[aketchum]

this is a tangent for sure but I doubt you can find payday loans that lend for 30% APR (Apple Store takes 30%). People really have no idea what realistic rates are for people with bad credit. If you have a sub 580 credit score the average APR for unsecured loans is 100%.

[Dylan16807]

> payday loans that lend for 30% APR (Apple Store takes 30%)

You have to flip the percentage. The fraction of money that goes to the intended destination after a 30% tax is 70%. The fraction of money that goes to the intended destination with a one year 100% APR loan is 50%.

Though there's no reason to assume a year in particular. If you take a six month loan at 100% APR, you have to pay back 141%. Paying back 141% is equivalent to a 29% tax. And if the best comparison is "six months of compounding payday loans" that's even worse than the initial comment suggested.

[benreesman]

I think that we should either refer people to serious treatments of bond pricing or say nothing on the matter: it’s very easy to confuse everyone with “sort of” explanations of important math.

[benreesman]

I was being generous to the App Store vendors.

The better analogy is Tony Soprano with a migraine.

[FredPret]

But Tony Soprano sucks the blood out of pre-existing economic activity while Apple created a brand-new playing field for billions of $ of new activity, complete with the hardware platform and app hosting.

[Dylan16807]

At what point does a "new" playing field become an "existing" playing field? Surely they don't deserve an outsized cut forever, and we're more than 16 years in.

Their hardware sales shouldn't entitle them to a cut of the software used on it, and the hosting is not worth particularly much.

[FredPret]

Of course they do? Just because they created a platform long ago doesn’t make it public property all of a sudden?

The value of their platform is in both hardware and software by the way.

[benreesman]

All property is public property in the sense that the duly constituted government informed by the wishes of the electorate has an iron monopoly on the use of force and in this case enough force to make anyone do anything.

Some internet platform thing stops being socially useful from competitive innovation and starts being an extractive rent?

The public has the power to dictate terms to the people running it. It’s a power the public hasn’t exercised a lot recently, but it’s only been about 30 years since LA 92, a little longer to Watts and Detroit.

It would be a grave error to mistake the public’s kindness for weakness.

[Dylan16807]

> Of course they do? Just because they created a platform long ago doesn’t make it public

If that's what you think matters above all else, would you support a literal mafia group taking a cut if they had started the market in that particular city?

> public property

It's a market, not property.

But Apple owns none of the iPhones, so why do they get a say?

> The value of their platform is in both hardware and software by the way.

They shouldn't be artificially tied together by DRM.

[michaelt]

> If that's what you think matters above all else, would you support a literal mafia group taking a cut if they had started the market in that particular city?

This is called being a "landlord" and it's actually completely legal.

You buy some land, you build a mall, you invite shopkeepers to set up shops and sell to customers visiting the mall, and the shopkeepers give you $$$$ every month, forever. If they ever stop paying, they lose their shops.

Even though it's shopkeepers that draw customers to the mall in the first place, and even though the shopkeepers are covering all the maintenance costs of the mall, you get paid anyway. Because you own the mall.

So if a mafia group created a market, took a cut from every shop, and threw out anyone who wouldn't pay them their cut? That's actually a legitimate business.

[FredPret]

A legitimate business created an asset. There’s no good reason to believe they should cede ownership simply because 16 years have elapsed.

> But Apple owns none of the iPhones, so why do they get a say?

This is an interesting point. But the key thing is people buy iPhones in part because of the walled garden, and Apple bakes it into the price. Without that App Store revenue, those $999 iPhones would simply see a price increase.

[benreesman]

On economic activity? Apple has generated a lot in the last few decades.

On human welfare? Every other day a new study comes out on the destructive force that heavily marketed smart phones represent: Phillip Morris and Enron put together couldn’t collapse the birth rate in a nation.

This debate is about economic activity as a good a priori. A lot of people assume that.

Some are ill-informed: they haven’t read the designer of GDP talk about the perils of GDP as a metric.

A small few know how mathematically comical the fucking Laffer Curve is and who thought it up and where and prey on the good intentions of the former group.

They’re going to catch a guillotine no matter how much caution I or anyone else advocates for.

[FredPret]

"Catch a guillotine"? (!!)

Collapsing the birthrate?

Human welfare?

We're talking about the App Store my friend. You need to take it easy on the ideology.

[benreesman]

No we’re talking about Apple and the ostensible economic impact as opposed to the humane assessment of outcomes friend, and we can talk about anything from child labor in Foxconn factories to union busting at Apple stores to parts pairing around right to repair before we even get into how fucking illegal the App Store shit is.

[cutthegrass2]

Have you "de-apple'd" your life in anyway so that you're at least not helping to finance the illegal app store shit?

[michaelhoney]

Endorsing this, because an upvote is invisible. Also consider: is it the phone that’s the problem, or is it TikTok/Twitter/Instagram/whatever? And even for them, is it the app itself, or is it the other people?

The problem with X is… the other people who use X.