How to Make Trillions of Dollars • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#141

Post by lsc » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 4:37 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #136

lsc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet you five bucks that whole foods has better margin on it's "whole" butter than the safeway where I shop has on it's cheap off-brand margarine.

But that doesn't change the overall situation. First you bought butter whose "realness" and "wholeness" wasn't in question and didn't cost extra. Then you bought margarine that "better" and cheaper. Only then you realize that you were being sold a unhealthy (trans-fat-filled) fake. So you people went and bought yet another product , "whole", "real" butter! As far as margins go, they're being chased down by competitio…

>As far as margins go, they're being chased down by competition, which exactly there always needs to be new products, as above.

This implies that there are usually competitors willing to accept a lower margin for a largely similar product; in food, I'd compare Trader Joe's to Whole Foods in this role.

Really, this (producing a largely similar product at lower margin and lower price) is the tactic I'm attempting to use, as well. The margins most large companies have, once you account for their economies of scale advantages, must be staggering, (that, or the inefficiencies inherent to being a large company where the people who make the decisions have no contact with the people who own the company are staggering.) which means there's plenty of room for the generics to have a go at bringing prices down.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#142

Post by blasdel » Sat, Jan 29, 2011, 4:43 AM UTC

davidhollander wrote: post #103

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #68

This was long-winded and flawed in many ways. To point just one flaw out: part of the argument is that the modern culture is designed by marketers to keep you unhealthy and consuming. That's confusing, yet again, correlation with causation. It's just as likely that modern marketers are just doing what people want. That the current system of distraction, consumption, and unhealthiness is evolutionary and not some mast…

> part of the argument is that the modern culture is designed by marketers to keep you unhealthy and consuming. Welcome to the field of Applied Psychology and Cognitive Science. Once you have reverse engineered the mind, the only practical application is manipulating it. > just as likely that modern marketers are just doing what people want For a TRILLION dollars we are not talking about "marketers" in the Mad Men, I…

Neither Coca-Cola nor Phillip Morris invented their products or market segments — cola/caffeine and tobacco/nicotine have been used for thousands of years by huge portions of every population to gain access to them.

The products have always sold themselves, if anything it's the marketers and behavioral psychologists that are the parasites (on the commodity-selling industries).

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#143

Post by zeteo » Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 7:22 AM UTC

anthonyb wrote: post #135

zeteo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the standard Marxist analysis, but it's been refuted since, by Armstrong and others. The Enclosure Acts "kicked" very few people off the land. What they did mostly was to transform poorly utilized common land (marginal pasture, forests, and even some "tragedy of the commons"-style arable land) into extremely productive privately owned plots. The food production increased immensely as a result, which allowed bu…

Happy, well-fed, unevicted peasants don't riot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#Enclosure_riots And people in the east end of London were most certainly not well fed: http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/chapter25... Please try not to be so knee-jerk dismissive of everything that doesn't fit into your free market viewpoint.

While acts of enclosure were an old custom in Britain by the time of the industrial revolution, the discussion here was about the effect of those acts at the time of the said industrial revolution, i.e. late 18th century. The last riot that your link mentions ("the Newton Rebellion was one of the last times that the peasantry of England and the gentry were in open armed conflict") happened in the early 17th century.

Re: How to Make Trillions of Dollars

#144

Post by anthonyb » Thu, Feb 03, 2011, 5:58 AM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #143

anthonyb wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy, well-fed, unevicted peasants don't riot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#Enclosure_riots And people in the east end of London were most certainly not well fed: http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/chapter25... Please try not to be so knee-jerk dismissive of everything that doesn't fit into your free market viewpoint.

While acts of enclosure were an old custom in Britain by the time of the industrial revolution, the discussion here was about the effect of those acts at the time of the said industrial revolution, i.e. late 18th century. The last riot that your link mentions ("the Newton Rebellion was one of the last times that the peasantry of England and the gentry were in open armed conflict") happened in the early 17th century.

I was refuting your earlier points specifically about the enclosure acts themselves:

> The Enclosure Acts "kicked" very few people off the land ... previously starving peasants moved into the cities to become well-fed

Your description makes it sound like some peaceful transition, followed by massive prosperity, everyone happy and singing, but the reality is pretty far from that.