Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the things that’s surprising about traveling to Europe and Japan is that this revenue maximizing business strategy isn’t as prevalent. You don’t see the same upsells everywhere and tipping culture is also mostly non-existent. Many US businesses managed to behave in a manner that was vastly less extractive to their customers for most of the last century as well. It really is possible to care about the quality o…
It's exactly harder but when customers prioritize price above everything it's hard to succeed if you offer better, but charge more. The hard truth is that American consumers care only about price, and so businesses optimize for that (or go under). Which means they lean into other sources of revenue, or ways to reduce costs. Elsewhere people care about value more than price, and are willing to spend more to get more.…
Nobody cares
671–680 of 1001 posts
Re: Nobody cares
#672How does the second part of this paragraph disprove "something something incentive systems" ?
I am sincerely curious, as I can't make the connection myself, and of course "something something incentive systems" would be exactly my argument.
Re: Nobody cares
#673Re: Nobody cares
#674Its ironic, because this dude doesn't seem to care enough to even the slightest bit of research to understand why any of these problems he highlights are the way they are, and lazily attributes everything to OTHER people not caring. LEDs last longer, are more energy efficient, and also reduce light pollution because they are more directional[1]. Took me 30 seconds to google. There are enormous design standards for de…
It forces the biker to slow down and reduces the collision risks with others in the line.
It is selfish to think only about the biker coming from the hill. The biker that thinks it is okay to drive 20mph in that situation.
Re: Nobody cares
#675Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in Baltimore the city seems to have purchased a huge batch of defective LEDs that are actually purple. It’s disturbing when you encounter one.
Nitpick: "are actually purple" makes it sound like they came out of the factory purple, but they're actually changing from white to purple over time as the phosphor coating fails.
Re: Nobody cares
#676Its ironic, because this dude doesn't seem to care enough to even the slightest bit of research to understand why any of these problems he highlights are the way they are, and lazily attributes everything to OTHER people not caring. LEDs last longer, are more energy efficient, and also reduce light pollution because they are more directional[1]. Took me 30 seconds to google. There are enormous design standards for de…
I don't understand how they're safer, because locally they've installed a few and they're already dying, and dying by strobing on and off at about 1Hz, which makes it quite hard to drive through. They're so bright that this failure mode is like a disco strobe light. This failure is so severe that regardless of how it might be elsewhere, to me it seems like the people who decided to use these LED lights and continue t…
Sure, the actual LEDs might have a 50000 hour lifetime, but the crappy power supply they got from the lowest bidder and packaged with woefully inadequate thermal dissipation dies after a tiny fraction of that.
Re: Nobody cares
#677Its ironic, because this dude doesn't seem to care enough to even the slightest bit of research to understand why any of these problems he highlights are the way they are, and lazily attributes everything to OTHER people not caring. LEDs last longer, are more energy efficient, and also reduce light pollution because they are more directional[1]. Took me 30 seconds to google. There are enormous design standards for de…
Re: Nobody cares
#678Re: Nobody cares
#679Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course there are "reasonable justifications" for the shitty status quo, but that's kind of the point. Things are shitty for reasons but not for good reasons. The author points to Japan to illustrate that you do get measurably better results when people habitually try to do good work. We're not actually doomed to have crappy furniture, flimsy and buggy appliances, byzantine legal codes, ugly architecture, and hosti…
Cheaper lighting costs across an entire city are a very good reason. "Ugly architecture" is subjective. A lot of architects care very much, but they follow the academic line and lack the imagination and empathy to understand why elements of that aesthetic are unpopular and impractical - a completely different problem, even if it causes related outcomes. Bugs are easy to write and hard to fix. MBA culture as a whole i…
Re: Nobody cares
#680Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, in a way this is already true. If you consent to installing their mobile app (which includes god knows what kind of analytics), you are rewarded with at least 20% off all McDonald’s food list prices. So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register. Now, if there was an option when booking a flight to pick a fare class not subjected to the stupid branded credit…
> So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register. I didn't know they took orders at the register still. I've only been in once (last year) in the past 20 years, but they seemed to insist on kiosk-only. Not sure if the drive-thru is like that too.