Tibor, this was an interesting subject, though I arrive at a different conclusion. I believe most Objectivists would agree that one of the few legitimate roles of government is to enforce contracts. Since advertising is typically an oral or written promise to deliver a product or service for a set a amount of money, it follows that it is a legitimate function of government to ensure that what individuals advertise, they also deliver. To advertise one thing, and to deliver another can be (with some exceptions) measured accurately by an unbiased observer, and determined to be in accordance with the promise or not. Railing against government because they enforce enforceable contracts (a promise to deliver a tangible service/product for said money) and don’t enforce unenforceable contracts (an ideological or religious promise) is absurd. One must draw a line between what the government is competently able to and ought to enforce, versus what would be enforced only for political gain, and advertising falls into the former category.

I'm no lawyer, but I'd say it's safe to assume the Truth in Advertising law deals more with tangible and verifiable claims like whether, in reality, a certain brand of toothpaste contains the expensive whitening agent the advertisement claims it contains, as opposed to the government investigating the divorce rate among Colgate users who read their advertisement in Red Book magazine.

You wrote: “It is not based on this that the contract should be signed but on having investigated the come-on and learned that the producer-seller does indeed promise the goods are reliable.  The market brochure is not a promissory note. It is a promotional device.” Actually, the marketing brochure is a promissory statement and a promotional device- you act as though the two are mutually exclusive. Often, but not always, the promotional content of an advertisement is precisely the explanation of the product’s benefits to its audience. Advertisers must keep in line when it comes to factual information precisely because it is viewed as a promise- and if they factually misrepresent a verifiable claim to boost sales, they know that their swindled customers have recourse to the law- this is Capitalism at work, ensuring that the information that leads to a transaction is accurate. To deny that a promise is a promise, or to say that two parties to a transaction ought not be honest in exchanging critical information relevant to a transaction, is an affront to the morality of Capitalism at its very roots. Capitalism only works when people are honest in their transactions- or when the law allows recourse for people who have been lied to- including lies in advertisements.

Bridget asserted: Consider this, if you could make it a crime for being stupid, absurd, and down right goofy, then everything a person does in some function could be called a crime by that you made it possible to wiggle any old thing in as one.