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" Texting and social media aren’t a good substitute for everything; they can’t fill in for a needed heart transplant, or if you are on the verge of not having enough food to eat. But it’s remarkable how many of our daily activities they can substitute for, as evidenced by the big time shift to those activities in so many of our daily lives. And that is the great unheralded virtue of the mobile internet. It’s not only fun but also a kind of near-universal consumption substitute that constrains monopoly power in many invisible ways. You call it addiction; I call it trust-busting. These days, virtually all suppliers, whether they know it or not, are competing with Facebook, social media, and texting. That’s a hard battle to win. "

Tyler Cowen , Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero


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Tyler Cowen quote : Texting and social media aren’t a good substitute for everything; they can’t fill in for a needed heart transplant, or if you are on the verge of not having enough food to eat. But it’s remarkable how many of our daily activities they can substitute for, as evidenced by the big time shift to those activities in so many of our daily lives. And that is the great unheralded virtue of the mobile internet. It’s not only fun but also a kind of near-universal consumption substitute that constrains monopoly power in many invisible ways. You call it addiction; I call it trust-busting. These days, virtually all suppliers, whether they know it or not, are competing with Facebook, social media, and texting. That’s a hard battle to win.