I would argue that Facebook and Google are bubbles too since they do not provide value. Advertising is a joke of an industry - it produces nothing and is essentially the business of mass psychological manipulation. For proof that such bubbles burst, look towards to entertainment industry which also provides nothing of value yet charges through the nose for it.
>Please don't confuse your personal opinion of the advertising industry with 100+ years of empirical evidence.
It really depends on what your definitions are. My personal take on it is that advertising is duct tape for a broken economic model. If we have an entire economic system where one of it's pillars is something so asinine (psychological manipulation with no opt-out for certain flavors like billboards), perhaps we should rethink the model.
So, from the perspective of a business which is trying to find clients/customers, sure, there's a tonne of value. From the perspective of trying to move humanity to bigger and better things, it has a huge negative value, again, IMO.
>"Entertainment" is doing fine. The current industry establishment is not. Not the same thing.
I actually wrote "entertainment industry" in my post :)
> So, from the perspective of a business which is trying to find clients/customers, sure, there's a tonne of value.
Excellent. And I'm sure you'll agree that's something of a leap from "it produces nothing"? Also, there's a corollary to this: This enables competition by lowering barriers to entry, which massively benefits consumers.
>And I'm sure you'll agree that's something of a leap from "it produces nothing"?
A diamond is worth a great deal in a lot of peoples' eyes yet it produces nothing. Interestingly, the goal of advertising and marketing is to increase the value of actual things by tricking people into believing that a) there's not enough supply - buy it now! and b) that demand is too high - buy it now! What exactly has been produced here? Demand? That's not a thing, it's an idea. Intellectual "property" is an absurd term, therefore, nothing has been produced.
On the subject of why I think that it has no value - well, most businesses see no value in me scratching my hand because it has an itch. From my perspective, there is a great deal of value in it. Similarly, I see no value in what some businesses do, since, from my perspective, they are harming the people around them. There is no absolute value in anything. Therefore, the value of something is determined by the beholder, which in my case is me.
>This enables competition by lowering barriers to entry, which massively benefits consumers.
Assuming that a competitive economy is a good thing, ofcourse.
The first is a paper by a psychologist and motivational speaker. Is that really what you want to lead with?
The second paper I can't really figure out, but it's dealing with individuals in a closed environment - not with matching supply to demand in an open economy.
Anyway, I'm plenty open to questioning my assumptions. That doesn't mean I'm willing to invest in lengthy discussions with random strangers in off-topic threads.
Google's might be overvalued but I don't think so. They've had 10 years of search data to analyze and understand human behaviour. They're working on solving mass consumer real-life issues; Maps, Chrome, Self-driving cars, etc..
I'm a pragmatist, so anything which makes survival easier has value. Everything else is fun and games (not important enough to build businesses around and charge money for). Personally, I think it would be good to have two economies - a 'core' economy where there is a gold standard, currency can only be traded for essential goods and patents and speculation are strictly forbidden. Then a 'extra/luxury/optional/nice-to-have' economy for all the rest which does allow a more fragile currency, speculation and what-not.
If you want food, produce something which will help someone else survive. If you want want to play around and relax, create something which will help other's do the same. Trade what you produce for what you require.
