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Given the similar nature of the people doing the Harry’s thing I’m not entirely certain the people are in fact outside the order.
Should we be calling you, “Auric?”
I once worked for a distributer of durable goods who bought (in large quantities) from the manufacturer at 25% of list price, sold to retailers at 75%, who then sold to the end users at 100%. Since then (oh so many years ago) there have been many innovations in distribution of goods that have been of benefit to the customers.
Eh, not a good example. Socrates also managed to get caught on the wrong side of politics, and when those who hated his guts for siding against them took power, they merely trumped up an excuse.
One word: “plastics”.
sorry. Couldn’t help myself. Btw, cool model you have there.
It’s also not a truly new innovation. When you’re breaking into an ossified market you aren’t creating the market ex nihilo; that limits both how crazy you have to be to try it and how insanely rich yo ucan get if everything goes well. “Amazon” makes Jeff Bezos. “Amazon, but for razors” will still make you money, but not richest-man-in-the-world money.
Another thought which I didn’t get into in the body here has to do with the differences between various entrants into the new field. You can make money being a youtube star, you can even make a living at it. But odds are you won’t make Pew Die Pie money that way.
Not until I can afford that Rolls, no.
I’m not seeing how that’s inconsistent with what I wrote. But I haven’t made nearly enough study of greek philosophy, so perhaps I’m wrong.
The racketeers didn’t care about his philosophy; they cared about him praising their traditional enemy of Sparta and his students going so far as overthrow the Athenian democracy and instituting the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants. Though his philosophy mostly consisting of “You can’t answer my questions so you’re an idiot”didn’t help matters.
Isn’t that most philosophers?
Right, but I was saying that the “two randos making things cheaper” model might actually be supported by the existing grifters.
I don’t know, I think the example of the failed 90s web businesses is enough for that. The main difference is that the barriers to entry are lower.
I also think the “disruptors discovering old ideas” deserves a mention here. An example being AirBnB owning real estate instead of matching owners and buyers.
There are other disruption factors and modes. You cited Newton up above as one – figuring out an entirely new way to do something within an already established framework. I’ve watched my father and others rack up patents by doing this – solving old problems in newer and cheaper ways. It’s not always working around the bureaucrats, sometimes it’s working around the other engineers who are stuck in creative ruts, and taking existing tech but recombining it into different patterns.
I think that still counts as disrupting a racket, though. It might not be that the engineers are stuck in a rut, it might be that the rut has proven profitable and they have no reason to do it better.
A customer of mine called that “The Outhouse Mentality”.
You try to sell them on a better way of doing things, and they balk at the cost, or are just too lazy. You then ask them “You still use an out house? Cheaper than indoor plumbing, isn’t it?”
http://ricochet.com/363955/archives/the-outhouse-mentality/
That right there? That’s brilliant.
As I’ve said before, my grandparents still had an outhouse until about 1990, when their kids finally got together and bought it for them.
Then again, as a practical matter I wouldn’t mind going outside for at least some of my bathroom trips, but the Man doesn’t always agree with it.
This article’s wisdom reminds me of how the PC movement came about due to efforts by companies like NorthStar, Microsoft, and Apple.
IBM’s top people were all: “Why would any company bother to build and promote computers for the home users? After all, there aren’t any home users.”
To be fair, until the Internet came along in the 90s most people had no use for them. They were really expensive, fairly crappy game systems.
You could do 3D vector based games on PCs long before the consoles could do them. F-19 Stealth Fighter (late rebuilt and updated as F-111 Stealth Fighter), Mech Warrior, Flight Simulator, and sundry other games and sims were wonderful on the PCs of the early 90s.
I was thinking more mid-80s when I got my first.