this advertising-as-root-problem perspective seems to have some traction here, but you’re not going up far enough in the causal chain of abstraction if you stop

this advertising-as-root-problem perspective seems to have some traction here, but you’re not going up far enough in the causal chain of abstraction if you stop at advertising. that’s a tried-and-true recipe for unintended consequences and ineffective solutions. ultimately, it’s money that’s at the root of the problem, but that’s too uncomfortable of a truth for most people to accept, so we try to pull up short with attempts like this. and money in turn is overloaded to encapsulate power, influence, esteem, and wealth. if we really want to inject fairness and competition into the ad business, we must accept that the quest for money, and all that it represents, is the driving force behind these kinds of behaviors, and that the only effective means of curtailing them is to ultimately rein in the drive for money (not simplistically to limit advertising). both money and ads are useful tools in context, which also means in moderation. money is an overly simplistic metric poorly correlated to what we all want, which is human worth: to be loved, respected, esteemed, and included. having been gamed for so long, it now represents, and correlates with, our vices more than worth. we need to get beyond money as this simplistic on-size-fits-all metric for human worth.