re: Why does this simple truth get lost on so many people (such as jd Vance?)

Well, don’t you need the country, and the country in tact at that, in order to have rights in the first place?

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Economic transactions in a market *only* take place if both individuals believe that they are better off exchanging.

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So when you buy a new car you think you are an equal benefactor??? Keep dreaming I want whatever you’re smoking.

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You can't sell out a country's quality of life so a few people can benefit from the free market while most live at its mercy.

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Statements like that render statements like this:

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But this simplified point of view leads to worse outcomes.

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Hilarious in its unrealized irony.

We have the most comfortable standard of living with the most financial opportunity for the most people in the history of the world, and it's not close, and it's precisely our commitment to the system of capitalism and free markets that facilitated it (our Constitutional Republic protected it).

Maybe you need to go live in Europe for a while and visit this country again during a World Cup to realize how awesome we have it here.

They get it (now). Our poor people have 30% more living space on average than middle class people in Europe. The average American has roughly 30% more disposable income than the average European.

The populist left has done this sort of whining for decades about racism. We have the least racism we've ever had. You might even say we have a "negative degree" of racism. They have to go to ridiculous lengths to manufacture something that they can call racism.

The populist right does the same thing in economic terms. You guys act like you're so put upon when every single fricking one of you lives in comfort and daily enjoys luxuries that no one could have imagined even 30 years ago, let alone the luxuries you enjoy daily that could not have been imagined 60 or 100 years ago.

I watched a video once in which Dinesh D'Souza was recounting a conversation between himself and Jessie Jackson. Jackson was complaining about racism and D'Souza told him—as a fellow non-white in America—that his problem was his point of comparison.

Having lived elsewhere, he told Jackson that there was more opportunity here for minorities than anywhere else he knew of in the world, and the reason he couldn't see that is that instead of evaluating America against a real standard that actually exists somewhere, he was evaluating it against an imaginary ideal, which doesn't exist, never has existed, and never will exist. Which, of course, it would always fall short of and always provide a basis to bitch.

That's what you guys do. I think you just love to bitch and to feel like you have a windmill to joust.

I think one of the more obvious error's in the OP's logic is he assumes that people have a choice in the transaction

If the government (the tax payer) gets ripped off by a defense contractor did both sides really mutually benefit? Of course not. One side used political leverage to rip off the other.

that quote is whack. i buy sht all the time that doesn't 'benefit' me.

Today I bought a bar of chocolate for my kid. My kid will eat it and scream and run around like a loon. Buying that chocolate definitely doesn't benefit me.

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A neverending debate on this board happens with respect to China. SFP and Roger tend to say we have a healthy relationship where both sides benefit. The tariff brigade says China is cheating this system by benefiting from slave labor, so we need tariffs to "level the playing field,"

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That really is not the argument at all.

The argument relates to predatory trade and operations to disadvantage competition. The Chinese trade game is to artificially undercut prices by whatever means -- subsidies, labor practices, slave labor, patent infringement, espionage, propaganda, currency manipulation, etc. Once a relative monopoly is achieved, pricing can be readjusted.

Sometimes China can get the competition to disadvantage itself through political narratives and propaganda, regulations, tax disadvantages, etc. A perfect example would be the promotion of climate change narratives through the IPCC at the UN. Western do-gooders lap up the IPCC Climate change bullshite like sweating corpulent gluttons at an all-you-can-eat buffet. The CCP must get quite a chuckle out of western morons, giving up nuclear energy, natural gas, and even hydroelectric in favor of windmills and solar panels. Meanwhile, China is building coal fire energy plants as quickly as they can. They use their coal fire plants to energize factories manufacturing solar panels which they can sell along with their climate change propaganda. As the West hamstrings its energy production, cheaper Chinese energy translates to cheaper Chinese products, which can then further undercut the West.

We are seeing a version of their game play out in the AI realm. China desperately wants to stay in the ai game, or even win it. So they fund, contrive, and promote US anti-AI narratives. Simultaneously, they rip off years of training from companies like anthropic, incorporate it into their copycat product, and promote it as their own work. Then they sell access at a price undercutting US companies, encroaching on profits of the actual innovators, and taking market share and client information as they go.

But none of that matters to buyers willing to sell their soul for cheap Chinese stuff.

There are a couple major flaws in this thinking. Starting with the obvious one, there are a ton of market transactions that don’t impact only the buyer and the seller of the good.


Blue Cross and Toyota might very well both be better off if Toyota sells my driving history to Blue Cross, as it will show them a significant increase in the number of trips I’ve been taking to Crumbl cookies this year (to satiate my wife’s primary pregnancy craving)… but when my premiums increase next year, I’m sure as shite going to wish that there was some restriction on the type of activity we ceded to “free” markets.


Just because markets are good for buyers and sellers, it doesn’t mean they are good for the product… and increasingly, WE are the product.

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It's silly to apply this to necessities. Yes, people can starve instead of buying the apple. People can choose to be homeless instead of paying rent. But this simplified point of view leads to worse outcomes.

The constant desire to apply general statements in every situation reduces complex topics like the economy into 3rd grade lessons. It's nice for a very basic understanding, but the real world is much more convoluted.

You can't sell out a country's quality of life so a few people can benefit from the free market while most live at its mercy.

You can't let competition be stifled. You can't put your country's independence at risk. You can't allow unnecessary mass unemployment.

The "free market" we have now does all of this.

There are practical limits that will improve the free market as a whole. The free market isn't the objective, it's the tool. The objective is the life brought by the free market.

We shouldn't revere the free market itself more than the prosperity and independence it brings. When aspects of the free market itself limit that prosperity and independence, then you shouldn't carry on full steam ahead. It's OK to implement restrictions when they make sense. Nothing has to be 100%.

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With populists, expect populism

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The current subscription model for everything has ruined everything.

You will own nothing and you will like it.

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I'm not shocked you don't get it.

What % of your retirement portfolio involves tech? I bet it's significant and you're benefiting greatly from this product model.

For all of the annoyance at subscription-type tech offerings, there are legitimate market-based reasons that this type of offering has become so popular. One of the primary reasons is that tech traditionally was not good for projecting revenue and finance. The solution to this problem was the subscription model, which is why tech has become such a great investment vehicle (and basically keeps our stock market afloat)

LINK

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The Core Shift: Value & Metrics

The subscription model swaps short-term cash hits for long-term predictability, which investors reward with higher valuation multiples.

*The Critical Ratio (LTV:CAC): We break down the relationship between Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Learn why the benchmark is LTV = 3x CAC and the pitfalls of inflating LTV with non-recurring revenue.

*The Accounting Challenge: We explain revenue recognition (ASC 606/IFRS 15) and the concept of Deferred Revenue. Cash is received upfront, but revenue is recognized over time, which can make financial statements appear less profitable during high-growth periods.

*The Cautionary Tale: Analysis of MoviePass reveals the danger of fundamentally broken unit economics, where the cost to serve the customer (CoGS) was higher than the subscription fee, accelerating the path to bankruptcy.

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Yeah, Salesforce’s financial strategy really revolves around leveraging that deferred revenue we just talked about. In essence, that pool of cash paid upfront by customers acts like an interest free loan from their user base, which is fantastic for managing working capital. Their big focus areas are things like renewal forecasting, predicting who will stay, and especially net revenue retention, or NRR. NRR is crucial because it doesn’t just measure if customers stick around, but whether they actually increase their spending over time through upgrades or buying more services. And minimizing friction in the sales cycle is key too. All this leads to that predictable, highly visible ARR growth path. And that’s exactly why they and similar sales companies command those really high valuation multiples from investors. Another really powerful example is Adobe’s big transition. I remember this clearly. They used to sell Photoshop and Creative Suite in boxes, big upfront cost, which gave them these huge revenue spikes when a new version launched, but it was really unpredictable cash flow overall.

Then, around 2013, they made that massive gutsy move to the Creative Cloud subscription model. That must have been a huge strategic risk internally. Oh, it was enormous. And initially, it was quite painful for their invite statement for their reported revenue because they stopped getting those big fat upfront license fees almost overnight. Revenue actually dipped in the short term. But, and this is key, their finance and investor relations teams did an absolutely critical job managing market expectations. They were very transparent. They explicitly communicated, “Look, this short-term dip is planned. It’s an investment we’re making to build a much more valuable, long-term, high-margin, predictable revenue stream.” And that transparency, that communication, it worked. The market eventually understood the long-term value and rewarded them massively. Their market cap just exploded over the following years because of that predictable recurring revenue. Yeah, and that kind of strategic pivot. Moving to subscriptions, it stabilized things for other giants, too.

You think about Microsoft moving to Microsoft 365, or even the New York Times using digital subscriptions to become less dependent on the really volatile advertising market. It smooths out that earnings risk. It’s also really important to remember that not many companies are pure subscription plays anymore. Many are using hybrid models, which adds another layer of financial complexity. Take Peloton, for example. That’s a great one. It’s a really interesting split, isn’t it? They sell you a pretty expensive piece of hardware, the bike or the tread, which has its own margin profile. But the real long-term value, the stickiness, comes from that relatively low cost recurring monthly subscription for the classes, the content. Exactly right. So the finance team there, they essentially have to manage almost two different business models side by side, two P&Ls effectively. They need to analyze the hardware sales, looking at margins, inventory turns, logistics costs, and then separately they track the subscription revenue for that predictable growth, churn, LTV, all those metrics we discussed. The key insight is understanding that the hardware sale, while profitable, is primarily a customer acquisition channel for the much more valuable ongoing recurring content stream. That’s where the long-term profit engine really lies. And maybe the biggest hybrid model of them all is Amazon Prime, that annual fee.

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This is almost always the proverbial "rub" with these discussions. You can't have your retirement portfolio without these changes. By engaging in market-constricting regulatory behaviors (which is often discussed as "socialism" in the modern parlance), we become Europe and their stagnant economy without a future.

Being ignorant of the total picture is not a good thing.

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And I’m not reading all that shite

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Am I shocked? No.

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Enjoy paying $22 / month for everything for the rest of your natural life.

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I don't have a current paid subscription (in personal life, not work life although that's changing) that I couldn't cancel today and replace with a lifetime or free option.

Even AI, I could run an open source model myself if I wanted to.

I pay the subscription prices because it's a more efficient market option probably 99% of the time.

An my investment portfolio benefits, so it's a double-benefit to me. Like using credit cards to buy everything I purchase and making thousands a year in points.