Also a lot of US STEM grads have their skills wasted in unproductive fields, like the ad business.
The problem with advertising is that a little bit done honestly is actually good and fine. What we actually have way, way too much, and it's often dishonest and manipulative.
It's a similar thing with finance. It's necessary, but way too many talented people are spending their energies on it.
Black and white thinking doesn't really capture the situation, and ends up creating a lot of noise (BAN IT ALL vs. IT'S ALL GOOD AND YOU LOVE IT, FIGHT!).
Honestly, I think it might be a good thing to put caps on the number of people that can work in sectors like that (and further limit the number of very smart people working in them), to direct talented people to more productive and socially beneficial parts of the economy.
At the end of the day, if most of company's income is from ads, it can be safely assumed that whatever else it does is somehow about ads even if it doesn't contribute directly. Well, or else Google is incredibly inept.
Especially if it's an ecommerce business.
Regardless of which side of the camp you fall on, you can’t argue that ads are “good” just because some businesses need them to survive. In fact, I’d wager if a business NEEDS ads to survive, it’s probably a net negative on society as a whole.
I won’t die on that hill, but that’s my hunch.
Advertising is nothing more than bringing attention to your product to your target customer.
And without this so called immoral behaviour I fail to see how any business works.
It’s not even debated that advertising as it exists with Google, for the sake of profit at all costs is a net-negative in society.
It’s not the same as putting a sign by the road.
The tech is fine. The toxic parts (data collection, spying, etc) aren't even in the ad tech divisions and aren't done for advertising purposes.
They collect data because it gives them bargaining power and a seat at the table with state-level actors.
There is good and bad advertising.
I'd want to receive ads for things that I'm really interested in.
The problem with prohibiting ads is how to prevent (or even define) payed hidden promotions. But tracking and targeted ads could be prohibited, which would already make things much more civil and less relevant as a tech profit center.
Maybe the ad is good when you arent even aware that you were influenced by it?
like Cola vs Pepsi, McDonald vs KFC, etc.
People want to buy things, especially the ones that make their life easier, but you got to get to know them somehow, right?
Aka does advertising as a whole increase total consumption or is it a zero sum game (aka send bigger slice of the same pie to a competitor)
From what I know advertising does increase total demand aka more things/services need to be produced and sold on aggregate.
But most ads are trying to convince you to buy their brand’s version of a product that you already know of, or (even worse!) a new version of an old product. Any demand induced there is just wastefulness.
If Amazon can figure out that I’m interested in headphones, I already know more actual information about headphones than their ads will give me.
An alternative explanation is that prospective tech CEOs who are willing to overlook morals are scarcer and thus mandate higher salaries. ;)
There may be other services that might be better if not for network effects, but it is trivially true that a search engine is better for most people than no search engine at all. And that is what is produced.
A tick can contain a lot of blood, doesn't mean it produced that blood.
Things like Google and Facebook cannot be parasitic, every dollar gained is a voluntary exchange with no threats. People choose to use Google and gain something from doing so.
Remember kids – thousands dying from lack of healthcare isn't a bug of the system, it's a feature. This has been determined as necessary, nay even beneficial, by market forces that can never be wrong.
Imo, profits != productive or to a benefit of society.
Because fundamentally I think there is an effect where the people in proximity to lots of money earn more. Obviously the Walmart receptionist and the JP Morgan receptionist are doing basically the same job. But the JP Morgan receptionist is surrounded by people who wouldn't think twice about doubling the receptionists pay and I would imagine that has a significant effect.
If you want to be the receptionist at Goldman Sachs at their headquarters at 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, then you're looking at paying $616,250 for a 556 sq. ft. studio apartment. And that's just the housing. If you want to live within 30 minutes of work, you can get that number down to $400,000, but that's also a studio apartment.
Then you have to consider some place to eat - or you bring your own meals.
What about clothing? You need clothing that looks the part.
It's the proximity to real estate, which I guess you could argue is a proximity to "lots of money" as you put it, but... not reeeaaaally...
For example, Boston has a higher per-capita income than NYC but somewhat lower housing costs, and Austin has around the same per-capita income as Los Angeles but significantly lower housing costs. Because it's a lot easier to build housing in Texas than in California.
Crazy how the same box of pasta is suddenly three times the price once you cross the border.
Taken to the extreme, literal theft can pay well, and produces absolutely nothing.
Pay indicates the transfer of wealth -- it can be a heuristic for productivity, sure, but productivity is clearly not its only source.
You're just shifting around a bunch of numbers temporarily to make a bunch of money for someone and lose a bunch for someone else.
Lots of shit we do is well-paid and unproductive.
If, as a species, we eliminated all bullshit jobs, there's a good chance only 20-30% of the species would be working. Here in America, only around 50% of people are actually working. Everyone else is in school, or retired.
Despite what some people may think, options are not just for gambling, but some people - like farmers who have to plan for uncertain weather - use them for a real purpose. And of course the use of option in the financial sector for hedging is extremely important too. But it's easier to dismissively say that trading options is a "bullshit job" and go back to one's ivory tower.
Why else would Google need 182,000 employees? Or how about Facebook with 67,000? Microsoft clocks in at a whopping 228,000, and Apple at 161,000.
These are staggering numbers of employees. So many, in fact, that it would be an exercise in futility to try and manage so many for the number of products they offer, especially Google and Meta.
It's cheaper to make busywork than risk the cash cow.
Keep in mind that approximately 50% work in the retail stores.
But Google and Meta?