This is like watching Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class but upgraded for our Attention Economy Age.
In the past the Signal was - look at me, look at all these luxury items I have accumulated, look at my leisure activities, you want to be like me - do what I say.
Today the Signal is - I am so smart, Farmer Joe and his herd of illiterates has validated I am a genius, look at my networth, look at my ideas, you want to be like me - pay ATTENTION to me - do what I say.
As business complexity grows it just gets hard for Tech, Engineering, Science & Creative folk to keep pace with the skills of Finance/Business folk.
And this has a huge impact on trajectory of the majority of businesses. Cause with scale, they become dependent on other experts from Finance, Marketing, Sales, Logistics etc who take over decision making and leadership as firms grow in size.
You can see it in every sector of the economy. Not just Tech. James Cameron, Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson don't end up creating and running a Disney anymore cause the amount of time to specialize in their own field keeps increasing.
Look at Finance. As soon as an org has more than a few offices in different countries they very quickly learn how to take advantage of difference in labor costs, interest rates, forex, corporate tax rates, rent, real estate costs, subsidy differences, regulatory differences etc. Now scale that up 20 offices in 20 countries and the Financial Engineering dept suddenly a huge say in where the story goes.
Replace Finance with other specializations(Marketing, Sales, Supply chain etc) and the same story plays out.
If you want to have influence you need to have skills across specializations, or know specialists who share your values.
More probably supply related. I worked at an incubator once upon a time, there was no dearth of funds to pull in from rich donors and investors.
The issue was always finding quality teams and people. We ended up funding lot of poor quality output. But its all par for the course in how progress works. Keep planting seeds all over and hope for the best.
The sanctions don't have a goal. So anyone can say anything. Besides Air Transport is a small ass part of GDP. Their MIL complex is on over drive, more than compensating for whatever hits the other sectors are taking. Their GDP is growing faster that all other major Western Economies. The US & EU are not serious about winning this war, mostly because they don't have confidence in themselves that they can.
Waste of time. Just talk in terms of what they want to hear. They are just interested in the payoffs (not in the details).
As info explodes and specialists dive deeper into their niches, info asymmetry between ppl increases. There are thousands of specialists running in different directions at different speeds. Leaders can't keep up.
Their job is to try to get all these "vectors" aligned toward common goals, prevent fragmentation and division.
And while most specialists think this "sync" process happens through "education" and getting everyone to understand a complex ever changing universe, the truth is large diverse groups are kept in sync via status signalling, carrot/stick etc. This is why leaders will pay attention when you talk in terms of what increases clout/status/wealth/security/followers etc. Cause thats their biggest tool to prevent schisms and collapse.
Its good they are talking. If your job is to build empire defense features into Chrome, then there is no one better to talk about which features to take out.
There are lots of young people who are not ambitious. And as soon as you say that, there is a reactionary group that will come running to say well the problem is with teachers not being inspiring, curriculum being poor, society not creating the right environment etc etc. But these kids are never the issue. They are quite satisfied and accepting with whatever the universe throws in their lap.
The real issue is Ambitious kids. Not the ones who have enough looks, contacts, knowledge, skill, intelligence, creativity and imagination to meet their goals but the ones who don't.
Materialism exploits such people more than anyone else. It tells them Donald if you are not admired, respected, loved just work hard, don't stop, keep grinding, keep hustling, accumulate material wealth, accumulate status, accumulate luxury goods and you will get the affection, respect, admiration and love you crave. Its pure bullshit.
This is the stuff that has to stop. We have to take care of these people better and channel their infinite energies into things beyond consumption and materialism. Its the hardest thing to do cause they are an extremely annoying group to deal with constantly craving attention, praise, sympathy and love.
But thats the only path to a better, healthier and sustainable society.
No Free Lunch.
Its just Natural. The World is much more complex and ever changing, than the chimp troupe has capacities to react to it all.
When you look at Nature do you start asking why do we "need" blue whales or redwood trees? No one "needs" them but they emerge anyhow.
We chimps (mysteriously) love to believe we are in control of nature and what emerges out of it. And time and again the universe takes a gigantic shit on that belief. See Theory of Bounded Rationality/Illusion of Control or read Jurassic Park.
Its also why we see monopolies emerge in every sector of the Economy inspite of all kinds of speech making, laws and govt depts to "control" things.
If you go look at the Annual Report of your favorite monopoly, you will find hundreds if not thousands of subsidiaries/factories/offices around the planet to manage their empire. No External Auditor visits each of those sites cause its just not possible within a reporting period. So every report has a large warning - hey man this our best guess about whats going on in the 10% of the sites we had time to visit - don't sue us.
Don't fall for the notion that people have perfect control over complex ever changing systems. It will just lead to misunderstandings and confusion.
Will just say, there are many different causes of Deafness. And therefore outcomes vary a lot depending on what the exact condition is. If the issue is with the auditory nerve for example, cochlear implants won't solve anything. And the whole debate can go in some other direction entirely.
It was a common (and natural) reaction leading up to and post 2008. Today you won't see as many people on prime time cursing the Fed.
We already had the Free Banking Era where individual Banks issued their own coin. It made the financial system extremely chaotic and unstable. There was constant fluctuations in currency, bank failures, panics etc. And as the economy gets more and more complex and interconnected with other economies, an unstable financial system is non optional. Throw in wars, pandemics, natural disasters, famine etc and things get even more insane. This is why defi/crypto is doomed to follow the same path as the chartered banks of the Free Banking Era.
So how does Adtech generate more and more revenue and sells more and more ads year on year?
Simple answer - Fraud.