Several people have given several reasons, many of which alone are enough to demonstrate awfulness.

The biggest reason they are bad is that they don't work. I would happily subscribe to a concierge service that showed me genuinely useful information. However, the advertising systems we have got are not built for my use case, they are built for someone else's which is adversarial to mine. I could not possibly care less about your quest to build brand loyalty and awareness.

As noted, people often get shown ads for products which they have already bought. When I buy a car, it's a safe bet that I don't need another car for several years. Every car advertisement that I see in that time is wasted effort for both the advertiser and myself. I also notice that nobody is advertising along the lines that might influence my choice. As a single, eco-conscious male, I don't need "three rows of seating" and I need "low zero to sixty" times even less. Automobile advertising is heavily devoted to the highly profitable SUV segment. Eliminate the Chicken Tax and promote decarbonized and efficient vehicles. Stop basing advertising campaigns around stoking even more antisocial behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

And the flip side, people getting shown advertisements for products they have rejected is also wasted effort. I don't need penis pills, and every advertisement I have ever seen for them has always been wasted effort.

Stop polluting my information streams with awful crap I don't need.

Nobody likes being watched. Instrumenting the interaction that I need so that you can make wrong inferences about my preferences is pretty galling. Undermining my control over what information I do give out is worse.

https://proprivacy.com/guides/super-cookies-flash-cookies

Further, not specific to targeted advertising is the method of advertising. Advertisements in popup windows are a terrible idea. Forcing me to take an action before giving me useful information is a terrible interaction model. And that's not designed to make me want to buy your product. Advertising when it exists should be as unobtrusive possible. Obnoxious behavior sucks.

"and the CEO talked to the protestors and told them how helpless he himself was, as he was just part of the system with relatively limited ability to change it. I'm not sure I buy that, and not sure the protestors did either, as the CEO still has enormous power."

Precisely. Nobody should accept that kind of obvious nonsense.

People are put into positions to make decisions. So make better decisions.

Iowa may be an example of how ethanol is done wrong in practice, but I'm not sure your theory is so sound.

Make ethanol from sugar cane, not corn. Louisiana should be the center of US ethanol production. Much higher EROEI.

"I could imagine corporate-run nuclear plants that have the same incentives as airlines."

So how exactly do you enforce that corporate executives and their families must live on site for decades?

Why? We've got lots of coal mines with the equipment to move tons of material. Just start stacking cordwood down below.

"They don't want their family to starve."

We know how to stop that. We don't have to sentence people to subsistence agriculture. When you know better, you do better, and we know better.

We can farm in ways that build high carbon soils. We can do this even in the 3rd world. Teach people the proper techniques.

It's nonsense to claim that we just have to accept this kind of collapse.

"Teach people the proper techniques."

I read quite a long article once, it was about efforts to teach Iraqi farmers how to use modern techniques and modern equipment.

The main problem they encountered wasn't conservative mindset. No, the farmers were willing to try something new.

It was missing infrastructure. Once you start using any sophisticated equipment, you need repairs, distribution of spare parts, good documentation in local language etc. Such a system is not easy to set up in a really foreign country, much less so if security is problematic.

Engineering new biomes for fun is different than having to do it every year or you die.

What do you do when seasonal heat makes Pakistan and India uninhabitable for large parts of the year? We're not prepared for that kind of migration, we didn't even deal with Syria well.

Farming and other activities often require decades to truly show a profit. When rainfall patterns are changing on short timescales, you will not be able to plan for food production given the underlying churn in fertile locations.

Several different issues. Nuclear is necessarily large & centralized energy production, with all of the antidemocratic politics and corrupt economics that comes with that.

The insane project duration and nonsense cost overruns for nuclear construction are their own problem.

And you get a lot of people who don't understand and don't want to understand the safety aspect.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/comed-bribery-s...

This kind of satire is unnecessary and unhelpful.

It costs nothing to say "lab testing" instead of "in vitro". Literally the same number of syllables, zero loss of precision, and immediately understandable to a wider audience.

Testing in mice is considered lab testing though, so clearly something is getting lost in translation, no? All you really need to know to infer from context is "vivo" = "alive" and "vitro" = "glass".

But labtesting can be done in Vivo, some would say in Silico even, depending on your definition of lab.

In vitro is a consice term, useful to me in my profession.

"But if you want to put $5-$20K into a friend's business, or a business you know well, the SEC makes it hard unless you're already a millionaire."

What do you mean? Individuals are still allowed to sign contracts. So write up a specific contract.

The SEC makes it easy to use standard arrangements if the investors are 'accredited'.

But mixing in any 'unaccredited' investors drives up the legal complexities and costs, through extra liabilities. A generous (or desperate) founder might still go through the extra headaches to take money from a wider circle, but many potential knowledgeable investors are encumbered and essentially frozen out, simply because they are sub-millionaires, due to extra legal hurdles. It's like everyone who's not a millionaire is a minor, not trusted to contract like an adult - but not based on age or competence, just net worth.

Millionaires face no such restrictions – and thus enjoy the state's support in preserving for themselves privileged, first-look access to a class of potentially-lucrative investments.

It'd be like if millionaires were granted their driver's license on request, because hey, they can be trusted. And we'll waive their fees for permit applications, because they surely hired good advice before applying. Car registration, marriage license? Free if you're rich, we know you won't be getting into any trouble.

But you're not a millionaire? Find a rich sponsor willing to be a counterparty, and pay extra fees, because you poor folks are just too risky to [drive, build, marry, etc].

"legally complex" is different from "impossible".

And yes, people who have years worth of expenses saved are clearly better able to accept risk than someone with $10K in an IRA.

You're not making persuasive arguments here at all. An in both theory and in practice I'm on your side.