>> Small, medium size farmers are disappearing fast, they quit or at best being absorbed by large farmcorps.
> So making agricultural markets orders of magnitudes more efficient is destroying it in your view?
Yes, of course it is.
It's like replacing families by hell called a "System" - wet dream of the eg. leftists.
It literaly destroy "market" becouse producers side disappear and you have just institution :)
It destroys it becouse no one know how or want to do that hard agriculture business. People will just prefer to sit in slums around big cities. What they can do anyway if everything is not big but giant ? How to buy such area ? How to even learn what to do with it ?? How to acquire buyers if you even get that giant area LOL ? And if it to big for one man or family how to get enough workers (why they even wanted to live slums ? how they even learn what to do??) ??
That giant and efficient (in one dimension) thing just extend himself into lack of self-sufficiency on multigeneration time scale.
Monoculture becose it's cheaper ? :>
Product quality ??? Compare to XO brandy, champagne or artisanal leather wallets. Not to boxed milk with "not yet discovered" PFASes or future "improvements".
Food security in case of war or invasion ? Or mass drone invasion ? Without small and medium agriculture you have nowhere to run. And why to even run - do one giant owner will take multiple ex-bigcity refugees to his home (and feed them few months) or just hire security to shot them or scary of his land ?
And even if giant owner want to help he can't. Becouse hi is only one. Compare to many small/farms - they are somehow just "human" and humanity sized...
Don Corleone was planting tomatoes at the end ;)
I met few peoples that when stopped to be young just moved to province and started peacefull living of the land. Giant farms are a no go for that purposes.
And yes, eg. China builds piggeries and cowsheds town-sized now. Now imagine one case of some-flue in that "town" - best case... And suddenly millions have prices hike or are starving. Or Africa countries get very cheap but toxic meat. Or animal food. Eg. with prions included...
And all of that are just real world facts and "technicals". Now add greeeeed by "lawful" owners. Tell me - is that hypothetical ? \s You easily can write long replay or tree of them just on that subject :>
Corect way is to not build hell on earth in the first place.
People need to stop using this stat. It's completely useless. There are literally people making top percentile incomes saying they're living paycheck to paycheck in these surveys because they interpret the survey questions wildly different than other people. A tiny, tiny percentage of Americans would literally go hungry if they didn't get their next month's paycheck the rest would have to cash out some small percentage of their S&P 500 ETF.
> A tiny, tiny percentage of Americans would literally go hungry if they didn't get their next month's paycheck
"71.93% of Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck Have $2,000 or Less in Savings"[0].
So no, it's not a tiny percentage. $2k or less in savings means being one emergency expense away from not being able to pay rent or your house loan next month.
Well it might please you then that about 50% of the respondents report low income as the cause for living paycheck by paycheck. Even more report high monthly bills as a cause.
People thinking their income is to low is not exactly news. I haven't personally met anyone who would ever claim their income is to high. Why do you think I haven't read it? Do you always agree with everything you read?
I'm confused about that figure, since not having any savings to fall back on seems to me to be the definition of living paycheck-to-paycheck. How is that not 100%? The argument you're making seems tautological, and doesn't really account for the elasticity of people's spending habits, or the income ranges they fall into in the first place.
I respect your opinion but the stats presented before does not “shows“ illiteracy but low investments. Lack of liquidity to invest seems a very plausible raison because a revenu threshold has to be passed to be able to buy food before founds. This stat is probably almost a proxy for how many Americans are below that threshold.
It is really hard to believe that 71.93% of Americans are on the verge of homelessness and starvation. Much more plausible (and even mentioned in the linked article under "Lack of budgeting and financial planning" and "Social pressures") are just bad habits.
Of course there are economic literate people who really are struggling, but I doubt they make even half of those 71.93%.
In this case you are revealing your own (statistical) illiteracy. It’s referring to 70% of people who claim to be living paycheck to paycheck, not 70% of all people.
There’s a range of goods and services accessible on may consider after food but before investments : medical expenses, gas to visit family on week end…
The personal savings rate has slowly halved over the past 60 years[0].
Did everyone become illiterate or maybe the inflation rate has exceeded the growth rate of wages[1], among other things?
What's funny is that on two comments rejecting my argument one accuses me of considering people "too dumb" to take their own financial decisions, the other tells me people are actually too dumb and that's why they are in financial trouble.
The article you linked mentions "Lack of budgeting and financial planning" and "Social pressures" for reason of living paycheck to paycheck. And those are self reported values.
Last 60 years we experienced enormous growth of advertising - is it really hard to believe that many people are having big problems with limiting their spending.
In genera, "self reporting" needs to be viewed as the untrustworthy statistics it is. I hear it a lot recently in the social siences. And media happily parrotting the results, as proof of whatever they are currently trying to push. I wonder how much of these self-reported issues would be seen in a completely different lens if those asked were forced to discuss their answers within a certain peer group. "What, you say you're poor, with that car and that house?"
Also consider that some of the respondents are actually "bragging" about living paycheck-to-paycheck so they don't seem any poorer than anybody else, when they are actually not even sustainable and deeply know they are heading downward toward bankruptcy or something like that unless things look up.
Tech companies sell tech. Advertising companies sell attention. Most big tech companies are just high tech advertising companies. They don't like to say this because it doesn't carry nearly as much prestige to admit that the culmination of their life's work is to get people to buy more crap rather than making the world better in any measurable way. I say this as someone who works for an advertising company
I take issue with pretty much every single one of your statements here.
> culmination of their life's work is to get people to buy more crap rather than making the world better in any measurable way
Advertising makes the world better in a lot of ways. It allows companies to provide services without actively charging for them which is a much preferred way of monetization of the vast majority of users (just look at the popularity of Netflix's recent ad supported plan). It allows companies and users to connect on new products which often results in a purchase that both the consumer and company benefit from. The result are higher living standards.
Google Search is funded primarily through ads. If you truly believe that Google Search hasn't made the world better in any measurable way I truly don't know what to tell you.
Then you'll probably disagree with me when I say that I think the world wide web in general has had a net zero impact on the world. I believe it's had as many positives as negatives. Perhaps if we could've frozen it circa 2005 it would be an overall positive but I'm not convinced it's as good as we all believe it is
1. Jeff Bezos no longer controls Amazon operations.
2. He doesn't own the company either, he owns a minority stake.
3. In what universe does Amazon come even remotely close to having a "quasi-monopoly" over the internet? This isn't true when limiting it to just e-commerce.
4. The majority of people actually prefer to watch ads over increasing prices. Streaming platforms ad-supported plans are MASSIVELY successful.
1. He's the chair of the board, so he has an outsized amount of control. He could easily fire the CEO or any other C-Suite members if he wanted to.
2. He owns a bit more than a minority stake, he owns (I've found several estimates, so I'm putting in a range here) between 9% and 12.5%. That's hardly a minority stake for a company worth nearly $1.5 trillion. He's the single largest shareholder.
3. Maybe not a full on monopoly, but AWS has the same market share in the cloud space as the next two providers combined. (MSFT + Google). That's as close to a monopoly as I can think in of a competitive industry without getting trust busted.
4. Most people I know would prefer to keep things the way they are - they pay for a premium service on top of already paying for Prime. If Amazon offered Prime Video for free but it was ad-supported, I'd be fine with that. I don't think I'm alone when I say that if I'm paying for a premium service (Video) on top of already paying for a service (Prime), Amazon shouldn't be allowed to triple-dip by selling ads.
Streaming platforms usually have ad-supported tiers, yes, but most of those are either free or very cheap.
1. I'm not saying he doesn't still have control over governance at Amazon. As executive chair he most certainly does. Operational decision like these are not subject to the board of directors though. He also couldn't "easily" unilaterally fire Jassy. With all the clout he likely still has if he told the board they should vote to fire Jassy over the decision to run ads on PV they would tell him to get bent.
2. You're literally describing a minority stake here.
3. Last data point I saw was around 3% of internet traffic running through AWS. Also I'd say there's quite a large difference between the internet as an entity and the cloud infra a tiny part of it is run on.
4. Most people I know would prefer to get Prime for free but that's never gonna happen either. I'd wager that at this point the only cash flow positive streaming platform out there is Netflix which is simply not sustainable. So it's either cancel the product eventually, raise prices, or introduce ads. The vast majority of people would opt to go with the ads.
I think you're being completely disingenuous here. Using an ad-blocker is free-riding and nothing less. We consume a service provided by Google through server capacity, monetization enginea, and improved discovery and by the creators through sweat and tears in creating video content without paying for it. You can consume the content without being exposed to ads while paying Google and the creators their share by buying Youtube Premium but you choose to instead steal it by both consuming it and not paying for it.
It's completely fair to argue that Google makes more than enough money to not have to rely on your ad revenue but after all you're still free-riding.
Users are also part of the content-generation algorithm. Youtube uses my view history in their recommendation algorithm to others. YT uses my interactions the same way, whether it's engaging with the creator in the comments or providing feedback for other viewers or just simply giving it a like.
Yes, I'm consuming the service, but I'm also contributing to it. Less users = less engagement, and maybe that's good for YT's bottom line but it's harmful to the ecosystem.
Using words like 'theft' to describe visiting an openly-accessible webpage with a browser extension that modifies the presentation of that webpage is a bit extreme.
If these sites were truly concerned, why not just put youtube behind a paid username and password like netflix or hbo go or any other streaming content service today? Its because there is massive value in having your content be open to the world and not gatekept behind a subscription. The financials of this business don’t suggest its lacking a means to cover its costs, so why should I pay out my attention for a rate far below I quote anyone else in the market for it?
Did Google ever unfairly dominate competition? Did Google ever use their power tyrannically? Did Google ever release a product or design that caused untold social damage? Does Google deserve stellar treatment because they treat us stellar? Even if you view their ads or buy their product, is the product still not free of exploiting you? Why is it not the correct moralism that we have a right and a duty to take everything from them until they are no more?
Calling it free-riding is somewhat absurd in this framing, though. Is it free-riding of google to literally play music in my house? They don't pay for it, after all. Consider, you could easily frame this such that they are free riding on my trust to let them sell access to other companies. That they can't deliver on that purchased transfer of trust is their problem, not mine.
Ya people want their cake and eat it too. Or we want a free and open internet and that means ads or we really don’t want ads and that means to the app/platform/creator/website to go private and with a paywall. It will never be sustainable to have something free out there without ads and quality. Quality in anything won’t just come out of nowhere when it require investment, sweat and tears.
Alternative take, Google introduced the "customer as the product model", at least they did that at scale. Then honestly, we became dependent on their services as the web became Google, so I don't think it' totally fair to take that view.
No, I think most people are fine with paying for a service, it's just that most people in this thread are completely right.
1.) Google drove up ad coverage in front of videos to the point where I have to watch 2, sometimes 3 ads before I can watch a video. This is insane. I'd rather go back watching TV instead.
2.) Simultaneously, they have made it impossible for creators to support themselves by using ad payouts - indicated by how many creators chose to go with third party sponsorships. So even when I'm using adblock, I'm watching ads, only this time I'm usually okay with it, because I can skip them and even if not, it supports the creators I'm watching (although I'm sure advertisers will slowly figure this out as well and creep over to surreptitious advertising).
> that means to the app/platform/creator/website to go private and with a paywall
You pretend like this isn't already happening. Google is so detached from their customer-base, that Linus Tech Tips is currently starting his own streaming service, that does exactly this. Using their YouTube platform as a way to advertise it.
Larger content creators will just build their own platforms, as Linus proves.
> No, I think most people are fine with paying for a service
> I have to watch 2, sometimes 3 ads before I can watch a video. This is insane. I'd rather go back watching TV instead.
Your 2 statements contradict themselves. If you and others are fine to pay for a service and hate to watch 2-3 ads then why not take YouTube Premium? Now you just said you will prefer not to pay and go watch TV.
> they have made it impossible for creators to support themselves
You can literally pay a subscription to a channel you want to directly support now. How is that not helping to support content creators.
> You pretend like this isn't already happening.
I think you start to reading way too deeper here because I was literally pointing that it is happening and has to happen if people want quality. Or you go free with ads or you go private with a paywall.
Truth is you are already kinda answering what is happening right now:
> So even when I'm using adblock, I'm watching ads, only this time I'm usually okay with it, because I can skip them and even if not, it supports the creators I'm watching (although I'm sure advertisers will slowly figure this out as well and creep over to surreptitious advertising)
During Covid the internet ad market exploded but the price also went way down. If it’s ads on Facebook Google or even YouTube. A lot of people are more on the web with lock downs. They shop even more on Amazon and e-commerce shops. But this influx of new (regular) users made also cost of the ads per user crash because of the influx itself and because of the financial situation.
Coming back on YouTube that’s when and why YouTube started to show a lot more ads before it was 1-2 it went to 2-3 or so. And usually not skipable.
Add to this like you said in your comment people that want to support a channel and do watch ads but never click, advertisers will “figured it out”. Well they already did figured it on out. And they is them and Google Facebook etc. The market already corrected itself at the beginning of Covid. That’s why now you have to see more ads on YouTube because the cost per click is way down.
We can’t just zoom in and avoid all the economic situation. Forget how we got here. And avoid to see what YouTube offers to support content creators and yell that they don’t do a thing when really everything is already there. The question is are people defending this narrative going to fight to always things free with no (little) ads or are they going to put their money where their mouth is?
Still not free-riding when you consider the data they are collecting from viewers even with ad-blockers. People still have accounts to save channels/videos, lots of people or households have Android phones that makes it stupidly easy to link to people, places and purchases. There is significantly more value they still gain from it even if youtube itself operates at a loss.
Maybe if they weren't allowed to collect so much information, or had to pay back the users they are collecting data on could I see the point that ad-blocking is free-riding.
It's probably less than 1% of users that care about these changes at all. An even smaller number will actually dial down their reddit usage as a result of this.
The only consequence Reddit will suffer from this is an increase in ad revenue and maybe the added side effect of reigning in the power of moderators.
Let me be clear: Reddit messed up in their communication and execution of effectively cutting out third-party apps but the underlying strategy remains sound.
My theory that multi billion dollar companies base decisions like where to manufacture on costs? Or my theory that this set up forces lenient labour laws? I really do not know anything about economics, so would love to hear what you have to say. Would be helpful if you could link some things too
Why would they search of a reason if they see their employees being more productive WFH and they can save a significant share of their capex by getting rid of their real estate footprints? HackerNews needs to stop with the motivated reasoning when it comes to arguing against RTO. Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data showing some portion of their employees being more productive working from the office to an extent where it justifies taking the massive capex hit by bringing them back to the office. Your anecdotal experience doesn't outweigh that.
> Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data showing some portion of their employees being more productive working from the office to an extent where it justifies taking the massive capex hit by bringing them back to the office. Your anecdotal experience doesn't outweigh that.
I think you are grossly overestimating the validity of that "data". Data can be twisted to say whatever you want it to say. I've watched management throw out results because it didn't align with what they thought, I've seen them cherry-pick and distort employee survey data to backup whatever they already wanted to do, I've experiences KPI hell and how it has zero bearing on the work being done.
These companies are not data-driven, they are people-driven and people are not coldly logical/analytical.
So there is no such thing as a cargo cult? Every time some trend picks up, be it agile, standup, open offices, WFH, return to office, over-hiring, massive layoffs, and what have you, it’s because it backed by rigorous data analysis?
> Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data showing some portion of their employees being more productive working from the office to an extent where it justifies taking the massive capex hit by bringing them back to the office.
