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Yes! This the dystopian future I was hoping for! What's crazy is that TV's are already crazy cheap. I was in the grocery store a few weeks ago spending $5 on s

Yes! This the dystopian future I was hoping for! What's crazy is that TV's are already crazy cheap. I was in the grocery store a few weeks ago spending $5 on some lettuce and right next to the checkout was a big stack of 50" TV's that they were selling for $199. I'm simplifying here, but how is mining a dozen rare-earth materials, making a handful of integrated circuits, casting a flawless LCD panel, pick and placing circuit boards, winding coils for magnetic speakers, molding a case out of plastic and shipping the entire large box across the world the equivalent of growing 40 heads of Romaine lettuce? Doesn't the lettuce just kinda grow from seeds with occasional watering? Maybe a good startup would be a refrigerator that only opens after you let it track your movements, preferences, listen in on your conversations and then watch a few targeted advertisements in exchange for some free lettuce?

comfypotato 3y ago
Just pointing out that the lettuce costs what it does because of logistics. It’s fresh where you expect it to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of growing the lettuce is less than 5% of the cost. My dad used to comment often on how it always baffled him that 90% of the cost of anything involving steel beams in his construction work was just moving the beams.
- saulrh 3y ago
  Also reliability and consistency and efficiency. Growing one head of lettuce in your yard is easy. Growing fifty million heads of lettuce a year, year round, every year, rain or shine, summer or winter, in sickness or in health, without it consuming 20% of your entire population... Yeah.
- hettygreen 3y ago
  Sure... but is there not a bunch of logistics related to procuring the hundreds of parts in the TV's bom, organizing international shipping, distribution and sales required to get the TV to the exact same grocery store as the lettuce? The lettuce is grown in my own country and is already picked and tended to by low-key slave labour (migrant workers).
  - comfypotato 3y ago
    Not in comparison. That was my point, actually, that the logistics situation for lettuce is much different. It’s mostly in the time value, but the ratio of value to weight/volume is also much lower (which is going to result in logistics affecting the price a lot more). The biggest factor is that the clock is ticking for the lettuce going bad, and also that it needs to be refrigerated at every step along the way. Logistics are expensive! It’s the difference between night and day when time/refrigeration doesn’t matter. The logistics involved in getting a TV to a grocery store is nothing in comparison. There’s no risk factor for delays (this risk is incorporated into the price of lettuce) and the total time between manufacture and floor-display doesn’t matter. I meant steel beams as an example of logistics with special constraints. In the case of steel beams it’s extreme total weight/size/shape.
TonyTrapp 3y ago
I keep thinking the same every time specific people complain about supposed price fixing on hard drives / SSDs. Those things are dirt-cheap, even compared to other mass-produced items. If you consider the value of what's inside, it's incredible how much reliable, fast storage you can get for the same amount of money as that TV.
soared 3y ago
The cost of the good is negligible. You eat the lettuce and it doesn’t continue to provide revenue for the farmer. Telly will record what shows/etc you watch, record your living room, and sell not only that data but targeted advertising to brands. CTV commercials that are $15-$70 per 1,000 (cpm). Banners on ctv devices are probably $2cpm or so. So if a user watches 1,000 commercials, Telly has already profited despite giving away the TV. And they can sell your data in perpetuity, us AI to combine it with other data to resell it later fore a higher price, etc.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  The problem is that it's likely that people who get this TV have significantly lower-than-average household income, which makes them less valuable to advertisers. If banners are now $2, advertisers might quickly find that they're only willing to pay $0.50 for the demographic of people who owns this TV.
  - technothrasher 3y ago
    I don’t know about markets in general, but when I ran a retail liquor store I was making all my money on low income customers. The occasional rich guy who came in and bought the $300 bottle of Scotch wasn’t even close to matching the large number of regulars that were buying high margin $3 nips and $8 wines.
    - mrtweetyhack 3y ago
      [dead]
fipar 3y ago
> I'm simplifying here, but how is mining a dozen rare-earth materials, making a handful of integrated circuits, casting a flawless LCD panel, pick and placing circuit boards, winding coils for magnetic speakers, molding a case out of plastic and shipping the entire large box across the world the equivalent of growing 40 heads of Romaine lettuce? Doesn't the lettuce just kinda grow from seeds with occasional watering? I won't pretend I know the answer, but I do know some people who work on electronics/the hardware side of things, and some who are rural workers, and I think part of the reason could be that for the TV, once you have the mass production facility operating, unless you hit supply chain issues, the whole thing is rather predictable. Predictable as in, you know if you get the necessary inputs, you can produce X units in T time max. With the lettuce, sure, it just kinda grows from seeds (though the lettuce you grow for seeds is not one you'll eat), but it's a lot more unpredictable (there could be droughts, flooding, fires, invasive species, bugs, and last but not least, thieves). So again, I won't pretend I know the answer to your question, and I'm not even an expert on either subject, but after becoming a little bit more familiar with the process involved in producing food to supply a population (so I don't mean your home orchard, which is lovely to have, but won't feed a city) I think a lot of us folks with very little knowledge of rural life and food production tend to underestimate the effort to produce food, and overestimate the improvements modern technology has brought into this. In any case, I completely agree with your point about the dystopian future. In line with your refrigerator startup idea, a few years ago already some friends and I were joking that, in the future, people wouldn't even own their bathroom: it comes in for free, but you can only use it once a day. After that, it's in-app purchases (at least two tiers, of course!).
captainmuon 3y ago
The implication is of course that your advertizing data is so valuable to subsidize the cost. I don't believe it - maybe advertizers do of course. Actually from the outside it looks like the advertizing market is continuously collapsing. Look how bad ads have become, and how irrelevant linear ad-paid TV has become. I think what's actually going on is that the $200 (or let it be $400, same ballpark) is a fair price. Drizzle a few LCD crystals on a glass plate, pop it into a cheap injection molded plastic case with an off-the-shelf TV mainboard and ship it in a container. Also, $200 is a lot of money, for that price you can get a supercomputer for your pocket! I think what's really going on is that the price of food is insane and our food industry is a grift, but that is a different topic.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  Imagine a world without advertising constantly. No generation before us has ever had to deal with this kind of constant aggressive product placement. It makes me want to hatch a plan to take over the world, solely to ban advertising in every way, shape, and form, outside of Yellowpages. It's completely out of hand. And it would take real restraint to not send the advertisers to the pillory for the rest of their lives for thinking this is an OK way to treat human beings.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    The entire modern corporate ecosystem is build by and for adtech. Its interesting to imagine where we would be if advertising had been disallowed or nonviable as a business model.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  A cellphone isn't a supercomputer. Sure, it might have relatively decent grunt versus computers of yesteryear, but it doesn't trade punches with the average GPC, nor an actual supercomputer.
  - zamnos 3y ago
    It trades punches just fine. What do you think people use computers for? Punches like "has access to the Internet" or "runs Google Docs". Other ones too, like "runs Candy Crush" or "lets me watch Netflix/YouTube/Disney+". True, it'll get sucker punched by shots like "runs Kerbal" or "runs Factorio" but that's a niche market.
AviationAtom 3y ago
I think you assume those existing TVs don't already engage in a large amount of the activity you describe, which is what allows them to sell those TVs at less of a profit margin, or perhaps even a loss.
MandieD 3y ago
Taking up amateur radio has given me an idea of what mass-market consumer electronics might have cost if economies of scale hadn't kicked in so thoroughly.
zamnos 3y ago
The mistake you're making is in assuming that the price of something has anything to do with the inputs. It's a fairly common mistake. But looking at loss-leaders, door-busters, sales, and verblen goods, hopefully you're able to understand that it's true. Thus, discussions of supply chain length of lettuce vs TV is the wrong one. Comparisons can certainly be made between the two but in determining how much something costs? At the right places at the right time (moving day) and find you TVs for free.

comfypotato 3y ago

Just pointing out that the lettuce costs what it does because of logistics. It’s fresh where you expect it to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of growing the lettuce is less than 5% of the cost. My dad used to comment often on how it always baffled him that 90% of the cost of anything involving steel beams in his construction work was just moving the beams.

saulrh 3y ago
Also reliability and consistency and efficiency. Growing one head of lettuce in your yard is easy. Growing fifty million heads of lettuce a year, year round, every year, rain or shine, summer or winter, in sickness or in health, without it consuming 20% of your entire population... Yeah.
hettygreen 3y ago
Sure... but is there not a bunch of logistics related to procuring the hundreds of parts in the TV's bom, organizing international shipping, distribution and sales required to get the TV to the exact same grocery store as the lettuce? The lettuce is grown in my own country and is already picked and tended to by low-key slave labour (migrant workers).
- comfypotato 3y ago
  Not in comparison. That was my point, actually, that the logistics situation for lettuce is much different. It’s mostly in the time value, but the ratio of value to weight/volume is also much lower (which is going to result in logistics affecting the price a lot more). The biggest factor is that the clock is ticking for the lettuce going bad, and also that it needs to be refrigerated at every step along the way. Logistics are expensive! It’s the difference between night and day when time/refrigeration doesn’t matter. The logistics involved in getting a TV to a grocery store is nothing in comparison. There’s no risk factor for delays (this risk is incorporated into the price of lettuce) and the total time between manufacture and floor-display doesn’t matter. I meant steel beams as an example of logistics with special constraints. In the case of steel beams it’s extreme total weight/size/shape.

TonyTrapp 3y ago

I keep thinking the same every time specific people complain about supposed price fixing on hard drives / SSDs. Those things are dirt-cheap, even compared to other mass-produced items. If you consider the value of what's inside, it's incredible how much reliable, fast storage you can get for the same amount of money as that TV.

soared 3y ago

The cost of the good is negligible. You eat the lettuce and it doesn’t continue to provide revenue for the farmer. Telly will record what shows/etc you watch, record your living room, and sell not only that data but targeted advertising to brands. CTV commercials that are $15-$70 per 1,000 (cpm). Banners on ctv devices are probably $2cpm or so. So if a user watches 1,000 commercials, Telly has already profited despite giving away the TV. And they can sell your data in perpetuity, us AI to combine it with other data to resell it later fore a higher price, etc.

idopmstuff 3y ago
The problem is that it's likely that people who get this TV have significantly lower-than-average household income, which makes them less valuable to advertisers. If banners are now $2, advertisers might quickly find that they're only willing to pay $0.50 for the demographic of people who owns this TV.
- technothrasher 3y ago
  I don’t know about markets in general, but when I ran a retail liquor store I was making all my money on low income customers. The occasional rich guy who came in and bought the $300 bottle of Scotch wasn’t even close to matching the large number of regulars that were buying high margin $3 nips and $8 wines.
  - mrtweetyhack 3y ago
    [dead]

fipar 3y ago

> I'm simplifying here, but how is mining a dozen rare-earth materials, making a handful of integrated circuits, casting a flawless LCD panel, pick and placing circuit boards, winding coils for magnetic speakers, molding a case out of plastic and shipping the entire large box across the world the equivalent of growing 40 heads of Romaine lettuce? Doesn't the lettuce just kinda grow from seeds with occasional watering? I won't pretend I know the answer, but I do know some people who work on electronics/the hardware side of things, and some who are rural workers, and I think part of the reason could be that for the TV, once you have the mass production facility operating, unless you hit supply chain issues, the whole thing is rather predictable. Predictable as in, you know if you get the necessary inputs, you can produce X units in T time max. With the lettuce, sure, it just kinda grows from seeds (though the lettuce you grow for seeds is not one you'll eat), but it's a lot more unpredictable (there could be droughts, flooding, fires, invasive species, bugs, and last but not least, thieves). So again, I won't pretend I know the answer to your question, and I'm not even an expert on either subject, but after becoming a little bit more familiar with the process involved in producing food to supply a population (so I don't mean your home orchard, which is lovely to have, but won't feed a city) I think a lot of us folks with very little knowledge of rural life and food production tend to underestimate the effort to produce food, and overestimate the improvements modern technology has brought into this. In any case, I completely agree with your point about the dystopian future. In line with your refrigerator startup idea, a few years ago already some friends and I were joking that, in the future, people wouldn't even own their bathroom: it comes in for free, but you can only use it once a day. After that, it's in-app purchases (at least two tiers, of course!).

captainmuon 3y ago

The implication is of course that your advertizing data is so valuable to subsidize the cost. I don't believe it - maybe advertizers do of course. Actually from the outside it looks like the advertizing market is continuously collapsing. Look how bad ads have become, and how irrelevant linear ad-paid TV has become. I think what's actually going on is that the $200 (or let it be $400, same ballpark) is a fair price. Drizzle a few LCD crystals on a glass plate, pop it into a cheap injection molded plastic case with an off-the-shelf TV mainboard and ship it in a container. Also, $200 is a lot of money, for that price you can get a supercomputer for your pocket! I think what's really going on is that the price of food is insane and our food industry is a grift, but that is a different topic.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Imagine a world without advertising constantly. No generation before us has ever had to deal with this kind of constant aggressive product placement. It makes me want to hatch a plan to take over the world, solely to ban advertising in every way, shape, and form, outside of Yellowpages. It's completely out of hand. And it would take real restraint to not send the advertisers to the pillory for the rest of their lives for thinking this is an OK way to treat human beings.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  The entire modern corporate ecosystem is build by and for adtech. Its interesting to imagine where we would be if advertising had been disallowed or nonviable as a business model.
hammyhavoc 3y ago
A cellphone isn't a supercomputer. Sure, it might have relatively decent grunt versus computers of yesteryear, but it doesn't trade punches with the average GPC, nor an actual supercomputer.
- zamnos 3y ago
  It trades punches just fine. What do you think people use computers for? Punches like "has access to the Internet" or "runs Google Docs". Other ones too, like "runs Candy Crush" or "lets me watch Netflix/YouTube/Disney+". True, it'll get sucker punched by shots like "runs Kerbal" or "runs Factorio" but that's a niche market.

AviationAtom 3y ago

I think you assume those existing TVs don't already engage in a large amount of the activity you describe, which is what allows them to sell those TVs at less of a profit margin, or perhaps even a loss.

MandieD 3y ago

Taking up amateur radio has given me an idea of what mass-market consumer electronics might have cost if economies of scale hadn't kicked in so thoroughly.

zamnos 3y ago

The mistake you're making is in assuming that the price of something has anything to do with the inputs. It's a fairly common mistake. But looking at loss-leaders, door-busters, sales, and verblen goods, hopefully you're able to understand that it's true. Thus, discussions of supply chain length of lettuce vs TV is the wrong one. Comparisons can certainly be made between the two but in determining how much something costs? At the right places at the right time (moving day) and find you TVs for free.