I have this graph I like to show with "risk to company posed by changes" and "benefit to company posed by changes" on the y axis and "company entrenchment" on the x axis. The "benefit" graph starts out nearly vertical but quickly levels off. The "risk" is the inverse, starts off horizontal but quickly ramps up to infinity.
So I think that ZIRP has little effect on the "just say no" phenomenon, that's more about company size.
Sometimes I think about the bizarre path computer technology took.
For instance, long-term storage. It would stand to reason that we'd invent some kind of big electrical array, and that's the best we could hope for. But hard drive technology (which relies on crazy materials technology for the platter and magnets, crazy high-precision encoders, and crazy physics like floating a tiny spring over the air bubble created by the spinning platter) came in and blew all other technology away.
And, likewise, we had liquid crystal technology since the 70s, and probably could have invented it sooner, but no need, because Cathode Ray Tube technology appeared (a mini particle accelerator in your home! Plus the advanced materials science to bore the precision electron beam holes in the screen grid, the phosphor coating, the unusual deflection coil winding topology, and leaded glass to reduce x-ray expose for the viewers) and made all other forms of display unattractive by comparison.
It's amazing how far CRT technology got, given its disconnect from other technologies. The sophistication of the factories that created late-model "flat-screen" CRTs is truly impressive.
The switch to LCDs/LEDs was in a lot of ways a step back. Sure, we don't have huge 40lb boxes on our desks, but we lost the ultra-fast refresh rate enabled by the electron beam, not to mention the internal glow that made computers magical (maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, like people in the 80s who swore that vinyl records "sounded better").
Someday, maybe given advances in robotics and automation, I hope to start a retro CRT manufacturing company. The problems, such as the unavailability of the entire supply chain (can't even buy an electron gun, it would have to be made from scratch) and environmental restrictions (lead glass probably makes the EPA perk up and notice).
Taking this a step further, it's logical to conclude that society itself is a constant war between rich people, who use their wealth (influence/power) to enlist the poor in their attacks on one another. Taking it another level, we could say that "society" itself is merely a side-effect of this war, in fact it is the current state-of-the-art weapon in this struggle. If something better than capitalistic society comes about (such as, most obviously, human-level AIs and robotics), the rich will not hesitate to abandon the society strategy.
My introduction to Pascal and Assembly Language were after finding one of those huge paperbacks on the shelves of a Salvation Army in North Huntington, Pennsylvania. This was long after the book had lost all relevance. But before that I was stuck thinking about programming in terms of Java and C++ OOP. Small things that changed the course of my programming career.
Laravel is never going to be competitive with Django/Rails simply because PHP as a language is just not as easy to master as Python/Ruby. There, I said it. Lots of PHP fans write these articles about how PHP is catching up in terms of usability, but nobody is choosing PHP in 2024 (other than truly uninformed people who are just picking their project language at random).
The one area where PHP is useful in 2024 is for prototyping a website quickly. As a one-person team, PHP without a framework (and without OOP) is the fastest way to build a fully-functioning complex site. I built a massively complicated site this way, in very little time. This is great because if it ever becomes popular, I can simply hire developers to rewrite it in the latest framework du jour (probably Next/Nuxt/whatever)
1. My entire network is struggling, even the ones who have jobs are worried. Despite being universally acclaimed and vouched for by my past coworkers, it seems to have no impact. Companies don't trust their own employees references right now.
2. Maybe this is changing, but it seems like entrepreneurship is at an all-time low. Nobody has ideas, everyone just wants to go to sleep at a comfy 9-to-5. Maybe bootstrapping a company is so outside of people's comfort zone that they can't even fathom it.
Libraries and publishers have always had a love/hate relationship. I'm sure book publishers are no happier that their products are being loaned out for free than the MPAA is that movies are being loaned out for free, or the RIAA is that music CDs are being loaned out for free (all of these are currently done by physical libraries in the USA).
This has never been a real problem in the past, because libraries were limited by how much they could loan out, due to having a limited number of library staff, and a limited amount of shelf space.
The Internet Archive is also similarly limited, due to having a limited budget to hire engineers to scale up the platform to support more users, and a limited budget for digital storage space.
But it's enough that it really changes the equation, and I think that if the IA wins, we'll see less physical books printed, and the ones that are will have an increased price tag. I expect that the government will adjust the laws to keep the balance, somehow, however.
I think that's very true. However many forums die due to the owner not being able to pay the bills or stop spam. Xenforo + anti-spam addons ain't cheap, google ads won't take just anyone and the payout is very low. Or they just get bored with running a final fantasy fansite. This is where reddit becomes more appealing because if someone deletes a subreddit you don't have to find an entirely new site to join, someone will just recreate it.
Of course Reddit is busy trying to make it's VC owners back all of their billions, so its vision has become heavily compromised.
I haven't been laid off, but due to the economy I've been trying to come up with something I can do to become self-reliant. I've built a forum platform, and I've been buying up ___forum.com domains and pointing them at it. So far it has been costing me lots of money, and no users are showing up, but it's my vision and I'm not going to give up so easily.
So I think that ZIRP has little effect on the "just say no" phenomenon, that's more about company size.