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by benreesman 548 days ago
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.
1 comments
FredPret 548 days ago
"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.

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benreesman 548 days ago
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.
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cutthegrass2 548 days ago
Have you "de-apple'd" your life in anyway so that you're at least not helping to finance the illegal app store shit?
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benreesman 547 days ago
I’m rotating things out of walled-garden mega ecosystems and into e.g. Proton.

It’s not done in a day but I’m on track to finish in 2025.

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cutthegrass2 547 days ago
Nice, thanks. Making similar strides myself. Moved over to a Framework machine (which has been surprisingly pleasant) with Linux (also not too bad as a desktop OS in 2024) - coming from an M1 Pro. Photo's is my current sticking point though, do I really push everything into Google photos...
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michaelhoney 548 days ago
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.

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