Nolan starts by quoting Cullen Roche, an investor and writer, who went to the Tour de France and marveled at “how poorly they monetized the event.”
Roche:
In short, the American model creates a wealthier, more capitalized industry, while the European model sacrifices financial maximization to generate a widely distributed, unpriced public good. Which is better? Most certainly a mix. The hard part is getting the balance right.
Nolan:
The way that America’s version of capitalism proves its utility is by adding up all of the profits created by the privatization of public goods without subtracting the value that has been destroyed by the same activity. We have created the largest enshittifying machine in world history by employing a financial logic that leaves out half of the equation.
Take a scenic countryside and fill it with billboards. You can calculate precisely the amount of profit that has thereby been created for advertising companies, and the associated rise in profits for the companies that attract more customers with the billboards. But what is the cost of the destruction of the scenic countryside view? Don’t ask! It would, of course, be something of a philosophical project to place an exact dollar value on the lost beauty. The bigger problem is that, in our economic system, we do not even try. Across our economy, externalities are simply ignored.