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The absolute worst scenario happened

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Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, he owed no-one anything. He could set the price to 1 billion for all he cared. His former employees could take it or leave it. Second, you speak as if his claims were irrational. The way I see it, however, you would set for 125k (probably much less judging from what you write) while he, the sentimental fool, scooped up double the money. Therefore, your decisions, which you personally claim are rational, would…

> Second, you speak as if his claims were irrational. The way I see it, however, you would set for 125k (probably much less judging from what you write) while he, the sentimental fool, scooped up double the money. Therefore, your decisions, which you personally claim are rational, The way I see it you are putting words in my mouth and I am definitely not interested in having a discussion like that. I never insinuated…

No one said the free market is "why" the price got doubled. Emo drama ended up being the mechanism of price discovery here. But the market accepted this price. It was not a swindle. It was free trade.

And yes. I completely agree with your edit and said as much elsewhere. Their acceptance of 250K showed that the OP under-priced their services at 125K.

And yes. Free markets produce monopolies. Especially when time is important. As I said above, the critical good here was not the delivery but the delivery within a certain time.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. The way the story is told the price doubled after and because of the CEO screaming. The market has nothing to do with that except the good old "The fair price is the one that god paid, uh.” I suppose.

"The market" has nothing to do with that because one single trade isn't a market; if you and I exchange 1g of gold for $1000 that doesn't say "gold is fairly priced at $1000/gram". If many people exchange gold for money, each with different information and desires, over time the gold will go to the people who pay more, sellers will generally trend their sale price down because higher prices won't get buyers, buyers w…

> Anything distorting those conditions - e.g. there's only one seller, only one buyer, a time constraint, a skill constraint, an information disadvantage, will distort the pricing as well. One trade isn't enough information for a market to exist or to settle on a fair price. I agree there that the market has nothing to do with it.

This is non-sense. Those conditions specifically define a market and make it distinct from any other. To say a market with any of these constraints is "distorted" is to say all markets are distorted and render the term meaningless.

Also, I never said this one trade signified a market. My point was that this is a consequence of free markets. You can make any single trade "irrelevant" by choosing arbitrary criteria by which to separate it from its market. The company could have certainly hired another engineer in hopes they could complete the work in time while running the risk of blowing the deadline. But it was freely and fairly worth at least 250k to them to guarantee the job could be done correctly and on time.

This kind of thing is such a common part of the free market, that there is a whole aspect of contract law that pertains to ensuring companies don't get into this position. It's why contracting completed work is so important. Leaving things partly done leaves you vulnerable to others eating right up to the tiniest margin of your profit.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apologies, I edited my comment as you were typing I think. I added some more.

IMO your edit didn't help and you're not getting a lot of sympathy. The point wasn't that the employee is psychopathic as you say, but that management was incompetent by not ensuring a transfer of knowledge and validating before the employee left. You as the buinsess owner should plan for people to not be available and no one person can derail a $10M contract. This is also called the "bus factor". https://en.wikipedi…

It certainly didn’t help at all! But that’s okay, there was a lot of discussion around it. I th

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#565

And that is why I choose to host "my company" at the big names: homepage directly with Wordpress instead of a smaller local provider, office directly with MS and so on. Because, even there might be cheaper solutions, at least I can be sure to have a huge org in place to make sure stuff is up. And to find ways to get stuff back up and running in case something goes south. I value that peace of mind a lot.

Interesting. I choose to keep a copy of everything on my home machine (it's only personal stuff, not a company), plus backups to two removable disks, one in a fire-resistant box. Because I don't trust a big company to decide that my account is bad, or something, and I can't ever get my data back.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"where polling shows farmers are overwhelmingly Republican who tend also tend to hate immigration legal or not." source?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/03/why-y...

so no, no source. cool
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