nickpp

Because regulation (even well meaning regulation) always favors incumbents and hinders startups.

Aren't most of the current/latest advancements in health care coming from tech and software?

No, I am not saying I trust Meta's statements at all. I am just saying that I have ZERO trust in those "independent researchers".

I am old enough to remember when "researchers" and "experts" where warning us about the evils of violent FPS gaming, the whole panic over teens and kids playing Doom. The Columbine shooting. The end was nigh! Of course, it was all blown out of proportions...

people who spend their time thinking and researching the positives and negatives

If only we could trust such big hearted people who selflessly donate their time and expertise for thinking and researching - without asking those pesky little questions like "what do they stand to gain? what hidden agenda do they have? what ideology dictates their value system? what axes to grind and biases do they harbor?"

I'd rather trust the people directly involved, whose interests are mostly clear and known.

Even his examples (Meta, Google, Airbnb, Uber) are "hated and accused" mostly by pundits and activists. Their users and investors are overall rather happy with their services (all have healthy competition) and their employees can quit and work for somebody else at any moment.

The EU is trying relentlessly to read our IMs though.

Such sleeper accounts, slowly acquiring clout and time on the platform are often used by botnets. One day they (or their actions) will be sold to the highest bidder to upvote a comment, support an idea, ideology, politician or party or some virtual product, stock or coin.

I've been planning vacations with ChatGPT's Deep Research since it became available. Absolutely brilliant!

From finding areas with favorite activities for each parents, teens and kids to discovering the do-not-miss attractions and scheduling our vacation between them - it is invaluable. I've seen places I never knew existed in countries I've never been to before and speaking languages I did not speak.

Very few mistakes and lots more flexibility and understanding than the travel agents I used before. I do write long prompts though with lots and lots of info about our family and what we like to do.

Not yet good at finding, filtering by our criteria, comparing and booking available accommodation yet, but it's getting there.

Your clients and your competitors' clients did benefit from this overall faster coding output though.

Eventually your employer benefitted too, from more & happier paying customers.

Finally you indirectly befitted as well - through continued employment, salary and bonuses and stock (if you own any).

There are other reasons though. Whole house backup is a game changer. Battery always holding about twice our daily usage (or thrice a reduced, emergency usage) means I don’t really care about blackouts or midnight electrical company maintenance power cuts.

Direct to EV DC charging means I don’t buy gas, either. Planning for induction range and heat pump someday too. Not paying for energy about 3/4 of the year feels awesome.

Panels are cheap. Cheap to replace too. The newer ones have even better efficiency. My whole (unsubsidized) sistem cost around $15k here in Eastern Europe and amortization was never a consideration. Money well spent.

Finally, giving the finger to another crappy government-granted monopoly and proving once again that there is no such thing as a “natural” monopoly: priceless.

Software running modern farming runs in datacenters. For example, AI checking images from drones monitoring health of crops, then directing drones with treatment.

Software ate the world, now the world eats software.

Sure, I totally get you. Then higher costs, lower availability and crappier services (all due to less competition and more bureaucratic hoops) is a price you should be happily willing to pay.

Not a hobby, but a duty. I lived under both systems and I do not wish the horrors I’ve seen in my youth onto my children. Although at this point, it’s probably unavoidable. It seems that some lessons can only be learned by experiencing them, no warning is ever enough: Russia, communism.

Must be all that nationalization.

No, it’s the regulations. In less regulated, freer markets like vision correction eye surgery the costs went down and quality up. Even in health care.

State run (or heavily regulated) services around here in Eastern Europe: health care, education and housing. All incredibly bad and expensive, I pay huge chunks of my monthly salary for them and I try to avoid them at all costs. They get worse and more expensive with time too.

All the other services and products I use in my life, from the car I drive to the clothes on my back, the food I eat and the device I write this on are provided by private enterprise and they have become much better and cheaper in my life time.

Capitalism is the only known system that aligns natural, normal individual greed with the benefit and advancement of the society.

help humans instead of replacing us or squeezing us as hard as possible in the name of productivity

Increasing their productivity is helping humans.

These days it’s forbidden to deny the horrors of nazism but quite fashionable to glorify the murders and confiscations of communism and to even justify Marxist murderers like Mangione.

It still doesn't bother me as a consumer in the slightest. On the contrary, I am happy that laundromat exists in the first place.

Every year, the government comes around, reassesses my house value (always up, never down) and ask me to pay a percentage (always increasing) or they will take away my house which shelters my kids and family.

So, no, I am not too worried about Amazon removing my $9.99 book.

PCs are also made by corporations, together with PC parts. The reason computing became so cheap during the last 50 years was competition between said corporations. Competition that is also pushing the AI token price down and also encouraging - corporations - to come up with models that can run on user hardware.

So what are you ranting against?!

Own nothing and be happy.

Ah, here it is. Only governments can confiscate our property and force us into that. Governments and politicians that keep telling us how evil corporations are…

This is ignoring the people who capture the rent.

So my grandma shouldn't have been be deliriously happy with the new washing machine that saved her hands from bleeding weekly because the evil capitalist laundromat owners charged a few quarters per load?!

My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.)

It also did diddly squat in the market place and the company producing it ran out of business.

Again, a product is a set of tradeoffs. Those tradeoff include functionality, cost, logistics to build, even marketing and sales. Maximizing a feature to serve a loud minority (headphone jack!) but thus ignoring other features will simply make a product fail in the market place in time...

I hate when a technocrat at a multi-billion dollar company makes those decisions

Really?! So instead of the person hired and paid specifically to select and decide what the product should cost, look and work like, the person whose very pay depends on how well she chooses those product features for you - instead you'd rather have a faceless nameless bureaucrat who never pays the cost of his wrong decisions, who instead gets more power and money the more he panders to the vocal minorities that push populist agendas completely detached from the market place.

not giving a fuck about any other criteria

That is simply not true, such a company would go out of business fast. As I said before, any product is a set of tradeoffs. Cost (and profit) is just one of the factors. Ignoring the others does not make successful products.

profit

I love it when a company I buy from is successful. That means it's gonna be around to create more stuff for me to enjoy. It also means the awesome people working there get paid and are successful themselves. Finally, it means that its investors will back up more of this kind of companies that create useful products and services. Profit is great!

it can technically be done

At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.

I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market.

I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.

I know a few categories falling under this "richest 1% of the world’s people": entrepreneurs, highly paid professionals and politicians.

The entrepreneurs invested in or built from scratch organizations able to deliver an incredible amount of value to our society in the form of products, services and jobs. These organizations, called businesses, are the unsung heroes that differentiate our lands of plenty from the hunger and cold of countries suffering under communism.

The professionals (doctors, lawyers, programmers) worked in such organizations and added significant value ensuring their success in the market place.

Finally, politicians managed to convince a sufficient number people that only they can solve their problems and thus got themselves elected into positions where they control significant flows of money and/or influence.

Locally made stuff was bound to be a lot cheaper.

Lots of stuff under communism was cheaper on paper. It was also extremely crappy and/or unavailable.

So black markets were thriving, even though, as you rightly point out, used hard to get, expensive currency.

Paul Grahams's latest public statement on the issue:

https://x.com/paulg/status/2041363640499200353

Ignoring market realities and proclaiming to care about noble but unrealistic ideological goals is how the communist regime I grew up under managed to fail to even feed its population.

Safeway won’t starve and die if I decide to buy from Fred Meyer.

Ironically, you (along with a significant number of others) deciding to buy from a competitor will eventually lead to financial trouble for Safeway and thus to layoffs and losses for their investors (pension funds among them).

So, do you find your decision to buy from Fred Meyer "absolutely immoral"?!