Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Your Map Is Wrong’

p2p.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 101 posts

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#71

Post by yobbo »

carbadtraingood wrote: post #56

> There is this beauty of economics – you don’t have to make anyone poorer in order for you to become richer. At any appreciable scale I disagree with this, or at least believe this ignores a whole lot of complexity. Like, it totally ignores how profits are allocated within a company, for instance. Jeff Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance. He could have chosen to make his employees richer at…

> There is this beauty of economics – you don’t have to make anyone poorer in order for you to become richer.

Actually, economics doesn't create wealth. Technology and industry creates wealth.

In the case of facebook, you'd have to make the argument that advertising budgets is creating more "wealth" in the hands of facebook than anywhere else. Advertising spending budgets are, in fact, zero-sum. Which form of advertising creates more "economic wellfare" is probably a normative debate, and we'd need someone motivated enough to have it.

But in the end, facebook's revenue comes at the expense of other companies' revenue.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#72

Post by yobbo »

m0llusk wrote: post #47

The product that lifted Apple out of mediocrity and into the public eye was the iPod. The iPod, especially in its initial release, had a feature list that was explicitly derived from the failings of competing products. The idea was to take and dominate the mobile music player market. All of the biggest power moves Steve Jobs made were about eating someone else's lunch.

The big difference was iTunes/store integration, which would have been impossible for any of the smaller companies.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#73

Post by mikkergp »

nicoco wrote: post #12

>None of us knew we needed Steve’s devices until they were given to us. I have recently been given a $2500 toy by $EMPLOYER$ and I still don't need it. Personal anecdote aside, is this post seriously advocating for creating needs from scratch?

I do wonder how "needing things" has changed personal finance. This is obviously alot more complicated then I'm going to describe here, but there's the common trope of "don't eat that Avacado toast and buy an iphone and maybe you could afford a house." And this is obviously laughable given the rise in home prices, but at the same time, I think it gets at a certain idea that there are so many more expenses today than you had in our grandparents day.

Also, I think it's more vogue in modern times to charge for things that used to be free. My friends just went camping and it was $40 a night. What was that cost in the 1920's and how has that changed as a percentage of income over time.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#75

Post by eagleal »

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #13
lucideer wrote: post #11

> Wealth is not a fixed pie (PG). I've read a fair bit of PG's writing but hadn't dug into The Pie Fallacy referenced here. Wow, what utter nonsense. I've certainly not agreed with everything PG comes out with but this is a new logical low. And it's not just the usual problem of an oversimplified analogy not accurately representing more complex systems, the analogy[0] isn't even internally consistent with itself. [0]…

What specifically is over simplified, inconsistent, or wrong?

Economics is too broad. For example Land and Real Estate is zero-sum, as is strictly Debt/Financial/Monetary exchange.

Some things, as with blue skies research, really do create more wealth as in overall some technological advancements make making some things cheaper, or available.

Creating debt to print capital now for making X cheaper to produce is generally good as that zero-sum is offset by the wealth/wellness created by that capital in the future (a company producing cheaper components for example).

Meta exists in a zero-sum market, as advertisers fight for the same limited resource: attention (an individual can view as much advertisement in 24H).

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#76

Post by runnerup »

cupofpython wrote: post #55
mlatu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he is right in a way that makes it hard to see what facebook is turning into profit: the users attention. sure they are creating a space without taking away volume for other people to build there, but nobody will care about the other things because a proper map of the internet is not concerned with what is there, but what a given user spends their attention on.

>but what a given user spends their attention on I want to point out, since I have not seen it elsewhere in this thread, that user's do not need to be on the internet at all . Does no one remember what it was like to be bored? With respect to living everyday lives, social media addiction is becoming an issue. Instagram specifically is a huge item. So it would be contradictory to say Meta is responsible for manipulati…

I might not need to be on social media but I do need to be on the internet.

- Vehicle and Public Transit Navigation

- Apartment shopping

- Amazon.com

- Determining visa rules for extended travel

- Obtaining medical records

All of these are possible without the internet but all of them are a massive waste of time without the internet. I’m okay with being bored but some things would be an enormous waste of my life.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#77

Post by temporalparts »

yobbo wrote: post #71
carbadtraingood wrote: post #56

> There is this beauty of economics – you don’t have to make anyone poorer in order for you to become richer. At any appreciable scale I disagree with this, or at least believe this ignores a whole lot of complexity. Like, it totally ignores how profits are allocated within a company, for instance. Jeff Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance. He could have chosen to make his employees richer at…

> There is this beauty of economics – you don’t have to make anyone poorer in order for you to become richer. Actually, economics doesn't create wealth. Technology and industry creates wealth. In the case of facebook, you'd have to make the argument that advertising budgets is creating more "wealth" in the hands of facebook than anywhere else. Advertising spending budgets are, in fact, zero-sum. Which form of adverti…

Advertising spend is not zero-sum. Budgets are determined by advertising efficiency; if a new platform comes along that significantly improves cost per conversion, then you'd allocate more money than before. The reason advertisers are flocking to Google and Facebook is because of their advertisement efficiency (through targeting), and this has lead to an increase in overall advertiser spending.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#78

Post by jl6 »

carbadtraingood wrote: post #56

> There is this beauty of economics – you don’t have to make anyone poorer in order for you to become richer. At any appreciable scale I disagree with this, or at least believe this ignores a whole lot of complexity. Like, it totally ignores how profits are allocated within a company, for instance. Jeff Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance. He could have chosen to make his employees richer at…

> Jeff Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance.

How did he make them poorer? He took money from them?

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#79

Post by sfvisser »

carbadtraingood wrote: post #56

> There is this beauty of economics – you don’t have to make anyone poorer in order for you to become richer. At any appreciable scale I disagree with this, or at least believe this ignores a whole lot of complexity. Like, it totally ignores how profits are allocated within a company, for instance. Jeff Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance. He could have chosen to make his employees richer at…

> Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance. He could have chosen to make his employees richer at the expense of making himself poorer.

No, they both got richer. Maybe Bezos had a chance to make his employees slightly more rich and himself less so, but ultimately no-one got poorer here.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#80

Post by antisthenes »

golergka wrote: post #14
seydor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even contestable. Google and FB took the advertising money from everyone else. Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising, only it's 2 monopolies now instead of thousands of media.

> Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising That's completely false. A lot of small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes) were not viable before Google and especially Facebook/Instagram — they simply could not realistically find their consumers before internet advertising.

Many successful small internet businesses actually arose from the era before internet advertising.

They simply took their product expertise and brought it online and expanded their reach to more customers through advertising.

As for housewives selling cupcakes - that business is just as not viable offline as it is online. It simply doesn't scale and shipment/delivery will eat your entire profit margin. It might make some beer/fun money, but it's not a business, it's a hobby.

Post reply on HN