It’s really hard to operationally distinguish between “tricked” and “found a framing that encourages voluntary transactions”. You yourself say you get value from identifying as an audible subscriber, and that you probably captured some surplus (implying you got more value than the $100 you spent).
It’s simply always going to be the case that there are multiple ways of bundling, charging for, advertising, discounting, and delivering goods and services, with different mechanisms designed to attract different kinds of buyers, and not always a perfect match for your actual reflective preferences. Framing these mechanisms as “tricks” implies that you should avoid or be upset at it. Framing it as “offers” simply means you should choose in ways that best fit your desires.
Oh, also you paid $100 for NOTHING. The real “trick” here is convincing you to pay anything at all for limited permission to use a mathematical construct (sequence of bits).
[ disclosure: I work for the vendor in question, but am not in any way speaking for them, and I have no knowledge of their thinking or behavior on this topic. ]
Overall, this comment seems to be insinuating that because it’s hard to tell when you’re being tricked, it’s bad to call this a trick. But people trying to trick others have a strong incentive to make the trick look like something else that is not a trick. So, unless we just want to give up on noticing when we’re being tricked, we’re going to have to look at the hard cases.
Oh, also you paid $100 for NOTHING. The real “trick” here is convincing you to pay anything at all for limited permission to use a mathematical construct (sequence of bits).
What’s the relevance of this point? How is this more of a trick than selling land, or the combination numbers to open a safe containing some valuable object? Information is the foundation of all property arrangements—and pretty much all other coordination too.
I’m confused. Do you think it’s bad/a waste of time to examine tricks as a concept, or that I was pretty seriously tricked (while actively looking for tricks), which seems to me like it calls for spending more time on the concept?
Not a waste of time, and probably not tricked any more than you thought. I was trying to make the point that it may not matter that it’s a trick—if you’re examining the value and believe you’re capturing some surplus in the transaction, it sounds like a win. I apparently did so badly. The last part was 2⁄3 joke and 1⁄3 reminder that value is purely subjective in the first place.
It’s really hard to operationally distinguish between “tricked” and “found a framing that encourages voluntary transactions”. You yourself say you get value from identifying as an audible subscriber, and that you probably captured some surplus (implying you got more value than the $100 you spent).
It’s simply always going to be the case that there are multiple ways of bundling, charging for, advertising, discounting, and delivering goods and services, with different mechanisms designed to attract different kinds of buyers, and not always a perfect match for your actual reflective preferences. Framing these mechanisms as “tricks” implies that you should avoid or be upset at it. Framing it as “offers” simply means you should choose in ways that best fit your desires.
Oh, also you paid $100 for NOTHING. The real “trick” here is convincing you to pay anything at all for limited permission to use a mathematical construct (sequence of bits).
[ disclosure: I work for the vendor in question, but am not in any way speaking for them, and I have no knowledge of their thinking or behavior on this topic. ]
Overall, this comment seems to be insinuating that because it’s hard to tell when you’re being tricked, it’s bad to call this a trick. But people trying to trick others have a strong incentive to make the trick look like something else that is not a trick. So, unless we just want to give up on noticing when we’re being tricked, we’re going to have to look at the hard cases.
What’s the relevance of this point? How is this more of a trick than selling land, or the combination numbers to open a safe containing some valuable object? Information is the foundation of all property arrangements—and pretty much all other coordination too.
I think it was a half-joke, trying to illustrate how you can frame arbitrary things as “tricks” without it really getting you anywhere.
I can be intentionally obtuse about lots of things without it really getting me anywhere.
I’m confused. Do you think it’s bad/a waste of time to examine tricks as a concept, or that I was pretty seriously tricked (while actively looking for tricks), which seems to me like it calls for spending more time on the concept?
Not a waste of time, and probably not tricked any more than you thought. I was trying to make the point that it may not matter that it’s a trick—if you’re examining the value and believe you’re capturing some surplus in the transaction, it sounds like a win. I apparently did so badly. The last part was 2⁄3 joke and 1⁄3 reminder that value is purely subjective in the first place.