If you consider only the product is relevant and not how it is made, then no it does not matter; or at least it doesn't matter as long as you don't personally attach any emotional qualities to products beyond their material qualities (unlike the vast majority of people).
But the comment you reply to explicitly points out the process is in fact relevant as it is itself a cultural artifact. You're not replying to their main point.
The main point is "It's good for the heritage and good for the customers."
How are the customers hurt if their pie has not been baked by a babushka in Petrozavodsk using the old original recipe, but by an anonymous migrant worker in a dark kitchen using an optimized recipe if the end result is objectively the same? The packaging doesn't have to say who it was made by.
I also don't see the problem with the heritage. The comment I replied to already said anyone could call their pies Karelian, so there was no restriction that benefitted the residents of a specific region. I can see a PDO-like carveout that goes "we want to preserve the traditional pie-making of Karelia, so we want this activity to remain economically viable. Therefore, only pies baked in Karelia can be sold as Karelian pies." But I don't see how Sysco baking the same pies and distributing them nationwide helps maintain the heritage.
Customers want a very specific thing, rules exist that say if you sell something called Specific Thing it must be made a very specific way or you can't call it that.
Even if you make something that tastes and looks exactly like the original, you still can't call it Specific Thing because the process wasn't followed as it's an integral part of the product. Think of it like a trademark. You can't create some brown sugary stuff and sell it as Coca-Cola - even if it tastes EXACTLY like it does.
Nothing about this is about profit or economic viability, it's not even a small part of the equation. The purpose is to preserve cultural heritage and not dilute it with shitty imitations calling themselves something they are not.
The issue is how this will be handled in law. Can the law define this in a way that is not overly strict or overly permissive? The current attempts is effectively the law doing this, but with an overly strict approach of what counts as 'objectively the same' by judging the process and not purely the outcome. Would it be possible to make the law's definition of this more permissive, to focus only on the product produced, without accidentally becoming overly permissive?
The Honnecourt illustrations strongly suggest that (a) photorealism is the goal, but (b) Honnecourt doesn't know how to draw it. He does things like place a person's right eye at a different angle to the rest of the face than the left eye has. But hey, how likely is it that viewers will notice a malformed human face?
This is unreal, do you think people who face the choice between lifelong debt and the loss of a loved one really are comparable to people wanting a six pack? Do you think people really don't care about literal life and death situations?
I'd argue the fact a significant minority of US citizens are cheering on the assassination of healthcare executives (something that does not happen in countries with socialized healthcare systems) mean they are quite motivated for changes but can't find a political outlet for this motivation.
The same could be said with all advertising and surveillance.
No one wants to be advertised to, but powerful lobbies argue that ending ads will lower consumption and thus harm the economy; and no politician wants to lower GDP.
No one wants to be spied on, but powerful lobbies argue tracking people allow better security; and no politician wants to be soft on crime and terrorism.
The single most powerful lobby, by far, to the point that it is essentially the only lobby, is the enormous mass of people who refuse to pay money for content. Absolutely refuse.
Even when you give them the option to pay, with no ads or tracking, the conversion rate is still around 0.5-1%.
People are willing to pay for things they value. Those people who "refuse to pay money for content" probably go to the cinema, perhaps purchase magazines, purchase drinks with friends, etc.
We should however make it easier to pay for content online; let's implement HTTP 402 and integrate it into the users' browser and internet bill to reduce friction. Who wants to create an account and enter their credit card details to read a single article or watch a single video?
No, they overwhelmingly are not. When given the opportunity to not pay, and do so anonymously (no social shame), the actual pay rates drop to the 1-5% range.
This is a clear trend from thousands of creators who give simple payment options to those who wish to support them directly. The conversion rates from "ad-supported (but blocked)" to "paying member" are usually around 5% of the active audience.
The numbers are atrocious despite the deafening virtue signalling of comment sections ("I always pay creators to support them!")
You just assert "no" to my suggestion that people don't pay for these things because they just don't value them enough to pay for them, which doesn't really move the conversation forward. There's loadsa stuff more important in life than youtube videos so it's unsurprising the conversion rate is low.
My point is that the value prop breaks when people can shamelessly be dishonest.
If people actually didn't value the content, they wouldn't devote their time to it. I don't know anyone who regularly devotes hours a day to something they get zero value from...
I think this is a pricing and billing problem more than a "people only want free shit" problem.
All the paywalled news agencies want a monthly subscription. But I, as someone who doesn't like getting all their news from a single source, am not interested in signing up for news subscriptions because the cost would pile up fast, and to be honest I don't read that many news articles in a given month.
I think we need some kind of usage based billing system where participating outlets can set a price per article, and users can agree to be billed for that article when they go to view it.
Eh. I've not seen any convincing arguments about this, especially because the quality of said content was dragged down specifically to support ad revenue and SEO. We really never saw the potential of an internet with microtransactions, largely because Google explicitly decided to force people to use ads.
>> No one wants to be advertised to, but powerful lobbies argue that ending ads will lower consumption and thus harm the economy; and no politician wants to lower GDP.
I doubt that. People tend to spend their money regardless. Advertising just determines what they spend it on.
Yes, but then you might consume beer based on how it tastes rather than the likelihood of winding up in an impromptu volleyball game with a bunch of Nordic bikini models. So you see where the entrenched players want to keep the status quo.
Our culture values the act of buying things for social status (consumerism), and one of the main reasons for that is advertising.
You're assuming people would still have the same amount of money, but for most money is not a given, and people strive to earn money precisely because they want to buy the things they were advertised.
Without the social pressure to acquire things one doesn't need, it's very possible people might simply work less and use that time for other things.
Advertising is only used heavily when all products are similar, otherwise the best would naturally rise to the top.
For example, washing powder/liquid is advertised heavily on TV, yet do you really believe one brand of powder/liquid gets your clothes cleaner than any other?
not so sure about that, I am pretty sure ads promote materialism and consumerism, probably even leading to people working more to be able to afford more
In some sense, "no one wants to be advertised to" is similar to "no one wants to pay for stuff". Like yeah it'd be nice if my groceries were free, but that's not very realistic, the grocery store would just close if they had to give everything away. Advertising is similar - a cost we pay so that websites can make some money in exchange for their services. Most ad supported websites would just disappear without them.
In some sense I agree but there is a fundamental difference. I pay for my groceries because I have the fundamental need for sustenance, and that requires land and toil. I have neither and therefore I pay someone else; but for me to survive it is necessary that _someone_ perform that work.
My need for websites is much less predominant and really I could live without. So of course I bounce when mildly interesting websites ask to host cookies on my browser or want me to create an account and enter my card details.
If one considers maximizing utility the goal of economic science, then this is in fact good, as it redirects me to more useful venues like doing chores I'd been putting off instead of mindlessly scrolling online. Some metrics such as GDP however might suffer.
I disagree with your assessment, the poster is obviously disillusioned but they just detail their point of view. You can't just write off safety violation and toxic environment as "high-intensity work culture". You also just work in your own anti-union discourse without any basis in the actual text.
> The western companies aren't using the business as a strategic tool to destabilise the host country.
What is your source for this claim? Wouldn't companies destabilize the host country to facilitate their own business?
Western companies have been destabilizing local regimes for centuries at this point. Companies in general are a convenient way to mask state power that pays for itself. Many of these companies were established in former colonies as a direct replacement for explicitly colonial resource extraction.
Searching online for examples I find Glencore, TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, Chevron (among others) have all recently engaged in bribery or even supported violent political groups abroad to protect their own interests.
What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
Individual employees are far more numerous (therefore harder to coordinate) and have way shallower pockets than companies, so the negotiation power is always going to be lopsided.
> What happens when the companies band together to compress wages? Like what happened with the high-tech employee antitrust litigation.
What happened with that litigation is it got shut down and those companies pay some of the highest compensation now.
One of the few jobs you can get that pays that much compensation with fewer educational requirements and better hours than alternatives in that compensation range (surgeon, specialist doctors, lawyers at demanding firms)
I don’t think that’s a great example for your point since by comparison FAANG employees have some of the best pay you can find in an attainable job for someone with a 4 year degree and the demands are lower than many of the similarly paid jobs that require a lot more education.
Possibly it's just a one time thing that was limited to just these companies.
Or possibly the incentives that led to this are still in place, and the current judicial climate is way more lenient towards big companies. Who's to say?
It's nice to be able to put things in perspective rather than glomming on to every monthyl moral panic in a sad attempt to reassure myself that I'm a good person.
But the comment you reply to explicitly points out the process is in fact relevant as it is itself a cultural artifact. You're not replying to their main point.
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