pg would argue Starbucks the Umbrella group is startup as it's an franchise operation focussed on growth. A single instance of Starbucks is a business focussed on turning a profit.
In fact even the name YC is YCombinator, which in programming is a "function that produces functions" and YC is supposed to be a startup that produces startups. Here Starbucks (Umbrella) is a startup that produces coffee shops (Starbucks).
You can define startup or business however you like it's not a legally protected term. Just around these parts that's what it means and I personally find the distinction useful when reasoning about what does and doesn't have high growth potential.
You can ask this about a lot of foods, but probably won't get many satisfying answers. For example cheese goes back many thousands of years, and it's theorized that it was invented accidentally due to storing milk in sheep stomachs or similar.
Probably something similar for pickling. Someone noticed that salted foods last a long time, and vinegar never seems to go bad, so why not try combining them?
What about hakarl? "Rotten" icelandic shark meat. It stinks to high heaven. Yet somebody thought "let's eat this". I can't imagine how hungry they must have been. And, if it doesn't decompose for 6 weeks under sand, it's toxic, so you die if you eat it. I'm sure they knew that. Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine.
> Yet they still tried it... Must've been a helluva famine.
Humans have lived at subsistence level, one bad harvest away from famine for most of history. Our modern abundance is very recent (1-3 generations) thing depending on where you were born.
So I think a tremendous amount of food discovery was a combination of food accidents didn't want food to go to waste, and desperation level eating anything to delay death from starvation.
There hasn't been an explicit ruling from the supreme Court that applies here, but there are indications that they would have ruled that the fourth amendment applied. They've explicitly avoided closing the door on that possibility.
> Also left unanswered was the broader question surrounding the privacy implications of a warrantless use of GPS data without a physical intrusion – as might occur, for example, with the electronic collection of GPS data from wireless service providers or factory-installed vehicle tracking and navigation services.[27] The Court left these matters to be decided in some future case, saying, "It may be that achieving the same result through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question."
> Ultimately, in Carpenter the court determined that the third-party doctrine could not be extended to historical cell site location information (CSLI). Instead, the Court compared "detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled" CSLI records to the GPS information at issue in United States v. Jones, recognizing that both forms of data accord the government the ability to track individuals' past movements.[24] Furthermore, the Court noted that CSLI could pose even greater privacy risks than GPS data, as the prevalence of cellphones could accord the government "near perfect surveillance" of an individual's movements. Accordingly, the Court ruled that, under the Fourth Amendment, the government must obtain a search warrant in order to access historical CSLI records.[1]
Of course there are no guarantees on how they'd rule today, but in the past they've ruled that scale and ease of access and compilation are significant enough to mean that fourth amendment protections should apply.
> And big enough share of demand accepted that new price point.
Exactly - this is literally econ 101, no appeals to "greed" needed.
As they say, the cure for high prices is high prices. You already saw this in a number of different areas. Fast food prices outpaced what people were willing to pay, so people stopped eating out and businesses needed to adjust accordingly.
> As they say, the cure for high prices is high prices.
Your line of reasoning is downplaying the fact that we don't exist in a world with perfect markets or rational consumption habits.
There are multiple clear cut examples of producer collusion and oligopoly formation in the past few years - including in the food industries (see eggs and pork in the past 5 years). Food being essential for life means consumers can't interact with the market rationally, just like they can't for insulin, transportation that enables income, and so on.
Fine, but blaming price increases on "greed" is still just as idiotic. Yes, market participants are "greedy" - sellers want to make the most money and buyers want to spend the least.
If only McDonalds charges $20 for a burger instead of $10, people will go elsewhere.
If everyone charges $20 for a burger, people will still go to McDonalds. In such a state, no individual place would dare charge $10 again. Why cut revenue to nearly half? It’s not like they have the capacity to sell 20x the usual volume…
I’m not convinced that basic economics works when output capacity isn’t fully scalable.
Same reason no lawn care team tries to deeply undercut competitors - they can only mow so many! (Barring that they hire more helpers)
Because, to quote Jeff Bezos, your margin is my opportunity. And did he ever squeeze every drop from that opportunity. Just ask the brick and mortar stores in your street.
> I’m not convinced that basic economics works when output capacity isn’t fully scalable.
Economics works for land, which isn't scalable.
> Same reason no lawn care team tries to deeply undercut competitors
That works right up until Fred down the road loses his job, and then it dawns he could be making more money with his mower because of those sweet fat margins those other lawn care people thought they could keep all to themselves.
> Because, to quote Jeff Bezos, your margin is my opportunity. And did he ever squeeze every drop from that opportunity. Just ask the brick and mortar stores in your street.
Sure and now after having become the Shoggoth monopoly, Amazon is now increasing fees. Squeeze your competitors out via unlimited money and then begin to squeeze your customers after you become of the lone poles in the forest.
The one where being the dominant player and executing anti-competitive practices removes any opportunity. Being a sufficiently big bullying tree chokes out all future undergrowth for others
That’s an uncompetitive market. No one can outcompete on service, so they can only compete on price, but why would you in such a circumstance, it would only hurt you, so nobody does.
This is what people seem to forget... you don’t need monopolies or collusion for markets to be uncompetitive. Collusion works fundamentally because participants aren't competing with each other... not for the fact people made a secret agreement. It is entirely possible for markets to be completely uncompetitive even without a monopoly or any collusion going on.
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