[essayist]

I'd agree that a sales tax on Internet-based purchases will be imposed at some point, and that seemingly going industries can be remarkably unprofitable in the long term [1]. Don't know about the long term viability of Internet ads and do wish they'd die, but it'd be nice to see data.

But the rest of the article seems to be unquantified assertions -- the SST went broke, so of course the Internet will as well; data centers cost a lot of money to maintain. One could counter with other assertions-- Apple profits and Amazon revenues are huge, etc. Data would be nice.

[1]E.g. airlines have, over six decades of operation, not returned the cost of capital. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/ec...