> Every time I feel like I have come to terms with marketing people as economic actors they manage to plumb some new nadir.

Well, yes, but they do what works. They wouldn't do it if it didn't work. Which means they manage to connect with something deep inside our minds. So, when you make statements about what marketers do, you're really commenting on how the human mind works - a jumbled, impromptu, cobbled-up-in-a-hurry mess (that somehow still manages to put rockets on Mars, by some incomprehensible miracle).