Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If these costs are being borne evenly, then it's complete societal waste. We could pay X for the content, and not incur the overhead. If these costs are not borne evenly, and some people are paying for the consumption of more disciplined people, it's probably contributing to terrible cycles of poverty (ie: some kid spending money on fancy new shoes he doesn't need and can't afford is paying for a well-paid tech-user…
Who pays the costs in lost efficiency, lost productivity, lost time etc for readers to wade through ads to get to content? Saying something "lowers costs" without considering ALL costs involved is lazy. Most smart consumers are much less interested in what a company has to say about its own products (embellishment) than about what other people say. So yeah, advertising is pretty terrible.
"Note that even if there is a gain to efficiency because of lower prices, it may be completely offset by the cost of advertising itself (costs being the cost of consumers having to be irked by looking at them and the effort that went into crafting the advertisements)."
I think that speaks to your comment about the lost productivity of users of the web. I do think all costs should be considered, absolutely. Didn't quite follow your last two paragraphs. You seem to have a gut feeling that all the costs outweigh all the benefits? I have no such gut feeling.