Have you even read the memo? His conclusion is that due to inability to have fair discussion about differences between sexes Google is focusing on wrong methods to improve diversity and should, instead of using quotas and other discriminatory practices based on gender and race, focus on introducing changes that would make coding more attractive to women, like pair training, or more people oriented approach.
How's that bad? I fail to understand how's that a bad conclusion. His objective is obviously to improve the diversity and inclusion, he's only pointing out that methods employed by Google are counterproductive due to their inability to engage in honest assessment of the problem due to their political bias.
Would it be possible to mention, what obvious stupid mistakes do you mean? I'd agree that from editorial point, the book is really flawed and it would require some serious trimming, but from the philosophical content, I often hear people say that but then usually it comes from some serious misunderstanding like "She says that only thing to care about is money" or that "She advocates that we shouldn't care about other people".
Companies are in the end just bunch of people working together to deliver certain goods or services. If we end up in a situation that I'm not able to freely exchange money, goods or services with other people of my choosing we will be living in a world without freedom.
So, it's not indeed god given, but it's essential to freedom that we're able exchange goods and services without 3rd party's approval. It's not a coincidence that first target of communists was private entrepreneurship.
Also I don't see any problem with limited liability, as everyone is aware of it up front. Limited liability is one of the greatest economic inventions of all time since it precisely removes the threat of ruining yourself forever by failing in a business venture. If removed you'd destroy drive to innovation - or rather, you'd limit it to people that are already rich and can afford to risk the failure. Poor people without capital would be extremely disadvantaged by that.
I genuinely wonder what is fair on demanding to use someone else's infrastructure on your own terms? It's not like Google or Apple were given those things, they build it on their own for huge amounts of money and with significant investment risks. I would see a point for example if there is a infrastructure build from public money, then yes, but we're talking private investment here.
If you don't like doing business with Google or Apple don't do business with them. You can also invest those millions and millions of dollars into creating your own successful mobile phones and operating systems and reap the benefits.
But of course it's cheaper to whine to EC to help you make more money.
Unfortunately, EC wouldn't wait a second to stick their stinking fingers into another industry.
If I want to sell my product through retailer, of course he will ask for part of the money. I'm using his infrastructure after all. And if he asks too much, then I simply wouldn't do business with him. And if he's only retailer on the market, yeah, that sucks. But either your product is so good that it will create a significant downside for retailer to not have it or if it doesn't maybe my product is not so good after all.
That's called doing business. If you want to drag government regulation into it, well done for helping to destroy another functioning market,
People who write these articles don't this this economycs bullshit. Don't you see, it's about justice and what's fair... I'm sure that if we tax the rich more we can give everyone gigabit broadband.
sigh...:-/
But why? I'm sure that when you buy Apple device you agree to a license agreement that you will repair that device only in Apple authorised places.
Regardless of what you may think of it, that's the agreement and I don't understand why Apple shoud be forced to do anything. If you disagree, the solution is simple. Don't buy Apple.
The fact that he lost his deals with Disney and YouTube are not big deal. You're right that about that - and this guy even acknowledged as much in his response and said that he understands why they did it.
The big deal here though is the fact that WSJ completely misrepresented his videos to portray him as actual nazi supporter and antisemite, which is far cry from being a person with bad taste for humor.
What pisses me off the most personally is that by doing this, WSJ waters down the actual, real problems with antisemitism. In the past, being an antisemite bore real stigma. When they bring bad jokes to same level as a worldview that is based on actual hatred towards Jews, they are guilty of exactly what they accuse him of - normalizing antisemitism.
btw - I have never heard of PewDiePie before this bruhaha started. I'm no fan of his and I really don't understand why he's so popular. But still, WSJ did a clear character assassination on him and the fact that such a reputable journal as WSJ is capable of this is massively worrying. This is on par of what Breitbart or infowars would do.
That would cause without doubt untold suffering in developing world. You'd make all those people virtually unemployable. There's for example quite solid evidence that child labor laws in Bangladesh forced children out of sweatshops into prostitution and beggary. Hardly positive result.
It's sometimes difficult to grasp, but you cannot legislate prosperity. If you try to, you cause misery. Every. Single. Time.
No, it's actually quite agnostic to the motivations involved. It's an equilibrium between what manufacturer does and what consumer expects. The corrective comes from consumer behavior. That's exactly what happened to early Chinese production where their devices where in terms of features on par, were priced lower but their quality was inferior and therefore consumers were not buying them. As soon as the quality and life expectancy improved, sales improved significantly.
As a side note, it always seems to me that in discussions like that, consumers are treated as idiots who can't possibly make decisions to reward or punish producers that produce products that are not aligned with their expectations. I'd say it's manifestly not true.
I don't think that your example is fair one. Of course their sales figures would drop if there was an explicit statement that it would fail exactly after two years. But that's how planned obsolescence works. If the notice said "You can expect your device to last about two years" (which you can read anywhere on the internet) their figures would be probably fairly unchanged. Because this knowledge is already out.
The problem with these kind of things is that of course if there would be a way to force manufacturers to provide extended lifetime without any consequences for the consumers, that would be great. But it never works like that. If you disturb the equilibrium between what manufacturer deems profitable and consumer (on average) accepts as sufficient by some external regulation, the result will be that in order to comply with that regulation, manufacturer will cut something else or increase price. That might be positive for some minority of consumers, but will damage the consumers in general, because they already showed (by buying the product anyway) that they don't particularly care about that specific feature.
It's the same situation like when you'd force Apple to keep audio jack. Why? Consumers who want to have jack on their phone will buy something else, those who value Apple products over their old headphones will buy Apple.
So, let's separate things here.
First, planned obsolescence is manufacturing principle that simply looks at how long your device is actually being used regardless of causes and subsequent optimization of manufacturing process to align with that expected lifetime. That will always bring savings regardless, unless you already make devices that last as long as they are being used on average. In other words, if you make devices less durable then your customer expects, he will leave you, if you're making devices too durable, you're wasting resources, because your customer will stop using it anyway. I think you'd be hard pressed to find situation where this is not useful and efficient practice.
Second, regarding the information you ask for - it's already available. The manufacturer gives you quite clear indication how long he's guaranteeing correct function of the device - that's what warranty is for. As you rightly point out, that's quite routine in tech industry.
As to b) Apple and I think Samsung as well provide option for you to leave your obsolete device in store or they will provide prepaid return envelope.
Partially yes, I know about the John Deere case, but that doesn't change my position on the proposed legislation. The problem is Digital Millennium Act and the way it's written. If politicians want to fix something, they need to fix or repeal Digital Millennium Act, not introduce another legislation that attempts to prohibit manufactures from doing what Digital Millennium Acts permits them to do. That's completely mental.
So how about not engaging in insane plans and instead working on ways to adapt to changing environment?
That's how human race suceeded anyway.
I know it sucks for some places, but to me these plans sound like trying to rebuild the Bering sea land bridge to travel to Asia rather than using an airplane.
It's impossible that it works without external power source.
You have all sorts of losses in process like that, for it to work indefinitely there would have to be lossless process.
Only instance I know of where permafrost has to be kept frozen artificially is railway to Lhasa and that's massively costly from both money and energy point of view.
Yeah, that's perfectly correct, but that just confirms my argument. This process is never driven by singular factor, as anything in market, it's equilibrium. Right now the magic number seems to be 2 years. It would be then wasteful to build phones that last significantly longer periods.
This of course does not apply universally, there will be always a niche for people who prefer this feature above all.
Besides, this applies to almost any other sector of manufacturing. Bottom line, planned obsolescence is very useful concept, that makes use of resources more effective, rather then opposite.
That's not a ulterior motive - there's no secret that companies have just one goal - make money.
So they look at all the possible ways to make money. But you as a consumer have great power - not to buy their stuff.
That's all we need. Influencing design choices through legislature just limits innovation and options for consumers. Like here in EU where they wanted to make USB legally mandatory in all phones.
Planned obsolescence is actually very environmentally friendly.
It doesn't work like many people thing - evil company deciding that it will make all devices last some arbitrary amount of time so that everyone needs to buy a new one.
Companies track average retention rates of their devices for all the reasons (new models, rate of technological development) and plan to adjust lifetime of their devices to this time frame.
It's actually pretty wasteful make devices that can last 10 years if they are being discarded after 2 years because consumers want new phone / more powerful computer.
I hope Apple will prevail and prevent this bullshit to become a law.
Apart from general problem with forcing actual private company to produce something it doesn't want to produce which will inevitably damage consumers in some way how do you want to enforce it?
Will there be price controls on spare parts?
And how do you even judge whether the product is 'reparable'? Will there be some committee that would have to approve that or how do you enforce it otherwise?
Consumer electronics market is one of the few where government didn't manage to f*** things up too much because it didn't interfere. I guess it's time to change it we had it too good.
Except this will not have any impact on competition whatsoever. It's just price fixing which is the stupidest form of regulation possible.
What will happen is that mobile carriers will cash back that money on their local customers by effectively separating and charging the service (you will have plans without roaming that will have lesser monthly payments and plans with roaming with higher monthly payments or something to that tune)
Also, it's damaging carriers that already have friendly roaming plans because it's destroying their competitive advantage by making it mandatory for everyone. So it will be the loss for everyone, consumers will be forced to make choices they would otherwise wouldn't do, carriers will have to change their strategies and for what? That some Brussels' bureaucrats can pat their backs how they're helping to create unified Europe.
Besides that, since it's only relevant to roaming not international calls and it contains provisions for carriers to charge premiums if the SIM is used in roaming mode for longer periods it will contribute nothing to potential cross boarder competition.
Here's how monopoly really works:
A company large enough lobbies the government to introduce regulation that would make it impossible for a competitor to enter the market without starting substantial cost (government auctioned frequencies in this particular case) or over which regulatory body it can take control of through bribes and kickbacks.
This has been the ONLY way how monopolies were and are sustained over longer periods of time. Just try to find historical example of monopoly that was able to sustain itself based only on market principles. Even in case of natural monopolies, there are always substitutes. Just look at Microsoft which at one point had very significant market power, which it tried to keep very hard exactly by attempting to blackmail consumers and sue competition into oblivion. How did that work out for them?
Free market theory doesn't actually care about your issue. Competition is not a goal, it's a tool to deliver best product for lowest price. If the company is willing to sell products to the consumers bellow its production price, it's already a win for consumer. No need for competition there! Moreover it's never sustainable over longer periods. Every time company tries that, consumer profits and company does not succeed to kill the competition in long run.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you even read the memo? His conclusion is that due to inability to have fair discussion about differences between sexes Google is focusing on wrong methods to improve diversity and should, instead of using quotas and other discriminatory practices based on gender and race, focus on introducing changes that would make coding more attractive to women, like pair training, or more people oriented approach.
How's that bad? I fail to understand how's that a bad conclusion. His objective is obviously to improve the diversity and inclusion, he's only pointing out that methods employed by Google are counterproductive due to their inability to engage in honest assessment of the problem due to their political bias.
Would it be possible to mention, what obvious stupid mistakes do you mean? I'd agree that from editorial point, the book is really flawed and it would require some serious trimming, but from the philosophical content, I often hear people say that but then usually it comes from some serious misunderstanding like "She says that only thing to care about is money" or that "She advocates that we shouldn't care about other people".
Companies are in the end just bunch of people working together to deliver certain goods or services. If we end up in a situation that I'm not able to freely exchange money, goods or services with other people of my choosing we will be living in a world without freedom.
So, it's not indeed god given, but it's essential to freedom that we're able exchange goods and services without 3rd party's approval. It's not a coincidence that first target of communists was private entrepreneurship.
Also I don't see any problem with limited liability, as everyone is aware of it up front. Limited liability is one of the greatest economic inventions of all time since it precisely removes the threat of ruining yourself forever by failing in a business venture. If removed you'd destroy drive to innovation - or rather, you'd limit it to people that are already rich and can afford to risk the failure. Poor people without capital would be extremely disadvantaged by that.
I genuinely wonder what is fair on demanding to use someone else's infrastructure on your own terms? It's not like Google or Apple were given those things, they build it on their own for huge amounts of money and with significant investment risks. I would see a point for example if there is a infrastructure build from public money, then yes, but we're talking private investment here.
If you don't like doing business with Google or Apple don't do business with them. You can also invest those millions and millions of dollars into creating your own successful mobile phones and operating systems and reap the benefits.
But of course it's cheaper to whine to EC to help you make more money.
Unfortunately, EC wouldn't wait a second to stick their stinking fingers into another industry.
If I want to sell my product through retailer, of course he will ask for part of the money. I'm using his infrastructure after all. And if he asks too much, then I simply wouldn't do business with him. And if he's only retailer on the market, yeah, that sucks. But either your product is so good that it will create a significant downside for retailer to not have it or if it doesn't maybe my product is not so good after all. That's called doing business. If you want to drag government regulation into it, well done for helping to destroy another functioning market,
Why didn't people think of that, right, those municipal fiber networks that just appear on it's own and are free to use. Everybody's happy!
People who write these articles don't this this economycs bullshit. Don't you see, it's about justice and what's fair... I'm sure that if we tax the rich more we can give everyone gigabit broadband. sigh...:-/
I don't think you have that right. You have the right not to buy Apple device if you disagree with their license agreements though.
But why? I'm sure that when you buy Apple device you agree to a license agreement that you will repair that device only in Apple authorised places. Regardless of what you may think of it, that's the agreement and I don't understand why Apple shoud be forced to do anything. If you disagree, the solution is simple. Don't buy Apple.
The fact that he lost his deals with Disney and YouTube are not big deal. You're right that about that - and this guy even acknowledged as much in his response and said that he understands why they did it.
The big deal here though is the fact that WSJ completely misrepresented his videos to portray him as actual nazi supporter and antisemite, which is far cry from being a person with bad taste for humor.
What pisses me off the most personally is that by doing this, WSJ waters down the actual, real problems with antisemitism. In the past, being an antisemite bore real stigma. When they bring bad jokes to same level as a worldview that is based on actual hatred towards Jews, they are guilty of exactly what they accuse him of - normalizing antisemitism.
btw - I have never heard of PewDiePie before this bruhaha started. I'm no fan of his and I really don't understand why he's so popular. But still, WSJ did a clear character assassination on him and the fact that such a reputable journal as WSJ is capable of this is massively worrying. This is on par of what Breitbart or infowars would do.
That would cause without doubt untold suffering in developing world. You'd make all those people virtually unemployable. There's for example quite solid evidence that child labor laws in Bangladesh forced children out of sweatshops into prostitution and beggary. Hardly positive result.
It's sometimes difficult to grasp, but you cannot legislate prosperity. If you try to, you cause misery. Every. Single. Time.
great loss for uber drivers and customers alike.
If you don't like conditions that Uber provides, don't freaking work for them!
...that's not how planned obsolescence...
No, it's actually quite agnostic to the motivations involved. It's an equilibrium between what manufacturer does and what consumer expects. The corrective comes from consumer behavior. That's exactly what happened to early Chinese production where their devices where in terms of features on par, were priced lower but their quality was inferior and therefore consumers were not buying them. As soon as the quality and life expectancy improved, sales improved significantly.
As a side note, it always seems to me that in discussions like that, consumers are treated as idiots who can't possibly make decisions to reward or punish producers that produce products that are not aligned with their expectations. I'd say it's manifestly not true.
I don't think that your example is fair one. Of course their sales figures would drop if there was an explicit statement that it would fail exactly after two years. But that's how planned obsolescence works. If the notice said "You can expect your device to last about two years" (which you can read anywhere on the internet) their figures would be probably fairly unchanged. Because this knowledge is already out.
The problem with these kind of things is that of course if there would be a way to force manufacturers to provide extended lifetime without any consequences for the consumers, that would be great. But it never works like that. If you disturb the equilibrium between what manufacturer deems profitable and consumer (on average) accepts as sufficient by some external regulation, the result will be that in order to comply with that regulation, manufacturer will cut something else or increase price. That might be positive for some minority of consumers, but will damage the consumers in general, because they already showed (by buying the product anyway) that they don't particularly care about that specific feature.
It's the same situation like when you'd force Apple to keep audio jack. Why? Consumers who want to have jack on their phone will buy something else, those who value Apple products over their old headphones will buy Apple.
So, let's separate things here. First, planned obsolescence is manufacturing principle that simply looks at how long your device is actually being used regardless of causes and subsequent optimization of manufacturing process to align with that expected lifetime. That will always bring savings regardless, unless you already make devices that last as long as they are being used on average. In other words, if you make devices less durable then your customer expects, he will leave you, if you're making devices too durable, you're wasting resources, because your customer will stop using it anyway. I think you'd be hard pressed to find situation where this is not useful and efficient practice.
Second, regarding the information you ask for - it's already available. The manufacturer gives you quite clear indication how long he's guaranteeing correct function of the device - that's what warranty is for. As you rightly point out, that's quite routine in tech industry.
As to b) Apple and I think Samsung as well provide option for you to leave your obsolete device in store or they will provide prepaid return envelope.
Partially yes, I know about the John Deere case, but that doesn't change my position on the proposed legislation. The problem is Digital Millennium Act and the way it's written. If politicians want to fix something, they need to fix or repeal Digital Millennium Act, not introduce another legislation that attempts to prohibit manufactures from doing what Digital Millennium Acts permits them to do. That's completely mental.
So how about not engaging in insane plans and instead working on ways to adapt to changing environment? That's how human race suceeded anyway. I know it sucks for some places, but to me these plans sound like trying to rebuild the Bering sea land bridge to travel to Asia rather than using an airplane.
Not really since they would have to place it into geostationary orbit:-)
It's impossible that it works without external power source. You have all sorts of losses in process like that, for it to work indefinitely there would have to be lossless process. Only instance I know of where permafrost has to be kept frozen artificially is railway to Lhasa and that's massively costly from both money and energy point of view.
Besides, this applies to almost any other sector of manufacturing. Bottom line, planned obsolescence is very useful concept, that makes use of resources more effective, rather then opposite.
That's all we need. Influencing design choices through legislature just limits innovation and options for consumers. Like here in EU where they wanted to make USB legally mandatory in all phones.
It doesn't work like many people thing - evil company deciding that it will make all devices last some arbitrary amount of time so that everyone needs to buy a new one.
Companies track average retention rates of their devices for all the reasons (new models, rate of technological development) and plan to adjust lifetime of their devices to this time frame.
It's actually pretty wasteful make devices that can last 10 years if they are being discarded after 2 years because consumers want new phone / more powerful computer.
I hope Apple will prevail and prevent this bullshit to become a law. Apart from general problem with forcing actual private company to produce something it doesn't want to produce which will inevitably damage consumers in some way how do you want to enforce it?
Will there be price controls on spare parts?
And how do you even judge whether the product is 'reparable'? Will there be some committee that would have to approve that or how do you enforce it otherwise?
Consumer electronics market is one of the few where government didn't manage to f*** things up too much because it didn't interfere. I guess it's time to change it we had it too good.
Except this will not have any impact on competition whatsoever. It's just price fixing which is the stupidest form of regulation possible.
What will happen is that mobile carriers will cash back that money on their local customers by effectively separating and charging the service (you will have plans without roaming that will have lesser monthly payments and plans with roaming with higher monthly payments or something to that tune)
Also, it's damaging carriers that already have friendly roaming plans because it's destroying their competitive advantage by making it mandatory for everyone. So it will be the loss for everyone, consumers will be forced to make choices they would otherwise wouldn't do, carriers will have to change their strategies and for what? That some Brussels' bureaucrats can pat their backs how they're helping to create unified Europe.
Besides that, since it's only relevant to roaming not international calls and it contains provisions for carriers to charge premiums if the SIM is used in roaming mode for longer periods it will contribute nothing to potential cross boarder competition.
Here's how monopoly really works: A company large enough lobbies the government to introduce regulation that would make it impossible for a competitor to enter the market without starting substantial cost (government auctioned frequencies in this particular case) or over which regulatory body it can take control of through bribes and kickbacks.
This has been the ONLY way how monopolies were and are sustained over longer periods of time. Just try to find historical example of monopoly that was able to sustain itself based only on market principles. Even in case of natural monopolies, there are always substitutes. Just look at Microsoft which at one point had very significant market power, which it tried to keep very hard exactly by attempting to blackmail consumers and sue competition into oblivion. How did that work out for them?
Free market theory doesn't actually care about your issue. Competition is not a goal, it's a tool to deliver best product for lowest price. If the company is willing to sell products to the consumers bellow its production price, it's already a win for consumer. No need for competition there! Moreover it's never sustainable over longer periods. Every time company tries that, consumer profits and company does not succeed to kill the competition in long run.