[tokai]

But most of the US tech giants don't produce anything of value. They just suck out adverting money from companies that actually produce wealth. Its the same as the Germans 1944 GDP or Russians current. The numbers go high when you burn a tremendous amount of money.

[Longhanks]

There's lots of value in being able to influence huge portions of the population. The fact that you consider it morally wrong does not make it invaluable to others.

[hackeman300]

Agreed. Also just so you know, invaluable is one of those weird words that is intensified with in-, not negated. It means even more valuable, not worthless

[denton-scratch]

> It means even more valuable, not worthless

The "in-" actually is negation; the word means something like "NOT susceptible to valuation", i.e. beyond value.

[Longhanks]

Hah, you're right - sorry for the confusion and thanks for the note, I'm not a native English speaker :)

[jijijijij]

Semantics. The problem is economic value is not causally linked to human prosperity. Money is a shit metric.

[ajuc]

The funny thing is that it's the same tradeoff that slavery was, just to a lesser degree :)

[raverbashing]

- Android, React, several other Google libraries

- GMail, Google Maps, etc

Saying there's no value in those (even if ad sponsored) is a bit naive

[jijijijij]

Don't be so literal, it's a weak contribution. I think OP's sentiment is clearly along the lines of "disproportionate little value to humanity in regard to their economic power".

[kibwen]

Ad companies like Google actually produce negative economic value, because advertising is a Red Queen's Race with no upper bound and every dollar wasted on advertising is a dollar that the company must recoup by increasing the price of the product, at absolutely no benefit to the consumer.

[Rinzler89]

>But most of the US tech giants don't produce anything of value.

That doesn't really matter at the end of the day when you're discussing finances. All that matters for people, countries and governments in capitalism is that they have more money in their pockets than the rest, not how ethically that value gets generated or if their work produces much social value to society.