Advertising

In my Internet email I get advertising for a lot of different things, like in these categories:

• Credit cards
• DUI defense
• Health Insurance
• Replacement windows
• Credit scores
• Free auto repairs
• Free movies, cheap Internet
• Printer ink and toner
• Cheap Tektronix parts and service (OK, that's maybe just me)

The most frequent is for the various Internet providers. And they really want me to sign up so they can sell me more advertising. Does this make any sense? It's like a perpetual motion machine. I get the internet and read the ads and buy another internet provider and read their ads and around and around. What we used to call "over unity". There are plenty of sites about that if you want to use a favorite search site.

But can we really run an economy this way? I have long suspected that advertising is the only industry that the U.S. is good at, but can I really eat it for dinner?