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Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by mc32 on Sunday November 29, 2015 @06:45PM (#10646698)
This will sound a bit off kilter, but except for truly emergent situations (injury, medication, etc.) it's good to have some "friction" otherwise we could end up with a population demanding immediate satisfaction and perfection from everything, whereas many things will remain imperfect and unrealized. Why can't my government change right now the way I want it! Why are they serving someone else in need and not me!

I have a fear we're on the way to creating a whole class of people who are totally dependent on the system for everything. There will always be people who are well rounded and know the relationships between things (i.e. know where the sausage comes from)

Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by arjie on Sunday November 29, 2015 @07:04PM (#10646776)
Why shouldn't we demand immediate perfection? Why should we have to choose between serving someone else and serving me? Why shouldn't governments immediately change?

All the problems with having these things today are implementation problems not fundamental issues.

Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by mc32 on Sunday November 29, 2015 @09:16PM (#10647223)
We want a delay between what we think we want and what we get from government, else we get majority rules democracy which is not far removed from mob-mentality government.
Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by function_seven on Sunday November 29, 2015 @11:25PM (#10647696)
I think you're stretching a little to get from faster merchandise delivery to mob-rule government.

Or, your objections would have been valid against the railroad and the telegraph as well (both of those reduced friction tremendously).

I get the gist of what you're saying, but I don't agree that artificially limiting technological innovation, or improvements in efficiencies is beneficial at all.

Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by mc32 on Monday November 30, 2015 @12:42AM (#10647959)
I think railroads reduced times to human times (from weeks/months to hours/days --but it wasn't a snap of the finger kind of response.

The objection I have is more with the psychology rather than the physicality of it. It makes things more disposable. You lost a sneaker, we get it replaced in minutes. It's allowing people to gorge on consumerism. It also puts the local shops at a disadvantage. But, mostly, it removes the barrier to thinking about buying more. You don't have to think about waiting till tomorrow, or two days from now, or having to walk twenty minutes, or get out and take transit, or jump into a car to go satiate the impulse. No, all you need is your desire (and buying power) and it's fulfilled.

Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by function_seven on Monday November 30, 2015 @01:10AM (#10648053)
Fair point. This just happened to me yesterday. I needed a 3.5mm to RCA cable to connect my TV to the receiver[1]. The one I had wasn't long enough, so I found one on Amazon and ordered it for the next day.

By the time it was delivered, I had already found my long-lost extension cable and didn't need it anymore.

Waste of money and—to your point—if I didn't have that option I probably would have searched a little more around the house before resorting to buying a new one.

Ultimately I still want to see these things advance, though. Whatever mechanism that would set lower bounds on delivery times would be worse than the problem it would be intended to prevent.

[1] Never mind why the TV only outputs audio on a 3.5mm jack, kinda cheap.

Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by TrevorJ on Sunday November 29, 2015 @07:14PM (#10646816)
That ship sailed with plumbing and the electric grid.