Optimism and Deception

Environmentalism

Over the last 70 years, less than 10% of plastic waste has been recycled - it’s uneconomical. Recycling shifts attention from the environmental impact of plastics and their overproduction to the consumer’s willingness to recycle. Reducing and reusing is a much better environmental strategy. #environmentalism

Betting (and Gambling)

The Submarine. Paul Graham. www.paulgraham.com . Apr 1, 2005.

Many people rely on social proof to form opinions; therein lies the power of PR.

PR firms are not dishonest for they need good reputation with news outlets. But PR firms serve overworked reporters with selective truths.

The firms feed the same story to different publications at once. Readers see similar stories in multiple places and assume a new trend has come.

The Shady Economics of Buy-One-Get-One Free Deals. Zachary Crockett. thehustle.co . Feb 17, 2019.

BOGO goods are usually low-demand, non-efficient, lacking in quality and/or close to the expiration date. The BOGO deal is usually a 50% discount off of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). And oftentimes, this price is artificially marked up to begin with.

• MyPillow offered BOGO deal on their pillows, but really just doubled the price of the first pillow.

Law of diminishing marginal utility: consumers will buy two of something when the word ‘free’ is involved, even when they only need one — and the second item often ends up in the trash.

AT&T restricted FaceTime from running on some data plans. Justifications?

• FaceTime is preloaded, therefore 100% of users have it
• FaceTime wasn’t efficient in network usage.
• The capacity was asymmetrical, but video chat is symmetrical

Interestingly enough, AT&T required Apple to greenlight it, which they did. AT&T worked with top developers to teach network etiquette.

AT&T to pay $60m in settlement for slowing cellphone data on unlimited plans. www.reuters.com . Nov 5, 2019.

• Complaint filed in 2014 by the FTC: AT&T charged smartphone users for ‘unlimited’ data plans, but throttled them after ~2GB within a month.

• AT&T: None of these allegations were ever proved in court. We were fully prepared to defend ourselves, but decided settling was in the best interests of consumers.

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