I don't think this is true, I run an affiliate site that directs people to Smile, and my commissions have been the same whether I direct to Smile or not. I have heard that your conversions typically go down when you use Smile. However I think that might be because many customers have never signed up for Smile and are scared away. I decided to stick with Smile links because I thought that in the long term it would motivate people to continue using my site and I figured at worst I'd help charities a lot more than the income I'd lose so I'm a bit sad to learn about this.
Smile and affiliate commissions are separate. So in your example both the charity and the stale affiliate link would receive a cut that is independent of the other. Source: I run an affiliate site and my links always direct to Smile, and I keep getting commissions.
Is it possible that by linking to smile, your amount is reduced by the smile amount, or that it operates differently when the affiliate link happens first and the smile insertion happens second?
If you're discussing performance of SQL queries, showing the output of EXPLAIN ANALYZE is the bare minimum. There's too many variables that can affect performance and if you can't see what's happening under the hood it's not very useful.
Same here, and I'd also like to see what explain analyze shows about the plan and execution details. Also, some system setup may also help, e.g., memory size and check if spill kicks in, etc.
The solution is real free markets. Constant government intervention in the housing market, the stock market, education, healthcare, and everything else under the sun has led us to where we are today. It always feels nice for a bit when the government bails you out, but the long term consequences are always much more severe. Prices are information and when all the information is polluted, it becomes very difficult to have a functioning economy. It's the same thing that happens in social media, trolls and bots pollute the information so it's impossible for most people to tell the truth apart from fiction. Unfortunately the regulatory capture is so deep and the problems have gotten so bad that I don't know how this can be solved without an extreme event.
Why would free markets help homeless people? Is there any basis for this, other than claiming that one's favorite solution is the best? Free markets serve those who pay the most, which is good for allocating iPhones, but not for healthcare, basic housing, basic food, education, safety, etc., which should not depend on ability to pay.
> It's the same thing that happens in social media, trolls and bots pollute the information so it's impossible for most people to tell the truth apart from fiction.
As someone who has spent years in a low income situation due to health issues that hasn't been my experience. At least up until the pandemic food as well as many manufactured products, which are relatively unregulated, were quite affordable even for the lowest incomes. There's a large enough market of low income people so that companies like Walmart, dollar stores and even Amazon can make money serving that market.
Housing and medical care, on the other hand, are completely unaffordable for a significant fraction of the population without government assistance.
I am not doubting your experience, but I don't think we can project that to the larger situation.
> At least up until the pandemic food as well as many manufactured products, which are relatively unregulated, were quite affordable even for the lowest incomes.
The data shows otherwise, that many people haven't been able to afford food (think of school lunch programs) and especially quality food. Also, large 'food deserts' exists in poor communities where food is unavailable beyond very expensive small stores.
> There's a large enough market of low income people so that companies like Walmart, dollar stores and even Amazon can make money serving that market.
I've thought that, but it turns out that they don't often don't serve low-income people. I've also spent plenty of time in low income areas, and retail options are very slim. I've been in the best grocery store in the neighborhood, where fruit scales were rusty, and it stunk of something rotting. It was packed.
Well, I know that I could live spending less than 50% of my monthly income on food. Ignoring other subsidies however my rent would cost over 80% of my monthly income, so if I paid my rent, as people are likely to do first, it's true that I wouldn't have enough money for food.
So what I am saying does not contradict the claim that many people can't afford enough food, since most of their money is going to rent.
> Generally for most goods markets work really well. There's two intrinsic failure cases: externalities and monopolies.
I agree, but you are omitting two other cases: Equity and availability.
Again, markets are built to serve those who provide the highest profit. That's fine for iPhones, but not for health, safety, education, basic food, and basic shelter. Everyone should have those, regardless of how much profit they provide.
Markets also depend on 'creative destruction', businesses fail and their goods and services go away. That can't happen with healthcare, food, education, safety, and shelter. There are 'food deserts' in poor communities, where people can't get anything but expensive corner-store groceries. We can't have a safety, education, shelter, or healthcare desert (or a food desert).
Unless we are in a monopoly situation there are other vendors for common goods.
If a super market goes out of business there are several others though perhaps further away.
The idea of "Food deserts" is around the poor availability of affordable "nutritious" food. There is plenty of food in these food deserts with many different food providers.
So it's not about general food availability, it's around what food is stocked.
Which food are stocked is almost completely determined by supply and demand. We know the supply exists, so if there a lack of stock it's due to demand.
What other explanation is there ? A shadowy cabal making sure the poor can't access certain foods ?
The "free market" optimizes for one single thing: Profit.
Providing housing for homeless people is not profitable, and so a free market would never do it.
> Constant government intervention in the housing market, the stock market, education, healthcare, and everything else under the sun has led us to where we are today.
Health care is in the same boat. If a poor person gets cancer, the free market would gladly let them die. They wouldn't be able to pay for treatment.
Education is similar. If the government didn't provide schools, a considerable portion of children would go uneducated.
Optimising for profit can lead to both massive positive and negative effects.
So the obvious question is how you balance those negative effects against the positive. This is where regulations and governments have to step in, though that certain has it's own massive issues.
Health care has a lot of unsolved problems, from my perspective no group is actually doing well (Just varying shades of bad, I'm from the UK). There are so many ailments that can't currently be treated well (Despite having spent decades studying them, though that seems to be a systematic failure of academia)
Optimizing for profit greatly incentivizes innovation as corporations compete, I'll definitely give you that.
But it also leads to a poorer customer experience (long hold times as call centers are understaffed, cheap and flimsy materials, I could go on...), exploitative dark patterns, rent-seeking, and more.
And then there's the fact that corporations would happily dump toxic waste into rivers to save a few dollars if the EPA didn't exist to stop them. They will gladly burn the atmosphere in order to show growth on their quarterly report.
> So the obvious question is how you balance those negative effects against the positive. This is where regulations and governments have to step in, though that certain has it's own massive issues.
Agreed. Corporations can't be free to do whatever they want, but finding that happy medium of reining them in without stifling them is hard.
It doesn't help that our politicians are for sale. Corruption runs rampant.
I've worked at tech companies that despise helping the US military. Please understand that the world is complex and although all superpowers have done terrible things, helping the US is the only way our children will live in a peaceful world. This isn't about democrats or republicans, the future of humanity will be decided in the next decade.
Any abject suffering that occurs over the next hours, days, and weeks doesn't excuse the historical record of abject suffering imposed by the US military.
It's perfectly consistent to be opposed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and also reject the myth that the US's military is the only thing that maintains world peace.
It's not a 'myth' that the US maintains world peace, it's a most obvious reality and it's disturbing that anyone wouldn't be able to see it plainly.
The world is not a 'peaceful place' with a bunch of wars now and again.
It's held together by force.
Peace is a balance of, and righteous management of power.
The US+NATO+Allies form the basis of that power. Unfortunately, without the US, that 'Team' would basically be dysfunctional and wouldn't really work.
The Panama Canal, Suez Canal, the Gulf, S. China Sea - all of it would be controlled by various regimes if it were not for US power basically keeping it all open for everyone.
Israel and Egypt the 'lynchpin' of peace in the ME is kept that way because of US power. All of he Middle East would be like Syria were it not for US/West.
Obviously Taiwan would be in China and Korea would be vanquished by N. Korea.
It's hard to know exactly how the cards would fall, but they would definitely fall one way or another.
Unfortunately, we don't have a solution for Ukraine, but thankfully, this will be mostly contained in Ukraine thanks to NATO.
> Unfortunately, we don't have a solution for Ukraine, but thankfully, this will be mostly contained in Ukraine thanks to NATO.
The same sentences were written two weeks ago with respect to Ukraine. You can't make any assumptions about what Russia will or will not do. Taking over the Suwalki gap could easily happen. The frog is best boiled slowly, and with ample time to get used to the new temperature.
Also because what Russia is doing right now is the same thing that US tried to do in the Bay of Pigs, settling a puppet government in a portion of a country then make it ask for help? That's CIA 101
And that's what's great about the western world, you can't have a maniac at the top moving 200k soldiers without congressional approval and discussion? That's why if I have to pick between a country like US that is intermittently maniac and a country like Putinstan where a maniac has to decide that million of people have to suffer in and out the borders, then I would always pick the US
> And that's what's great about the western world, you can't have a maniac at the top moving 200k soldiers without congressional approval and discussion?
I guess we're ignoring the 200k+ troops sent to Iraq w/o a declaration of war by Congress? I will agree with you on one point though...the President wasn't a maniac.
Excerpt:
"At 5:34 a.m. Baghdad time on 20 March 2003 (9:34 pm, 19 March EST) the surprise[130] military invasion of Iraq began.[131] There was no declaration of war.[132] The 2003 invasion of Iraq was led by US Army General Tommy Franks, under the code-name Operation Iraqi Freedom,[133] the UK code-name Operation Telic, and the Australian code-name Operation Falconer. Coalition forces also cooperated with Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the north. Approximately forty other governments, the "Coalition of the Willing," participated by providing troops, equipment, services, security, and special forces, with 248,000 soldiers from the United States, 45,000 British soldiers, 2,000 Australian soldiers and 194 Polish soldiers from Special Forces unit GROM sent to Kuwait for the invasion.[134] The invasion force was also supported by Iraqi Kurdish militia troops, estimated to number upwards of 70,000.[135]"
I think your idea of lack of a declaration of war ignores that a year before it was voted by congress, on the basis of:
The resolution cited many factors as justifying the use of military force against Iraq:[3][4]
Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Iraq "continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability" and "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability" posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."
Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."
Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
Members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.
Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.
The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, and those who aided or harbored them.
The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.
Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.
And I would put some emphasis on the state of the relation on:
Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
It's not a declared invasion. I've read headlines that said Russia had "declared war"; in the body of the article, it turns out that Russia has sent a "peacekeeping force" into Donbas. There's been no declaration of war. Russia has responded to requests for help from the rebel leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk.
I mean, there is a war; Russia has been bombing and rocketing Ukrainian military installations all over the country. But it's not a declared war.
Yes, you're right, but it could be interesting to understand that for the living in order to prevent to be made dead by regular armed forces or intelligence in the future, in fact right now it's mostly the living that are trying to understand what happened/is happening
Yeah but my point was that the declared invasion is happening due to the rebels that took over Donetsk and Lugansk asking for help from Putin to defend themselves from the ukrainian govt
That is a very naive take. It's abundantly clear that Kremlin orchestrated the rebel areas to "ask for help" so they have a pretext for the invasion. I mean that was so transparent that I honestly thought it was only meant for Russian local audiences and absolutely nobody would buy that in the West.
The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 was similar to Bay of Pigs (with the difference that the former succeeded, while the latter failed miserably). The current situation is a full blown war and nothing less than that.
> "abject suffering" And what about some of the most peaceful decades in human history? That means nothing, eh?
The US, in a brief moment of national clarify, participated in exactly two just wars in the last century. The outcome of one of those wars was the establishment of liberal democracies across Western Europe, which is indeed a tremendous stabilizing force. But it's not clear to me that the US gets to claim outsized credit for the subsequent years of peacemaking under those nations.
Us participated in Vietnam War too which would made it third War. In Korea War too, four. Plus, supported various guerrilas (taliban) and dictators materiály.
And that is me being lazy to lookup whether there were other conflicts.
US the only way for a peaceful world? You should read a bit on the USA history and its military conflicts and you may change your mind. Wikipedia is a good starting point.
The period of US hegemony from WW2 until today has by far been the most peaceful time in the history of civilization. Unlike previous super powers, the US did not take over any other countries or colonize by force. We have done many horrible things, like support dictators, invade Iraq based on lies (to depose a dictator), etc., but we have also supported people all over after natural disasters, helped with foreign aid to relieve famines, policed global trade to enable fair markets, and many other good deeds. It's definitely not the only way, and we could do much, much better, but show me another major country that you would prefer hold the reigns of global power?
Peaceful for who?? Certainly not for Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, South East Asia, Middle East. The US has absolutely imposed "peace" by force and by pushing its own agenda everywhere.
I beg your pardon? Eastern Europe is eternally grateful to the US that they won the cold war allowing them to break free from the Big Bear. Nations comprising 100+ million people from Estonia to Bulgaria are living their golden ages right now, because of US.
I resent the implication that the US military is the only reason the world is at peace, and I bet plenty of NGOs feel the same - if anything, the US military is the one that has been pushing for new conflicts. And while it's true that all superpowers have done terrible things, the difference with the US is that plenty of them have stopped doing terrible things since.
I was not born yet when Germany started WWII, but I was alive to see the US declare torture as a valid means of interrogation and bomb civilians with no repercusions. And my living relatives who suffered under a US-backed military coup may not be as quick to forgive either. Maybe your children will live in a peaceful world, but for many of us that's cold comfort.
Give it 72 hours. The news cycle is leading the announcements tomorrow and the announcements that will inevitably come next week. If the news is already talking WW3 (and yes, they are) then it won't be long before the UN deploys it's own "peacekeeping forces" and the world goes hot.
I think right now in the west in general the appetite for getting hands-on in Ukraine is just not there.
As sad as it may be for Ukraine, they're going to have to do what they can to defend themselves with aid and supplies.
The one thought I have around this is Canada. Spitballing: There's a huge Ukrainian population there and the deputy PM has personal ties to the region. It's entirely possible, especially given recent events, that Trudeau decides it's politically expedient to get involved directly in some meaningful way. They'd also have to try to convince the other parties helping them maintain government. Even if that happens though, I suspect that won't make a difference to the outcome and the rest of NATO would look at it as a Canadian solo operation. I'd give this about a 0.001% chance of happening, maybe less. Any politician who got boots on the ground (barring some unforeseen change in circumstance) would probably be skewered public opinion-wise and be essentially kissing re-election goodbye.
> I think right now in the west in general the appetite for getting hands-on in Ukraine is just not there.
I hate to say it, but I agree. Germany sent Ukraine a few thousand hats to help them resist Russian aggression, for Christ's sake.
Western powers will drop a strongly worded letter in the mail and implement economic sanctions that'll do diddly squat to the Russian authorities, besides maybe push them into a closer alliance with China.
Honestly, the least they could have done is massed NATO troops in Poland, the Baltics, etc. and kept strategic ambiguity about whether they planned to actually use them (instead of explicitly announcing, like dumbasses, they weren't going to get involved in any way that would bother Putin).
> It's entirely possible, especially given recent events, that Trudeau decides it's politically expedient to get involved directly in some meaningful way....I'd give this about a 0.001% chance of happening, maybe less.
Definitely less. IMHO, if they were going to have to get involved, they would have needed to have been moving troops and equipment for quite some time. I don't think they've done that.
Tangentially: Russian Federation and PRC never should have gotten the P5 seats. The USSR's P5 veto should require unanimous consent of former Soviet republics, and ROC's P5 veto should still be with ROC.
Wasn't that the intel estimate on how long it'd take Russia to take over? I saw Biden's statement that he was sending thoughts & prayers while he watched this and would talk it over with world leaders tomorrow. Since the last few rounds of sanctions did nothing after Crimea, I don't see this changing things.
The territory is relatively easy to overrun with speed - the defensible choke point is on the wrong side of Ukraine (for the Ukrainians). It is only occupation that can prove to be difficult, or even intractable.
It's been 1 day, they're already in Kyiv and discussing surrender. I don't know the future, but it looks like the rest of the world had their pants down on this one so far, which seems surprising given the repeated warnings something was going down.
By the time there is a real response, it's looking like this may be over. Given that their urgency was "I'll talk to world leaders about what to do tomorrow" rather than "let's enact the plan we already prepared during the weeks of warnings" I think we know which way things are headed.
Russia is a openly currupt oligarchy dictator state and China runs slave camps and genocides. It seems to pretty much just be helping the US or the EU at this point. Honestly I would say EU over us in a ideal world, probably.
Nuclear proliferation, like it or not, has done more for global peace than US military/trade hegemony. Ukraine gave up all its nukes in the 90s which is why this is happening now.
Of course. You would have to be insane to agree to denuclearize at this point; it's clear that this is the only strategy to avoid being steamrolled by US/Russia/China.
What I do see is a promise made by both the US and Russia to "[r]efrain from the threat or the use of force against [...] Ukraine." So Russia definitely broke the promise, and I don't see where the US broke it.
The US would not retaliate militarily if Russia used nuclear weapons against Ukraine. That is not part of US nuclear doctrine. Ukraine is not a treaty ally.
There are 6 things on the list. This one is the closest to promising to defend Ukraine:
>Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
I don't know exactly what "Seek immediate Security Council action" means. What if the US seeks it and doesn't find it? Is that in compliance with the memorandum?
While that is technically correct based on the UN Charter, it's meaningless in practice. None of the permanent Security Council members are willing to take direct action on this issue.
# 1 Respect Belarusian, Kazakh and Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.
#2 Refrain from the threat or the use of force against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Both violated in the Krimean annexion 2014. Since Russia could easily violate this treaty, they could easily invade Ukraine now. And they got no weapons from signatories, only a few from the Baltics.
Treaties with these signatories are not worth the paper, otherwise Ukraine would have kept the nukes, and would have somehow got the codes also eventually.
The premise is not just that nukes are a deterrent against nuclear warfare, but also that nukes are a deterrent against conventional warfare. I'm not sure any country except israel is super explicit about this (cf Samson Option) but presumably the implicit or quietly explicit threat is there.
It's funny, or maybe sad, how so many people did not see this coming. All the propaganda and social engineering to get Biden associated with Ukraine so that when he tried to throw his hat in the ring, his own country will be alarmed.
Going to end up looking like a fucking 9000 IQ play by Russia here, but hopefully the world proves me wrong.
I live in Montenegro. The country was part of Yugoslavia.
I spoke with a guy who fought that war. I asked him "do you think the war would have ended without American intervention?" and he responded "no, I don't think it would".
I wouldn't describe the country as a blooming economy, but it's peace here, for more than 20 years and counting.
> in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, Iraq, Syria, and others, one or more parties in the conflicts had nukes.
I don't care about the other parties in the conflict. Nukes stop you from getting invaded, not from invading. Afaik, none of these countries were nuclear when they got steamrolled.
The original argument was that nuclear proliferation has brought peace. Even if you argue that it has brought peace to countries that own nukes, you'd be wrong. Israel does not have peace. USA does not have peace. Russia does not have peace. Argentina tangled with the UK despite the UK's nukes. The Taliban has no fear of USA nukes.
It does a lot for global peace right up until our extinction. We don't need thousands of nukes to maintain deterrence. We should reduce our nuclear stockpile to the smallest number that still maintains deterrence.
Seems like an exageration. Do you think any country armed with nukes is dominating people as much as British empire, Romans, Mongols did? The fact that Russia (or China with Taiwan and Hong Kong) actually has to fight so hard for one country kind of shows they can't dominate whoever they want.
This reminds me very much of the slow motion train wreck leading into WWII. Germany had to fight hard in the same kind of political way back then, too. That was obviously pre-nuke. It takes a long time to build the many (logistical, psychological, political) facets required to lead your country down this path. With or without nukes.
To answer your question, yes. A country with nukes is dominating people as much as the British empire, Romans, and Mongols did? How is that even a serious question? With military forces spread through Korea, Japan, Germany, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Poland, Lithuania, Arizona, Alaska, Dominican Republic, Cuba, you name it. From sea to shining sea, then another sea and another sea.
This is happening because the sanctions put in place on Russia during the Trump admin were undone haphazardly by Biden. Russia is moving strictly because it knows it has the EU by the short hairs on energy and after the afghanistan exit the US is in a very strategically weak position.
We should be grateful Ukraine does not have nukes. 12 hours ago the world might've gotten 4000C hotter if they did.
It's certainly different from Afghanistan. The invasion of Afghanistan by the United States was preceded by an attack by Al Qaeda on New York City. The attack by Russia on Ukraine is completely unprovoked.
I'm not aware of Ukraine kicking out weapons inspectors from known previous WMD sites, or bluffing about having CBRN weapons. The invasion of Iraq was bumbling and based on piss-poor intelligence, but the belief in a threat wasn't groundless. https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/World/Global-Ne...
The current Russian claims about Ukraine, however, do appear groundless, based on the consensus of international media.
The belief in a threat was manufactured by cherry-picking any weak scraps of intelligence that could be assembled into a believable marketing pitch for an invasion. Your average mouthbreathing intel analyst wouldn’t recommend invading a taco stand based on the shady sources and thin reporting used to justify this war.
Although I am certainly not well informed, as I could not predict this scale of military operation, I'd like to say that "consensus of international media" is not worth much at times of war. Because I feel like there is never a lot of disagreement in media during such crises. Maybe after, when the situation calmed.
It's a closer match than Afganistan at least, although I don't think that Ukraine under Zelenskyy is remotely similar to Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Let's hope that Ukraine backfires on Russia at least as severely as Iraq did on the US.
I also feel like I'm being obvious here: Al Qaeda was sheltered by Afghanistan during and after the attack on NYC. (I agree that there were essentially no ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.)
Actually reminds me a lot of the run up to Iraq ca 2003, which was a disaster for all involved. Who in the world looks at the US invasion of Iraq and thinks it was a good idea that should be emulated?
What you're witnessing right now are the deathroes of the dictatorships like Russia and China with its aging leaderships. These dictatorships know that their time is limited; the democratic countries are getting stronger and more united. China, the one dictatorship that is supporting all the other dictatorships like Russia or Iran, is going into the final stages of debt/demographic/economic collapse. This is a pivotal time for the citizens of the free world to fight against these dictatorships.
And you can help by asking your government to sanction China. And stop buying goods from China
I think you're just repeating what the parent comment said. Some big tech companies refuse to work with the American military.
I don't know if that's a good idea or not. I'm conflicted by my own hatred of the American government. At the same time, the obvious consequences of big tech refusing to work with the American military is a relative loss of power compared to countries like Russia.
The US moto is the same as that of the fictional character Peacemaker: "I cherish peace with all my heart. I don't care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it."
I would argue the US needs to batten down the hatches and become more isolationist. Let Europe deal with European problems. It's clear from the last 70 years, since WW2, that the US meddling in others' affairs only leads to death, destruction and more negative sentiment against the US.
If LBJ stuck to his promise, we could have avoid a ton of mess in Vietnam: "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
We don't have a dog in this fight.
Edit: Apparently arguing for the US to not get involved in yet another foreign war warrants my comment being flagged.
Many have argued that it was US intervention in WWI that created the economic and political situations that allowed such a bad outcome to take place in WWII.
I'm talking about WWI here and the unintended consequences of US intervention there.
The US getting involved in WWI arguably extended that conflict, the action that made WWII possible, and had many drastic unintended consequences for humanity.
The very short version is this.
* During WWI, there were lots of peace overtures being pushed in Europe because a lot of people were sick of fighting. Because a lot of powerful people were hoping to drag the United States into that relative stalemate, these peace offerings were not taken as seriously as they otherwise would have been.
* Because the US's entrance tilted the scales at the end of WWI so dramatically, Allies were able to enact a little revenge in the Treaty of Versailles and impose punitive and humiliating economic and political measures. Rather than a normal, face-saving peace-treaty, Germany was punished harshly and this tilting of the scales is what led to conditions for the Nazis to take power.
* If Russia's economic and political attention wasn't directed externally at the time, it's likely the Russian Revolution would have failed and the world would have been spared a great deal of grief from Communism.
Obviously this is all alternative history speculation, but there's a strong case to be made that absolute US neutrality in WWI would have ended WWI sooner, not created the economic/social conditions that led to Nazis taking power in Germany, and Communists would have never taken root.
I highly recommend the book "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order" for helping see the big picture. I am also saddened by the state of the world, particularly in regards to inequality which I think is the source of many problems. After reading the book, I realized that social media (or the internet in general) is a technology like any other and the countries that can harness its power for good will likely lead the next century. For instance, a country that sets aside short term profits from anxiety inducing ads and instead focuses on inspiring its people will win in the long run. Same for crypto, it is just technology and it depends on people to put it to good or bad uses. We've been fortunate to live through extremely easy times, but that is the exception not the rule. Think about how people must have felt during WWII or the Great Depression or any of the other countless tragedies we've faced. They also probably though the world was ending, but at the end of the day most people figured out a way to work together to get through it. Finally, be careful when reading news because almost everything you read has an agenda behind it.
It's pretty bare bones, but the problem I was trying to fix was that it took me a long time to browse the Amazon Warehouse offers trying to find the best deals. Amazon doesn't make it easy since they don't show the new and used prices side by side if you search directly under the Amazon Warehouse category. There is also no way to sort by discount. I wasted many hours until one day I decided it was faster to spend a few weeks automating this process.
I just look at the new price and used price, so the data problem is on Amazon's end. I have no way to tell whether an item that is sold for $5000 is truly worth $5000 or not. I have tried implementing a check for this in the past using some statistics, but I decided it's better to leave some potential bad deals on than to remove them but also remove other really good deals. I've contacted Amazon's customer service about that particular item and they told me they would forward it to the right team, but I don't know if they have policies against ridiculous prices.
One thing that stood out in that story is how some people just thought he was depressed. I know someone who had sciatica and I think one of the hard parts is that it's not easy to see. On the outside you may look fine but you may be feeling the most excruciating pain of your life. This makes it hard for people to empathize with which further fuels the mental health decline. If you have back problems, I recommend the book "Back Mechanic". This book really helped the person I know.
I experienced sciatica for about a day and thought my life was over. I'd take a kidney stone in its place any time; with a kidney stone you at least think that by moving it might help (and no fear it will last forever).
Fortunately in my case I associated the sciatica to having too thick a wallet in my back pocket, and removing that fixed all. Strong recommendation to those reading here to avoid such carrying of a wallet.
I understand the sentiment, but $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business. I have a hard time thinking of a way it wouldn't be a loss given the added organizational complexity having those kinds of projects would bring.
I thought the entire purpose of "other bets" was to pursue ideas that have the potential to become $XXB/year revenue streams. So of course they want 'moonshot' companies.
> $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business.
That's the thing though, it isn't a waste of time.
One can hear very similar logic from people with investments. They will say "The stock market is returning X% / year and is way better than those bonds with only 3%/year. Investing in bonds is a waste of time."
They say that because they have yet to internalize the value of having a diversified their investments. Not everything goes up all the time.
It only makes sense for Google if the Search Ads business were to never ever lose its profitability. And yet, it is losing its profitability. As a result, Google has to aggressively cut back on expenses, remove projects, end of life products, etc as that cash cow slowly deflates.
Consider then the alternative where there are 10, 20, even 30 business lines within Google generating $10 - $30M of profit each. 30 businesses at $30M is only $900M, less than 5% of their revenue, but those businesses are SOLID and provide a supply of management talent, consistency, and some bucks to keep the lights on elsewhere.
That is diversification of execution risk. It works the same way investment diversification works, it adds other, less high margin, businesses to the portfolio that are all revenue positive.
A company like Google can use those businesses to experiment with alternate user support models, management schemes, policies, and communications. All of that helps the "main" company to mature in its thinking about how to be a business. Sadly, executives who have never had any experience other than one wildly successful business tend to think exactly like you do, "Why would I waste time on piddling little products when I've got more cash than I know what to do with being pumped out by my main business?"
Do you have any idea how insanely hard it is to create 30 separate $30M businesses from scratch?
Even with the weight of the Google brand, creating new businesses is HARD.
It'd be roughly 1,000X easier to squeeze an extra $900M in revenue out of search than it would be to incubate 30 new mid-size companies.
Instead of going on an insane boondoggle where your brand image is trashed by creating literally thousands of failed companies (the only way you're going to end up with 30 successful ones over the $30M hurdle rate)...why wouldn't Google just buy those 30 companies? They have enough cash on hand to buy 99.9% of Silicon Valley startups outright.
And even then, would the 30 companies they buy grow faster than their core business...or even the S&P 500 at 9% a year? Because otherwise they might as well just dump that money in existing products or return it to shareholders.
If Google buys a bunch of businesses that grow slower, then their valuation and stock price drops dramatically. If investors wanted to own a random sampling of 100 mid-size companies, they'd buy the appropriate index fund! They buy Google because they want a concentrated bet, not an index fund.
This is nowhere near as easy or simple as you think it is.
For all of Google's PR efforts around moonshots and only hiring "the best talent," a vast majority of their revenue still comes from only one product they incubated on their own, the google search engine. The next biggest bucket comes from external acquisitions (DoubleClick, YouTube, Android).
I think the fact that Google hasn't incubated any big success in the last decade is a good thing! It leaves more room for others to take their place. Why would we want one company to dominate everything forever?
I am aware of the difficulty. Google X is hardly "from scratch" however.
First, you have all of the infrastructure for a business already in place. Even when I was there it was straight forward to get resources allocated to a project.
Next, you have billions of "seats" in that users the world over are already using Google branded services every day, have a reasonably good impression on the brand, and typically a low barrier to "trying out something new."
Finally, you have a tremendous amount of smart, experienced, people you can call on for advice for free! I know a lot of people have left but when I was there it wasn't uncommon to have the argument about a thing settled by the person who invented the thing weighing in on the argument. While it became clear to me that Google and I were not compatible long term, it was still intoxicating to walk around bounce ideas of some really really sharp people who could trim months off idea research and development.
As a result of that, starting businesses within Google was akin to scoring in baseball where you got to start at third base (or maybe second base if it was a longer stretch). That is significantly easier than starting from scratch.
$900M/year is <1% of Alphabet's yearly revenue. I know you mentioned profits, but the OP mentioned revenue so I want to keep the same units because they're very different things. It could very well be that if it was $20M/year in profits, then those projects would not be considered failures.
If something happened to their core business, it's unlikely that those tiny projects (<1% of revenues combined) would save them. The more likely thing is that many of those small projects fail over time and it becomes death by a thousand cuts.
What you said is mostly correct and is exactly what they are doing. The only problem is that at the scale of a trillion dollar company, they need 10, 20, even 30 business lines generating $XB - $XXB of revenue each.
In the case that I am completely familiar with the business was returning $20M/year in net profit margin on roughly $180M/year in revenue. Google threw it away.
Their reasoning was that the resource usage to net profit numbers wasn't "good enough." The comparison was always search advertising.
Yup this is also the final thrashes of a dying company. Slow but surely Google will die and I can't wait to see other companies which are born. It's just evolution.
> Consider then the alternative where there are 10, 20, even 30 business lines within Google
They could not even succeed with one of their messengers, there are so many of them out there. What makes you think they will succeed with 30 business lines?
I think this is the wrong approach. If you don't want to deal with an X$M/year company, you can sell it. Google isn't too big to sell stuff are they? They still sell advertising space, afterall. So take it to an IPO, collect the proceeds and use them to re-invest in more moonshots.
There is as much reason to shut down a profitable company as to throw away gold. That's literally what you are doing, and no one is too big to throw away money.
Selling off is the obvious — and correct — answer.
But these companies were founded inside Alphabet, and grew within Alphabet's infrastructure. This is how they gained a decent chunk of their initial bootstrapping advantage, as described upthread by Chuck. To decouple them out into something suitable for sale is extra time and cost, and beancounters never like time and cost.
So, ironically, part of what makes these attempts possible at all is part of what ends up killing them.
