Raising the price doesn’t “solve” shortage and no one in economics makes that claim.
Instead, the claim is more limited - that even in times of shortage if you want to make sure that the item in question is still available, raising the price will accomplish two things: it will encourage marginal production and discouraged marginal consumption.
Without prices, the only mechanism you would have to accomplish the same effect, would be a political decision about who did or not deserve to have hard bread, while you work out the production issue.
In both systems, you’re doing rationing, just by different means.
Whether under capitalism or collectivism the way you solve a shortage is always the same - you produce enough for everyone who wants the thing.
The difference is the presence for absence of the feedback mechanisms like prices. The problem with collectivism is that once you get rid of prices, there is no explicit feedback mechanism. There may be implicit mechanisms such as a waitlist, but ultimately the decision to increase production is turned into a political decision. I doubt many people care if production decisions about hard bread are made by politicians or business people, but in more consequential areas, such as housing, we have a century of experience of what happens in production decisions are collectivized and politicized. (it is illegal to increase the national stock of interior residential floor space by even one square foot without prior political approval, I.e. rezoning, variances, etc.)
Maybe a sign of AI alignment? It understands that it's harmful to let humans spread false and politically motivated ideas, so it's trying to avoid contributing to that?
> Based on an agentic market research campaign, we vibe coded an app called GutCheck, a bathroom diary for people with IBS. We chose this app for its minimal yet helpful functionality: an iOS app live on the App Store with the RevenueCat MCP and App Store Connect CLI. Saul has full write access to the codebase. We set up the App Store account permissions beforehand to ensure Saul wouldn’t get blocked by Apple human compliance checks. We sourced this idea from Reddit.
I think this shows the flaws in doing agentic designed apps. This is a really specific market that would be hard to make money from. Many people aren't going to think of using diary, most will use generic tracking app or even just notebook. Those that do won't spend money on it.
Another is that they don't have enthusiasm for the idea. Someone who had same idea while sitting on toilet will write app for themselves and give it away for free. They will have connection with IBS groups for promotion. They won't give up after weeks.
When the costs are low and require no change in personal behaviour, nor even belief in the problem. Billions of people had no idea about changes to aerosol propellants or refrigerants and they were not required to know or agree in order to solve the problem.
Do people have to know about what generates their electricity? They get input now, but we could probably just stop taking public input on new infrastructure and that would avoid poorly motivated protests of wind farms or nuclear.
They do not need to know what generates there electricity but...
- when what generates the power changes the landscape they can see, many people get upset, however irrationally
- many people are emotionally attached to lifestyle objects that use fossil fuels, i.e. cars, boats, planes, etc
- even where there are good options, most people are not willing to spend one extra penny
- even when there are options that cost less (i.e. bicycles, walking) humans spend a lot of their energy thinking about status and struggle to voluntarily choose things that they fear might result in a loss of status
- even if you solve all that, collective action problems are a named thing for a reason - they are hard and don't necessarily have obvious answers.
My point is not that everything is hopeless, but that OP who said "Have we ever as a species successfully changed our behavior on a scale..." has a point that we will have to grapple with if we want to actually change stuff. Wishing human nature away doesn't actually solve anything.
Perhaps more importantly than any of those, often people react out of fear of what they think other people will think.
Maybe everyone bitches about gas prices, but we would all get over it pretty fast if politicians just pulled the band-aid off. Instead they use it as an opportunity to pull down any crab that tries to save us from the bucket.
Good point - maybe also stop taking public input on decisions. :V
I kid, but I get more sympathetic to totalitarian countries seeing how people react to some things too. it simplifies "banding together" if there's fewer decision makers I guess and I can't think of a good way to have that squared with democracy.
Totalitarianism only works well with a benevolent dictator. Unfortunately, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Due to human nature, it will never ever turn out for the best.
You also get no feedback from people, massive corruption and many useless megaprojects end up being built at the cost of everything else (because everyoneis too afraid to point out its nonsense & regime adjacent thugs will then make it 5x as expensive and pocket the extra money).
Actual headline is "Donald Trump jokes about 2028 re-election bid".
Given the submitter's comment & submission history, we have to consider this an attempt at disinformation. A poor attempt, to be clear, but an attempt nonetheless.
As you can see from the article, it was updated after I posted this. The headline changed. I used its original headline at the time of posting per site rules. Nice try, but your post is slanderous misinformation.
Because individual HN users do the flagging and many are tired of the inevitable and pointless Israel v Palestine proxy comment war that predictably erupts on any topic related to the Middle East.
The point is that every random going-on gets used as an excuse to rehash the entire conflict from 1947 onwards, and a lot of people are just not interested in that, and don't consider it relevant to the site.
It’s a rehash of a conflict from abut 3000 BCE onwards. Who really is the “historical people” of the land that is now Palestine/Israel has been the subject of bloody conflict for 5000 years.
> Why is it pointless to inform and remind others about what Israel did in the region?
It’s the act of comment warring that is pointless. [X/Y] partisans are not intellectually curious about statements coming from a [Y/X] partisan. Nobody’s minds are going to change either way.
There presumably some third parties who could hypothetically be swayed, but from what I’ve seen they’re few and far between.
For the same reason you chose to exclude the any mention of informing and reminding others about what Hamas did in the region.
You comment presumes that either the posted article or the comments are doing in any informing. I contend that neither do, they are both simply writing prompts for partisans.
Your comment also presumes that the entire earth is not already saturated in Israel v Palestine content. You not getting your desired outcome is not evidence that people are uninformed.
Whether they are or are not, you are also sidestepping an even more important question - why must all internet sites cover all topics? There's nothing wrong with any site making clear what topics they want to focus on. HN and it's users have made it clear they prefer to focus on tech and there are literally 70 million other places you can go to fight over Israel & Palestine. If that's your thing, have at it, you don't need to do it here.
In fact, I would argue that both HN and Israel v Palestine fight sites would be better for it. If all sites are for all issues then all sites just devolve to the same slop. If sites can focus, they develop their own unique community. The attempt to invade such spaces and force them to have the discussions you want them to have is just colonialism by another name.
> When people say things they often have a hidden motivation, and who they are is a strong signal about what their hidden motivation is.
Citation needed.
The idea that most statements contain hidden meanings or only serve to cover up hidden motivations suggests an incredible level of paranoia.
I would posit the opposite - when people say things you can & should generally take them at face value. Sometimes people will disappoint you some of the time. Some people will do it so often that you would do well to discount their future statements. If you find yourself believing that anyone who doesn't share your opinions & values is secretly a facist/nazi, carefully curating their public image until it's time to strike, then you should really consider finding some grass and touching it.
> The idea that most statements contain hidden meanings or only serve to cover up hidden motivations suggests an incredible level of paranoia.
I wouldn't say most but if you don't think this never happens that's just naivety. If you think right wing anti-immigration wasn't thinly veiled racism... Hell sometimes it wasn't even veiled.
(I say "was" because in the UK the situation has changed somewhat in the past 5-10 years - immigration has actually reached unsustainable levels. But Farage and worse were around long before that.)
Instead, the claim is more limited - that even in times of shortage if you want to make sure that the item in question is still available, raising the price will accomplish two things: it will encourage marginal production and discouraged marginal consumption.
Without prices, the only mechanism you would have to accomplish the same effect, would be a political decision about who did or not deserve to have hard bread, while you work out the production issue.
In both systems, you’re doing rationing, just by different means.
Whether under capitalism or collectivism the way you solve a shortage is always the same - you produce enough for everyone who wants the thing.
The difference is the presence for absence of the feedback mechanisms like prices. The problem with collectivism is that once you get rid of prices, there is no explicit feedback mechanism. There may be implicit mechanisms such as a waitlist, but ultimately the decision to increase production is turned into a political decision. I doubt many people care if production decisions about hard bread are made by politicians or business people, but in more consequential areas, such as housing, we have a century of experience of what happens in production decisions are collectivized and politicized. (it is illegal to increase the national stock of interior residential floor space by even one square foot without prior political approval, I.e. rezoning, variances, etc.)