[calamari4065]

I wonder if the author realizes that there are eight billion humans. They can't all work on the same thing. And the majority of people who are not engineers and who just work regular mindless jobs need entertainment.

Also we've had entertainment since the dawn of time. People don't just go home and stare at the wall for sixteen hours before going back to work. Almost none are going home from work to solve humanity's Real Problems(tm). Entertainment holds significant value to everyone plus or minus a few percent.

But really the author has a critique of capitalism and doesn't want to admit it. The complaint is that art is a product you're expected to pay for and consume, and individual artists almost can't even exist without spending all their time advertising. Imagine how much art would be produced if artists weren't forced to choose between making art and paying rent.

All in all, the author is yelling at clouds because other people have values he disagrees with and refuses to understand

[tyfighter]

Of course they realize that, because that's not what the article is about. The problem being described is that the distribution of talent/intelligence across the problems civilization is facing is uneven. The author's perspective is that individual interests and pay/profit incentives bias the distribution towards fun boom/bust industries (e.g. video games/VR/entertainment), and more critical industries may be losing out on this talent as a result. These are problems that capitalism can't naturally solve, because not every problem needing to be solved can be crafted into profit driven market. More than a "critique of capitalism", the author has noticed his industry is filling up with engineers/competition.