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I see the expected comments about addressing symptoms here. Yes, intellectual property lock-in is bad. Confusion over why McDonald's put up with this (as in, in

by jmyeet 3y ago

I see the expected comments about addressing symptoms here. Yes, intellectual property lock-in is bad. Confusion over why McDonald's put up with this (as in, in an idealized view of a free market, that problem would resolve itself). The problem is capitalism. And it's working as intended. IP, by definition, is just an enclosure [1]. McDonald's the corporation has an adversarial relationship with its franchisees and you see this in every franchise. The head corporation will simply try to extract the maximum possible wealth from their franchisees, even to their detriment. Profits tend to decrease over time. To keep profits growing, it inevitably leads to cutting quality to lower costs and predating on your customers, franchisees and employees. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

LordKeren 3y ago
I’m not sure changing capitalism is a very viable solution to malfunctioning ice cream machines
shuntress 3y ago
Ok so, this is good for McDonalds actually?
- jmyeet 3y ago
  In the short-term financial sense, yes. McDonald's gave an exclusive contract for a particular ice cream machine. They then locked down those machines so only first-party repairers can fix them. It's a means of extracting wealth from the franchisees. The ice creame machine maker makes money on these service call outs so they have no incentive to make them reliable (the opposite, actually). And I'm sure McDonald's gets a piece of those service call outs. Now does this do long-term damage to the McDonald's brand? Maybe. But nobody actually cares about that.
criddell 3y ago
They may have an adversarial relationship with franchisees, but the McDonald's corporation owns and runs 2800 restaurants themselves. You would think that's enough self-inflicted pain that they would do something.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
The problem is not capitalism, it's a very specific part of it: intellectual property. The notion that you can own ideas is fundamentally broken and nonsensical, it's logically reducible to attempting to claim ownership over numbers. The economies and laws that arose out of it are fundamentally exploitative. Corporations put a little software on a machine and suddenly they have complete control over what you can and can't do with it, any attempt to resist is felony contempt of business model.

by jmyeet 3y ago

LordKeren 3y ago

I’m not sure changing capitalism is a very viable solution to malfunctioning ice cream machines

shuntress 3y ago

Ok so, this is good for McDonalds actually?

jmyeet 3y ago
In the short-term financial sense, yes. McDonald's gave an exclusive contract for a particular ice cream machine. They then locked down those machines so only first-party repairers can fix them. It's a means of extracting wealth from the franchisees. The ice creame machine maker makes money on these service call outs so they have no incentive to make them reliable (the opposite, actually). And I'm sure McDonald's gets a piece of those service call outs. Now does this do long-term damage to the McDonald's brand? Maybe. But nobody actually cares about that.

criddell 3y ago

They may have an adversarial relationship with franchisees, but the McDonald's corporation owns and runs 2800 restaurants themselves. You would think that's enough self-inflicted pain that they would do something.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

The problem is not capitalism, it's a very specific part of it: intellectual property. The notion that you can own ideas is fundamentally broken and nonsensical, it's logically reducible to attempting to claim ownership over numbers. The economies and laws that arose out of it are fundamentally exploitative. Corporations put a little software on a machine and suddenly they have complete control over what you can and can't do with it, any attempt to resist is felony contempt of business model.