Here’s how markets are supposed to work —

Sellers compete. The one with the lower price attracts more buyers. Competition keeps prices healthy. Everyone benefits.

Here’s how they actually work —

Consumers don't see all sellers. They see whichever sellers show up in ads. And showing up in ads costs money — a lot of money.

This creates a paradox. To be visible, you need to advertise. To advertise, you need revenue. To have revenue, you need high margins. To have high margins, you need high prices. The sellers consumers actually see are, by construction, the ones charging the most.

Now imagine you're the honest seller. You lower your price, because that's what competition is supposed to reward. But lower prices mean less revenue, which means less money for ads. Less advertising means fewer people see your product. Fewer eyeballs means fewer sales — even though you're offering a better deal.

You lose on margins and volume. You die.

Meanwhile, your competitor keeps prices high, stays visible, and captures the market. The system has punished you for doing exactly what free markets are supposed to reward.

This isn't a bug in advertising. It's the core mechanism. Higher prices fund more ads. More ads mean more visibility. More visibility means more sales, which fund even higher ad budgets. The cycle reinforces itself, and prices ratchet upward continuously.

The result is a complete inversion of market forces. Instead of competition driving prices down, it drives them up. Sellers with fair prices get selected out of existence. Consumers overpay without ever knowing cheaper options existed. And the advertising platforms — sitting in the middle of all of this — extract more and more money from everyone involved.

That's the advertising tax. You're paying it on almost everything you buy.