The real problem is that we have a default theory of value: stuff is just worth whatever people paid for it, otherwise they wouldn't have paid for it is the sho

The real problem is that we have a default theory of value: stuff is just worth whatever people paid for it, otherwise they wouldn't have paid for it is the short version. It's a gaping hole in our economic theories, and unsurprisingly advertisers have driven a goods train through it. It arises here because we're trying to figure out whether people are paying for stuff they don't benefit from (or don't benefit enough to make it worth the price), which to many people seems intuitively the case, but it's quite hard to flesh out an argument for how it's could happen when we think people only pay for stuff that they want.