> Where do you draw the line on pharmaceutical marketing?

The line is pretty straightforward. No marketing to patients of any drug that requires a prescription whatsoever. The reason why these medicines require prescriptions is because they are more serious than aspirin or sunscreen, so it's an easy and reasonable line to draw. Marketing to doctors is fine (i.e. the market actors who have the base knowledge necessary to make reasonably informed decisions). There are plenty of policy arguments to be found on why direct marketing of pharmaceuticals is not a net win. There's a reason why it only happens in the United States and New Zealand.

> If you are seriously worried about a highly educated segment of society being misled by a simple numerical trick like the one you describe, there must be no hope whatsoever for humanity if the only people we can trust to watch commercials are people with a Ph.D in stats.

The same arguments were made about predatory lending agreements and similarly misleading financial mechanisms. Society has come down in large part against these things, rejecting the idea that the consumer is wholly responsible to educate themselves. Marketing with law schools is a serious problem and the ABA is currently under investigation by several senators on this issue.

> If someone has not become well acquainted with the sorts of semi-misleading things mentioned in ads by the time he/she is an adult, something is seriously wrong, and the sort of paternalistic society needed to protect this person from him/herself is unacceptably oppressive to everyone else's freedom.

Sounds great on paper, but like most arguments of this type it doesn't hold up. In reality you've got people with average college educations going up against PhDs in finance, economics, psychology, etc. Companies can afford to pay these people huge salaries in order to increase sales, while the consumers are just regular people who get home after a hard days work and don't want to spend the balance of their free time on figuring out how the business execs are trying to trip them up. The bottom line is that in this country and others companies don't have the absolute freedom to represent their product how they want. As a practical consideration consumers don't have the time to educate themselves to the proper level and so regulation stops companies from taking advantage of consumers.

The argument that typically comes back is nanny state, etc, etc, etc. But I find it telling that it is only the people with the ability and education to combat predatory practices that make this argument. In reality America is composed of a diverse set of people, some with education, some without, some native speakers, some not. Some regulation to protect everyone who otherwise would trample the average citizen because of greed is the right thing to do.

I'm not sure I understand how a consumer hearing wind of a pharmaceutical is a problem, since his/her doctor is the gatekeeper and has sworn to do no harm to the patient.

Your argument against lenders and fine print is interesting. Post housing crash this sort of thing is blamed for herding lots of naive people into mortgages with terms they shouldn't (in retrospect) have agreed to.

However if you look at what regulators were doing during that period, they were actually expanding the core problem. Bush had started a war that was having real effects on the economy. In spite of Greenspan's attempt to clarify the government's position on implicitly underwriting Fannie and Freddie, Bush expended no effort at solving this problem, which had been much anticipated. Fannie and Freddie ended up not releasing any financial information to the public for several years!

This was also the time when many people felt very wise for having bought a house when they did. Prices were up 40% over a few years in many markets, and so it was easy for the American people to support an expensive war b/c so many were rich on paper thanks to the drastic appreciation in housing prices.

The regulations that tilt investment toward housing are supported by both political parties and created the massive bubble that ended up bursting.

Sure you can blame lenders for sloppy research, buyers for inadequate caution, but our government had everyone convinced that housing prices always go up.

You relate a sort of conspiracy theory about intellectuals being paid great sums to hoodwink the average person and suggest that better regulation is the answer. I'd argue that regulation is the biggest problem we have b/c it insulates people from the predictable and obvious consequences that they'd anticipate without this malign guidance.

Like a seatbelt made of tissue paper, it may appear to offer protection, but in reality it leads to risky behavior that no sane person would undertake without a large dose of naive trust in the ruling class.