Emeritus
1yr ago
I'm sure feminists themselves were not considering such higher order effects, they were just collectively extorting economic power for their group in the short term. This probably couldn't have occurred in a civilisation without modern standards of living though.
I don't think there is an easy way to simplify the forces driving this other than to the too-simple self-interest, which drives everything. I don't think society naturally drifts towards freedom. More competition creates opportunities for collusion, and more collusion creates opportunities for defection.
Advertisements provide immensely negative utility to society. They stifle competition (advertising budgets for megacorporations are huge, small companies can't compete with that) and prey on normies who are manipulated by ads into making irrational purchases that they otherwise wouldn't make (and into sharing the ad with their friends).
A lot of ads, even on major ad networks, are literally just for malicious scam websites. They're annoying by design, waste human attention, shit up websites, and degrade performance.
The utility that a company gets when you watch one of their ads was not produced out of thin air. No value is created by an ad. It's utility that's being stolen from the average consumer in aggregate. If all advertising was magically banned I think a lot of economic problems would disappear overnight.
The downsides you're describing of ad-blocking are real, but are the result of a race to the bottom. Anyone who stops showing ads on their site (or whose userbase blocks ads) is obviously going to get paid less money and might not be able to support their site. Anyone who does show ads on their website might benefit themselves, but will necessarily be hurting the world to a greater extent: something I'd describe as antisocial.
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