In libraries there are librarians who know enough about their books to guide you to the ones you need. There's systems to make finding types of books easier, and if the book you need isn't available they can have another library send their copy over, and all of this is paid for with taxes, so you don't need to buy books and find out they were a waste of your money. Imagine a library where they use a different method of showing you books. Instead of a librarian there are posters and videos and events all to promote different books. How much harder would it be, in such a library, to find the books you need? What if the books you need are educational, which aren't being promoted at any time? There's ads for cookbooks, for entertainment, for sports, but nothing for your hobbies. Ads for books about types of cars, but not how to repair them. This library wouldn't run on tax dollars, nor would the books be sorted for ease of finding them.

The second library sucks, fundamentally it's a worse experience for everyone. But that's how things work outside of libraries, we get shown pictures of things that are almost what we need but not quite, and then that's supposed to convince us to buy it. I just want a global librarian who can listen to the problems I have with a project, so they can point to where I can get or buy a solution. An expert that is paid with tax dollars. Half the budget of every product is its marketing, meaning half the cost you pay for anything comes from marketing. If there was no marketing outside of what's funded with taxes, it wouldn't lower the cost of everything by half, it's lower it by more than half. If you make chairs and use that money to buy beds and tables and desks, those people are also not needing to market their beds and tables and desks, so you need half the money you used to. Even if you don't lower your prices and they don't lower theirs, you can still buy twice as much as before, and so can they, because you didn't have to pay to show people pictures of your chairs and had money left over.

Instead of ads being billboards distracting drivers, or adding to paper waste, or wasting peoples time by interrupting something they were trying to watch, instead there could be centralized events where people can use different things in person. A location that holds all kinds of equipment and lets people use it for a while, with people on hand to teach how it's used. Like a library, there would be fees if the items aren't returned on time. But it would let people figure out if something is worth getting, as well as collect it all under one roof so you can browse the different sections. Maybe you want to make sure that a USB-C cable you want to buy actually transfers data, or if the port on your laptop is just dead.