6 ms·

This argument can be made in a lot of industries. Farming, furniture making, automotive, consumer electronics, appliances... There are things we can do (and I'

This argument can be made in a lot of industries. Farming, furniture making, automotive, consumer electronics, appliances... There are things we can do (and I'd argue we should) systemically to incentivise building for the long term but I think the cultural mindset needs to change first. I hesitate to lay all the blame on consumerism, but it certainly seems like a big part of the problem. I hope that projects like The Long Now and Artemis signal a shift toward thinking more about future generations.

6510 6y ago
The market system is an epic hack, it does fantastic stuff but it is merely a hack. We won't be able to do everything outside its scope. It is a really large scope but not large enough.
jmchuster 6y ago
Furniture-making actually seems like something you can draw a lot of intuitive analogies from. You need to make a chair so your client can sit down and work at their desk. While waiting on this chair, your client needs to stand awkwardly at their desk. So they care about how long it takes for you to make this chair, as well as how much it costs and all the normal stuff. You can build a very fancy premium chair custom fit to your client's body-shape, but it's extremely expensive, wouldn't work as well if the client ever gained or lost weight, and took forever to build, with your unhappy client standing around the whole time yelling at you to make it faster. Maybe you can build a super cheap chair real fast, but then this chair falls apart all the time and you need to keep on fixing it. Client got to sit down fast, which is great, but they keep on needing to get up so you can glue on more balsa wood to try to hold it together. You could get a stack of crates for them to sit on. Not really a chair, but it works, and you could then work on a nicer chair that won't fall apart instantly in the meantime. Or maybe they're happy enough with the stack of crates and say don't bother with the chair, i don't want to pay for it. And then maybe your client moves cross-country every year, and so will just toss the chair when they move, and find someone else to build them a new chair when they get to their new apartment.
- couchand 6y ago
  The part missing from that analogy is the iterative process. Your client may have asked you to build a chair, but until they sit down on what you've built they don't realize that what they really wanted was a couch.
- justinclift 6y ago
  Furniture rentals (aka FaaS) sounds like it'd suit this client more. :)

6510 6y ago

The market system is an epic hack, it does fantastic stuff but it is merely a hack. We won't be able to do everything outside its scope. It is a really large scope but not large enough.

jmchuster 6y ago

Furniture-making actually seems like something you can draw a lot of intuitive analogies from. You need to make a chair so your client can sit down and work at their desk. While waiting on this chair, your client needs to stand awkwardly at their desk. So they care about how long it takes for you to make this chair, as well as how much it costs and all the normal stuff. You can build a very fancy premium chair custom fit to your client's body-shape, but it's extremely expensive, wouldn't work as well if the client ever gained or lost weight, and took forever to build, with your unhappy client standing around the whole time yelling at you to make it faster. Maybe you can build a super cheap chair real fast, but then this chair falls apart all the time and you need to keep on fixing it. Client got to sit down fast, which is great, but they keep on needing to get up so you can glue on more balsa wood to try to hold it together. You could get a stack of crates for them to sit on. Not really a chair, but it works, and you could then work on a nicer chair that won't fall apart instantly in the meantime. Or maybe they're happy enough with the stack of crates and say don't bother with the chair, i don't want to pay for it. And then maybe your client moves cross-country every year, and so will just toss the chair when they move, and find someone else to build them a new chair when they get to their new apartment.

couchand 6y ago
The part missing from that analogy is the iterative process. Your client may have asked you to build a chair, but until they sit down on what you've built they don't realize that what they really wanted was a couch.
justinclift 6y ago
Furniture rentals (aka FaaS) sounds like it'd suit this client more. :)