That's the biggest lie.
Society radically changed after the mid 20th century, with TV and radio. It turned from demand-supply economics to a psychological push culture following the work of Edward Bernays and others, analaysed and to some extent amplified by Walter Lippmann.
Of course we call it advertising. It was never really "honest", of course. But once upon a time advertising was predominantly informational, and also more strongly regulated regarding its accuracy.
It's the "Biggest lie", not because there is one extraordinary untruth, but because advertising is a multi-trillion dollar, international, highly specialised, scientific, well researched, systematic framework of lies.
The prototypical lie, the class from which all lies are derived, is that you "need" something you don't. Humans are in fact extraordinarily resilient, self-sufficient, adaptable creatures. We need little more than basic food, shelter and exercise, a list laid out by Maslow that includes social and spiritual needs. We don't need much. Some have even said. "All you need is love" - and that's not too far from the truth.
Yet, through this lie of "necessity" that leverages our emptiness, we have been made to "consume" billions of automobiles, smartphones, dishwashers, TVs, ridiculous excesses of food, clothing, entertainment. And we still feel inadequate and unhappy.
There is no greater lie than "What you need".
"The point of advertising is to make the person you are envy the person you could be with their product. In other words, they are attempting to steal your satisfaction and then offering to sell it back to you."
Your life consists of your sex life.
Your life consists of your social media life.
It's a conflation of personal responsibility into unquestioning work ethic, and begins the alienation of the worker from their craft.
Leaded fuel is safe.
There’s no such thing as global warming.
- The battleship Maine was blown up by the Spanish government, therefore we must go to war with Spain.
- There's isn't any famine in Ukraine, this is the 1930s.
- There are weapons of mass destruction somewhere, we think Irak.
But lies happen all the time, we were told inflation was temporary, and then that it was good. The message I'm getting now is that it's a problem and it's here to stay for a while. Depending on where you land on COVID, Russia-Trump collusion, election fraud, ... you may add some examples, but clearly someone is being lied to.