Comment by rakoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rakoo | Hacker News Reader

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> Question: why does the market fail so miserably in this respect?

Counter-question: did you really think the free market was actually working for the consumer ?

A free market relies on multiple points:

- consumers are rational

- consumers have time and energy to compare alternatives

- alternatives exist

- it is essentially free to create an alternative, and alternatives take 0 time to become mature

- consumers have enough money to buy exactly what they want

None of those are true. Consumers aren't rational, or else there wouldn't be a multi billion dollars ad industry whose point is exactly to instill artificial demand. Consumers have too little free time to spend on chores, family, going out; they won't spend a weekend spreadsheeting a smartphone. The last competitor to the current duopoly failed because it didn't gain traction, and it was a multi billion dollar company. The income inequality keeps rising, people have to make a choice between paying rent and buying a new smartphone.

The free market has always been a fable. The whole economic system is not geared towards maximization of consumers' quality of life but of shareholders' profits. A barely working, ad-ridden, slow as molasses smartphone that prints money just by being turned on is the expected outcome of those incentives.

I’m commenting because I can’t upvote twice. Other commenters are apologists working hard to defend their capital-religious beliefs. And, I’m here to support the statement that “the free market has always been a fable”.

I think the legacy of trust busting from the late 1800's and early 1900's carried over pretty well into the post-war boom in the 50's and 60's, and that's why we have so many stories about how home appliances lasted for 30, 40, and 50 years back then. I think our system started falling over with the deregulation under Reagan in the 80's, and it's being a steadily-increasing decline ever since. Matthew Stoller on Twitter is closely following Lina Kahn at the FTC, and she seems intent on restoring the balance between consumers and corporations, but I'm afraid that if she actually does something noticeable by the general populace in this regard, she'll simply be replaced by a "sympathetic" administration, and the organization "steered" back into compliance. If so, the people who do this should just disband them. It doesn't do us any good to have regulatory gatekeepers on the payroll, if they're only acting like the ratings companies in the MBS fiasco and subsequent meltdown.

FTFY: The last TWO competitors to the current duopoly failed because they didn't gain traction, and they were both a multi billion dollar companies.

Windows Phone and Fire Phone.

A free market relies on none of those assumptions.

> The free market has always been a fable. The whole economic system is not geared towards maximization of consumers' quality of life

No economist would claim that (and I seriously ask from where you got the "markets maximize consumers' quality of life" claim). Markets rather optimize for the most efficient usage of resources.

Efficiency in this case defined as "extracting as much money from consumers at as low a cost as possible", not "providing as much value as possible to consumers at as low a price as possible". The latter can, under the right circumstances (a competitive market) be the most effective way to achieve the former, but those conditions do not always occur, and most companies, for obvious reasons, do all they can to get into a position where they don't.

> Efficiency in this case defined as "extracting as much money from consumers at as low a cost as possible", not "providing as much value as possible to consumers at as low a price as possible".

"providing as much value as possible to consumers at as low a price as possible" is exactly the opposite of efficiency since as a company you don't have to invest that many resources for the given price.

What's the value in a spyware ridden laptop?

> What's the value in a spyware ridden laptop?

Pre-installing spyware gives money to the vendor of the laptop. The developer of the spyware can afford to give this money to the laptop vendor since he can use the collected data to make even more money.

Yeah obviously, I mean the value to the users

> Markets rather optimize for the most efficient usage of resources.

Where, in practice, "efficient" is conveniently circularly defined as "whatever the market decides". In the case of the OP, there's nothing "efficient" about grinding a computer to a halt under an oppressive layer of crapware, thereby wasting the user's time and energy (in both a literal and a figurative sense). The stark lesson of the modern age is that markets are hopeless at pricing in externalities.

Markets rather optimize for the most efficient usage of resources.

And increasingly, consumers have become resources rather than market participants.

> And increasingly, consumers have become resources rather than market participants.

By their buying decisions, they actively decide that this is what they want.

They don't decide this is what they want, they decide this is the least bad they will bear.

I don't like Android, I don't like iOS. What do I buy ? Not the one that is best for me, because I don't have a real choice, but the one I will hate the least.

> I don't like Android, I don't like iOS. What do I buy ?

Not buying is also a possible decision. You should of course choose this choice if all other available option have a negative net value for you. The fact that you decided for Android or iOS shows that both of these choices have a positive net value for you - so what are you complaining about?

If I don't buy anything, I'm out of the market system and the whole argument of "the market is best" falls down: it means the market hasn't solved my problem.

> The fact that you decided for Android or iOS shows that both of these choices have a positive net value for you - so what are you complaining about?

Android suits me more, but I would like to be able to run multiple VPNs at the same time. What do I buy ?

I didn't buy Android because this is what I want, but because it's the closest. But how do I drive the decisions to where I want ? Am I supposed to wait that a million alternatives are created and have the same level as Android, then only can I buy what I need ? This just doesn't work.

> If I don't buy anything, I'm out of the market system and the whole argument of "the market is best" falls down: it means the market hasn't solved my problem.

This means the vendor makes no money from you. If a lot of people decide this way, the vendor will have to adjust or go bust - this is called "market adjustment".

The fact that you did buy tells the market that what you bought is of net-positive value for you.

That's like an AI recognizing Bugs Bunny as a cat and not as a chair, at least it's an animal, it is a net-positive over the alternative. That's still not what I want.

> The fact that you did buy tells the market that what you bought is of net-positive value for you.

This doesn't mean the market is efficient. It means the market misunderstands itself.

Try Librem 5 or Pinephone.

I applaud the efforts, but it's not there yet and still, look how long it took to be where they are today. Look at the lost efforts of webOS, Maemo, Symbian, FirefoxOS. Most of those have working forks, but only commercial ones are still living and are still not what I'm looking for.

Indeed, it's very much work in progress, but in my opinion it's very far already and people who are concerned about having alternatives should support such efforts (I do).

I don't believe that's true.

As an example, I hate every option available for phones right now but I can't just not have a phone. I have no real choice.

Whichever decision I make will send the wrong signal to "the market" and won't influence it to improve.

You can buy second-hand phone to avoid giving more profit to the producer.

Except older phones will be EOL much sooner and will stop getting updates.

Thanks 'free market'.

Use LineageOS - and indeed, thank the free market.

Lineage doesn't guarantee security updates for your device, even if there are official builds.

Not to mention lineage means no verified boot

The most efficient usage of resources is the constraint, not the goal. It means markets will use fewer resources for building 10 smartphone than an ad-hoc system, but it will not decide whether the 10 smartphones are needed or what kind of smartphone are needed.

Also it doesn't imply it'll use the least amount of resources, it implies it'll use the least amount of _money_, which means the cost will be exported to countries that can't afford to say no... Are we really surprised at the amount of slave labor in the world?

> but [the market] will not decide whether the 10 smartphones are needed or what kind of smartphone are needed.

This is what buyers decide about via their buying decisions.

I have a hard time believing that the monstrously bloated spyware know as Windows 11 is "the most efficient usage of resources".

The parent said that they want a specific kind of smartphone, and questions why the market doesn't provide it. They essentially ask why the market doesn't provide something that suits them better

> Markets rather optimize for the most efficient usage of resources.

Most efficient usage of resources in what sense?

In the sense that those who are willing to pay the most get preferred resource allocation in a way that is self-adjusting.

If a company is able to pay more for their commodities, it means that it is able to create more of an economic value of the commodities than a competitor (otherwise it would not be able to pay this price). This leads to a more efficient and effective use of the commodities that are traded on the market.

It also encourages slavery. Who sows your clothes? Who assembles your phone? Who picks the vegetables you eat? Really it's all the same person: The cheapest option.

> It also encourages slavery.

Indeed, if slavery turned out to be more efficient, it would.

But I think that the claim that slavery is more efficient does not hold, since opressing people binds a lot of ressources; also opressed people tend to do work as minimally as possible.

So it is much more efficient to give people the illusion of freedom instead of enslaving them.

And yet, in our system that prioritizes efficiency, we have more slavery than at any point in human history. Something doesn't add up.

Producing something that people need but dont want isn't efficiency, its exploitation

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