I was thinking the same thing:
The next step following this line of thinking would be trying to ban all torrent clients, because they CAN be used to download copyrighted material.
I believe he has the soul of a gamer. (heck, he ran a regular poker game at Harvard).
And when he was immersed into the money-making game, he was all in, willing to do anything to win.
But when you eventually beat the game, you don't get that thrilled anymore, there's no big challenge ahead. You can play for a while to see how far can you go, but it ends up being boring after a while.
So, I think he moved on to basically a real life version of reversal Plague Inc (instead of trying to infect everyone, he tries to beat a disease). This is a harder challenge in many ways, because he needs to deal with tons of geopolitics, international affairs, research and development, human behavior, etc.
If you see it from that perspective, you can still see that he is still a hard player, but this time, he is playing a game that can be beneficial for everybody, not just himself.
It's interesting how my mind had some trouble processing some of those crater images, because I saw initially some of them as circular buttons, going up from the surface, instead of craters going down.
I had to stop looking, and look back several times before my mind could actually see some of those pictures correctly.
If it's the same now as it was back when I last used it (more than 15 years ago), it should have a search box. You search within the app itself, it shows the results and you select the file you want to download. You don't need to use an external service.
I see the claims that this won't produce inflation with extreme scepticism.
And I say this, living in a country that has had something similar to a basic income for years, although not fully universal (universal for kids, and people below certain income line), the vast majority of people get it and ended up resulting in that around half the public budget goes to social expenses. Every year that bag gets bigger, deficit gets bigger and having more currency flowing, inflation gets bigger and bigger.
So, this income is increased and salaries get adjusted, and it ends up in a never-ending cycle of income trying to catch up with inflation.
It's very hard to get out of that situation once you are in it, because now people depend on this money, and the political cost to cut it is so enormous that nobody dares trying to do it. It would mean the end of their political careers.
Maybe Germany can show us that it can be done, it will be very interesting to see the results. But from what I've experienced, this is not as simple as many people think it is.
Because that's how the market works for buying anything.
It's like saying: how is it better to have multiple supermarkets to buy the stuff i want, if they offer the same product at different prices? Well... it's an option, nobody forces you to do it. You can always go to the same place, and know that there's going to be times when you pay more, and times when you pay less.
But you also have the chance to check on other store's offers and buy there if you want.
> How is having to navigate N stores
You don't "have to". In the end, more offer = better for consumers. It's up to each individual person to decide if they want to find better prices or just go to their default place.
You seem to prefer giving people less option, because multiple stores are an inconvenience to YOU.
You know what would be a better solution for that? The same one that happens with some applications now on Android: publishing an app in multiple stores. Many apps are simultaneously published in Play Store and other stores.
For example, you could have a game published on the publisher's store. If you buy it there, the price is X. Simultaneously, you could have the same app published on Apple store for $X + 30%.
Then, you let the market decide. Increasing competition is better for consumers.
If you prefer the convenience of buying from just one store, it's OK, you can buy everything from the Apple store, and pay the premium for that. But that would also let the door open for people who want to choose where else to buy their stuff.
To be fair, Trader Joe's or any other store does not require me to go through them, without any other alternative, every time I want to modify or use in new ways my stuff after I bought it.
The problem arises when you are a dev trying put food on the table.
It's easy to talk about how other people's work should be given for free when you have a source of income every month, and your basic needs are covered.
But if the author is trying to live of his work, as it's the case here, it's a decision that should be respected.
And Yes, you can disagree with him, and in that case, you can vote with your wallet by not buying it and using any other app.
As an example, check pictures before and after being millionaire of some rock stars, actors, sportsmen, etc and you will see how money can really change the looks.
Take this picture before after of Cristiano Ronaldo, for example:
> The alternatives require more reuse than actually occurs.
Where I live, we banned plastic bags in 2017. Every store at first sold cloth bags, for buyers who didn't bring their own. Some weeks later, everyone had several reusable bags, that they would bring when buying stuff, not a hard thing to do.
Those bags last even years, so I don't understand why you think people wouldn't reuse them. They actually are quite better (they don't make my fingers hurt, won't break so easily, etc).
