Or, how about we just get rid of advertising?  While basic critical thinking skills are well and good, why should it be necessary to use them every day, everywhere we look, day after day, to slog through an avalanche of self-interested lies?

Seriously - what positive role in society does it play?  What public good does it perform, that makes up for all of its negatives?  Insofar as it funds the cultural industries, I think there are better ways to do that.  Why allow it at all?