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Economists tell us that growth is the engine that drives the economy. I'm no economist, but it seems to me there's something fundamentally flawed about that notion. It may work in the short run, but it puts the future of the world at risk. It's not just that eventually you run out of markets, but resources as well. Meanwhile, advertising is the engine that drives growth, and advertising is arguably the most egregiously wasteful of all human enterprises. It's output has no intrinsic value. Newspapers and magazines, television and radio, billboards, handouts, the Internet, junk mail, skywriting, they all innundate us constantly with messages that are not just infuriating, but also a ravenously costly aspect of the economy they're supposed to drive. Almost immediately it all vanishes, leaving no imprint on the culture other than kitschy and fragmentary evidence it once existed, like decades-old publications, throwaway coasters printed with the logo of beer that hasn't been around since the 1950's, and snatches of bygone slogans like a little dab'll do ya.