If I may disagree: I live in a flat with a fully electric vehicle. It's just a matter of planning around charging a bit. Once you think ahead (and it's not dramatic), you don't notice anymore.
I find plug in hybrids make no sense: electrification is the future.
I would really hate having to keep going out to move my car to a charger, then go out again to move it back to another parking spot when it's done (usually you pay a fine if you keep it at the charger). It's just so much work and it means I can't sit down and relax. And parking spaces in my area are extremely limited at night so every time I move I'd have to worry about finding one again (and a free charger too obviously which also seem to be extremely rare, I just know of one about 1km away)
For me a car is about convenience and having to worry about it and going out and doing things with it when I'm not even using it is the opposite of convenient. It should just be there and ready when I need it and forgotten when I don't. And it should be as cheap and low-maintenance as possible. If every parking space had a charger and I could just plug it in and forget about it when I park it, it'd be acceptable (in fact better than an ICE because at times I also had to remember to refuel it for an early trip). What adds to this also is that I don't really have a 'routine', my life is really ad-hoc.
So for me it would be a huge dealbreaker to have an EV until chargers are everywhere. But right now I have the perfect solution anyway which is not even having or needing a car at all :) My city has amazing public transport and 20 euros gets me an unlimited monthly travel pass. I don't even like spending money on cars, and when I did still own one it was usually a 1500-2000 euro old banger meaning that EVs are out of my price range anyway (even used ones will never be that cheap).
Really, just a bit of “planning around charging”? The less predictable your life is the less this is an option. The most extreme example of this is Hertz having to walk away from billions invested in 100,000 Teslas. Short term renters simply don’t tolerate the uncertainties that EVs bring.
To my understanding, much of the work was backbreaking, disease was a big problem, starvation around the corner every year. And governance and freedoms were mostly reduced to service to a local strongman.
And this is before the industrial revolution, working in insalubrious factories, belching smoke steam engines etc.
Nowadays I think things are significantly better for the majority of people.
Hygiene theory has gone a long way to alleviate some of the more problematic disease issues. I have said that if we went full Mad Max (I don't think we are), hygiene theory would survive because of how useful it is.
Starvation is one of those issues of the odd cycles of nature. Many I have spoken with that do back to the land farming have said, on a 5 year average calories aren't an issue. The problem is it usually means 3 bumper years followed by two starvation years. Thru modern agriculture we have both made systems of storage and fertilizers that flatten over these issues.
As for the governance of strongman. There was the flip side of, they couldn't strong arm people TOO much because if enough people figured it was worth over throwing them, the boss would be overthrown with violence or death. It was risky being at the top, there was a reason why the kings thrown was backed up to a wall. Stops the assassin coming from behind.
The problem is that in leaving much of undesirable things behind, we've also left many of the desirable things behind and it's not entirely clear if we can ever reclaim them in society as it is. One paragraph stuck out quite clearly to me in your link:
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"Of course our farmers don’t care about maximum efficiency (because that means for maximum efficiency of people who aren’t the farmers eating the surplus). They care about marrying, having families, raising children, keeping friends, staying close to loved ones and so on. Farmers, after all, are people, not mere tools of agricultural production (we will talk about non-free farmers next time) and so they do not serve their farmers, their farms serve the needs of their families."
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And "friends", as the article also describes, meant something very different. It was not infrequent that friends could be entire households where relationships would last for generations. Modern life has really done away with most of these things.
I'd also say that many things people look on as negative, like difficult labor, are not necessarily so. I spent a fair amount of time when I was young working in construction and it was some of the most rewarding paid work I have ever done, by a wide margin. If it paid as well as the path I ended up taking, I would have absolutely stayed in construction for as long as my body held out. That last part might sound grim, but it's the exact same in fields like software development. Over time your mind will slow, as will your motivation to keep up with the latest API, language, and just general trends. At that point you're going to be headed for 'early retirement', quite likely even earlier than a guy working construction - with construction workers having a median age of around 40!
Well I hope this isn't a weird comment: thanks for expressing your views so clearly and positively. It opened my eyes to an aspect of genuine and human exploration of newfound freedom and caring.
Thank you! I’m so happy it was enlightening. It’s a space we don’t often discuss and I think these stories need to be told. We all deserve the sense of joy that can be found in the exploration of our bodies and others.
Weren't we all complaining 20 y ago that music labels were giving bands pennies on the dollar and the only way they could actually live off of the music was by touring and selling merch?
I think Radiohead then did the groundbreaking selling of mp3s for a pay what you want fee.
Worse than that, I remember reading articles about how some artists didn't "make" a single dollar from their first album that sold millions. It all went to the record company and paid for marketing and advances.
Sometimes they didn't begin to see revenue until 2nd or 3rd albums.
Labels did scum stuff like have sublabel go belly up (oops no royalties anymore), not paying royalties, not giving artists royalties when on VA album, and downright piracy, and enforcement of centralization via signing rights away to (equivalent of) RIAA. These are just examples from memory talking to artists.
It wasn't that groundbreaking. Radiohead were already massively popular despite taking the anti-Britpop, anti-commercial rock route in the '90s. The online MP3 thing in 2007 was a bit of a publicity stunt -- the record was still distributed by XL , which retained all the traditional distribution channels.
I believe Smashing Pumpkins actually beat them to it by several years by releasing Machina II for free online in 2000 after the breakup of the band.
It was ground breaking, taking into account that Radiohead released a critically acclaimed album. In Rainbows had a digital release that was pay what you want, not exactly the same as putting something out for free after breaking up.
I feel like the biggest loss from the days of big record companies is that no one is going to front a promising young band enough to go away together and make their 'Dark Side of the Moon' or 'OK Computer'
* I know both bands probably could've self-financed those projects by that point in their careers, but would they have? And would their role as investors have changed their artistic decisions?
I'm not so worried about humanity's loss of peak works like these since I don't think any young band has it in them at the start anyways. What young artists need is an on-ramp and a way to stay in the business long enough to hone their craft and build a following while turning out a couple Pipers at the Gates of Dawn. Works like Dark Side and OKC are developed, not born, and we need that pipeline.
The problem was that the big companies had the good recording studios and the possibility to make records and distribution. This was very expensive.
Today are studios in abundance. And bands that are good are usually good connected and certainly know a good down mix engineer.
Then they can distributed via Bandcamp.
Today it’s much better for artists who want to make music. The big record labels were just gatekeepers.
Yes, the music labels have a conflict of interest because they took financial positions (equity) in the streaming services in exchange for giving artists lower rates. So they don't really represent the artists. They instead joined up with the streamers to screw over the artists.
Most hits today are produced by Spotify. Actually they are record company. And they also have a really shitty contract. That at the end the revenue stream, for the artist is coming back to Spotify anyway.
It’s easy.
1. Search talent on TikTok.
2. Let them sign shitty contract.
3. Produce them.
4. Market them on Spotify.
>From my understanding it's still the music labels that are not giving the artists their share.
If that is the case, the artists can easily sue the labels for violating the terms of the contract. But the fair share is just what the two signing parties agreed to.
They do. Bandcamp is a thing, and it's pretty much that, minus a fee for the infrastructure.
But it's not a panacea. An old classmate of mine who's a decently successful Jazz artist now (by Jazz artist standard), had scammers upload her album to Bandcamp without her knowledge. They defrauded a lot of money from her actual fans, probably more than she ever made on Spotify.
I bought it when he released it. It was good for him but arguably he lowered his worth and took a pay cut, and it also set a bit of a price ceiling base rate for comedy specials at 5$, which if you aren’t the #1 comedian at the time like Louis was you can’t bring in the same sales volume.
Amazing, thanks for mentioning this! I had no idea. He looks to sell everything on there, not just mp3s, and they are well priced! Just bought a couple of videos of his performances, and it does indeed include DRM-free .mp4 downloads. Even includes a .srt file for subtitles!
It was also when CDs were $19.99-25 which I distinctly remember because I was 10 in 1995 when I bought my first CDs (smash, it was written, dookie) and I could rarely afford to buy them.
And then artists still weren't getting paid but an even bigger portion of my income went to them. shrug.
It shocks me to see the end game of a culture where the ONLY incentive is financial gain. Doctors performing unnecessary surgery making 90k per week. Shameless.
And everyone is making money, laser makers etc, everyone else doesn't dismiss these people as unethical, but jump on the band wagon: if there's a market, it's fulfilling a want, right? Who am I to judge and I can make money too, right? It's harmless, right?
Late stage capitalism at its worst. Everyone profiting from everyone else to the bottom of the chain: the baby that didn't ask to be part of this trainwreck of a system.
Why the rush to blame capitalism when simple human cultural memeing is at play? Medicine has fads. They are often stopped or started by one or two individuals. Various theories have been held out about various facets of medicine, and doctors often split into camps until they reconvene / one is proven wrong, etc. There is no need to even involve money yet as simple professional recognition and the desire for human popularity is at play. For example, basic research reveals that even in countries with socialized systems, tongue ties seem to be a thing that people now have
For example, the NHS has a whole page on it, with a link to an industry association to help you find a practitioner. Now, it would make sense that the doctors themselves wanted the procedure done (they get paid), but why would the NHS, who loses money, put this information out there unless certain doctors actually believed it?
I hadn't come across this "tongue ties" until now.
The article mentions that it is a condition that does exist even though is pretty rare. The fact that it is a recognised health condition should be enough for the NHS to put the information out there.
The other side of it is doctors who diagnose and operate.
Firstly, do you have any evidence that spurious diagnostics and operations are actually happening on the NHS at a rate that could be construed as either malice or rampant incompetence vs simple error? The article describes a situation where one of those (or both) is likely at play.
Secondly, if doctors are paid per procedure, how is that any different than a purely private system? The doctors's incentives go towards doing more of the procedures. Top that with the fact that the patients/parents have no financial incentive to avoid the operation, and you get a double whammy. The worst incentives of privatised health care topped with no (financial) incentive to stop the malpractice from happening.
I think the argument that humans are naturally willing to harm infants for personal gain is not at all true. Generally, harming other humans, especially young humans, is deeply traumatic to most of the species. Harming children for personal gain, particularly economic gain, stands to ask why people stand at all to gain economically when committing harm.
Never attribute to malice what is better explained by stupidity. Often doctors just take wild guesses and use their positions of authority to make it seeem as if they know what they're doing. This is a historically problematic part of the profession and has led to all kinds of known harms. For example, the deaths of laboring women in early maternity wards by doctors who 'knew best'.
> I think the argument that humans are naturally willing to harm infants for personal gain is not at all true.
Who is making that argument? There isn't even agreement on the assertion of "harm" in the particular context of the original article. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say.
I guess you're being downvoted by the people who don't realize that greed was recognized as one of the major human failures long before capitalism was invented...
You're literally posting on a site paid for by a venture capital fund who's audience is startup hackers and other venture capital people. Why are you here on HN if you dislike capitalism?
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