• 7 Posts
  • 52 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Yep, that’s the right train of thought.

    I used to also dislike them, due to their limitations vs cash. But eventually realized that I liked having the excuse to go out of town to a fancy restaurant, or splurge on games I might otherwise decide I don’t need right now.

    Strictly speaking, cash is better, yes. But gift cards can influence people to do things that might make them happier than typical rational or habitual decisions.



  • Yeah, it’s such a shame. This should be the silver lining of ubiquitous data harvesting.

    The problem is that they aren’t really serving individual consumers - the main customer for these big attention merchants is other businesses. Amazon and Steam et al could focus more on helping you surface great products you love, but they undercut that by helping sellers get visibility they want (almost regardless of product quality).

    It’s certainly not simple still. They’re not incentivized fully to serve your interest, and even if smaller companies are, it’s hard.












  • There’s not much distinction between currency and product is there? Most products are just other forms of currency - eg, goods can be sold back for money. Services usually save you time. So when you say product, you just mean what is time exhanged for?

    The most common product of time is probably money, the next most ubiquitous type of currency. But then there are also more abstract things like enjoyment, knowledge, rest.