Banning the use of brands obviously won't achieve anything desirable, but requiring transparent branding seems like it will improve the consumer market's spending decisions.
Of course, pro-free-market legislation will never make it through Republican-controlled Congress...
IANANC but my understanding is that a true market is two-sided: it requires informed consumers. Initiatives that bolster the buyer-side of the market aren't anti-market.
Regulations that improve market efficiency are good. Regulations that impede efficiency are bad. In practice, we do need regulations because real-world actors are not optimal rational agents.
The most basic is the enforcement of contracts, which I think everyone agrees on.
But regulations about truth in advertising fit in there too. Lists of ingredients and nutritional information on packaging are an onerous regulation that allow consumers to make better informed choices (and so lead IMO to a "better" market). (I think brand ownership transparency is close philosophically to requiring ingredients on food products.) There are many examples of regulations that promote market efficiency, which sellers don't like because they may have been making profits from the inefficiency, or from information asymmetry.
There are of course regulations which degrade market efficiency too, either by regulatory capture or ill-thought out "consumer protection" like price controls, rent control, etc.
My overall point is that the assumption that a market with the fewest controls is de-facto the "best" market should be examined closely - manipulations of the market (whether by regulation, taxes, etc.) should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis based on whether they promote or degrade market efficiency.
In this case, the information is technically available but obscured such that consumers cannot make educated purchasing decisions without expending an irrational amount of time... thereby reducing supply-side competition.
Devil's advocate...
Brands can be a mnemonic that helps customers quickly recall relative quality experienced in previous purchases. This may vary across brands, and my experiences with Dove soap don't tell me anything about my experiences with Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
Brands are often silly and misleading and I try to avoid them, but they aren't inherently malicious by default.
Any medium that can manipulate can also inform.
I feel this is something like identity politics, and something that really does not need regulation except to allow those to identify however they wish, with no determent to others.
Corporations are made up of people, yes, but giving them personhood is a pretty dangerous idea. Should they get to vote? Obviously, the answer has to be "no" or else people will register companies to rig elections.
If they can't vote, are they really people?
If they aren't, then what exactly are felons and foreigners?
This logic is hugely flawed. Since we work off of a one-person-gets-one-ballot system, grouping people together (as in a corporation) and giving them a vote wouldn't make any sense. By contrast, you can't "use up" your speech rights: Each person is allowed an unlimited amount of legal speech, and I don't think there's a compelling philosophical argument that a group of people speaking together isn't protected. There may be _pragmatic_ arguments, but that's another ballgame altogether, since the entire point of the Constitution is that it's _not_ subject to the pragmatism/whims of the time.
I'm not saying that "corporations should be legally modeled as people" is an ironclad truth, but none of your objections make sense.
In reality, the argument is that you can't restrict a corporation's speech because using a corporation to speak is merely a form or method people use to speak.
You could speak via billboards, grass roots organizations, a radio show, lettets, or even a company you own.
The government can't curtail your speech no matter the method.
The people who comprise a group have no extra vote to give: if two friends and I form a group, a new vote allocated to the three of us doesn't magically materialize. By contrast, since there is no quota for speech per person, two friends and I can form a group (eg, an advocacy group) and tomorrow go down to Union Square (or buy airtime, or hand out pamphlets, or stand on a street corner) and engage in whatever legal speech we like, collectively. The claim is that if that group of people happens to be given the structure "corporation", that doesn't automatically allow for infringing on the rights of the people within the corporation to engage in legal speech.
Again, I'm making no statement as to whether I think this approach is wise or good for society or not, but it's astonishing how common it is to see people who completely don't know what they're talking about on this issue and yet are somehow super passionate about it.
Why shouldn't a corporation, effectively a person, use the vast wealth at it's disposal to influence elections and steer government policy in the direction it wants?
Hmmm, perhaps we should rethink this whole corporations as persons thing.
I have some nasty reactions to the stuff and so did my late mother, who was a total skeptic to all crunchy-granola pure-foodery. I hate that they can brand a strange chemical like this with the names of natural sweeteners and then we're expected to call it by that name. Though I admit DichlorodideoxyβDfructofuranosyl4chloro4deoxyαDgalactopyranoside is much harder to say, and contains letters that aren't even letters at all.