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Comment by qroshan | Hacker News Reader

Most of HN don't understand that the Advertising ecosystem is what is feeding the tech boom and their livelihood. Just like housing it is an entire ecosystem now with many people's jobs and livelihood is based on.

Hit that ecosystem and you get a recession. However it doesn't stop at the recession. Most VCs are funding hundreds and thousands of startups with the hope that one of them is going to get sold to Google or Facebook or Amazon or any of the Advertising Cash Cow business. Dry that tap and you'll have VCs pulling money from Tech.

Now, there is glut of Programmer supply and a severe lack of investments. Not dissimilar to 2008.

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That's usually called "the broken window fallacy".

A kid goes out and breaks random windows in people's home; as a result, a lot of economic activity ensues - the glass producers, the people who produce glass cutters and specialized tools, the people who install windows, the cleaners who specialize in cleaning broken glass, etc ...

The ad industry is breaking everyone's windows. It does indeed produce a lot of economic activity; But it is more likely than not "misallocation and waste of funds" when looked at in a broader context.

Broken Windows is actually not a fallacy (classic Keynsian vs Hayek argument) If past decade has proven anything. Keynsian economic policies worked (printing money forcing people to spend) while a Austrian Austerity would have been disastrous.

Again, HN will not understand the side effects of destroying a major ecosystem. They all think they are much smarter and can stand on their own and VC money has no effect on their livelihood and it's their superior linux skills that keep them making tons of money

The past decade has proven that central banks can keep a system afloat for a decade. It remains to be seen if it proves anything else.

I think many HNers do understand this. I do and I am sad by the amount of waste it creates. The jobs in adtech are better left not done at all, and the manpower and money redirected to more socially useful jobs.

We could be working on distributed systems and analytics engines to - say - chew through all the protein mediated DNA/RNA expressions.

That would cost a few pennies in engineering skill and we might even find cures to things that might kill us or our loved ones.

But no, we’re throwing these opportunities away trying to be the next overvalued IRC skin.

Again, this is someone who doesn't understand economics

The sooner the ad nonsense stops, the sooner we can turn to finding profit in something more useful to humanity.

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