> You don't see advertisements for the ballpoint pen any more Google "Ballpoint pen" and you get a whole top row of sponsored links trying to sell ballpoint pe

> You don't see advertisements for the ballpoint pen any more Google "Ballpoint pen" and you get a whole top row of sponsored links trying to sell ballpoint pens to me. But sure, ballpoint pens aren't advertised on prime-time TV like products sold to 20-something trying to get an edge on the dating life (deodorant, hairspray etc.). That's an especially lucrative market, but not the target audience of most products. > Macro-economically speaking, is this a company or industry that should keep on growing? The point of capitalism was supposed to be that there was competition in R&D[...] One of the main points of capitalism is to decentralize the decision making about what's worthwhile economic activity to a bunch of uncoerced individual decisions. Does that result in a bunch of money being spent on "pointless" products? Sure, but who's to say what's so important that everyone should do without it?