What about them? Gmail 'beat' them years ago thanks to a generous amount of storage on the free tier, hype marketing at launch, and a vastly superior spam filter.
It won't be sustainable in the long term, but it doesn't need to be. It's about throwing everything at the wall now and hoping some of it sticks before the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs take off. Then just like Google Search you'll start to notice the more intensive AI features are randomly missing.
chinese (slave) labor. in fact, look at anything primarily imported from china - very cheap compared to 1990s. look at things that cannot easily be exported from china like housing or education. expensive.
the world has never been cheap, we're just better at arbitrage now.
LOL, the blog gives a lot of detailed reasons, even summarizes it [1] and but some random stranger gives an outdated opinion from the '90s, which is not even wrong just plain humorous. If slave labor, how come everything else is also not so cheap.
[1] Virtually all the major mechanisms that can drive efficiency improvements — improving technology and overlapping S-curves, economies of scale (including geometric scaling effects), eliminating process steps, reducing variability and improving yield, advancing towards continuous process manufacturing — are on display here
Why are you putting the onus on the commenter you’re replying to, to show you examples that disprove the point of the article when you’re the one being a contrarian?
TVs are super famous as the economic example of a good getting cheaper in nominal terms every year as they get better specs. Because it’s such a strange phenomenon. You looking for cheaper real goods, opposed to nominal, misses half (or more) of why TVs are so interesting.
Why don’t you show us some other goods that are cheaper in nominal terms compared to the 90s “because China”?
Basically almost anything electronic? Camera’s, microphones, wireless microphones, battery packs, etc.? Plethora of kids toys all made in china. Most of them are crappy throway, so whether they are really cheaper than the quality toys you can play with for longer…
Then, I noticed that some frozen salmon in our supermarket was mega cheap at €9/kg, as opposed to the more standard €14-16/kg, and the country of origin???? China.
You linked a macroeconomics paper. You’re asking for examples from microeconomics. Are you going to provide your example products or do you get off on disproportionately wasting other peoples’ time?
The article itself already provides them with the TV… you can use cell phones too if you’d like. A palm pilot vs a Xiaomi. Virtually any electronics junk that you’d find on Amazon is cheaper now. What’s the common factor…? China. Again, in the paper.
This is a very Reddit comment. You can move to Oklahoma and get a brand new construction house for under $300k. But you won’t, because you want to live within an hour or so of the same dozen major US cities everyone else wants to live in close proximity to.
The houses as a structure aren’t going up in value (any more than the price of construction materials and labor has). It’s the land that’s appreciating faster than inflation in most cases you’re complaining about.
Aren't their salaries and standard of living up a lot - higher than even places like Mexico? Or are all the videos of modern China on YouTube CGI/AI state propaganda? Also, South Korean TVs are cheap, too. Also slave labor?
I don't know about salaries in Mexico, but ~8 years ago the salaries in coastal cities industries for unqualified workers were above 600€/month if I did the conversion correctly at the time, which is 2 to 10 time higher than agricultural jobs.
That was an issue where I was visiting because basically 90% the non-retired adults were working on the coast, 2 days away, and let children with their grandparents all year round except for their vacations. Apparently that created a kind of 'lord of the fly' situation in some villages, but don't quote me on that, I didn't saw it myself. What I saw was the young there feeling abandoned and let down by the central and provincial government, and their parents.
as for salaries - yes indeed they are up. not every chinese laborer is a slave obviously, but many are - not usually for electronics directly though, more often for the inputs of such (energy and what not).
i'm surprised there's contention about this - it's all over the news.
cocoa is the main input for that and is subject to weather and crop failure, which - surprise - is why its' more expensive. however if you're talking about chocolate candies (not raw cocoa) it is indeed less expensive now adjusted for inflation. the problem is the quality of chocolate candies has reduced, so the equivalent chocolate bar is probably more expensive even though the similar one is cheaper.
ironically cocoa is a great example of my point though - it's not imported from china, so there isn't a huge cost reduction.
the amount of people willing to delegate to chatgpt tells me in the near future only rich people will be able to speak with a real doctor. the current top comment about someone's uncle being saved due to chatgpt guidance says it all.
Unfortunately, that's kind of already the case. The standard of care for wealthy people, who often purchase "Personal Medicine" services, can be astoundingly better than what is available to the general public. It's more like having a health team behind you than just a lone GP. They can push you through the system, get treatments, ask colleagues, and collaborate with other teams, way quicker.
> The proper decorum here is if the doctor made the wrong diagnosis. All fees and causal charges made by the doctor must be fully refunded and paid for. It’s only fair given the premium they were originally given to make a false diagnosis.
lol terrible idea. just as great as having so that the service you bought is entirely refunded if the code has a single bug.
Well the issue here is that the bug can cause you to die or can fuck up your entire life. A software bug generally doesn’t do anything to you and you actually don’t pay much money for software.
One false diagnosis from a doctor costs you thousands of dollars and fucks up your life.
Remember mcas? The bug on the 737 max that forced Boeing to pay reparations? That’s the level of bullshit people are dealing with for doctors. Life altering stuff. This isn’t some chrome bug or smart phone bug. Therefore the penalties and repercussions of mistakes should be equivalent.
If the diagnosis only costs 100 dollars or something, and I was told that the diagnosis was only a probability… I could accept a no refund policy in that case.
Legally speaking, why should the rules for important services be different than unimportant services. The price paid for the services is proportional to its value, if there are no consequences for a bug in your code, it was worth less and you should have paid less for it, the refund would be commesurate.
It's worth noting that you framed the discussion in terms of refunds, so any extra human life uncalculable value isn't really within the scope of a refund, you'd have a malpractice case which is entirely different from a breach of contract. This is just about the fees paid for the service.
Malpractice is deliberate harm by not following standard professional practices or doing deliberate harm.
I’m not talking about that. What I’m talking about is fucking simple. A doctor gives you advice and you pay him thousands for it. That advice is completely fucking wrong.
In what universe does that payment make sense? In what universe is giving wrong information deserving of thousands of dollars of payment for services rendered. It’s bloody simple: it’s not deserved and a refund is in order.
You're generally paying for time and materials, not results. This is common practice in many industries, not just healthcare, so your rhetorical question is silly and displays deep ignorance about how the system works. If you want to pay for results only then you're free to negotiate a cash payment contract with your healthcare providers on that basis. No one is stopping you from doing that so let's not have any lame responses claiming that the system is conspiring against you or something.
You have got to be kidding me. No one on the face of the earth wants to pay a doctor for time. They want to pay for results.
Nobody is going to pay thousands of dollars for shitty advice or treatments that can potentially kill you... are you kidding me? What human will happily dish out thousands of dollars just to give "time" to the doctor for wrong advice. That has got to be a joke.
>If you want to pay for results only then you're free to negotiate a cash payment contract with your healthcare providers on that basis.
It needs to be law to make it on this basis. Every patient would demand this. The only person who wouldn't demand this is a doctor who's "time" doesn't provide results.
What's going on here is the patient has nowhere else to turn. If every doctor negotiates on "time" and the legal system is set up this way, what other choice does the patient have then to gamble thousands on something that won't work?
Let me explain it to you plainly. The system is set up this way so patients are indoctrinated to accept unfair treatment. They can even be aware of flaws in the system but they still have to accept it because the behavior is so wide spread.
It's similar to North Korea. If everyone in north korea stood up to Kim Jong Un, the sheer number of people getting screwed over vs. people in power is so overwhelming the government would topple immediately. But the system is pervasive. And that is the medical system in the US: Pervasive and systemic. And it goes deeper than just the unreliability of doctors here.
I WANT to negotiate based on results... but thanks to the cartel-like policies of the medical system all together, I can't. Ask any patient... EVERY patient wants this, but none of them can do it. Same as your average north korean... they don't want to starve under an unreasonable regime, but they have no choice.
You may not have realized it but your last sentence was a slip up... Your initial sentences was an attempt to justify time based payment by comparing and contrasting to other occupations like lawyers... but in your last sentence you were essentially (and likely accidentally) telling me to suck it up because I have no choice. That was not something any patient wants to hear.
You seem to be unclear on the basics of how this works. There's no need for any new laws. If you want to negotiate a value-based care agreement with a healthcare provider instead of paying on a fee-for-service basis then you're free to do so. Existing laws allow for that.
As for your absurd assertions about what every patient wants, you're just lying and making things up. Many patients (like me) don't want that or have no strong preference at all. Your comparison to North Korea is just deranged and bears no relationship to objective reality.
The fact nobody negotiates for results based treatment is similar to how everyone really needs insurance to afford medical treatments. It's not law to have medical insurance but basically everyone needs it regardless. The problem is systemic. It's not purely related to law. Side effects and incentives stemming both from law and outside of law force things to be this way.
Stop manipulating the conversation this way. You know what I mean. Any sane person pays for results, not for time and garbage results.
>As for your absurd assertions about what every patient wants, you're just lying and making things up. Many patients (like me) don't want that or have no strong preference at all. Your comparison to North Korea is just deranged and bears no relationship to objective reality.
No it's not a lie. It's obvious to anyone reading. I'm so confident about it that I'll even say you're lying about what you want.
You don't want to pay a doctor thousands of dollars for his time and wrong advice that can potentially kill you. No patient wants this. 800,000 patients per year die or are seriously injured from misdiagnosis. Every single one of those patients wants there money back. That is objectively reality. You're not stupid. You're not delusional. So you know this. At this point you're just arguing and lying.
>Your comparison to North Korea is just deranged and bears no relationship to objective reality.
800,000 patients injured/dead from misdiagnosis. 300,000k of that is deaths. That's equivalent to mass slaughter. One of these persons is my brother, imagine if it was yours.
It's not deranged. You're deranged for thinking it's NOT. The comparison is not only relevant as an analogy but relevant in degree of severity.
You seem to be assuming that a different payment model would reduce diagnostic errors. There is no evidence for that. Anything related to biology is necessarily probabilistic and highly error prone. Some care quality improvements are certainly possible but those aren't necessarily tied to payment models. It's more important to focus on evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.
>You seem to be assuming that a different payment model would reduce diagnostic errors.
No. The payment model should change to be fair, I never said the payment reduces diagnostic errors. The patient should be informed about the probabilistic nature of the diagnosis. A contract (not in fine print) to protect the doctor from lawsuits from misdiagnosis should be signed by the patient to reflect this. Then the payment should be Heavily reduced to reflect the unreliability of the diagnosis. By heavily I mean becoming a doctor should not be a profession that is associated with extreme wealth because the unreliability of their diagnosis/treatment does not convey that level of value.
>Some care quality improvements are certainly possible but those aren't necessarily tied to payment models.
I don't think it's "some" quality improvements. The US has some of the worst outcomes in the 1st world in terms of quality of care. There are massive improvements that can be made here.
>It's more important to focus on evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.
Agreed, and until the evidence, clinical practice guidelines and effectiveness of doctors rises to the level of significant reliability, both payment and respect should be adjusted to reflect the current level of low reliability.
this is not true. why is this upvoted? first of all, ICE is federal. second, they were acting as part of "federal official" duties. it will be trivial to move any state prosecution to federal court.
Federal officers aren't immune from state prosecution just because they're federal officers, or because they're doing their federal duties at the moment. They also have to be acting in accord with their federal duties. See, e.g., https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/are-federal-officials-i... (although that's not in response to the current incident).
They will certainly attempt to dismiss any charges, but they are far from guaranteed that they will be successful.
That doesn't matter. It's not enough that they were doing their job beforehand, their actions at stake have to comport with their actual duties.
So is it part of their official duties to walk in front of a car of someone who is trying to leave the scene, alter their path when the car turns out of the way to ensure they remain in their way, and then shoot the driver? Or is that merely the kind of excessive force that's in contravention of their training and not part of their job role?
so even if you don't have your face scanned on the register, unless you're paying cash they'd still know who you are right? don't most people have passports? real ID is also a thing. if you're concerned about a hostile government wearing a mask at a grocery store isn't going to do anything sadly. not even counting things like gait analysis, security cameras or tracking your phone
Katz v. United States is an interesting case if you're interested (tldr one thing the case implied is that if your actions are freely observable by others of the public there's no expectation of privacy).
personally I think the only option these days is to push for very short retention policies governed by law such that use of information is inadmissible in a criminal situation (e.g. say a 1 week retention, they can't go scrubbing footage from months back to convict, wouldn't be allowed during discovery), and making it harder or illegal to share with other non-government entities. stopping collection I think is a ship that's sailed imo. it's pretty unlikely public or private surveillance (for supermarket like stores) will ever be made illegal. in fact I can't think of a country where it is.
- as a side note, suggesting to switch to Whole Foods is hilarious. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, and you can look for yourself all the tracking they do
> law such that use of information is inadmissible in a criminal situation (e.g. say a 1 week retention, they can't go scrubbing footage from months back to convict,
Or, amazing life hack, don’t do crimes, on video or otherwise.
Not saying there are no privacy concerns, but I WANT this used in court against criminals
Do you agree that all current laws are just and correct, and are you confident that nobody will ever come into power who wants to make illegal something you believe is just and right to do?
I don't disagree, but I don't think private companies should be able to both keep videos indefinitely and for those videos to be accessible to the government for arbitrary goals.
I do pay cash. I don't have a passport. You can opt out of Real ID.
Anyways, the solution, as always, is noise. They leave their data pipelines open and assume all the data is mostly clean. There needs to be a massive technological development for the population to just clog those channels with so much noise they become effectively useless.
No shit. I'm making an assertion as to "why", not "who". "Simply" is doing a lot of work in your statement.
Trump's entire first campaign was based around a stupid, expensive, and racist "wall", and he openly mentioned during his debate that he wants to get rid of immigrants because they're eating dogs. Unless these people were living under a rock they saw all this, and at best they were ambivalent to this, but I think more likely supported it.
You could argue that maybe during his first campaign they had plausible deniability, but when all these people voted for him again, they have lost any sense of that. They knew what they were voting for, and they knew that the person that they were voting for was a racist sack of shit.
People should grow up and own their terrible decisions.
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