Pretty normal margin in some kinds of businesses, like supermarkets. Then again, supermarkets aren’t likely to see all their customers leave at the drop of a hat.
You are forgetting that tenured researchers often need lots of PhD students to actually do their research. So that ratio of 8 PhDs to a tenured researchers could actually be pretty good.
I know it’s not popular to bring politics into things on HN, but… From the outside at least, White House policy sounds like at least as much of a black swan event as COVID.
I realize very well the problems of following this line of thought. But clearly populism combined with propaganda isn’t working out either in a number of countries. Should we just stop thinking about causes and what could be done about it, because it’s uncomfortable to think about it?
Some people mainly come to political positions for emotional reasons rather than substantive ones. These people are generally easy to reach for populists and propagandists.
Many of the real problems in society, unfortunately, have no easy solutions and require very substantive evaluation, weighing expert opinions, etc. In the current environment it has become very hard to get a lot of people to even consider these or, if they want, elect someone to do it in their stead.
TLDR: populism + propaganda causes significant dysfunction in democracies, especially ones that aren’t winner-takes-all.
It’s just not as black-and-white as you say. Propaganda is doing a lot of harm to democracy and freedom in my country and the EU on a daily basis. Should we invest in education (that is generally already reasonably good, IIUC)? Should we leave it to commercial journalism, even the best of which are moving to clickbait headlines? Should we do nothing?
Interesting point. There’s wide acceptance of commercial censorship, but censorship for the common good (rightfully) feels like a slippery slope. But are they actually so different? Couldn’t the latter be done in a way just as purposeful? Or does it always lead to loss of freedom disproportional to its goals?
During the early days of the “sharing economy” trend, there was actually plenty focus on connecting people.
But at some point you need money to pay people working on these things. So you look at something that doesn’t replace the core social connection, but augments the experience. Like selling additional services such as insurance.
But it’s not easy to cover costs, especially in western countries where employees are expensive.
These days (I haven’t been part of it for a long time) I’ve noticed there are also subscriptions to be part some community, which works but of course also makes it harder to grow.
And investors who are looking for return on investment are also difficult in something that’s so sensitive to good will from users.
The price for the replacement is also higher if your battery isn’t actually in need of replacement. Basically apple subsidizes (compared to their higher pricing anyway) the other parts when replacing the laptop body to get the battery replaced.