Author: Joel Gross

A disaster of the commons is that if people are in smaller vehicles and getting a car accident there is less likely to be injuries or fatalities. These vehicles also require significantly less fuel per mile. However, for any given individual, physics shows that being in the larger and heavier vehicle increases your likelihood of survival and reduces your odds of injury.… read more “How to reduce car accident fatalities”

Google was once my favorite company when it was still run by its founders and genuinely followed the “don’t be evil” policy.

Now everything it does has turned into dark patterns. Google’s #1 revenue generator Ads (formerly AdWords) now uses dark patterns to trick advertisers into spending more. For example, most of the recommendations make a user’s campaign spend more money while not getting results.… read more “Google Ads Monopolistic Dark Patterns”

https://doctorow.medium.com/i-quit-9ae7b6010c99

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/hospitals-price-transparency-spotty-compliance-swings-price/596183/

This is the downside of a macroeconomic concept called gains from specialization and trade. Some people can build businesses that get so incredibly good at delivering exactly what people want for the price that they want that it is nearly impossible for any individual to compete. The real secret is to find a niche that no one else is in yet.

Companies that make products purposefully so they break down after a period of time, or so that they are not backwards compatible are stealing from their customers. Planned obsolence should be a crime with long jail time and fines big enough to bankrupt the companies that do it.

Right now, nearly every product you buy is designed to break or be incompatible with future updates to increase the sales of the company.… read more “Make Planned Obsolence a Crime”