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Comment by DeusExMachina | Hacker News Reader

I often see comments like this one that misunderstand value for how something is achieved.

Value is decided by the market according to the utility of the service. I happily pay $22 per year for Pinboard to keep a few bookmarks with tags. That's also storing "tiny text files" but I could not care less. I could even implement something similar myself. And yet, I find the value it provides worth paying.

Another, more extreme example. I am part of a $5000 business program. Last week, I got a single piece of advice that I consider already paid for the entire program. The delivery was 20 minutes long. It was not even something original invented by the lecturer, but it can be found in some books. And again, I don't care. The value is in the impact, not in how the advice that was discovered or delivered.

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I didn't misunderstand "value for how something was achieved" I said it was expensive.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/16/22178026/microsoft-authe...

Microsoft have launched a beta password manager

-------------------------------

Lastpass (€3 per month)

- Password Manager

- 1GB of encrypted file storage

-------------------------------

Office 365 (€6 per month)

- Beta Password Manager

- Office Suite

- 1 TB Storage

A year from now:

"I do not understand why the only companies that exist are Google, Apple and Microsoft? Where is the competition?"

A year from now: "Suddenly I understand why individual consumer choices are not the basis for maintaining a balanced economic system."

Conglomerates that do B2C for money will always beat upstarts as their customer unit average cost will be lower and per unit attributable revenue will be higher.

If the only thing that a customer cares about is paying the minimum amount, the customer should not be surprised that their choices would be limited to conglomerates.

Independent restaurants are a lot more expensive than national chains and make a lot less money than the national chains. If one's only goal is to feed oneself in a restaurant, one is better off going to chain one.

Fine but that’s not the parent’s point. You shouldn’t buy from local stores, local restaurants, or small shops because of some notion that you’re sticking it to large companies. You do when, for you, their products and services they offer have better value for you.

If you choose a worse or more expensive product because it’s from a small business then you’re only making yourself worse off.

> Fine but that’s not the parent’s point. You shouldn’t buy from local stores, local restaurants, or small shops because of some notion that you’re sticking it to large companies. You do when, for you, their products and services they offer have better value for you.

That's not correct: the part of the value that you get from buying from local small businesses rather than conglomerates is that you are not buying from a conglomerate, even if the local product could be considered inferior by some measure.

That's true for people who try to politicize every aspect of their lives, but this is a toxic attitude and, as the grandparent post said, you are only hurting yourself.

> misunderstand value for how something is achieved.

I find this line of reasoning offensive as it assumes that people who genuinely disagree with me don’t understand.

I think it’s more likely that people understand and genuinely disagree. It’s dismissive to just not respond to someone’s values and rationing and I think leads to less discussion and thus more disagreement.

It’s very likely that people place different values on things and I think to have conversation we have to get to common ground and then build from there. If different people miss the meat of an argument then I think it’s not as interesting or useful.

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