We'd all like a free coffee, but people glay pay $5 at Starbucks every morning because they know things cost money. Ask these same people for $5 to install an app on their phone – that was built over years by a team of hundreds – and they will flip out. People who used to buy a single $5 newspaper or magazine from the newsstand will not pay $5 for a monthly subscription to the same paper.
There's a fundamental disconnect in how people value digital assets, and that is why the internet is the way it is.
Advertising enabled this model. It makes people value your work less because it is perceived to be free, even though in reality you might be raking in way more money due to the wider reach (no cost friction).
Advertising is literally the root problem here. The expectation of free didn’t come from somewhere else. Also, not all digital assets are expected to be free. Only those that advertising got it’s claws into.
Huh? How is this an interesting question? I would love it if my food, housing, transportation were free… because then i have more money for non-free things. This is like 2 + 2 = 4 level of obvious.
If advertisers found a way to make food free, or cars free, or housing free, etc, then some sizeable portion of society would benefit from it in the short term while society as a whole gets shittier.
The problem is figuring out the actual cost of advertising to society, and finding a way to communicate that cost to the public in a way that isn’t really abstract and sleep inducing.