I didn't say otherwise. I like paying $10 for an Uber ride from someone scared I'll give them a bad rating, instead $15 from a surly, unaccountable cab driver. I'm just pointing out that if you think that's a problem, blame the people responsible for it.

Who do you think is responsible for low prices?

The idea that responsibility is conserved is a fallacy. In the case where a system which had lots of failsafes fails, all of the failsafes are wholely responsible for the failure

Really? I much prefer the cab. I'll always take honest surliness over false suckuppery. Especially when most of the time what I actually get is honest friendliness.

This isn't necessarily about efficiency, or economics, but rather more about power, and influence. It seems that technology has so far acted as a consolidator of power rather than a distributor of one, even though it has fundamentally changed the economics of many things by making tasks more efficient. Technology has yet to affect change in the fundamental ways we govern ourselves, and control our economics. So the problem isn't economics, but who controls it, and who profits from it.

Customers also enjoy cigarettes. Which kill them.

The Information Age revolution has empowered and freed us countless ways. But it has also freed us to make bad choices. And it has empowered us to do far more damage to ourselves, our civilization, and our home than ever before.

And at the same time, we live in in world where the mechanisms of our existence - shaped by evolution and civilization are less suited to dealing with that ever before.

I'm confident that we can figure out new strategies for dealing with the world we've created, but I'm unsure how much damage we will do to ourselves first.

I'm not sure I understand the conclusion you're trying to reach here. At first I thought your point was that lower prices are somehow bad for the consumer but you never expand on that point at all. The only coherent thesis I could get out of your comment was that consumers make decisions that are sometimes self destructive like the decision to smoke. But no one thinks cigarettes are good for them, I would still argue that people who desire cigarettes have a right to purchase them in the same way that I would defend people's right to purchase any number of digital services they might not actually need.

All at the expense of our future. Consumers are generally ignorant to what the real costs are.

Sure, your uber ride is $7 dollars but the person driving that is getting screwed.