It's not just museum exhibits and kids, it's everything. I have some maintenance roles in my background and the rate at which things like paper towel dispensers get worn down and completely destroyed when interacted with by hundreds or thousands of people a day is eye opening.
Physical books in libraries is another example: They can typically last just a few dozen circulations.
Some books are well made but others are crap.
I think mass market paperbacks in standardized sizes hold up pretty well considering everything. My collection mostly from the 1970s and 1980s held up pretty well up to 2010 but they are going yellow now because of the acid paper. Libraries rebind them and I notice they have a lot of rebound paperbacks of the same age that have the same yellowing mine have despite better storage conditions.
Some trade paperbacks are fine but because they're not really standardized quality is all over the place. I've bought some where the binding broke the minute I spread the book out. Hardcovers are more consistent than trade paperbacks but some still fail early.
Then there are just the accidents like the book I had in my backpack when I was outside in heavy rain but I think that was one book wrecked in about 300 circulations.
I think they meant that books being handled and read by dozens of readers annually won't survive for too long.
The user bears the cost of destroying the book though.
Sometimes I really feel like this is a cultural problem rather than a maintenance problem. Visiting Japan was really eye-opening for me. They have almost no trash cans in public places, but they also have far less litter; it's just a cultural norm that you might have to carry your trash for a while, and people just do it. There are great clean public bathrooms everywhere, because they are so much easier to maintain -- no one destroys them, there's no need to lock them up. They don't have to worry about paper towel dispensers being destroyed, because they don't have them; instead, everyone carries around a handkerchief-sized towel in their pocket.
I guess it's because it's waaaay too expensive to buy really robust things (like paper towel dispensers). It's not like you couldn't build an indestructible paper towel dispenser, but it would cost 10x a normal one and have 100x smaller market.
Since these towel dispensers are all over schools and other locations that likely get more traffic than that museum, either they are buying the good models which everyone in the business knows about, or they are choosing to buy the cheap ones because it is a better value despite having to replace them all the time. I don't buy such things so I'm not able to tell you which. I know that there are enough of them in the world that anything not robust would be well known quickly. (there is a possibility they bought something new that turned out bad, but then replace it once and done)
It's cus all skilled workers learned they can charge insane rates. Blue collar skilled labor starts at 100$ an hour in West Virginia or Mississippi now. Most of them, like Software, have learned that it's hard to figure out if the work they did was good or not until afterwards. As such, there are tons of charlatans, grifters, scammers, and related in many industries right now. Classic cases are Dentists (Literally everything), Car Mechanics (blinker fluid scams to grandma), Plumbers, Leak Detection Companies, etc
I started to understand a whole lot of class or even guild warfare stuff from the past when I start to see what happens when skilled workers start to scheme for their gain against the common good. I also don't just accept unions as being good for everyone anymore for the same reason.
The sad reality is that skilled workers are just like the hot waitress index. When the economy is bad, it's a lot easier to get the cream of the crop for those who still have money. The fact that everything is still somehow decent for a few more months is exactly why it's insanely difficult to source any kind of labor for a reasonable price. Since no one can source this labor, they simply don't and do without.
Shit stayed open late during the recession. Good thing Trump is trying his hardest to put us into another one right now.
>learned they can charge insane rates
It's called "what the market can bear" and it's what corporations with marketing and sales professionals have always tried their best to do; charge as much as you possibly can without losing business. Of course, it only actually works when there is competition, and so the rising prices are kept in check by undercutting competition.... and then, _that_ only works when the undercutting competition is working to the same quality (by a code, ideally) and is subject to the same economic pressures so that it can level out fairly. If the competition is all fresh immigrants with lower CoL, or if the competition is cutting corners, all bets are off. You end up with a race to the bottom, where each individual is trying to be part of a race to the top at the same time... everyone wants more than they're worth, but those who are actually doing the best work still aren't getting what they deserve, lol!
A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work, just like any other freedom. It's always been strange to me that Americanism seems to view freedom as the fundamental condition of man, hampered by law; ultimately most freedoms come from rule and order, because they can carve out space for one to enjoy freedoms with far fewer negative consequences.
> A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work
While I am not a free market absolutist, I think your assertion is based on judging negative outcomes of a free market vs the positive intentions of regulations trying to prevent those negative outcomes, i.e. you’re not considering the negative outcomes of regulations. I don’t think any free market advocate would state categorically that they produce perfect results, merely that any attempt to prevent certain negative outcomes through law will produce different negative outcomes elsewhere.
For instance regulations tend to incentivize very large corporations to advocate for more regulation as it raises the barrier to new competition entering the market place. Another example would be over burdensome regulations that slow the production of housing which constrains supply and prices a lot of people out of the market. I would have loved to take public transit where I lived a few years ago, but they spent a decade on environmental impact studies while traffic and the environmental impact from it got significantly worse.
There’s also a time component where the effects of regulations can take decades or even generations to really play out, but people tend to only remember the well-meaning goal of the regulation if they remember it at all. This tends to be very beneficial for politicians who end up being judged not on outcomes, but intentions.
I think you missed the parent comment’s point. They are not saying that a free market had it’s downsides, but rather that a lassaiz-faire approach often does not even result in a free market, but rather in a market that tends towards monopolization. And a market without competition is not free.
In order to have free, competitive markets, you need to have a referee to enforce a common set of rules, like antitrust.
Sorry for the double reply but I think a concrete example might elucidate what I am discussing.
I have had to deal with close friends being addicted to heroin. I believe the free market is harmful when it comes to hard drugs because of my experiences. I am all for the complete ban of these hard drugs. However, that does not mean no one will OD on heroin even though it is banned. Such a law will create a black market, crime due to its illicit nature, incentivize horrific cartels to smuggle it into the country, and cost a lot of tax money to enforce. These are all negative outcomes from legislation whose goal is to prevent people from having access to heroin. I think this trade-off is worth it personally although some would disagree. The point is I’m not comparing the negative outcomes of hard drug use to the intentions of “fixing” it through legislation. Rather I am comparing outcomes to outcomes because there are some serious downsides to such a policy solution.
I have also lost a friend to heroin (well, probably fent... it was the early days of that, and we suspect that nobody knew how to dose properly...) and so I appreciate your tangent.
One of the things we've learned up here in Canada over the last couple decades is the need to understand that some people just cannot be sober. They will not be, and they will do anything to not be, ranging from the familiar drugs to whatever they can find (gasoline, inhalants, etc). Obviously, there are worse and better choices in this range of options, and there are more and less self destructive outcomes. Harm reduction has become a key strategy; what can we do that will help keep these people from hurting themselves and others?
We've achieved some manner of success helping prevent people from OD'ing, getting needle-transmitted drugs, etc. which helps them and helps all of us at large (in the most utilitarian sense, it keeps social healthcare costs lower). What we've failed at is preventing them from hurting others, unfortunately.
In the long run, I think that what we're going to need is better drugs. We have to find something that makes people feel as good as they need to feel, without all the massively negative side effects of heroin, meth, etc. that result in wrecked lives. Healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry should seriously be looking at it this way; not just working on antidepressants and other clinical meds that are trying to get people to a stable "normal", but drugs that actually make you feel good so that they can displace heroin / fentanyl, without the downsides.
Yes, we would still see people addicted to that.... <sips coffee> <watches guy across the street smoking>
Thanks, that's a very succinct way of putting my original idea.
It was well put in (one of the) the ending(s) of Evangelion, where the protagonist Shinji learns that gravity, a constraint that removes a degree of freedom, also gives him freedom by providing a surface upon which he can walk; without the constraint, he would actually be less free.
I didn’t miss their point, I challenged the foundation upon which it rested.
You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly. Even if I take this as a fact for the sake of argument, it doesn’t nullify my point that judging the intention of political action (antitrust laws to prevent monopolies) against the outcomes of a system (free markets devolve into monopolies) is comparing apples to oranges. You must judge the outcomes of both systems. As I stated in my original reply, regulations can actually lead to monopolies, so the outcomes matter a lot more than their good intentions.
If I don’t take your assertion as a fact though[1], then what you’re doing is judging what you believe to be the outcome of a free market with what you believe will prevent that through legislation. This is entirely too theoretical and doesn’t even begin to answer which is a better system. Ultimately we need to understand the actual trade-offs that are being made between these systems in order to select the system with the most desirable characteristics.
[1] It is not at all proven that a free market will naturally devolve into a monopoly. This has been a contentious debate in economics for centuries and is absolutely not resolved. People tend to assume a static market and extrapolate into the infinite future, e.g. if a horse drawn carriage manufacturer has 99% market share then will it forever be a monopoly in a broken system or will a fledgling automotive industry dethrone this “monopoly” with a better alternative that is not even a direct competitor? This is a really, really deep subject in either case.
> It is not at all proven that a free market will naturally devolve into a monopoly.
I think it comes down to the category of item being offered in the market. Some things naturally lend themselves to monopolies; it feels like perhaps it's based on factors like the difficulty of entering the market with a new product at all, the amount of coordination and manpower required to field it, and the cost efficiencies of having a singular producer vs. many.
There are certainly cases where we see duopolies or triopolies etc. where one really-well-run company might be more efficient, from a labour standpoint; but then, in turn, we all benefit from having a redundant array of supply chains.
There are other cases where we absolutely want a monopoly, such as with policing, or (in many countries) with healthcare, because they apply to everyone and being a consumer of the service is not exactly optional.
> You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly.
No, I am not asserting that.
I think the first thing to clear up is our definitions. My main point would be that a market that is controlled by a monopoly is not a free market. I would define a free market not as a market that is free from government interference, but a market in which all of the actors are free to participate on a fair competitive playing field.
I think that lassaiz-faire, with the meaning of "hands off" may be a more precise way to describe what you are saying when you say "free market".
I think that a fair competitive landscape is ultimately what we want out of markets. I agree that it is bad when government actions interfere with a fair competitive landscape. But it is not inevitable that all goverment actions will do that, and in many cases government action can help rather than hurt. And similarly, plenty of actions by non-government actors can interfere with a fair competitive landscape as well.
> a market that is controlled by a monopoly is not a free market.
In other words, the thing you are talking about _does not exist_ except in libertarian fantasies. Without a government (the monopoly on force in a region, that controls the markets within) providing the backbone for this - i.e. with features such as courts, police, mint - there is no freedom, because an aggrieved party has no recourse other than violence.
It’s a supply and demand problem. There are just not enough people pursuing these jobs to replace the retiring generation. Some of these small family businesses are quite profitable, but most owners don’t have kids interested in continuing their legacy. Private equity noticed this and went on an acquisition spree. They buy your local HVAC and plumbing company, keep the family-owned branding “since 1976”, hire people with no experience to do the job and increase the hourly rate. They recover the investment, squeeze out every dollar they can and shut it down once bad Google reviews and lawsuits start to creep in.
Recent experience: called a HVAC contractor to fix a heating furnace, they spent 1 hour convincing us to scrap the current furnace and install a new one; once we told him "no" at least 10 times, he spent 30 minutes "diagnosing" the problem while on the phone with somebody with technical knowledge; then he quoted $250 to replace a part that I could buy on Ebay for $15. Finally, I bought the part and replaced it myself.
I understand being annoyed at a sales pitch, but this sounds like about 3-4 hours of work for the contractor, which comes out to about $80/hour. That doesn’t sound so unreasonable to me.
Sorry, I skipped some details. They had a pre-agreed $180 "diagnostics fee", which we paid, then they tried to charge $250 on top of that for the part. The contractor had no technical knowledge and kept video-conferencing the office for help. He had lots of sales training, though.
Even trying to sympathize with the contractor is ontologically evil.
Sounds like sociopaths being allowed to do sociopath things problem, rather than supply and demand problem.
>>> Blue collar skilled labor starts at 100$ an hour in West Virginia or Mississippi now
Why should they charge less? Would you want to pay 50$ for unskilled worker instead?
I know a lot of shops that hire good mechanics though if you want to get some work done on your car that requires difficult diagnostics often you have to wait days or weeks to get the attention of someone who can get it done.
After reading Chris Beasley's blog about trying to build a castle in Chattanooga (linked here on HN a while ago), I have unfortunately started to agree with this sentiment a bit.
There's too much of collective bargaining and scheming for increased prices going on in a lot of markets is what it looks like.
Hunting around for people and apparently they started texting each other stuff like "He said it was $100,000 higher than, you don't leave that money on the table."
Quotes started at $6/sq. ft, then became $6.5/sq. ft. Those people left. Became $15/sq. ft, and $23/sq. ft. It seemed like people saw a big money project, and started collectively trying to milk it for everything they could. [1]
Entire project was that way. Had thefts of a tractor, cement mixer, and small tools. Could not get people to give honest or correct bids on fencing. And 30 banks skipped on financing. Parts of the blog are depressing, yet the castle got finished, and its kind of a bleak laugh to read some of the stuff.
[1] http://www.buildingmycastle.com/stone-cold-problems/