Anyone watching the emerging markets?

[GRG55]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

I found something interesting.

http://www.zuljan.info/articles/0302wwiigdp.html

When Pearl Harbor happned, the US economy is 7 times the size of Japan.

In fact, the US economy (industrial economy I suppose) was nearly twice of all the Axis countries combined.

The elephant in the room tipped the balance decisively after Pearl Harbour. Having its oil fields, mines and factories out of range of the bombers certainly helped tremendously. But what other nation could fight a two theatre war, over enormous geography, produce enough surplus armaments for Lend Lease to supply arms to European Allies and Russia. All at the same time?

I remember reading a book by one of the Honda motorcycle company marketing executives. Some dozen years after the war he and one other Honda employee were sent to the USA on a multi year assignment to see if they could create a market there for Honda's 80cc and 100cc motorcycles. The two of them travelled all across the US. He wrote about the occasional ill treatment from the residual resentment of the war. But what I recall clearly is his descriptions of how repeatedly amazed he was at the vastness and the enormous natural resource endowments the US enjoyed. He wrote that he could not understand how Japan's then leaders could possibly have expected to win a war against such a nation.

[Techdread]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

[QUOTE=dcarrigg;311766]I don't know. Maybe you're right. Time will tell. But I'm not impressed. We were rolling out smartmeters before the great recession. They're no better now than they were then. Lots of tech has improved. LEDs have gotten better. Solar panels have made big strides in the past couple years--a lot more watts per panel, much better inverter technology, real improvements. But I don't see the leaps in personal computing that you do. The iphone of 2018 does not seem leaps and leaps above the iphone of 2008 or 09 to me. It really doesn't.


Whatsapp is 9 years old now. Things moved fast for a while. Now they crawl. For 10 years they've been promising all these things are coming by 2020...now it's 2030...soon it will be 2040. But from my end, I'm just not seeing much improvement. At all. If anything, this is the slowest 10 years I've seen in tech and computing since I've been alive. Every other decade showed me more in-home commercial advances than this one, which just seems to be about monetizing and making user experience worse, not better.

Maybe SaaS makes sense for businesses who can write off the operating costs. But for a consumer, it feels like just more ways to screw you over with nickel-and-dime BS and auto-renewing subscriptions and petty monthly fees for $0.99 and $1.99 all over the place that nobody wants to remember to pay. I mean, Google used to grow with me. When it first came out with gmail and 1gb of free storage, I hopped on board gladly. Told everyone I knew how great it was. And the next year they upped it to 2gb. Then 4 and 5. Until they stopped two years ago at 15gb. It doesn't grow with you any more. Now you have to delete all your stuff or pay $1.99/mo. So for the first time in a decade, I started looking for alternatives. I didn't mind trading all my data and dealing with the obnoxious advertising in exchange for the service. But now you're going to make me have to remember to pay $1.99 every month? Forget it. Not worth my time or money to also give them all my data and advertise to me. That's like paying for premium channels and still having to watch commercials. If I'm going to pay, I'd rather get privacy and an ad-free experience with it too.

But really, I would have much rather that they just said, "Give us $100 or $150 one time, and we'll keep growing with you for another decade." At least that's a one-time payment I can make once and not have to worry about it anymore. I don't need 1,000 different programs I use to each be charging me micro-transaction monthly fees that I have to all keep track of. It's totally obnoxious--the whole SaaS experience is like driving down the Garden State Parkway back in the day where you couldn't go three miles without having to throw a couple dimes in the toll. Super annoying. Not better. Worse.[/QUOT

Who really uses more than 10 apps regularly, I mean when smartphones first came out I used to install apps all over the place. Now I am standardised on 1 subscription app, and 1 cloud subscription less than a dollar day. the other cloud storage is with my pixel phone. Paying a subscription makes you think what you really use I would gladly pay for Gmail, Chrome , Whatsapp (which I used to voice call over WIFI on holiday another recent addition) and You Tube. It's like everyone wants things for free but don't mind wasting money on booze and junk food.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

...wasting money on booze...

Ha! You lost me right there

[dcarrigg]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

Who really uses more than 10 apps regularly, I mean when smartphones first came out I used to install apps all over the place. Now I am standardised on 1 subscription app, and 1 cloud subscription less than a dollar day. the other cloud storage is with my pixel phone. Paying a subscription makes you think what you really use I would gladly pay for Gmail, Chrome , Whatsapp (which I used to voice call over WIFI on holiday another recent addition) and You Tube. It's like everyone wants things for free but don't mind wasting money on booze and junk food.

It's not about wanting things for free. It's about wanting an ownership option back, but only being given the option to rent.

I can't just buy photoshop or illustrator or indesign or acrobat or whatever anymore. Adobe used to sell them individually, or as a bundle for about $600. Now you have to buy a monthly subscription to each one. And you can't just launch them like a regular application. You have to keep adobe's clunky 'creative cloud' application running all the while and launch them from there. Going on a trip with no internet access, but still want to do some work in these apps? Better hope they don't randomly try to do a license check. If they do, tough cookies. You can't use them until you're online. Because you only rent the apps now. You don't get to own them.

Same thing with the latest Sim City. I liked that franchise since the first one. But EA ruined it. They forced you to be online in the latest one, even if you wanted to play it single-player, as a crappy form of digital rights management (read, theft deterrent). And I only want to play it single player. I have no idea why you'd want to play a city simulator like that with other people--it's not that type of game. So anyways, you couldn't be on a train with spotty wifi and blow off a little steam playing that one either. Lose your connection, you cannot play. Because you don't own it. You only get to rent it. And not only do you have to pay the full former ownership price to rent, but now the game ships broken on purpose, and you need to buy several $5.99 add ons and $19.99 expansions to get it to work right. This led to a giant backlash 5 years ago when they first tried it. And the game did not do well. But now it has become basically the standard model for most major studios anyways.

Think if Hasbro did the equivalent with physical games. Say you used to be able to buy a Monopoly game for $20. But they put out a new Monopoly 2018 version--the only one you could buy--with some new pieces and new alternate rules and a better bank organizer and board or something. Say you were interested in it. But after you bought it, you'd have to order the chance and community chest cards for $5.99 each and get the house and hotel pack for $19.99, or you couldn't play the game right. They did not come in the box like you expected. Plus you found out that it came with a digital padlock whose combination would change every month unless you mailed them $5 per month. And the padlock required electricity, so if the power went out, you couldn't play the game.

Do you see why this isn't an improvement now?

Then think of the Google services. Most people deal with ads on network TV, because it's free. But would you be pissed off if you paid monthly for HBO and they started showing commercials during all their movies and shows? Of course. And would you be pissed off if NBC started charging $1.99/mo on top of advertising to you--maybe enough that you said, "Forget it, I don't need NBC." I think you'd also be justified there.

This is the type of thing I'm talking about.

EA games got rated the worst company in America twice by the consumerist, beating wells fargo and bank of america, because it pissed its customer-base off so bad. 2k games and the other major publishers all have done similarly.

Just google 'creative cloud sucks' and watch how many threads there are over at Adobe of 30-year loyal customers fuming angry at having to rent what they used to be able to own. They have one start at consumer affairs. The worst rating possible. Again, this was a 2013 or 14 'innovation' that has only gotten worse since. People hate it!

Or look how much people hate Office 365. It's awful. Same story.

I really don't think it's at all about being cheap. And I think if you think that's what it's about, you're totally missing my point.

I'd rather pay 100 times the money in one lump sum one time than dribble $0.99 per month out every month for the rest of my life and have to keep track of that. I'm serious. I'd rather pay $100 to own something, free and clear, and have it just work whenever I want than get something broken that requires constant patching and connectivity and eats my memory and processing power constantly to prevent others from copying it and requires a quickbooks entry and constant monitoring to remember when cards expire, when it auto-renews, to track when they arbitrarily increase the subscription cost, and all the rest. The effort that goes into all that accountancy alone is worth a lot of money to me.

But I'm the type who has never leased a vehicle. Who doesn't like the idea of leasing an apartment. And who buys things cash when at all possible.

I like to own, not borrow.

And they're taking that option away. Not because customers don't want the option. Because they would rather nickel and dime them to death, and they don't care what customers think.

Open source competitors are finally winning me over, not because they have better products at their core often times, but because the layers of DRM and obnoxious forced-subscription and forced connectivity models break the commercial products so badly that the open source ones are now the best option a lot of times, even if they are totally free.

Same goes for games made by some indy developer kid in Uruguay that are actually better than ones made with whole corporate teams of professionals now, not because the graphics or physics engine or mechanics are great, but because that indy developer is making a complete game that's not broken and not obnoxious and that doesn't try to charge you monthly fees or downloadable content fees to put humpty dumpty together in the first place.

Imagine if movies did what games do now. Back to the Future 4 comes out. You buy it for $29.99. Then you can stream it. But you just have to watch it without Lea Thompson or Christopher Lloyd unless you buy their characters for an extra $5.99 each. And the movie really doesn't make a lot of sense without them, even if it has Michael J. Fox. You can now sort of watch it, but the effects suck. Because you need to pay $19.99 for the digital effects expansion package that gives you all that post-production magic before you actually get the whole movie the way it's meant to be seen. But then, what's worse? Unless you pay the Universal Pictures $1.99 monthly subscription fee, the movie will stream scrambled. And to prove you paid it, you have to be connected.

This is an exact mirror of what they've done. It's not an improvement. It's just greedy.

For decades, major software firms seemed to really care about improving the product and improving user experience.

But for the last 5-10 years they have gotten big enough they act like Comcast or any other natural monopolist--they nickel and dime the hell out of you with arbitrary fees, offer crap that gets worse every year, take your right to own anything away, and generally treat customers like garbage. But what are you going to do? Use Yahoo! for search? Or not have MS Word? They're betting that they can punish their customer base as hard as they want with few repercussions. And they may be right.

[jk]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

dcarrigg, you keep mentioning "having to keep track of" the $0.99 or $1.99/mo rental fees. no one keeps track of those. that's part of the idea.

software and hardware companies both confronted the same problem that automobile manufacturers did many decades ago: their products are pretty good and last a relatively long time. how do you keep selling things if people can buy it once and be happy with it for a long, long time?

one solution is planned obsolescence- apple liked that idea so much they implemented it by deliberately degrading the performance of older phones whenever they put out a system update. otherwise someone might have kept their phone for 4-5 years or more. i'm using a galaxy note 4 - released almost 4 years ago, and just fine for my needs. it's the last model that let you swap in a new battery. the sealed batteries in newer models are guarantees that you'll want a new phone in a few years.

in addition to planned technical obsolescence there is always fashion - this is more applicable to apple than other tech makers.

however they achieve it, companies that produce indefinitely re-usable goods [i.e. you can use it over and over and over] somehow want revenue STREAMS. but i'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

so if you ran adobe, how would you stay in business?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

dcarrigg a related technique to extract rents is the online self-renewing subscription. Even Consumer Reports uses it.
Pay by credit card and they hit your card again and again until you cancel.
The poster child is probably "Smilin' Bob" from Enzyte, convicted of fraud (the corp, not the actor).



They and any number of miracle cure supplement pills work on that self-renewing subscription model:

1. entice the customer to sign up
2. keep sending product not requested
3. make it inconvenient (or impossible) to cancel
4. count on people to forget or delay cancellation to sell them things they don't really want

The snake oil pills may not be the worst offender. At least the pills come in the mail reminding you to cancel.
When the self renewing subscription is for on-line services, the product is out-of-sight and out-of-mind and small charges may rack up for years.

It seems horrific that we allow such an arrangement. A legally enforceable contract not bounded by time or money.
In theory such a subscription could be forgotten for a hundered years and cost millions of dollars, and the only words in the contract are "$15" and "month".

It's clear we are moving towards a system where the clever and strong are allowed to prey upon the dimwitted and weak without any restriction.
Too bad, your grandmother clicked to accept the terms...we're taking the house...

[dcarrigg]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

You're right, of course, that they don't want you to keep track of it. But I'm the type that will. And I can't be the only one. We have to be a good percentage of the population, if a minority. Not providing the option to buy something outright is infuriating enough for me to just stop being a customer at all.

dcarrigg, so if you ran adobe, how would you stay in business?

Probably the same way they stayed in business from 1982 to 2013 without subjecting anyone to this subscription nonsense. The general formula's pretty simple, I think:

1. Do less
2. Advertise less
3. Hire fewer people
4. Put out new versions with better functionality occasionally
5. Put out new software applications every few years
6. Keep an eye out for promising startups to buy

In 2005 they had 5,000 employees. By 2012 they had doubled their revenue and reached 10,000 employees. Now they have 15,000 employees, and they've doubled their revenue again, only this time they did it by abusing their customers instead of producing newer, better products.

But inevitably they hit a wall where there was a lack of stuff on the market to buy, right? After that big Macromedia acquisition in 2005, there weren't many big players in their arena left. Their newest move is to buy up e-commerce companies and challenge salesforce. Probably that will all merge into one thing soon enough. But that's the problem with monopoly. You hit a wall, then you just start abusing customers with one hand and making whacky fad-based bets with the other.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

dcarrigg a related technique to extract rents is the online self-renewing subscription. Even Consumer Reports uses it.
Pay by credit card and they hit your card again and again until you cancel.
The poster child is probably "Smilin' Bob" from Enzyte, convicted of fraud (the corp, not the actor).



They and any number of miracle cure supplement pills work on that self-renewing subscription model:

1. entice the customer to sign up
2. keep sending product not requested
3. make it inconvenient (or impossible) to cancel
4. count on people to forget or delay cancellation to sell them things they don't really want

The snake oil pills may not be the worst offender. At least the pills come in the mail reminding you to cancel.
When the self renewing subscription is for on-line services, the product is out-of-sight and out-of-mind and small charges may rack up for years.

It seems horrific that we allow such an arrangement. A legally enforceable contract not bounded by time or money.
In theory such a subscription could be forgotten for a hundered years and cost millions of dollars, and the only words in the contract are "$15" and "month".

It's clear we are moving towards a system where the clever and strong are allowed to prey upon the dimwitted and weak without any restriction.
Too bad, your grandmother clicked to accept the terms...we're taking the house...

That's absolutely true too. Had a relative with dementia who was on SS--fixed income, and not much--and almost every time she would call up that abused animal hotline that plays the "Arms of the Angels" song and films the dogs in slow motion so they all look sad trying to donate again and again, forgetting she had. She'd give her info, and they just didn't seem to have a system that would stop. Then they'd mail her crap. She didn't really have any money in the account, but it makes a big mess. Very annoying. And fundamentally mean-spirited.

Only when your product can't stand alone in the marketplace the way you've priced it do you have to resort to these sorts of auto-renewing subscription scams to rob people enough to stay afloat.

[jk]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

And I have no clue how ants conceptualize the world around them. But I did see this a couple years ago when it came out [pdf]. And so maybe they're at a "higher level" of consciousness than we'd think. Who knows?

this line from the abstract:

In front of a mirror, they rapidly moved their head and antennae, to the right and the left, touched the mirror, went away from it and stopped, cleaning then sometimes their legs and antennae.


love to think of those ants primping in front of the mirror.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

Doug Ford it is. Yee haw! Interesting development will be that for the first time in a long while, Ontario's minimum wage will fall significantly behind New York's in real terms. If the US could just get its healthcare mess in order, maybe in a decade or so our side of Niagara Falls wouldn't be so obviously the trashy one...

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

apropos of nothing, here's a chart of the annual US budget deficit.


t

[jk]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

apropos of nothing, here's a chart of the annual US budget deficit.


t

note deficit worsening even with "full employment" and [reported] growth. and it's not just the tax cut, since it was also the case the prior 2 years.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

note deficit worsening even with "full employment" and [reported] growth. and it's not just the tax cut, since it was also the case the prior 2 years.

Don't forget, GOP in Congress stuck Obama with the sequester (15% across the board austerity cuts to discretionary spending). But they do not stick their own guy with it. In fact, they've increased discretionary spending. I've been saying they engaged in a massive fiscal stimulus here between the tax cuts and new spending, and this is the result. They're obviously Keynesians at heart (regardless of what they profess when they're not governing) and terrified the fire will die if they don't pour gas on it now. And if it works and they make it through midterms in decent shape, expect a really big stimulus from the GOP going into 2020. The ultimate end-goal is to win in these two key years to control redistricting and get sufficient statehouses and governor's offices to trigger a constitutional convention. Then it's game over.

Here's the plan, man. 6 more state resolutions and it's off to the races. Literally everything and anything is up for grabs at that point. And the rules are totally unwritten.

[bpr]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

What is this? The current state of the Balanced Budget Amendment? Sorry, haven't been keeping up.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Anyone watching the emerging markets?

What is this? The current state of the Balanced Budget Amendment? Sorry, haven't been keeping up.

It's related. It's the current status of the number of state legislatures that have passed resolutions calling for an Article V constitutional convention. The balanced budget amendment people are responsible for the effort. But if they do call a constitutional convention, there are very few written rules and almost no precedent. Imagine a 100% partisan constitutional convention where everything is up for grabs. They can go in talking about balanced budgets and come out re-writing literally anything in the constitution they don't like. They could bring back noble titles, take away congress' power to regulate commerce, abolish the income tax, prohibit alcohol again, even legalize slavery again. There are literally no limits.