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Car makers like Jaguar Land Rover and Peugeot have been accused of using special software to raise spare parts prices.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/04/car-makers-used-software-to-raise-spare-parts-prices/
Ever had the nagging suspicion that your car's manufacturer was charging outrageous prices for parts simply because it could? Software might be to blame. Reuters has obtained documents from a lawsuit indicating that Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot, Renault and other automakers have been using Accenture software (Partneo) that recommended price increases for spare parts based on "perceived value." If a brand badge or other component looked expensive, Partneo would suggest raising the price up to a level that drivers would still be willing to pay. It would even distinguish parts based on whether or not there was "pricing supervision" over certain parts (say, from insurance companies or focused publications) to avoid sparking an outcry.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:29PM (55 children)
Humans are the cause of cruelty.
If you don't like it, capitalism offers one way out in this limited circumstance. Somebody else needs to go in business manufacturing replacement parts. They can't do that because of imaginary property laws?
Again, the humans are the cause of the cruelty.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:36PM (2 children)
I hate humanity so fucking much. Just So. Fucking. Much.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:01PM
Good thing you're subsentient then or we'd have ourselves a problem.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:26AM
Do you own or can easily get your hands on an automatic weapon?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:46PM (48 children)
You've obviously never watched cats play with their prey. Humanity hardly has a lock on cruelty.
And capitalism is nothing but a minimally liberated version of monarchy, with all the cruelty that entails. It's just the result of the merchant-princes holding royalty hostage to get a bigger slice of the pie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:02PM (47 children)
Unrestrained capitalism eventually devolves into monarchy or oligarchy. Probably monarchy once the oligarchy devours itself. It's an inherent contradiction, and that inherent contradiction cannot be ignore. The working class then becomes the serf class.
Why should we put unrestrained capitalism in place then?
I've identified a problem that capitalism can address. Must we throw the baby out with the bathwater?
Socialism too, like capitalism, does not work in its pure, theoretical form.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:15PM (3 children)
Do you have citations for your presumptions? Unrestrained capitalism leeds to monarchy, or oligarchy? Surely you have some historical examples?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:58PM (2 children)
I have one: Republican Rome. Capitalism was extremely unrestrained by modern standards, scams were common, environmental and labor laws were basically non-existent. As an example of a not-uncommon practice: A house is on fire in the middle of a city. The richest guy in the city, with his slaves and hired thugs, shows up and uses force to prevent anyone from putting out the fire until the owner sells their house to the rich guy at a steep discount (the owner sells because the alternative to selling is having his house burn down and be left with nothing). By the time of Julius Caesar, the whole system had become unstable in large part because the people with political power, the senators, were also hogging the vast majority of the wealth, in effect forming a hereditary oligarchy. That created the grievances among the poor that allowed Julius Caesar and later Octavian to have the level of popular support they needed to take over and turn Rome into a monarchy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:37PM
That's interesting. I used to argue that Rome was capitalist, but the majority of the hivemind disagreed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by quietus on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:47PM
You should mention Sulla [wikipedia.org] here as the first to effectively exploit the inequality within Roman society for grasping near-unrestricted power. You should also stress the importance of the publicani [wikipedia.org], and not merely the political class, in creating this inequality. It is true that, to make the climb on the societal ladder -- the cursus honorum [wikipedia.org] -- vast amounts of money were needed, partly to create favour with the masses, and partly to create favour with more advanced members in the cursus honorum. To get those sums, loans were needed from rich businessmen -- the publicani -- in exchange, ofcourse, for profitable outsourcing contracts in future.
As a well-written description of the whole process, I can recommend Rubicon, by Tom Holland.
As to the deeper moral of the story: when you hear a politician preaching about the private sector being more efficient at something currently done by public administration (and throwing in some promise of tax cuts for the masses), you should know what's going on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:44PM (42 children)
You're conflating economic system with governing system. The term you want is anarchy not capitalism.
You're correct about absolute capitalism leading to badness but that's specific to where a monopoly (natural or otherwise) is involved. In any other case it will eventually correct itself.
Socialism, however, is predicated on human beings acting other than human beings naturally act and takes heavy-handed micro-management to exist for any length of time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:11PM (9 children)
That's definitely not the only market inefficiency that can occur under capitalism. Here's an example:
--------------------------------------
Consider a widget that requires a great deal of capital to produce. There's no red tape or anything, since this is absolute capitalism, but there's just a ton of stuff you need to make a minimum viable product (a railroad line, a high-tech bit of hardware that requires complex equipment to manufacture, etc). Now, there isn't a monopoly, but there are just 3 firms that have the necessary capital. Now, the CEO of each of those 3 firms, tasked with making more money, has three ways to do it:
1. They can make a better widget, which is good for the real economy because better widgets are now available.
2. They can cut their prices to try to gain market share, which is good for the real economy because now it's easier to get those oh-so-handy widgets.
3. They can raise their prices in the hopes that the other 2 firms will raise their prices in response, creating a tacit agreement that all 3 firms will overcharge for widgets and thus all make more money selling widgets. This is bad for the real economy, because it means widgets cost more than they really should based on the cost to produce said widgets.
Of those, option 3 is by far the easiest one to engage in. But, you cry, what prevents that is another competitor entering the marketplace. But the new competitor isn't going to be able to easily enter, because the step of acquiring the capital is often insurmountable. And once they do, they have no real incentive to not overcharge for widgets themselves. Plus mergers and acquisitions often prevent that new competitor from staying independent for long - remember, all 3 of the established players have a strong incentive to remove the upstart from the market.
And that describes a very large number of markets in existence today in capitalist countries.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:07PM (5 children)
Nah, startup capital isn't a problem. Unless the government is throwing roadblocks in the way or other exclusive deals have been signed, an investment in a third party with solid plans for kicking the shit out of the entrenched parties is easy money and enough investors know it. Either of those conditions is an artificial monopoly stifling competition though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:32PM (4 children)
... says somebody who I'm reasonably certain has never tried to acquire startup capital. I mean, have you ever walked into the offices of, say, Goldman Sachs, and said "I have a great idea for a business, can I have $100 billion?" Yeah, I didn't think so.
And here's the biggest barrier to getting the startup capital you completely left out of your considerations: Your most likely sources of startup capital are going to have to be very rich, because this is a business with a high capital cost. Said sources are quite likely to be invested in one of the 3 players in this oligopoly. That investment means that they want the gravy train to continue unabated, because they're getting some of that gravy.
If you want empirical evidence that oligopolies are inefficient, just look at the shareholder reports of players in the major oligopolies today. If all market players are reporting high profit margins then the market is inefficient, because those high profits come from charging a lot more for the product in question than it costs to produce it. Or you can examine markets where the price of a product has increased substantially without any significant increase in the costs of production.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:41PM
You are asking for WAY too much critical thinking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @11:31PM (1 child)
That's not how it works. How much capital were youtube or github blowing through before acquisition? How much is twitter blowing through now and what exactly is twitters business model?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:38PM
All your examples are relatively low-capital businesses, where they could and did release their product to the market after spending a few million at most. Modern examples of the businesses I'm talking about are much more complex than that, like designing and manufacturing microchips or nationwide cell phone coverage.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:56AM
Google had no problem raising capital to go against microsoft when it owned 90% of the browser market and people were talking abut having to get the government to step in and fix the situation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:35PM (1 child)
Or, say with a Car Analogy, (remember where we started?)...
The current manufacturer of that particular car still holds a bunch of patents, and it ties into their on-board computer system which tries to protect patents when parts are added.
You've got a warehouse full of parts, and you have to maximize profit. You take the best course of action on each part.
Part fits multiple model years? Price remains high. Part has several third party competitors, price stays low.
I suggest the Accenture software probably reduces prices on over stocked items, as well as those that can be obtained from multiple sources. But we won't hear about that on SN. Only price rises.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday June 08 2018, @12:40AM
That's because a competitive market is what is supposed to be happening. The fact that it's increasingly not the case is a problem that needs to be addressed.
"Man walks past bank, doesn't rob it" isn't news.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:18AM
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:02PM (7 children)
No, I am certain the terms I want are capitalism and socialism, not anarchy. The failure mode of capitalism you identify, monopoly, is the polar opposite of anarchy.
fwiw, I am in agreement with Mr. Vim that government is a violently imposed monopoly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:08PM (1 child)
Government will always be a violently imposed monopoly and the only solution is to keep governments as small / local as possible. By definition they are a violently imposed monopoly, how else do you prevent someone from doing something the majority deems unacceptable? Make all humans angels first, then we can discuss more idealistic forms of governance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:07PM
Read some Kropotkin.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:12PM (4 children)
Only in the case of a government imposed monopoly. Anarchy put no barriers against natural or collusion-based monopolies, only those created by a government. So, yeah, you need to pick your terms better.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)
How is a government imposed monopoly different from monopolies imposed by other means?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:47AM
You really can't figure that out? I mean, I would have thought the word "government" would give you a clue.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:32PM (1 child)
As soon as someone manages a monopoly on an essential resource, the anarchy party is over [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:49AM
Absolutely correct. Which is why anarcho-capitalism does not work but (minimally) managed capitalism kicks the shit out of everything else ever conceived.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:05PM (4 children)
You do realize that a pure capitalist will do everything in their power to create a monopoly yes? The "correct itself" statement is the crux of the problem here, markets don't give a shit and require a human to make a difference. What to do when someone corners the market and pushes out all competition? We see this all the time, and usually it is despite government regulation contrary to the typical libertarian lament about "if only the gov would stop meddling with the perfect market!"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:09PM (3 children)
You can read, can't you? Reread what I actually wrote instead of what you wanted me to say.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:27PM (2 children)
Ha, I'm not putting words in your mouth you giant fool. I'm pointing out that your theory of market self-correction fails miserably most of the time. It only works for markets where initial capital investment is low and there is no incumbent who can simply lose money for a little while to put you out of business.
How do you think you're so smart? I just don't get it, constant failures to understand what other people say and horrible logic and assumptions to prop up your own world views. You are too smart for your own good, but not smart enough to be any good. Except coding perl apparently, at that you are sufficient.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:50AM (1 child)
You're horribly wrong but you wouldn't listen if I pointed out a million examples, so I won't bother.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:53PM
Nice to see your usual tactic of "I'm right, you're dumb, i dont have to offer proof."
Cause history disagrees with you, only by the grace of government regulation do we have a halfway decent society. Go eat a turd you stupid bird.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:03PM (1 child)
One problem is that what we call the free market in the U.S. is nothing like it, it's just an excuse to let government created "corporations" walk all over everyone. In order to get at the form of Capitalism that might work, we will have to remove all corporate charters, all IP law, prescription laws, and any form of license. Significant imbalances in power between buyer and seller corrupt the whole system.
In U.S. politics, the "free market" people are mostly whackados who recoil in horror at the thought of any of those measures. They just don't like regulations that don't let them externalize their costs. I'll note that this includes the current Libertarian party which now supports corporate charters.
Interestingly, the same whackados are happy to let the corporations push the courts aside in favor of "arbitration" where the arbiters' financial future depends on pleasing the corporations.
It's also worth noting that even if we do implement that sort of economy, we'll see a lot of "miracle crystal water cures your cancer" type products out there. We'll also need major revisions to our civil courts so the people who get dumped on can afford to sue those who do the dumping unless we want to see a big increase in murders and "unfortunate fires".
Even with all of that, you'll need a mechanism better than handwaving to overcome the problem that money attracts money and so eventually someone ends up being the king.
In other words, "pure" Capitalism doesn't really work either. If something is going to work, it appears to be a balanced and mixed economy. In the U.S. that means a shift towards the left.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:53AM
You've mistaken me for someone who holds up the US economic system as an example of capitalism done well. It's not. Our government does the exact opposite of what it should every chance it gets. The US government never met a hand full of cash it didn't want to exchange for regulatory capture rather than ensuring competition like it should.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:46AM (16 children)
I think you're conflating the historically heavy handed governments that purported to implement socialism with the actual economics of socialism.
Scandinavia isn't doing nearly as much micro-management as the USSR/China used to, and I think they're getting much better results.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:02AM (15 children)
Really, we're talking more communism than socialism but let's skip that argument and just switch to the proper term for the duration of this discussion.
Yes, communists can show good results for a time. Eventually though every single communist regime runs into precisely the same problem. They run out of other people's money to spend.
Let me ask you a question and I want you to really think about it honestly. Is there ever going to be a point where a communist population says "Okay, we're getting enough help. No need to pile any more of a burden on the people creating all the wealth we're living off of."?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:13AM (14 children)
I believe tax rates in Scandinavia have been relatively flat for the last 30 years, as opposed to the US where I've watched some taxes yo-yo up and down while others (Florida Sales Tax, for instance) steadily increase from 3.5% to 7% and no sign of stopping.
Personally, I'd welcome a 25% VAT, if it meant that we could get healthcare costs under control and my company would turn over the $25K/yr they're spending on my health insurance to me in salary.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:17AM (13 children)
Man, I'd club a baby seal if it meant I only had to pay one kind of tax, ever. I wouldn't pick a VAT though. That's a horrible way to tax folks. All other reasons aside, it makes your population less willing to spend on non-necessities, thus harming your overall economy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:30AM (12 children)
Taxes on consumption are the method of choice for Caribbean nations like Anguilla, where they hope to attract and retain wealthy immigrants. I didn't see much struggle in the economies of northern Europe and they have all had crazy high VAT for a long time now. The Danish did seem to not buy new cars very often, but this was an observation I made while leisurely riding a bicycle clear across their major landmasses in less than a day each.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:34AM (11 children)
Oh it sounds peachy keen for a rich person but only if they make their money elsewhere. Flat percentage income taxes or even "progressive" income taxes harm the purchasing power of the majority of the population less than does a VAT; that's just fairly straight-forward math.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:57PM (10 children)
My personal feeling is that a quasi progressive income tax (and yes, Petunia, capital gains IS income, and if you are an artificial entity like a corporation your artificial self also makes demands on the infrastructure of the country and needs to pay taxes too...) should be both sufficient for the bulk of revenue collection, and a driver of economic growth.
When I say quasi progressive, what I mean is a flat tax that kicks in somewhere around the poverty level, coupled with a UBI sufficient for food, shelter, and occasional modest transportation sufficient to hold some kind of job. The people on the bottom have no excuses of desperation to justify crimes of theft/fraud, the people just above them have negative and then very low effective tax rates (providing purchasing power to the masses) due to their receipt of UBI, and even the wealthiest also receive UBI, but of course pay it back many times over with their flat tax on income.
Of course that will just turn the country into a pile of dope smoking TV addicts, but the present system doesn't seem to be avoiding that fate very effectively, anyway.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:10AM (9 children)
Foolish statement. They already do pay for infrastructure even without income taxes. They pay their bills and the taxes on them, they pay gas tax for roads, they pay to tag their vehicles, they pay extra to be DoT compliant, blah, blah, blah... The idea that income taxes are needed for infrastructure is simply a lie that you got fooled into believing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:35PM (8 children)
I thought we were trying to abolish VAT and other consumption taxes... sure, if we go consumption tax based, then everybody can quit paying income taxes: people and corporations.
If the people pay income taxes to cover federal expenses like social health care, military defense, roads, etc. I don't see why corporations get a free ride on that train. Well over 50% of my road use is in service to my corporate employer.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 09 2018, @11:34AM (7 children)
Look, man, if you want corporations not to have rights like people, you can't tax them like people. The desire to tax abstract concepts like corporations instead of sticking to human beings is why we have this corporate personhood bullshit to begin with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:01PM (6 children)
Fine, the day a corporation can no longer sue me in court, they can quit paying taxes.
See, from where I stand, it looks like the idea that a corporation can dodge taxes and deflect personal liability is why we have corporate personhood bullshit to begin with.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 11 2018, @02:01AM (5 children)
Can't drop the suing thing or you'd have to be unable to sue them to maintain parity. You can absolutely remove their ability to take any part in politics though.
Dodging taxes and deflecting personal liability is not a corporations thing, it's an anyone who can afford the accountants and lawyers thing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @02:53AM (4 children)
I'm all for this, but consider it an impossibility. Natural persons within corporations can directly or indirectly channel corporate funds to natural persons who act on the corporation's behalf. As it stands today, my employer (a corporation with 100K+ employees), has a whole political action department that does nothing other than monitor world politics and lobby for the corporate benefit. A former, smaller ~1K employee company made a point to hire an attorney who was the campaign treasurer for a prominent congresscritter, and used him exclusively for access to the congresscritter's ear - raising medicaid reimbursement for the company product, lobbying the FDA for additional approvals, etc.
See, this is one thing that Trump sort of is blowing in the right direction on (as randomly as he blows, some of it has to go the right way just by chance...) Reduction and simplification of laws and tax structures is a good thing. Simplify it to the point that there aren't "legal dodges" that you just have to hire an army to find and justify - o.k. that's the goal, at least start moving in that direction.
Anyway, what do the accountants and lawyers do with rich people's money to help them dodge taxes and personal liability, and so many other things like obfuscation of ownership, etc.? They set up corporations within corporations within corporations - as complicated as need be to achieve the goal. This is where your money really can buy you additional personhood, you don't have to employ real people, you can just rent an accountant and/or lawyer to set up a fake person or 50 for you, and let them deflect everything you would rather not have stick on you.
I'm not saying we should abolish corporations overnight, they're too entrenched in the world's systems - but turning the tide toward gradual dismantlement of them would be a good thing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 11 2018, @03:09AM (3 children)
Nah, man. There's ways around all those problems if you stop thinking of corporations as people. I mean even you are doing it. Corporations should be for being owned not for owning other things. Remove their ability to own anything intangible.
As for abolishing them, no way. They're the best way to organize a business that you don't want a single owner of for whatever reason. Stockholders could use more control over the boards but other than that the organizational aspect is fantastic compared to any other distributed ownership method.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @03:57AM (2 children)
That's a start, sounds like a major dismantling already.
So, keep the multiple natural persons' ownership, but retain personal liability for the actions of the corporation. These multiple owners may all want to be "silent partners" with no liability for whatever might go wrong, and that's O.K. up to a point, but we've gone beyond the O.K. point long ago - somebodies within the corporation have to retain liability for the corporate actions. When Union Carbide gasses a major city, the corporation should be required to put forward the responsible parties to stand trial for manslaughter and whatever other crimes have been committed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 11 2018, @04:30AM (1 child)
For the owners? No. They should never be able to lose anything but their investment unless they had some actual part in illegal activity. Guilt isn't communicable like that. You either had an actual part in or knowledge of the crime or you didn't. Anyone who did, crime's crime and they go to jail. Anyone who didn't, didn't and that's the end of it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @11:06AM
Yes, up to that point that they had actual part in illegal activity, such as demanding that a chemical plant be put online before adequate (legally required) safety checks can be performed: if members of the board are presented with information that legally required safety checks have not been completed and they vote to commence operations anyway, that's a responsible act.
This kind of responsibility wouldn't start and end with the owners, it would start with the line workers responsible for the safety checks and proceed upward through management to the level which "the buck stopped here" and they demanded go ahead to meet schedule against the law. Needless to say, today's normal levels of transparency and recordkeeping would need to increase to make this actually work - it's more than technically feasible and no more onerous than current regulatory compliance, just not practiced in a sufficiently transparent manner to find, for instance, exactly who within VW decided that cheating on emissions tests was in the company's best interests.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:22PM (2 children)
If we ignore imaginary property laws, then another way out in this circumstance is to steal the parts in question. While classic cars aren't life-or-death situations, the Heinz dilemma [wikipedia.org] is based on a real question of what to do in the face of business practices and laws that lead to unfair outcomes.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:04PM
Interesting. I wasn't aware of that dilemma. Is that an evolution of the dilemma of stealing a loaf of bread for a loved one that will otherwise starve?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:54AM
Once upon a time, long ago, there was a person in need of a trivial brake pad separator spring. This person called the parts counter and received the bad news that the $0.10 spring is only available as part of a $25 assembly, but was willing to pay the money to get the missing spring for their new car and possibly use the kit years later and just reuse the spring then, so they drove across town during their lunch hour to the parts counter that was supposed to be open for another 15 minutes before the parts department left for lunch. Upon arrival, the parts salesperson asked the person in need to wait, talked on the phone to friends for 5 minutes, then walked out and went to lunch themselves.
The person in need of a trivial brake pad separator spring noted that the new cars on the lot with alloy wheels left said separator spring exposed, where a little push with a finger would dislodge it, and just happened to find the needful spring laying on the ground after experimentally verifying this observation. Too bad, so sad that the purchaser of that new car had dragging brake pads on one wheel, such things happen when the dealer hires jerks to work the parts counter.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:24PM
I could watch a video of Vader rubbing a stick of butter through his fingers forever.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:35PM (30 children)
http://reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism [reddit.com]
Any corporation which is not using these and any other tactics available to them to maximize shareholder returns is violating their fiducal duty to their shareholders, leaving money on the table.
Non-car analogy: I use a seed/granular fertilizer spreader several times a year, at the mega-hardware store the other day I saw some dusty old electric handheld spreaders and thought to myself: "that would be kind of cool, I might like one of those" - no price, anywhere - I tell myself: "no way I'm paying more than $20 for this...." and take it to the register, where the price scans up as: $20.00 exactly. This is not an isolated occurrence, there's a whole segment of the workforce devoted to marketing: gauging what people are willing to pay for things and informing businesses of how to maximize profits based on these perceptions of value. Not surprising that software and algorithms can replace them, the one's I've met didn't seem terribly bright. Or, as Scott Adams said about Human Marketers: "that's all liquor and guessing."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @04:55PM
Scott Adams had an open bottle of Irish whiskey in front of him when he said that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:43PM (8 children)
Barter existed before capitalism. Under capitalism, the market produces alternatives and this exerts downwards pressure on prices for this class of goods. Under socialism, everyone starves to death. HTH.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:50PM (4 children)
That's not true. I was in the soviet union. Everybody was just hungry all of the time. And the food they got looked like it all came from the produce section of the dollar store.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:16PM (3 children)
I rode a bike from Hamburg to Berlin in the summer of 1990, the (visible in the stores) food selection in former East Germany at the time was still very "soviet flavored" - 98% empty stores, cheap bread - all one kind, really fatty sausage with almost as much bone as lean meat in it, and the occasional bottle of lemonade. The people I stayed with along the way had much better food, similar-ish to west Germany but without the commercial packaging. I did stumble into one "well stocked" store that was absolutely jammed with people for a selection that looked like a 1940s dollar store, if such a thing existed in the 1940s.
As for why things were that way at that time: I blame the people in power being overly greedy and squeezing everyone else as hard as possible, and those people being literally trapped in the situation, unable to choose better circumstances elsewhere. You see similar trends in the US in regions where the people are heavily exploited, but it doesn't get as dire because there is the option to go elsewhere for better opportunities. It's not about socialism vs. capitalism, it is about freedom and equality of opportunity.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:16AM (2 children)
I've done half a dozen road trips across the US and have never seen anything remotely approaching conditions that I saw in St Petersberg, one of the 'wealthier' locations.
I remember meals being catsup on spaghetti with margarine and bread. Yum. Even the poorest locations in the US, the Indian reservations, people have access to all kinds of food. Life expectancy was 55 years and drug abuse (alcoholism) was present everywhere.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:31AM
True, and I said "trending in that direction" nowhere in the US was as poor as Germany east of the ex-wall appeared to be in 1990. Even in the poorest corners of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, most roads are paved and 2 lanes: B5 - Federal Highway 5 from Hamburg to Berlin was one lane of cobblestones most of the way (they do have an "interstate-like" road too, but in the US the interstates are far from the only paved roads.) The whole week of riding through countryside, I saw one sad looking pony - no horses or other livestock except maybe the extremely rare chicken. Obviously it's better in the US, nobody is literally barred from leaving the state to find someplace with more opportunity, no matter how poor.
However, if you get to know the poorer side of the poorer counties in the poorer states in the US, you will find families eating catsup on spaghetti with margarine and bread that's not nearly as good as the East German standard brown loaf was.... these families get SNAP (food stamps) from the government, but they have little access to transportation to get to the wonderful WalMart super-stores that everyone associates with the poor side of the US, and once they get there their SNAP doesn't give them access to all the food that's on the shelves. Far more common in the US are those in deep poverty who have nothing to do in life but eat cheap food and get fat. And drugs and alcohol are very present in the poor side of the US, especially when you hit the Indian reservations.
It was definitely worse behind the former Iron curtain, worse by a lot, but those conditions are not absent in the US, just less pervasive.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday June 08 2018, @01:51PM
Which St. Petersberg?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:44PM (2 children)
Under socialism everyone eats nutraloaf [wikipedia.org]. Under capitalism everyone shops at a grocery store with a limited supply of a wide variety of products ranging in quality from "fresh organic" to "bulging can with foreign lettering" where only one person is allowed in at a time and the entrance line is ordered by wealth in descending order.
Under socialism, everyone is guaranteed a meal that never changes which they may not desire to eat. Under capitalism, the 0.01% get the best of the best, the 0.99% get the rest, and the 99% either risk getting sick from eating garbage or starve to death.
Shove your capitalism up your ass. If nothing else it will give your head some company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:31PM
Everything I've read on the matter leads me to believe it smells of socialism up there, right down to the brownshirts. Capitalism gives you the freedom to starve but there's food on the shelves. I've never seen many socialists trying to emigrate to socialist countries, victims of socialism trying to escape socialist states is another story. Crony capitalism and corruption should be the target of our ire, charging people what they are willing to pay in a system of voluntary exchange should not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:33AM
How does the food the 0.0001% eat differ from that of the rest?
It sounds like you've never been to a grocery store in the US. I don't know how you are coming up with "a limited supply", other than physical constraints of an infinite supply. Not only that, but there's amazon where you can buy just about anything in the whole world or get a ton of wheat delivered to your garage if you want @1.15$/kg. My friend told me that everyone there ate a loaf of bread a day/person (about 1/2 kilo each).
http://www.montanaflour.com/bulk-orders/ [montanaflour.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday June 05 2018, @09:46PM (17 children)
If they're able to raise the price significantly above the marginal cost of production, the market is unhealthy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:36AM (10 children)
When was the parts counter at an auto dealer ever a healthy market? Last time I caught a glimpse of the monitor, they've got 3 prices for every item: what they charge their own shop, what they charge other professionals, multiply the second one by two and add it to the first and that's what they charge people off the street.
Lots of unhealthy markets in the real world - effective price collusion between "competitors" - sham competition between brands owned by common parent companies. Get the government involved with regulations and the prices only get worse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 06 2018, @06:08AM (9 children)
yes, there are a great many unhealthy markets. Some caused by IP law, and some caused by failure to regulate the market. Government regulations didn't make the parts cost people off the street more than they cost professionals.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:07PM (8 children)
My mental picture of government regulated monopoly industries include AT&T in the 1940s-1980s, the airlines in the 1940s-1970s, cable internet even today in many markets... Generally not good for price or innovation, although the quality of service was better with the phone and airlines - not sure what psychopathic issues are driving Comcast today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday June 07 2018, @01:35AM (7 children)
But remember, the breakup of AT&T and forcing them to give "alternative" long-distance companies equal footing was also government regulation. Not allowing workers with chronic TB to spit on meat being distributed for human consumption (pun not intended) is government regulation.
Regulation works well when it's done well. Unsurprisingly, when it's poorly done, the results aren't as good. An automatic no to regulation is unlikely to be good regulation.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:27PM (6 children)
Yep. One of the problems I see with regulation is that changing it frequently is disruptive, while not updating it to reflect current conditions is worse. That's the "magic of the free market," the rules don't have to change because "there are no rules..." as long as "free" still respects all the participants in the game (spitting TB into food being one good example of lack of respect.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:39PM (5 children)
I wouldn't go so far as to claim that all regulations currently in place are well thought out, but a great many exist exactly because significant players in the market were not respecting all players (and 3rd parties). Many have become tangled and exacting because the disrespectful players made every effort to work around the regulations to continue behaving badly rather than becoming respectful.
Consider that for car parts, the only reason 3rd party parts are even a consideration is a law that the auto makers can't void all warranties just because you didn't use a "genuine" part or get it serviced exclusively at the stealership. In spite of that, the FTC has just recently informed a number of manufacturers that they are in violation of that law. The demands for right to repair are excactly because manufacturers are actively working to make sure that only "authorized" repair people are even able to work on "their" equipment.
I'm all for making regulations as simple as possible and I do not believe that the U.S. has been all that good at that goal, but the notion that the Free market will make regulations unnecessary goes against hundreds or years worth of evidence to the contrary.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 07 2018, @07:15PM (4 children)
Libtards forget this too often. The advances in quality and length of human life in the last 200 years due to pervasive government regulations have been huge.
Right to repair needs some real teeth, crawling inside the design process and questioning: does this really need to be glued shut instead of screwed? Could this be made of metal that would last 50 years instead of plastic that would last 3? Etc. And, if there is some incentive for making the item disposable, quantifying some kind of "non-repairable item" tax (or repairable item tax rebate, however you want to look at it) to put some incentive on the side of making things that last, instead of turning the whole commercial world into razor-blade sales.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday June 07 2018, @10:32PM (3 children)
We also need to kill things like parts on a private network (such as can-bus) that authenticate and refuse to inter-operate until some manufacturer authorized person uses a proprietary tool or software to "introduce" them. That has been John Deere's latest tactic to restrain free trade. Also the "smart" ink and toner carts where printers refuse to use (or just resist using) re-filled or 3rd party carts.
I'm really glad the EU put an end to special snowflake charging cables and the accompanying gold plated chargers for phones.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 07 2018, @10:46PM (2 children)
In ~1998 I looked into making an OBD-II reader software on Palm Pilots, all it would have required was a $5 cable between the car port and the handheld device.
Membership into the society that might have given me access to the connector part numbers started at $50K...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday June 08 2018, @12:27AM (1 child)
Exactly that sort of thing. I recall years ago attempting to repair a VCR (back when VCRs were still somewhat relevant). I needed to watch it loading a tape to see what was going wrong. I found the lid switch easily enough, but it actually had a well hidden light sensor as a backup to make damned sure it would refuse to operate with someone watching it. I can think of no valid reason for it, it was a repair defeat device.
The "special" screwdriver needed to open the original Mac and the odd nut driver for Sears televisions (back when TVs were expensive and typically repaired) come to mind as early examples.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 08 2018, @03:40AM
Safety, no doubt. Anybody who pinched a finger inside one of those devices was clearly going out of their way to defeat the built in safety mechanism. I'm sure there was just such a justification recorded somewhere in the company that made that repair defeat device. I had a similar TV that had some kind of field sensor that would defeat the picture with the case off, thing was: the field sensor went out of cal and the TV stopped operating unless you put another box around the back of it... Oh, and this happened about 1 month out of warranty.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:06AM (5 children)
Absolutely. It was made so by government monopoly. Namely patents. You can't make an aftermarket product that someone has a patent on and will not license out for a workable price. Personally, I could do without patents entirely and with severely limited copyright.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:25AM (3 children)
I'd like to keep the patents, but enforce a strong "right to repair" law. Patents expire, and that's a good thing. Copyright is shaping up to be the zombie apocalypse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 06 2018, @06:05AM (2 children)
Patent's don't expire nearly soon enough to help with auto parts. By the time a patent is dead, so are most of the cars that used that part.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:04PM (1 child)
We own four cars: the newest is a 2002, two 1999s and a 1991.
If people would fix the things they have instead of sending them to the landfill and buying new, not only would they save money, they'd also be saving the environment. Which is worse? A 1977 pickup truck that gets 10mpg for 41 years, maintained as needed, or a series of 6 new trucks constructed ~ every 7 years getting progressively marginally better gas mileage all the way up to 24mpg in the latest incarnation? If people were maintaining their old vehicles, they'd even be able to do things like bolt-on EFI to bring the gas mileage up from 10mpg to maybe 16, and when the transmission finally wears out (maybe twice in 41 years) they can replace with a new more efficient unit and be up around 20mpg on the old frame, but, no... the economy works better if we crush the old ones and keep the new ones rolling off the line - feeding the sales, marketing and distribution channels in favor of repair and maintenance mechanics.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday June 07 2018, @01:57AM
Personally, I agree. I tend to maintain things rather than replace as well when I can. But the patents and iron fisted control of parts makes that hard for cars, and impossible for many other things. One reason there aren't so many 20 year old cars on the road is that overpriced parts and special diagnostic tools make 10 or 15 year old cars a pain to maintain.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 06 2018, @06:03AM
Government monopoly certainly doesn't help, but it goes a lot deeper than that. Consider consumer electronics where the only difference between the high end device and the low end is the firmware they load, or a cut jumper. That is, they build all high-end models, then take an extra step to make it a low end model (and so the low end model is actually slightly MORE expensive to manufacture).
Then you see things like stores throwing people out for writing down a list of prices.
Some of it is because if ill conceived patent and copyright law, and some is because of the lack of consumer protection. You may be old enough to remember when retailers handled warranty returns for their customers as a matter of course. Now they expect the consumer to deal with the manufacturer and leave them out of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:23AM (1 child)
That corporations must seek maximum profit ASAP is a lie that keeps being mentioned on and on, probably spread to make some rich, like the CEOs that burn working companies quickly and get a golden parachute. Corporations have more duties than just giving back money, and they can codify that in their paperwork so any shareholder clearly knows what is going on with that company.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits [nytimes.com]
https://hbr.org/2016/09/the-maximize-profits-trap-in-decision-making [hbr.org]
Also leaving money on the table may be the difference between having a recurring business or a one off. But hey, let's kill the goose that lays golden eggs and move to another company.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:42AM
The must portion is the lie, but in reality most of them do end up in an extreme search for ever greater profits and growth, and when all the morally upright options have been exhausted, they're usually more willing to engage in a little exploitation instead of "disappointing the street." Because: the top end of management is highly incentivized with stock options and other mechanisms that make them highly sensitive to the opinions of the major investors, and those major investors are the ones who are only interested in maximal profits.
There are plenty of people who are interested in the good deeds of a corporation, but when those good people turn their retirement accounts over to money managers to maximize returns, they are no longer exercising human value judgements, they're just chasing maximum returns.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:22PM (9 children)
If they used abacus, you gonna blame abacus? Also, "artificial price"? As opposed to what, a "genuine price?"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:12PM (7 children)
Yes, exactly that.
Genuine price: cost of materials, labor, and overhead
Artificial price: whatever the fuckers can get away with, the result of collusion and/or monopoly positioning.
Blind faith in a system means blind faith in the components. Be blind if you'd like, but at least you've had one person point it out to you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:19PM
You forgot opportunity cost as part of the genuine price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:28PM (2 children)
There are 3rd party parts producers. You wanna decide the price, you produce your shit and decide whatever pricing scheme you want. The world doesn't owe you shit.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:38PM (1 child)
Oh look, the anarcholibertard pokes its head up!
At no point did I say I was owed anything you illiterate jackass. Your incredibly basic description of business pricing does not match a lot of reality, I think I may have to stop posting on this site since trying to correct dumbasses is probably a massive waste of time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @10:23PM
You may have to stop posting on any sites, then.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:11AM (2 children)
Bullshit. Genuine price is whatever it makes you the most money over the product's sales lifetime to charge. Yes, you absolutely can and should charge every penny the market will let you. Right up to the point where it starts lowering overall profits. Wal-Mart understands this, which is why they sell tons of shit for cheap. It's not because they want to do a public service, it's because they think they're going to make more money doing so.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:59PM (1 child)
Sociopaths like you are why government regulation is necessary. Thanks for fucking shit up ya douche.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:16AM
That's not sociopathy. It's lack of idiocy. What something is worth is decided by supply and demand. Saying you should get something for less than what it's worth marks you as the greedy one not the business.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:01AM
As opposed to an open-market competitive price where the buyer has not only access to multiple suppliers who compete for business by lowering prices to attract it, but also perfect knowledge of the quality of the products being offered and can make an informed decision regarding which one is the best value. Yeah - like that ever happens in the real world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:02PM (7 children)
This reminds me a bit of how some websites won't give you prices without knowing where you are (zip code etc)...all of which can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.
Apparently there are business that increasingly think the answer to "how much ya want?" it "how much ya got?". Fuck that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:21PM
Has anyone tested the different prices depending on zip code? Maybe compare San Francisco with Watts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:21PM
Examples? The only pricing like that I've seen uses local labor costs as part of the pricing. It's less expensive to get a new room addition in Baton Rouge than Boston.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:35PM (3 children)
This is exactly how voluntary exchange is supposed to work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:53PM (1 child)
It becomes a whole lot less "voluntary" when Tyson Foods Inc. teams up with Pepsico to make food prices insane. Ever head of "company towns"? You are so naive, it'd be cute if it wasn't so stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:37AM
Do you have examples where this is a problem because I have traveled extensively and not seen it. Are you talking about places like Barrow, Alaska?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday June 08 2018, @01:38AM
Actually, no. In a capitalist system, competition is supposed to drive the asking price down to the marginal cost of production. It's the seller asking himself (how much less is the other seller asking).
In many cultures (and the U.S. used to be one of them), asking too much more than the cost of production is seen as shameful and the people who do so seen as morally compromised at best.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:04AM
That tradition goes back beyond the invention of money.
WalMart in rural locations will charge 2 and 3x the price for identical product as compared to their stores in competitive urban locations, knowing that the rural customers can't/won't afford to drive 50 miles round-trip to save a couple of bucks on an item they need quickly.
🌻🌻 [google.com]