Boutique Pedal Manufacturers Are Feeling the Tariff Pinch
- Thread starter Chuck D. Bones
- Start date
Stickman393
Well-known member
I dunno man. Like I said before: Humans are instant gratification eat sleep fuck murder primates. I don't see that trend as anything more than commercial interests hacking our evolutionary imparatives for their benefit.
We like to think we're evolved. We aren't. We know some math and science, but our understanding of the world we live in is remarkably limited. Hell, we really don't have a firm understanding of how our bodies work. We are animals. Smart ones, but still partially governed by impulse and instinct.
We may have free will to a certain extent, but there are shortcuts in our psychology that can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors. This is basically the purpose of advertising: how do you get the monkey to buy the banana?
Propoganda is a natural evolution. How do you get the monkey to overthrow a democratically elected government to get access to cheaper bananas?
Day-o, Daylight come and me wan go home.
The issue with Google search isn't so much that it's a bummer that the first result is no longer the intended target and therefore we have to do more legwork to get there. The dream and promise of capitalism in the Adam Smith-ian sense is that we will all achieve a better world by simply allowing the invisible hand of the markets work their magic. That everything will be more efficient. That things will work themselves out into the best outcome because that's how good the system is.
It's not, though. Products are purposefully made *objectively* worse and the markets reward the companies that do so. AI is the latest evolution of this: It's good at certain things...but it's headed for a cliff. The amount of venture capital pumped into OpenAI, for instance, is massive. Like 50 million a quarter. Their current offerings don't make a profit at all, and are heavily resource intensive. And they really don't have a realistic path towards cutting the cost of compute, making the workload more efficient, or monetizing in such a way that the service provided is worth the cost to operate the service.
It's supposed to be the next hypergrowth market...like the smartphone, or the cloud, or whatever. Thing is...most of those markets may have been expensive to start, but there existed a reasonable route to reduce costs. No such route currently exists with generative AI. Its a cow, and when it tips it's gonna have a massive impact on our economy.
We've let companies like Amazon follow this model and completely destroy small businesses in their path. They were able to out compete just about everybody else...not because they did it all better, but because they *didn't have to make a profit*. They were filled to the gills with VC cash and could afford a burn rate that smaller companies couldn't sustain. And what was it that eventually made the company profitable? Certainly not their logistics or shopping platform. No...it was AWS. Web services. Something so far removed from their core mission that it kinda makes ya go "what?".
Not to mention how awful the shopping experience has gotten on Amazon in recent years.
My overall point is this: capitalism isn't inherently the sort of thing that generates mass prosperity. It's not inherently better than any other system. It's not the system that leads to the best possible outcomes. Hell, It's not even inherently *efficient*, which is what is supposed to be its primary selling point. It works because it uses our own short sighted-ness and greed and ignorance of its long term detrimental impacts on society to keep us pushing its bloated corpse down the road like we're on Weekend at Bernie's X, in space nobody can hear your body rot.
Capital alienates us from our work, from each other, from the consequences of our choices. Eventually...those chickens gonna come home to roost.
Sunshine. Lollipops. All is well and fine. Really. Murder. Kittens. Murder.
We like to think we're evolved. We aren't. We know some math and science, but our understanding of the world we live in is remarkably limited. Hell, we really don't have a firm understanding of how our bodies work. We are animals. Smart ones, but still partially governed by impulse and instinct.
We may have free will to a certain extent, but there are shortcuts in our psychology that can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors. This is basically the purpose of advertising: how do you get the monkey to buy the banana?
Propoganda is a natural evolution. How do you get the monkey to overthrow a democratically elected government to get access to cheaper bananas?
Day-o, Daylight come and me wan go home.
The issue with Google search isn't so much that it's a bummer that the first result is no longer the intended target and therefore we have to do more legwork to get there. The dream and promise of capitalism in the Adam Smith-ian sense is that we will all achieve a better world by simply allowing the invisible hand of the markets work their magic. That everything will be more efficient. That things will work themselves out into the best outcome because that's how good the system is.
It's not, though. Products are purposefully made *objectively* worse and the markets reward the companies that do so. AI is the latest evolution of this: It's good at certain things...but it's headed for a cliff. The amount of venture capital pumped into OpenAI, for instance, is massive. Like 50 million a quarter. Their current offerings don't make a profit at all, and are heavily resource intensive. And they really don't have a realistic path towards cutting the cost of compute, making the workload more efficient, or monetizing in such a way that the service provided is worth the cost to operate the service.
It's supposed to be the next hypergrowth market...like the smartphone, or the cloud, or whatever. Thing is...most of those markets may have been expensive to start, but there existed a reasonable route to reduce costs. No such route currently exists with generative AI. Its a cow, and when it tips it's gonna have a massive impact on our economy.
We've let companies like Amazon follow this model and completely destroy small businesses in their path. They were able to out compete just about everybody else...not because they did it all better, but because they *didn't have to make a profit*. They were filled to the gills with VC cash and could afford a burn rate that smaller companies couldn't sustain. And what was it that eventually made the company profitable? Certainly not their logistics or shopping platform. No...it was AWS. Web services. Something so far removed from their core mission that it kinda makes ya go "what?".
Not to mention how awful the shopping experience has gotten on Amazon in recent years.
My overall point is this: capitalism isn't inherently the sort of thing that generates mass prosperity. It's not inherently better than any other system. It's not the system that leads to the best possible outcomes. Hell, It's not even inherently *efficient*, which is what is supposed to be its primary selling point. It works because it uses our own short sighted-ness and greed and ignorance of its long term detrimental impacts on society to keep us pushing its bloated corpse down the road like we're on Weekend at Bernie's X, in space nobody can hear your body rot.
Capital alienates us from our work, from each other, from the consequences of our choices. Eventually...those chickens gonna come home to roost.
Sunshine. Lollipops. All is well and fine. Really. Murder. Kittens. Murder.
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Im a designer and work in marketing …so words are important in marketing.
we had a recent graduate who really struggled with copywriting - like she was writing but there was a load of “huh why are you saying that? What are you thinking”
And she would get fairly defensive and never really was able to take on advice.
Turns out (despite company rules not to use it) about 95% of her work was ChatGPT!
pressed reply before finishing…
The really crazy thing with her was firstly being so defensive of your ‘work’ when a robot wrote it - but also seemingly not being able to do it herself.
Yould never get the short writing where the idea is killer but just needs a bit of polish - just walls of AI generated rubbish.
No ideas.
The really crazy thing with her was firstly being so defensive of your ‘work’ when a robot wrote it - but also seemingly not being able to do it herself.
Yould never get the short writing where the idea is killer but just needs a bit of polish - just walls of AI generated rubbish.
No ideas.
The irony: I was thinking, that this would make a great tshirt. You can purchase it at Amazon
Stickman393
Well-known member
Selling the revolution back to us. Tale as old as time.
pricklyrobot
Well-known member
A related Public-service Announcement:
I just ordered some weirdo Euro-bulbs from a German EBay seller, for this epic project http://jhaible.com/legacy/compact_clone/ that I’ll definitely finish in a timely fashion
He messaged today saying
“I just received a message from DHL stating that shipping to the US via DHL/Post will be temporarily suspended starting August 25th.”
He offered to ship them out today, to try and get them in under the wire, and give me a refund if they get returned to him.
Apparently, no-one (including major international shipping companies) has been able to get the details of what’s supposed to happen with all the soon-to-be-former De Minimus stuff. So they’re just suspending all service to the US.
On the plus side, it’s going to be pretty awesome when hardworking ‘Muricans can get jobs in factories manufacturing obsolete European incandescent lightbulbs right back here in the US of A!!
I just ordered some weirdo Euro-bulbs from a German EBay seller, for this epic project http://jhaible.com/legacy/compact_clone/ that I’ll definitely finish in a timely fashion
He messaged today saying
“I just received a message from DHL stating that shipping to the US via DHL/Post will be temporarily suspended starting August 25th.”
He offered to ship them out today, to try and get them in under the wire, and give me a refund if they get returned to him.
Apparently, no-one (including major international shipping companies) has been able to get the details of what’s supposed to happen with all the soon-to-be-former De Minimus stuff. So they’re just suspending all service to the US.
On the plus side, it’s going to be pretty awesome when hardworking ‘Muricans can get jobs in factories manufacturing obsolete European incandescent lightbulbs right back here in the US of A!!
thomasbe86
Well-known member
Same here, I suspended shipping to the U.S. on my website. Swiss Post, Deutsche Post and French La Poste just plainly won't accept any shipment to the U.S.
thomasbe86
Well-known member
I get the joke but it's not really about uncertainty, simply that carriers in Switzerland (outside of the EU) won't accept shipments to the U.S. starting today.. Swiss Post sent us this last night
It's just so lazy. Tariffs will NOT bring back manufacturing to the US if that's all you do. As well as tariffs you need to help prospective manufacturers with guarantees and probably tax incentives. You need to do your own research into what prospective manufacturers need to spend their money to set up plants. And you definitely don't tariff things that those potential manufacturers need from outside the USA. You don't make tariffs 20-50%. You don't introduce massive tariffs because a prime minister called you a name. You don't call anybody nasty names.
As usual the orange man is doing the least possible with the most bluster. Lazy.
As someone who lives outside the USA I am shocked at the poverty I see every time I visit. I have toured around the States in Greyhound buses and seen the way poor people live which looks just like what I have seen in third world countries. I don't understand how this can happen in the wealthiest country in the world. I'm not having a dig at my American friends. I like most Americans I meet. American people are no different from anyone I meet in any country. But the acceptance of brutal poverty for such a large section of society is bewildering. And yet the word socialism is so loaded in the USA. A little bit of socialism can be a liberating thing. And a reasonable minimum wage is not the danger that so many seem to thing it is. If people make more money then they can spend more money. Duh!
And I will stop before I upset anyone any more. Everyone here is good people.
As usual the orange man is doing the least possible with the most bluster. Lazy.
As someone who lives outside the USA I am shocked at the poverty I see every time I visit. I have toured around the States in Greyhound buses and seen the way poor people live which looks just like what I have seen in third world countries. I don't understand how this can happen in the wealthiest country in the world. I'm not having a dig at my American friends. I like most Americans I meet. American people are no different from anyone I meet in any country. But the acceptance of brutal poverty for such a large section of society is bewildering. And yet the word socialism is so loaded in the USA. A little bit of socialism can be a liberating thing. And a reasonable minimum wage is not the danger that so many seem to thing it is. If people make more money then they can spend more money. Duh!
And I will stop before I upset anyone any more. Everyone here is good people.
Chuck D. Bones
Circuit Wizard
Greed is a powerful and ugly thing. The Most Selfish Man In The World lives here. He'll spend 0.1% of his wealth influencing elections, but can't be bothered to contribute the same amount to feeding the hungry.
Coda
Well-known member
Because the British set up America as classless (economic class) because everyone that went there did so because they were a failure in England/Britain. So the idea developed that the only way to prove how better you were that everyone else was by amassing wealth. America learned about “new money” and ran with it. It’s the reason The Great Gatsby is a classic. The Founders believed in a “natural aristocracy” that was naturally better than everyone else. This “aristocracy” was able to succeed, despite lacking the privilege of the standard aristocracy. As a result, anyone who was rich was automatically assumed to be a natural aristocrat. The difference became do we build a country that caters to the natural aristocracy (Hamilton), or do we break free entirely and embrace the classless (Jefferson). Hamilton won in the end…
giovanni
Well-known member
That’s very insightful! And explains why we often measure individuals’ value by how much money they make
Chuck D. Bones
Circuit Wizard
It's also about power. If you crave power, you can never have enough money. It's kind of like a Coke habit; the more you get, the more you need. There is always one more judge or politician to buy. And private security. You're nobody if you don't have your own army.
comradehoser
Well-known member
Amen to what HamishR had to say about 'Murrica and poverty.
Amen to the obscenity that any one living human could own 1 billion dollars, let alone multiple billions. Especially if you think about it in physical terms. And comparative terms.
On the origins of America, class, Hamilton vs. Jefferson, it's a little more complicated, and depends on the colony. Georgia, for example, was set up as a poor person's egalitarian utopia, banning slavery, and attempting to treat the Muscogee and other indigenous folks with respect and equality. Virginia, on the other hand, was a bunch of middling British posers eager to replicate the conquistadors and European aristocrats to the point where they alienated the initially open local Algonquians by demanding to be provided non-existent gold and trying to enslave them. They refused to sully their hands with work despite the constant urgings of John Smith, so 439/500 colonists died of starvation after eating each other during the second winter at Jamestown.
Jefferson's views on aristocracy are complicated and American republican theory in general is so--look up the concept of corruption. For Jefferson, citizenship was premised on the independence of thought and freedom from corruption granted by land ownership. Women, slaves, and anybody not working for themselves (i.e.: all of the urban working class, and all of Washington DC) were a priori corrupted by their position of dependence on others, and were thus excluded from citizenship. It's true that this agrarian ideal was in principle egalitarian, but in practice, we are talking about a republic of landed mini-kings, most of which had slaves.
American views on "natural aristocracy" have the pernicious and persistent corollary inheritance that if you haven't made it as a rich person, then there is something inherently inferior in YOU. Thus the basic approach to poverty, socialism, health care and the lack of care for the poor: you only have yourselves to blame, and that's nothing to do with me. Which is the basic MAGA view of black and brown people in the country. Structural inequality? What's that? It must be a defective character from national origin/particular physiognomies, not a fully traceable history of discriminatory policies and laws, sure.
As I think Mencken or somebody once said to explain the lack of a socialist revolution in the USA: every working class person imagines themselves to be a temporarily embarrassed millionaire (or billionaire).
Our country has a deep lack of sociological imagination.
Amen to the obscenity that any one living human could own 1 billion dollars, let alone multiple billions. Especially if you think about it in physical terms. And comparative terms.
On the origins of America, class, Hamilton vs. Jefferson, it's a little more complicated, and depends on the colony. Georgia, for example, was set up as a poor person's egalitarian utopia, banning slavery, and attempting to treat the Muscogee and other indigenous folks with respect and equality. Virginia, on the other hand, was a bunch of middling British posers eager to replicate the conquistadors and European aristocrats to the point where they alienated the initially open local Algonquians by demanding to be provided non-existent gold and trying to enslave them. They refused to sully their hands with work despite the constant urgings of John Smith, so 439/500 colonists died of starvation after eating each other during the second winter at Jamestown.
Jefferson's views on aristocracy are complicated and American republican theory in general is so--look up the concept of corruption. For Jefferson, citizenship was premised on the independence of thought and freedom from corruption granted by land ownership. Women, slaves, and anybody not working for themselves (i.e.: all of the urban working class, and all of Washington DC) were a priori corrupted by their position of dependence on others, and were thus excluded from citizenship. It's true that this agrarian ideal was in principle egalitarian, but in practice, we are talking about a republic of landed mini-kings, most of which had slaves.
American views on "natural aristocracy" have the pernicious and persistent corollary inheritance that if you haven't made it as a rich person, then there is something inherently inferior in YOU. Thus the basic approach to poverty, socialism, health care and the lack of care for the poor: you only have yourselves to blame, and that's nothing to do with me. Which is the basic MAGA view of black and brown people in the country. Structural inequality? What's that? It must be a defective character from national origin/particular physiognomies, not a fully traceable history of discriminatory policies and laws, sure.
As I think Mencken or somebody once said to explain the lack of a socialist revolution in the USA: every working class person imagines themselves to be a temporarily embarrassed millionaire (or billionaire).
Our country has a deep lack of sociological imagination.
pricklyrobot
Well-known member
Though I agree with the sentiment about America’s ‘pathological aspirationalism’, I think you might be referencing this oft-mis-paraphrased Steinbeck quote. Where he was actually talking shit about dilettante weekend revolutionaries
"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property."I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."
― John Steinbeck, America and Americans
Aleph Null
Well-known member
@comradehoser I think there's also a corollary where the destruction and loss of two world wars simultaneously broke much the entrenched ruling class in Europe and gave people the opportunity and motivation to consider new social arrangements. America was the only country with industry that hadn't been bombed into oblivion, so American industry boomed post world war by making stuff for everyone. America hasn't had the collapse and subsequent reckoning that lead Europe to more egalitarian thinking. And thus America looks now like much of Europe did before the world wars. It sure would be nice to get the social change without the collapse and reckoning!
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