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Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

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Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#101

Post by mandevil »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #90
mandevil wrote: post #30

My wife is a pharmacist. Over the past two decades the number of pharmacy schools has increased and some schools have gotten bigger classes, such that now every year there are about 25% more Pharm.D's made than in 2005. The result has been a predictable decrease in pharmacist quality of life- the pay is basically the same number of dollars today that you would get in 2005 so inflation has made them poorer, the hours…

Software is eating the world, sure, but consider a parallel: the typist. In 2000 there were 282,000 employed typists in the US[1]. Today it has fallen to 23,000. A 90% decline over 20 years. Why? Everyone knows how to type now. Typing is an assumed skill in other jobs. Twenty two years ago I took a typing class in middle school on clacky old Selectrics[2]. While typing classes aren't taught in school today, I cannot…

While I agree that there will be more demands for the all-in-one coder+subject matter experts, I think that coding will have to fundamentally change for it to become expected of everyone.

Right now, we professional coders make our living because we have trained our brains to think like a computer does. It's why we can tell them what to do, but it means that we simply don't think like a "normal" does. As long as that is true, I doubt that it is possible to be as common as typing skills.

If it is possible to develop a programming language that is high enough level that it can actually be written by a normal who thinks in normal, human ways, then that might change things. Or if it possible to build a computer that thinks in human ways enough that you could give it natural language direction like you would to a human, either of those would render the skill of "thinking like a computer" obsolete, but I'm pretty sure that the solution isn't going to be "everyone is now expected to think like a computer." That's just too hard a lift for most people.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#102

Post by cwp »

nix0n wrote: post #70
cwp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that we haven't found the limit yet. Usually this kind of discussion turns to supply-and-demand economics and somebody says that if you want to hire software engineers you just have to offer more. That's not wrong, but it too narrow a view. A free labour market ensures that skilled people get allocated to the highest value work, which is a great outcome for everyone. But there are so many projects that never…

> I'm sure that we haven't found the limit yet. I agree with that. > A free labour market ensures that skilled people get allocated to the highest value work, which is a great outcome for everyone. Value in terms of dollars is not really correlated with productive value to society. I think a lot of the software that's being built, shouldn't be built.

> Value in terms of dollars is not really correlated with productive value to society.

No correlation? No, I don't think that's true. Sure, there are externalities, but if something truly isn't valuable, you can't make money from it.

Also, what do you think shouldn't be built? I have a hard time coming up with "a lot" of software that has zero or negative value. Sometimes a startup will build something that doesn't end up being valuable, but it was at least potentially valuable, or it wouldn't have been funded.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#103

Post by 789itsfine »

HidyBush wrote: post #57

I think an MLM business can be described as a business model that is mathematically proven to not work and is intentionally employed to make the founders rich off the money of other people. A business that simply needs to reach a certain scale to be profitable by itself is not an MLM. For example a new chat application might require 10.000 users to pay off for the computing power needed to run the servers, so until y…

That's a pyramid scheme. An MLM is (supposed to be) when product sales can still sustain the business at a marginal level, even while employing the same model of worthwhile profit being based on how many people you recruit. Of course, it's probable that many businesses that pass themselves off as MLMs are, in actuality, pyramid schemes that are able to hide their non-viability well.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#104

Post by aetherane »

rdbell wrote: post #88
rlili wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other commenters already stated that, but it's because achieving increasing profits ultimately relies on an increasing population to work and consume. This is why, for example, people are always encouraged to have children. It's marketing to coerce people to reel more people (in that case, unborn people) into the scheme. What's the difference between that and any other MLM?

Reproduction is one if the most fundamental instincts ingrained in all of nature and you’re blaming people’s desire to have kids on some kind of capitalist conspiracy. That’s an absurd take.

In cities all over the world, people are reproducing less and less. Many governments have programs to encourage people to have families because it is important for the economy and sustainability of the country.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#105

Post by 789itsfine »

rdbell wrote: post #88
rlili wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other commenters already stated that, but it's because achieving increasing profits ultimately relies on an increasing population to work and consume. This is why, for example, people are always encouraged to have children. It's marketing to coerce people to reel more people (in that case, unborn people) into the scheme. What's the difference between that and any other MLM?

Reproduction is one if the most fundamental instincts ingrained in all of nature and you’re blaming people’s desire to have kids on some kind of capitalist conspiracy. That’s an absurd take.

The number of children born to a given family has fluctuated over time. It's not absurd to say that the shape of our society influences family planning.

In fact, there are capitalist countries (coughJapan) where encouraging baby-making, in the face of a demographic crisis that threatens to catastrophically disrupt economic stability, is state policy.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#106

Post by guerrilla »

rlili wrote: post #83
guerrilla wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equivocation between a pyramid as hierarchy and a pyramid as a specific business model. As far as I know, capitalism doesn't require constant recruitment because growth can be achieved in other ways like reducing product quality, reducing wages, deteriorating working conditions, increasing technological efficiency, enclosing commons, privatizing public goods and services, etc.

The alternatives that you listed seem likely to eventually lead consumers to stop consuming a product. Population growth, on the other hand, does not. Unless, of course, we reach the inevitable point where resources become so scarce that no one can consume anymore. But that future is still distant enough to be systematically ignored. Hell, even climate change is still being barely addressed.

Population has an upper limit too anyway... growth can inly go so far, which is beside the point.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#107

Post by guerrilla »

sky-kedge0749 wrote: post #77
guerrilla wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equivocation between a pyramid as hierarchy and a pyramid as a specific business model. As far as I know, capitalism doesn't require constant recruitment because growth can be achieved in other ways like reducing product quality, reducing wages, deteriorating working conditions, increasing technological efficiency, enclosing commons, privatizing public goods and services, etc.

Capitalism usually means a small owning class and a large working class, which is the hierarchy. It doesn't actually require a pyramid scheme system of recruitment, you could just have an enforcer class that beats the workers into hopeless submission and consumption. The way it works now though is that workers at every level are led to believe they can rise up the pyramid. This is a good complement to the raw violenc…

Yeah I didn't ask if capitalism is a hierarchy, that's obvious. The claim is that it's a pyramid scheme which is an unrelated claim.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#108

Post by kelseyfrog »

popcalc wrote: post #97
moneywoes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a backend focused dev today what would you suggest to do to be future proof as they say?

Master an obscure, esoteric language that has a stronghold on legacy infrastructure.

Ah yes, the Stenographer's Gambit.

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#109

Post by javajosh »

TheDong wrote: post #54
javajosh wrote: post #40

This is, I think, better to think about with the "meme" idea[0], that ideas function like organisms that land in your brain, have a lifecycle, reproduce, and so on. You can apply all kinds of useful intuition from the biological world about reproductive fitness, selection, mutation, and so on. MLMs are the ideas that are like viruses because they are minimally simple (the content is not the point), they spread easily…

> I think the end-game will be an MLM-as-a-service (MaaS) Arguably, the ICO boom was a realization of this end-game. There were guides to create a new etherium-backed crypto token in minutes, services to help create and manage them, and so on. Each ICO functioned as its own MLM, with the differentiating factor usually being branding, sales, and whitepaper quality.

I'm sure it's a great comment but "ICO" doesn't signify. I pretty sure I used to know what it meant, but when I try to retrieve the knowledge, it's like peering through a hazy fog in the moonlight, and the meaning just slips away...

Re: Is Everything an MLM? (2019)

#110

Post by seneca »

antisthenes wrote: post #99
seneca wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Oliver is a comedian. Referring to him as a source isn't something that gives merit to an argument.

What gives merit to an argument is whether something has been researched and the accuracy of information behind it, not the occupation of the person presenting it. If your research into the Subway franchise indicates otherwise, I'm all eager to hear the counterfactuals.

> What gives merit to an argument is whether something has been researched and the accuracy of information behind it, not the occupation of the person presenting it.

That's not really the point. I'm not disputing the correctness, I'm saying your argument is flawed. Imagine I told you "the sky is blue, my cat told me so". Well sure, the sky is in fact blue, but that doesn't make my cat a good source of information. A comedian, even one playing as a social crusader, is not a source, much like my cat is not.

> If your research into the Subway franchise indicates otherwise, I'm all eager to hear the counterfactuals.

Do you mean counterarguments? Counterfactuals are things that didn't happen or are not true, not a response to an assertion.

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