[feoren]

> the unglamorous stuff that needs doing.

You're thinking of picking up the trash, driving trucks, fixing toilets, and assembling wheelbarrows. That pays shit: the things that "need doing" are mostly just not done, and what is done pays nothing. Advertising has never "needed doing", it's always been an exploit that psychopaths use to enrich themselves at the expense of all of humanity. And the advertising industry is nothing if not glamorous.

[throwaway4aday]

I don't think you can get away with throwing out the baby with the bathwater on this one. In any market where there is more than one supplier you need some form of advertising even if it's just just a couple signs that say "Bob sells shoes" and "Alice sells shoes" though in reality customers need more information than that. What kind of shoes? Men's shoes? Women's shoes? Children's shoes? What color are they? What weather are they good in? What are they made of? etc. etc.

Granted, advertising has been taken to the extreme and there wouldn't be harm in cutting back on it to a certain degree, you just can't get rid of all of it so it is in fact one of those jobs that need doing.

The point of my comment is that you can say the same thing about every pair of thing someone wants to do and thing someone needs done and the essential part is that it doesn't matter what the second thing is, people would still complain that all this talent for A was being wasted because they were working on B instead but it's not a waste for a variety of reasons one of which is that there is not enough demand for A. You could easily say someone is a psycopath or antisocial if they choose to spend all their time doing something that isn't needed or not wanted instead of doing the things that other people need done. You would at the very least say they are selfish.