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Circular Markets

Pharmaceutical companies owe a lot of their profit to the health issues caused by the products that fast food companies sell. Neither of these existed until around a hundred years ago. If we entirely got rid of both at the same time, perhaps there would be no net long-term harm to society (outside of the existing generation that depends on big pharma)

Social media profits off draining your attention and numbing your ability to form real human connections, and now online (and even AI-based) therapy platforms are chiming in to offer a low-quality fix.1

I feel a newer version of this is coming with AI more generally. Many AI tools are free but they are known to cause cognitive decline with excessive use (as your brain is offloading the real work of thinking through questions and problems). What will be the cure that is sold to us for this condition?

In all of these examples: one industry forces the problem upon you, and the other sells you the solution. But neither were necessary in the first place.

Footnotes

  1. I am not agains the concept of therapy in general; rather, the online and AI alternatives seem half-baked and in many cases yield more harm than good. ↩