Can we justify digital content?

I had what i found to be an interesting conversation today, concerning how useful the internet and digital media is for e-commerce, and how most of it would not be justified if it had to put a case for its existence and usability, beyond earning someone a living, (most often the creator) and how much of it is a complete waste of time.

Now this was not a conversation about the rights of free speech, or about stifling freedoms of any kind, but about the real usefulness of all that is available via the internet, be it web sites, videos, educational material or ebooks, and just how useful or useless most of it is, about how easy it is to use, find products, its entertainment value, or even about finding real information.

Before anyone says anything about it helping people with disabilities, or the elderly, as a member of both groups i can honestly say, "it fails miserably ", on both counts.

As someone who develops for the web and has a reasonable understanding of how to use it, even i had to admit to others that unless one knows exactly what one is looking for, (manufacturer, author, product name, etc) finding anything to buy outside of the weekly food delivery on the web is almost impossible, (and my age group are supposed to be the people with the most disposable income). Even ebooks are 80% of the time, (in this writers opinion) a waste of time, as the samples delivered are often no more than the first few pages of the printed book, covering things like copyright, chapter contents and co-authors/how-to-use, (if technical) and often no actual content, as for video rental or video learning most of the time i would want my money back, (if that was possible).

So can anyone really justify over 1 billion web sites, creating new web sites, adding new content for their or their clients site, or even charging for an ebook or video without first ensuring that the sample(s) available actually delivers something worthwhile?

And what do you think we are doing wrong and how do we fix it, when meaningfull casual shopping is not something that the web makes available to users?

Or to put it simply, if i cannot find anything to spend my money on via the web, then there must be something wrong, (saves a lot though )