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Are we the baddies?

(geohot.github.io)
697 points AndrewSwift | 1 comments | 06 Jul 25 05:36 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ggm ◴[06 Jul 25 06:09 UTC] No.44478235[source]▶
For some people, paying the premium to jump the queue is the point. What they didn't forsee is what happens when everyone has wound up paying the premium, and the queue is now with you again. This is mostly Australian frequent flyers, when it was a high barrier to entry it conferred advantages and now Fly in Fly out work has commoditised club status, there is next to no boarding advantage, and no points flight availability.

So yes. Status seeking, and differential price seeking probably is a-social as a pattern when it's weaponised against the consumer.

That said, I hated Uber, they actually offered to underwrite people breaking the law to get foot in the door (how that didn't get them excluded as a corporate scofflaw is beyond me) and they continue to export all the profits offshore, but taxi services had become shit and now we have got used to Uber and I just don't worry about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly.

My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off.

The European push to mandate included luggage in flight is seeing a fair bit of trolling. So there are still true believers who think needing clean underwear is weak.

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rr808 ◴[06 Jul 25 11:56 UTC] No.44479945[source]▶
> My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off.

I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.

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chrsw ◴[06 Jul 25 16:14 UTC] No.44481977[source]▶
I'm American.

This is how capitalism is supposed to work. It's supposed to seep into every crevice of society and pull money out of the poorest, weakest people and into the hands of the richest and strongest. This isn't a coincidence, it is in fact the most important aspect of the system.

Tipping went from some generous gesture to recognize exceptional service and it's turned into a mandatory, arm-twisting shakedown by businesses that simply do not want to pay their employees. Not just avoid paying a living wage (those days are long gone) but not even a _minimum_ wage. Many people involved in or invested in the restaurant businesses wouldn't have thought about getting in if they had to pay employees for an honest day's work.

Many restaurants these days aren't just local mom and pop family run businesses but large corporations who own many franchises and operate in the billions of dollars yet people like you and I are expected to pay most of the wages of the servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darden_Restaurants

Sure, you can never eat out or only eat at locally owned small businesses. But that's just one small slice of society. The only realistic solution for many of us is to try to run the rat race faster.

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1. benreesman ◴[06 Jul 25 17:39 UTC] No.44482606{3}[source]▶
As an American who agrees with you that this is a perennial failure mode for our culture and that this is by far the worst I've seen it in decades (I was a kid for "...government is the problem"), I still always remind everyone that it doesn't have to be this way, it wasn't this way 20 years ago, it was trending bad but not like this ten years ago, and that old proverb (Chinese I think and I'm probably butchering it) is spot on: "every step into a dark forest is a step you'll have to take to see the sun, but you have counted your steps".

Markets are great when they are well administered by competent and uncorrupted authority. And this is not an oxymoron! Brooksley Born should win the Nobel Peace Prize or something, she saw the road ahead and gave everything in a bitter battle against Clinton's goons and if we hadn't kneecapped her we wouldn't be here today.

More recently Lina Khan was a one-woman nightmare calamity for scammers, thieves, and other assorted bottom dwellers, and if Trump's goons hadn't had their way she'be ramming data privacy laws so far up FAANG's ass that Lt Colonel Boz would think he actually had been through legit basic.

The system can work, we get excellent people in charge of the important stuff with some frequency, but we have got to drop this red/blue crap and get behind leaders like the ones I mentioned or this goes one fucking way.

And there's a pretty optimistic message not in what George wrote, but that people like George are starting to ask if they're the baddies. He's always been brilliant but I was starting to wonder if he had gone TESCREAL on us, and I think we can see he (metaphorically) sobered up off the kool aid. If he can, idk, maybe Lex can, maybe pmarca can. If those guys took a cold shower? The world changes that day.