[balbeit]

But by having people click on those ads, the companies that are advertising (which could be and are companies actively engaged in "physical" products) are acquiring paying customers and thus have greater ability to fund their products.

SpaceX, Boeing, GM, and Victoria Secret need revenue sources to create their 'non-virtual-reality' products, and marketing/advertising creates a revenue source. If they had a net loss from advertising they simply wouldn't do it.

[freshhawk]

That's definitely partly true. You can't argue that market capitalism doesn't move some resources to useful and productive things.

Maybe you are right and this is just a horrible inefficiency that will be corrected as soon as we figure out how to make ad optimization and ultra addictive time wasting games more efficiently.

It doesn't seem likely to me at all though, the only arguments I've seen for it are just ideological commitments to our current economic/political system.

The statement that modern global captialism is the best system for productive human endevour we have come up with and the statement that modern global capitalism and the systems it will spawn are enough to continue the upward trajectory of civilization are not the same thing.

> If they had a net loss from advertising they simply wouldn't do it.

I have little faith in the non-scientific philosophies that this kind of statement is based on given modern neuroscience and human irrationality. There are too many counter examples. We are not self interested rational actors, it's way more complicated than that.

[tdrgabi]

You are right, in theory.

But I get this feeling, more and more, that big, world changing companies, don't need ads revenue. The number of visits on the internet is less relevant for them.

You picked some companies randomly, but out of them SpaceX and Boeing are not selling stuff over the internet.

There is this hunch, that what we do, doesn't matter. It's mostly self congratulatory friend/social app. Yes, you might make some money out of it from VC but it doesn't change the world.

[freshhawk]

I have some hope that the maker/3d printer/home fabrication sector could combine the profitable small startup business that we all seem to love with some progress that will actually provide substantial benefit to humanity.

I think we need a lot more time to figure out how to organize and motivate and fund large projects as well as evolve culturally before any interesting large scale space exploration will be done. SpaceX type experiments might be the first step, even if it's just a data point about what doesn't work.

[rbanffy]

> Yes, you might make some money out of it from VC but it doesn't change the world.

Sounds like a plan: make a lot of money and then spend it to turn us into a real spacefaring civilization.

That's, apparently, what Elon Musk is trying to do.

Anyone wants to join in?

[mseebach]

The companies that buy Boeings products very much are selling stuff over the Internet.

[tdrgabi]

Yes. We could argue that people would still buy tickets even if they weren't available online, since flying beats car / ship traveling even if you have to walk to a store to buy your ticket.

[mseebach]

That's not the point.

Selling and advertising tickets online is at least as good as the offline alternative at the same cost (presumably cheaper). Otherwise, why bother?

Thus, better/cheaper online advertising -> more tickets sold -> higher demand for air planes.

[philwelch]

There's a plausible case that advertising is a negative-sum game (in the game theory sense). If no one advertised, they wouldn't be worse off since we would still buy the stuff, but if one player defects and advertises, they gain an advantage so the Nash equilibrium involves wasting lots of money on advertising to no net gain.

[kbutler]

The best advertising educates the receiver, rather than just trying to persuade to buy one product over another.

Advertising can thus be a positive-sum interaction.

Unfortunately, it's usually easier to target the other product, rather than promote one's own (see political advertising).

[uptown]

That's only because we live in a world that's built around the principles of commerce and capitalism where activities are lubricated by money. There's no reason to expect that the same system exists in alien worlds.