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Competition is more than just another store offering the same goods and services at the same prices. I'm flabbergasted at these comments. You are as out of tou

Competition is more than just another store offering the same goods and services at the same prices. I'm flabbergasted at these comments. You are as out of touch as a republican supreme court justice. Willfully out of touch even.

rosser 10y ago
I quite agree with your first line, but downvoted your comment for the second line. That's personal commentary, and HN strives to keep discussion at the level of ideas.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  HN strives, but fails. The quality of posts has massively declined over the last 5 years or so. One more for the pile. However, another commenter does make the same point but worded better: The person I'm responding to is over-generalizing toy models to the real world, then demanding that it's the world that is wrong, not them. It's a common reasoning fault in humans, and also one that seems to be common to republican supreme court justices. The insistence that the toy model of the world is appropriate, and applies and holds true even in the face of evidence that it is not. Along with personification of systems, as if a system has a conscious mind. eg: capitalist system writ large prefers people to make 40k a years, rather than 20k a year. Not only is this a unsubstantiated remark, it's even false, since we have a ream of evidence that our American capitalist system, writ large, does not seem to be good at turning 20k earners into 40k earners. Anyways, I wasn't even referring to any specific person, republican supreme court justices is a group of individuals, and not a single person in specific.
  - rosser 10y ago
    Please help me understand how, "You are as out of touch as a republican supreme court justice. Willfully out of touch even." isn't somehow about 'rayiner, personally, given that it was said in response to his comment. When I say "HN strives", I'm not talking about some sort of intentionality on the part of the community as a whole. That's not even a point worth debating (in this context, at least, though it might be fun after we've passed a joint around a few times...). I'm talking about every one of us, individually, and our specific contributions to the level of discourse here. When you say "HN fails", you're therefore saying you failed (for the specific, situationally appropriate value of "you" — in this case, you, specifically). Especially when you follow that with "One more for the pile." Being all, "Welp!" in the face of the degradation of discourse you complain about makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
dang 10y ago
Personal attacks are not allowed here. We ban accounts that do that and it looks like you've done it before, so please don't do it any more. Re downthread: Whether or not comment quality on HN has "massively declined" (such perceptions tend to be in the eye of the beholder), please don't make it decline more massively still. "One more for the pile" is the credo of a litterer. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924820 and marked it off-topic.
- Sciencehaters 10y ago
  Can you stop doing everything you can to make people hate science. Stop being elitist maybe?
rayiner 10y ago
It's wrong to flippantly point to competition being the solution in every case, but it's equally wrong to dismiss the explanation without some reason to believe competition is not working. The microeconomic statement that competing sellers push price to margin cost is extremely well documents. To the point where if you're asserting that it isn't happening, you need to be able to point to some reason why.

rosser 10y ago

I quite agree with your first line, but downvoted your comment for the second line. That's personal commentary, and HN strives to keep discussion at the level of ideas.

ryanobjc 10y ago
HN strives, but fails. The quality of posts has massively declined over the last 5 years or so. One more for the pile. However, another commenter does make the same point but worded better: The person I'm responding to is over-generalizing toy models to the real world, then demanding that it's the world that is wrong, not them. It's a common reasoning fault in humans, and also one that seems to be common to republican supreme court justices. The insistence that the toy model of the world is appropriate, and applies and holds true even in the face of evidence that it is not. Along with personification of systems, as if a system has a conscious mind. eg: capitalist system writ large prefers people to make 40k a years, rather than 20k a year. Not only is this a unsubstantiated remark, it's even false, since we have a ream of evidence that our American capitalist system, writ large, does not seem to be good at turning 20k earners into 40k earners. Anyways, I wasn't even referring to any specific person, republican supreme court justices is a group of individuals, and not a single person in specific.
- rosser 10y ago
  Please help me understand how, "You are as out of touch as a republican supreme court justice. Willfully out of touch even." isn't somehow about 'rayiner, personally, given that it was said in response to his comment. When I say "HN strives", I'm not talking about some sort of intentionality on the part of the community as a whole. That's not even a point worth debating (in this context, at least, though it might be fun after we've passed a joint around a few times...). I'm talking about every one of us, individually, and our specific contributions to the level of discourse here. When you say "HN fails", you're therefore saying you failed (for the specific, situationally appropriate value of "you" — in this case, you, specifically). Especially when you follow that with "One more for the pile." Being all, "Welp!" in the face of the degradation of discourse you complain about makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

dang 10y ago

Personal attacks are not allowed here. We ban accounts that do that and it looks like you've done it before, so please don't do it any more. Re downthread: Whether or not comment quality on HN has "massively declined" (such perceptions tend to be in the eye of the beholder), please don't make it decline more massively still. "One more for the pile" is the credo of a litterer. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924820 and marked it off-topic.

Sciencehaters 10y ago
Can you stop doing everything you can to make people hate science. Stop being elitist maybe?

rayiner 10y ago

It's wrong to flippantly point to competition being the solution in every case, but it's equally wrong to dismiss the explanation without some reason to believe competition is not working. The microeconomic statement that competing sellers push price to margin cost is extremely well documents. To the point where if you're asserting that it isn't happening, you need to be able to point to some reason why.