Yeah, to use it effectively you use it for inspiration and generation of template code. The code may need a lot of changes or may need relatively few. But don't copy it expecting it to work without validating and testing it.
Because growth is now baked into the share price. If they don't keep stoking the fire of optimism, it burns out and the share price collapses. Our current business culture is saying that this is what managers need to think about, so this is what they think about.
I would be happy with a vast economy of Mittelstand type businesses, each producing ball bearings or gear wheels, not trying to eat the whole planet, just existing at a sensible level. It's not like they can't grow if the opportunity arises.
Because your competitors will grow to create economies of scale and vertically integrate, eventually killing your current business model since you won't be able to compete unless you're a boutiqueor some other niche. This is especially important if group think is a big part of your success (iPhones as a status symbol, always needing the latest one, iPods before that).
Because in their minds, the market will eventually dry up, and... they're not wrong. There's not many folks looking for a new Apple ][ these days. And since continuing business means needing to access ever-increasing amounts of capital to create the next thing to sell, they have to make the number bigger. Otherwise the business goes under.
Honestly, their hangup on that last point is perplexing, because as long as the big shareholders get a decent cut in a long enough horizon to hedge or exit positions, they don't care if the company goes kaput. See GE. Jack Welch basically parted out the company like a corporate raider. It was obvious what would happen: at some point, there would be nothing left to sell and the company could not continue as an independent going concern. But you could mark the sale of a division as income for the quarterly report, and it made them meet projections, so it was seen as visionary.
That's a tough thing to do when you consider the market dynamics - namely that other companies are trying to eat their market share. They have to be actively improving products doing marketing, etc. in order to just maintain their position, so why not do those things in a way that's targeted at growth?
There's also the matter of people - people like to work on big, important challenges. The best people don't tend to want to work at companies that are stagnant. If you're the leader and you lose the best people because you decide to stagnate and throw off revenue, then suddenly you're going to have trouble maintaining your market position because the best people are now at competitors working to take your market position.
It is a little weird how there are two economic systems seemingly. The one you mention about market share and global slices of pie. But then there is the entire long tail of businesses that don’t participate in these games at all. Most private companies are probably like this. You know, the six person graphic design shop with a string of clients. The local glass and mirror business. Your dentists private practice. A locksmith. A taco truck. All these businesses humming along making money for their owners with sometimes decades of operation under their belt.
I think that's just a mindset that made sense when tech was new. As this becomes just a part of life, I think you'll see a bifurcation between established tech and "new stuff", where the established stuff is treated more like a utility.
In some ways we have that now, it's just not flashy. There's countless websites (think Craigslist) that pull in predictable and reasonable income for the folks that run it.
I'd prefer a world full of those versus a bunch of megacorps using tactics of the KGB to try to increase their revenue by X% every year.
That's a pithy, vivid snarkonym I suppose; 10/10. The reality is that things don't exist in a vacuum: competitors exist and one of the best defenses against competitors is growth. Growth provides affordances, such as ample capital, market profile and regulatory leverage to counter competitors. Certainly one can conceive of alternative ways of surviving competitors, but it never hurts to be a thriving concern. That's hard work for all involved though, so better to simply spiral the rest of the way down and condemn competition as well: perhaps "The Market is societal metastasis".
Or something. You'll get there anyhow, so best to start working on the next clever derogation now.
I agree with your response, but I also think it's an unsustainable model, which is why it's a "mind cancer". Growth makes things easier but nothing grows indefinitely, and that mind-set has done a lot to create climate change problems.
That's the buyer seeking growth, even if only to shut the bought down, yielding relative growth. Big fish eat little fish. That's the universe talking, as opposed to whatever ideology you prefer to blame.
The "solution" -- should you perceive a problem with all this -- is destabilizing the large such that the small find more opportunities. Hating on growth isn't compatible with this, however: you must be capable of tolerating the small enjoying growth.
When it comes to the personal and intangibles, then grow all you want; read the books, develop the skills, and so on. But when it comes to consumption of resources and economic growth then cancer is the right word as unbounded growth fundamentally results in unbounded growth of waste products and overconsumption of inputs.
There is no system or ecology that can support infinite growth; as long as we're stuck in the "coasting is dying" mentality we'll see productive entities develop dysfunctions as they outgrow their ecosystems or kill themselves trying to expand. If coasting leads to gradual decline then over expansion leads to catastrophic failure.
In this context Tribe is a federally recognized sovereign yet dependent nation. They have the ability to govern themselves but are still subject to federal law, but while on reservations they not subject to state law, only federal and tribal law. It's complicated.
AFAIK there are drug addicts all over the world, including in the Middle East and Philippines where drug addicts are met with severe punishments. The problem is IMO more the availability of drugs vs the potential punishments people face. People are willing to take risks to do drugs. Unless a government completely controls everyone's private life there remains an ability to evade detection and take drugs while telling oneself that one will not be caught.
Yeah sounds like the people who bought it suck. Why would you destroy a pizza oven? It would add a ton of value to the house for the right buyer. If you had sold it to me I would have absolutely kept the oven :) Also inspires me to follow a similar path for my house. I think the key is to price the house so only someone who values the work you've done would bother buying it, if you have the time to wait around. And I guess that doesn't guarantee anything.
One of those things that adds a ton of value for the right person, but for the wrong person is equally negative value (it takes up 64 square feet of yard space!). While most people won't really care. And so while it can add a lot of value to the right person, overall it is zero value. Even to the right person it won't be as much value as you would expect - unless they are putting a more than normal down on the house the bank will then value that at zero and thus not give them a loan for what that feature is worth.
Pools are the same thing - should be valuable to the right buyer, but in practice worth zero. Even the most valuable remodels - kitchens - often are worth less than not doing it at all because while it adds a lot of value to the house it doesn't add as much as they cost.
Pools are worse - they are usually worth negative money when it comes time to sell, because you cannot just let it sit, unlike the pizza oven (at least in theory).
Not saying what should or shouldn’t be done, but the implication here seems to be that that’s a lot of yard space. Depending on yard size, that could be a crippling amount of space to lose, or just a drop in the bucket.
I don’t know anything about Seattle yards. I’d kind of expect them to be on the small side, but maybe his wasn’t? He obviously had some amount of land, but from his post I really can’t tell how much.
thats why you should remodel while you live there so you're actually getting value out of your expenditures, not just upgrading everything right before you move out.
Renovating before moving is the worst (excluding clean up (fresh paint, etc) - I feel like most people have horrible taste and use cheapo contractor grade materials, last time I was buying a house I couldn’t believe how many newly renovated homes I saw where I thought “wow this needs a ton of work”
This happened to me too! After a day of dealing with the router crashing every 30 minutes, I finally updated the firmware and am hoping the issue is fixed now.
I remember as a teen going to my dad with some outrage bait news I'd heard on the internet that totally fit into my preconceived notions, and he just said "Now think about that for a second. Does that sound like something that's fully true, or is it something that someone thinks you want to hear?"
If the government is going to give out drugs, then they should just run some pharmacies similar to state run liquor stores. No need to force users to buy from dealers, that makes no sense at all.
I'm not sure I understand completely or agree with it, but if the drugs could be reliably tested to avoid gaming the system, then in theory we could continue to try to curtail the illegal drug trade on one end while replacing adulterated drugs with clean ones on the other, net zero increase of availability.
If it worked well. There are probably many problems with this idea.
I've always said anyone who likes should be offered the choice of a free ticket to Swain's Island, which could be stocked with barrel fulls of absolutely pure and pharmaceutical grade hard drugs to the heart's delight of the new resident.
Let anyone who wants it buy fentanyl, and let natural selection do its work.
This is suggested semi-facetiously, but at the same time, feels like there's something to it.
Decriminalize, tax, regulate, and focus enforcement efforts on black market dealers.
The waste of human effort and life that has gone into the last 60 years of drug policy is insane to consider. We have got to try _something_ other than what we're doing now with prohibition.
I think the framing of "let natural selection do the work" is self sabotaging if you're really trying to make the argument persuasive. It makes your position sound on some level likes it's casually dismissing the loss of life when what is really being argued, to me when I read your post at least, is that we need to accept that in dealing with this kind of topic lives are going to be ruined/lost either way and that when we/governments take responsibility as distributors that at least allows us more control over the situation and from that position we might at least be able to diminish the risk/harm to addicts even if we can't actually convert them into non-addicts.
I'd add that I think more explanation around the black market angle could probably help the argument further since atm the state of legalization advocacy in the US tends to be "But think about the tax revenue!" which is fine for less problematic drugs like weed but which is going to stall fast when you get to things like heroine. Emphasizing legalization and government regulation/distribution as a way to take money out of the hands of gangs and street dealers would be compelling to a lot of people imo if framed in the right way.
100% fair, and also right. I started writing that as a kind of dismissive jokey, maybe slightly trolling, thing and then ended up a little more serious as I continued thinking - probably not my most well-argued or empathetic post.
If you follow that line of thought then allowing fentanyl is equivalent to the capital punishment. You can't consciously rely on this to manage society.
It doesn't matter who was banking there, from my perspective a society where we have to worry about bank runs and bank failures is worse than a society where we don't.
