The Wisdom of Bill Watterson

I was going through some of my old Calvin and Hobbes comic books, and I was amazed that as I have developed with more and deeper ways of looking at things, I was able to see more and more genius in the work of Bill Watterson. Today, I would like to focus on one strip I recently read. While I cannot find an image, nor scan it, I hope a simple transcript will suffice.

Hobbes: I can't believe there's a magazine for gum chewers.
Calvin: Heck, there must be a dozen such magazines.
Calvin: Each appeals to a different faction. "Chewing" is a high-gloss, literate and sophisticated. "Gum Action" goes for the gonzo chewers. "Chewers Illustrated" aim at vintage gum collectors, and so on!
Calvin: Each one encourages you to think that you belong to an elite clique, so advertisers can appeal to your ego and get you to cultivate an image that sets you apart from the crowd. It's the divide and conquer trick.
Hobbes: I wonder whatever happened to the melting pot.
Calvin: There's no money in it.

There isn't much I can say about Watterson' genius in this strip, let alone his entire works. Everything works in this dialogue. He has the reference to another "magazine" as an intro. He has Calvin give an excellent description of how marketing and sales works in America in regards to his magazine. He then even makes a connection to an overarching idea of how America has, one could say, deteriorated ethically.So, I guess you can say ol' Bill has done all of my work for me.

What I do want to do is expand on some of the crucial questions that were brought up in the cartoon. Has financial incentives become the driving force of the American market? Or, perhaps more appropriately, hasn't it always been? While it may seem rudimentary to point out that marketing  is founded upon sales, but it seems to me that American's tend to  ignore or pass over the brute fact that marketing is a strategic game, in which the players will use any means necessary to win.