someone is willing to pay is the sum total of what a business gets income from

Except credit changes the math on that significantly. You aren’t constrained by your income, but by your risk of default (and even then… glances 2008-ward) Then you can afford to buy more by paying a higher interest rate.

the capitalist marketplace, is 100% correlated to income willingly given vs cost of obtaining that income

“Willingly” is doing a lot of lifting, given the degree to which fraud, extortion, and price gouging play a roll in the national economy.

What shocks me about much of the U.S. economy is how much is spent on marketing, promotion, advertising, and sales. 0% value derived from such activity, but frequently over half the cost of things that are purchased in the U.S. is sunk in promotion.

Promotion (and deception and intimidation) drives sales. They create the illusion of scarcity and transform luxury into necessity.

They add perceived value among the unwitting and create implicit value through absence of harm.

something is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it

That’s a naive short-term approach to valuation.

Real value has to be measured in some kind of revenue generation, or - at least - cost mitigation. Otherwise what you’re describing isn’t value but expense.

the willing buyer is the key to the whole valuation equation

The willing buyer is the key to perceived value. But suckering someone doesn’t increase the utility of what you sold them.

Every registered voter can say Elon deserves to be in jail and guys like Merrick Garland will just kinda drag their heels, wave their hands, and insist there’s nothing to prosecute him on.

Meanwhile, we still have people in Guantanamo Bay from 20 years ago who have never stood trial.

Haha. Yeah. Stupid Republican voters.

shuffles feet through the tattered remains of all the liberal broken promises

Yeah, Trump’s making America great by killing white collar industries

True(ish).

and offering factory jobs

Flatly false.

I started my own company because I was sick of it.

I’m genuinely curious to hear how you’ve found it easier to land clients than employers. In my experience, you really need a good in with a bigger firm if you’re going to have any hope of launching a business. Unless your old employer is jettisoning their contracts as quickly as they jettison their staff, that can be tricky.

If not for the battery with a disturbing history of exploding, it would be the vehicle’s worst feature.

Welcome to the Marketplace of Ideas!

That’s a great idea you’ve got there. Would be a shame if something happened to it.

“Zero Emissions” has never sounded so sinister.

Angry Labour Value Fundamentalist Noises

I’m forced to say that some of the wraps and textures added to the vehicles do make them look cool again.

But I feel like that’s equivalent to saying “Once you drown the turd in whipped cream and cherries, it looks edible.” I mean, fuck, I suppose so. But I know what’s underneath so I’m not touching that spoon.

I would pay $15,000 for one.

I would pay $15k for a better vehicle. I’m not getting in The Truck That Kills You Instantly.

Strip out the bad stuff

What’s left after that?

Not hypothetical

possibilities

?

And what does that story have to do with generational pressure?

The dead family aren’t around to give better advise

All the adults told us it would be better for us than for them.

All the adults told us that it was our responsibility to do better than they’d done things. Some of the adults tried to help out along the way, while other adults knee-capped us and robbed us and threw us in jail for the crime of becoming poor.

And there’s a real selection bias along the way. A friend of mine was six years old when her dad shoved her out of the way of a speeding car. He died. She and the driver lived. She got to grow up in a world without a father willing to give everything to protect her. But the guy who killed her dad kept on ticking.

As we carve out more and more space for reckless, heartless people, we lose the honest and selfless ones along the way. In the end, a generation that selects for selfish people is going to be dominated by the most ruthless.

It is not unfair to clock the first bit. But you can’t count hypothetical WW3s. That’s like Boomers saying they lived through Hypothetical Nuclear Winter.

Also, if we’re counting recessions as millennials, you can’t neglect the '87 crash and the '01 dot-com bubble. If we’re counting plagues, you can’t leave out AIDS.

Understanding is cemented in one’s original source of information about the world. Shaping a pre-existing understand requires not just accuracy but volume, because you’re not competing against faulty logic. You’re competing against accumulated memories.

If someone is deep into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, what is shaping their opinion is the consistent repetition of orthodoxy over time. Similarly, if someone is highly educated in a particular scientific field, their opinion is shaped by the persistent need to reaffirm fundamental truths in order to succeed and progress. We are not computers. We are not creatures of pure logic. We are the accumulation of our prior experiences and exposures.

You should not be surprised if an individual - when confronted with a narrow band of contrary information - does not immediately jettison all their prior information. Because ask yourself - would you? I mean, if a single guy showed up with a stack of papers insisting he’s proved without a shadow of a doubt that chemtrails are real and the entire professional weather reporting community is lying to you, is there anything they could show you that you wouldn’t greet with skepticism proportional to your exposure to professional weather science?

Because, if the answer is “No”, then why would you expect someone immersed in hundreds of hours of conspiracy theory podcasts and think pieces and social media conversations to behave any differently?

That second one doesn’t make sense unless Leia owned a ton of slaves

There’s a link in the second paragraph to the technical details

I’m reminded of this mindset from the crypto scam surge.

Points at technical documents

“Well, it says it’s secure so quit arguing that it’s not secure”

Typically followed by

“If someone traced you/robbed you, then you were just doing it wrong”

Like, we’ve got high level white house officials feeding national security secrets to the Israelis because they just blindly implemented a “secure” Signal extension. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised people don’t look past the cover.

But come on. “You can just buy some tokens and then you’re secure” is painfully naive.