Yes, we can agree on that political element being destructive (though might start diverging on the mechanisms ... I'll spare the long ramble here).

I do fundamentally believe that markets and information goods are a poor match. Attempts to "market it harder" to fix news, academic publishing, ratings, community, and most of all, conversation, seem to be a category error. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_inf...

Advertising seems remarkably pernicious, particular in its adtech instantiation.

Bitcoin ... well, that's another story ;-)