> In most fields (film, painting, music, etc), there are standards -- agreed upon to varying degrees, sometimes almost unanimously, sometimes with only a plurality -- based on objective or almost-objective criteria. In other words, there are "measurable" criteria that expert or even merely good practitioners can agree on. In these cases the word "quality" is often used as a shorthand for possessing these kinds of properties. In this sense, ascribing quality is functionally different from a mere opinion, linguistically and technically.
Could that be selection bias, where people who think X is "quality" promote other people who agree and push down those who disagree?
At that point, it may be true Agree X has found something objective and measurable, but they're using circular reasoning: these metrics are important because they show "quality", and we know it is "quality" because of those metrics.
It's true as I noted there is no final god-like arbiter. But that is not really an interesting observation imo. Taking that perspective to its logical conclusion we end up in a world where values are utterly flat and relativist, and the only thing we can say is that we can't say anything about anything.
It's also true the selection-bias you described exists, in some cases to the point of collective delusion. But note how I can say that and you can immediately think of cases that fit and cases that don't...
On balance there is something real and (despite my first sentence) I want to say "objective" in most cases of expertise. In practice everyone lives as if that were true, even if they are arguing otherwise.
Regardless, even if you want to make the most contrarian, relativist case possible, the phenomenon of expertise (simply viewed as a social pattern) does exist and governs nearly every domain where people talk about "quality".
Are there $150 pairs which are better than every $10 or $20 pair? Sure.
But there are plenty of $150 headphones which have the same quality as a $10 pair of earbuds. People overpay for brand names, for trendy styles, for good marketing/ branding, etc. Price _alone_ is not an indicator of quality.
> Meaning quality is more important than quantity.
It's not a binary choice.
Price is a non-linear factor here: "quality" may be prohibitively expensive as a single purchase, even if it is less expensive over X years than re-buying a cheaper item every year.
In the US, shopping trends are clear that many people (perhaps most) value quantity very highly, to the point that they will sacrifice "quality" which is loosely defined and more subjective. IME this also ties into Americans being very price conscious.
That's a silly comparison: by that metric, Apple "won" against Saudi Aramco and Berkshire Hathaway, and Microsoft also "won" against them.
Except that they aren't in the same business.
On the desktop, Microsoft is still kicking Apple's ass. Even moreso for servers. The only place Apple "won" is on mobile, where Microsoft lost to _everybody_.
I can't find the exact stat right now with some light google, but I recall there was a stat that while Apple doesn't have majority of user base, they essentially have an outsized share of the profit due to the average sales price & associated profit margins.
In Windows space, MSFT gets their license money, and then its a commodity race to the bottom by the hardware makers who need to pay AMD/Intel for chips, MSFT for a license, and compete with 100 no-names OEMs for every penny.
Arguably in the long run, Amazon is winning enterprise in ways Google never did. MSFT owns enterprise desktop / desktop collab use cases (and any virtualization / server side stuff to support it) only.
Sure I guess if you're still living in 2010. Nobody uses an "mp3 player" anymore. Get with the times grampa. Everyone has a cellphone that plays MP3s today.
> They won on music stores.
Spotify is at 36% market share compared to Apple's 30% of the music streaming market.
>They won on mobile.
And Apple did not "win on mobile" - only in the US are they popular, but globally Android has 72% market share. Apple lost the mobile market to Android a long time ago.
>They won on laptops.
No, Apple did not "win on laptops", they are still at about 9% market share.
"As of the third quarter of 2020, HP was cited as the leading vendor for notebook computers closely followed by Lenovo, both with a share of 23.6% each. They were followed by Dell (13.7%), Apple (9.7%) and Acer (7.9%)."
Nothing has really changed since 2020. Apple will always be a tiny portion of the personal computer and laptop market.
>They won on headphones.
huh? There are far better headphones than anything Apple makes. Are you talking about earbuds? There's a difference.
No, Apple has not "won" on anything but having overpriced hardware. $3600 for a VR headset? Yeah, I guess they "won" most ridiculously overpriced hardware ever.
> and it must be amended, updated, or replaced with a better version that addresses common grievances.
That assumes it will be "better" and less flawed. To that point:
> In my subjective experience, I would prefer to see S230’s protections “scale” with the size of the platform and its function. For instance (and I know this will be a highly controversial take), I don’t think large, centralized platforms like FB or X should have S230 protections at all, because
sec230 in its current form is better than every "reform" I hear suggested.
There's always going to be a lot of money/profit in amoral behavior that's legal -- while being moral means passing on that behavior and money. It's possible to run a business morally and successfully, but rarely as successfully as someone who runs one amorally.
IME, most people in the US will happily take a job with the extra money at an amoral company, even if the lesser paying job at a moral company would still be enough for a comfortable life. (Folks in the US are very price conscious; I don't know how that compares to other cultures/ societies.)
It had nothing to do with tax rates and everything to do with wage "controls" (i.e. caps) during WWII.
Employers were not allowed _by law_ to pay their employees competitive wages, so they offered benefits which weren't restricted.
Even after the war, this was still a benefit to employers: the cost of benefits paid by the employers could be deducted from their taxes, but employees didn't have to pay taxes on it (unlike wages), so it was more efficient; also, changing jobs meant changing health insurance plans, which complicated job switching for employees.
(BTW, the supposed "high tax rates" were paid by almost no one, in part because they only applied to the highest tax brackets but also because of numerous tax deductions.)
Yes, the high tax rates weren't meant to be paid. They were almost universally routed around via benefits and deductions.
Of course, both what you said and what I said still doesn't explain why benefits weren't taxed (or at least not as heavily).
Btw, I remember growing up in the 1990s in Germany that having a company car used to be a big deal as a perk. I don't hear about that as much anymore, I suspect it's because the relative tax attractiveness of benefits vs straight up cash changed over time; I remember some loopholes being tightened (if not closed).
> considering that the median employee takes almost zero risks and can leave whenever they want.
This is an important point that is often ignored.
Within the past week there was a thread about "How to get paid FAANG money at non-FAANG companies", and someone mentioned starting your own business -- which folks (correctly) pointed out involved risks and time that most folks don't want to take.
(Also, it's always funny on HN when someone sarcastically talks about a CEO "only" being paid an absurd amount of money, when almost all of us are getting paid multiples of the median salary, plus whatever annual bonuses and stock.)
> The problem here would be that there's not enough people who can provide the level of protection a third-party vendor claims to provide, and a person (or persons) with comparable level of expertise would be much more expensive likely.
Is that because of economies of scale or because the vendor is just cutting costs while hiding their negligence?
I don't understand how a single vendor was able to deploy an update to all of these systems virtually simultaneously, and _that_ wasn't identified as a risk. This smells of mindless box checking rather than sincere risk assessment and security auditing.
Kinda both I think, with an addition of principal agent problem. If you found a formula that provides the client with an acceptable CYA picture it is very scalable. And the model of "IT person knowledgeable in both security, modern threats and company's business" is not very scalable. The former, as we now know, is prone to catastrophic failures, but those are rare enough for a particular decision-maker to not be bothered by it.
Could that be selection bias, where people who think X is "quality" promote other people who agree and push down those who disagree?
At that point, it may be true Agree X has found something objective and measurable, but they're using circular reasoning: these metrics are important because they show "quality", and we know it is "quality" because of those metrics.
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