The whole article is essentially a long moan about how things have changed, and how the beancounters would like things to go back to normal because right now they no longer understand how to add stuff up.

Example: "tiny payments for digital contributions might correct yet another problem, a misallocation of labour. If companies paid people for useful data, rather than mopping up what they leave behind as they use online services, then prices could nudge people towards more productive online activity."

Correct a problem? A problem for who? Neither the consumer nor the provider appear to be in any kind of trouble. The use of "mopping up" implies that the acquisition of data is somehow accidental, and simple an act of unwanted stuff discarded by the visitor, whilst in truth it is an aggressive and intelligent machine that flenses data from the visitor. Finally "productive online activity" is completely fucking meaningless in this context. productive how? for whom?

Yet another faux-intellectual bullshit piece by the Economist.