geohot is pretty deep into the center of the map afaict.
That said I have felt the same feelings expressed by Hotz in this post. I commend him for saying it.
He attributed this to basic monkey psychology and said it led to revolutions where all the rich people get killed and society gets poorer overall.
I read it as mocking poor people, but maybe he was trying to warn the people who get killed in those kinds of revolutions.
From all the podcasts (Trevor Noah, social media in general), etc, one good aspect that I find is now society in a distributed manner can point a finger to social problems. e.g. we desperately need community in our society, by that I mean, we need a modern version of village. Not being individualistic and self-centered in all decisions. Adjusting to each others requirements and needs. Sometimes not asserting yourself on your parents even if you know they are wrong. It is hightime we nurture such an interdependent society, not unbundle ourselves totally and becoming transactional.
Stop participating. Hinge is towards the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you'll do just fine without it.
Spend for two weeks in the woods, and you'll find out who brings you food when you're hungry (spoilers: nobody).
Someday, people will have to realize we live in a society.Isn't this a reasonable way to achieve many desirable results? Hardcovers/paperbacks, watch a movie right away or after a few weeks, etc.
When it comes to media like movies… really? Still? The resource use of Top Gun and Star Wars is bonkers. Can’t we just have local theater and you know socialize?
Do we need the movie to come together and socialize over?
I so thought we were done with that stuff around Spider-Man 3. MCU and Star Wars sequels made no sense to me.
Is our attention always going to be coupled to Saturday mornings in 1990s?
Boomers did all the drugs and made music and corny fun shows like SNL and somehow convinced us to stare at computers iterating on word problems like it’s fucking middle school while staring at these over the top delusions of grandeur to borrow from Han Solo.
You removed my argument from its original context of finance and real resource use, which made it untrue. Leave them be and it’s still true.
And even if what you say in your last point about purchases is true that’s not a reason to stick with the pattern of also selling paperback books. Two manufacturing pipelines to accommodate both formats also uses up resources.
Go ahead and obsess over money I’ll focus on the physical resources use which actually exists whereas money is a social illusion.
So I guess I’m gonna do what you did and just ignore your argument altogether.
Price discrimination is when two people visit a site to buy a book, the algorithm computes an estimate of what they are barely willing to pay, and then shows the two of them different prices for the exact same book based on who they are.
America
Capitalists
Good luck ever getting back onto the apps, especially if you've ever used facial verification to validate that you're you. Every future attempt to sign up again will be immediately blocked. No way to appeal. Dystopian.
Here is what a man seeking woman profile needs:
1. Good Pictures. Honest. Good lighting. Appropriate grooming and attire (whatever than means in your social context). Smile in a carefree way in most of the pictures.
2. Attractive man in the pictures.
3. No icks.
Yes the pictures are more important than being attractive.
As a matter of storytelling, the theme is "aspirational", but the particular aspiration is up to you.
It’s just not worth it in my view. I gave up. Being a singleton is going to become the new normal in the next 25 years, many Western countries are going the way of Japan and South Korea.
The good news for George is he’s a high profile, decent looking, wealthy dude. He’ll be fine.
What GP is suggesting is simply making an effort to showcase your features. The most attractive person on Earth could be rejected if their pictures are of poor quality. That's just common sense. Being genuinely attractive by modern societal standards is important, but the first step is making an effort.
Dating apps can be a good way of finding a partner. After all, they're just the modern equivalent of making the initial connection. Their problem is the same as with any SaaS: companies are incentivized to keep users on the platform for as long as possible, which they do by engaging in shady tactics like artificially controlling the visibility of user profiles, while squeezing out as much profit out of users as they can. This is bad news for men, who are overwhelmingly the ones using these services and are willing to accept the downright predatory tactics of these companies.
But in theory, there's nothing wrong with the concept of dating apps. They're just corrupted by the usual user hostile incentives. A dating service with the right incentives could appear tomorrow to disrupt this rotten industry.
I'm in my 20s and the way a significant portion of relationships start in this generation is via dating apps. If you aren't using dating apps, and don't have social circles, there's just no social fabric to build from. Believe me, I've tried activities, they don't really work. It's extremely difficult to build enough rapport with someone in the space of 1-2 hours that they'll care enough to ever meet up again.
So change careers, change city, change country, change whatever is needed so that you can have a decent life.
I actually go out a lot, and moved across the world to Tokyo four months ago. The problem is not meeting people. I can make surface level connections every day of the week. The problem is finding people who want to stick around.
Permanent mental damage is rather from years spent in loneliness, or lovelessness, or poverty, or any other kind of unsustainable personal situation.
You don't have to "pretend" to do anything, or try to get rid of what others consider "icky", but generally I think most people aim to at least be neutral (if not pleasant) in the eyes of others, either by social pressure or because life just gets easier and less frustrating then.
I'd probably wager that the whole pretending thing you think is required, actually backfires as people eventually learn who you are, so better to just be yourself upfront.
That’s not what was meant and you know it.
Ten years into a relationship, I sometimes leave my dinner dishes in the sink and wash them in the morning. Had I done that early on in my relationship—or had those dishes in a photo on a dating site—I’d sabotage my chances with a lot of people.
The same is true for interests. Maybe you really like guns: marksmanship, customizing them, restoring them, and so on. If you have guns front and center in your dating app pics you are going to alienate a lot of people. Plenty of those same people would enjoy being introduced to that hobby once you are in a relationship! But guns being a photographed part of your dating-site-identity is not going to help your chances. The people who swipe left are avoiding gun nuts, misogynists, etc. Putting guns in your picture only sabotages yourself.
That’s not “I have to totally be someone I’m not and remove every single thing someone might find objectionable”. That’s basic social awareness and understanding that there’s a time and a place for presenting different parts of yourself.
I believe the zoomer interpretation of "icks" refers to childish/petty reasons to give up on perusing someone, not something like lack of cleanliness.
Also, there's all kinds of maxing stuff, and there's basic advise, like wash your face and get a haircut before you get your picture taken.
It starts with picking the “right” pictures, then saying the “right” things then choosing the “right” place and then confirming at the “right” time. Eventually you are just going down a checklist rather than being your authentic self. If you find yourself minmaxing in this way, take a break.
Someone catch your eye at a party? You'll probably take a moment to choose what you want to say to them there too
What I’ve found is that the first couple of interactions (up until the second date) can be completely formulaic - and what can look like outward success is just a treadmill.
If you get too good at optimizing the dating apps funnel you can find yourself on a regular rotation of dates without actually connecting with anyone.
Tinder, Hinge and others are directly responsible for tens of thousands of cases of depression and in building up a perfect breeding ground for misogyny and misandry. Everyone involved in their self-worth-destroying app has blood on their hands.
This isn't theoretical, it's happening right now. The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people, the shift from public feeds to private DMs, and the "Do Not Disturb" generation are all symptoms of the same thing. People are feeling the manipulation and are choosing to opt out, one notification at a time.
That disengagement metric is valuable, I'm not gonna give it away for free anymore. I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what works.
> The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people
That's a market now. It doesn't mean shit. It's a "lifestyle".
> People are feeling the manipulation
They don't. Even manipulation awareness is a market now. I'm sure there are YouTubers who thrive on it.
---
How far can you game a profiling algorithm? Can you make it think something about you that you're not? How much can one break it?
Those are the interesting questions.
Of course the machine will never stop trying. But with results decreasing gradually with time, the human will get discouraged and will turn it off. It happens at places, btw.
Any predictable pattern, including when you disengage, is just another feature for the pricing model. If the model learns you reliably leave after 3 hours, it will simply front-load the surge pricing into that initial window.
Analysis: This user loses disengages during 75% of the
time and belongs to a group of 5% who do the same. The
expected revenue for this group over a longer period
and with multiple users is 24% lower than for the
average user.
Action: Since 80% of theirs engagements last for at
least 12 hours, ads should be shown and prices
increased only within the first three hours.
If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say.
Anecdotally, when I bought my car recently, they forgot to even offer me the extended warranty they'd planned to push. I find it funny to think it was so minor, even they forgot to care.
I paid for an extended warranty on the first car I ever bought. Turned out it didn't cover any of the things the salesperson cited as good reasons to pay for it, and to maintain the warranty, I'd have to pay the dealer for all maintenance - even oil changes.
That car never needed any repairs, but seeing the list of exclusions convinced me to never pay for an extended warranty again.
If this were true, it would result in a loss for the issuer of the warranty.
Maybe it's not about the money. Maybe I see it challenging profiling algorithms as entertainment.
Sure it does. The salesman may have information you were not aware of. They could even tell you something which satisfies your needs better and is cheaper. Not all salesman are out to screw you, some really care about a happy customer.
I’m reminded of an old Hypercritical episode. If you ever heard John Siracusa, you know he does his research and knows what he wants. Yet when it came time buy a TV, which he had intensively researched, the salesman mentioned plasma and how the tech had improved and it threw a wrench in Siracusa’s whole decision.
That's what we're seeing with Youtube for instance: your choice is to pay Youtube's price for Premium (litteraly paying to not get bullied), sit through all the ads in the world, or get three strikes after playing the ad-blocking cat and mouse game for long enough.
Of course you're still free to go somewhere else, in a world where even public guides and presentations will often be pushed on youtube only, to alleviate for the bandwidth costs on standard web services.
My favourite approach to this is to write an email to all dealerships within the radius I’m willing to go, explaining what I want, then “publicly” make them bid for my business in a thread with their peers. I’ve had it work several times now.
I've never encountered this. What is it?
Depending on when you look at it, it might be worked around or fully enforced again, it comes and go, but at least Youtube doesn't seem willing to give up that stance entirely.
I think pretty far. I expect the future involves nonsense layer full of AI slop being read and written by AI's. Mapping it onto the actual humans will be difficult unless you have a preexisting trust relationship with those humans such that they can decrypt the slop into your actual communications.
If I were an algorithm-profiling company I would try to anchor my profilings in the real world (what kinds of people I talk to, about what, what kinds of places I visit, what are the opinions of others on me, etc). LLM garbage would be just to draw voluntary participation in potential surveys.
It takes a particularly paranoid and stubborn individual to make the necessary efforts to consider what kinds of profiling could be done with such anchored data, and even more effort to probe it enough to acquire some knowledge on how it works.
An antelope's greatest desire is to be in the herd, because while it may contain a lion, the world outside contains a thousand wolves.
We've built a herd—society—that is incredibly effective at holding those wolves at bay: famine, plague, and chaos. We willingly participate because it provides "shields" our ancestors could only dream of. The problem isn't the herd itself; it's the lion that we allow to stalk within it.
What I am suggesting isn't to abandon this safety and comfort brought by modern capitalism. It's to improve the herd—to enjoy its protections while finding ways to tame, cage, or evade the lion of exploitation. What we're discussing here aren't futile attempts to escape, but vital tactics for building a better, safer herd for everyone.
Sure capitalism offered us the herd. But too big companies/people are just a net negative.
I hope someone today will have the courage to dismantle those big actors. Except, at least in the US, they now are protected by fascism.
First, the massive asymmetry of power involved in making people choose opting in (again and again, to greater and greater degrees).
Second, the fact that unrelated penalties—severe ones—are attached to choosing to opt out, by people and systems who want to discourage this behavior. It’s not like saying “choosing to not eat means you might be hungry”. That’s an intrinsic consequence; it has to happen. It’s not even like “choosing not to eat again and again means you might stunt your growth.” That’s intrinsic too, whether or not it’s intuitive.
No, the penalties we’ve attached to opting out are more like “choosing not to eat means you might go hungry, and also the people with hammers that specifically go after people that don’t eat will break your fingers.”
It's worth adding that "disengagement" does not mean "not giving a f*ck", and I worry that it isn't a good human response either.
So what's the difference between "not giving a f*ck" and "disengagement"? I think where the former works on the individual level, the latter is supposed to work on the collective level. I'm no scholar on any social sciences, mind you, but I worry that disengagement can only lead to positive change in conjunction with the Broken windows theory[0]. Here's the bummer: A lot of us are already in said stage of disengagement.
We somehow are in an atmosphere that makes it unpleasant for everyone and let the environment decay together, but the provoked collective change is just not happening. The dumbphone and digital detoxes are outliers. What happens instead is that the threshold for what's acceptable is systematically being lowered, and my biggest gripe is that it's done in the name of equality and inclusion while the imbalance between demographics is just growing. Tell me why?
There was a movement after Occupy Wall street and the Arabic Spring where it got fashionable to Not Giving a F*ck[1]. It contrasted a movement of self-optimization, growth-hacking, and some data-driven lifestyle usually reserved for corporate marketing. Morphemes such as hyper/super/über got resurrected from a nostalgic sentiment of the economic boom in the 80/90s, the neoliberal free-market Accelerationism and Bitcoin certainly fit in there. While "not giving a f*ck" was a critique of the established attention-grabbing system to promote the individuality of citizens, it also got misinterpreted by political representatives and corporate operators that started to put more focus on their own career than the responsibility of their current role. They all "didn't give a f*ck" anymore in a world that got more and more connected, year after year.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subtle_Art_of_Not_Giving_a...
watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY linkhead removed for language and content, but you know what to do (and probably who it is)
boosts, uber fees, late fees, small order fees, busy hour fees...it's like this is what people spend their time thinking up
when i see people stuck in traffic on their morning commute, i think thats a net positive for humanity in some small way
Their profits
Perhaps this person lived in a fantastic futuristic city before. But for a lot people, getting a cab was not a good experience. Uber singlehanded changed that.
And dating apps are not middlemen for dating. They're middlemen for dating outside your social circle, which is always a mess. Whatever subscription you pay to the app per month is probably cheaper than a single drink at a bar anyway.
I've been in taxi just about three times in my life and zero in Uber. Usually just take bus/tram/train, walk or bike. Car for utility in the country. I think I do not live in fantastic futuristic city (it is in eastern Europe) but at least it is not dystopia.
I'm from GenX. It can be done. We used to do it. Just stop playing their game. The only winning move is not to play.
Dr Death is also a very apt take on modern technology
Uber, Booking.com, AirBnB, ClassPass, Steam, DoorDash - these winner take all middle-men rent seeking tech behemoths are bad for society and are hostile to consumers and the businesses that rely on them.
Let's decentralise this shit.
Probably as long as gaben is alive, it will be so. But don't expect it to last. There's nothing special about Steam the platform.
You definitely don't own Steam games for real, and they don't ban randomly but for example, if you're caught cheating in a game, or talking about illegal things with your friends, you will find out how much you don't own those games.
How so? If Steam goes away, then so does your game. That's not ownership.
Just because they have carefully and honestly fostered a lot of trust in their game rental service, doesn't make it not a game rental service.
AI is propping up the Web but I'm not convinced it can do that indefinitely.
The dream of Internet enabled disintermediation is not dead. We'll eventually switch protocols, change the incentive structures and build a social internet for ourselves - at least those of us who've not had our souls eaten by Moloch already. It's not inevitable but it is possible and it is what a lot of us actually want.
You can literally go outside and talk to people. There's no moat around dating apps. Human beings continue to exist in meatspace. I am yet to see a dating app contract that prevents you from being casually approached by strangers. Heck matchmakers still exist.
You can't . If you talk to modern city people the way you casually said 'hi' to strangers in the 90s , at best you 'll end up in a tiktok branded as a creepy person
We once had a 2 hour conversation about how she just could not find a mexican restaurant in town and would do /anything/ to eat at one. So I found one (willed it into existence) and then she simply wasn't interested.
Thing was, I dont really care about the rejection so much as, it was super easy for me to have relatively deep and interesting conversation with a total stranger. This wasn't even the first one, previous conversations about "Why are cities taking up valuable agricultural land" and "The best gifts to buy a woman are power tools" went down much the same way.
If people are convinced that the conversation to be rejected in cant even take place then I guess I understand concerns about the birthrate a little more.
I've done this a few times over the last few days alone (in Seattle no less, a city infamous for being antisocial - though I'm willing to accept some were tourists for the 4th).
IME, people are actually starved for human interaction.
Is the low chance of bad consequences the only factor keeping you from talking to strangers? There’s a low chance of bad consequences when you cross a busy street, too.
Is fear of rejection by an individual or group a factor, too? There’s a much higher chance of that happening, but it’s far from life ruining.
Are you worried that you have social behaviors that make it more likely you are considered creepy in social interactions? If so, are there ways you can reduce those behaviors?
Are there other areas where acute awareness of severe potential negative consequences makes you avoid activities that lots of other people in your cohort might enjoy?
Source: it me. If you’re in a similar situation, know that it can get a lot better. Just takes time and work, like everything.
When it comes to social context, you might miss some kind of sign and the worst cases there are pretty terrifying, might even get arrested in UK, which will lead to losing a job, failing any background checks, might even become homeless — and nobody sane will have any empathy for your mistake.
So I really do not get why people are against dating apps, when those are the best thing ever to avoid catastrophic consequences for initial approach.
As someone who has similar anxieties, I was pleasantly surprised in two ways when getting professional help:
Surprise one: the advice for confronting anxiety--specifically social anxiety around forming connections--was actionable and specific rather than woo-woo and "just be present/mindful/listen to your thoughts and they go away"-flavored.
Surprise two: therapists identified specific areas where I had broken or atrophied social skills and helped to build them. Just like crossing a street, most unprompted social interactions:
a) Have an expected script which, if followed, reduces the risk of severe negative consequences to near zero. If you didn't know the script you mentioned ("Wait until all traffic has stopped..."), then crossing a street would be dangerous indeed.
b) Have a higher likelihood of minor, non-lasting negative consequences: getting honked at by oblivious drivers, playing do-I-go-left-or-right chicken with oncoming pedestrians, bumping into people, and so on.
c) Have a lot of rules that are contextual (local traffic laws :: mores about what is acceptable in a park vs. in a pub). Some of those rules can be researched, but a lot of them are unspoken/gained through practice--and practice with others is most effective.
d) Are not practiced perfectly by most people. Those apprehensions you have? Those awkwardnesses and anxieties and hyper-awareness of the consequences of failure? Those are shared by tons of people! Even women in the dating scene--hell, especially women in the dating scene--are screwing up, recovering, bailing out, gathering themselves, and trying again constantly.
If you are worried about "missing some kind of sign and ... losing a job", that sounds a lot like either anxiety (therapy surprise one helps) or some missing/mis-functioning specific skills (therapy surprise two, and I cannot underline this enough, really helps here).
(Caveat: be aware that psych help, just like friends, car mechanics, or clothing stores, is variable in quality and highly preference-based; multiple selection passes may be needed before you find someone that you vibe well with).
I also really recommend Devon Price's writing on the subject. He has a few focuses that may be less relevant here (experiencing autism, being queer/trans), but also writes extensively on social/romantic interaction as a practiced, scripted phenomenon; I have found those essays to really help contextualize some of this stuff: https://devonprice.medium.com/
> I really do not get why people are against dating apps, when those are the best thing ever to avoid catastrophic consequences for initial approach.
I'm not against dating apps; I'm responding to the "unprompted social outreach is risky/a bad cost-benefit" claim.
In fact, you can get a lot more out of dating apps if you have practiced the skills required to be comfortable with ("comfortable with" is not the same as "good at") apropos in-person connection forming!
Also:
> nobody sane will blast you on social media
I agree. Raging about someone's social gaffe on social media is not sane/healthy behavior. Since jackasses raging online is nearly never as life-ruining as you might fear, framing it as "not sane and therefore not worth losing sleep over" is a good approach!
...and people on social media routinely rage about pedestrians, cyclists, slow drivers, etc. With pictures, license plates, death threats--the works. With dating, just like with crossing the street, it is not worth worrying about: be kind/do no harm, learn (potentially with help) the skills needed to progress, be willing to fail a lot while learning, and it will turn out well. I promise.
EDIT: Also, one last thing:
Avoid parts of the internet that use language like "daring to approach while ugly" and "on initial approach" when talking about dating. I've been there. I get how good it can feel to be validated by people with similar experiences, who explain that it isn't your fault/that thinking about dating as adversarial game theory is healthy. But those communities are toxic, self-hatred-reinforcing hostility factories. Seriously, go for a walk/watch TV/read a book instead.
If those are terms you came to use organically, consider avoiding them to avoid being associated with those places.
Second, if you talk to a stranger in line at the coffee shop nobody is going to put you on the local creeper list, maybe just don’t comment on how smooth their skin is.
It's an common thing to see someone complaining about a "creep" (quotes as in, I'm quoting them) because someone tried to hit up on them and so on.
In today world, what you're speaking is at best dangerous.
That was actually unwelcome in the 90ties too in most settings.
I agree with the premise that it is really difficult and sucks to "just go out and talk to people". Depends on where you live I guess though. I think thinking you'll end up on a TikTok because you talk to a person in a queue is just a far off excuse.
It is true, in some places, that talking to strangers are generally frowned upon without having a good reason to do so.
The trick is to either only open up the conversation when you have something relevant to say (or funny, seems to work sometimes too), or move to city/country where it's socially accepted.
As someone who used to live in a country where talking with strangers is basically implicitly forbidden and straight up weird, but then moved to a country where it's completely normal, the amount of interesting conversations easily skyrocketed as soon as I landed in my new home country.
Only in small towns with high trust societies, sadly.
The CTO, Adil Ajmal, says “we help people worldwide go deeper on their favorite games, entertainment, and culture.” How can I possibly do that with the absurd number of ads on the page?
The money incentive in software right now is to make it extremely shitty. We need ways to incentivize people, and especially executives, to make friendly decisions for their users.
Right now across the industry, many people are getting promoted and hired for decisions that are extremely hostile to their customers and visitors. Whether it be for replacing support with an unhelpful, dumb AI bot, or marginally growing revenue by shoveling ads down your unwilling throat, we are not incentivizing products that are good and friendly to humans.
Seriously, fuck all the investors who are incentivizing this BS.
Of course, we need drastic changes to the economic system (the counterproductive incentives exist everywhere), but you have a choice in the matter. It’s possible to build a good product and make good money and make some revenue growth without being absolutely insane about it. Companies are betting that customers won’t catch on. Facebook might be a good example. It’s turned into such a shithole that no one in a certain age range wants to deal with it anymore, outside of very specific niches. The primary feed & product has failed.
It's like, saying social media is not real. Well, maybe it is. But right now where I live they shaped the politics of our country.
This is a good point. Some VCs were major proponents of this (and tons of other business people I'm sure), but this is of course just a guaranteed inflow into the largest companies and the companies that think they will be large some day. Yet another way to reallocate public cash to private companies.
Another similar example is UBI -- its proof of an economy that is not dynamic. It's a tacit approval and recognition of the fact that "no, you probably won't be able to find a job with dignity that can support you and your family, so the government will pay to make you comfortable while you exist".
ETFs need to rebalance, increase, decrease shares of a given stock and even evict them. Buying shares on SPY exposes you to the current companies but also any companies that will join.
If a company gets evicted, then there is massive drop in their stock pricing as most movement is mechanistic and done by ETFs.
Well massive is relative. For example last week we saw quite the drop in pltr after it was removed from russel2000.
Most market volume according to citi is done by ETFs, approximately 80%.
When said ETFs rebalance at start and end of any particular day, we end up with big movements, much wider than the sideways chop we observe during the day when movement is mostly performed MMs that deal with hedging or dropping options value.
So I don’t think it’s the presence to S&P per se, but presence in big ETFs.
Also that paper is from 2012. Market’s a lot different these days.
To be clear, I am not saying that getting in there implies stock go brr. I am saying that in the context of the whole comment chain, buying spy exposes one to all companies that will enter or be evicted from the ETF, which then theoretically funds the companies which then produce value, which returns back as dividends or growth of stock.
If we look deeper though, buying into ETFs likely means the shares that are exchanged are bought and sold by and to MMs, so a whole lot of value is lost to them.
Technical analysis might as well be astrology. It treats tickers as isolated when in reality ETFs and growth of any individual stock in an ETF affects the flow in and out of other ETFs. When ETFs purchase stock due to an increase in value, they seek most liquid constituents first, and eventually rebalance. All these create feedback loops. The flow across the ETFs drives 80% of volume.
People would have higher performance if they learned about any particular sector, its movement and long term trends.
Retail has a lot of flexibility but people focus on trading over days instead of understanding trends and events of tomorrow, next year and the next decade.
Retail options “traders” barely understand the mechanics of at all, let alone the disadvantage they are in. They buy overpriced options with absurd premium that tanks during the chop induced by MMs. They don’t understand how MMs move/manipulate(not in the illegal sense)/shape the market to avoid losing money — they wouldn’t be in this position if they lost money. They just copy trades from traders on discord and hope to make some money.
ETFs are a great way to make money in terms of risk exactly of their rebalancing mechanics.
Everyone doesn’t have to beat the market, just beating inflation and leaving it in the bank is an improvement for the average person. Yes it won’t make people rich tomorrow, but they will be in a better situation next year or the one after than today.
I don't think there are many proponents of that type of ubi.
The way, at least I, see ubi is absolute subsistence - with a right to earn above that without affecting your subsistence.
IMHO something along UBI is needed for a democratized market economy - and I think the Scandinavian countries are the support for this claim.
UBI is more like the grain dole which Roman Emperors used to temper mass unrest and "prove" their benevolence.
It seems to be in vogue among tech moguls who cant distinguish between abject dependence on the Chinese industrial system/systematic underinvestment in infrastructure and all jobs being automated thanks to their glorious genius.
The main difference from then, however, is that it is difficult to give each man a showel to dig and each woman a kid to care for this time.
People need qualifications to operate heavy machinery, know regulations, etc. - we are not in 1934 anymore.
As such we also don't need 30% og the population in the farming sector.
What changed is not the newfound impossibility of doing that, just the reluctance of employers to pay for it and the willingness of the government to indulge their insatiable demand for cheap, pretrained labor.
I am not as convinced as you. When training is 7 year degree to achieve some specialization it simply is not for everyone.
Also, ubi is not anti work - it is merely the acknowledgement that not everyone have salary worthy things to do.
The alternative it havy financialization as in you receive a tip when you bring down you neighbors garbage.
Another good sign of a difficult policy to implement successfully/an idea that isn't ready for primetime. If everyone has different ideas of what the thing is, it's very hard to make good decisions, and easy for the "wrong" UBI to sneak in.
Other commenters have already made this point, but there are other ways to guarantee "subsistence". I think the hard to answer question is why are the targeted methods currently available not good enough? If we want to ensure people have food, then food subsidies/support make sense.
Also, if unemployment is the problem, fix that. If unemployment isn't the problem and people who are working aren't getting subsistence wages, fix that.
I think part of the problem is that no one wants to stick up and define what we think every human deserves and what we want society to provide. Does every human deserve housing? Access to green space? etc. Trying to clearly define this will lead to really interesting discussions that lay bare the disagreements core to society.
I think my early point still stands, UBI is not needed (we're making do without it now), and if it ever is needed, it's a sign of a lack of dynamism in the economy/ineffective wealth distribution mechanisms (basically, taxation).
It will never be ready for primetime because the system under which we live requires an underclass of people that are coerced into working jobs that no one really wants to do for abysmally low wages. Because the only other option left for them is homelessness and starvation.
It is an inherently cruel system, but this cruelty is what keep things afloat. Any system that guarantees the basic subsistence of all would not do.
> I think my early point still stands, UBI is not needed (we're making do without it now)
It's important to qualify that "we" as "we that make six figures working in white collar jobs". Yes, "we" are making do without UBI just fine. This "we" does not include the vast majority of people.
Hopefully plummeting birth rates will throw a wrench to this system by making labor a lot more expensive.
We're talking about how it might be about to not require the this underclass, and how we might need a UBI to fix that right? Can it be both of these things at once?
Also as a side note, I think that it's kind of arrogant to think we can create a society where no one does work they don't like, for wages that are always perfect. Nature is not that way, and creating those condition is basically asking for utopia. There is probably always a percentage of undesirable outcomes that every society must endure (and undesirable outcomes are a moving target).
I get your stance on the cruelty of the current system, but I want to note that in the span of human time we've had MUCH crueler systems in place. For example in the US despite the perceived high cruelty of the system, soup kitchens exist, governmental help exists -- there are a lot of things that exist that wouldn't exist in a maximally cruel society/one you describe. There are places on the planet we live on now where these safety nets don't exist.
The problem is the relative position of those with the most resources in society to those with the least. That, is fixable.
> It's important to qualify that "we" as "we that make six figures working in white collar jobs". Yes, "we" are making do without UBI just fine. This "we" does not include the vast majority of people.
I mean that we in the sense that no known society has collapsed because of a lack of UBI (would love to be corrected here). UBI is clearly, objectively not a need.
There are other ways to create a society that works for those with and without, what is probably most needed is clarity on those steps/what we want to guarantee people who live in the given society.
I would disagree that the "majority" of people in (for example) the US are against the current situation. The poverty rate (likely a reasonable proxy for an economic system that really isn't working) is not above 50%. People may
It's hard to quantify -- one of the things about sentiment polling is that people often just don't have a good grasp on how well or how badly they're doing. See earlier this year, when sentiment polling basically was incredibly negative, yet the "economy" as a whole is still mostly chugging along and unemployment has not spiked dramatically across all industries. Tech is in dire straits but "regular" jobs like HVAC, Plumbing, etc are doing fantastic AFAIK.
> Hopefully plummeting birth rates will throw a wrench to this system by making labor a lot more expensive.
Yes, except that is happening at the same time that we've turned what could be a huge corner on automation of both white collar and maybe eventually blue collar work.
I think the price of labor needs to go up, but this is only part of the equation. The more direct answer is simpler -- we need higher taxes on businesses or automation or both.
If you want to profit from US citizens (US company or not!), enjoy infrastructure and stability provided by the US, then the price for that can rise. Charge businesses for the jobs they don't create.
The classic refrain to the increased tax is that businesses will leave. I think that's absolute bullshit -- the US is where people want to be for many reasons, and it is incredibly unlikely that companies will unseat themselves to go run their headquarters out of malta or whatever. Also, incredibly unlikely that all the people who work at those companies will go redomicile. Also, INCREDIBLY unlikely that those companies will give up on the incredibly profitable American consumer they're targeting. What we lack is politicians who can/want to reign in corporate power.
I would agree if there were no billionaires in a country where people also cannot afford things such as housing, food, healthcare and basic education. With economic inequality this high, I don't think we are trying hard enough to create a more egalitarian society.
> I get your stance on the cruelty of the current system, but I want to note that in the span of human time we've had MUCH crueler systems in place.
That scaphism is more cruel than stoning as means of execution, it does not make stoning more humane.
I think you get my analogy.
> I mean that we in the sense that no known society has collapsed because of a lack of UBI (would love to be corrected here). UBI is clearly, objectively not a need
No society collapsed directly because of use of slave labor. Many actually thrived in such a system.
That should not be an argument in favor of slavery.
Just because the lack of UBI does not cause society to collapse ot does not mean that a society as inequal as ours cannot be improved.
> Yes, except that is happening at the same time that we've turned what could be a huge corner on automation of both white collar and maybe eventually blue collar work.
I don't think we turned this corner. But if we did, then perhaps it's fine we head towards extinction. With no humans there will be no inequality eh?
> we need higher taxes on businesses or automation or both.
Agreed.
> The classic refrain to the increased tax is that businesses will leave. I think that's absolute bullshit
I always say the same. If businesses leave, but the demand for goods and services in that society still exists, other businesses will occupy that space. Either existing businesses will seize that opportunity or new businesses will spawn.
> What we lack is politicians who can/want to reign in corporate power.
In no small part because our current system favors capital above all else, and excessive capital concentration allows its owners to distort institutions to their will. Excessive economic inequality is a bitch.
Note that I said excessive. I am not against some economic inequality. I think it's alright for a surgeon to have a nicer house and a better car than, say, a store clerk.
I don't think it's alright for one to have a mutiple yachts and mansions on ski resorts, while the other fights starvation.
Not that I think surgeons have multiple yachts or mansions on ski resorts. But I think you get my point.
Agreed -- the ratio is a problem. The problem is not that billionaires exist, because that is a slippery slope IMO (you could say the same thing about millionaires, or people who make money WITHOUT working at all -- i.e. wealth). The problem is the ratio. We need to decide what disparity is acceptable for our society, and then enforce that.
Not full on regime change to whatever new government might be better than the current. Just a clear stating of what our values are as a nation, and some numbers.
> That scaphism is more cruel than stoning as means of execution, it does not make stoning more humane. > > I think you get my analogy.
True, but if I had to pick a way to be executed, I don't think it's a hard choice. The analogy has to imply that you have to pick a poison -- there's no utopia.
> No society collapsed directly because of use of slave labor. Many actually thrived in such a system. > > That should not be an argument in favor of slavery. > > Just because the lack of UBI does not cause society to collapse ot does not mean that a society as inequal as ours cannot be improved.
UBI was proposed as a "need". It is not a need -- it is a want, or seen as a moral imperative.
Of course society can be improved, it's a question of how, and UBI is not a convincing how, that's my problem.
I'm not really sure the comparison to slavery here is relevant. I did not imply that the lack of UBI is desirable, just that UBI is not present and not a necessity for any government that exists.
> I don't think we turned this corner. But if we did, then perhaps it's fine we head towards extinction. With no humans there will be no inequality eh?
I think we did -- even if AI stopped where it is right now we already have created a pretty insane new tool. Even if it's only use was surfacing knowledge 5x/10x/100x??? faster than current search engines can, in a way that is more natural to humans. The knock-on effects are profound and likely going to be immeasurable.
Almost completely separate from that, robotics is really progressing. We have self-driving cars, just casually running around right now. We've turned some pretty big corners.
And IMO it's not an ideal outcome to head towards extinction, but it's a possible one. It's arrogant to think that humanity will live on forever, no matter how much we want that to be true.
Very against people who explicitly want extinction though -- pretty anti-human thing to say, and I can't think of something more worthy of suspicion. We worked pretty hard to survive this far.
> I always say the same. If businesses leave, but the demand for goods and services in that society still exists, other businesses will occupy that space. Either existing businesses will seize that opportunity or new businesses will spawn.
Yup, that's an even more compelling argument. Imagine all those companies vacating the space. The absolute explosion of entrepreneurship and new innovation would be transformative, if the interim can be managed through and the right incentives put in place.
> In no small part because our current system favors capital above all else, and excessive capital concentration allows its owners to distort institutions to their will. Excessive economic inequality is a bitch.
I'd agree, except I'd replace "capital" with "power". No political/social system seems to be immune to excessive power accumulation, but IMO current representative and direct democracies are the closest we've ever gotten.
Real politik is a bitch.
> Note that I said excessive. I am not against some economic inequality. I think it's alright for a surgeon to have a nicer house and a better car than, say, a store clerk. > > I don't think it's alright for one to have a mutiple yachts and mansions on ski resorts, while the other fights starvation.
Yup, while I like leaving it up to a market to decide that, I do think markets need to be controlled/have guard rails.
Agree though, the ratio is the problem.
I often think there's a really simple solution that sounds amazing -- just cap the discrepancy between total comp of the lowest employee at a company and the highest one (including the board). Super simple solution that broadcasts values, and is relatively easy to understand.
People might argue that the "most productive" people would lose motivation, but IMO it wouldn't do a thing -- they'd keep their same motivation because the drive (put overly simply, greed) will always be there.
This is not a reasonable bar for a policy being "ready for primetime". Some version of this is true for practically all policy proposals. The details will always matter, it will always be possible to get details wrong in critical ways, and people will (likely) always disagree on what those are.
It's very funny that you snub UBI in favor of "wealth distribution mechanisms". What do you think UBI is?
Obviously there are essentials that can effectively be at any price and you have to pay them if you can afford them, but everything else is fair game.
Are you seriously proposing that we need people who are paid below subsistence?
Or was this more an argument for ubi?
Note, I have no position on whether or not it would work in this way, but that is my understanding of the position of the those in favor of it.
On the contrary, we would likely see non positional goods become cheaper as the market is alive and companies can continue to produce at scale.
I have not heard a convincing argument the other way, would really appreciate a link to one if you find one.
Naturally, implementing UBI would require the entire financial sector to adjust. We would likely need to significantly raise interest rates (Which, IMHO would be great) and have a period to manage inflation.
But beside the initial recalibration phase, I have not seen any convincing arguments for why prices on non-positional goods would increase. Even with the increase interest rates, we would likely see that prices on positional goods / assets would stabilize as dead-cheap capital is not available.
Spending power with no real alternatives (i.e. in monopoly/oligopoly conditions) isn't actually very useful IMO. It's mostly just more guaranteed money for the current monopoly/oligopoly -- you're just guaranteeing revenue streams.
In a pre-UBI world, you can at least assume that companies can't completely shaft employees because then no one can buy anything. If the government steps in to make sure people can still buy stuff, that has almost the opposite effect.
I think walmart & it's treatment of employees (with employees reportedly needing to ALSO depend on food stamps) as a perfect example of the system kind of working against itself. The fix for that problem is within our reach right now, but it's just unpopular for the usual reasons with the people with the ability to make the fix.
> Naturally, implementing UBI would require the entire financial sector to adjust. We would likely need to significantly raise interest rates (Which, IMHO would be great) and have a period to manage inflation. > > But beside the initial recalibration phase, I have not seen any convincing arguments for why prices on non-positional goods would increase. Even with the increase interest rates, we would likely see that prices on positional goods / assets would stabilize as dead-cheap capital is not available.
OK, so then how about we do this without the UBI bit and just raise interest rates? I'm not seeing where UBI actually has a material benefit here, and there are other real problems with raising interest rates, because losing access to cheap credit also hurts those at the bottom of the economy (arguably even more) -- the solution there is political, likely (i.e. lower income borrowers could somehow be advantaged, but then we have shades of 2008 all over again if excessive greed/moral hazard sets in).
In my first comment I referred the Scandinavian countries. Read up on the flexicurity model of Denmark.
> OK, so then how about we do this without the UBI bit and just raise interest rates?
You cannot within the confines of the responsibility of the monetary systems (Eg. The FED). What you are seeing now is that the FED "prints" money that accumulate at the top because the fiscal powers (Eg. the government) are p*sies who do not dare to redistribute - this is called the velocity of money. And there is a higher velocity of money when they are in the hands of the people than in the pockets of the rich.
Regardless, proposing UBI on American forums is generally like setting fire to a wasp nest. Americans have been conditioned to support the oligarchy in quite some decades now.
Denmark does not have UBI. They "just" have a good welfare system, good income redistribution policies, and strong labor policy.
They do not make the case for UBI, they make the opposite case -- that the problems of present can be solved without UBI.
> You cannot within the confines of the responsibility of the monetary systems (Eg. The FED). What you are seeing now is that the FED "prints" money that accumulate at the top because the fiscal powers (Eg. the government) are psies who do not dare to redistribute - this is called the velocity of money. And there is a higher velocity of money when they are in the hands of the people than in the pockets of the rich.
You can, and they have. In fact, much of the US wants the FED to lower rates right now, but they have not.
I agree with you that people lack the wherewithal to redistribute more effectively, or at least as a stated goal.
Trying to make sure I'm hitting the points you're noting here but the FED is not "printing" tons of money right now, they have tightened monetary policy, especially relative to the last ~6 years.
It's unclear if the use of "velocity of money" is right here -- I think you're referring to propensity to spend, which would increase velocity of money. Yes, poor people spend more of their income than rich people, and that is stimulative to the economy, and so arguably policies should be crafted that encourage productive work for pay rather than rent seeking or pure accumulation of capital. I'm not sure if that's your point, but that's what I take away from it.
> Regardless, proposing UBI on American forums is generally like setting fire to a wasp nest. Americans have been conditioned to support the oligarchy in quite some decades now.
Welp, that's kind of an unproductive way to end, but sure. Conditioned or not (I'm American), I'm still looking for a good argument for UBI and haven't found one.
Good arguments for better redistribution are easy to make, good argument for higher taxes are good to make, good arguments for better social safety nets are easy to make -- but still can't really find one for UBI specifically above the other options.
There are a lot of good arguments: stability of monetary systems, democratized marketeconomy, equality, etc.
Just like with other things there is an infinite number of solutions for a given problem.
I stick to Occams razor.
Anarchism, socialism and communism can work perfect in a small village where everyone knows and trusts each other. But if you scale it up it does not work well because people can be corrupt. If you want to scale up to a Geo Global level that is trust-less the best way we know is to use Capitalism, but Capitalism ends up becoming more and more centralized.
Because Capitalism is inherently competitive there will always be winners and losers and these are not just businesses it's everyone in the system because capital is required to partake in the system. This competitiveness is also what leads to the lack of "morality".
What will it take?
I think you cannot have the benefits of capitalism without these side-effects.
Australia has social healthcare and massive mining companies. They coexist just fine. There really is a lot of wiggle room between fully embracing socialism and going full anarcho-capitalist, and maybe the tradeoffs of shifting towards the socialism side of things are worth considering.
Although, George seems to just want to flip the table out of the belief that real reform that would impact most people positively will never get passed in a democracy. It would require too much change.
In capitalism the capitalists end up being the government. They can choose who gets elected, the laws, they even start political parties.
So, there are governments that oversee capitalist countries that are willing to implement policies that hurt corporate interests with the goal of helping consumers. I'd say the problem is that often these policies made with good intentions, like GDPR, end up being poorly implemented and therefore harming consumers as well as hurting corporations... but that's an entirely different problem.
I sold my TV. Don’t wanna get creeped on thanks. A TV with a microphone might be convenient for some but for us that’s a hard pass.
I drive a 12 year old car, its fuel efficiency is horrendous and its entertainment system barely works. But it’s off the grid! When I turn it off it TURNS OFF. It doesn’t creep on me, it doesn’t sell my driving habits or report my location or upload microphone recordings at the dealer when it’s plugged in for a service.
I’m biding my time until enough others think like me that a company takes notice. One day someone will make a car that loudly says it doesn’t creep on you, one day someone will make a TV that doesn’t creep on you. One day companies will care again about the customer. One day people will be wise enough to recognize enshittification and will call companies on their shit, and the market will speak.
Not today, but soon. Eventually.
I know you think everyone is just trying to "get their bag" and that's the framework you see this in. But I already had more money at 21 than I've spent to date, and not cause I had a lot of money, but cause I don't buy much stuff. I'm sorry you feel played, but don't project that on me.
I don’t have an answer - is there scientific research on this?
Taxation? Loopholes will be found.
Lawfare against it? Lobbying will win.
I am amazed by capitalism, but at the same time it is a ruthless machine - and in democratic countries it is highly unlikely that a single political party can force the machine into a new direction. Perhaps that is a very nice feature, at the cost of also having to tolerate rent seeking, but it sure as hell sucks to see these downsides.
There is no perfect system. But we can choose the least detrimental.
It's not a coincidence that all this has happened as the US' national identity has gotten weaker and weaker. They're shifting from a cohesive nation to one of those "it's a single block on the map but it's actually 200 tribes who all hate each other" countries, and people's values and behaviour are shifting to match.
A second-order difficulty is that the tools with which we could go about dissecting, reimagining and reconstructing new society are also tainted by the powers that have delivered such malignant incentives and effects. This is not new and the fervour and insistence will continue to mount as the cracks in the dam grow in number and size.
There are, however, positive routes forward but in my experience they are somewhat alienating because the majority of people around you will think you are mad, weird or simply delusional. To be clear, I am probably all of those things (definitely the first two), but I prefer that to being a commodity powering a machine that is disinterested in anything that doesn't make it bigger. Two illustrations:
First, cognitivism. A sneaky, anthropocentric idea that simulataneously promotes and soothes a sense of dissonance. We don't, imo, create meaning primarily by modelling simulations of the world in our heads and forming goals based on them. Sure, this happens, but to give it primacy will lead to all sorts of unexpected and unpleasant effects. Alternative: constructivism.
Second, systems of perpetual (exponential) growth. Every day we buy into this by transacting within a system that has this implicit assumption built into it. We do not (an cannot) comprehend the scale and influence of this, because society is unpredictable and the effects are often emergent. Example: tragedy of the commons. This system didn't just show up by itself, nor was it the creation of a shadowy cabal - it perpetuates because we all use it, all the time. Alternative: imagine harder, build systems that mimic nature in its sigmoidal beauty, not only their growth phase.
An important milestone is, imo, proper systems thinking. This is no-ones fault and we are all complicit, but we all possess the ability for radical adaptation and, where it has been cultivated, the ability to rebuild all that which is broken.
I regularly think/read about, work towards and promote such angles, including ethical algorithm design, open-model behavioural analysis and value-aware technology. If anyone would like to join my micro-revolution, you are most welcome. I should warn you though, it doesn't pay well.
How about we try love, empathy, and compassion to solve our problems? Collaboration?
We don’t need advertising, which fundamentally is little different from lying and manipulation, at all, and society would be a lot better if we denormalized advertising.
If a company paying an influencer to talk about them, or placing an ad on a sports game, would be denormalized to the extent that it would lead to people deliberately not buying the product.
Instead one could subscribe to trusted reviewers who make their money off subscription revenues and therefore their interests are aligned with the customer rather than the ad supplier.
There are far more men than women on dating apps, women don't buy the boosts, etc.
So you are paying for exposure in that skewed market.
If it were a complete free-for-all then women would get thousands of messages a day and not use the apps at all.
Obviously it is not black and white like this. In turn- we all have the free choice to not engage. I don't engage with 99% of contemporary market economy tech, for these reasons. Heck I still carry cash just so I can leave cash tips, or make small cash payments at stores, bribe an official, etc.
In a way the real baddies was the trivial stuff we fixated on along the way.
Take a colony of ants and destroy their ability to use a pheromone trail. What happens?
Take a colony of ants and use the pheromone trail to generate "profit" for some of the ants at the cost of others.
Ants probably have little self consciousness. But add that awareness to them - essentially tell them they are being manipulated - and then perform the above two experiments again.
A good way to understand complex adaptive systems, like the ones we humans use, is to try to build some. See John Holland's "Hidden Order" for some hints on how to go about this.
It changes with production, if production shrinks it shrinks. This is exactly what you need with a retirement account, otherwise you end up with a situation like the UK where the pension system is crushing the workers.
But here is one that actually makes sense. Of course the self-reflection with who he otherwise praises and spends his time with will never set in, but at least others may take the time to look inward and do something differently.
Something has to change. Even HN seems to have had an increase in sentiment like this in the past few years. Maybe I’m just noticing it more myself. Maybe it’s not just the existence of the Grape, but rather where it came from.
Can you share that that post is about and the significance of it in relation to this link?
Very poor thought. Likely written after consumption of some bad drugs.
And the antagonistic algo everywhere world is starting to suck. And google removing their "don't be evil" sure seemed very self-aware.
...but not sure about the whole "needs WW3 to reset" angle...seems a bit much
Relevant here, all the way from 1975:
"...In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision. What usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, but even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be significant. Thus most individuals are unable to influence measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society. The system tries to “solve” this problem by using propaganda to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them, but even if this “solution” were completely successful in making people feel better, it would be demeaning."
- Industrial Society And Its Future, Ted Kaczynski (1975)
Context: built a viable business which I ran for many years. Eventually got seduced and went to work for big(ish) tech as a product manager. It was so divested from what I understood about building great products - however I was fantastic at doing things my way and getting shit done; largely based on what I learned from doing "all the things" at a small business. I had lots of success while also suffering with burnout and anxiety almost constantly.
Worked on incredibly popular cloud and OSS software. Hated most of it - especially what product management and the product-management-industrial-complex was distorting that role to be (divorced from much of reality but also expected to fix bullshit founder/c-suite/old-guard behavior). Oy the Miro boards and endless GDocs comment threads.
I left product (and some wild comp) to go back to building things.
So, I'm not disagreeing, I am just hoping you could expand a bit more on your own personal experience with rise of the product manager role.
Nevertheless, I also don't think PMs and PM-centric culture, are to solely to blame. I've not yet met a leadership team who's behavior and decisions I respect and/or can live with (and yes, it's highly possible I'm the problem).
Absolutely none of my business but technically this is on-topic right now, in this thread.
Nobody twisted your arm to use Hinge rather than utilize local dating resources like singles meetups, speed dating, and matchmaking services.
Or just get a group-oriented hobby and talk to people in real life.
As long as everyone is OK with the losers losing big so the winners can win big, it will persist. As long as the “I've got mine, screw you” attitude keeps being culturally ingrained, it will persist.
Now for Uber. If you pay to upgrade to Uber X it’s a great experience. One time I got in the wrong Uber (not X). They said silver Nissan at station 4 at the airport in Atlanta. Got in the car and he was obviously going somewhere else than where I requested. When he realized I was the wrong passenger the driver became extremely agitated and aggressive. My bad for not checking his plate, his bad for not checking the passenger out. He was the driver so it’s really his responsibility since I may not know these things. Also I could not leave a bad review as I did not know who this driver was. Always always check you are in the right car.
ggm•11h ago
So yes. Status seeking, and differential price seeking probably is a-social as a pattern when it's weaponised against the consumer.
That said, I hated Uber, they actually offered to underwrite people breaking the law to get foot in the door (how that didn't get them excluded as a corporate scofflaw is beyond me) and they continue to export all the profits offshore, but taxi services had become shit and now we have got used to Uber and I just don't worry about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly.
My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off.
The European push to mandate included luggage in flight is seeing a fair bit of trolling. So there are still true believers who think needing clean underwear is weak.
anonzzzies•10h ago
Especially on the discounters here in EU (especially Ryanair / Easyjet), i'm the only one in the non-priority queue, everyone else is in the priority queue. This used to of course not be the case; you paid extra and was in first. Now i'm usually in before 2/3th of the prio queue. Which is just weird.
> about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly.
Not sure how it is in the US (I used uber there on vacation in the past, but on vacation, I don't worry about prices too much), but here prices jump heavily during surge; often from 40->50->38 euros in a few minutes; I'll just keep an eye on the app for a few minutes and pick it at a good point. Taxis are almost always twice or sometimes (airport) 3x the price. I never take them as they are also often rude and I cannot rate them (these two are related). The last one I took was 3 weeks ago; I was 10 minute drive to the airport from some horrible 'business hotel' and I had an early flight, so I checked out, ordered an uber at 5am and waited; in front of me stopped a 'real' taxi (both are now legal and need licenses, but Taxi have Taxi on top); the driver got out to welcome his client which was not me but obviously he thought I was. We talked for a bit waiting for his real client and then he asked how much uber was; E15 I showed him. He said; cancel it and give me E15. Ok, so I got in front, the other client in the back. We arrived, and while waiting to park up, he shoved a terminal in my face with E15 on it, so I paid. We got out, he got the luggage from the other guy who asked 'how much is it'; E72,-. Cheers bro; made almost E90 for a 10 minute trip.
Point being; hating uber (and I used to refuse to use them) is making your life very hard for very little benefit. The taxis needed a kick up the arse and they still didn't learn anything. Still need to order far upfront, their app sucks and far more expensive. Not sure how they can exist (of course I do, they don't know uber exists, how to use it or they refuse to use it). I find if you are with 2+ people, they are often cheaper than the trains which is quite mental really in a country where 'people should take the train if they can'.
jagrsw•10h ago
Yup. The price jump isn't just a "surge." It's the algorithm calculating the highest price you'll tolerate without abandoning the app long-term, no matter availability of cars (which can be related, but from CFOs perspective that's not the metric to optimize)
This personalized price discrimination is precisely the kind of manipulation geohot is describing.
It's the same principle as (an old story) booking.com charging Mac/Safari/iphone users more.
chii•9h ago
So you have to vote with your wallet. If you can't, or won't, then it just proves that their pricing algorithm has found "your" price, and so you don't get to keep your surplus value as it gets transfered to uber.
This is why i, even if i can afford it, go for lowest price, most economically valuable buys. Always, without exception. Cannot allow them to win.
matthewdgreen•6h ago
SXX•9h ago
Also all kind of cashback or discount offers just bake even higher premium than Cashback they offer.
So yeah booking hotels is more and more like a whack-a-mole game if you don't want to pay 30% more.
diggan•7h ago
dalyons•4h ago
diggan•2h ago
javitury•9h ago
However it's not rare to find bad drivers on Uber. On Christmas this year I took an uber from the airport, the driver had supposely arrived but he was nowhere to be seen. We called each other and I could hardly hear anything. After wasting about 30 minutes (and battery almost depleted) we finally found each other. It turns out he didn't know how to speak English or the local language. He had two phones, one he used to call a colleage who could (barely) translate english for him, the other phone he used to talk to clients, and both phones were placed mic-to-speaker to bridge the calls. What about the extra time that the driver wasted? I was billed for it and I had no way to dispute it. I could only report this behavior in a review to a driver that didn't seem to be him (was the main driver subletting his account?).
anonzzzies•6h ago
Generally I still had much nicer uber drivers than taxi drivers. What do I do if a normal cabby is a shit? With uber I get to vote 1 star AND I will get my money back the same day. That's not happening here with the normal taxis: you can complain, fill forms, and maybe, after you expire of old age, your family will enjoy that 10 euros refund.
javitury•5h ago
buran77•9h ago
You should check if there are taxi apps where you live. In Europe a lot of these apps consolidated under bigger brands (e.g. FreeNow) so it's a good bet that you'll find one and then you have the same experience as Uber. Just check which gives you a better price.
When the service providers feel cheated by the app they have to use to reach any audience (Booking, Uber, etc.), they'll find ways to make more money. Hotel owners gave me hefty discounts just to cancel a Booking reservation and pay directly, Uber drivers did the same. And with taxis it's getting ever so slightly harder to cheat when people have a recording device in their pockets at all times. I know cases where friends used Strava to record a trip and could show it's impossible for the trip to cost that much at advertised prices. Driver complied.
Startup idea: Strava for taxi rides, disrupt the market of shady taxi drivers with an app dedicated to tracking the trip to calculate/estimate costs.
alexanderchr•8h ago
That’s because the ”priority” queue for those carriers is really a ”paid for a proper carry on”-queue. But the airlines realised that they could brand it as a priority queue to make the upcharge to bring a bag more palatable. You’re not spending €40 just to bring a bag that used to be included in the ticket, you also get to feel more important. At least the first time until you realise 2/3rds of the plane is also important.
pksebben•8h ago
"Sorry, I've got like 20 lith-ions in there. I can pull them out if you'd like to see them." cue shiteating grin and grumping from the airline staff.
On the one hand I feel good about it because your dumb rules are dumb and fuck that shit. On the other hand, it's not the air steward's fault Frank Lorenzo was a lizard person puke pustule.
edit: Appropriate use of 'cue'
jlokier•7h ago
Not where I live. Here, Uber is 50-100% more* than the price of a local taxi, at all times of day. Uber is also at least 30% more expensive than hailing a black cab.
So even though I have the app, after optimistically checking the Uber price, I invariably choose to book a taxi instead.
The shorter arrival times shown in the Uber app are sometimes tempting, but after waiting nearly 30 minutes for a car that Uber continuously said was 4 minutes or less away, with their location moving around (so not stuck in traffic) and driver repeatedly changing, I don't take the time seriously any more.
I just wanted to correct the impression that's often put out that Uber is cheaper (or faster) for the customer. It's evidently true in some places. But where i live, other than when they ran a 50% discount for the first few months after arriving in town, I've never seen Uber be anything other than the most expensive option.
It's not due to lack of drivers: I've been told most drivers at the biggest local firm switched to Uber as soon as they arrived in town, and that's backed up by seeing Uber-marked cars everywhere.
jksflkjl3jk3•7h ago
I never understand why people make comments like this and leave it to the reader to guess where they live. Your profile has your email and linkedin, so it's not like you're trying to stay anonymous.
And to your point, local taxis being less expensive is unusual in my travels from 50+ countries. Uber/Grab/Bolt/Gojeck/Maxim are almost always significantly cheaper and more reliable in my experience, especially for foreigners who aren't familiar with typical fares.
anonzzzies•6h ago
fivestones•4h ago
yurishimo•2h ago
CuriouslyC•4h ago
jlokier•24m ago
It's intentional, because the location has nothing to do with the actual point. Stating it invites people to focus on the location too much instead of the actual point, or to say things like "oh that's just your country / town, we can assume that's anomalous".
Which would be missing the point entirely.
If you're interested in the location you can find out. It's no secret, though I would advise against trusting people's locations on LinkedIn, they are often not where the person currently works or lives.
But I'm not interested in stating it. For the point I was making, the specific location, or even the country, detracts from that.
You've traveled in 50+ countries. Just from that, you're an extreme economic and social outlier. You are almost certainly taking journeys that are systematically different from those taken by the majority of people, and the price brackets and journey routes you're comparing between services are different than those used by other people. It may well be that the comparison works out differently as a result.
Not to disregard your experience. You've plenty. But you are very unusual, and it's impossible to travel that much without taking journeys that other people never or very rarely take.
I would not be surprised if the "obvious foreigner" premium is there for taxis, even if you're experienced. I'd find it unlikely that you became so intimately familiar with all 50+ countries as to get the true "favour for a friend" fare in all 50+ including those where that's more common, and that you took the same journeys as locals do in all of them.
On the other side (and on the original topic), Uber has reason to optimise for traveller cohorts. If Uber wanted to seem cheaper than local taxis to people in your cohort, to a greater extent than for other people, they could probably do that, and it would make economic sense if their algorithm statistically optimises for that. Profit-maximising algorithms with "personalised" pricing default-optimise for trade with wealthier customers who use their services more often, for journeys associated with other spending, such as to/from travel hubs and hotels, and for separating out cohorts in subtle ways that maximise the inability of cohort members to detect the separation.
Al-Khwarizmi•6h ago
In my country (Spain) there can't be more than 1 Uber (or similar) per 30 taxis by law (obviously pushed by the taxi lobby). That's actually enforced, at least in my region (I think in some regions, like Madrid, it's not). Additionally, in my region Ubers are further nerfed by requiring booking 15 minutes or more in advance and not allowing trips inside of a city, but they just disregard that law and at the moment it doesn't seem to be actually enforced, although taxis are protesting a lot about it so it might be in the future.
Normally I would be indignant at a foreign big corp disregarding laws, but it's hard not to support Uber when taxis are clearly not enough to meet demand (sometimes you need to wait half an hour for one, in a small city where if you are fit you get to most places walking in that time anyway. If I want a taxi it's because I'm in a hurry and walking or taking a bus won't cut it, if I have to wait 30 minutes for a taxi it becomes useless) and they constantly push not only to limit the number of Ubers, but also the number of taxis themselves. They prefer to be guaranteed to always have customers waiting and see the taximeter numbers go up constantly, and screw the people who have to put up with a terrible quality of service because they don't meet demand. In the past I used to take a taxi to the train station if I'd rather work some more instead of stopping 30 minutes earlier to take the bus, now I don't even bother because you might need the same time to go by taxi than by bus due to scarcity of taxis.
Add to that that many taxi drivers are rude, and many drive Dacias which are the cheapest low-end car here... come on, I'm not saying they should be luxury cars, but you are serving customers in a car that is your whole means of production, your image and your calling card, and that will be amortized very fast, and you go for the absolute cheapest that you can find in the market? What does that say about your care for the customer?
I take Ubers whenever I can (which is also seldom, because obviously with the 1 to 30 rule they are even further than taxis from meeting demand) because taxis really go the extra mile to make me hate them.
throw393949•10h ago
Washing clothes was discovered several thousands years ago.
And boarding plane is much faster. I really do not want to pay for your luggage!
digitalPhonix•10h ago
nemothekid•10h ago
I avoid checking a bag but because it’s price sensitive; its because so much of the airline experience is just idle dead time and I’d like to avoid spending an extra 45 minutes waiting around at baggage claim.
Having everyone check bags is just trading waiting at one area for waiting in another area
mcintyre1994•9h ago
wiseowise•9h ago
So you carry high quality detergent, and clean washing machine with delicate setting, and then air dry your clothes? Nice.
throw37383848•9h ago
It is simpler and faster than dealing with hotel laundry, laundromat or carrying extra 10kg of clothes around!
flir•7h ago
This guy International Travels.
bregma•6h ago
The big problem with traveling without any bags at all is that you get flagged by security for extra attention. Turns out terrorists are too cheap to buy a set of luggage and a return ticket if they're just going to blow themselves up.
protocolture•9h ago
Eh I wouldnt speak for all of us. I like having the ability to reward contractors with some extra cash for a job well done. The issue is structurally relying on it.
Shit, when I was 14 or so I worked as a baggage handler. And I will never forget the time we took on an overflow job from an american cruise liner at circular quay. Not only was I getting 20 bucks an hour (decent pay at the time), but I took home an extra 1100 or so completely tax free. Nothing as australian as cash in hand.
>That said, I hated Uber, they actually offered to underwrite people breaking the law to get foot in the door
Its always moral to break unjust laws. The taxi monopolies needed to be broken. Having those laws challenged thanks to the donation of US VC money was just a bonus.
Actually theres still work to be done. Sydney CBD is still extremely hostile to rideshare.
ggm•9h ago
protocolture•8h ago
stavros•8h ago
cortesoft•9h ago
Wouldn't the market purist argue that this just means the good is mispriced, and tickets should actually be what the price is with the premium added? What you really need is to just raise the prices of the tickets and the price to jump the queue?
kragen•9h ago
jodrellblank•4h ago
imtringued•9h ago
bsenftner•6h ago
andyst•8h ago
In high capital businesses like airlines and supermarkets it seems to play out all over the place these days.
cjfd•7h ago
immibis•2h ago
AstroBen•3h ago
My guess is the hidden fees end up making businesses more money
Neil44•8h ago
taneq•8h ago
Why would you want to be on the plane earlier than necessary? Only thing I can think of is better access to the overhead lockers, which fill up fast these days.
FridgeSeal•7h ago
Getting on the flight 15 minutes early also beats dawdling in a slow moving like for 20.
Lounge access is worth it alone! Especially on international connections!!
pards•5h ago
Airport food & coffee is expensive and often not very good. At least with lounge access, I get that subpar food & coffee for free plus somewhere to sit. With a family, that can save a significant chunk of money off the cost of a holiday.
BLKNSLVR•3h ago
How long are y'all sitting around in lounges?
If a small meal / snack saves a significant chunk of money off the cost of a holiday then one of us is not doing it right.
Flights and accommodation are the lions share of costs as far as my limited experience goes.
(P.S. I was meant to be leaving for Japan this morning, but family medical emergency has ruled it out. Flights were $5,500. I'd hope that airport food costs wouldn't raise a blip on a radar set to that scale).
CrulesAll•7h ago
surgical_fire•7h ago
There's a freedom that comes with not caring and just accepting I am last in the line. I don't pay the premium and I can sit and relax in the lobby while the sheep that paid wait in line. Only when the queue is nearly depleted it is my turn.
nosianu•7h ago
The actual strategy is not that you are last, but that you choose to be part of the smallest group.
surgical_fire•4h ago
I think that in a world with no priority queueing, I would still not care about the only queue and show up at the gate at the last possible time.
Problems would arise if everyone behaved like me. You would have everyone showing last minute and chaos would be the result.
I wonder how the system would adapt to that.
BenjiWiebe•2h ago
jasode•6h ago
The supposed "sheep" that want to get on the plane first are people that want to get that precious overhead bin space to avoid checking a carry-on bag at the gate. Boarding last means there's no more bin space and the gate agent will put the bag in the belly of the plane. This adds extra hassles of waiting an extra 30+ minutes at the arrival terminal to wait for the bag on the conveyor belt and/or the bag getting lost.
Yes, it can look "irrational" to hurry up and get in line because as some like to say, "No point in fighting to get on the plane first since we're all leaving on the same plane at the same time!" ... The issue isn't the departure time -- it's the limited bin space.
EDIT add reply to : >bag put in the belly lf the place, and my bag was never lost.
There are more complications because at some airports with widely separated terminals, going outside of the security zone to pick up a bag at the conveyor belt also means using slower buses instead of the tram to go to another terminal to get a car. E.g. at Dallas airport, the faster railway trams are only available inside the secured area. So not getting that bag in the overhead bin has domino effect of waiting for buses (another +30 minutes) which can add up to 1 extra hour of waiting at the arrival destination. Getting in line early for boarding is a small price to pay to avoid all of that.
surgical_fire•6h ago
I get that time back by being able to go to the gate when they are about to close :)
Ygg2•3h ago
They are still sheep. Fighting for better spot on the butcher's table.
So let me get this straight. Rather than fighting airlines for better flying conditions, they fight each other for earlier boarding time.
Not sure who said it, but consumerism truly is slavery perfected.
djmips•2h ago
sensanaty•1h ago
rr808•5h ago
I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.
nilamo•5h ago
CuriouslyC•4h ago
tempodox•3h ago
Y-bar•2h ago
SpaceNoodled•2h ago
immibis•2h ago
greyface-•1h ago
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/te...
Workaccount2•2h ago
1.) Owner needs workers and wants to make the position attractive.
2.) Owner is given the option to enable tips, and entice works with "Pay, plus tips!"
3.) Owner doesn't pay tips, patrons do.
4.) Workers blame patrons, not owner, for not tipping.
5.) Patrons feel guilty and tip. Workers make pretty good money from this, and enjoy the job more.
In a way it's kind of like a social mind virus, where the workers and owners benefit, and the patrons feel pain for not going along with it.
The only fix I can come up with is a law that tips can only be solicited after a service has been rendered. And entering something into a computer is not a service.
lazystar•1h ago
tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the same number of hours, the higher skilled driver earns more because they get more tips.
this "work harder => more pay" incentive is pretty unique in the industry; in manual labor jobs where each day has a set limit on the amount of work that can be completed, like grocery merchandising, workers that work harder get paid less than average workers. stock incentives are the closest comparison, but it's too far removed from the individual worker's output when the company's size grows above 100 employees.
the point is, part of the problem is the lack of other incentives that reward the hardest/best skilled workers.
tayo42•9m ago
bigyabai•6m ago
2. Only people working front get tips. If you have a lazy busboy working front for the most talented chef in the world, the chef pockets $0.00/hr in tips.
3. If any computer science job ever contemplated adding tipping to my compensation package, I'd go get my pink slip within the hour.
chrsw•1h ago
This is how capitalism is supposed to work. It's supposed to seep into every crevice of society and pull money out of the poorest, weakest people and into the hands of the richest and strongest. This isn't a coincidence, it is in fact the most important aspect of the system.
Tipping went from some generous gesture to recognize exceptional service and it's turned into a mandatory, arm-twisting shakedown by businesses that simply do not want to pay their employees. Not just avoid paying a living wage (those days are long gone) but not even a _minimum_ wage. Many people involved in or invested in the restaurant businesses wouldn't have thought about getting in if they had to pay employees for an honest day's work.
Many restaurants these days aren't just local mom and pop family run businesses but large corporations who own many franchises and operate in the billions of dollars yet people like you and I are expected to pay most of the wages of the servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darden_Restaurants
Sure, you can never eat out or only eat at locally owned small businesses. But that's just one small slice of society. The only realistic solution for many of us is to try to run the rat race faster.
ikr678•4h ago
carlosjobim•4h ago
That's simply discovering the true price of a product. We're living in a mega-inflationary period, but most people won't accept that a dollar or a euro is actually worth no more than 30 cents. So sellers are putting things which used to be included at a premium price. If people pay, then that is the price.
It's highly annoying as a customer, but the general public won't accept that product and services they pay for cost double than they used to. At the same time the general public demands that their real estate and stock investments should be valued at triple or quadruple than what they used to.
cainxinth•4h ago
Now, anyone anywhere can get a ride, often quickly. I’m not trying to excuse any predatory commercial practices directed at drivers or passengers, which are serious problems deserving of more strict regulation, but I absolutely do not want to go back to the old way.
specproc•4h ago
I had two incidents in the UK recently where my app of choice failed me and I was quickly bailed out cheaper by googling "taxi $TOWN" and having a one minute conversation with an operator.
jen20•3h ago
jordanb•3h ago
The apps did three things that the call services did not do:
1) subsidize drivers with vc money for many years making drivers plentiful and fares cheap
2) use unlicensed cabs so they could saturate areas like Manhattan that had previously limited the amount of cabs that could operate
3) Deprive drivers of info they might use to reject fares they don't want (like destination).
robertlagrant•1h ago
This is mostly a problem with the people you pay taxes to who would invent systems to restrict the driver numbers.
robertlagrant•1h ago
The main amazing thing about Uber is that you can go most places in the world, not know what you're doing with obscure public transport/payments/etc and just get an Uber to your hotel, no problems. It's so, so much better than what came before.
tbrownaw•4h ago
So which of the laws that uber broke to get big are what prevented these new issues, and which are what made the old way bad?
Y-bar•3h ago
I don’t mind the old ways.
Taxis had apps before Uber arrived here, they had geolocation with ETA, contactless payment, up-front pricing, and never refused service (because they were required by law to offer service to anyone anywhere).
The problem probably never was incumbent taxis, it was how they were regulated (or not).
jen20•3h ago
Sure, they’re mandated to not refuse service, but you try getting picked up in Manhattan with a suitcase mid afternoon (when it’s obvious you’ll be taking the fixed fare to JFK in heavy traffic). To this day, the meter being “broken” is a tactic used in taxi strongholds like Las Vegas, even with this regulation.
The sweet spot for taxis was London, but I will go out of my way to avoid taking one lest I get forced to listen to the drivers views on Brexit for the entire ride.
Y-bar•3h ago
As in most rules on the books, not in actually enforced rules I presume?
paleotrope•2h ago
appreciatorBus•1h ago
This assumes that “most regulated” correlates with less atrocious. Or that the intentions behind regulations are always good. Regulations can indeed makes things less atrocious, but other regulations can just as easily make things more atrocious. I’d argue that many taxi regulations were more the latter than the former. (I.e arbitrary limit on total number of taxi vehicles, while allowing an unlimited number of non-taxi vehicles)
bko•1h ago
Maybe the fact that they were the most regulated services around was exactly why they were atrocious. Regulation often erects barriers to competition. It's impossible for a regulatory body to spell out every way in which a company can be exploitive and disallow it. The only thing that prevents bad behavior is meaningful competition.
It was this regulatory body that limited the number of cabs that could be on the road at any given time and set "fair" meter pricing. What resulted was that if you lived in a poor isolated neighborhood, there would be no cabs willing to take you there or driving around to pick you up. Uber solved this pretty much overnight.
wellthisisgreat•1h ago
I lived in NYC and other metropolitan US cities for the few years before the Uber and I don’t remember a single car service that had any of that and wasn’t a lottery of if they’ll pick up the phone in time to get me somewhere
martin-t•3h ago
Asocial people are great because they lack exactly this kind of status seeking and don't feel the need to engage in zero-sum social games. They just do what they like, which often is something actually productive or fun.
This behavior is anti-social. It actively harms everyone else except the person (or group) doing it.
mikewarot•2h ago