| All of the businesses described have been around for long enough for us to discover why the things they 'eliminated' existed in the first place. Amazon is an infinite cornucopia of worthless shit. A good shop is one that offers a variety of products in each category, where each has been selected by someone who knows enough about those products for me to be confident that buying the cheapest option will still be a good buy. Also, waiting for delivery is more friction for me than walking to the shop. Tesla has a design philosophy that I fundamentally disagree with, which introduces friction into operating the car. I have no off-street parking, so an electric car is less convenient for me than a petrol one. Maintenance in the form of physical objects ensures that I have control over what features my car offers. Netflix provides less variety for me than the old video rental places did. Having all of the tapes lined up made it easier to browse for an unexpected gem than the standard streaming site menus. Producers not being obsessed with metrics meant that series were made to their natural conclusions. Physical input controls provide a better interaction with devices (consider the obsession with mechanical keyboards). Thanks to integrated cameras, people go to concerts and watch them through their phone screens rather than enjoying the actual performance. Traditional taxi services (at least where I'm from) offered varying levels of service quality through easily-identified and well-known brands. Government regulation ensured passenger safety and made sure drivers were able to make a living. Spotify - see Netflix. When books were only published on dead trees, the cost of doing so ensured that whole teams of people were employed to ensure that what was published was of a reasonable quality and, in the case of non-fiction works, accurate. Now bullshit and humanity's greatest works sit side-by-side with little to indicate which is which. I don't want to be that person going on about how things were better in 'the good old days', but an awful lot of people simply can't cope without all the guardrails that the pre-Internet businesses imposed on the market. Sure, I can successfully navigate the complexity, and can even thrive in it, but I live in a society, which means that I end up paying for other people's incapability somewhere. |