> There is such a thing as negative value, if you do something that is a commodity poorly, then you are actively less valuable relative to competitors that do a good job of the same thing.
I think negative value would look something like bombing someone. Negative relative-[commodity-]value does not imply negative value.
Also, software is not a commodity at all. There's no cost to reproducing it.
> You can' charge anyone extra for doing this commodity stuff right.
I'm not sure what you mean by "commodity". I think you mean "commonplace" or something like that.
Commodities only have the commodity-value (i.e. price); actual value (i.e. something's worth/weight/utility/what something means to you) is unrelated to commodification. Most valuable things in your life likely have no meaningful commodity value. Very much including the concept of friction.
If only commodities are "valuable", the word has lost all value.
It's not the deciding factor yet. You can bet the IP hammer is going to swing in again once the big players have been decided just to keep the small players out.
> The other piece of "evidence", Cal-Maine's quarterly P/L, is also useless, for all we know they decided to invest in less capital equipment than previously in Q3 2025
There's no serious moral or value distinction here; if you insist on pointing fingers you can, but at the end of the day the profits we see celebrated come with higher costs, and the continuing-to-increase wealth inequality in this country confirms that not everyone sees the benefit.
> You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.
> They always feel slightly like academics reading into things too much when it's totally possible they were meant platonically or like a brotherly type of love.
Why on earth are you looking for definitive proof of specific claims when it comes to history? That just seems like a fool's errand.