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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The problem is, they’re not actually learning about anything real, they’re learning about one specific outcome of rent seeking in the modern world that they only noticed because of their profession. By giving this very narrow and specific concept a cute name, and making that shit popular or whatever has literally prevented young people from understanding these important economic concepts on any real level.

    So yeah I’m glad that a small portion of terminally online tech nerds have finally discovered a major form of rent seeking in their industry and identified it as a problem. But then they just stop there as if it exists in a vacuum. I just wish they’d read some actual books (or hell, if you don’t want to turn off the screen, audio books?) about the subject rather than just repeat some clever term over and over.

    That’s my problem. I guess it’s nitpicky. But I do believe there are people who will now never learn another single thing about economic concepts that affect their lives because they’re not even aware that this “newly discovered phenomenon” is just one small aspect of a much larger problem that is endemic to all of capitalism. They just think it’s this quirky thing that only affects tech.











  • I’m just annoyed that people think rent seeking is some newly discovered concept. I’m not sure if there’s a name for the very specific type we’re referring to and I’m not sure there needs to be.

    I think we’d be much better off if people actually understand the underpinning concept rather than having a thin and shallow understanding of just one single way it manifests.

    I’ll let the opening paragraph of the “rent seeking” wiki page to show why:

    Rent-seeking is the act of growing one’s existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, stifled competition, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, risk of growing corruption and cronyism, decreased public trust in institutions and potential national decline.

    Successful capture of regulatory agencies (if any) to gain a coercive monopoly can result in advantages for rent-seekers in a market while imposing disadvantages on their uncorrupt competitors. This is one of many possible forms of rent-seeking behavior.

    (Emphasis mine)

    On the wiki itself, each one of those items in the list I bolded has an entire wiki page about it and I’m pretty certain what is called “enshittification” fits into at least one of them.

    I just wish people would care about the actual thing that’s going on and not just one aspect of one type of the thing.

    Edit: for any downvoters, look at my response to the reply below for clarification. Yes I’m glad that a small group of terminally online nerds in the tech industry have finally discovered one aspect (and consequence) of rent seeking. That’s not really my issue.


  • I’ve had my disc PS5 for two years now, and the only thing I’ve put in it was Top Gun on 4K disc

    You are really missing out then, because if you know where to look (like psprices.com) you will often find sales on only physical copies at Amazon, Best Buy or GameStop.

    I’m talking like significant sales. Like AAA games less than a year old (that still costs $60 on PSN) for $15.99 kind of sales.

    I cannot tell you how many PS4 and PS5 games I’ve gotten, and which, for 40%+ off. Too many to count. I’ve saved hundreds if not over a thousand dollars doing this.