Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49378472

Points: 7

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49157022

Points: 2

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Crazy.

What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995603

Points: 3

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920234

Points: 6

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48846536

Points: 2

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Counterfeit goods are clearly bad and a problem, but knockoffs that aren't counterfeit seem to be a good thing from an economics perspective, right?

A knockoff that isn't counterfeit isn't deceiving customers -- it is just competing and competition drives benefits to consumers.

There are many knockoff goods that reach comparable quality as the original, luxury good. We shouldn't support the idea of brands for their own sake. Today, many luxury brands are actually degrading in quality as the only thing customers are buying them for is the status signal more than the actual quality.

What is critical is a customer is informed about the trade offs between the goods to make an informed decision.

When I recently was buying camera gear, I bought some of the peak design bags and accessories (which are amazing). I then also bought some knockoff gear that is compatible with their system. Real:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F94FQRB $29.95 Knockoff: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FYCB594Y $5.01

I knew what I was buying in both cases. I wouldn't trust the knockoff clips to hold my $3K Canon, but I am ok with the knockoff clips to hold an old, light film camera I also brought on the trip. I made an informed decision and my choice also helped contribute to competition between vendors, which is good for the market as a whole and consumers broadly.

If everyone used these chrome extensions, economic theory predicts that prices would rise for consumers and quality of the original brands would degrade through reduced competitive pressure.

What could be more informative for consumers that simply eliminating knockoffs from their search results would be to increase information. Maybe adding a visible indicator of which company is the established or originator of the design and which are knockoffs would be better than simply filtering them out.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822063

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

"folk economics" implies it is by untrained people.

Milton Friedman's famous quote of "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" shows that he deeply believed the relationship between inflation and money supply, and one certainly cannot call Friedman a "folk economist" considering he won the Nobel prize in economics and was a professor at the University of Chicago.

Note: I am not saying he is right or supporting his belief. I am merely stating that such a belief is not a "folk economics" belief. This belief is still very prevalent in the freshwater schools of economics. [1]

As a personal anecdote, at Ronald Coase's 100th birthday party, I personally got Gary Becker and Richard Posner debating a very related topic (whether and by what degree the velocity of money of fluctuates and whether helicopter drops of cash would have been better during the early days of the money supply collapse in 2008/2009 than just giving money to the banks). In a room full of Nobel Prize winning economists in 2010, there was a very rigorous debate on the topic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_and_freshwater_econo...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48353347

Points: 6

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352376

Points: 4

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48351666

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

It is actually extremely important that no one “owns” a nonprofit in the way shareholders own a corporation. A nonprofit has no equity owners. It has directors/officers with fiduciary duties, and its assets must be used consistently with its charitable/public-benefit purpose.

But to be clear, that is in no way equivalent, even metaphorically, to it being "owned by the public".

“Public benefit” does not mean “whatever the median taxpayer would vote for” or “whatever the government currently approves of.” It includes many causes supported by small, unpopular, eccentric, religious, ideological, scientific, or advocacy-oriented communities, so long as the organization fits within an exempt purpose and does not operate for impermissible private benefit.

simple examples can easily elucidate this. One can found a nonprofit for a purpose that society generally disagree with. For instance: - a nonprofit to advocate for the rights of hemorrhagic fevers as living organisms - nonprofit museum devoted to preserving a deeply unpopular ideology’s historical artifacts - a nonprofit to educate the public about an eccentric scientific theory - a nonprofit advocating for legal recognition of some fringe moral concern

All of these could be legitimate nonprofits under the law, even though we may deeply disagree with them. This is by design.

I agree with you that this is an important question.

I disagree with you that, "Musk is as good as a vehicle as anyone else because he is bringing to the court a real-life problem that needs to be decided"

Standing is itself a very important and critical concept. If anyone could sue over any “important” public issue without standing, courts would be asked to referee disputes that are normally handled by elections, legislation, agency rulemaking, oversight hearings, and public debate. We don't want the courts to be such arbiters of so many matters and want their purview to be more narrow by design.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48191824

Points: 1

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48175553

Points: 1

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174939

Points: 4

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