You're right, but I think this just highlights the issue with market economies.

There is this capitalist lie that money is a stand-in for "value provided to society". So, when you provide value, society gives you money, and you can use this money to ask society for value back.

Which sounds great. And truly, I do believe that people should have to contribute to society if they expect society to support them, but the problem with this lie is that, despite how capitalists make it sound, the market was not designed with this ideal in mind, instead we have imposed it onto the market after-the-fact in order to justify why the market is good and worth keeping around.

But the real truth is that money does not reward the person who contributes the most value, it simply rewards the person who makes the most money. Money is not "value", money is power. And the system rewards profit no matter how it's acquired.

This means that you can provide a good service that people want, but you still need to advertise and compete in order to be rewarded for your contribution.

It also means that you can do something valuable, like cleaning up all the trash off of a beach, but that doesn't mean that the market will reward you for your contribution.

And it also means that if you have a thing and you want to make profit selling it, you can run a manipulative ad campaign that convinces people that they truly need it, and the market will reward you.

> instead we have imposed it onto the market after-the-fact in order to justify why the market is good and worth keeping around

Not sure about that, markets existed since forever and are still useful even without ads.

Alas, well-regulated market economies are the least-worst option we have.