3 ms·

> to make money it helps to insert yourself between people and something they may want or need. this is how pretty much every business works. Even though there

by gumby 3y ago

> to make money it helps to insert yourself between people and something they may want or need. this is how pretty much every business works. Even though there is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of grifters and rentiers, it's unreasonable to say that "this is how pretty much every business works". If you buy a car the mfr is hardly inserting themselves between something you could have without them. Same for a haircut, a restaurant, or the food the restaurant used, for that matter. There is even a small segment of the banking industry that does more than just insert itself and charge a toll!

nerdponx 3y ago
Of course they do. Toyota inserts itself between me and my need to go places.
- pixl97 3y ago
  In this case transportation grift is a trillion dollar problem in the US, but maybe slightly different than you're saying. A huge portion of US infrastructure is built on the idea that no one in their right mind would walk to it. Our shops are box islands in multi acre oceans of black asphalt. Vast arteries of concrete separate people from where they live to where they buy. So, yea I would say there is plenty of grift at different levels.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    I think we have a different interpretation of "between". I just meant that they see a costly thing that people do, and they do something to reduce that cost. That basically is what all companies do. I believe that's what GP meant as well, but apparently everyone else interpreted it differently.
  - rewmie 3y ago
    > A huge portion of US infrastructure is built on the idea that no one in their right mind would walk to it. No one in their right mind would want to walk to any business in the US due to its urban planning and transport infrastructure. Even biking is an absurd risk that only rare people dare to make. In the US it's not abnormal to express the length of even mundane car trips in how many hours you spend driving. That's definitely not a halmark of a walkable region.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > No one in their right mind would want to walk to any business in the US due to its urban planning and transport infrastructure. > Even biking is an absurd risk that only rare people dare to make. Neither of these things are true everywhere in the US. There are many cities where walking and biking are common forms of transportation. But there are certainly many places where the infrastructure appears to be actively designed to kill pedestrians and bicyclist as well.
- ta8645 3y ago
  People went places before cars were invented, you can too. Toyota offers you a better way, if you can afford to avail yourself of their offer -- that's all.
  - drekk 3y ago
    People went places before cars were invented, and then General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only to dismantle it. Now car companies are offering not "a better way" but "the only real way" unless you want to get hit by a suburbanite driving a Ford F-150 while sitting in an unprotected bike lane. I'm really tired of people acting like it's just a free market where everyone is an equal, rational actor. There was a concerted effort to redesign Americana around cars that was not replicated globally, and you see the consequences of it play out in real time.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      > I'm really tired of people acting like it's just a free market where everyone is an equal, rational actor. It's never been a free market. There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I'm really tired of people acting like the only thing standing in the way of utopia, is capitalism.
      - astrange 3y ago
        > There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I think you're thinking of Skyrim and not the actual world, but there are certainly historical periods that were famously bandit-free even in antiquity like the Mongol Empire.
    - gumby 3y ago
      > General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only to dismantle it I know this story and for a long time believed it. But it appears that developers building new towns (urban expansion) in the mid 20th century put in streetcars to get people to move in (connected to city networks etc) and ran them at a loss. As the new town filled up and the developers went on to the next one, the streetcars became the uneconomic responsibility of the town.
javawizard 3y ago
> If you buy a car That's a particularly amusing example to pick considering that dealers are the dominant distribution channel from which to acquire a car, at least in the U.S.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  The grifters are car dealers in this case, increasingly. Mfgs create value. Not unlike how writers/artists created a bunch of value and ClosedAI and similar are grifts built on top of them. except unlike car mfgs authors don't have much pull to stop it
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    ... and there isn't a person in the US that doesn't hate car dealers (including other car dealers).
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      We had a Toyota dealer in our town that both customers and former employees speak reverently of. Some of those employees jumped ship to the Honda dealer after the Toyota dealer was bought by the guy who owned all the other car dealerships in town. For a long time the Honda dealer was the only competitor to Maguire, but then Maguire bought the Honda dealer. Those employees don't speak ill of Maguire but they certainly don't speak about in him in glowing terms.
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  That’s how it was done pre-Internet, but now Tesla is one of the most valuable auto manufacturers and it sells directly to end users, no middlemen dealers.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    Toyota-5x Ford, Honda, Chevrolet-4x Jeep, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Ram, Subaru-3x These are many more multiples of Tesla’s sales. Teslas sales make up a minuscule portion of the market. Tesla cannot sell directly to users in any of the continental US, they must sell through a website and ship the vehicle. Federal Dealership laws preclude direct to customer sales. Tesla may be valuable but its effects on the market are negligible.
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> If you buy a car the mfr is hardly inserting themselves between something you could have without them. They start to, though. What was that about BMW and having telemetry on car radio I heard about the other day? Or attempts by manufacturers to turn pieces of car into services, which has an effect of them inserting themselves into car resales?
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
> it's unreasonable to say that "this is how pretty much every business works". i don't mean it in a totally negative sense. maybe it came across that way in the context. a business is still a facilitator between you and something you need. they have an advantage be it money, resources, technology, connections...something that allows them to act as that middle man and in many case monopolise it. on social media its much easier for anyone to do that. you dont really need any resource aside from "hustle" as they call it.
cma 3y ago
Perhaps it isn't the orginization in that example, but the detached and shareholders who have limited liability.

by gumby 3y ago

nerdponx 3y ago

Of course they do. Toyota inserts itself between me and my need to go places.

pixl97 3y ago
In this case transportation grift is a trillion dollar problem in the US, but maybe slightly different than you're saying. A huge portion of US infrastructure is built on the idea that no one in their right mind would walk to it. Our shops are box islands in multi acre oceans of black asphalt. Vast arteries of concrete separate people from where they live to where they buy. So, yea I would say there is plenty of grift at different levels.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  I think we have a different interpretation of "between". I just meant that they see a costly thing that people do, and they do something to reduce that cost. That basically is what all companies do. I believe that's what GP meant as well, but apparently everyone else interpreted it differently.
- rewmie 3y ago
  > A huge portion of US infrastructure is built on the idea that no one in their right mind would walk to it. No one in their right mind would want to walk to any business in the US due to its urban planning and transport infrastructure. Even biking is an absurd risk that only rare people dare to make. In the US it's not abnormal to express the length of even mundane car trips in how many hours you spend driving. That's definitely not a halmark of a walkable region.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > No one in their right mind would want to walk to any business in the US due to its urban planning and transport infrastructure. > Even biking is an absurd risk that only rare people dare to make. Neither of these things are true everywhere in the US. There are many cities where walking and biking are common forms of transportation. But there are certainly many places where the infrastructure appears to be actively designed to kill pedestrians and bicyclist as well.
ta8645 3y ago
People went places before cars were invented, you can too. Toyota offers you a better way, if you can afford to avail yourself of their offer -- that's all.
- drekk 3y ago
  People went places before cars were invented, and then General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only to dismantle it. Now car companies are offering not "a better way" but "the only real way" unless you want to get hit by a suburbanite driving a Ford F-150 while sitting in an unprotected bike lane. I'm really tired of people acting like it's just a free market where everyone is an equal, rational actor. There was a concerted effort to redesign Americana around cars that was not replicated globally, and you see the consequences of it play out in real time.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    > I'm really tired of people acting like it's just a free market where everyone is an equal, rational actor. It's never been a free market. There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I'm really tired of people acting like the only thing standing in the way of utopia, is capitalism.
    - astrange 3y ago
      > There was no golden age where everybody had access to public transit. There were zero public services at all, you were on your own. And often had to contend with bandits and worse. I think you're thinking of Skyrim and not the actual world, but there are certainly historical periods that were famously bandit-free even in antiquity like the Mongol Empire.
  - gumby 3y ago
    > General Motors put itself between people and the desire to move around by buying up public transit only to dismantle it I know this story and for a long time believed it. But it appears that developers building new towns (urban expansion) in the mid 20th century put in streetcars to get people to move in (connected to city networks etc) and ran them at a loss. As the new town filled up and the developers went on to the next one, the streetcars became the uneconomic responsibility of the town.

javawizard 3y ago

> If you buy a car That's a particularly amusing example to pick considering that dealers are the dominant distribution channel from which to acquire a car, at least in the U.S.

throwaway290 3y ago
The grifters are car dealers in this case, increasingly. Mfgs create value. Not unlike how writers/artists created a bunch of value and ClosedAI and similar are grifts built on top of them. except unlike car mfgs authors don't have much pull to stop it
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  ... and there isn't a person in the US that doesn't hate car dealers (including other car dealers).
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    We had a Toyota dealer in our town that both customers and former employees speak reverently of. Some of those employees jumped ship to the Honda dealer after the Toyota dealer was bought by the guy who owned all the other car dealerships in town. For a long time the Honda dealer was the only competitor to Maguire, but then Maguire bought the Honda dealer. Those employees don't speak ill of Maguire but they certainly don't speak about in him in glowing terms.
SkyMarshal 3y ago
That’s how it was done pre-Internet, but now Tesla is one of the most valuable auto manufacturers and it sells directly to end users, no middlemen dealers.
- imchillyb 3y ago
  Toyota-5x Ford, Honda, Chevrolet-4x Jeep, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Ram, Subaru-3x These are many more multiples of Tesla’s sales. Teslas sales make up a minuscule portion of the market. Tesla cannot sell directly to users in any of the continental US, they must sell through a website and ship the vehicle. Federal Dealership laws preclude direct to customer sales. Tesla may be valuable but its effects on the market are negligible.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> If you buy a car the mfr is hardly inserting themselves between something you could have without them. They start to, though. What was that about BMW and having telemetry on car radio I heard about the other day? Or attempts by manufacturers to turn pieces of car into services, which has an effect of them inserting themselves into car resales?

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

> it's unreasonable to say that "this is how pretty much every business works". i don't mean it in a totally negative sense. maybe it came across that way in the context. a business is still a facilitator between you and something you need. they have an advantage be it money, resources, technology, connections...something that allows them to act as that middle man and in many case monopolise it. on social media its much easier for anyone to do that. you dont really need any resource aside from "hustle" as they call it.

cma 3y ago

Perhaps it isn't the orginization in that example, but the detached and shareholders who have limited liability.