4 ms·

Indeed: Ideally, there would be one car. Ford. Ford would be the only vendor for cars, and Ford would be the only car vendor. We'd have the technology approved

by msla 6y ago

Indeed: Ideally, there would be one car. Ford. Ford would be the only vendor for cars, and Ford would be the only car vendor. We'd have the technology approved by Ford and all of the technology approved by Ford, including black paint, carburetors, tetraethyl lead, and, through a special deal with Radio (formerly RCA), AM radios tuned to Radio, the only Radio company and station in the world. These vehicles would be simple to maintain, in that the only maintenance option is to ship them to Ford, and simple to customize, in that you cannot. And anyone who attempts to modify their Ford would be subject to legal penalties, up to and including bomb-making, just as if they'd tried to destroy any other institution.

cle 6y ago
Wow, that's not at all what I'm saying. Did you notice how I offered no prescriptive nor normative statements? I'm just observing that there are tradeoffs involved--there are some beneficial properties that emerge as the number of choices decrease (along with a bunch of detrimental ones). Pretending like those don't exist does nobody any favors. Since you asked, my opinion is that there's a healthy tension between too many choices and not enough choices, and we should strive to maintain that tension. Which requires an objective understanding of the tradeoffs, instead of knee-jerk reactions to the phrase "vendor lock-in".
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  What counts is not the quantity of choices its the complexity and cost of failure especially if the choices are interrelated with other choices and the cost of failure increase with successive badly chosen choices. Standardization drastically reduces the cost of choices by letting you make them independently, a healthy market increases the chances that there will be many good choices, transparency increases the chance that you will pick one that is good for you. A small number of complicated interrelated choices would be manifestly worse than a large number of independent mostly good enough choices. This is why its mostly ok that there are a billion different cars. Most of your choices are good enough for most purposes and you don't have to pick your phone, your route home, your brand of gas station based on your car or options. Having few choices is virtually always bad. The converse is a difficult position to defend when instead of fewer choices one nearly ought to always wish for easier ones.

by msla 6y ago

cle 6y ago

Wow, that's not at all what I'm saying. Did you notice how I offered no prescriptive nor normative statements? I'm just observing that there are tradeoffs involved--there are some beneficial properties that emerge as the number of choices decrease (along with a bunch of detrimental ones). Pretending like those don't exist does nobody any favors. Since you asked, my opinion is that there's a healthy tension between too many choices and not enough choices, and we should strive to maintain that tension. Which requires an objective understanding of the tradeoffs, instead of knee-jerk reactions to the phrase "vendor lock-in".

michaelmrose 6y ago
What counts is not the quantity of choices its the complexity and cost of failure especially if the choices are interrelated with other choices and the cost of failure increase with successive badly chosen choices. Standardization drastically reduces the cost of choices by letting you make them independently, a healthy market increases the chances that there will be many good choices, transparency increases the chance that you will pick one that is good for you. A small number of complicated interrelated choices would be manifestly worse than a large number of independent mostly good enough choices. This is why its mostly ok that there are a billion different cars. Most of your choices are good enough for most purposes and you don't have to pick your phone, your route home, your brand of gas station based on your car or options. Having few choices is virtually always bad. The converse is a difficult position to defend when instead of fewer choices one nearly ought to always wish for easier ones.