
What is the unique value proposition of selling honey? - weinzierl
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/09/bzzz/
======
D_Alex
This reads like some kind of allegory, but I really cannot tell for what...
But taking it in the somewhat literal spirit: we have a good analogy in the
market with free range eggs.

Here in Australia, "free range" hens must be kept at no more that 10,000
head/hectare (or 1 sqm of land per hen). This is massively better than battery
hens, which are kept at as low as... 0.03 sqm of cage/hen. The animal welfare
benefits are huge, battery hens have a truly horrible existence, to the point
where I believe that it is immoral to farm them in this way.

But some producers are advertising lower stocking densities, some 6 sqm per
hen and others even 10 sqm. They are charging a small premium for their eggs,
and some people pay it, because they like the idea of animals being treated
well.

So yes, many people are prepared to pay a bit extra for ethical treatment of
animals. Even people (if that where the original post was pointing at).

~~~
beloch
Given the source, I interpreted it as referring to how companies treat their
employees (i.e. worker bees). The story suggests that, all other things being
equal, consumers might gravitate towards companies with a reputation for
treating their employees well. Mark, Barry, and Willy produce the same product
at the same price, so how they treat their employees becomes how they
differentiate themselves and win over consumers.

The problem is, all things are rarely equal and, if they are, businesses
usually find ways of differentiating themselves that consumers care more about
than happy employees. When Mark starts losing business to Barry, he's going to
cut his prices, spend more on advertising, etc.. Treating his bees poorly may
actually help him squeeze more honey out of them at less cost, so Barry might
not be able to match him without starting to mistreat his bees a little too.
Willy's costs are probably the highest of the three, but maybe he can use
clever advertising to portray his product as a luxury item that's somehow
better than Barry's or Mark's, even if it's identical. If that fails he'll
have to choose between happy bees and not going bankrupt.

I'd like to live in a world where a virtuous feedback loop would lead to
companies treating their employees better and better, but history says that's
not the world we live in. We live in a world that has had to come up with
labour unions when spirals of mistreatment and cost-cutting got out of hand.
We live in a world where executive pay is going stratospheric while employee
benefits are stagnant. Perhaps it would be a better world if people cared more
about how companies treat their employees, but I honestly don't see how you
get people browsing Amazon to choose the honey that's $2/jar more just because
it came from slightly happier bees.

~~~
zentiggr
> I'd like to live in a world where a virtuous feedback loop would lead to
> companies treating their employees better and better, but history says
> that's not the world we live in.

This sort of comment always reminds me of the quintessential answer: "That's
funny, I always thought the world is what we make of it."

If the only way we can 'make consumers choose better' is to continually
publish and broadcast the worst corporate behavior in order to spur these
kinds of shifts, then so be it.

Scream loudly about WalMart subverting local government and historical
societies to build a store within sight of Tenochtitlan.

Republish over and over about Amazon's treatment of their fulfillment workers.

Shame them all until the baseline is as much better as we can make it, and
keep pushing against the entropy.

That's how we make the world better.

~~~
lonelappde
The world is what We make it, not what I make it. The coordination problem is
not trivial.

Look at our lord and savior Bill Gates saving the USA from novel Corovirus. He
could only do that after amassing a fortune from being a criminally savage
businessperson for decades.

~~~
glofish
This is an excellent point.

Bill Gates has money because he created a product that set back science for
decades. It still hurts science today. The way Windows differentiates itself
from Unix for the sole reason of not being compatible has set back society
immensely.

Today, after having made all this money exploiting society in general and
science in particular, he is putting money back into science.

Look, I get it, the damage is already done, so him putting money back we gain
some back. And I also get it. If he didn't do it someone else would have.

But does that absolve the sins of the individual?

~~~
prestonh
How does Windows hurt science?

~~~
glofish
They were trying to kill off Linux for decades. Yet most science ran on
Linux/Unix.

there is actually a lot many more examples, I am just summarizing in one
sentence.

------
mikekchar
A long time ago I worked for Bell Northern Research (which eventually became
Nortel, which eventually became insolvent). When I started there they had a
retirement savings program where they would sell you BNR stock for half price
(though you had to have it in your retirement savings). I said "No thank you"
and a lot of people thought I was crazy. At the time the company was pulling
in $18 billion a year and was making about a 5% profit (later it was found
that the "5% profit" was actually accounting fraud but nobody knew that at the
time).

From my perspective, I looked at the business and realised that we were
selling hardware at a 90% margin, but only eking out a 5% profit. Where was
the rest of the money going? Well, obviously to a very inefficient rest of the
company that included the software developers (me ;-) ). Later it was
discovered that it was also being imbezzled, but we didn't know about it at
that time...

It occurred to me, though, that the only thing that was stopping a company
from eating our lunch was that telecom hardware was a capital intensive
industry. So you had BNR, AT&T and Seimens capturing practically the entire
market, each being as incompetent as the other, but with very little
distinction between them. All you needed was a few billion dollars to shake
the industry to the core. And, of course, that happened. It took only a couple
of years (less than 5 I think) for Nortel to go from 100K employees to zero
(with the executives slurping up the retirement fund to pay for their own
"retention bonuses", because what would have happened if the executives bolted
as soon as bankruptcy proceedings started??? I mean apart from retirees
actually getting their retirement money, obviously...)

But it's a funny thing because if I were Barry, I would be selling mead. And I
would open up a visitor centre in a "Ye Olde Merry England" vibe where you can
sample the mead. And I would start an onsite bakery with Knights in Shining
Armour theme where I would test out recipes on my customers. And I would make
a joint venture with a factory producing confectionary to try to get into
convenience stores. And because I would quickly run out of honey to sell, I
would buy up all of Mark's honey and eventually just acquire him so that he's
my employee. Then I'd fire him because he's mean to bees.

But realistically, I think Barry will just be trying to figure out how to
siphon a few extra dollars out of the business and into his pocket because
starting up new ventures are risky and hard work.

~~~
ainiriand
I want to work for you.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Only if he has a liberal mead-while-at-work policy

------
mwcampbell
This is obviously about Uber and Lyft. So I want to drop the analogy and talk
about the real thing.

I live in Bellevue, WA. I would gladly pay 1.5x the normal rate for Uber in
this area to get my rides from a company that (a) is sustainably profitable
(b) treats its drivers ethically, e.g. hiring them as real employees, and (c)
otherwise has the same rider experience as Uber and Lyft, e.g. booking through
an app, average ETA under 10 minutes, automatic payment. Should I expect to
pay more? If so, how much more? 2x? 5x? 10x?

~~~
blowski
I don't know if it's "obviously" about Uber and Lyft, rather than any rivalry
in which one side's value proposition includes a huge element of "we're not
the other side". Could be about Google vs DuckDuckGo, WhatsApp vs Telegram,
iOS vs Android, or even Trump vs Biden.

~~~
jdm2212
The author works (worked?) at Lyft.

------
perlgeek
You don't need a unique value proposition to sell honey.

If you sell honey, usually your goal isn't to monopolize the whole honey
market. You just sell honey.

You might be nearer to some customers. You might be a bit friendlier, or have
slightly better marketing. Or people just buy from you because they are used
to it.

Not every market is a winner-takes-all, and that's very good.

This translates to software as well. There are many markets that don't have
one monopolist, and space for many players.

~~~
hrktb
> you might be nearer to some customers

> have slightly better marketing

These two parts are not trivial, and would justify the success of one over the
other. Being near customers for a bee keeper requires a decent effort, in
particular if the production itself is done near the selling shop. You just
don't move your hive in a busy street corner like you'd open a Starbucks.

Marketing honey is also the main premise of this piece: what value proposition
do you push forward. It will be a world of difference between someone pushing
for 'local honey' on TV and someone else pushing for a healthy lifetstyle and
building a customer community around that.

Overall I feel that the person writing this piece doesn't really like honey
much, but I get that it was just some analogy. I wish she took a field she is
more interested in.

------
zaat
What is the unique value proposition of anything? If Barry sells higher
quality honey, what keeps someone else from coming in and sell even better
quality honey, and for half the price? Oh, you say that it isn't simple to
make good quality honey cheaply? Well all the same, it ain't easy to be
profitable while providing all your bees with top notch health care too.

~~~
sigmaprimus
I think thats the point of the article, UVP or unique sales proposition is how
a company can market their identical product better than their competition.

The article suggests that by simply treating bees better, or infact less bad
would result in a marketable difference translating to better honey sales.

The reality is a successful honey company would employ several UVPs to promote
their product and protect their market share.

Perfume companies have done this for years, same with beverage companies.

Probably the closest analogy would be ethical investment brokers and mutual
fund groups who claim that they only put your money into "good" companies.
Sure your returns might not be as high but atleast you can sleep well at night
knowing your not supporting "evil" companies.

One last point, honey is a very unique farm product, other than the initial
startup cost and minimal labour there are no other inputs required. Almost
every other livestock requires feed, medicine, intensive management etc...

Bees are very independent, require very little management and produce an easy
to market long lasting cash crop.

(Unlike free range chickens, although chickens and bees live well together)

~~~
bregma
> One last point, honey is a very unique farm product, other than the initial
> startup cost and minimal labour there are no other inputs required. Almost
> every other livestock requires feed, medicine, intensive management etc...

Ah, the naivete of someone who does not keep bees.

~~~
sigmaprimus
Nice snide comment without anything to support your arrogance.

What inputs other than labour and maybe some antibiotics for foulbrood
disease?

Back up your attitude next time you think your right.

If you had any concept of the cost of keeping any other livestock just fed you
might appreciate how relatively easy bees are to keep and profit from their
production.

~~~
sigmaprimus
Here is an article that seems to break down the costs, let me know in your
infinite wisdom which part is missing.

[https://www.kelleybees.com/blog/kelley-
beekeeping/thinking-k...](https://www.kelleybees.com/blog/kelley-
beekeeping/thinking-keeping-bees-part-1-costs-time-intangibles/)

------
tenant
All Mark has to do is reduce his price a little. People will then rationalise
their decision to buy Mark's honey by telling themselves that if the price was
the same they'd buy Barry's because they care about the bees.

~~~
jiofih
Exactly! Then they start a race to the bottom, take up debt, and spend on
marketing until one goes bust! By then everyone is buying imported synthetic
honey which is way cheaper anyway. Heil capitalism.

~~~
nostrebored
... so you're saying at the end of the day consumers got a better product
that's ostensibly valuable and accessible?

~~~
pjc50
They get a product which is worse, but in very non-obvious ways, and has some
sort of negative environmental impact that is hard to identify until years
later.

~~~
xaxsacsdaffbnk
They get what they pay for. And here in my capitalist country, "good" honey
seems to be selling just fine.

~~~
wayoutthere
The biggest problem with modern capitalism is that you don't know if something
is "good" before you buy it. The information asymmetry / obfuscation ensures
that.

~~~
xaxsacsdaffbnk
That's nonsense. Businesses offering bad products go out of business. Can't
say the same for state owned industries.

Of course it is also up to you. You can always choose to buy from dodgy
sellers to save a few bucks.

Brands exist for a reason, to guarantee a certain quality.

~~~
jiofih
Information asymmetry and lack of regulation allow bad businesses to stay in
business. I’m sure you can recall quite a few if you sit down for a minute.

Also poverty (lack of options). Think of how the 70% of the population who
barely gets by would read your comment on being cheap.

~~~
xaxsacsdaffbnk
Which ones can you recall? If you can "recall" them, why do you still do
business with them?

Don't know about the US, but I think most people there shop at Walmart or
Costco. Seems to work fine.

------
moron4hire
I think a lot of the long tail of open source projects are like this, the
small treams and solo-contributors. Or at least that is what they put front-
and-center. I know I've been guilty of doing it myself. "Our software is
better because it's not made by Evilbook Partners, LTD".

The natural, default position is to think everyone else thinks like you do. So
if you present a solution to a problem, they should value it the same way you
do. "I wrote this because I didn't want to do X". But it seems to turn out
that most people don't care about your specific X.

My last, big attempt at FOSS didn't start that way. When I first started the
project, it was the _only_ such project available. But a household-name corp
started their own, competing project a year later and all I was left with was
(other than a much more complete implementation) some proselytizing about the
open web. But none of it could compete with them funding developers out of
pocket--while I scraped together contact jobs--to go out and implement their
library for other people's projects, write more blog posts than I have hours
in a day, and generally just fill the space with "look at us, we're the only
dog in town" fake news.

I knew their project was nowhere near as complete or easy to use as mine. But
I never put the time into expressing that. Well, for one thing they were
playing the "we're all one, big, happy community of niche-industry devs" card,
so it was impossible to say anything that could at all be considered negative
towards them. But I had so much code to write, and code is a lot easier to me
than marketing. It would have taken me becoming an expert in _their_ project,
when they had no such burden with regards to mine.

I let myself get pushed into taking about my project in terms of theirs. Hell,
some people even accused me if "wasting time, reinventing the wheel" (to this
day, no phrase pisses me off more).

Now, I'm just trying to write software for myself. That's all I was ever
really doing. The FOSS stuff had no plan, it was just "here's some code, maybe
other people will find it useful". While that is often the ur-myth of FOSS, if
it were ever true, is just not how projects grow today.

------
throwaway_Bees
I sold honey for a time, at significantly higher prices than the market price,
retail price was $1.99/.25 ounce (our wholesale price was a little less than
50% of the retail). To put it in perspective a typical 12oz honey bear retails
for $3.50-$4.

The secret to our success was coloring it red, and giving it a "vampire theme"
at the height of the Vampire show/movie craze and selling it through Hot Topic
(a Fortune 500 retailer with our target demographic and we were selling
through 800 stores nationwide).

------
growt
> Maybe they'll pay their bees better.

As an aspiring beekeeper: Please no! I can't afford to pay 100.000 Bees! We
can talk about an retirement plan though, as they all die working.

~~~
bregma
The upside is that all the workers are female so you only have to pay them
70%.

------
willvarfar
Perhaps Barry started the rumors? His moat is that he can out-slander every
other beekeeper?

~~~
motohagiography
Precisely. It's a race to the bottom and a purity spiral.

------
alixanderwang
The longer a business is around, the more opportunities to generate some
negative press that has some people label them as evil, which is a label that
generally doesn't get removed no matter what comes after. It's another reason
why startups can win over customers. In general, startups from inception have
a squeaky clean image until they get big enough for journalists/bloggers to
shit on -- then repeat.

------
dougweltman
The proposition that ethical sourcing is the differentiator in an otherwise
undifferentiated market seems incoherent.

If Barry is able to _communicate_ to the market that his honey operation is
more ethical, then he can communicate other things to the market as well,
irrespective of whether they have any substance or basis in product. Lots of
brands of water out there, many different shapes and sizes of bottles. Barry's
honey _is_ differentiated, just not in terms of product.

Mark can continue treating his bees badly, or he can try to discredit Barry,
or he can try to differentiate his product in some way (planting health-giving
plants whose pollen they can deposit into their honey).

The post imagines only one assumption being relaxed: that of ethical sourcing
_and the ability to communicate that fact_. But in relaxing those assumptions,
it is natural to relax others: the power of marketing being foremost. This is
a complex system and you cannot change a single variable, or imagine that Mark
simply takes Barry's moralistic grandstanding lying down.

~~~
lovemenot
Completely agree with you on supply-side. But Barry need not be alone in his
market communication. It is reasonable to suppose that demand-side is also a
complex, dynamic system which may respond to diverse communications, including
such as in the original post.

------
jankotek
Honeybees are delicate creatures. If bee hive is not treated well, it gets
sick, decreases honey production and maybe does not survive winter. Mark in
this story would probably went bankrupt in a few years.

------
werber
I read so many of my choices in that, lyft over uber, my iPhone over an
Android, and on and on

------
dvfjsdhgfv
That's why I take all alternatives to Google and Facebook with a grain of
salt. Their UVP is to be less evil than the near-monopolies they try to
compete with. But they need to make money somehow!

The current "common knowledge" is that if they don't profile people, they
can't be efficient. That's very wrong. There are many ways to deliver ads to
people that might be interested in them without profiling individuals. But the
market is too inert, and people too hooked to FB and Google already.

------
kriro
That seems like a pretty unrealistic scenario. I guess it's a thought
experiment but positioning (and the existence of branding/marketing) alone
would indicate to me that Barry and Mark are not going to be exactly the same.

Positioning is always going to be at the very least a soft-moat and especially
in consumable goods it's going to be a pretty strong moat (think Coke vs.
Pepsi).

~~~
serioussecurity
Uber / Lyft

------
scarejunba
Pricing is everything when you don't have product differentiation. You will
win if you lower your price and the other guy sells himself as the nice guy.

It's the most common revealed preference. People do exist who care about these
things but it's rare. The ideal situation is you give people the ability to
pretend caring but actually continue exploitation.

------
7777fps
The way I read this is that companies who are slightly less evil than others
are really the bad ones because someone else could come in and be slightly
less than them, and then everyone loses?

Except if companies are fighting to treat employees better, then _everybody
wins_ because conditions get better.

------
Syzygies
I buy honey from
[http://thehoneyladies.com/biography/](http://thehoneyladies.com/biography/)
because they save bees.

(Yes, I understand this was allegory, but I took it literally.)

~~~
itronitron
nice gallery on their website, I feel sorry for the construction workers that
discovered some of those nests

------
Svoka
I don't get it. Is it a metaphor or analogy of some sort?

From my experience, analogies usually are a mechanism of manipulation, trying
to drag in some arguments which bare facts cannot support.

~~~
itronitron
The author is making a point, by analogy, that consumers make purchase
decisions based on a relative ranking of company behaviors and reputation.
This is why PR firms exist.

Consider what might happen if 'someone' produced a popular documentary on the
psychological trauma that YT or FB moderators endure. (If such a documentary
already exists I'm sure it will be posted here)

------
zajio1am
What would Mark do? When Barry offers higher 'ethical value' by treating bees
better, then Mark would need to find some different ethical axis on which he
excels above Barry (say, has lower CO_2 emissions per jar of honey) and
advertise that.

Then customers are splitted based on which ethical axis is more important to
them and internalized that decision. Now both Barry and Mark can increase
their profit margin as customers would not switch to the other 'evil one'.

------
jancsika
Unfortunately for Rachel's argument, rhetoric exists.

That means that while Alice can come along and be less evil than Barry and
Mark, Eve can _appear_ to be less evil than all of them and corner the market.

Now ask yourself which our society optimizes for: designing and implementing
sustainable, ethical business models? Or designing and implementing
sophisticated public relations campaigns?

Btw-- how much market share does Firefox currently have?

------
fnord77
Uber vs. Lyft?

~~~
rachelbythebees
Yes, that's definitely what this is about. Rachel recently quit working at
Lyft (the title = "No More Pink Mustache"):
[https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/02/29/poof/)

~~~
zhdc1
If this is a comparison between Uber and Lyft, I'm not sure I really get it.

Platform business models are essentially winner takes all. Lyft's value
proposition is that they're number two in a market where anyone who isn't in
the top 4-5 has almost no chance of winning.

This doesn't mean that they're doing enough to differentiate themselves from
Uber, or that they'll ever be able to turn an actual profit, but for the short
and medium term game they're more than capable of fending off Uber-copy #27.

------
lazyant
Products that are commoditized and are the same distinguish themselves with
marketing, see vodka for example.

~~~
Nasrudith
They really try to decommoditize themselves to varying degrees of success.
People care about Coke vs Pepsi. Very few care about gasoline or heating oil.

------
arnaudsm
Thanks to this effect, small food companies are growing fast since the 2000s.
"Big Food" is fighting back by doing local-washing: silently buy small
companies, industrialize them, then pretend to be local and responsible.

Tech has exactly the same problem.

~~~
Nasrudith
Well aren't they still local then? It doesn't teleport the facilities
thousands of miles away.

------
Frost1x
This is crazy... but if you'll entertain the idea for a moment: not everyone
who operates a business or sells product/services do it out of profit driven
motives.

Sometimes, people enjoy the lifestyle of their work and provide a
product/service that people want/need/will love pay for. Their business may
not be unique, they may not offer optimal prices. Sure, these folks can very
likely be undercut because it's unlikely that by these goals alone they're
running an optimal process to reduce costs or have the capital to scale things
up to points they can attain cost saving advantages. This means their value
proposition would be fairly weak.

That's fine. People still want honey and maybe they like Mark or Barry or
whomever and would rather pay a little bit extra to make sure their local bee
keeper is able eat and continue to contribute to their community.

One unique value proposition does come to mind however for many of these local
artisan style businesses: these people are less likely to abandon small
communities. Pure businesses focused on profit motives alone will leave when
the situation become unprofitable. People like Mike and Barry are more likely
to stay as long as their lifestyle can be maintained. They may even have
children who want to continue the family business as is (or not).

There are plenty of examples where Walmart, for example, saw opportunities in
small rural communities, swept in, undercut the competition and then for one
reason or another found it would be best to close the store leaving a vacuum
of needs to be met: [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/when-wal-mart-leaves-
small...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/when-wal-mart-leaves-small-towns-
behind)

Sometimes the local businesses can rebound but often those local vendors
aren't interested in being burned twice.

Life is not _always_ about offering the best value proposition. Constantly
worrying about optimization in every aspect of life will make you pretty
miserable (at least from my experience). At some point you have to choose
happy over optimal and understand that's a respectable goal.

~~~
learnstats2
> not everyone who operates a business or sells product/services do it out of
> profit driven motives.

I don't believe that's the case. If you have almost any other motive, running
a business is generally not the best way to reach that goal.

I provide a service which I am good at and enjoy, and would be prepared to
provide to friends for free. Like almost everyone does, in fact.

I run my service as a business so that I can keep a roof over my head: that's
ultimately a profit motive.

~~~
Nasrudith
There is a small case of hobby or identity businesses - farming is a common
case of the latter being having a small scale farm or an author.

They exist but by economic output they aren't players of significance.

------
Jedd
Aha, hermeneutics.

The literal answer is probably found in the law of comparative advantage --
both Barry and Mark should do what they're best at doing. (Arguably this law
is one of the handful of non-obvious insights from the science <sic> of
economics.)

A lot of markets are extremely price sensitive, but, OTOH, there seems to be a
growing ratio of informed consumers that are not racing to the bottom, but
instead acknowledge that a) almost every action has an ethical component that
can / should be factored in, and b) how you spend your money has a greater
impact than how you cast your 3-5 yearly vote.

------
thaumasiotes
> Maybe they'll pay their bees better. They'll hire them outright and give
> them bee benefits instead of having them work as 1099 labor. That'll win a
> bunch of hearts and minds. "Oh, it's better for the bees, so now we only buy
> our honey from Willy".

I always ask to be 1099 labor, and I'm always told "absolutely not. It'll
never happen; completely unacceptable".

Where does this delusion come from that W2 status is a good thing that workers
want to have and employers want to withhold? Where are these W2-withholding
employers?

~~~
moron4hire
The difficulty in finding 1099 arrangements these days for tech companies is
that they often want to monopolize your time, which they can't do in a 1099
arrangement. Basically, back in the late 90s or so, Microsoft tried to use
1099s to avoid giving out benefits (such as unemployment insurance) and got
hammered by the Labor Department for it. So now most places either put
everyone under W2 or are super strict about the number of hours you can work.

It basically comes down to who gets to say when you start and stop working. If
the company wants to demand a certain set of hours of the day (not just an
aggregate of hours during a work period), then the person doing the work is
not a "contractor". Contractors are supposed to be able to make their own
hours and find any number of clients they wish to fill their time. If the
client doesn't like you doing that, then they are obligated to make you an
employee.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> If the company wants to demand a certain set of hours of the day (not just
> an aggregate of hours during a work period), then the person doing the work
> is not a "contractor". Contractors are supposed to be able to make their own
> hours and find any number of clients they wish to fill their time.

This is not true in general; for example, security guards can have contractor
status while obviously still being required to show up during their shift and
not someone else's shift.

~~~
culturestate
> security guards can have contractor status while obviously still being
> required to show up during their shift and not someone else's shift

No, the IRS (assuming we're talking about the US) wouldn't allow it - that
security guard would either need to be classified as an employee or provide
their services to the customer as a corporate entity themselves. The
guidelines[1] around this are very straightforward:

"Under common-law rules, anyone who performs services for you is your employee
if you can control what will be done and how it will be done. This is so even
when you give the employee freedom of action. What matters is that you have
the right to control the details of how the services are performed."

1\. [https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
employed/independent-contractor-defined)

~~~
leetcrew
so if I pay someone to clean my house every Wednesday morning and tell them
they can't use bleach, they're my employee?

~~~
culturestate
If you're hiring them personally, no. This is only applicable when the hiring
entity is a company.

On the other hand, if you're wealthy and run your household via e.g. a family
LLC which contracts that cleaner in a professional capacity, then -
technically - yes. It's possible there's an exception for scenarios like this,
but I'm not familiar with it.

Disclaimer: I'm neither an accountant nor a tax attorney, but I've dealt with
classification issues as both an employer and an indie consultant for years.

~~~
leetcrew
I guess that's a reasonable trade-off. if I want to protect my personal assets
through an LLC, I have more obligations to the worker than some random Joe.

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samdung
You got me at "Grocer News" :)

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edu
Reputation matters, and it's important to cultivate and improve it.

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danmur
Barry and Mark and whoever else can't make enough honey for everyone. The
value proposition is that you can exchange for .

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itronitron
KeyValues stock is rising.

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dot1x
Why is this website spammed so much? I don't even know who this person is.

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dannyw
Bees are users. Honey is data.

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xaxsacsdaffbnk
Yes, it is a good thing that competition also operates on "being good".

You can't be arbitrarily "good" to your employees, though. You have to improve
your business to be able to afford to be better to your employees.

That's as it should be.

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bluedino
I was looking forward to a good read about why organic honey is $14.99 for a
small jar.

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austincheney
The irrelevant value proposition described in the blog reminds me of the panic
around this current virus and the hostility when people compare it to the flu
even if that comparison is limited to the most boring of facts published by
the WHO. People frequently need to exercise a value proposition in defiance of
objectivity. Dr Seuss even wrote a cartoon about using that as a tool to
manipulate people:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PdLPe7XjdKc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PdLPe7XjdKc)

~~~
paulsutter
You might want to read up on what it's like in Italy right now. The issue is
not the death rate, the hospitalization rate quickly overloads the healthcare
system:

[https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/123714289107769753...](https://twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237142891077697538)

"We’ve stopped all routine, all ORs have been converted to ITUs and they are
now diverting or not treating all other emergencies like trauma or strokes.
There are hundreds of pts with severe resp failure and many of them do not
have access to anything above a reservoir mask.

"Patients above 65 or younger with comorbidities are not even assessed by ITU,
I am not saying not tubed, I’m saying not assessed and no ITU staff attends
when they arrest. Staff are working as much as they can but they are starting
to get sick and are emotionally overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, lots of people act like nothing is happening:

[https://twitter.com/figgyjam/status/1236982564503486465](https://twitter.com/figgyjam/status/1236982564503486465)

~~~
austincheney
That is a serious concern, but is not an indication of panic.

I live in the third most populous country in world and there have been
extremely few cases reported here, though that number is growing. Even still
people here are hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer like there is a
zombie apocalypse. There are already memes about black market back alley
toilet paper at $10 per single roll.

~~~
paulsutter
Three weeks ago Italy had no cases at all. Seven weeks ago, China had only 50
cases.

Meanwhile the president of the third most populous country is doing his
damndest to prevent the number from going up.

"Seattle-area nursing home unable to test 65 workers with COVID-19 symptoms"

[https://news.trust.org/item/20200309234801-s0bah](https://news.trust.org/item/20200309234801-s0bah)

~~~
austincheney
Is that supposed to qualify panic and $10 toilet paper?

~~~
paulsutter
Nobody I know is panicking. It's just a good idea to wash our hands more than
usual. You are free to go out and lick public surfaces just to show how smart
you are. Everyone will be really impressed.

Most likely, few of us will be impacted. But preventative measures are wise.
Particularly as a team effort.

