[infecto]

Fair, but let’s be honest: even in your accounting app example, the “value” is ultimately in helping a business capture margin more efficiently. That business, in turn, is usually extracting value as a middleman somewhere else in the chain. Same with ad tech, finance, or even a lot of enterprise software, you’re greasing the gears of profit capture, not curing cancer.

That’s not a moral indictment, just a reminder that most of our jobs (mine included) exist to make capital move faster or stickier. Calling one sector “real products” and another “not benefiting society” is a bit of a convenient fiction.

[achierius]

Sure, but it's still helpful to think of what components of production are 'intrinsic' to production (it is hard to imagine making things out of metal without some sort of manufacturing being done by someone) and which are accidents of the particular economic system we find ourselves in (a system without private ownership of capital would likely have little place for equity traders). Advertising as we understand it (push-based) would likely not exist in an economy not based on commodity production.

That's not too cast moral judgement -- just to point out that under a different economic system, these overhead costs could be avoided and these resources (human and otherwise) could thus be redirected to ends more concomitant with human flourishing.