Hacker News Reader

Comment by 4gotunameagain | Hacker News Reader

So, silicon valley decides to use their playbook of expand at all costs by burning money to acquire the market (like a carcinoma), and it is the users fault ?

Should we be blamed about uber destroying the taxi business, or airbnb the hotel one? Oh sorry, "disrupting".

Uber was dirt cheap, now it is the same price as taxis, and the people working for it (the "partners", not employees) have no social benefits.

Airbnb was cheap and humane, now it is THE cause for housing crises and massive residential property "investment".

The playbook of silicon valley is destructive, not disruptive.

It is by design aimed towards wealth accumulation. The ones with most money can capture the market, and make even more. It really is late stage capitalism.

And the more wealth inequality there is, the more pain, poverty and instability will be as well. AI will only exacerbate this.

View on HN

Uber and Airbnb are not autonomous robots.

If people wouldn't use their services, nothing would happen. They would just go bankrupt.

So yeah, I'd say it's entirely people's fault. Because people just wanted to use their services without thinking what they're causing.

Customers who think only about themselves and noone else.

I disagree completely. You cannot expect every consumer to be fully educated and aware of the consequences of their purchasing power.

This is the role of legislation, educated experts creating policies so that you don't have to do business analysis before making a purchase.

Would I pay 10x the price for tokens and be outcompeted by other companies, hoping that openAI will go out of business ? This is entirely unrealistic.

Was the business model of Uber ever a secret? What about AirBnb?

Even if we argue that we can't require from every human being to understand what they're doing, I'd still argue that there are more people who perfectly understand it and don't care than people who have no idea how such a business operates.

> You cannot expect every consumer to be fully educated and aware of the consequences of their purchasing power.

Huh? I cannot expect that people understand consequences of their actions? What are we, animals? Of course sometimes things aren't simple, and we cannot predict that using some service will create some longterm effects that in the end will be harmful. Some things are hard to predict.

But some things are easy to predict and my point is that this was exactly this case.

I mean, now we all know what Uber and AirBnb did, and we still use them because we don't care (generally speaking, I've used uber maybe 3 times in my life, AirBnb never).

No, we are not animals. But life has become so increasingly complex that is infeasible for the average person to be that invested in everything in order to have an educated opinion.

I do NOT want to have to research the business model of companies before I buy their products or services. I would like to outsource that to the government, and spend my time actually enjoying life.

Am I supposed to be invested in every change that happens around me ?

What if I am a baker, using chatGPT to experiment with recipes and develop them. Am I supposed to read about LLMs, tokens, and the silicon valley playbook ?

No. I should not have to do any of those things.

If you think you should not do these things, then you're a part of the problem.

If a company will advertise that they can take your oil and "dispose it legally", and then on their website they will openly write that they've found a loophole allowing them to store oil on the bottom of the ocean, then you say it's morally OK to use their services because it's legal?

If todays legislations are cargo and are being bought and sold based on the number of hired lobbyists, then you say it's OK to base our moral compas on that?

If you're a baker then you need to figure out how LLMs work at least to a level so that you could say that you've tried to figure it out, just as when I'm a software developer and I need to figure out how kidney stones work, because it might be in my own personal interest to know this.

Same thing is when buying stuff from Chinese vendors that ship cheap stuff to every corner of the world. You can buy their cheap products using your blind excuses, but then don't blame your local markets that for some unknown and unpredictable reason they closed operation.

We have brains for a reason, and we need to use this organ to fight our way through the complexity. This is the tax every one of us has to pay for being human and to live in a human world. If you want to have a brain, but decide not to use it, then I think you're just being lazy and entitled.

> then you're a part of the problem.

Sure, enshitification is my fault because I do not read the fine print, or research business models before I buy stuff.

I am not saying that the consumer has no ethical responsibilities, I am saying that is infeasible for the average consumer to do so.

> If you're a baker then you need to figure out how LLMs work

I completely disagree. I should not have to research about which types of grain are destructive to the farming industry before buying bread.

> If you want to have a brain, but decide not to use it, then I think you're just being lazy and entitled.

I have the right to choose where I spend my brain power on, and there are much, much more interesting and gratifying things to me than trying to analyse the behaviours of megacorps in order to have a fully educated decision in everything, in the this hyper complex and hyperconnected world we live in.

We disagree completely, no reason to keep repeating the same arguments. Have a nice day and enjoy reading the fine print in everything you buy, if it makes you feel better.

> Sure, enshitification is my fault because I do not read the fine print, or research business models before I buy stuff.

Kind of yes. You use it, you buy it. You create demand. And if there's demand, there's supply, economics 1-2-3. You vote "YES" with your wallet.

I read the fine print, and this allows me to NOT use Opus x30 only because it's available. I choose to not use AirBnb. I send a signal that this supply is not in demand.

And I guess because people like me read fine prints, you can feel better as well, because if something big will come up, you will hear internet rants about it, because we analyze and resist.

It sounds like you think you are saving the world one purchase at a time. Sure thing haha. And with the 5 people that read your rants, it is enough for a megacorp with millions of users to go bankrupt. Sure. Keep saving the world for us, thank you

> Customers who think only about themselves and noone else.

When was this ever different? And do you expect it to ever change?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com