I don't see it as subscribing to free-market ideology - more like "every bad thing has a certain prevalence, and that prevalence is a policy choice."
The flu exists because we don't aggressively isolate/contact trace people who get the flu, but it isn't that prevalent and results in few deaths because of how much we invest in vaccination, hygiene, and medical care.
The muggings continue because we don't spend the insane amounts on law enforcement and surveillance that would really be required to eradicate them.
Also, these examples are different in another way - few people get mugged or get the flu, but literally everyone consumes ads daily. I think a lot of people dislike ads but I'm not sure I agree that there is a strong desire to dramatically reduce or change them - people seem happy to complain but pretty hesitant to pay actual money to reduce them.
> people seem happy to complain but pretty hesitant to pay actual money to reduce them.
First, you have to look at this in the context of the actual economic situation of the average American, which has been, more or less, getting steadily worse in a relative sense for roughly 40-50 years.
Second, you can't actually say this with any degree of rigor because in the vast majority of cases, there isn't an option to pay money to reduce the ads. Sure, I could subscribe to YouTube Premium to reduce the number of ads on YouTube—but it wouldn't eliminate sponsored segments of videos, most of it (all of it? I don't actually know the economics off the top of my head) goes to Google rather than to the creators of the videos you watch, and it doesn't do anything about ads outside of YouTube.
Even if you were to subscribe to every single service that has an option to do so to remove ads, you would still be seeing intrusive online ads constantly (assuming you weren't using an adblocker). You would still have your personal data sold and sold again to try to squeeze every last drop of profit out of you for people already more wealthy than God.
And, as can be seen on places like Netflix and Amazon Prime, there's zero guarantee that subscribing will actually keep the ads away permanently.
Given all that, why would most people give up another $9.99 a month just to reduce the number of ads on Yet Another Website?
> First, you have to look at this in the context of the actual economic situation of the average American, which has been, more or less, getting steadily worse in a relative sense for roughly 40-50 years.
I don't have a good grasp of the broad economic trends, but the accessibility of ~free, high quality, valuable knowledge (as well as entertaining content) online has exploded in this time frame. That may be unrelated to wages but it certainly has to do with demand.
> Second, you can't actually say this with any degree of rigor because in the vast majority of cases, there isn't an option to pay money to reduce the ads.
Maybe, but this seems like a problem that could have been solved if it were actually profitable to do so, no? I mean, I guess it's possible that we're in some local minimum where it's really hard to set up a less terrible system. But the simpler explanation is people would rather "pay" with attention than money. I'm honestly not sure though.
> The muggings continue because we don't spend the insane amounts on law enforcement and surveillance that would really be required to eradicate them.
Or a society where people's drug addictions are treated as a medical problem, and poverty is fought with the same fervor that we fight "terrorism" and "drugs".
> Also, these examples are different in another way - few people get mugged or get the flu, but literally everyone consumes ads daily. I think a lot of people dislike ads but I'm not sure I agree that there is a strong desire to dramatically reduce or change them - people seem happy to complain but pretty hesitant to pay actual money to reduce them.
People consume ads like I consume mosquitos in the summer.
The flu exists because we don't aggressively isolate/contact trace people who get the flu, but it isn't that prevalent and results in few deaths because of how much we invest in vaccination, hygiene, and medical care.
The muggings continue because we don't spend the insane amounts on law enforcement and surveillance that would really be required to eradicate them.
Also, these examples are different in another way - few people get mugged or get the flu, but literally everyone consumes ads daily. I think a lot of people dislike ads but I'm not sure I agree that there is a strong desire to dramatically reduce or change them - people seem happy to complain but pretty hesitant to pay actual money to reduce them.