[gruez]

>but that want is itself manufactured by the economy.

Is that an issue? There's not much demand for 8k ohm SMD resistors from people, but people do want smartphones that require 8k ohm SMD resistors to manufacture. The same applies for stuff like managers and other "bullshit jobs". Nobody wants them, but they're nonetheless required to keep the company/economy humming along. And if they're actually not required, then the economy that supposedly cares what's "economically most efficient" should have eliminated them.

[sw104]

I think the previous poster may be thinking more along the lines of a Mickey Mouse shaped bar of soap, rather than an important component of something useful, like resistors.

There is a mountain of trash end-products out there, which marketing is creating the want for. These products may not otherwise exist without the manufactured want, and could be removed entirely without much detriment to the very small amount of people that conscientiously decided of their own free will they wanted that product.

Marketing is what makes something like a Peloton a viable business, rather than those customers just taking a regular static bike and adding a tablet mount to the handlebars.

In some senses, I think the economy isn't always looking for the most efficient methods. I believe there is some political input involved to keep everybody's heads down under a quagmire of pointless work, so those people (even in a democracy) don't start asking too many questions. Some people could easily be automated out of work, yet they aren't, despite the efficiency it would bring.

To each their own, but I'd be fine with a huge amount of (what I deem) useless products and jobs being removed from the market. Most serve very little real purpose and as somebody else stated, are destroying our planet and wasting away the best years of our lives to attain them.