That’s an uncompetitive market. No one can outcompete on service, so they can only compete on price, but why would you in such a circumstance, it would only hurt you, so nobody does.
This is what people seem to forget... you don’t need monopolies or collusion for markets to be uncompetitive. Collusion works fundamentally because participants aren't competing with each other... not for the fact people made a secret agreement. It is entirely possible for markets to be completely uncompetitive even without a monopoly or any collusion going on.
I once saw someone say something like this: "Working in a monopoly mega corp is like working for a 20 person company, connected to 20 other 20 person companies, connected to 20 similar entities containing similar 20 companies, with each group of 20 persons in each competing with each other for investment/budgeting."
Maybe hyperbole... but to some extent I think that's about right. It's like you're not even a cohesive unit other than that thin marketing veneer facing the outside world.
Things are often built in silos. Integration of products is almost always an after thought. Decisions/changes are done in response to outside markets or internal political games for promotional appeal and money. The turnover of people retiring, new hires coming. Most every mega corp today is nothing like it was 30 years ago. And so, things typically end up half-baked and the customer left wondering why the products are often such a mess.
Now some companies do things better than others, and may have their stellar areas and their bad areas. Same goes for cities, and even countries, when you think about it.
"No that's not right, it should be a red bricked house. Not a brown one."
> AI redraws a red bricked house.
"No. It should have a 2 car garage, sit on top of a hill. Also it should have a front porch, and have a tree right in front."
> AI then draws a red bricked house on top a hill with a 2 car garage with a front porch and a tree right in front.
...
The issue is that people think AI should automagically create some vague idea in of theirs, without having to do the work of spelling out all the exact details. So AI (like people) must make some assumptions about what wasn't specified. Like since you didn't specify a "red bricked house" in your initial prompt, but merely a "house"... it had to come up with something as to the color, and did as you otherwise asked, but it didn't know you actually wanted a "red bricked house", since you never specified that detail. Hence why it failed to do what you wanted, and you had to "review and correct it".
Again this isn't solely an intelligence problem, but an inherent problem in language/communication, of unsaid assumptions/specifications. Of being unaware of what you don't know, unaware of your own assumptions, sometimes even being unaware of what you even want. It's why AI can't fully get rid of jobs in software.
But sometimes people just don't care. They just want a picture of a house made. Anything remotely resembling a house will do, not necessarily a solid one, or one that can withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake. You know... like something people can put up in minutes so they don't have to do hard work... such as a shabby old tent. And AI is very good at generalizing, so it can in fact achieve this. So everyone reports they are far more productive now, putting up tent after tent. Meanwhile, the people responsible for the slop have a nightmare to review...
Yup. This is basically what Steve Jobs argued throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and championed as a philosophy. Adopting it, took Apple from being a struggling tech company on the verge of bankruptcy, to the dominant personal consumer technology maker it is today.
There are more numerous cases where cities happen to be situated fairly close together in Europe, where trains actually are a more sensible travel option, hence the fixation there.
Planes instead make more sense the further you must travel.
I mean, depending on circumstances, it takes nearly the same amount of time to travel from Chicago to St. Louis by plane as it does by car. Something shorter than that and it can actually take longer to get there by plane than it does by car. I mean no one takes a plane to travel to a city that's only 30 minutes away by car - as it often takes longer to get through airport security and board a plane than that.
3 years ago I was traveling from northern Poland to southern Poland by train - the only option unless you have a car. It so happened that my family was flying from Toronto to Warsaw at the exact same time. They arrived before I did and were much more comfortable than I was, too. Not to mention the safety aspect.
Of course if we're talking about cities that are 20-30 minutes away by car, then flying would not be reasonable.
You call strawman on someone else and show up with anecdata...
And even anecdata with so little information as to be useless.
In all honesty one of the biggest problems in all these discussion is that there is no Europe healthcare / trains /...
Spain has the second most rail in the world per Capita and together with France are one of the best experiences (Japan and China in their own league) while Germany is currently shit and definitely not up to its "reputation".
Public healthcare in Belgium (personal experience, doctors / 1000 people etc) is amongst the best in the world while I guess based on your comment the one in poland is not that good ?
Nevermind the USA that has places like Appalachia and San Francisco
> You call strawman on someone else and show up with anecdata
Anecdotal is just that - sample size of one. Straw man is a dishonest manipulation technique to bring someone down.
> In all honesty one of the biggest problems in all these discussion is that there is no Europe healthcare / trains /...
Yes!
> Public healthcare in Belgium (personal experience, doctors / 1000 people etc) is amongst the best in the world while I guess based on your comment the one in poland is not that good ?
Healthcare in Poland is very poor and has been that way for a while. In fact, it's currently in the spotlight as it's on the verge of collapse and controversies are brought up to light to assign a convenient scapegoat.
I'd say bring someone down is a bit exagerated (distraction is more common) and not assuming the good fate we're supposed to have. Could also be him feeling that it is relevant / applicable ...
The classical saying is “The plural of anecdote is not data.”... hence you should in general on hn bring some actual data based facts (hence me not just using personal experience but also mentioning doctors/1000 metric)
But anyway glad we agree on Europe not 1 and sad to hear about bad healthcare in Poland, hope you get some politicians who actually care to fix it.
This mis-frames the actual issue. "Being there for the paycheck" isn't bad per se, it's the morality in the manner of doing such.
There's a marked difference in earning a paycheck via genuinely helping someone else out, as compared to... being apathetic to how that happens, or worse: earning a paycheck via deliberately sabotaging someone else's wellbeing.
Does it matter if they only own a small fraction of the homes? There's some studies that show that in markets where institutional investors do buy, prices typically noticeably increase for houses afterwards, even if they only own a tiny fraction of the housing units.
There's plausible argument as to network effects (e.g. my neighbor is charging that much, so why can't I?), as well as changing unit types to rentals, limiting owner-occupied supply and hence driving up prices.
I mean, I imagine it can be kind of similar in the stock market, where that you don't actually need to buy all a company's shares in existence to bid up a stock's price... you only need to buy enough of the available float to raise prices (sometimes which can be <0.5% of shares in existence).
Yes, I don't think this is a single faceted issue. I've yet to see anyone here mention animals yet... but numerous animals in captivity have also been shown to have far lower breeding/fertility rates. Factors like restricted space, lack of mate choice, and disrupted natural instincts can all influence animal behavior, and I see no reason why the same can't apply to us?
I know for me personally, it's not economic reasons as to why I have not had children, but more a problem of finding the right mate at the right time. Some people just aren't socially fit for each other...
I think the real interesting question isn't "why don't people have children" but more "why do those who have one or two kids not have more?" It seems everyone around came from a family of 6+ or knew those who did, yet everyone has 1 or 2 kids, three if the first two were both the same sex.
I didn't choose to have kids, but I have a friend who prioritized doing so, and she talked about hoping to have a larger family. She got married and had her first child not long after graduating from college. So biologically a very healthy age.
She ended up with two. Pregnancy sounds nice and well until your teeth start falling out. Some women just have a really rough time of it - so doing it while also being the primary caregiver for 1 or more other young child... yeah, even if you're financially stable and supported from your spouse's job, that is really a hard thing to manage.
In her case, it seems extra hard because neither her parents nor her husband's have helped with caring for the kids.
Meanwhile, my step-sister (who is less financially well-off than my friend) has 3, but they are constantly hanging out at my parents place or with extended family. Having nearby family that wants to help makes such a huge difference.
The familial support really is key - it is possible to have a large family "on your own" but it's significantly harder than if you have cooperative family in the area, or are already in multi-generational living situations.
That alone will probably do little, due to contagion effects. Simply finding an index which excludes it might not be enough if it still shares other similar underlying stocks with indexes that do include it.
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