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Comment by Zak | Hacker News Reader

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Zak·

the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Well that didn't take long to change.

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I was talking to my wife today about how a great many people HATE being sold things.

Part of the reason is that most salespeople are all, "HEY! BUY SOME MORE USELESS CRAP!?!?" and not very "What can I do to help you, or make your experience here more pleasant?"

If you go to Whole Foods Market, all of the salespeople there are in the second category, which is why people enjoy shopping there even at the price points they charge.

That's a great widget you got there, one of our finest, let me ring you up.

Now... would you like the 24 month extended warranty? That widget is a piece of shit that is likely to catch fire the moment you bring it home.

"salespeople" have been replaced by "customer reviews". The quality of the information is better because the motivation is no longer "get you to spend as much as possible", but "help others find the products they need, and rely on others to help me find the product I need".

Much of the wrongness of the article is in this same vein. He gave a series of reasons why things didn't exactly, perfectly translate, but failed to recognize how new technologies and new communities would arise to fill in the gaps and improve the user experience. He saw the problems and assumed they wouldn't be fixed, while tech pioneers saw the problems and found ways to fix them (often using technology that was already being demo'd in 1995.)

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