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Yes, pretty much everything in our current economy is extremely inefficient. In terms of waste, cryptocurrencies are peanuts. - Facebook ad spending is a waste

Yes, pretty much everything in our current economy is extremely inefficient. In terms of waste, cryptocurrencies are peanuts. - Facebook ad spending is a waste; do companies actually get a ROI on all the money they give to Facebook? They don't actually know! In the grand scheme of things it's a complete waste. If Facebook didn't exist, then companies wouldn't be forced to pay it money just to stay relevant; they could focus their funds on actually improving their products instead. Not to mention the enormous amount of otherwise productive human hours that Facebook is responsible for wasting every day. That's not even counting all the other social networks. - Gambling; $240 billion per year; the money does nothing for society. The amount of money spent on gambling every year is MORE than the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies added up together. So even if you think that buying a cryptocurrency is gambling, your odds are much better (and improve as you do more research). If people stopped gambling on horses and lottery and started gambling with cryptocurrencies instead, the total market cap for cryptocurrencies would be much higher than it is now. - Sports; the sport industry makes $75 billion per year. Yes it's entertainment. So is trading cryptocurrencies. - Tobacco industry makes $35 billion in PROFITS per year. Doesn't add anything positive to society. I think that if you were to add up all fees (profits) ever charged for transferring cryptocurrencies, you wouldn't get anything close to $35 billion.

DKnoll 9y ago
Jon, all I need to do to check if any internet ad campaign is effective is check analytics. Facebook Ads can be very effective. Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries. Sports promote fitness. Cigarettes make me look cool (kidding).
- neilwilson 9y ago
  "Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries." It doesn't. That's the myth that keeps you supporting the system. The truth is the other way around. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree-exists-822ee0ecb09a https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree...
  - DKnoll 9y ago
    That article is nonsensical. Also which system are we referring to, there are an infinite number.
Mahn 9y ago
> Facebook ad spending is a waste; do companies actually get a ROI on all the money they give to Facebook? Yes they do, and yes they know. Facebook is very effective at reaching qualified leads, it's not "likes" or "engagement" what advertisers are buying.
- jondubois 9y ago
  Maybe for a small subset of the total advertising spend, but for the big players, they can't always be sure which part of their revenue can be attributed to Facebook and which part can be attributed to other sources or which part can be attributed to their sheer scale (everyone knows about Coca Cola, but that won't stop the company from spending big on advertising). Companies like Procter and Gamble started scaling back their Facebook ad spend; they had no idea what their FB ROI was until they actually started scaling back and they realized that it was essentially $0.
  - Mahn 9y ago
    I don't think that lead generation ad spending on facebook represents a small subset of the total advertising spend on there. Sure, there are always going to be monolithic companies that market poorly on facebook, but from my experience this is not the norm, and a lot of companies and startups are marketing on facebook without blindly throwing money at it.
  - bira 9y ago
    If they can't measure their ROI, big or small the players, it's their fault, not Facebook. It's not that hard to deploy direct marketing campaigns and monitor conversions. It's actually the ABC of online marketing.
eridius 9y ago
> In terms of waste, cryptocurrencies are peanuts. I don't have a link for you, but just yesterday I read a headline saying bitcoin mining accounts for 5% of the UK's energy expenditure. That's not peanuts. Now, even if that headline is wrong, here's a site that offers a Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index Chart (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption) and they say that bitcoin accounts for 0.08% of the world's electricity consumption. That seems absurdly high.

DKnoll 9y ago

Jon, all I need to do to check if any internet ad campaign is effective is check analytics. Facebook Ads can be very effective. Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries. Sports promote fitness. Cigarettes make me look cool (kidding).

neilwilson 9y ago
"Gambling pays for many social services through (heavy) taxation and government-run lotteries." It doesn't. That's the myth that keeps you supporting the system. The truth is the other way around. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree-exists-822ee0ecb09a https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/the-magic-money-tree...
- DKnoll 9y ago
  That article is nonsensical. Also which system are we referring to, there are an infinite number.

Mahn 9y ago

> Facebook ad spending is a waste; do companies actually get a ROI on all the money they give to Facebook? Yes they do, and yes they know. Facebook is very effective at reaching qualified leads, it's not "likes" or "engagement" what advertisers are buying.

jondubois 9y ago
Maybe for a small subset of the total advertising spend, but for the big players, they can't always be sure which part of their revenue can be attributed to Facebook and which part can be attributed to other sources or which part can be attributed to their sheer scale (everyone knows about Coca Cola, but that won't stop the company from spending big on advertising). Companies like Procter and Gamble started scaling back their Facebook ad spend; they had no idea what their FB ROI was until they actually started scaling back and they realized that it was essentially $0.
- Mahn 9y ago
  I don't think that lead generation ad spending on facebook represents a small subset of the total advertising spend on there. Sure, there are always going to be monolithic companies that market poorly on facebook, but from my experience this is not the norm, and a lot of companies and startups are marketing on facebook without blindly throwing money at it.
- bira 9y ago
  If they can't measure their ROI, big or small the players, it's their fault, not Facebook. It's not that hard to deploy direct marketing campaigns and monitor conversions. It's actually the ABC of online marketing.

eridius 9y ago

> In terms of waste, cryptocurrencies are peanuts. I don't have a link for you, but just yesterday I read a headline saying bitcoin mining accounts for 5% of the UK's energy expenditure. That's not peanuts. Now, even if that headline is wrong, here's a site that offers a Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index Chart (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption) and they say that bitcoin accounts for 0.08% of the world's electricity consumption. That seems absurdly high.