alt Hacker News> In the US for example there's still the vague idea that working hard is a virtue of sorts, but there's also an equivalent desire to produce something,
This is the root of a lot of busywork and bullshit jobs as well. People work hard producing something of little and often negative value.
Think of all the effort that goes into making competitive products, from life insurance and cellphone plans to airline tariffs difficult to compare. Compound that with advertising campaigns that don’t inform about the product or service they are selling. All that consumes colossal resources and deliver effectively negative value for society, for a market to be maximally efficient it needs informed consumers that can compare offerings.
Oh yeah no doubt. That kind of thing is just human nature to some extent. Anywhere where getting something done gets you promoted or paid more (which again is a necessary side effect of rewarding progress) tends to have cases where people are producing bullshit or inflating their real contribution.
Yeah I wonder about that sometimes, the maximal balance between efficiency and inefficiency. Some things are clearly a waste (like advertising as you mentioned) but then other stuff is part of innovation, and it's sometimes a bit fuzzy between the two. On paper it's wasteful that Mazda, Toyota, Ford, etc. all had to independently develop a sedan, yet it would be far worse if we only had one car company to choose from (far worse because of how monopolies inevitably stagnate).