I like this comment, and I'll pitch in my two cents on it.
Suppose Joe Salesman sells your friend Al a used car and it turns out they got a bad deal, the car was a lemon. What lesson should be learned from this?
a) This was an honest mistake. We expect this kind of variance in used vehicles, and the market works out kinks. I should feel comfortable buying a used car from Joe, should the need arise.
b) The information that this car was a lemon was available to Joe, who did not share it with Al because Joe thought Al was a sucker. I am better at diagnosing cars than Al, (or better at reading people), and I should feel wary about buying cars from Joe.
c) Joe only sells lemons, his business model is to rip people off, and there's no way to get a good deal on a used car from Joe. I should look elsewhere to buy a car.
d) This describes the business model of all used car salesmen, I should not buy a used car from a business that sells used cars.
e) This describes all business models when there is information symmetry between buyer and seller. I should not buy anything whose utility I cannot bound from below. (I need a warranty or similar arrangement from the seller).
There are obviously other options here, this is just to illustrate the spectrum of assumed adversariality. There was an article on HN recently declaring that salesman were more likely to get ripped off. I think this is because salesmen tend to think the answer to this question is (b) because salesmen exclusively interact with people who think that the answer is either (a),(b), or (c).
It's not just salesmen, actually. I think the phenomenon is equally well represented in people with business degrees. The core belief of an MBA is that you can subvert the regulatory structure, and people's psychology, to get them to give you more money for the thing than it costs you to make the thing. That's after all, where MBA income comes from. I think this comes much more naturally to people who think that the answer to the question above is (b).
I think by and large, whenever you hear that their company decided to purchase anything at all (but particular some sort of service), your instinct is that the purchaser was a gullible idiot, and that things would obviously work much better if no one was allowed to buy anything.
Personally, I do not think that ferocious skepticism is necessary to solve this problem. I think that it is much more cheaply and easily solved by having a moratorium on buying shit. Mozilla does not, EVER, need to be a customer.
Does Mozilla still need to be the seller or partner in deals with commercial entities (e.g., Mozilla getting paid to be the default search engine or LLM within the browser UI)?
If so, would ferocious skepticism within Mozilla be appropriate in vetting and monitoring those deals?
Suppose Joe Salesman sells your friend Al a used car and it turns out they got a bad deal, the car was a lemon. What lesson should be learned from this?
a) This was an honest mistake. We expect this kind of variance in used vehicles, and the market works out kinks. I should feel comfortable buying a used car from Joe, should the need arise.
b) The information that this car was a lemon was available to Joe, who did not share it with Al because Joe thought Al was a sucker. I am better at diagnosing cars than Al, (or better at reading people), and I should feel wary about buying cars from Joe.
c) Joe only sells lemons, his business model is to rip people off, and there's no way to get a good deal on a used car from Joe. I should look elsewhere to buy a car.
d) This describes the business model of all used car salesmen, I should not buy a used car from a business that sells used cars.
e) This describes all business models when there is information symmetry between buyer and seller. I should not buy anything whose utility I cannot bound from below. (I need a warranty or similar arrangement from the seller).
There are obviously other options here, this is just to illustrate the spectrum of assumed adversariality. There was an article on HN recently declaring that salesman were more likely to get ripped off. I think this is because salesmen tend to think the answer to this question is (b) because salesmen exclusively interact with people who think that the answer is either (a),(b), or (c).
It's not just salesmen, actually. I think the phenomenon is equally well represented in people with business degrees. The core belief of an MBA is that you can subvert the regulatory structure, and people's psychology, to get them to give you more money for the thing than it costs you to make the thing. That's after all, where MBA income comes from. I think this comes much more naturally to people who think that the answer to the question above is (b).
I think by and large, whenever you hear that their company decided to purchase anything at all (but particular some sort of service), your instinct is that the purchaser was a gullible idiot, and that things would obviously work much better if no one was allowed to buy anything.
Personally, I do not think that ferocious skepticism is necessary to solve this problem. I think that it is much more cheaply and easily solved by having a moratorium on buying shit. Mozilla does not, EVER, need to be a customer.