Ask Slashdot: Is the Information Asymmetry Between Producers and Consumers Good? 183
dryriver asks a philosophical question:
The producer of a tech product -- thanks to internet data mining -- may know all sorts of things about me, the buyer of a product. Gender, age, income level, education level, profession, geolocation, what I read online, who my social media friends are, what interests me intellectually, which way I swing politically, and more. For a few dollars spent, I am no "mystery" to the producer of this tech product.
But if I were to ask the producer of the product simple questions like "How much did the GPU component in this laptop you are selling me cost you?" or "What portion of the final asking price of this product is profit that goes to you?" I likely wouldn't get an answer. Information asymmetry is at play now -- the producing party in the buying transaction knows far, far more about me than I can possibly know about the producing party. And unlike the producing party, I cannot simply open my wallet and purchase "data mined information" about the producing party. Company secrets are company secrets. The "info buying" works in one direction only.
Is it a good thing for consumers that this "information asymmetry" exists in the first place? That pretty much any tech producer can learn about me with a few bucks spent, but I cannot get simple information like "How much did the Nvidia 1060 Mobile GPU in this 1,200 Dollar notebook cost the producer"?
Anyone have an answer? Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Is this information asymmetry between producers and consumers good?
But if I were to ask the producer of the product simple questions like "How much did the GPU component in this laptop you are selling me cost you?" or "What portion of the final asking price of this product is profit that goes to you?" I likely wouldn't get an answer. Information asymmetry is at play now -- the producing party in the buying transaction knows far, far more about me than I can possibly know about the producing party. And unlike the producing party, I cannot simply open my wallet and purchase "data mined information" about the producing party. Company secrets are company secrets. The "info buying" works in one direction only.
Is it a good thing for consumers that this "information asymmetry" exists in the first place? That pretty much any tech producer can learn about me with a few bucks spent, but I cannot get simple information like "How much did the Nvidia 1060 Mobile GPU in this 1,200 Dollar notebook cost the producer"?
Anyone have an answer? Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Is this information asymmetry between producers and consumers good?
Let's turn it around.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let's turn it around.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can the manufacturer reciprocate and ask you how much you earn, how much you spend on tech toys and how much for food?
The entire point is that they already know all that.
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Also, why should I care about the producer's profit margin?
What I do care about is how many of their customers are happy with the product, and what do they see as the advantages and disadvantages. Thanks to the Internet, search engines, blogs, and online reviews, I have way more information than I would have had a generation ago.
If anything, the Internet has tilted information asymmetry toward consumers. But it has really benefited both parties. Markets work best when transparent.
Re:Let's turn it around.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. The primary piece of information you have about a product is the price. It's a great piece of info, because it's pretty comprehensive and you can compare it directly against the seller's competitor's prices for similar products. The most useful secondary information is from other people who have purchased the product, to find out the quality. For low cost products, you can do that yourself by trying it, but for higher price points it's worth spending the time to do some online research and get more thorough comparisons.
In terms of margins on individual components, etc... that's useful for a competitor, perhaps, but for the consumer, you don't know if they paid $5 for that component because they got the cheap, low-quality version, or because they're part of a conglomerate who bought a jillion of them at a time, or what. The only things their profit margins tell you is if they're more efficient than their competitors in the same industry, while the industry-wide profit margin will average out to about the same as other industries with similar risk, capital and expertise requirements, because they're participating in another market for capital which they're going to pay about the same to others for, in the same way you pay about the same as others do for milk for your cereal.
Just like the advertisers ask you for information (and many don't seem to value it much, so they give it up gladly for minor conveniences or discounts), you can ask a manufacturer all the questions you want and they can volunteer the answers. Some are unlikely to volunteer the answers unless there is some incentive yo, like you're planning to purchase a significant amount of product. If you ran a lemonade stand, you might answer casual questions about your recipe, costs, etc... from your customers, but you might also not want to. There's no reason to think anyone should be forcing you to, which is where this line of questions seems to end up for some people.
Why should that info be hidden from you? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not about why you should be told, THE FREE MARKET REQUIRES YOU BE TOLD. The free market requires a fully informed consumer, so BY DEFAULT you should be told any information, it has to be shown why some info is not relevant. Moreover, if there is profit, the free market is shown to be broken, since in the free market profit is indication that there is room for a competitor to come in and undercut the current incumbent(s) and take their customers. So ANY profit is evidence that there is not a free market
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You're using your own definition of a "free market", which certainly doesn't match mine. OTOH, the questions I think should be answered have more to do with the performance, durability, repair-ability, etc. of the product than with how much money they're making.
Still, for my definition profit does NOT imply lack of competition. I displays things like hysteresis, development time, up-front costs, etc.
On the third had, I consider that worshiping the "free market" is foolish and socially destructive. It's a
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It may be *taught* in Econ 101, but it's false-to-fact for every market that has existed throughout history. Perfect information is only possible in very limited and simple toy game theory applications. Chess is a game of perfect information, but bridge isn't...and bridge is much closer (not very, admittedly) to a decent model of a market. Both are "fair" games in the sense that all participants have a theoretically even change of winning if their skills are equal. This means that neither is a good mode
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Free markets are allowed to generate profit. Efficient markets shouldn't generate *excess* profit. That is, they should operate at an equilibrium point where the profit is sufficient that producers find it a worthwhile endeavour, but no higher.
Free markets generally assume complete information on both sides though, and also rational decision making.
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Kind of a fallacy there. The entire point of a capitalist free-market is that you can get some measure of return on your investment so that you can use that surplus to purchase goods and services that are not part of your core competencies. A break even investment in dollars is actually a net loss because you lose time. Therefore, no, an ideal free-market does not have a zero dollar profit as it would erase the supply side of the market entirely. An ideal market does however have a low profit (though lo
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Would you be happy buying a pill that costs $1.27 to make at the low low price of $2789.54 each knowing that their consumers had to buy it to live? (Because it has happened)
Also because today's economy is driving people to poor poverty, not just plain poverty but twicely poor (poor and in debt and by definition in prison).
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So don't buy anything, don't browse the web, don't go to anywhere that might use facial recognition, gotcha!
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Your VPN provider knows all then. You must be hallucinating if you think I advocated collection of personal data.
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You've gone full retard. You live on /. and pretend you know shit about the world, when in fact you demonstrate complete ignorance. Nice projection about mommy and daddy, we know you don't know anything else ;)
Re:Let's turn it around.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever buy any large ticket items or do anything requiring a credit check? Then they have that information. Another issue is the amount of information sharing going on between these companies. Right now there is very minimal regulation and different companies are perfectly willing to sell off their piece of the puzzle for the pieces they don't have about consumers. Facebook and Google have made pretty considerable profits off of essentially doing that.
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You don't have to volunteer your financial history; you only need to buy stuff.
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Oh I forgot, slashdot has a number of hermits visiting the site on the regular... Less than 1% of landlords are going to not do a credit check, and the problem isn't the landlord it is the damn credit agencies that have detailed financials records of your entire life. Even cash purchases can be traced in some ways by banking institutions that are analyzing known shopping patterns of the average person against ATM withdrawals. Of course I'm sure you keep your money in a mattress somewhere and think everyon
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For starters, how many people actually have that kind of money on hand? If everyone started doing that the current economic system would crash and burn hard. Besides that, the IRS requires any transaction over $10,000 be reported to them with identifiable information to prevent money laundering and other financial crimes, so that isn't even an anonymous purchase.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses... [irs.gov]
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Can the manufacturer reciprocate and ask you how much you earn, how much you spend on tech toys and how much for food?
They often do so they can refine who to sell to next. something as little as which postcode you live in, will tel them quite a bit about you or at least the averages for those around you. Think about that next time you fill in the warranty card
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The correct answer is: "No, it's not. Next question."
Capitalism relies on equal bargaining power between all parties of a transaction to work correctly and efficiently. An imbalance in bargaining power, like Information Asymmetry of any kind, violates this requirement and leads to inefficiency and sows distrust in the entire system.
Ever hear of "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." ? The entire purpose of that quote is to show what happens when you
Yeah, they do that all the time (Score:2)
Subby is asking the wrong question, probably out of a desire to avoid loading it when it so obviously should be loaded. The question isn't, is this good? It's "Can our economic system survive the extreme imbalance of information we have today without increased government regulat
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No, but the retailer can. Just not from you directly, but from a data broker. That's the whole point.
Author is asking the wrong questions. (Score:4, Insightful)
With big data collection we get a an incomplete picture of the user. About 5 years ago, I was looking for a replacement worm gear to fix my garage door opener. For the next year, my web advertisements were showing me advertisements for worm gears as if I was some sort of worm gear aficionado. Also it seems that big data has my politics wrong as well. It isn't an all knowing technology, gust a statistical analysis of what you most likely are.
Now for the seller, I can know a lot of real detail information about them, how long they have been in business, if they are publicly traded I can read their quarterly financial report, what they sell, I can also find other customers and see what they think about the product.
The question how much does it cost to make your product is just a stupid question for the consumer. If you have 2 Cpu's at the same cost, what does it matter to you, that one CPU cost the company 50% in parts to make the CPU, while the other CPU cost the other company 20% in parts to make the CPU. This often just means once company has a bigger supply chain, or perhaps the engineers just knew of more affordable parts that had no effect. Or a cheaper material actually worked better.
Dryriver is a moron (Score:1)
Just check out the submissions from this person. Truly idiotic.
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Sorry, you're not describing Socialism, but rather Communism. They aren't the same.
OTOH, from a less regulated state Socailism can be seen as a step on the slippery slope towards total control of the individual by governments. The thing is, from a slightly different view Free Market Capitalism can be seen as a step on the slippery slope towards corporate ownership of the individual. And BOTH fears are valid.
Why would I need that? (Score:3, Insightful)
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You seem to be under the amusing impression that what it costs to produce something has anything to do with the selling price. The selling price is purely what the producer believes will get them the maximum return on investment. As a consumer, I look at the price and make the decision whether this is a good value to me or not. The component prices are irrelevant, the seller's margins are irrelevant.
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If our markets were even vaguely functional, marginal cost of production would have a great deal to do with retail price. It's a very basic principle of Capitalism as explained by Smith.
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Insufficient regulation of the market, handing out corporate charters like water, and failure to hold corporations to their charters, including the requirement that the incorporation continues to be in the public interest. That last bit is a bit hard to believe when a corporation commits a string of felonies that would get an individual life without parole.
Smith warned about that.
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I couldn't use a lot of that type of information...
Because you're stupid? Thanks for letting us know. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, until they warn me.
Your tone makes me cringe, given that you have ignored the most basic economic law, and have ignored practical operational needs such as the need for the revenue of successful products to also cover the development and marketing costs of unsuccessful products. It is off-putting that you are so aggressively confident while having no idea what it takes to run even the smallest company. Have you ever been involved in the manufacture of a physical product?
Re:Why would I need that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me give you a real world example.
You used to buy products from company A (which is an IT&C online store). At some point they fucked you in one way or another, say warranty shenanigans, defective products that they refused warranty on for whatever reason, delivery delays, you name it. They pissed you off and you decided to no longer buy from company A and buy from their competition, let's call it Company B.
Unbeknownst to you, Company A and Company B have the same parent, say Company X. Oopsie, you still bring profit to the wrong entity.
You have to actively dig for this kind of information, and many times it's so deeply buried that it's very hard to find.
Pop quiz: what do Epic Games, Riot Games, Supercell, Miniclip, Grinding Gear Games and MORE have in common, besides being game development companies? They're all subsidiaries of Tencent, notorious for copying competition's games.
Getting the product at a reasonable price is not everything. There's service quality, price/performance indicator, there's also company ethics if you care about it. In other words, would you eat fruit from a tree grown on top of a common grave?
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This is a reasonable point; I oversimplified earlier.
Ideally, I would think there would be some kind of happy medium between knowing literally everything about a corporation and corporations being black boxes. I don't know where exactly that would fall or how it would be implemented (which is why this whole situation is problematic)--all my original point was is that radical transparency on the part of corporations probably wouldn't help too much. Information overload doesn't help me make purchasing decisio
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I'd rather have too much information than not enough. If I have too much information I can filter it down to what I need. If I don't have enough, well... I can't "unfilter" the missing pieces.
Re: Perfect information does not exist (Score:1)
That's not what Capitalism is about. Capitalism is about values. It's about exchange to mutual advantage. When you exchange money which is the product of your labor, you do so because you value the laptop more than the money at that time. The sellers costs are not of concern to you. What the laptop does in exchange for the amount you paid is what's important. If the company making a product sets the price such that people either value the money more or value a competitor's product more, they may reduc
Not the right "information asymmetry" (Score:3)
The "information asymmetry" that should be discussed and then outlawed is the misinformation and misframing broadcast to customers and the knowledge deliberately withheld for the producers' own selfish gain.
One minuscule example: the Clorox Company trying to convince customers through misleading advertising that not all 5% solutions of sodium hypochlorite are the same, that theirs is somehow more effective.
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Or that Monsanto's patented glyphosate may cause cancer.
Re:Not the right "information asymmetry" (Score:4, Informative)
What I realize is that you're a fucking idiot who knows nothing at all of basic chemistry and is the perfect target for such a company's advertising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Sorry, but the effectiveness of a product, e.g. bleach, may be affected by many things beyond the main constituent. Just for e.g. the pH can affect how it interacts with the materials it's used on, and whether all the active ingredient is in solution at the same time. It can also affect, e.g., whether it would damage certain materials.
So just knowing the Sodium Hypochlorite concentration of a solution doesn't tell you how good a bleach it is. Things are more complex than that.
That said, bleach has been a
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You obviously have never seen the commercials. They portrayed it exactly the way I stated.
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ugh. Really? Read a label sometime. Chlorox Bleach contains the Sodium hypochlorite you indicate. It also contains Sodium Hydroxide. It also contain Surfactants. It is the third one that causes the advertised difference. When you are looking at what a suractant is, it is a combination of detergent that doesn't have to be specifically spelled out. This is where they can claim the difference is, despite having the two main chemicals be exact matching amounts as other brands. Even with other products of their
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At the time of the commercials, which was quite some years ago, the Clorox product did not contain sodium hydroxide, only sodium hypochlorite.
They portrayed it exactly the way I stated. Take your righteous indignation somewhere else.
For consumers? No. (Score:2)
However, for producers, of course it is. Next question?
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It doesn't matter, not anymore. Your friends and/or acquaintances will do that for you. It's enough to have a social media account. You'd be amazed to realize how much information about you could be deducted from proxies spewing THEIR life onto Social Media.
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It's a bit difficult to exert social pressure against someone doing something when you can't tell that they're doing it, and *they* don't realize that they're doing it.
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Much of the data gleaned by the companies I do buiness with is highly inaccurate. Even Facebook is wrong about my political affiliation. This data is worth close to $0.
Yet ZuckFace still sells it making Billions doesn't matter if its right or wrong. To shareholders as long as buyers/advertisers are willing to pay for it it good enough
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Who's asking the equestion? (Score:1)
You give the obvious answer.
But in absolute terms I'm for anything that removes the advantage. We are not demanding enough transparency, especially from the government.
So, whistleblowers unite!
Money talks (Score:2)
That pretty much any tech producer can learn about me with a few bucks spent, but I cannot get simple information like "How much did the Nvidia 1060 Mobile GPU in this 1,200 Dollar notebook cost the producer"?
"I'm not going to tell you how much it cost."
"Ok, then I'm going to buy my notebook from someone who will."
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And if nobody will?
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As with everything in life your choices are lost amongst those of a world of lemmings. Only those choices matter.
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When was the last time you bought something from someone who knew how much it cost to make? Among other things. Actually, how much it cost to make is generally among the least valuable pieces of information. Durability, repairability, parts list, etc. are much more valuable, and those aren't available either. Warranties are generally designed to be so difficult to use that they're worthless except as PR. And are often ignored when people try to enforce them. (Well, not exactly. Turn this in at our se
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> I already avoid Apple products, partly due to Apple trying to ruin Qualcomm.
Er... there are plenty of good reasons to shun Apple products, but their treatment of Qualcomm deserves a standing ovation.
Look, I hate Apple as much as the next guy, but I'll give them fair credit for being the one company on earth with the balls and determination to beat Qualcomm & American carriers into submission and break their chokehold on LTE.
Remember, just ~5 years ago, it was IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to manufacture a
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I don't know about *you*, but *I* could program the Macintosh. In fact I did. It *is* true that at first you needed to buy a compiler rather than having one included.
FWIW, I was quite upset at the way they changed their API between models after the fat Mac (which had the same API as the original). It seemed that every new model had a different API. That slowed down about the time the Mac II was released, though, and then it stayed about the same up through System 9, only changing radically with OSX. So
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"we are, after all, talking about the company that back in 1984, proudly released the first home computer in history that couldn't be programmed by end users... the original Macintosh"
Guess I was doing the impossible, even back then.
Re: You need to change the law, not applaud break (Score:2)
Look, I recognize that nobody is a saint, and life is full of ambiguous gray areas. I have no problem with a company using a fair, legitimate patent to earn money.
I do, however, object TREMENDOUSLY to a company using its patent portfolio to hold back progress, and totally think there should be a straightforward way to force compulsory licensing at a fair price that minimizes the up-front cash a small company has to pay and sets the amount at some percentage of the expected retail price that's high enough to
If it bothers you they collect all this (Score:2)
walk into brick and mortar store
pay cash and don't use your loyalty/discount card
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I think that facial recognition is still to error prone to be relied upon, and too expensive for most merchants to consider it reasonable. They may collect the data, but only governments can afford to process it, and THEIR data interpretation is full of errors.
If you want info about the producer check SEC (Score:2)
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Publicly traded companies do but if, for example, the laptop in the article was a Dell then there's no reporting requirement on them since it's pivately held.
Apples and oranges? (Score:3)
How does it really change your situation if you know what the true production costs are for a product? You might know for a fact that component cost of a $1000 phone is $75. If the phone still works great and does everything consumers desire in a phone though? They'll pay the $1000 anyway, because they don't have the knowledge, ability or time to assemble one for themselves.
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Of greater importance is knowing how durable and repairable a product is, and for that teardown sites like iFixIt are invaluable. Has Apple fixed the screen cable this year? Is that foldable screen going to last more than a few weeks?
Only when their interests are aligned (Score:3)
Not sure why the Slashdot editor seems to taking so many of these philosophical topics lately, but...
Better start by reviewing the question: "Is the Information Asymmetry Between Producers and Consumers Good?"
The obvious (Subject: "Only when their interests are aligned") answer (per game theory) is that it depends on what sort of game is being played. If their interests are aligned in a win-win scenario, then it should basically be fine, even if there's a bit of squabbling about the division of the spoils. However what we usual have these days are win-lose or zero-sum scenarios where one player wins and all of the other players lose. Best example: Facebook "wins" and everyone else loses.
It has to do with how the rules of the game are written, and right now most of the rules are being written and rewritten by the most cheaply bribed politicians. They think they are working for rich donors, and the donors think they are acting for their personal profit. In reality, the punchline is that the corporate cancers own the donors and provide the funds for the political bribes, too.
The information asymmetries are inevitable. Kind of silly to worry if they are "good" or "bad" without considering the contexts and results. A problem without a solution is not really a problem, but just part of reality that must be endured.
Because it's none of your damn business. (Score:2)
For a good goddamn reason... They'd have f**kin' comedians such as yourself calling and badgering them for every little detail.
Stick with comedy dryriver, you might know more about that than production - or philosophy apparently.
Easy answer? Maybe not? (Score:1)
Buy or have reason to have the latest McMaster Carr catalogue. Or just go to: https://www.mcmaster.com/ [mcmaster.com]
There are sliding scales for quantities for components and you **could** figure out how much the wholesale cost of every part would be. Many people in America would call what you are asking for as some form of socialism which is associated for some reason to Communism.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, you should roughly be able to quantify costs (other than custom components), but that will never be the tru
Good for someone, sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Want GPU info? (Score:1)
Chart out every GPU supported by a generation of OS you want to support.
How many of that GPU range got sold with all features? As a mobile GPU? Desktop? CPU use only? Something that got put in the slow bin in the GPU factory?
Then consider how many brands that make a "laptop" have to stuff "software" on their laptop to try and make a profit?
The conditions the GPU maker puts on GPU use? The power use of a GPU and its support in a laptop?
Loss lead
No, it's very bad for consumers and the economy (Score:3, Interesting)
The "consumer surplus" is the difference between what the product is worth to you, the consumer, and its price. The "producer surplus" is the difference between the price and what the product costs to make. The "social surplus" is the sum of the two (plus externalities), and that's what society gains by having the transaction.
The better the producer matches the price to each consumer's value, the larger portion of the social surplus goes to the producer. The price tag, which fixes the same price for all consumers, was one of the biggest gifts of Quakers to humanity (second only, perhaps, to oat-based cereals), and tech giants are taking us 150 years back on that front.
And that's why capitalists who think they like the status quo, which isn't capitalism at all, are morons.
You know more of the company than vice versa (Score:3)
You know where the company is located, you know who heads it. You know their age, where they live, who they're married to, probably how much they make, their entire occupational history. You know a lot of people who work at the company (for example via a LinkedIn search). You know what products they make and the specs of these products. You might even find a YouTube video showing a factory tour. There's no shortage of information that you can find about any company.
In short, you know a lot more of the company than the company knows of you.
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Nice illustration of the difference between data and knowledge.
Knowing your counterparty in a meaningful way means getting yours arms around their principle ventures and commitments. The average person might have five or so major ventures spread across work, family, hobby, community, church (or non-church). The tech titans e
Depends on the product (Score:2, Funny)
For example i neither want nor need to know what's in the sausage,
Information matters (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
er (Score:2)
It's kind of the wrong question.
Is it inevitable? Yes.
Is it new? No.
I'm wondering what you think the alternative is. We all become experts on every product and service that we buy? Not going to happen.
Keep in mind that not even producers have - or can have - all the information that they want. (See the famous example of how nobody knows what a pencil should cost.)
Meet Robert (Score:2)
Meet Robert. Robert is a moron. He is of average intelligence but has never been interested in anything other than cars, sports, and superficial girls with large breasts. He barely made it through school, is still working in the first job he ever got, one that barely pays over minimum wage. In his free time, Robert mostly watches comedy and music videos and conspiracy theory videos on the internet. Robert has no goals in life, no ambition, and owes money on every single credit card he owns.
Meet Patricia.
Maybe get some real focus on the matter (Score:2)
what has the tech industry kept from the end users for their profit at the expense of the end users and how Karma is now in play regarding a lack of diversity in eth subfield of tech, Artificial Intelligence http://3seas.org/EAD-RFI-respo... [3seas.org]
Is the information actionable? (Score:2)
If Vendor A sells a phone for $300 that costs $50 to produce, and Vendor B sells a phone for $500 that costs $60 to produce, which phone should you buy? You should probably buy the one which fits your needs best, insofar as you can afford it, so the cost of production isn't really relevant to you. Production cost might be considered a proxy for quality, insofar as vendors use comparable production systems, but evaluating that is an entirely different question, and if you are capable of evaluating that you
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For example, if you know it cost $60 to make the $500 phone, you may then ask for a discount and buy the "more expensive" phone. If you have the $500 phone cost $300 to make, you may find justification to believe that it is better made, so is a better buy than the $300 one, because it lasts longer and spending $300 twice costs more than spending $500 once. You may find that if it only costs 10 dollars different that the extra features are not worth it because to add the expense in you believe costs more than $10, so they must have cut corners elsewhere. You may find that if it has such a massive markup that you will buy neither and look at the "unbelievably cheap" off-brand phone for $100 as able to offer the same experience of ownership as any of the other on offer.
A person can evaluate whether an item _feels_ like a high-quality item without knowing the cost to purchase or the cost of production. A person can evaluate if it has the features a person needs without knowing the costs of production. The phone is going to last how long the phone lasts without regard to the cost of production. Vendors all the time try to use arguments about their high-quality ingredients/components - but that's a marketing message, just because someone says they used only the best input
Obligatory xkcd (Score:2)
https://xkcd.com/309/ [xkcd.com]
Surprised this didn't show up earlier.
Revenge (Score:1)
I'm going to incorporate myself and then sue businesses for violating my trade secrets and intellectual property rights.
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weird open mike in different drag (Score:2)
This must be one of the weirdest open mikes in the entire history of Slashdot, right up there with whether binary distributions have ruined the Internet.
No wait, my bad—that's actually the same discussion, in different drag.
double take (Score:2)
I first read the title and immediately thought, "Of course information assymetry is bad." I'm a big fan of nutritional and content labels. I thought the ACA should have constructed a set of "standard" policies, and then force insurers to advertised based on their divergence from the standards.
Then I read the question and thought, "Is this guy for real, or is he just TRYING to be stupid?".
First of all, if you want to know how much the components cost, there is publicly available price list. Every time I r
Terrible examples (Score:2)
Asymmetry - thjreat or menace? (Score:2)
Information asymmetry has always existed. I don't think the internet has made it worse; what it has done is increased the amount of information available to both sides, but the big player had the advantage pre-internet and it has it now.
Asymmetry leads to inefficient markets, and ones that poorly serve the needs of the low-information side. Health care is a blatant example, where the buyers know almost nothing about the actual costs of the services they use or the relative quality of different providers. (T