We have this in the US. Open a business and you'll get spammed with a lot of providers offering stuff that is either free, un needed, or overpriced.
"You need this sign in your break room else you'll be fined $10,000! Just subscribe for $299/year and we'll mail you labor posters each year." These can be found for like $10 and don't change yearly.
"This form needs to be filed else you'll be fined! Pay us $499 and we'll take care of it!" Free to file online.
Even forming a business in my state is like 2 forms and $125 and can be done all online. But if you were to google how to, you'd find all these people to "Help out" and it'd end up costing you $1000-2000 for their "Help".
To be fair a lot of people are not privy to the “correct” way to open a business. You should not list your name on any public facing documents nor should you use your personal address anywhere. It helps to consult a lawyer when starting up.
I always tell people to expect a minimum of $1k/yr to maintain a business and that’s to pay for a registered agent, a virtual office, and a domain and website (I also recommend a CPA). A registered agent exists only to forward legal correspondence directly to the owner. A virtual office handles all of the mail (which includes the junk mail you mention but can be silently processed out using their virtual mailbox service). And a website to provide an easy means of communication (again with spam filters in place)
I never see junk mail and I have started 5 successful businesses over the past 20 years. Spam phone calls is a completely separate unsolved problem, however
I don't think society should treat "Stupidity Arbitrage" as an acceptable business model. These guys are predators, exactly like scammers that call up elderly people and try to get them to buy gift cards. We should have a clearly defined regulatory framework to get rid of them.
As long as a free market exists, there will still be a stupid tax. That's just what happens when you let people sell other people stuff through marketing and advertising, you fill the gap between "expected utility" and "realized value" with lies. White lies, not like "our product will fly you to the moon" but unrealistic stuff like "the Humane AI pin will read you recipes while you cook!" The Humane pin will be dead in a drawer in 6 weeks; the people selling that know full-well they don't have market fit.
The worse practice IMO is exploiting a captive audience. It doesn't matter how stupid you are if you're an Apple developer or an Oracle customer; these companies will bleed you dry for simply touching their product. The only path of recourse is antitrust settlement, which is a lengthy and unnecessary process that is inherently stacked in the favor of whoever can hire more lawyers. Because of this, companies have no motivation to improve a paid product. Instead, the goal is to make you reliant on it somehow and then increase the price. We see this in Netflix, Amazon Prime, Windows/Office365/OneDrive, Apple developer program/Apple One/iCloud/App Store, and YouTube's TV/subscription services. The most successful businesses in our daily lives are the ones that have dug their claws into us and refuse to be anything other than a parasite.
I don't know how reliably you can distinguish between stupidity arbitrage and lazy arbitrage, and there might be grey areas, but if it's actually more convenient it's probably lazy arbitrage and if it's easily confused with a service it's reselling it's probably stupidity arbitrage
I'd like to distinguish between those that bring services closer to customers and those that hinder customers getting to the services they intend to use
Gamepass is pretty generous. Gamers see MS buy a studio and add their catalog to gamepass. PC gamers appreciate that Xbox games are also usually on PC.
Nintendo sends a ton of C&D letters to smaller developers, and are pretty anti-emulation. Games never go on sale. Remakes are expensive ($60 for Super Mario RPG for example).
Sony just had the whole "You need a PSN account to play a PC game" thing. But also, you can't create a PSN account in some countries, so sorry you can't play the PC game you bought anymore. They ended up walking it back though. You also need to pay to play online, which is a thing on xbox as well. But I think that's usually drowned out by the "PC Gamers" who don't need to pay for something like that.
> In 2024, the revenue in the Luxury Goods market in the United States amounts to US$75.6Bn (Watches, Eyewear, Jewlery, fashion, cosmetics/fragrance, leather goods)
> Americans wagered a record $119.84 billion on sports betting in 2023
> Slots and table games across the U.S. generated $43.79 billion
>Do you know or recommend a service for this thats easy and fast to use?
I use a google account with a catch all domain. {Website/Store} @ short domain that goes to the same mailbox. I reply from name @ different domain, though.
The benefit is when I give it over the phone it's easy to say "StoreName"@ than spelling my name or using another longer email.
> Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card?
Many times people who steal credit cards will try to make small purchases to validate cards. Since there is no human interaction someone who has stolen ~10 cards could try each one by buying a $1-2 coffee and seeing which ones work. The machine takes photos which could then be turned over if/when the card holder reports fraud.
So they enter a secure facility with their already vetted credentials and CCTV in operation to try out stolen credit cards? Or they could do those same validation tests at home on a dodgy website.
Do you think using stolen credit cards is a big problem in Amazon warehouses, because what I think is this isn't a bug but a feature to detect who is working and who is slacking.
> uses a camera for people to purchase coffee with a card, she said. But Carroll added that Amazon offers the coffee to employees free of charge and has no practical use for the camera.
I'm not sure why you quoted that because there is a camera in operation and whether Amazon 'has a practical' purpose for it or not is irrelevant here.
Would be like finding a camera in a girls locker room and then saying 'we have no need for that'. Like what the hell is doing there is the real question and I suspect it does have a practical purpose for Amazon.
I've worked places where it would be 1000x harder getting a spare laptop from the IT closet to run some processing than it would be to spend $50k-100k at Azure.
This is a huge issue in self publishing. Sure, some people got lucky and can churn out a book a month and make decent money. But so many more sell books/courses on 'how to make money'.
Some will show you their revenue, "I'm a six figure author!" But frequently hide how much they spend on ads or editing. Or try to hide that they're making ~$50k on courses/affiliate sales and their net is... ~$50k. Writing is a net zero income for them and most of it is just used to sell courses/products.
Chances are he had a blog or something with content/pages and got approved. Then just re-used the codes/keys for the affiliate links on this new site. Once you start making money Amazon doesn't care.
Source: Me. I had a comparison tool for products with similar layout to this. They originally denied it citing 'lack of content'. Made a 2nd website with some blogs/reviews, it was approved. Re-used the code/api for the comparison tool and closed the other website. They haven't complained in 12 years.
Even with steam I can buy a game on steam and install it on steam. Then when I go run it, I need to first install another company's launcher. This includes signing up, confirming my email, etc.
Even single player games will require you launch, sign up, and auth with EA's servers before you can play said game.
Is all of this worse than not playing the game at all ?
I don't play any EA games so I don't know how it feels on each platform, but the games I care about on steam are just not available, or have been extremely cut down on the other platforms, so it's not like there's an equivalent polished experience to fall back on.
"You need this sign in your break room else you'll be fined $10,000! Just subscribe for $299/year and we'll mail you labor posters each year." These can be found for like $10 and don't change yearly.
"This form needs to be filed else you'll be fined! Pay us $499 and we'll take care of it!" Free to file online.
Even forming a business in my state is like 2 forms and $125 and can be done all online. But if you were to google how to, you'd find all these people to "Help out" and it'd end up costing you $1000-2000 for their "Help".