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It's not a crime if we do it with an app

pluralistic.net

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Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#121

Post by golemotron »

ohlookcake wrote: post #66
golemotron wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is not a great case for your argument. They made the world safer and enabled transportation for people who would otherwise not have it. No one, literally no one, who has spent any time in taxis wants to go back to them. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to call several companies to get a taxi to the airport have none arrive. Uber broke the ice and showed what was possible. There was literally no othe…

> They are a net positive by a large margin Maybe initially. The 'large' margin is getting smaller every day. Pricing is opaque and ever increasing. A subscription is slowly becoming a requirement rather than a ln add on. Most of the price increases are not passed on to the driver. Drivers in most markets are 'independent contractors', which they're realising is a bad deal. They've only recently moved from market-cap…

We only get to complain about these things because ride service is ubiquitous and easy now. With taxis, it wasn't.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#122

Post by akoncius »

jeffhuys wrote: post #30
ryandrake wrote: post #17

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything , it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to…

This also happens in the EU, tho.

there are some exceptions, when US jails EU CEO https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/6/16743308/volkswagen-olive...

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#123

Post by cratermoon »

vtashkov wrote: post #95
gmueckl wrote: post #76

This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily. If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently.…

[flagged]

Redbaiting is SO 1950s

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#125

Post by greyface- »

> Inflation is one of the most politically salient factors of this decade

> Inflation has lots of causes, it's true.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

Algorithmic price fixing is certainly a not-insignificant part of the issue. But it's strange to see zero acknowledgement of the massive increase in money supply over the same time period. When doing causal analysis, we need to examine both the private sector and our government.

When you use M2 as denominator for egg prices, we're at the same place we were in early 2016: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DcVw

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#126

Post by 9283409232 »

stickfigure wrote: post #110
9283409232 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is naive and wrong. An example of this is Google Fiber and ironically Tesla. When Google Fiber came out, ISPs lobbied to sue Google and local governments to prevent Fiber from being available in their areas instead of competing. When Tesla tried to sell direct to consumer, dealerships sued to prevent it. Entrenched companies will always use the system to prevent competition. Regulatory capture is a term for a re…

I doubt there are any regulatory or legal restrictions that prevent newcomers from selling frozen potatoes.

All of the FDA and USDA regulations and inspections.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#127

Post by UncleEntity »

bovermyer wrote: post #96
Ekaros wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest hear. If you go to store and steal sack of potato. I doubt either the store or police will even attempt to track you anymore... Retail theft is just left to happen.

I doubt that. "Loss prevention" divisions in larger corporations might allow for some amount of unpunished theft, but once that number gets high enough, they'll implement measures to control it. Sometimes, that takes the form of locking down shelves, but I imagine some take a more reactive approach. Additionally, the amount of video and audio (and other data) recorded is increasing, not decreasing. As tracking techno…

> I don't think it'll be too long before we'll have "arrest-a-thief" as-a-service.

I believe that's called '911'...

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#130

Post by yieldcrv »

constantcrying wrote: post #103

What a terrible article. The title and the first paragraph talk about how new business models are circumventing existing laws, which seems fair enough and actually quite an interesting subject. Then, there is a switch to the most traditional of businesses with the most traditional business models. Who, the author argues, are engaging in price gauging. In the second paragraph he claims that apps cause this inflation (…

Blog posts are just random comments that would get torn apart, but elevated as worthy of discussion because its in an app.
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