Great lyrics to that one; worth reading twice!

Alex, I think that today's market-based thinking is largely a codification of concepts that existed before modern times. Modern western society seeks to make everything a science, with theories that can be proven, principles that can be built upon, and specialized jargon for communicating with other practitioners. But that doesn't mean that all of the underlying concepts were invented in modern times. I think that the basics of marketing (or "salesmanship") have been understood and used for many centuries, by politicians, religious leaders, merchants, and lots of other folks. The same could also be said of psychology, sociology, and other related fields.