I love DCS, but their business model is killing them.
Without a subscription-style revenue stream, they are forced to create and sell new products constantly. This leads them to be in a constant state of "early access" -- often with some substantial issues. I would prefer it if they let me pay ~$10/month and I just get access to every module.
The primary reason I use Twitter is to read blue check marks (and other well known people). Why would I want to know what a random person thinks about an issue when I could hear from people who have built years of clout on a subject? I feel the same way in reverse -- why would anyone care what I think about something when I have no experience or track record on the issue?
> If EEVblog's suggestion was taken and Susan (YouTube CEO) had to manually review every moderation action on channels with 5K+ subs, she would not be able to keep up.
If there were fewer moderation actions, then we'd be seeing more articles saying how obviously abusive content that should have been taken down and wasn't.
There are many sophisticated actors that try and game the system, and it's because of them at sometimes the system makes the wrong call.
I feel only the questionable removals make it to HN or other tech sites that make it feel like lesser moderation would be better. But the fact is there is a vast ocean of disturbing content that literally causes some moderators to lose their mental and need counseling.
> If everybody is panicking, then the goods go to the panicking people who have the most disposable income.
Higher prices often discourage people from over-buying an item.
For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, people sensed toilet paper might soon become hard to find. Its not perishable, so when they found it at a normal price, they stocked up. Why not? They know they'll use it eventually and they don't want to be hunting for it a month later. You don't need to be a super wealthy person to pre-purchase a years worth of TP.
But, if TP had been selling for double the normal price, they would have bought less. There's no need to pay pandemic prices for TP that you'll be using next year.
And the doubled price would keep people who are least able to pay from getting necessary resources, also potentially encouraging them to continue working in risky conditions to earn extra income to do so, helping in some small way to perpetuate the pandemic itself.
If you're looking for a market-based solution to hoarding, there are others besides price gouging. Amazon's approach, at least in areas where they have complete control like their pantry, fresh, and whole foods services, can serve as an example: They want happy customers. Happy customers return and buy more stuff. Customers who can't buy what they need because it's sold out due to hoarding are not happy. Amazon institutes a policy for orders through fresh/pantry/whole foods that limit TP purchases to a single package. More customers get needed supplies, stay happy return to buy more, make Amazon more money in the long term.
Supply/Demand price curves & price elasticity are not the only rational market-based methods of price discovery. More subtle and long-term considerations breed other strategies.
A doubled price of TP isn't going to prevent almost anyone from not having enough. (Yes yes, I know there are edge cases where $5 matters, but weigh that against the alternative.)
On the other hand, a doubled price of TP means that hoarding 10,000 packages becomes far more expensive, and less profitable.
You have likely never been in a situation where you have to weigh the purchase of food against the prospect of eviction. I grew up that way, and labelling those circumstances "edge cases" is a tidy way of dehumanizing the situation that many millions of people find themselves in. I won't do the work for you: lookup how many people are on SNAP programs. These are not edge cases.
Think market forces can solve all economic problems? Fine. But don't let that blind you to the fact that they have not done it yet and large numbers of people live in poverty and misery at the bad end of the economic scale.
While not perfect free market/capitalism pulled up more people from poverty than any other system. It is usually about who you compare yourself to. If you compare yourself to 1% of the most wealthy country in the world then you are most likely going to look poor. But if you compare yourself to the bottom 1% of the poorest country you most likely going to turn out sickly rich. And when you do the same comparison to the poor in the far past then it gets even more crazy.
>While not perfect free market/capitalism pulled up more people from poverty than any other system
Nope not true - that award goes to communist China
>China lifting more than 800 million people out of poverty since the start of its economic reform is a "great story in human history", World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said today, underlining that there is "lessons to be learned" from this Chinese experience.
>Over the past three decades, China has successfully led the greatest poverty alleviation program in the history of the world. During that time, an estimated 500 million Chinese were lifted out of extreme poverty.
If it actually were exceedingly rare for the price of toilet paper the make a significant difference in people’s financial situation, then I suspect toilet paper manufacturers/retailers would realize that this means they’re leaving profit in the table, and they would raise prices.
That is not how markets work. As long as there is competition, prices drop to the bottom. It would take concerted effort to rise prices, e.g. by forming a cartel. That's illegal for that reason.
You can also calculate the situation for yourself. How much does a unit of toilet paper cost and how long does it last?
To me, the situation looks more like GP could be right and doubling the price of toilet paper doesn't kill people but rather stabilizes the situation. Besides, it's always possible to substitute the usage.
The 'edge cases' amount to probably at least hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone. Unless you're saying they're not "people who need toilet paper", dismissing them as outliers not to be worried about is just blatantly cruel.
"if TP had been selling for double the normal price, they would have bought less"
When people are panicking, I think the price elasticity of demand sharply declines, and the price elasticity of supply is small in the short run. Which in turn means that the time value of money skyrockets. This seems like it might be a clue as to why allocating stuff by price in crises is a bad idea.
> For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, people sensed toilet paper might soon become hard to find
No, it actually became hard to find quite rapidly, and remains so (with some relief as reopening progresses), because people stopped going out and using facilities that use commercial paper and therefore were using lots more home paper, and commercial and home-use toilet paper are different products with different supply chains, neither of which has much excess capacity above normal levels and which cannot easily shift to the other.
Hoarding was an overblown factor to which too much was attributed early on by observer’s who don't understand the relevant supply chain dynamics; higher prices would perhaps have reduced it (OTOH, they might not—rapidly rising prices often spur stockpiling-before-it-gets-higher the same way as anticipated or perceived unavailability), but it wouldn't have made a significant difference in the dynamics except that everyone who was able to get toilet paper would have paid even more.
To be fair, toilet paper is in a very special product category. It is used by everyone (sudden interest in bidettes notwithstanding), is pretty cheap, weighs very little and takes up an absolutely enormous amount of shelf space relative to its unit cost.
When the panic buying started here in the UK, people were stocking up 2x or 3x the amounts they'd normally buy. You don't need that many customers hauling out multiple 24-roll bags to completely exhaust the in-store stock. Sure, the managers would be stocking up as fast as they could, but even with 80+ pallets per restocking round, customers going locust will have them wiped out in no time.
This resulted in the very predictable photos of empty supermarket shelves. Toilet paper shelves were particularly empty because they couldn't hold that many sales units in the first place.
No wonder the stores imposed limits on how many units of product, or even category, you could buy.
> Higher prices often discourage people from over-buying an item.
Sure if prices are stable. But prices lie on a curve over time. And because prices are on a curve, the price itself is not what the market sees, but instead the curve of the change in price over time.
Price hikes cause FOMO. If you need something, and you're worried about the price going up, you're going to buy it now. This has most commonly happened with gasoline. During 9/11, the government had to tell gas stations, e.g., to not hike their prices, because that would cause even more panic -- there was no supply shortage.
The second aspect is those that can afford the risk see the sudden spike as an investment opportunity. One of our neighbors in the development used it to buy toilet paper and sell it at $5/roll. They're expecting the price to continue to rise. This is not much different than buying stock when the price of a stock is rising.
So yes, in if a market is rational and prices are stable (but high), then you're right. But lately, price spikes seem to be causing fear -- which, btw, people seem to like to game.
What actually appeared to happen is that people bought up as much toilet paper (and hand sanitizer etc) they could to resell on craigslist/kijiji at extortionary prices because there is demand inelasticity for these things. Doing this made people panic even more, and even more people got in on the gouging, etc.
Toilet paper started becoming available at stores again pretty much immediately after those sites started cracking down on this practice. There was plenty of supply, it was just being hoarded.
Hell, aggregate demand had not even actually changed. People don't suddenly use more toilet paper in quarantine for no reason.
>Toilet paper started becoming available at stores again pretty much immediately after those sites started cracking down on this practice
It's premature to assume that the return of normal supply was due to crackdowns of reselling on online marketplaces. There were a bunch of other factors that changed in the same timeframe
* stores imposed per-customer limits
* prices went up (both in terms of absolute prices, and discounts disappearing)
* as hoarders stocked up, their demand also went down(if you just bought 18 month's supply, you'd be less inclined to buy more)
* people were being assured by the media that there won't be a TP shortage, which probably decreased the amount of panic buying
Aggregate demand for home toilet paper rose as consumption of industrial toilet paper fell. Increasing supply of toilet paper is expensive and would not be profitable before toilet paper demand normalizes.
> We want to use services but we do not want to be subjected to surveillance capitalism.
Who is the “we” you are referring to? I think most people care so little about this that they don’t even bother to skim the TOS before using a service.
To add to your point (which I fully agree) (and I am surprised of the downvotes - I don't care for the karma but it looks that I didn't write it clear enough and/or people misunderstood my comment 2-3 levels up).
I am not touching the "add value" bit, I will stick to the ethics. Some businesses are (imho) scum (Facebook, Google, Zoom, every tracker, every data aggregator, etc.)
They may uphold the law or they may ignore the law. Since we should not burn their buildings down in retribution, we can sue them (or whatever the local privacy laws state), we can stop giving them money (our free/paid information). But it is up to us. Zoom clearly needs a (sic) phat penalty by EU to get their stuff straight. Then every EU user should bombard both Zoom and FB with questions on their data practices and "right to be forgotten". Then we should burry them in the sand and move to other service providers.
I am adamant on the issue of privacy and the reason for that is that these scum KNOW they are violating our rights, and the voice in their minds tells them "screw them, £€¥$ goes first".
Caring about this shouldn't be necessary. When people sign up for a service, they shouldn't have to stop everything and wonder about the many, many ways their personal information could be abused. Nor should they have to scrutinize the terms of every single service out there just to know exactly how they're being exploited without being able to do anything about it. This constant paranoia about everything is not a good way to live.
As you can see from the sentence before the one you quoted, I didn't forget about it.
I agree there's a lot of complexity there. But it's still a relatively small slice of the population. A friend is a farmer; she's just carrying ahead farming. Compared with urban life, she's been "socially distancing" for years. For the more dense parts of the chain, we need to take other infection-prevention measures. But food production is already pretty good at keeping things clean, and the rest we can work on.
It's worth remembering how efficient our modern food systems have become that less than 3 out of 100 people are enough to work them.
That said, it wouldn't hurt anything to start a "victory garden", it's the right time of year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden (but that's a good idea anyway, orthogonal to the virus.)
> These sites have to make money somehow or they won’t exist for long.
Crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Patreon etc.) provides a successful model for funding content quite directly, without slapping a hefty paywall onto it. This stuff is not rocket science, it actually works quite nicely.
First of all, they are probably doing both things today.
Second, not necessarily the same people that complains about adds complains about paywalls.
Also, If you don't live in the US, 99.99% of wsj' contents is irrelevant, excepting that one article you read once an year. So subscribing is not worth it.
Meanwhile it excludes a ridiculous amount of people of a very important subject for the whole world.
Please track the hell out of me but don't paywall on subjects that matter.
Blizzards statement about having an “investigation” into a “ rule” violation is very disingenuous. The rule is just they can ban anyone at their sole discretion that hurts their image.
The EU subsidized Airbus, which hurt the American company, Boeing. Therefore, all Americans have to pay 25% more for european wines, cheeses, and whiskey. How does this make any sense?
Drops demand for same items, hurting the producers and the countries they're based in, while maybe also diverting consumer money to domestic alternatives (or at least other countries that aren't quite so tariff'd). Right?
Not siding with the tariffs, but that's the idea, no?
I'm no expert, but I'd assume it's to make good on other trade negotiations the public isn't privy to. In regards to the like of the extra $9b free up for US exporters to Japan, mostly ag. Complete and utter hidden... on the front page of the ustr.gov site. Takes a real investigative journalist expert to find. I mean, who would ever look on the same site on China trade deals to find negotiations opening up with other countries...
Hurting Scotch means a better chance for the Japanese whiskey market in the USA. Total random speculation on that. There are lots of other products without Japanese replacement. Especially since scotch is really one of the smallest mattering products in that list. Parmesan, I argue, is a far bigger deal and we'll see that effect more. At least for me.
But, to be fair, after looking into trade relations for a while, Trump isn't as insane as CNN and BBC makes him out to be. I don't understand why everyone makes it seem like he's throwing dice and making decisions in a bubble. I'm starting to think he's making short term pains for long term gains. Which, to be honest, is the thing we should always be doing. Losing in the short term for mid to long term gains is not insane, stupid or crazy. Just... you know, sucks for a while.
On top of that, everyone seems to be a trade-deal expert suddenly because they've obviously negotiated with foreign govs all the time. I'm not and don't claim to be like others on HN and reddit. I just see there's more going on than just China and things don't look as one sided as it's being made out to be. But then again, BBC and CNN, and social media agreed, thought China would dump $1+ trillion in US bonds for pennies on the dollar and lose out on the loan leveraging they get to "punish the US"...by bankrupting themselves? Which never happened anyways. Such great "economic experts" who can't figure out supply/demand market dynamics taught in macro econ 101 textbooks. Same folks are commenting on the trade war. So whatever...
> But then again, BBC and CNN, and social media agreed, thought China would dump $1+ trillion in US bonds for pennies on the dollar and lose out on the loan leveraging they get to "punish the US"...by bankrupting themselves? Which never happened anyways.
There's plenty of hyperbole out there, but hyperbole doesn't negate reality. China is buying fewer treasury bonds, and this is one reason why the bottom fell out of the market for purchasing U.S. treasury bonds, requiring Federal Reserve intervention. It's one, small reason, but it will become increasingly more important as Chinese purchases drop while U.S. deficits continue their upward climb.
The reason you know Trump isn't crazy like a fox is because his policies are inconsistent and erratic. Demanding your investment managers to buy high, sell low doesn't make you Warren Buffett. Starting a trade war with the expectation that the other guy will flinch before you doesn't make you a cunning strategist; it just makes you dangerous.
I dont know, maybe the baby bird needs to be pushed out of the nest too. It's a good way to quit relying on one large source for the bond market. That's inherently unsustainable. Every service provider knows your biggest customer is your riskiest one. If they leave, it hurts. Thus, speed that up in a controllable manner. A few broken eggs sure, but you still keep the hens and the hen house.
"Starve the beast" has been the Republican strategy for decades to kill entitlements. The thinking was that by refusing to raise enough revenue to cover spending, Congress would be politically forced to reduce spending. Of course, what happened and continues to happen is that revenues drop, spending stays the same or grows, and the gap is covered using increasing amounts of debt.
If you're suggesting that the pain of losing Chinese money will force the U.S. to reduce its deficits, that has manifestly not been the case for decades. For treasuries, instead what will happen is exactly what we've seen happen the past few weeks--something or someone will fill the gap before the whole house of cards collapses, which will sustain the status quo but ultimately put us on a more perilous path.
You can't bluff and cajole your way to smarter fiscal and industrial policy. Republicans have tried that and failed because it turns out you can't avoid making hard, considered decisions; nor avoid compromise. There's no avoiding the fundamental dynamics at play, which are complex and merciless. Entitlements exist for a reason. Trade with China exists for a reason. You can't address those things without addressing the underlying reasons they exist. Doubling and tripling down on a failed strategy with the world's worst bluffer isn't going to work any better.
First of, all politicians are greedy, lazy self interested assholes incapable of actually accomplishing anything of real substance of their own two hands. They just have different flavors of bullshit. So you pretending that just blame Republicans and the world is a better place, yea, ok. Its worked out so well for govs in history to blame another party and declare all politics should be based on ours. It's already a waste of an argument.
That and you put the cart before the horse. It's always been to cut spending first so rev wouldn't need to increase.
In theory yes, however you have now possibly hurt foreign consumers of your products such that even in the absence of formal retaliatory tariffs, you may have harmed your export market.
He wants to target farmers because it’s an emotional play against a specific country’s exports...
It’s more tangible than adding a tariff to some obscure machine part because it becomes a pride thing. Also politicians of every country are acutely sensitive to the needs of their farmers.
It's a pretty simple theory -- if Americans have to pay 25% more for certain European goods, then they will be incentivized to purchase those goods elsewhere, therefore hurting Europe. Of course, this assumes the goods are fungible; this could backfire if no suitable substitute exists for those goods.
Single Malt Whisky starts out at a high price point. I do not think that anyone that normally would spend $ on this is going to care. Not quite the correct item to tax. Find something that is not a luxury with an equivalent US product.
> Single Malt Whisky starts out at a high price point. I do not think that anyone that normally would spend $ on this is going to care.
Many high quality single malts are $40-50. Expensive for a daily drink, but within reach as an indulgence. The new tariffs will raise the price of the bottle by $10. That's not terribly significant on it's own, but knowing that buying a bottle contributes $10 on a needless trade war to feed a maniac's ego is pretty irritating.
This reasoning is only correct if the number of sales from rich people far exceeds those from poor/middle-class people. Since the latter group far outnumbers the former, I can't be sure that what you said is true.
And considering Scotch whisky, it comes at a very peculiar time. The EU might be stopping to export Scotch whisky in 4 weeks from now :p. Not sure how this applies to Irish whisky though. As a consequence of the whisky boom of the recent years, the Irish whisky industry had a rebirth.
It gets worse. Boing got (indirect) subsidies[1] to the tune of at least $23bln, says the EU (but denies it subsidizes Airbus and most allegations it subsidized Airbus in the past). And the US even used the Echelon system to spy on European companies including Airbus and gave the information to US competitors including Boing (the EU parliament investigation concluded economic/industrial espionage happened, and former CIA director James Woolsey later admitted to abusing Echolon to spy on European companies).
So both companies are claimed to have received substantial "illegal" subsidies.
This isn't Trump's making btw. This legal battle over subsidies started I think in about 2004, so Trump is the third president involved. But of course, he was eager to jump on it and announce those tariffs now, even before the WTO ruling was finalized.
It just happens to be a very specific market where I would dare to say (and this is just my opinion) most consumers are willing to pay a little more for the real deal, that is, the imported goods instead of looking for "local substitutes"...
Both the taste preference and the "perceived value" are super important in the market for alcoholic beverages.
Without a subscription-style revenue stream, they are forced to create and sell new products constantly. This leads them to be in a constant state of "early access" -- often with some substantial issues. I would prefer it if they let me pay ~$10/month and I just get access to every module.