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Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by ragona on Monday May 06, 2019 @01:58PM (#19842002)
I wonder about this often. I contend that we are getting better at extracting money from people. Is there some sort of line we will cross at which point the majority of people are psychologically unprepared to resist spending their money in a way that causes them financial harm?

We understand that friction causes consumers to consider their purchase more carefully, so we've worked hard to lower friction, and this has a statistically noticeable increase in users who complete their purchase.

I'm genuinely curious whether we'll eventually reach some sort of threshold where the bulk of the economy is simply driven by overriding our better instincts.

Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by fwip on Monday May 06, 2019 @02:40PM (#19842429)
> the bulk of the economy is simply driven by overriding our better instincts

Not to take away from your point, but you could probably argue that advertising pushed us past that point decades ago.

Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by ragona on Monday May 06, 2019 @03:06PM (#19842653)
I completely agree! I’m not sure how to define the horizon, so I’m not sure whether we’ve passed it. It’s not clear to me exactly how effective advertising is, and its effectiveness also clearly oscillates over time and between demographics!
Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by njarboe on Monday May 06, 2019 @05:28PM (#19844066)
And easy credit makes it much worse when you can go into debt to buy something you don't need or really want.