nickpp

6 ms·

31.
by nickpp 5mo ago
Capitalism is the only known system that aligns natural, normal individual greed with the benefit and advancement of the society.
32.
by nickpp 5mo ago
> help humans instead of replacing us or squeezing us as hard as possible in the name of productivity Increasing their productivity is helping humans.
33.
by nickpp 5mo ago
These days it’s forbidden to deny the horrors of nazism but quite fashionable to glorify the murders and confiscations of communism and to even justify Marxist murderers like Mangione.
34.
by nickpp 5mo ago
It still doesn't bother me as a consumer in the slightest. On the contrary, I am happy that laundromat exists in the first place.
35.
by nickpp 5mo ago
Every year, the government comes around, reassesses my house value (always up, never down) and ask me to pay a percentage (always increasing) or they will take away my house which shelters my kids and family. So, no, I am not too worried ab
36.
by nickpp 5mo ago
PCs are also made by corporations, together with PC parts. The reason computing became so cheap during the last 50 years was competition between said corporations. Competition that is also pushing the AI token price down and also encouragin
37.
by nickpp 5mo ago
> This is ignoring the people who capture the rent. So my grandma shouldn't have been be deliriously happy with the new washing machine that saved her hands from bleeding weekly because the evil capitalist laundromat owners charged
38.
by nickpp 5mo ago
> My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.) It also did diddly squat in the market place and the company producing it ran out of business. Again, a pro
39.
by nickpp 5mo ago
> I hate when a technocrat at a multi-billion dollar company makes those decisions Really?! So instead of the person hired and paid specifically to select and decide what the product should cost, look and work like, the person whose very
40.
by nickpp 5mo ago
> it can technically be done At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs. I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offe
41.
by nickpp 6mo ago
I know a few categories falling under this "richest 1% of the world’s people": entrepreneurs, highly paid professionals and politicians. The entrepreneurs invested in or built from scratch organizations able to deliver an incredib
42.
by nickpp 6mo ago
> Locally made stuff was bound to be a lot cheaper. Lots of stuff under communism was cheaper on paper. It was also extremely crappy and/or unavailable. So black markets were thriving, even though, as you rightly point out, used har
43.
by nickpp 6mo ago
Paul Grahams's latest public statement on the issue: https://x.com/paulg/status/2041363640499200353
44.
by nickpp 6mo ago
Ignoring market realities and proclaiming to care about noble but unrealistic ideological goals is how the communist regime I grew up under managed to fail to even feed its population.
45.
by nickpp 6mo ago
> Safeway won’t starve and die if I decide to buy from Fred Meyer. Ironically, you (along with a significant number of others) deciding to buy from a competitor will eventually lead to financial trouble for Safeway and thus to layoffs
46.
by nickpp 7mo ago
> once you have a dominant player they just buy or undercut the occasional competing startup If they buy startups, a thousand more will spring up hoping to be bought. Investors love this game. And if you think undercutting works, read up
47.
by nickpp 8mo ago
So no, they didn't "bought Trump the election". And the fact that a 3rd party supports an opponent does not kill any politician's career. Biden retired by himself, following his own party's pressure. And Harris is s
48.
by nickpp 8mo ago
> went MAGA and bought Trump the election Didn’t Harris actually raise and spend more than Trump on that election?
49.
by nickpp 8mo ago
> to make any attempt to enforce antitrust a carrier killer for a politician Any example of a politician carrier killed by an attempt to enforce antitrust?
50.
by nickpp 9mo ago
I (and most of the people I know) are happily paying for ChatGPT (or one of its competitors) every month. The value I get from it dwarfs the tiny fee.
51.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> i guess you're on benefits? Actually I've been lucky to practice what I preach all my life. Early in my career I realized that salaried employment is a rip-off: you pay through your nose for an illusion of safety and stabilit
52.
by nickpp 10mo ago
I don't know, are your opinions about life and reality made up or you're just so credulous you are repeating whatever you see on social media? Is it so hard to believe in today's day and age that somebody tries to learn and u
53.
by nickpp 10mo ago
That's a common misconception. Although the top tax rates were indeed high, they kicked in at such high income levels and included so many deductions and loopholes that the effective tax rate were much closer to 50%. And it makes sense
54.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> the vast majority of European countries who have socialized medicine and seem to be doing fine You do realize that the "vast majority" of European countries doesn't mean highly developed Western Europe, right? Here in Ce
55.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> All empirical evidence shows that single payer systems work better, producing far better outcomes at lower cost, than the US system. Agreed. Also, all empirical evidence shows that free-markets work better, producing far better outcome
56.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> the Phoebus cartel > 1000hr incandescent light bulbs remain the standard offering till present day This proves in fact that all the cartel did was establish a standard, an optimal average between various tradeoffs when building an i
57.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> Is there a legitimately good reason for all those treatments to be so expensive We can't really know, since only free markets can determine the price of a good or service (it's driven by supply and demand) and health care mar
58.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> misanthropic fantasy It's the obvious reality around me here in Eastern Europe. We were starving under communism before 1990 but are now enjoying the amazing wealth capitalism brought.
59.
by nickpp 10mo ago
No need for blind belief, you can always visit Venezuela, North Korea or Cuba to see how a country without free markets fares. Or come here in Eastern Europe where we had the "pleasure" of trying both systems and see how free mark
60.
by nickpp 10mo ago
> greedy corporations who literally exist to extract the most money Every single product and service I am using in my life is made by a corporation. The clothes I wear, the food I eat, the car I drive, the PC I am making my living on. Go

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