@joepie91 @esther First, I think I described a pretty realistic scenario, so I don't think this is idealism.
Second, my point with this whole discussion is exactly to avoid potentially harmful generalizations, so naturally I will point to examples where having ads makes sense and where proposed generalizations (ads inject need, zero-sum discoverability) fail.
Do I think the current ads ecosystem is anywhere near good? Absolutely not. But without identifying the *actual* problems we won't get workable solutions.