Something I believe but have no evidence for, and reality is continuing to, bafflingly, defy my expectations:
Ads are basically zero-sum in the sense that they mostly take customers that need something, and shift them to the brand that is advertised, instead of the one they would have heard of naturally (now, there is some element of ads actually increasing demand, but as people are quite cash-strapped or in debt nowadays, I guess it can only function up to some limit). Companies that advertise are engaging in an ever-increasing (more sophisticated, technical, and more expensive) competition to capture some allocation of this demand. Because we’re burning an increasing amount of money in a zero-sum competition, eventually the ecosystem must collapse under its own weight.
We can sort of see this, I think, in people becoming increasingly grumpy about how expensive everything is. But the system is very circuitous, so we misallocate blame all over the place.
Trying to regulate ads—I dunno, it seems hard to regulate without stepping on free-speech toes (US perspective, ymmv in other countries). I would rather regulate the collection of data, which doesn’t seem to be particularly protected in any sense other than that private entities can mostly just do whatever by default (it seems functionally similar to the sort of stuff that the 4’th amendment was intended to protect us against, except it is done by Facebook and Google so they get away with it) (but to be explicit, I think it is probably legal at the moment for companies to run vast surveillance networks, we need new laws).
He expected the end state of capitalism to be business owners just constantly fighting the markets to stay still. On the one hand, they'd be constantly trying to figure out how to make sure they were paying bottom prices for goods and services on which they relied, and on the other they'd constantly be fighting to try and sell in a saturated market. Eventually, collapse would ensue.
This was one of the foundations for his thinking.
He couldn't have predicted information technology, or ad tech, but the premise seems to hold up.
Of course, where he ended up was workers owning the means of production and every business basically being a "lifestyle business", with no need - or ability - to scale. This, as you know, became corrupted into government ownership, central planning of the economy, and all the other nightmares of a non-free market.
The ideal state - and I think this is where Marx would have wanted it - is that you might not have had a gazillion milk brands all screaming for attention (and the consumer ultimately paying for that, as it being priced into the amount they pay), but there being a free market of worked-owned businesses.
More to the original point, Bern banned some outdoor advertising last year (!). https://www.iamexpat.ch/expat-info/swiss-news/bern-approves-... says "SVP councillor Alexander Feuz was the most strident [opponent], calling the change a “step towards Stone Age communism.”"
Because when you're the sole owner and provider of goods, advertisement loses all meaning.
I grew up in the Soviet Union. There was one type of milk on the shelf, it was called "Milk", and I don't remember the label saying anything else.
Compare with "HORIZON ORGANIC DHA Omega-3 Supports the Brain Health organic Whole Milk" dressed in bright red and contrasting yellow, with typography that begs "please look at me, I'm the better option".
> There was one type of milk on the shelf, it was called "Milk"
I love this. And for me - as a 40 year old western european - it's so unthinkable, so unreal. I usually don't look at the milk packaging at home, but I remember reading on the packaging all kinds of stupid sh!te like names of the farmers where the cow grazes (which might be true, but I guess it's b0ll0cks) with some feel-good illustrations, all kinds of childish texts on the packaging as well. It's just 'milk', I don't need a fake story around how good your milk selling company is.
Maybe your soviet milk was unhealthy or not tasteful, I don't know. Maybe it's just the same kind of milk we have here. My milk is pretty good, but jeezz... that marketing on the packaging over here.
Yeah but dropping advertising (or regulating it) does not necessarily imply a monopoly in terms of who provides what.
That what I wanted to understand. I understand the other way around, that a socialist panned economy with monopolies in terms of who produces what is shit. And leads to advertising not being necessary. But the other way round is what still trips me off and what I am still not able to wrap my head around.
DPRK has been described as ad block for your life, but even under communism to have a consumer economy a limited number of regulated ads can be useful so ppl know products exist, but not this brand combat to the death oversaturation.
I would say communism is the final degree of "government as provider" not of "government as regulator". The final degree of regulation could be any variety of authoritarianism.
Much better to have capitalism replace political tyranny with economic tyranny. Where survival depends on serving someone else's profit with the requirement their margin grows every year.
When markets control basic needs, capitalism becomes its own form of authoritarianism that forces everyone to self comply. But it's freedom because they voluntarily choose to not starve to death/be homeless.
I don’t think we fully fathom how much everything on the Internet has degraded. And we and our children have degraded with it. Like frogs boiling alive in a pot, we never noticed it because of how gradually they increased the temperature.
I think the most important part is to start early. Make your kids interested in math, music, art, and sport, before they start school. Doesn't have to be anything sophisticated, simple addition and puzzles will do for math, etc. Then you have something you can later build on.
There are also ways to make things funny, including math. Most people say that they hate math, but then they do Sudoku. So, try to make more math like this. Not all math can be transformed to funny puzzles, but after a few the kids will get positive associations with the subject, and will be more willing to learn more.
The problem with building Uber and Lyft isn’t the process of writing the software — that’s been done many times over.
The hard part of course is investing the money in marketing and support to match the user recognition and experience that Uber and Lyft, subsidized by VC wallets, can provide to their customers.
Doesn’t bread go stale, milk go sour, chicken/beef/pork/eggs go spoiled, and fruits and veggies go moldy in two weeks? Where I live nobody enjoys yesterdays bread and we don’t cook meat or chicken if it’s been in the fridge for more than about five days.
Please explain how you’re able to do this, I would love not to have to shop for groceries every one or two days.
Ultra-pasteurized milk cartons have a shelf life of months (some even unrefrigerated) when unopened. Once open, they need to be used within a week or so, but that is doable with 1.5 gallon cartons.
> eggs go spoiled
Not really. At least the ones we get here, can last a long while in the fridge. Easily a couple of weeks if not more.
> fruits and veggies
Some veggies can be frozen e.g. carrots. Others can be fried/roasted and then frozen. Fruits do go bad fast yes. Some of the fruits can be bought frozen as well.
> Where I live nobody enjoys yesterdays bread and
Frozen bread thawed at room temperature tastes surprisingly fresh IMO. And no, it's not the "flour-based product" you refer to. I have made home-made bread and frozen with no issues and then thawed it out later.
> we don’t cook meat or chicken if it’s been in the fridge for more than about five days.
I don't eat meat, but I think the answer is again a chest freezer that sits at -20 C or so. A 10 cu.ft freezer is super compact and cheap and can store a lot of food.
You'd be surprised how some American homes have coolers that Europeans would think only a store would need, filled with all kinds of things, from veggies and meat to pancakes and tamales. Best news is, once everything inside freezes, the cooler doesn't consume much electricity to maintain it.
Between ultra-pasteurization, canning, freezing, dried food, and electricity, one of such families could stockpile nearly a year of food.
This works (I do it with rye loaves I eat), but IMHO most folks in the US have lower standards for what is called "bread" than a lot of other cultures.
OK, I will answer. Bread goes in the fridge in a ziploc (sealed plastic bag). It can last days without getting moldy or dry or stale. Meat goes in the freezer - and it can stay there for months if it is vacuum sealed (I have salmon I caught from last summer in my freezer. Because it is vacuum sealed there are no freezer 'burns'). Veggies - the fridges have some type of circulation inside and they have some bins marked for veggies. In these bins veggies do not go stale in a day or two. Tomatoes / peppers / carrots / celery can easily last more than 1 week. My two cents.
I mean this is what I do too, while doing daily groceries. I think the fridges are much larger in the US, amd the prevalence of the car culture, you guys ended up having bigger but far away super markets.
We also have those in Europa but I really hate driving to do groceries. It's just so inconvenient and too much hassle. I rather walk to the small shop daily than driving to the bigger one, which is maybe 3 km away.
Bread is mostly sliced bread in the US which lasts long. Can be frozen.
Lots of meat / fish is frozen.
Milk lasts for weeks in the store, same at your house (until you open it). I know in France milk is sold in bricks or bottles that aren't even refrigerated.
Most veggies can be frozen. And they weren't picked a couple days before you bought them, they can clearly last a long time.
Well, we drink almond milk mostly, and it keeps for 2 weeks. A lot of our meat is frozen unless we're planning a special meal. Some fruits and veggies are a bit tricky, sometimes we make a quick trip to get some fresh produce, but between some produce keeping well on the counter, and others in the fridge, they last a week or so.
Bread keeps long enough, unfortunately thanks to preservatives. "Homemade" (can't believe that label is allowed on factory-made food here) bread lasts a little longer in the fridge. But all bread I know freezes well, so we thaw it when we're ready to it the loaf, and it's gone within a few days.
We also live in a dry climate in the mountain west. I don't think we could get away with this in a wet climate.
Not OP, but for a lot of things, I actually get two or three months worth of meat (typically chicken) that is frozen (from a super-mega-super store called Costco), and I keep it in the freezer. Not uncommon for people to even have a chest freezer, or second refrigerator in their garages, if they live in the suburbs.
Bread keeps for a week, no problem, and when it's older than that and has started to go stale, it gets toasted for sandwiches.
But I typically go to grocery store weekly, because we eat a lot of produce in our house, and though I have some techniques to keep lettuce good for 1 to 2 weeks, some stuff spoils quickly.
Our eggs are refrigerated, they can keep for awhile in the fridge.
No bread like product will last a month without some pretty serious preservatives that isn't frozen. And it'll probably be taste awful well before them.
I'd be taking a long hard look at whatever this product is, and honestly a lot of the other stuff you may eat.
Mass produced food companies are not your friend. They want cheap stuff ebay keeps people happy. Health and well being wouldn't even make the list.
Freshly baked bread lasts quite a while, certainly longer than a week. White wheat longer than whole grain ones, but even those will last without any additional preservatives.
Of course it doesn't taste as good as freshly baked bread, but if it gets moldy only after a few days, it was already old or you didn't store it well enough.
I don't think anyone excepts the average American diet is anything but trash.
Back in 2013 at least, the effort I had to go to in Houston to find bread without sugar, milk without sugar, and butter that was actually butter was insane. Let alone getting to eating out!
Meat freezes well. We load up the freezer and defrost in the fridge a day or two before cooking.
Bread tends to last two weeks in the fridge, but our bread isn't what I'd consider great bread. It's just for toast or sandwiches.
Eggs last a long time in the fridge, well beyond their best by dates.
Milk also lasts two weeks just fine.
Veggies are the hardest if they can't be frozen. We tend to go fresh veggie heavy the first week and frozen veggies the following weeks until we get to the store.
There is bread made such that its shelve life is increased at the expense of taste and texture. It is sort of gummy, I find it hard to describe. But that's not the only option, you can buy normal bread but it's more expensive. With that in mind I too find it hard to do groceries every 2 weeks, some items do last but I prefer to get the fresh version.
Most Europeans know what this is, calling it something like "toast bread". In Britain and Ireland it's the default bread, but in most other European countries it's only used for making cheap, toast-based things.
One thing nobody said, a lot of what Americans buy is ultra-processed and designed to have a very long shelf life. It's going to last longer than most European foods to start with.
You can't show me zero of something which is why you can't divide by it. Zero is a placeholder for what we can't show which is also why negative number exist on the opposite side of it. Zero isn't a number, it too is a name.
> You can't show me zero of something which is why you can't divide by it.
I've shown you zero fish. The number of fish I've shown you is zero. If I tracked you down, brought a fish with me and showed it to you, I'd have shown you 1 fish, but I haven't.
I now hate YouTube so much because of ads that I wonder which is WORSE for their company — watching the ads or paying for premium, just to take the option that gives them least benefit.
The profit margin is just the shareholders' cut though.
What about the CEO salary? What about his secretary? The rent they pay for the buildings they occupy? Going down that path, how much of the operational expenses of private insurance meaningfully improve patients' health?
Google says UHC made $370b gross revenue and $12b net revenue.
Not sure what the total exec team costs but if the ceo was paid $10 million that’s 0.03% of revenue and 0.1% of profit.
Not defending them but I do think that people hear $10 million but don’t quite realize how huge the pie is.
I don’t think healthcare should be for-profit, but since we do have that system, what do people expect the ceo of a company (any company) that grosses $370b to earn?
It’s a bit reductive to just say something like “he makes $10 million dollars a year denying patient life-saving treatment”, just like saying the ceo of ratheon makes money from the killing of innocent Palestinians.
In the end though, I increasingly feel like the only moral solution is to have a single payer fully socialized system.
You're looking at the wrong numbers. Annual revenue for all of UnitedHealth Group was $370B. Only part of that was UHC insurance premiums. UHG is a huge conglomerate with multiple lines of business, some of which are unrelated to medical insurance or PBM. If UHG spun off the pure software parts of Optum it would be one of the country's 20 largest tech companies.
Not having to worry about any of those details is the whole point of having a competitive market in the first place. Any company that isn't serious about avoiding overpayment (even to their own CEO) becomes obsolete. And yes, it's a very competitive market with thousands of players and Obamacare setting a ceiling on rates and a floor on coverage.
If the market is competitive, you can trust that you're getting what you pay for. If it's not, well then that's the problem.
Small functions, small modules, small codebases. Keep state as contained as possible. Tightly control interfaces and interactions. Know your paradigms. Example: in Rust multi threading it loves putting things in an Arc. You have to tell it to use MPSC queues instead.
I love coding with AI. It has made me 100x more productive. I am able to work on my distributed event processing backend in Rust, then switch to my mobile app in Swift, then switch to my embedded device prototype and write a UART driver for a GPS module under ESP32.
I’ve been programming for many years but this level of productivity would have been unimaginable to me without AI.
Not really, since I was in management for five or so years with not much code writing. Embedded programming -- never in my life. Swift -- briefly, when it just came out years ago, but modern Swift is extremely different. Rust -- sure, I guess that's what I'd been doing before moving to management.
It's not the easiest language to learn, and in some respects it's one of the hardest.
Luckily, tooling is good.
It's one of those things where "trying" to learn it doesn't work. You should commit yourself to it and do it. Don't try too hard to understand all the abstractions and concepts. Just write an incredible amount of code. Your brain, over time, will pick up the patterns and make sense of the abstractions. It will do that while you're resting, not while you're actively trying to internalize. Just put in the "saddle time", and the brain will work its miracle.
yeah it's just a very strict language, I felt like everything I was typing was wrong (red syntax highlight). I get it though have to want it but also use it. For the moment I'm getting by with JS/Python/C++ some Swift.
Vulgarly unrelated to the subject — is anyone able to get a scrollbar to appear on this page on mobile? I kept reading and was completely unable to tell how long of a time commitment this read will be and whether I should continue or read it later.
How did we manage to lose perfectly good scrollbars in this race for colonization of mars and AI singularity?
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