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Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

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Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#71

Post by teiferer »

heap_perms wrote: post #43
teiferer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like Windows then? Cause a free alternative exists? Or farmers markets? Cause you can just grow all those crops for free yourself. Or carpenters? Just get some tools, do your home renovations for free. Or sex workers? Cause you can just go to a bar and get it for free. Oh, they are differences between the free and the pay options? The occupy different niches in the marketplace? You don't say. Maybe they are not sc…

A better analogy: imagine if someone built a public water fountain, then chess.com set up next to it selling the exact same water for $100/year while limiting the public fountain to 1 cup per day through lobbying. Then they sponsored all the popular hydration influencers to only drink their bottled water on camera. > Cause you can just go to a bar and get it for free. Not at the same convenience, can you ;) So they a…

> that costs them essentially nothing

If you know how to run such a platform for free, then I'm sure you could sell your knowledge for a lot of money. And the company running chess.com would be your highest paying customer.

In other words, I think you are underestimating the effort. Just ask the lichess guys.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#72

Post by gruez »

briandoll wrote: post #20
remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

In short, the leadership team has a fiduciary responsibility to their investors. Privately held lifestyle businesses don't, at least not as much.

>Privately held lifestyle businesses don't, at least not as much.

Only because if they're the sole owner, there's nobody with standing to sue. There's no special legal classification for "Privately held lifestyle business". If such businesses have minority shareholders, you still have fiduciary duty to them, and can't use it as a personal slush fund, or manage it incompetently.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#73

Post by cedilla »

fluoridation wrote: post #42
hnthrowaway121 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely it’s debatable whether increased short term revenue benefiting shareholders this year is better or worse than longer term plays with the chance of higher returns later, or that avoiding some sources of revenue for ethical reasons protects the brand’s reputation and image in the market.

If a decision puts at odds the interests of two different sets of shareholders at two different points in time, why should the interests of the more distant one be given priority over those of the current one?

There's no reason to speculate about who the future shareholder will be, nor is there any good reason to just assume that favouring short-term gains will favour the current shareholders more. It's also unknown if a shareholder would prefer long-, mid- or short term gains.

Favouring short term gains over anything else is obviously wrong – Amazon could sell AWS for 5 billion dollars tomorrow, but I don't think you'd argue that this would be in their interest at all, even though it's just giving priority to current shareholders over more distant ones.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#74

Post by oooyay »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #31
realityfactchex wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's a myth, and a pervasive one. Decent description at [0]. Not only that, but people actually think they know that. Since people believe it, it's "real to them". IMO, this helps make it easier to go from "we're going to make the best widgets and be good, responsible, ethical corps" to "we will extract as much value as possible from customers, anything within the law is fair game, external consequences not bei…

Why is the idea of quality oriented “getting by” businesses popular here, but worker cooperatives generally scorned? A worker owned coop is more resilient to deciding to focus on quality and affordability than a business with investors and hierarchical ownership that can change (after a death or a sale etc)

I've never actually seen them criticized here but I'll bite since I've worked for one.

Worker owned companies are just a different shade of typical corporate politics. I worked for North America's largest sewer inspection and cleaning company. The company did about equal volumes of each type of work but since inspection is more technology based there were far more cleaners than there were inspectors and analysts. I'd been there about a year and I'd noticed that we were so far outpacing cleaning that we'd started to lapse on some of our contractual inspection storage commitments which required about ten years storage of raw inspection files. The inspection files were raw video with annotations. I drew up a proposal to build out centralized storage arrays and upgrade video processing site internet connections. Pretty baseline stuff to meet the needs of our contractual obligations. It went up for a vote because it'd effect the yearly budget which impacted dividends checks. It was unanimously voted down by the cleaners. I realized then and there that any business that's worker owned will be primarily be influenced by the largest in quantity labor group and haven't worked for one since.

Long way of saying that I wouldn't say it's any better or worse than other management structures.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#75

Post by [deleted] »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #66
wahnfrieden wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the idea of quality oriented “getting by” businesses popular here, but worker cooperatives generally scorned? A worker owned coop is more resilient to deciding to focus on quality and affordability than a business with investors and hierarchical ownership that can change (after a death or a sale etc)

What are some examples of worker cooperatives that are successful due to their focus on quality and affordability? What might I buy from them? (The only worker cooperative I knowingly buy from now is a local bakery/pizza place.)

[deleted]

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#76

Post by jjj123 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #66
wahnfrieden wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the idea of quality oriented “getting by” businesses popular here, but worker cooperatives generally scorned? A worker owned coop is more resilient to deciding to focus on quality and affordability than a business with investors and hierarchical ownership that can change (after a death or a sale etc)

What are some examples of worker cooperatives that are successful due to their focus on quality and affordability? What might I buy from them? (The only worker cooperative I knowingly buy from now is a local bakery/pizza place.)

As you mention, plenty of bakeries, grocery stores are worker owned. For example rainbow grocery is not _cheap_ but the quality is high and the bulk prices are not bad.

For some reason two of the biggest and best flour brands are worker owned: King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill.

But if we’re talking bottom of the barrel prices, I don’t know many worker owned orgs that focus on that.

Turns out when operations are more democratic and left leaning (and all worker owned coops I know of in 2025 are left-leaning), workers are unlikely to support things that are cheaper but have negative externalities. So produce is more likely to organic (and expensive), farming practices are more likely to be ethical (and expensive), etc.

I’ve been on the lookout for worker owned clothing brands but they’re few and far between.

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#77

Post by Y_Y »

teiferer wrote: post #38
Y_Y wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Idk man, your definition of "scam" seems different from other people's. "Old rope"? Is every non-EV a scam because it's "old rope"? Are people with cable TV subscriptions victims of scams because cable is "old rope"? There is a difference between "in my opinion, there is no value" and "scam". Most items in the grocery store around the corner I don't buy, because they don't have value to me. But the store is not a sca…

[flagged]

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#78

Post by fluoridation »

mattkrause wrote: post #67
fluoridation wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why are they different shareholders? My question is about those cases when they're different. >But also simply, making long term plans is easily arguable to be in fiduciary duty as a future shareholder would be willing to pay more to the current shareholder for a company in good health. The future is uncertain. The future company may be in worse health even with this forward-thinking decision, for any number of reas…

The timeline (short vs. long ) doesn't matter at all. The current shareholders have chosen the management (e.g., by voting for the Board) and are consequently agreeing to follow their plan. If you don't like that plan, you have other remedies: sell your stock, run for a seat on the board, etc. As you note, the future is uncertain, so courts don't want to be in the business of second-guessing facts and competencies.

>If you don't like that plan, you have other remedies: sell your stock, run for a seat on the board, etc.

That exact same argument could be used to dismiss the concept of fiduciary duty altogether. "If the company doesn't operate in a matter you like just divest your stock."

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#79

Post by deaux »

remedan wrote: post #15

> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit. This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should t…

This isn't a "disagree or agree" topic. It's a "wrong or right" topic, and even at 13 years old I could've told you that you're right and they're wrong. Of course this isn't the goal of every business, and it's trivially verifiable.

They effectively put out a statement saying "the earth is flat, water is dry and sunlight is wet".

Re: Chess.com regional pricing: A case study

#80

Post by fluoridation »

cedilla wrote: post #73
fluoridation wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a decision puts at odds the interests of two different sets of shareholders at two different points in time, why should the interests of the more distant one be given priority over those of the current one?

There's no reason to speculate about who the future shareholder will be, nor is there any good reason to just assume that favouring short-term gains will favour the current shareholders more. It's also unknown if a shareholder would prefer long-, mid- or short term gains. Favouring short term gains over anything else is obviously wrong – Amazon could sell AWS for 5 billion dollars tomorrow, but I don't think you'd ar…

>nor is there any good reason to just assume that favouring short-term gains will favour the current shareholders more

The reason is that it's a situation that's bound to happen. If I plan to be invested in a company for a specific length of time (for whatever reason) any decisions that benefit the company beyond that term do not benefit me. If those decisions actually harm the company in the short term then they work against my interests.

>Amazon could sell AWS for 5 billion dollars tomorrow

AWS isn't a product, it's capital. It'd be like a factory selling its machines. You only liquidate capital if you need cash right away, precisely because capital is worth more than its flat monetary value.

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