On the other hand, employers are also barred from colluding to keep wages artificially low, which arguably would be considered a “negotiation strategy” if one follows your interpretation.
I agree though that employers have naturally more negotiation power in the vast majority of cases.
You'll notice that when Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay colluded for years to keep wages artificially low, their final penalty was far less than they saved in costs, and none of the corporate people involved faced jail time for their illegal actions.
In other words, that collusion was profitable for those companies and for upper management like Eric Schmidt who participated but face no real ostracism for their illegal actions.
That law has no real teeth.
Compare that to, say, UC filing charges against UAW Local 2865 following wildcat strikes at UCSC claiming that UAW Local 2865 didn't do enough to prevent the strike UAW Local 2865 didn't authorize in the first place.
All disciplines studying complex systems like societies down to something like the human body, simply do not have the luxury of absolute truths like in mathematics or even the ability to run experiments like in physics (often for ethical reasons, e.g., in medicine or economics).
But does that mean that it is not worth doing?
For these fundamental reasons economics is “hard”, but I argue that it is still worth doing because economic policies have a big impact on people’s lives, and partial understanding is better than nothing.
I feel the biggest problem with economics is that it's very infused with ideology, which makes it even harder to say what's true or not. There's a lot of what I would call "arm-chair economics" – entire government policies are based on nothing more than conjectures, guesses, and ideological preferences of so-called "economists". Okay, maybe guesses and conjecture is the best we have to go on, but at least be honest about what it is.
This is the case for some other social sciences as well, but I have the impression it's (much) worse for economics. The effects are certainly a lot more impactful.
>I feel the biggest problem with economics is that it's very infused with ideology, which makes it even harder to say what's true or not. There's a lot of what I would call "arm-chair economics" – entire government policies are based on nothing more than conjectures, guesses, and ideological preferences of so-called "economists".
Is it any better in fields other than math and the natural sciences? For medicine and nutrition we're constantly backtracking on our previous discoveries. First it was fat that's bad, then it was sugar.
Nutrition is really complex and hard, and we learn more every day. But for the most part, it's not like complete bullshit is invented whole-cloth on a piece of napkin. It slowly builds and expands on prior knowledge; as far as I know it's not really "constantly backtracking".
Yeah, I’m persuaded that nutrition is evolved as we learn.
I’m not persuaded that economics has that quality. It seems to be infected by political interests too easily.
As evidence of that statement i submit the example of Austerity as a concept. It’s something that’s been applied hundreds of times, there was a resurgence in the 2010s but it was very popular after the First World War too.
One problem, despite all these applications of the concept, its only ever worked twice in documented history. Both instances occurred in a context that doesn’t apply today and, well it’s not impossible but almost impossible for that context to appear again.
The concept has no economic foundation, it’s a device born of a political belief. It even contradicts economic assessment.
And yet, It’s continually proposed. It’d be like suggesting sugar is a weightloss product if you consume enough. If you gained weight, you didn’t do it right, you just need to consume more sugar, then you’ll lose weight.
For example, I’m persuaded by Taleb’s criticism of Value At Risk models, VAR.
Plenty of people still value the use of VAR although it’s common to concede Taleb’s point that VAR claims to do the impossible - characterise rare events. The justification is simply, well what else would we do? There is sufficiently advanced use of VAR that people are willing to ignore the broken foundation.
I just can’t accept that we should continue blindly because in many day to day cases the model seems sound, even though we’re aware it’s fundamentally broken and we can’t detect when it broke until after the event.
From my understanding, Taleb criticizes the native use of synthetic quantitative models with strong assumptions like VaR because they give a wrong picture of the real risks. But I don’t think that his point is that risk management is worthless.
I’d just keep in mind that there are no guarantees that kids will share our passions, even with the best approach. Humans are complex systems - it is very hard (and you would need need a lot of data) to make any general statement about things like this.
But when you bought it, you knew of those restrictions, right?
A fully unrestricted phone might have cost more (because it is not cross subsidized by App Store profit), so it is unfair to demand full functionality at the subsidized price.
How can you seriously argue that iPhones are "subsidized by AppStore profit", when one division pulls in 40%+ of Apple profits and the other barely 15% (and not even alone - appstore profits get added with iCloud and others under "Services" in Apple reports; realistically, it's probably 10% at best)...?
It's iPhones that subsidize everything else, including the AppStore. For all their talk of "going services", Apple is still first and foremost a hardware company.
I’m not doubting the facts you mention and the amount of the hypothetical subsidy might be on average in the low two digit dollar range.
The overall point is however that the App Store restriction was known at the time of purchase, so demanding to remove it without compensation is unfair.
(What would you say if your employer or client demands to pay a bit less after signing a contract with you?)
That's because they are facts. I mean, look up Apple reports, they are very readable.
> and the amount of the hypothetical subsidy
There is no such subsidy! Why would you "subsidize" something that makes 3-4 times as much money as you do...? The AppStore didn't even exist and the iPhone was already making money!
> The overall point is however that the App Store restriction was known at the time of purchase
Key point being was. One can just demand that new phones be sold without this restriction, if you really want to stick to the old rules.
> What would you say if your employer or client demands to pay a bit less
The government can mandate that your employer should pay you less from today, or even that it should pay you more for stuff done in the past (although retroactivity in law is pretty bad, it is still occasionally applied). Laws change every day, all over the world. Stuff that was legal yesterday might not be tomorrow, that's just a fact of life. And let's not even get into clients: cutting prices, credit notes, and discounts, are just the price of doing business and happen every minute of every day.
Not op, but no. However I'm not talking about the phones, not directly.
I write code for a living, and has had a MBP as my work machine for more than s decade, but each version is a worse experience for me.
Some hyperbole follows, but you know, I'm so, so, so fed up with this crap.
More code signing, triple click and spin around the Christmas tree to install an application, notarization, more things that you have turn off to be able to get things done, all of which essentially leaves me with a less secure computer since more and more of the security is based on the same things that makes using this +2000$ tool worse each iteration. The amazing time machine they were so proud of, isn't available for sale. The revolutionary magsafe, which I love, and as a contractor has saved my computer more than once, isn't en vogue any more. Keyboards that doesn't work.
One can't even just use the old version, as you are essentially forced to update the os/software, because things just stop working if you don't, and the nag screens never stop
However, changing platforms is not easy, or cheap. This wasn't anything that was easy to predict +10 years ago.
But then the iPhone, other mobile devices, and the app store started to pull in all the money. Since a few years, each release is a downgrade, but where to go?
People lauded Windows 10 for being so slick, but you essentially can't get the thing to not show random popups, nag you about "wrong live password", and just randomly reboot because it's decided you're not allowed to work right now, because this update has to run. Administration tools spread over 10 different apps and screens of various kinds.
Linux gives me heartache, most is not much different from when I ran Gentoo +10 years ago. Pseudo gui apps abounds, clipboard almost works, but there are 27 window managers, 97 different docks, oh, yes, seven different package managers that all really wants to be the only true package manager.
Getting fonts to render readably in the majority of apps on a 4k screen was probably not more then a few days work. So many terrible apps. The kernel is of course rock solid, but no, still no drivers for many graphics cards, ati is quite good I heard, but exactly which card to buy? Touchpad support is also wonky, but it's like three guys mostly in their spare time, so that's not strange.
But no, I really didn't think the company that had been obsessed with user centricity and hci would stop caring about anything but the bank account, and which new fancy toy to try to entice people to buy. Making phones that are practically made to be easy to drop due to non-existent tactile feedback.
This year was the first year you could buy a non Apple machine with a touchpad that actually works. Embarrassing is what it is.
But no it's not a monopoly in one way, it's three different options that each are terrible in its own way.
Clearly, the market is not working. As everyone only tries to build walls around their piece of the cake instead of actually competing. While not a monopoly in name, the platforms are monopolies in anything but, because the cost, in time, skill, and money of changing platform is so high.
Whatever the true cost is, the argument is spurious: Apple is not forced to provide this service at cost (or with a “reasonable” markup), they can charge in any case what they want.
Telegram should rather make a convincing argument why Apple should be considered a monopolist, which is not clear to me given the overall <30% market share of Apple in the phone market.
You don't get to charge what you want when your platform approaches monopoly in a market.
The trick is defining the market. Apple already has 90+% market share in many less broadly defined markets - e.g. for young consumers, or in higher priced apps - and what happens depends on who successfully segments the market in the eyes of regulators.
By gerrymandering the market definition you can make any company a monopoly. McDonalds is not a restaurant: it’s a burger parlor. No wait, a fast-food burger parlor. With a clown mascot. All who depend on clown-themed burgers are under their bootheel. Watch out, your startup might be a monopoly too.
Imagine a town of 50 people with only one restaurant: a mc donalds. The next town is three hours away and only has a burger king. You can move there, but it's pretty inconvenient.
Imagine a residential building that has only one coffee shop on its ground floor. The next coffee shop is across the road, you can go there, but it's pretty inconvenient.
Inconvenience is not a word in a definition of monopoly.
You don't get to arbitrarily redefine the market until you hit your desired threshold either. The courts will typically consider whether the consumer has reasonable access to alternatives to your product. Which in the case of Apple, there definitely are.
The apps available are part of the purchasing decision of which phone to buy, just like which games are available are part of the purchasing decision of which console to buy. You don't get to buy an Xbox and then demand to be able to play Mario Kart on it.
This isn't a valid analogy. A more appropriate one would be if Nintendo wanted to release Mario kart on the Xbox but Microsoft refused to allow them unless Nintendo gave them 30% of the revenue from it.
You realize that's actually the case, right? If Nintendo wanted to publish Mario Kart on the Xbox they would have to sign a publisher agreement with Microsoft and pay a royalty for every copy of Mario Kart sold on the Xbox.
Why do you think that I as consumer need another app store? What if I hate app stores and I don't want to download your weekly editions of "bug fixes and performance improvements" and just want a working mobile-friendly web app? Telegram is pretty much the same whether it's a native app or a web app to me.
Being a monopoly is NOT illegal. It seems many people think once a company has a monopoly, they need to be broken into separate pieces. This is fiction. A monopoly would only be illegal if a business uses its monopoly power to stifle competition.
My last course in competition law was a while ago, but I remember this: while there are many differences in detail between the US and the EU approach, the broad strokes are the same.
Also in the EU, having a monopoly is not illegal (as long as it was obtained fairly) - abuse of monopoly power is.
Surely being a monopolist means you are subject to additional rules, no doubt about that.
I could be wrong, but I think Telegram's lawyers are advancing on the grounds of anti-trust, not necessarily anti-monopoly. Which, as you correctly point out, would require convincing a court that a company with a minority market share is a monopoly. (Apple doesn't even have a threatening minority. They have maybe 25% if that.)
In any case, I think they can make a convincing argument that Apple is operating as an illegal trust. (If you alter the historical definition of "Trust" a bit.) I think that's more what they are going for here.
Whether the court will buy it? We'll see? I certainly would not plan on a win if I were Telegram, but it's worth a shot.
We've been having this debate for the better part of the last decade because whether this constitutes a monopoly really isn't clear as either side insists that it is. There's not much precedent for this specific kind of maybe-monopoly out there, and it's unclear to me whether the semi-precedents I can think of really support the notion that the App Store is a monopoly.
Also, as people have pointed out elsewhere, a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. European antitrust law focuses on anti-competitive behavior, but American antitrust law focuses on perceived consumer harm. Look at antitrust suits against Apple's iBooks from years ago -- Apple's collusion with publishers was to break Amazon's de facto monopoly on ebooks. Giving pricing control back to publishers would have increased competition, but it would have raised prices for consumers, and that was what the courts cared about.
And this is actually a big thorn in the side of American antitrust action against Apple's app store. We can shout "walled garden" all we want (although I am getting super tired of that phrase, so let's not), but you need to find cases where this harmed consumers, not developers. Developers can line up around the block saying that Apple's policies are destroying their business, but unless America changes our standard of antitrust to be more like Europe's, that simply doesn't matter. Those cases are arguably out there -- I keep coming back to Apple's store policies that force Amazon to release a Kindle app that not only won't let you purchase books but can't even tell you a URL to go to -- but on the whole, this is a relatively high bar.
100% of lemonade sold on my front lawn is sold through my lemonade stand. Is that a monopoly too? Of course not, because it's not representative of the overall market and the alternative choices the consumer has.
> It' doesn't matter than they're only ~11% marketshare of smartphones sold.
It very much does, because it means the consumer can choose to buy an alternative smartphone that is better suited to them.
Moreover, for the purposes of antitrust action, both the US and Europe have thresholds for the consideration of monopoly power that are well above 11%:
US: Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. [1]
Europe: The Commission considers that low market shares are generally a good proxy for the absence of substantial market power. The Commission's experience suggests that dominance is not likely if the undertaking's market share is below 40 % in the relevant market. [2]
To be fair, Trader Joe's or any other store does not require me to go through them, without any other alternative, every time I want to modify or use in new ways my stuff after I bought it.
Replying to myself to correct my comment: the pension benefits funding appears to be in general - and differently from what I stated - not much different to the private sector.
The change introduced by the 2006 PAEA impacts however the funding of health care benefits of retirees, which have to be funded at 100%. This is not required of private sector companies.
Additionally, to build up this future retiree health benefits fund, a very front loaded schedule of about $5.7B yearly between 2006 and 2016 was chosen. In fact, the USPS was not able to fulfill this schedule and defaulted on multiple payments.
That's not what is required. Here is the text of the law:
> In this subsection, the term `Postal surplus or
supplemental liability' means the estimated difference, as determined by
the Office, between--
``(A) the actuarial present value of all future benefits
payable from the Fund under this subchapter to current or former
employees of the United States Postal Service and attributable
to civilian employment with the United States Postal Service;
and
They have to fund the benefits that employees have earned. Not all of the pension cost that will be accrued over the next 50 years. That requirement is the exact same as private sector pension plans.
I'm with the other poster. You don't seem to be reading (or even acknowledging) the provided sources.
>That requirement is the exact same as private sector pension plans.
This is where you are confused. The bill has to do with pre-funding of health (and similar) benefits and not pensions.
Which brings us back to your original claim:
>This is a common talking point, but is factually incorrect. (1) The USPS hasn't made any of those payments since 2013. Their current financial woes aren't caused by the requirement since their not making the payments. (2) Pensions are required to be fully funded. In practice that's a bit more theoretical than actual, but the USPS isn't being treated any different.
Point (2) is incorrect since we aren't talking about pensions. Point (1) is incorrect as per the numerous sources I provided already (including a direct quote from the Postmaster General). But here's one more:
>the 2006 law requiring the pre-funding of health benefits for future retirees — not pensions — has put a financial strain on the Postal Service and hurt its ability to turn a profit in some recent years.
>The bill has to do with pre-funding of health (and similar) benefits and not pensions.
The law did a lot including:
Postal Civil Service Retirement and Health Benefits Funding Amendments of 2006 - (Sec. 802) Relieves the Postal Service of an obligation to contribute matching amounts to its employees' civil service retirement. Provides for a mechanism and an amortization schedule regarding the handling of any surplus or supplemental liability of the Postal Service regarding the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. Transfers from the Postal Service to the Treasury certain retirement obligations related to military service of former Postal Service employees. Makes Office of Personnel Management (OPM) determinations on surplus or supplemental liability subject to PRC review if the Postal Service so requests
>the 2006 law requiring the pre-funding of health benefits for future retirees — not pensions — has put a financial strain on the Postal Service and hurt its ability to turn a profit in some recent years.
Sigh, and we're back to the same confusion. Pre-funding has ZERO impact on profit. If you incur a cost today it goes on your balance sheet. The fact that the actual cash doesn't leave the company for 30 years doesn't change that.
You've just moved the goal posts. Your assertion was "Their current financial woes aren't caused by the requirement since their not making the payments."
Even though you've moved the goal posts, you're still wrong. Do you agree that having $0 available for infrastructure improvements, technology upgrades, delivery fleets, and R&D to improve efficiency for the past 14 years has had zero impact on current profit?
Really? Be honest.
Imagine if UPS had not upgraded (other than the basics) their hardware, software, and massive delivery fleet in a decade and a half. That amount of time is an absolute eternity in the areas of automation, transport and computing. Can you imagine where UPS would be right now in relation to FedEx has it stopped investing in itself since before the iPhone was invented?
Since you missed it. Once again, here's the relevant Postmaster General quote:
> "The Postal Service's $15 billion debt is a direct result of the mandate, this requirement has deprived the Postal Service of the opportunity to invest in capital projects and research and development."
Look, you've been arguing this entire time that the issue was pensions when it wasn't. And that it was the same rules for everybody (it wasn't). The other half of your argument was that the current financial position of the USPS is unrelated to the 2006 act. Provably wrong.
But since that original argument is falling apart you've changed your position to "the USPS is currently unprofitable". Well, obviously.
You're clearly not debating in good faith so I'm done here. Good day to you.
> If you're talking about the requirement to pre-fund their pension fund, my understanding is that UPS and FedEx (and all private corporations) were already required to do so.
> The law requires the Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer subsidies, to prefund its retirees' health benefits up to the year 2056. This is a $5 billion per year cost; it is a requirement that no other entity, private or public, has to make.
That is a comforting thought, but the “tough / law and order / war on drugs” response has already been tried extensively under president Calderón, and the result was an explosion in violence and killings, without overall reducing the power of cartels.
The source of the power of the cartels lies north of the border. It's not possible to fight them only in Mexico without tackling their funding sources.
Afaik it is working with marijuana, because we now support domestic production. If we want to cut off the supply chain, we would need to produce domestically the other drugs in the cartel's supply chains.
The US doesn't have the maturity to produce cocaine and distribute internally w/o becoming another cartel. The CIA already did this as a funding source, I could see it being done to destabilize cash flow for cartels. Simply legalizing the possession will allow the focus to be spent elsewhere but will not stem the tide.
>The US doesn't have the maturity to produce cocaine and distribute internally w/o becoming another cartel.
It already does.
Stepan, a chemical company in New Jersey, is the only company in the US licensed to import coca leaf, which primarily comes from a Peruvian state-owned company. The cocaine is extracted and sold to Mallinckrodt for pharmaceutical use (it's used in ENT surgery, as it's both a local anaesthetic and a vasoconstrictor), whilst the remnants are sold to the Coca-Cola Company for use as flavourings.
The process to get cocaine from coca leaf is the same as to extract any alkaloid from a plant.
The problem is the supply is not controlled in the USA, is dependent on the government of Peru and the drug manufacturing cartels have tons and tons of land in Colombia just for growing cocaine. It grows naturally.
Competition is good. The goal of legalising is not to make money, but to suck the profitability out of the industry. Especially the illegal part of the industry.
The cocaine, meth, and opium trade is more than enough to maintain the current situation.
Marijuana confiscation at ports is down 80% over the last decade, but under the current administration (Mexican), violence has exploded to levels triple that of the peak of the previous drug war when CDS/Zetas/CDT/CDG were engaged in multiple wars over lucrative plazas.
What you are considering a disadvantage is seen as a strength by others (myself included): you pay only for what you use. No cross-subsidization to services you don’t need!
While the topic is interesting, I don’t think the analysis presented in the article series (at least in the first two articles) is particularly compelling.
For one, it relies much on hypotheses about internal though processes, which makes it basically unfalsifiable. Then the author is in my view shooting himself in the foot with the bowling analogy, namely by describing how he noted that he didn’t improve anymore and went to ask a colleague for advice.
How would the same not be possible or even likely for the “expert beginner”?
All of this is much more easily and briefly explained by motivation - for many people in technology, technology is simply not a passion! For them it is just a tool and like also the article mentions, there are few reasons in many companies to spend more time on perfecting your craft - in fact, it might be strictly worse than building career-enhancing relationships.
This is especially true as someone not in a technical position is often not able to assess the quality of the output.
I agree though that employers have naturally more negotiation power in the vast majority of cases.