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Make product worse, get money

dynomight.net

51–60 of 176 posts

Re: Make product worse, get money

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a first approximation, boycotts never work. The concept exists as an opiate and sop make you think you have power as a consumer and that regulations are unnecessary, but it's a mirage.

Tesla sales tell a different story. The people who were all for Tesla are fleeing and when he had his brief moment of MAGA alignment, it didn’t help because most of them didn’t have the money and/or desire to buy an EV. Tesla is having sells issues world wide due to a large part because of Musk. Another recent example how fast Disney turned around and bought Kimmel back after people started cancelling Disney+ subscri…

I would certainly love to see Tesla implode and I'm crossing my fingers that it happens, but I think it's too early to tell whether the outrage about Musk will amount to anything. Their sales were down in Q1 and Q2 this year but recovered in Q3. That could be a dead cat bounce because the EV tax credits were expiring, or it could be at the outrage did all the damage it was going to do and is over now. We won't know which for a little while.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#52

There are dozens of interesting "conflicting interests" cases in business and life. But...Pizza?

This blog post is quite bad on all of its points.

More specifically to dating apps: There is a huge market imbalance on it, there are only a few women to pair off to whomever they prefer... So they can serve that market just fine, then the rest of the men are the ones to jerk around a bit: trick them with bots, tell them if they pay they will move up the ranks and have a better chance, come up with "studies" that show all they have to do is make better pictures and keep paying and trying.

How immoral is it really to satisfy a percentage of users... and then abuse the rest? Its not like you can properly give them what they are looking for anyway. I think its quite immoral but thats why I am not a successful businessman.

The pizza and other comparisons are quite dumb and not the same thing: A market that requires many participants to benefit a few, only some can be helped so do your best with those, then figure out how to abuse some/many for profits. If they don't figure out how it really works, well, thats a shame that they keep participating.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla sales tell a different story. The people who were all for Tesla are fleeing and when he had his brief moment of MAGA alignment, it didn’t help because most of them didn’t have the money and/or desire to buy an EV. Tesla is having sells issues world wide due to a large part because of Musk. Another recent example how fast Disney turned around and bought Kimmel back after people started cancelling Disney+ subscri…

I would certainly love to see Tesla implode and I'm crossing my fingers that it happens, but I think it's too early to tell whether the outrage about Musk will amount to anything. Their sales were down in Q1 and Q2 this year but recovered in Q3. That could be a dead cat bounce because the EV tax credits were expiring, or it could be at the outrage did all the damage it was going to do and is over now. We won't know w…

There is absolutely no reason to buy a Tesla over basically every other EV in 2025 unless full self driving ever becomes more reliable.

I’ve driven 4-5 different EVs over the past couple of years [1] including Tesla’s. They aren’t any better and in fact the infotainment system is worse than even low end cars with CarPlay support.

Sales are tanking worse overseas and being taken over by cheaper cars based on Chinese tech. It’s very much a dead cat bounce.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#55
post #5

>Cars: “The thing about automakers is that making cars safe is expensive. So they have an incentive to make unsafe cars.” It took a lot of wrangling to get them to be safe. They were coffins on wheels for decades.

Also, in their argument "unsafe" could be replaced with "environment polluting", and it would be just as true

Re: Make product worse, get money

#56

Why don't highschools teach every student these two things? 1. The miracle of markets (supply and demand, "the invisible hand," etc.) 2. The weakness of markets (incomplete information, monopoly, etc.)

Mine did, because NY requires you to take an economics course.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is suffering not so much a boycott as a brand failure. The car is sold as a status symbol among a certain group, and they tanked that status. It wasn't a boycott so much as an own goal.

People are explicitly not buying Tesla because of Musk and his politics. What do you call that if not a boycott?

There is no $25,000 Tesla - most of those the conscientious objectors weren't even in Tesla's target audience anyways. The "gotcha" of all luxury tech is that it's only a branding distinction.

Which puts Tesla in a similar spot to the Apple situation, where the majority of customers are the least-likely to demand value, quality or moral consistency from their OEM. Your CEO can embarrass himself in interviews, ship nonsense thousand-dollar novelty products and kiss ass to authoritarians, but people who consistently buy a certain product won't abandon their brand loyalty. In fact, both Apple and Tesla seem to benefit from the influx of liberal and conservative customers who feel "represented" by superficial gestures like interviews, novelty products and asskissing.

It feels safe to assume that both Apple and Tesla will persist long into the future, eager to amend their horrible misgivings coerced under authoritarianism.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#58

This is why I fail to see the value in boycotts at this point. Anything that I boycott will be cancelled out probably 10 fold by people happy to buy from that place still or just required. Like I'm not willing to pay certain prices for things like I fly less because the experience is worse than it should be, by a lot and I can't handle paying 10x more for the business class option. So I'm just stuck doing it. And the…

The average "boycott" is not even organized, has no particular goal, and is just meant to make the boycotter feel morally superior. I bet Starbucks execs giggle every time they hear about the next boycott. The people calling for the boycott probably haven't been in a Starbucks in 15 years, and they don't have any intention of becoming regular customers if they do. Thinking of boycotts that have worked in the past, th…

Just a note that my "Starbucks boycott" thing refers to the people over the years who have boycotted Starbucks for random greivances, not the organized union boycott, that might have some success.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#59
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perfect information consumer knows Tik Tok doom scrolling, while pleasurable in the short term, actually hurts them in the long term, so that is, of course, a very unpopular application.

I have no idea what you’re talking about here.

I constructed a direct falsification of the implicit premise, that capital allocation inherently produces good outcomes for individuals by competing well in the market. Whether or not you agree with my “perfect information” assertion is beside the point, it’s more so the trivial observation that really bad things sell really well.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#60
Short term profit companies usually try to get away with giving you the less they can while charging you as much as possible.

There are still mid size company that try to make a good product for a fair price, but I have the gut feeling that any company that have a board of shareholders will always default to this behaviour.

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