So if its more or less impossible to have any kind of quality, and we can all pretty much tell crap like this is of very low quality yet we are saddled with it anyway as an intrinsic, unavoidable part of the system, is this a worthwhile system to perpetuate?
As I said at the end of my reply to CamperBob2 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7162049), the answer is we don't know. There are many economic and historical studies on this. There are clear costs and benefits, but the empirical evidence for each do not seem to tip the either way.
