Growing up in the midwest prior to working FAANG in the Bay Area, this is my exact experience. With a graduate degree and making ridiculous money, I and my peers had no realistic path to homeownership on any reasonable time-scale in the Bay. Family members working HVAC, plumbing, electrician or other skilled blue-collar jobs in low-cost of living areas bought beautiful craftsman bungalows within walking distance to a decent school for $80K. Professionals with either no student debt or a few thousand from land-grant state university degree paid off in 5-7 years. This has knock-on effects to family formation and number of children. Many of my high school classmates had their first kid at 24-25 and have 3-5 kids now, versus Bay Area average of what seems like 1-2 starting in your late 30s. When you feel like you can finally afford it. I started making plans to leave as soon as I got there, it truly was "structurally hostile to families."
It is even more striking that it's written in the first person, so the error sounds like it's coming from the monk and not the writer. For the HN reader not aware, the Cistercians "broke away" from the Benedictines in the 11th century and are still very much "in" the Catholic Church. My great uncle is a Trappist monk and I have great memories of visiting the monastery to see him as a child.
Marketing spend, especially online, is one of the most studied inputs to business strategy. Long term lift studies of both brand and direct response advertising show that it absolutely drives consumer behavior. Whether or not that's good for consumers might be debatable. I'm happy to buy unbranded consumer packaged goods if I can ensure quality but there's a reason Procter and Gamble can make >50% gross margins.
I used to work at a startup called Trusker doing the same thing, I can't give your comment enough up votes on 1. not very tech savvy, 2. margins were low, 3. too much hand holding and I would add 4. a 1200 mile trip between commercial locations with weird hours and instructions is nothing like the intracity taxi markets.