Advertising works which is why corporations spend billions each year on it. If advertising did not work, our critics might have a point, but billions of dollars spent prove otherwise. Advertising is also the reason that looks are crucially important in establishing Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Beyonce etc.
It is not true that consumers assess the world and then come up with their choices. Consumers do not wander from business establishment to business establishment analyzing how products are produced and what is available. We are also convinced the consumers would rather that the government regulate foods and drugs--do an analysis of what is in these drugs and under what conditions food and drugs are produced. Anyone who assumes that consumers really want to do the analysis of the products they buy themselves is badly deluded, probably a professional bourgeois economist.
Consumers go to a store and based on prior ads they buy what is available. It is not an arbitrary process covering all the bases. Walmart stores are big but not so big as to allow every commodity anyone anywhere could think of producing. A few corporations decide on the vast majority of merchandise.
Mega-corporations choose and then spend money on ads. If a product makes less profit than others, the mega-corporation simply stops selling it. They make the choices. That is the truth even if the commodity sold is completely harmful as with cigarettes or junk food.
Once we get over our "free will" illusions and realize that people by their millions have been brainwashed into smoking and getting fat, we can start to debate the topic correctly. When it comes to the "who are you to decide" question, MIM is better to decide than the mega-corporations, because mega-corporations profit from their products and are not objective about them as a result. Both MIM and mega-corporations will make mistakes in what is good for consumers, but when something harmful like cigarettes come along, MIM has no vested interest in lying in their defense. We also have no vested interest in spreading ads for potato chips. Even if it is not profitable, MIM in power can propagate a product that substitutes for cigarettes while not harming the public. Such did not happen under capitalism for decades until doctors starting getting tougher on their patients and ordering this and that type of therapy.
That is an example why MIM is better than the mega-corporations in deciding "what" to produce in the first place. Their goal is to make profit which simply depends on what is easily available and easy to advertise. The goals of the international proletariat include a sustainable environment, enough food to eat, adequate shelter, clothing to wear and ever-improving medical science.
Who are we to decide? Better us than Frito-Lay or R.J. Reynolds or Playboy Magazine. People in the wealthiest capitalist countries are the most brainwashed because they think they are not. Anyone who has thought for five seconds about advertising's effects on children knows there is a Western form of brainwashing. It would be better that MIM does the brainwashing.