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First, do you or anyone you know directly or indirectly profit from these types of services? Because I find your emphatic endorsement hard to understand. To be
by afpx 9y ago
First, do you or anyone you know directly or indirectly profit from these types of services? Because I find your emphatic endorsement hard to understand.
To be fair, I do use some of these services, too (carefully). But, that’s only because often I can’t find quality alternatives. For instance, I would pay for a high-quality service like Mint (I don’t use it) that kept my data private, but there is none.
Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors.
Because of this, I’m a strong supporter of consumer protection laws and regulations. Capital often flows toward deceptive and unethical practices. And, all companies are eventually forced to follow the leader, otherwise they disappear. Laws are the only ways to prevent this.
- agentdrtran 9y agoTry Tiller. It puts all of your data into a Google Sheet with nice premade templates. Not quite as nice UX as mint but pretty close and allows for better customization.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ryanmonroe 9y agoYou start by saying the parent comment is hard to understand, then go on to explain why the statements are true. These two statements are essentially the same >Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors. > You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat. The only real difference is your use of the phrase "lock-out", but I don't think that's a reasonable way to look at it. If enough people really want to be part of a fee-based ecosystem, no one is stopping a company from engaging those people. You bring up IP laws, but that's really an independent issue, since fee-based and ad-based businesses can both use IP laws in the same way.
- afpx 9y agoI understand what you mean. But, for me to get the same quality of service (without regulation), I’d have to pay tens of thousands of dollars, at least. But, if there were regulations (like, to force service providers to have both a ‘free’ and a for-fee privacy-protected version), I’d probably only have to pay a few dollars.
- ancap 9y ago>First, do you or anyone you know directly or indirectly profit from these types of services? Of course. No one would be using them if they weren't better off from using them.
- walterstucco 9y agoCounter points: heroin, gambling, alcohol Exploiting addiction is not exactly good
- s73v3r_ 9y agoThe idea that people are perfectly rational actors with perfect information has long since been debunked.
- ancap 9y agoSure people are rational, even though you as an external actor may not agree with their motives. Even a schizophrenic is rational given what they have to work with. I'm not sure what perfect information has to do with anything. It's impossible that perfect information could ever exist.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoNo, they're not. They're people. They do not act perfectly rational.
- ancap 9y ago> They do not act perfectly rational. I suppose you have your own definition for "perfectly rational" that you're standing by, and that's fine. But I fail to see the point. How is that relevant to this thread? I originally posted that people wouldn't use these web services if they didn't receive some benefit from it, and you've done nothing more than present red herrings.
- ftlio 9y ago> For instance, I would pay for a high-quality service like Mint (I don’t use it) that kept my data private, but there is none. Have you looked at ynab.com? I find their overall philosophy on budgeting to be more effective, the app is high quality, and it's solely about your budget, not about offering you credit cards. It's one of the few products I recommend to anyone, and it's relatively expensive ($85 for the year I believe).
- afpx 9y agoI have tried it, but I didn’t think it was as useful for me personally. That is, I don’t need a budget. Instead, I need a high-usability, interactive visualization of all of my accounts (12+) with relatively accurate categorizations and alerts. But, I’d like to pay less than $49 / month. I would try to start a service like this myself, but I don’t think the market is large enough to make it usable.