> What do you expect to happen when you sign up for the subscription ink? If you don't pay for your subscription, the ink stops working.
I expect them to stop sending me more when I stop paying, not to sabotage what I had left.
I expect them to stop sending me more when I stop paying, not to sabotage what I had left.
Technically you are just renting the ink.
I use this service for years. I use the legacy free plan and have been printing for free for years.
As soon as somebody develops the technology they will make all the ink on your already printed documents turn invisible too.
It's only half a joke, if this becomes feasible I'm sure the business and marketing folks will have some urgent meetings to bring this along ASAP.
Our financials focused system is good at exerting pressure for people to do stuff, anything, but it fails miserably in promoting reason, instead creating narrow minds narrowly focused on The System itself rather than on the broad set of inputs our minds were originally evolution-made to handle. No wonder that than in turn those narrow minds are much more easily replaced by automated processes.
We keep calling people disregarding their humanity "bad people", but we never discuss the incredible pressures we put on people in the first place. If somebody doesn't focus on the financials we call them lazy and failures and many refuse to support them, we force people to think - and act - that way. Sure, in theory money could be made in better ways than, for example, "extracting value" from people who urgently need some drug, but fact is that this is not nearly as easy as it sounds, with much of the basic needs already in well-established hands and things people really need very complex to fulfill. Individuals and organizations with little capital can mostly only find some local niche, if even that. "You don't need to be an asshole" (to make money) is one of those "works for anyone" but it does not scale to "everyone". Even small local mini-entrepreneurs often have to rely on tricks and cheating and using the inexperience and lack of knowledge of their customers.
So, when we look at such developments, please, let's not stop at "those are horrible people". Just look back at the explanations for why Pizarro's was so brutal, if I read that correctly the conquerors themselves were put under huge pressure due to... debt. We can't expect people to act ethically, to their own big disadvantage, while having to live in a highly competitive system that forces them to make money.
well, different times and standards etc. but there is a quite bit of difference between brutal genocide to get out of debt vs. not allowing your printer to work unless you keep your subscription with our company so our revenue keeps coming in.
No, same mechanism. Yes, different contexts lead to different outcomes, why would that even need to be mentioned? Did you read what I wrote? Sometimes I hate Internet discussions. Instead of working with one another, the goal seems to be trying to find an interpretation that make sit possible to attack a post/position. If only I can find one flaw in your argument - by using my own most uncharitable interpretation that you forgot to explicitly prevent with several pages of small print - I'm contributing!
How do the different outcomes due to different contexts, which obviously will turn out very different in almost every single different context, make my statement less valid?
But that said I do think they actually are a bit different, lots of people won't kill someone even if they will pick up a wallet on the street and take the money instead of giving it back to the people. Your example implies people who will do one bad thing for monetary incentives will do the worst thing. Which is why I found it funny and pointed it out, not to imply that people don't do bad things for monetary incentives, just genocide probably needs a little extra push than that.
Because your statement is black and white. By your logic, if we don't provide literally 100% of everything needed to survive without requiring anything back at all for every person the system is evil.
Real life is shades of grey. Society requires some incentive for people in it to work in order to function. Of course, we can argue about the specifics, but you'll quickly release that if we provide everything for everybody that there is nobody left to do the providing (at least with today's technology).
I wonder if it's at all possible for us to develop and install a system that prevents us from exhibiting behaviors learned the hard way by our ancestors (most of which were not even human).
Maybe our digital descendants are able to get it right, if we don't also ground them in survival!
Capitalism is a brutal system. It’s becoming more obvious the longer it runs. I don’t have answers, sadly. Only the ability to see and recognize the failure.
I personally abuse the hell out of HP subscription service as I’m on their legacy free plan. 30 pages a month, and run a full set of cleaning cycles each time because I print so infrequently.
If I rent a car and stop paying for it, if I were to say "I expect them to leave me with the car I rented and just not provide a replacement when it needs to be replaced" people would look at me like I was trolling. The nature of renting a car, and the prices involved in renting vs buying are great enough that people understand the market.
With ink, they are doing something similar. You aren't paying $1/month (their lowest tier plan) to buy a cartridge of ink until it runs out. That pricing would be unreasonable compared to the current market price of ink (regardless of what that market price should be if we had better competition). Anyone thinking they found a hack to get HP to give them ink cartridges for $1 is like my example thinking I found a slightly used 2022 car for $500 because I can rent it and then stop paying and get to keep the car.
In this specific case, they aren't taking the ink back, not worth it, and instead creating waste by disabling it. We could say there market shouldn't exist and outlaw it to reduce waste, but that's a different argument than to argue they are selling you a cartridge of ink (technically 2+ for black and color) for $1.
1. Pay $1 for a subscription, print like crazy until your first set of cartridges are empty, then immediately cancel
2. Pay $1 for a subscription, immediately cancel, then keep printing with your first set of cartridges until they're empty
Today, HP allows 1 but not 2. Why?
My body, my choice.
And you would throw it all away because of some personal libertarian principle? This isn’t only about what you would like to be able to do in any given moment, it’s what this ability does to society as a whole. Your ability to someday be able to sell yourself into slavery has some value (for the principle of the thing, if nothing else), but it is certainly not worth the above-mentioned effects on society.
(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131936>, from two years ago.)
My body, my choice.
day after my death: huh, Bill Gates didn't pay, but luckily my wife can always sue for the money!
Fighting a billionaire is fun!
Now we have something else to aim for rather than policing people's bodily autonomy.
It's morally repugnant and unambiguously reprehensible to buy any of the flesh of another person.
A market with only sellers and no buyers is ineffective at best, and given the moral reprehensibility of any buyers that do appear, the entire market is tainted and wrong. Any and all of the infrastructure to support such a market is wrong. Anyone involved in buying, aiding, or abetting slavery or organ running is guilty of committing one of the most grievous and wretched offences known to humanity.
But yeah, it's absolutely your right to do with your body what you want. It's just a complete wrong for anyone else to do what they want with your body.
In Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance, Frederick is indentured to a band of pirates until his 21st birthday.
That particular wording coming back around to bite him when it's pointed out that he was born on February 29th in a leap year...
What if I pay $1, run the ink cartridge dry the first day, then immediately cancel?