I'm only minimizing the value of the Enlightenment's liberty proposition (liberalism) as a result of the scientific observation that entropy most definitely accelerates through liberal-democratic ideas and enterprises. Don't propose liberalism and then I won't appear aloof when I'm actually watching the situation very closely.
My feed is no longer related to my interests and I don’t know how to get it back on track. That and losing the confidence that the blue check posting is actually someone relevant. Really kills the enjoyment for me.
I’ll give that a shot;
- AI learns what’s on the site
- Visitors stop coming to the site, because the information is now freely available in parsed/summarized form from the AI
- Blogger stops posting because there are no visitors
- AI stops learning because there is no new content
People visit the site because they want more info if the summary isn't enough. No way to do that with chatGPT. This limitation probably means search engines are safe for now
It’s newsworthy! The current story being told in tech is that we can lay off significant parts of the workforce with no impact. Following this, the resulting failures are generally hidden or otherwise non-obvious.
Re: bestbuy “showrooming” issues, I think they actually figured out how to make it a value driver for them, whereas it killed others. It’s a great place to look at products, and they price match so you can walk out the door with the product instead of waiting.
> ... and they price match so you can walk out the door with the product instead of waiting.
I would love to see the behind-the-scenes numbers crunched on that model. I don't see how that model works long-term unless the percentage of customers in the showroom walking out the door with online price-matched goods is a relatively small group, or they're successful up- and cross-selling on gonzo margin goods and services before and after they walk out the door, or their COGS is way better, or some other activity to make up their bigger overheads versus an e-commerce marketplace.
Can anyone offer any insight how BestBuy is long-term sustainable with the online price matching policy?
I've known people who work at Best Buy and they get their products substantially cheaper, just as the online retailers do. There is some level of bake in for storing it at the store... but not really much different from sitting in an amazon warehouse for instance, most best buys have large warehouses in the back you'd never be aware of. Many people aren't aware of the price matching nor take advantage of it, they also sometimes will "confirm" the price match, so you can't really fake them out. And you end up browsing whilst they do the price match + grab the product from the back.
Long term sustainable simply because they've already baked it in and it's less widely known amongst the typical consumer and its honestly kind of a hassle, people pay for convenience.
Best Butt is basically a group of warehouses across the country - order from them online and you may find your order shipped from random Beat Buy stores.
And for many of their products they all sell at MSRP anyway (apple laptops say) so they’re already matching Amazon et Al. And things like hdmi cables are some off brand and so they don’t price match anyway.
They have a pretty slick setup going, also jumped in on the appliances market just as Sears et Al disappeared.
There is there real value. When you need it now they are just across town. You have to be very rural to not have one within half an hour. Amazon has 2 hour delivery in large cities, but only some cities (though granted the exceptions are small population).
I think it's more that Amazon's prices have come up on the type of stuff that's sold in stores where they aren't the price leader anymore, if they ever were.
I've bought more from Best Buy in the past few years than I have in the decade before because they are often the cheapest option, including Amazon. They also offer same-day courier service on some things I've ordered.
Another thing to consider beyond raw COGS is "attach rate": online price matching gets you in the door and buying the big ticket items, but once you are in the door how likely are you to also pick up accessories (especially if you are saving on the base item) or even unrelated things that you saw in the store while you were there?
One solution- if someone is taking out personal loans that function like income, let’s tax it like income. If someone really wants to live on 80k a year, that’s fine. But if they’re reporting 80k income but spending 10M, maybe they should be paying their fair share on that.
Edit- this has the benefit of completely avoiding the issue of unrealized gains and sticks to the issue of income...
It functions like income when they treat it like an average person treats their income. Spending on their home, their car, travel, etc. They’re using the loan to avoid taking income or realizing gains.
But yeah, I would be down for a more sensible sales tax situation. I’m sure there are a hundred ways to skin this cat.
How is that any different than paying with a credit card or using reward points? Those aren't taxable or treated like income so why should loans and mortgages be?
Someone sufficiently wealthy can push off taxes until they die and their heirs can use the step up basis[1] to avoid them entirely.
There's also a huge advantage in the ability to choose when one wants to pay taxes even if they eventually do get paid. Buffet loves to talk about unrealized gains as a loan from Uncle Sam at zero percent interest.
I think this is where at least talking about rather than a wealth tax a usage tax. Now some will fall through the cracks as a billionaire that lives like a middle class person would be taxed as such but that could be viewed as fair since the assumption is at some point the wealth will be spent and taxed. The trick of a usage tax though is some kind of baseline income or offset to prevent the inevitable result of permanent poverty as rich have the safety net of wealth and a usage tax just encourages them to hoard more and distribute less to employees.
