631–640 of 731 posts
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Force means "coercion or compulsion, especially w the use of threat or violence". If "not paying someone x dollars" = force, then at this moment, I'm forcing 6 billion people to do something.
Even the staunchest libertarians disagree with your understanding. Embarrassed that anyone holds or ever held this view, they have left you behind.
This is a lot of words to describe rent seeking. Google, Amazon, Instagram/Meta, ultimately all of these are earning their outsized margins through market-dominance enabled intermediation of commerce. I search for 'foo' and the top result is either Foo paying through the nose for what should really should be organic traffic or Bar 'buying' the click instead. In the absence of anti-trust the only winning move is to bu…
It was only 600 words. I understand there is a push against AI bloated slop here, but I don't think we should discourage good prose. I just wanted to share that I find Seth's daily blog consistently excellent.
AI can mirror this style of writing, but it can't mirror the clarity of thought behind it.
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> The one kind of physical shop I really miss is the kind of place where you can buy one screw, nail or picture hook etc. So much nostalgia for these shops. A man with a posh, sparkling clean apron knowing exactly what you need or mean. In and out in under a minute or two having parted with just 30p Screwfix are actually pretty close in terms of service. Their staff are pretty patient with people and quite helpful. T…
Spending 30p in a minute means the store's gross revenue including cost of goods sold is at most $18.00 per hour, which is already less than a living wage for one person.
The shop also sold more expensive things like small appliances and hand tools etc
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> Are you aware of the world you live in? Certainly this world comprises many other things than the Holocaust and IBM's support of it. Perhaps your awareness is lacking if you think that is the main thing to be aware of in this world.
> Perhaps your awareness is lacking if you think that is the main thing to be aware of in this world. I don't think that's what GP was saying at all.
To me "Are you aware of the world you live in?" suggests "If you don't even know this, you don't know anything. This is the first thing anyone should know". I'm willing to learng if they meant something else, but I guess that's asking a lot.
I do, you can too.
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> Perhaps your awareness is lacking if you think that is the main thing to be aware of in this world. I don't think that's what GP was saying at all.
Maybe say what you think they were saying? What is it with these maximally ambiguous comments? To me "Are you aware of the world you live in?" suggests "If you don't even know this, you don't know anything. This is the first thing anyone should know". I'm willing to learng if they meant something else, but I guess that's asking a lot.
This was, to my thinking, such a straightforward interpretation that it didn't bear making explicit; and your interpretation genuinely didn't even occur to me.
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Maybe say what you think they were saying? What is it with these maximally ambiguous comments? To me "Are you aware of the world you live in?" suggests "If you don't even know this, you don't know anything. This is the first thing anyone should know". I'm willing to learng if they meant something else, but I guess that's asking a lot.
The point is that Oracle's actions are unremarkable in the context of the existing state of the world, and that corporations are generally not concerned with the morality of their customers. This was, to my thinking, such a straightforward interpretation that it didn't bear making explicit; and your interpretation genuinely didn't even occur to me.
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Per the article, in exchange for that goodwill they get a billion dollars per week. Do we need more explanation? To be clear, it's gross, but they are doing it just enough that their convenience and average sufficient product quality keeps me using them. I'd guess they do a lot of research to keep that balance where it is.
I don't expect to get any sort of explanation from Amazon of course. I do think they are probably doing something that is hurting them financially. Acquired goodwill is extremely hard to measure and shows up in things like long-term customer retention and engagement, so you're not going to see it on an A/B test -- on a A/B test users come in with the same level of goodwill on both sides of the fork and thus their imm…
But I'm close. My purchases through them are down probably somewhere around 80%. My girlfriend never really used Amazon and doesn't see the appeal at all - telling someone "it used to be good" makes you wonder what you're doing.
Even AWS has burned me and clients enough times that we pretty much don't use them anymore - an idea that was unthinkable a decade ago.
The other thing is that the more they burn this goodwill the more they'll be tempted to increase ad revenue, and the more the goodwill will disappear.
>If you’re searching for an air fryer, Amazon already knows quite a bit. They know the best-reviewed, least-returned, best-priced model. The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place). What if I made a new air fryer that hasn't received a lot of reviews and costs a little more because of…
> How would I break through, if not ads? Make YouTube videos. Food porn is a thing, and some subset of that crowd will want to watch you fry stuff with your "pro" fryer.
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The point is that Oracle's actions are unremarkable in the context of the existing state of the world, and that corporations are generally not concerned with the morality of their customers. This was, to my thinking, such a straightforward interpretation that it didn't bear making explicit; and your interpretation genuinely didn't even occur to me.
It doesn't surprise me that corporations [whose primary, if not sole concern is the profit motive] don't care about the morality of their customers. What I don't understand is why you're objecting to me voting with my wallet, something that's been a popular retort against progressive and humanitarian movements for at least the past two decades.
I did nothing of the sort.
I simply said that I disagree with your stated motivations for your vote.
The way that you discuss your plan makes it sound as if you consider it morally incumbent upon others to follow suit. I do object to that.