nomorewords

While I do disagree with the chosen wording (using 'a cool new feature would be to...' sounds a bit more friendly, if you will) I don't think that anything is said in bad faith. This is a passion project for the creator and he most likely wants to improve it. He should still follow his vision of what he wants this website to be, but that doesn't take away anything from the suggestive comments posted here.

Wasn't there a big scandal some years ago about the big tech players making deals under the table about wages and not poaching each other's talent? At some point, when there is too much to lose, big companies are going to start collaborating on things that are not beneficial to the worker. At that point, you might say that you have total freedom in your choice of where to go to work, but you are also limited by the 'invisible hand of the market'

But yeah, I do agree that a direct comparison of programmers to serfs is a bit overboard. However, I am also seeing it in the sense that things don't really change much, even in a few centuries. The world is probably getting better for the people, but that doesn't mean that the same old tactics by the rich and powerful don't appear in new clothes.

Unless you have been taught at a young age that cooking is something valuable, I've found out that a lot of adults run from it like hell. When covid hit, I expected people to start being reasonable with their budget (and health) and reckoned that food delivery services would have a rough time surviving.

Turns out, people started ordering food for home a lot more, even though they now had the time as well as the incentive to save money due to the uncertainty.

On a side note, being from Eastern Europe as well, I think that, at least mentally, it was different being poor here in the 80s/90s than it was in the western world. Basically you and all of your neighbors and everyone else around you would be poor (unless you were a party member). Everybody had the same starting point when democracy arrived and there was real incentive for factories to come up with a good balance between quality and cost.

Yeah, the above comment kind of stuck to the analogy item of shoes. A lot of the things that are quality and are worth it (from a long-term POV) are going to be better value than getting the lower quality item more often, than the one time purchase.

Housing is also getting pretty bad. Essentially, the lower your income, the more you are expected to pay back to the bank since you can only put aside so much money for the mortgage each month.

A well-off person will pay his house as much as 2-3x faster than a 'poor' person, essentially allowing him to invest for the future at a much earlier stage in life.

Doesn't it? Although there are no-interest loans (for a promotional period at least), you are most likely going to pay more than what the price tag says since the bank wants to make a buck too. So the poor people end up spending more again.

I do agree that it is a better scenario than having to always buy the lesser quality item, but you still are paying the 'poverty tax'