SEO is just another form of advertising, with all the costs, benefits and externalities of any other form.
I had experience working with seo specialist, most of people in seo are there because good money is paid by startups to bring there site organic traffic by whatever black hat seo method, seo stands a good marketing tool for these startups.
Advertising is also vandalism
Without agreeing, I'm sympathetic to that point of view.
Most people are aware but are powerless to do anything about it.
Perhaps, though a world without SEO doesn't necessarily surface the best content either. Not everything about Google's algorithm that's subpar is because of spam or SEO.
There's no world with SEO that is a positive, don't delude yourself
I didn't say anything like that, don't delude yourself.