Are you ever surprised that you are being lied to?

To about the same degree that Captain Renault was “shocked, just shocked” to find gambling going on Casablanca, that’s how shocked many of us are to find that politicians and business leaders lie to us.Whether it’s the latest candidate promising to make the world a better place, or Coca Cola offering the Real Thing,  the idea of marketing and even misrepresentation has been around before spin doctors, and long before  Don Draper.From the days on the Savanna when the caveman may have allowed his buddy to be eaten by a lion, because he coveted his woman, to the endless promise of the Apple Watch...we know we are often lied to.But does matter?  Isn’t the idea of a free society the ability to allow us to have the information to be informed, to make our own decisions?  And today, with creative destruction everywhere, when buyers know more about the price of a car than the salesman, when transpiration can be ordered and altered with the click of a mouse, aren't we better off?Talk radio host and author Ethan Bearman, whose new book is Liars & W****s: How Big Government and Big Business Are Working to Save Their Own Assets, Not Yours,is not so sure.My conversation with Ethan Bearman: Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe