> Marketing done right seeks to cancel itself out; if two competing companies do their marketing in an optimal way, it will leave the customer in the same state as if no marketing effort ever occured (ok, maybe a little more tired from listening to all that crap, but otherwise his/her decisions will not be influenced). In doing so, it can in principle use up (i.e. waste) unbounded amount of resources. That's why I sincerely consider marketing to be a parasite and a plague of our times.

I am wondering what would be the impact of a law to limit the advertising budget of companies. I will be hard to apply it, but the goal is to force companies to get out of the Nash non-optimal equilibrium that forces them to spend resources on marketing just because if they don't, the competition will.