I think that a lot of it is bound up with the rise and rise of xero-sum marketing contests as directly productive work has declined, so that we have gone from "making things" to "making things up." Consider the classic and very orthodox economic claim that a quarter or maybe 30% of current US GDP is "persuasion": https://treasury.gov.au/publication/economic-roundup-issue-1-2013/economic-roundup-issue-1-2013/persuasion-is-now-30-per-cent-of-us-gdp