Real Value vs "Business Value"

[ygolo]

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We live in an age of surfaces." Lord Henry Wotton, a character in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Getting to the truth is valuable, as is the investigative work by journalists who get to it, but we get clickbait instead.

 

[The Cat]

The Price of almost everything and the cost of almost nothing. Such discrepancies and dependencies are what lead mortals into bargains with entities beyond their scope and ken promising everything and delivering naught but more sacrifice.

 

[ygolo]

Scarcity Psychology: Must We Compete for the Good Things in Life?

We think of ourselves as rational people. So why do we chase after things we don't need?

www.psychologytoday.com

 

[ygolo]

One stereotypical business model for organized crime is to pay people to break windows and then charge people to fix them.

Luckily (or at least hopefully), this business model is illegal. If not, businesses would increase it to produce a "booming economy" of window breaking and fixing. Our GDP may even go up.

Some systems resemble this pattern, however.

We pay marketing teams to spam people and engineers to build spam filters. We charge exorbitant fees for products and create special programs to get discounts.

Some healthcare providers operate under incentives that are misaligned with a healthier population.

 

[ygolo]

I've complained about regulatory capture before, but the problem is worse—cronies have captured all apparatus for making change.

When people want to change things, their mentors push them towards two main paths: business and politics. But the role of money in politics basically merges the two—the path is political gamesmanship in business. Mentors suggest treating Non-Profits like businesses and NGOs like businesses. People who want to make change are encouraged to major in business or political science and get a law degree.

The above issues have created a political crony class that runs all business sectors and the government.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I like the numbers and graphs given for things I already know.

 

[ygolo]

Good content vs. "safe" content

"Corporations are pussies."

Jon Stewart Goes Into More Detail About Apple Exit and Reveals Execs’ Concerns: ‘They Didn’t Censor Me,’ but ‘Our Aims Don’t Align in Any Way’

Jon Stewart says Apple did not censor him, but the two parties did not align in any way when it came to topics and discussion points on his show.

variety.com

 

[ygolo]

I could have posted it in the little tech thread, but they only mention those rays of hope in passing, and dismissively.

The "rot com" phenomenon and growth at all costs are real issues.

The valuations for a lot of companies seem ridiculous.

However, process automation is the promise of this wave of AI, and that is just getting started.

Business process automation, yes. But also personal process automation.

But Big Tech is sucking all the resources and deploying them in ways that increase costs and reduce access.

I posted before that reinforcement learning (q-learning especially) as consumer applications are being held by businesses to exploit and extract from consumers, rather than having reinforcement learning apps controlled by consumers.

In specific ways, the hype gets the wrong regulations passed. Instead of regulations against deep fakes, privilege seeking behavior with the government, protection of copyright, etc. We see regulations against model size, who can build them, and placing arbitrary hurdles on building them.

 

[The Cat]

I could have posted it in the little tech thread, but they only mention those rays of hope in passing, and dismissively.

The "rot com" phenomenon and growth at all costs are real issues.

The valuations for a lot of companies seem ridiculous.

However, process automation is the promise of this wave of AI, and that is just getting started.

Business process automation, yes. But also personal process automation.

But Big Tech is sucking all the resources and deploying them in ways that increase costs and reduce access.

I posted before that reinforcement learning (q-learning especially) as consumer applications are being held by businesses to exploit and extract from consumers, rather than having reinforcement learning apps controlled by consumers.

In specific ways, the hype gets the wrong regulations passed. Instead of regulations against deep fakes, privilege seeking behavior with the government, protection of copyright, etc. We see regulations against model size, who can build them, and placing arbitrary hurdles on building them.

Its almost like you're supposed to be distracted or something. Distracted from what, that's what always tickles my brain.

 

[ygolo]

 

[ygolo]

When you want to push for change in the US, people with influence push you towards entrepreneurship (it's called social entrepreneurship).

You can only do so many things with your time, and often the people looking to change things are struggling hard themselves (hence the motivation for change).

There's a second part of being pushed into entrepreneurship that I find especially troubling--you are told not to "compete on price." It's a "race to the bottom," you are told--the big companies will do it better due to economies of scale. On some level, I understand.

However, what if the change you want to see is affordability and equitable access to things (like certain aspects of Healthcare, for instance).

I call what many business professionals call "a race to the bottom," a "race for affordable access"-- some call it democratization.

Moore's law is not a physical law but an industry norm. It is very much a race for affordable access.

The discouraging of "the race to the bottom," discourages "the race for affordable access", which in a weird way is price collusion through community business programs(e.g. the Department of Rehabilitation, Small Business Development Centers).

 

[ceecee]

Until governments (sorry, they are the only ones that are going to be able to change course from what life is currently offering people. Not individuals, not business, not grifting shithead influencers and other circus barkers) start speaking about universal and less about "access" of whatever resource they want you to think is finite, the current environments of resources being controlled and consumed by the elite will continue to get worse.

Who just won a Nobel Prize? Two economists.

“Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences stated in the Nobel citation. “The laureates’ research helps us understand why.”

In their work, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson make a distinction between “inclusive” political governments, which extend political and property rights as broadly as possible while enforcing laws and providing public infrastructure, with “extractive” political systems, where power is wielded by a small elite.

MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share Nobel Prize

MIT professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, along with political scientist James Robinson, for work on the relationship between economic growth and political institutions.

news.mit.edu

 

[ygolo]

Until governments (sorry, they are the only ones that are going to be able to change course from what life is currently offering people. Not individuals, not business, not grifting shithead influencers and other circus barkers) start speaking about universal and less about "access" of whatever resource they want you to think is finite, the current environments of resources being controlled and consumed by the elite will continue to get worse.

Who just won a Nobel Prize? Two economists.

“Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences stated in the Nobel citation. “The laureates’ research helps us understand why.”

In their work, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson make a distinction between “inclusive” political governments, which extend political and property rights as broadly as possible while enforcing laws and providing public infrastructure, with “extractive” political systems, where power is wielded by a small elite.

MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share Nobel Prize

MIT professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, along with political scientist James Robinson, for work on the relationship between economic growth and political institutions.

news.mit.edu

I always have mixed feelings about each year's Nobel Prizes in every category.

This year's economic prize is more initially positive in my mind than say Ben Bernanke's in 2022.

My initial inclination is that distinction between inclusive and extractive governments are more core to problems than whether we have a big or small one.

I am still skeptical, however, that a government is going to be better suited to help my father-in-law after a fall than my wife and I would be.