<i>&gt; Or are we experiencing a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons?</i><p>We sure are. But advertising, not ad-blocking, is precipitating this tragedy:<p>1. The commons in this case is a healthy marketplace where the users are the customers and thus vote with their dollars. <i>The invisible hand</i> depends on this.<p>2. But then a competitor comes in and offers something for &quot;free&quot;. This is a trick, a lie. The other important principle of the free market is that <i>there is no free lunch.</i>[1] The advertisers pay the website with money that is added to the cost of the products they are selling. Guess who buys those?<p>3. Here&#x27;s where the tragedy comes in: Consumers are fooled by this. You&#x27;ve undercut the straight up competitors that charge for their product by fooling consumers into thinking you&#x27;re offering what the other guy is offering, but for free. Come on, who could turn down that? The straight-up businesses that want to compete the honest way can&#x27;t. They either have to cave and switch to ads, or die.<p>4. The tragedy continues: Since we are now the products not the customers, businesses don&#x27;t compete for a dollars by producing a product we are willing to pay for. Instead, they compete for our clicks (what they&#x27;re selling to the advertisers). Competing for clicks, as most of us see every day, yields horrible products for us.[2] But of course, we are not the customer.<p>5. And like every tragedy of the commons, what we are left with is a misused and polluted[3] precious resource, the web.<p>I haven&#x27;t even got into the harm advertising itself cause to society, nor how it distorts the free market, suppressing innovation and true competition.<p>-<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8585237" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8585237</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10049494" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10049494</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10047706" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10047706</a>