301–310 of 511 posts
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Vote with your vote. As far as I know only two candidates in the presidential primary race support right-to-repair: Sanders and Warren.
I think voting with your wallet is the more sensible approach to getting the products you want, but we also need politicians to stop passing crazy laws that make it illegal for you to even attempt repairing your own possessions.
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Are those profitable though? Farming is heavily subsidized by the EU.
Farming is heavily subsidised throughout the industrialised world.
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You make an interesting point. I think ideally what we want is: * easy automation for those that need it; if corporations want to driverless tractors doing all their farming, so be it. They're responding to a market that is demanding a lot of cheap food. * occupation as a choice; the productivity gains from automation shouldn't all just pile on to the people who made the investment; but it could be used to provide ne…
I don't have any references for this, just the farmers I have spoken to, so take this with a grain of salt. The massive mono-crop farming apparently have the draw-back of not following some of the recycling processes that old school, small farm farmers did to keep the soil rich and diverse in nutrients. i.e. rotating out crops, bringing in animals to eat old crops, flowers, provide diverse waste product as fertilizer…
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They all want to get to the point of being Tesla. Hiding features only in software, pushing out updates, and trying to bake in a living (recurring revenue) model. It's a problem for a lot of reasons. First off it's the complete death of ownership. I can't fix things. At some point they will probably just lock stuff back down if I want to sell, assuming I can even sell without them getting a cut. Second, repairability…
Stated another way, every company has discovered 'rent-seeking' in a relatively short period of time and they all think it's neat. Consumers haven't pushed back enough to stop this from happening.
The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free.[4]
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Thanks for sharing this about your grandfather. > The world changes and sometimes it sucks but that is how progress is made. This touches on something I think a lot about. Massive driverless farms, in my mind's eye, looks like one puzzle piece towards the utopia of the future. But you do lose the human aspect. It reminds me of Star Trek where Picard is working with his hands on a vineyard. Capitalism is abolished so…
I think the transition from capitalism to Star Trek Utopia is where basic income guarantee can be very helpful
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> Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. It clearly is good for business, even if it's bad for customers and society at large. Pretending it's bad for business just encourages complacency because it suggests that the natural discipline of the market will drive the milkers out of business and encourage good business practices. But that doesn't happen, and if we w…
I think what's being overlooked is "it's good for businesses in the short term" not necessarily good for them in the long term.
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You make an interesting point. I think ideally what we want is: * easy automation for those that need it; if corporations want to driverless tractors doing all their farming, so be it. They're responding to a market that is demanding a lot of cheap food. * occupation as a choice; the productivity gains from automation shouldn't all just pile on to the people who made the investment; but it could be used to provide ne…
I don't have any references for this, just the farmers I have spoken to, so take this with a grain of salt. The massive mono-crop farming apparently have the draw-back of not following some of the recycling processes that old school, small farm farmers did to keep the soil rich and diverse in nutrients. i.e. rotating out crops, bringing in animals to eat old crops, flowers, provide diverse waste product as fertilizer…
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The greatest innovation in the history of mankind was a land consolidation. It took what 100 peasants all making enough food for subsistence living to 100 peasants be able to make enough food for thousands of people. It's not sad, it's progress.
The end of peasantry was long before the rise of corporate, industrialised agriculture. Like so many human activities, fashions, and innovations, the reduction in numbers required to work the land started off providing a benefit and ultimately went much too far. Looking at the destruction such as algal blooms in countless water courses from over fertilisation, steady soil erosion, loss of wild flora and fauna caused…
We recently had to bin a beloved TV, and were looking for a "simple" 4k TV (i.e. not a smart TV ) to replace it, and were surprised to find that they simply don't exist! We ended up uncovering a 6 year old 1080p TV that was still in the box at Best Buy. All in all, this problem might present an opportunity -- there might be new markets for these types of devices (dumb TVs, tractors, refrigerators, air conditioners, t…
The Sceptre TV's available at Walmart don't have smart features in them (yet). https://www.walmart.com/browse/electronics/sceptre-tvs/3944_... - 65 inch (4k) - $350 - 55 inch (4k) - $240
The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help custome…
In other markets, customers could just switch to a new business that was less shady. In this particular case, it doesn't seem like there are many alternative suppliers, so farmers have no other options. If they did, they would've gone with them. Buying decades-old tractors suggested they somewhat already have tried to find alternatives.