Facebook Should be Paying Us

Back in the late '80s I was a newspaper editor. My General Manager was an advertising major. One day I mentioned to him that I did not understand why McDonalds advertised when they were so well-known.

"What would you think if they stopped advertising?" he asked me, and I immediately answered, "I would think something was wrong with the company."

Advertising costs companies big money. I'm sure when cigarette advertising was banned from TV the tobacco companies were ecstatic. Hundreds of millions a year saved! Our brands locked in place! No competition!

When people fill out their information on Facebook they are giving free information to advertisers. We are the ones who should be paid. Either that or not give Facebook any information, which isn't going to happen.

There are survey sites on the Internet which pay people 50 cents to take a survey. Sometimes. People probably make $50 to $100 a year, which is nothing, and companies are getting all this information for basically nothing. They're saving tens of millions of dollars, if not a lot more.

The same with crowdsourcing, in which jobs are distributed among millions of people, who are paid a pittance. Nickels and dimes.

Technology makes things easier for us. It's an example of Cooper's Law: "All machines are amplifiers." It's why one man with a tractor takes the place of 500 slaves.

Most of a company's business comes from loyal, repeat customers, which is why I have gotten unpleasant, insulting workers fired when I pointed out the company just lost three loyal customers.

I recently bought one-half pound of Amora gourmet coffee off of the Internet for $1 (that's called a loss leader). It was good enough to make me a loyal customer. But on other sites, I am run around from one survey to another and never find what I clicked on the link to find. That's just dishonest, and places like that have lost me permanently.

When it comes to the Internet, I have little loyalty to businesses. They brought it on themselves.