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Make product worse, get money

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Re: Make product worse, get money

#151

Post by floren »

kerblang wrote: post #44

> it’s why Subway sandwiches are so soggy I have NEVER had any such problem. Subway puts what you want on the sandwich. You tell them directly. You watch them make it. If you ask for soggy things on your sandwich, it will be soggy. I do not ask for soggy things on my sandwich. That is why I have never eaten a soggy subway sandwich, EVER. I did have a fairly loud argument with one - only one - of their sandwich artist…

> I often use bold & dramatic hand gestures while bent over slightly, face pressed against the glass enclosure of the sandwich-making zone. "STOP! RIGHT THERE!" I will yell, several times, if necessary.

God, Poe's law really gets me sometimes.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#152

Post by loxs »

The answer to the final question in the article is: "Mostly, because the government forbids us from solving this problem". Start a company? That will be 2k for incorporation and 3k per year for auditing/bookkeeping. You want to build something physical in Europe? What a bummer, come here and pay the exorbitant carbon tax. You still think you are very smart? Your will pay 70% effective tax rate if you want to hire someone else to help you.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#154

Post by pkaeding »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #34
robrtsql wrote: post #11

I don't think comparing the dating app to a pizza restaurant makes the dating app argument fall apart. The difference is that even a satisfied customer will get hungry again, so it's possible to provide a really good experience and still have that customer come back. A dating app is unique (or, at least in a different category) in that the best possible outcome for the user (assuming monogamy) is that the user delete…

More fundamentally--if a good product keeps a customer coming back for more there's an incentive to provide a good product. If a happy customer doesn't have any reason to come back there's no value in creating a happy customer. Note that "come back" needs to be interpreted broadly. For example, a Osprey backpack--lifetime warranty against most anything, doesn't look like there's any space for repeat customers. But--t…

But similarly to you recommending the Osprey backpack to your friends because you are a happy customer, happy/successful customers of a dating site will spread the word.

Re: Make product worse, get money

#155

Post by [deleted] »

heymijo wrote: post #133
SeanAnderson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tinder competes with Tiktok more than it competes with other dating apps. is a crazy remark, but I think you're right. We're living in weird time!

Yep, Peter Drucker wrote about this all the way back in 1964. > The competition is therefore all the other activities that compete for the rapidly growing “discretionary time” of a population His examples were bowling ball manufacturers competing with lawn care companies, but the idea is the same, go up an abstraction layer, and the competition is for time.

[deleted]

Re: Make product worse, get money

#156

Post by nubg »

mettamage wrote: post #135
tikhonj wrote: post #16

All of the pizza examples are about reducing cost . The argument about dating apps is about increasing retention . The dynamics are qualitatively different. The argument with pizza is more like "people like salty, fatty food, so pizza places are incentivized to make their pizza less healthy so that people come back more often"... which is exactly what happens! So why doesn't a legitimately healthy restaurant come alo…

> The other problem is that making a really effective dating app is just hard. It's fundamentally difficult to help people find compatible partners, especially without in-person contact. That's compounded by cultural and demographic issues. It doesn't matter how well your app is designed when there's a massive imbalance in genders! Really true. Most of dating seems to be dominated by that people want to be comfortabl…

Super interesting, please share more details! :-)

Re: Make product worse, get money

#157

Post by bikelang »

vkou wrote: post #39
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just restaurants, but also supermarkets. They don't produce food; they produce shareholder wealth. That's their goal. Healthy food, grown naturally, not sprayed with chemicals, harvested in the last week, is just not a cost-effective plan for them.

> Healthy food, grown naturally, not sprayed with chemicals, harvested in the last week, is just not a cost-effective plan for them. It's also not a cost-effective plan for most shoppers who have enough other expenses in their lives that they can't afford their food doubling in price. Most of us are stuck in globally-horrible local maximums, and we aren't going to get out of them without some external push.

To push back on this idea a bit - my family buys a share from a CSA (community supported agriculture). Our CSA is a local organic farm operating on about 4 acres of land. They grow enough food for ~30 CSA shares and sell at farmers markets as well as to local restaurants. For $700 we get enough fresh produce to cover about 2/3rds of our groceries (for 2 adults) for a 20 week period. We spend a lot more than 35/week at Whole Foods typically! And this is in a relatively HCOL part of Colorado - which isn’t known for its easy growing climate.

All that is to say - I’m not sure I agree that supermarkets are the cheapest outcome for food. Locally grown food can be substantially cheaper. What we give up is the year long availability for any kind of produce we could dream of. Instead we eat seasonally and we eat what is available. It requires a shift in cooking practice from “I want to make X - I am going to go buy A,B,C ingredients” to “I have A,B,C - what can I make with this?”.

Maybe that lack of choice is an unacceptable trade off for some - for us we find it fun. It’s well worth cheaper, better tasting (really cannot understate this part), and substantially longer lasting produce. It’s actually crazy how long the produce we get from the farm lasts - we have basically zero spoilage now.

I just wish we could get food like this year round - and I am considering buying a second share next year entirely to can it. So maybe it will be possible!

Re: Make product worse, get money

#159

Post by epiccoleman »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #111
pil0u wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 50 years, the proportion of the budget allocated to food, halved. I'm not saying everyone can have the choice to eat healthy, but probably a small majority has. I live in an area where small, local, sometimes organic producers are gathered to sell their product to the community in a way it is accessible to every budget.

>I'm not saying everyone can have the choice to eat healthy, but probably a small majority has. I bet the least healthy options in people's shopping trolleys are some of the most expensive items. Cakes, biscuits, chocolate, ice creams, alcohol, pre-prepared meals, etc.

i'm always a little surprised by how low my cart total is when i just go into the store to refresh a few produce items. that said, eating healthy certainly hasn't gotten any cheaper. i've paid $1+ for a single onion which feels absurd

Re: Make product worse, get money

#160

Post by meindnoch »

pil0u wrote: post #88
vkou wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 50 years, the proportion of the budget allocated to food, halved. Sure. But 50 years ago, healthcare and education didn't cost an arm and both legs. In those 5 decades, every single rent-seeker that you need to engage with to live has dipped his hand deeper into our pockets. > I live in an area where small, local, sometimes organic producers are gathered to sell their product to the community in a way it is acce…

I live in a part of the world where the healthcare system is also spread across the society in a more equalitarian way than what you describe. I don't understand your second point. One of my close friends is a farmer, they mostly grow organic apples. They work (insanely hard) across the whole year to prepare the crop and take care of the trees. They are not rich, but it starts to be sustainable. Locally, it's having…

>What I know for sure is that apples in the 50s had at least an order of magnitude more calories than apples today.

At least an order of magnitude more calories? Just to be on the same page, you're saying that apples in the 50s had at least 10x as much calories as they do today? :DD

You realize an apple is ~10-12% sugar by weight, right? The rest is just water and fibre. So an apple with an order of magnitude more calories would mean a solid block of sugar. (alternatively, an apple that's 10x the size, but we have photos of 50s apples, and they were roughly the same size as today)

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