Because we are cheap labor

It's amazing what the switch to an Information Economy does to a society.

There was an article a few months ago that showed why Amazon doesn't make a profit.
here's one.  Yet, Jeff Bezos has enough money to buy the Washington Post.

And Google produces nothing as far as I can tell, yet it is one of the most powerful companies in the world.

And Facebook is worth $50-$100 billion? And they produce, what?

And the companies that produce actual products or manage commodities aren't nearly as rich as the ones who manage information.

Agriculture and manufacturing may keep humans alive, but information gives us purpose.

Each of us must expect that we are here to produce data and information. You might be mad that Google reads your email, but that's their job, and yours, to let them. And what asshole thinks that free email is like paid snail mail? If you could pay 46 cents, the current price of a stamp, to send an email with the guarantee it would not be read, would you pay it?

No, you wouldn't.

In the current economy, we produce data. And we are rewarded with more crap than we can read or view or hear in this lifetime. We consume what we produce and produce what we consume. It's a cycle. But in this information chain, we humans are very near the bottom and companies like Amazon and Google, Facebook are at the top.

I just think it's interesting that snail mail and landline phone calls and UHF/VHF television and AM/FM radio could never be monetized in the way that digital media is now. Companies could only guess at what motivated consumers. But now that we are both the producers and the consumers, companies know everything. Because we just give it away.