5 ms·

They unfortunately recently (last few years) sold out to private equity (which tends to glaze over fundamentals and tries to pump out massive content using prev

They unfortunately recently (last few years) sold out to private equity (which tends to glaze over fundamentals and tries to pump out massive content using previous brand quality to give it credence), so beware of quality in more recent vids: https://youtu.be/hJ-rRXWhElI?si=Zdsj9i_raNLnajzi https://youtu.be/hJ-rRXWhElI?si=Zdsj9i_raNLnajzi

fn-mote 1y ago
Yesterday I was reading comments about how the market could pay for research and avoid the “distorting effects” of public funding. Is there any way to get a better outcome for the public here, or is “do good stuff then sell out” the way it’s always going to be?
- edwardbernays 1y ago
  What distorting effects of public funding? What about the distortionary effects of the market? I'll offer the suggestion that what you read is brainrotting private market propaganda designed to erode the public institutions that make America happier, healthier, and wealthier.
  - tomrod 1y ago
    In economics discussions regarding public funding policy, the concern of "crowding out" commercial firms or nonprofits is a real concern. It's definitely an observed, measured, and reported phenomenon. In the end, incentives matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowding_out_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowding_out_(economics)
    - edwardbernays 1y ago
      There is no private market entity with an incentive to provide research to the public, so in this sense there is no crowding out. Providing research to the public enables the discovery of new products which would otherwise have not been created. Public research is a public good that makes our nation happier, healthier, and wealthier.
      - tomrod 1y ago
        Let's ignore FOSS contributions for a moment, which very much contradict your claim that private companies don't contribute research to the public. Outside software technology: there is a series of papers from Grossman (going back to the 80s!) that analyzes basic versus applied research in a macroeconomic framework. Basic research _can_ be a public good, applied research can be crowded out. Combined with microeconomic research that monopolies can be dynamically efficient (investing in applied and basic R&D, like Bell Labs) and you get several examples and theories that contradict your statement that "there is no private market entity with an incentive to provide research to the public." Another real world example in hardware that contradicts this claim is the evolution of building control systems. Before the advent of IOT, so, circa 1980s - 2010s, you saw increasing sharing and harmonization of competing electronics standards because it turned out to be more efficient to be modular, not have to re-hire subcontractors at exorbitant rates to maintain or replace components that go haywire, etc.
        edwardbernays 1y ago
        Including FOSS software is so wild in this conversation that it's ridiculous. You mean creating a product as a loss leader to get people into an ecosystem, farm social capital, create a sales funnel, or get free labor from the community to provide QA? The creation and release of software is NOWHERE NEAR the same category as "doing actual real scientific research" that it just smells of incredibly bad faith argumentation. Economic analysis? Another intelligence product that requires essentially no staff, no actual R&D, no equipment besides computers? Brother, you have to be kidding me. The hardware thing is just companies evolving to a shared standard. Do you have even a little bit of a clue how hard it is to do good pharmacological research? Toxicological? Biological? Chemical? Physical? You have mentioned intelligence products with 0 investment cost and 0 risk of failure. This is perhaps one of the most fart-sniffing tech-centric perspectives I have ever been exposed to. Go read some actual research by actual scientists and come back when you can tell me why, for instance, Eli Lilley would ever make their data or internal R&D public. Jonas Salk did it. He is an extremely rare exception, and his incentive was public health. Notice that his incentive was markedly not financial. Market entities with a financial incentive, whose entire business model and success is predicated on their unique R&D results, have 0 incentive to release research to the public.
    - Ma8ee 1y ago
      That whole discussion is based on the assumption that commercial firms or nonprofits are better in some way than publicly funded research. That is the stupid neoliberal dogma that private and market economy always are better than things that are run by our elected officials. That dogma has to die.
      - edwardbernays 1y ago
        Completely agree. Neoliberalism and its consequences have been a disaster for mankind.
        tomrod 1y ago
        I disagree. I think Neoliberalism has done a remarkable job bringing the majority of the world out of subsistence. I also think it is a target for hijack by neofeudalists as neoliberalism is realpolitick without self-reference.
      - tomrod 1y ago
        Price as a market signal precedes neoliberalism by several decades to several millennia, depending on which economic historian you speak with. Is your argument that basic research which has no immediately attributable applications is better handled by publicly funded research? I mostly agree to that. Applied research is definitely handled better by commercial firms and nonprofits when handling is defined by what people are willing to value (pay for). If we're talking about applied technology in the public goods space, then it can be a toss up. Sustainability research, for example, can be quite blurry as to whether the market is pricing it in or not as applied or basic research -- really depends on how a government handles externalities and regulatory capture! I'll 100% agree to government entities as well as some well-chartered public entities being absolutely awesome at setting up incentive structures for desired outcomes. There is actually a whole field of research dedicated to the topic of incentive structuring called mechanism design -- think of it as the converse to Game Theory and strategic behavioral analysis -- that policy design and analysis learn from. I'll also note that governments aren't structured to efficiently provide benefits or just-in-time delivery in most situations. Though the discussion has made me more curious about how operationally efficient the DOD is for civilian goods distribution, given it supports a massive population.
0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
What's the easiest way to reliably check if a Youtube channel was sold to private equity? Is that info always a matter of public record?
- tbalsam 1y ago
  I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. If you look at the linked video, they state that it's oftentimes not in the best interest of the private equity group's moneymaking capabilities to announce that a channel has been sold out to them. How that is in practice, I'm not sure, and I'm sure with some sleuthing it would be possible to find out at least some of it. But on the whole, I'm honestly not sure beyond that.

fn-mote 1y ago

Yesterday I was reading comments about how the market could pay for research and avoid the “distorting effects” of public funding. Is there any way to get a better outcome for the public here, or is “do good stuff then sell out” the way it’s always going to be?

edwardbernays 1y ago
What distorting effects of public funding? What about the distortionary effects of the market? I'll offer the suggestion that what you read is brainrotting private market propaganda designed to erode the public institutions that make America happier, healthier, and wealthier.
- tomrod 1y ago
  In economics discussions regarding public funding policy, the concern of "crowding out" commercial firms or nonprofits is a real concern. It's definitely an observed, measured, and reported phenomenon. In the end, incentives matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowding_out_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowding_out_(economics)
  - edwardbernays 1y ago
    There is no private market entity with an incentive to provide research to the public, so in this sense there is no crowding out. Providing research to the public enables the discovery of new products which would otherwise have not been created. Public research is a public good that makes our nation happier, healthier, and wealthier.
    - tomrod 1y ago
      Let's ignore FOSS contributions for a moment, which very much contradict your claim that private companies don't contribute research to the public. Outside software technology: there is a series of papers from Grossman (going back to the 80s!) that analyzes basic versus applied research in a macroeconomic framework. Basic research _can_ be a public good, applied research can be crowded out. Combined with microeconomic research that monopolies can be dynamically efficient (investing in applied and basic R&D, like Bell Labs) and you get several examples and theories that contradict your statement that "there is no private market entity with an incentive to provide research to the public." Another real world example in hardware that contradicts this claim is the evolution of building control systems. Before the advent of IOT, so, circa 1980s - 2010s, you saw increasing sharing and harmonization of competing electronics standards because it turned out to be more efficient to be modular, not have to re-hire subcontractors at exorbitant rates to maintain or replace components that go haywire, etc.
      - edwardbernays 1y ago
        Including FOSS software is so wild in this conversation that it's ridiculous. You mean creating a product as a loss leader to get people into an ecosystem, farm social capital, create a sales funnel, or get free labor from the community to provide QA? The creation and release of software is NOWHERE NEAR the same category as "doing actual real scientific research" that it just smells of incredibly bad faith argumentation. Economic analysis? Another intelligence product that requires essentially no staff, no actual R&D, no equipment besides computers? Brother, you have to be kidding me. The hardware thing is just companies evolving to a shared standard. Do you have even a little bit of a clue how hard it is to do good pharmacological research? Toxicological? Biological? Chemical? Physical? You have mentioned intelligence products with 0 investment cost and 0 risk of failure. This is perhaps one of the most fart-sniffing tech-centric perspectives I have ever been exposed to. Go read some actual research by actual scientists and come back when you can tell me why, for instance, Eli Lilley would ever make their data or internal R&D public. Jonas Salk did it. He is an extremely rare exception, and his incentive was public health. Notice that his incentive was markedly not financial. Market entities with a financial incentive, whose entire business model and success is predicated on their unique R&D results, have 0 incentive to release research to the public.
  - Ma8ee 1y ago
    That whole discussion is based on the assumption that commercial firms or nonprofits are better in some way than publicly funded research. That is the stupid neoliberal dogma that private and market economy always are better than things that are run by our elected officials. That dogma has to die.
    - edwardbernays 1y ago
      Completely agree. Neoliberalism and its consequences have been a disaster for mankind.
      - tomrod 1y ago
        I disagree. I think Neoliberalism has done a remarkable job bringing the majority of the world out of subsistence. I also think it is a target for hijack by neofeudalists as neoliberalism is realpolitick without self-reference.
    - tomrod 1y ago
      Price as a market signal precedes neoliberalism by several decades to several millennia, depending on which economic historian you speak with. Is your argument that basic research which has no immediately attributable applications is better handled by publicly funded research? I mostly agree to that. Applied research is definitely handled better by commercial firms and nonprofits when handling is defined by what people are willing to value (pay for). If we're talking about applied technology in the public goods space, then it can be a toss up. Sustainability research, for example, can be quite blurry as to whether the market is pricing it in or not as applied or basic research -- really depends on how a government handles externalities and regulatory capture! I'll 100% agree to government entities as well as some well-chartered public entities being absolutely awesome at setting up incentive structures for desired outcomes. There is actually a whole field of research dedicated to the topic of incentive structuring called mechanism design -- think of it as the converse to Game Theory and strategic behavioral analysis -- that policy design and analysis learn from. I'll also note that governments aren't structured to efficiently provide benefits or just-in-time delivery in most situations. Though the discussion has made me more curious about how operationally efficient the DOD is for civilian goods distribution, given it supports a massive population.

0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago

What's the easiest way to reliably check if a Youtube channel was sold to private equity? Is that info always a matter of public record?

tbalsam 1y ago
I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. If you look at the linked video, they state that it's oftentimes not in the best interest of the private equity group's moneymaking capabilities to announce that a channel has been sold out to them. How that is in practice, I'm not sure, and I'm sure with some sleuthing it would be possible to find out at least some of it. But on the whole, I'm honestly not sure beyond that.