News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Renting Horsepower. Parent comment

Re:Renting Horsepower by ajross on Thursday May 04, 2023 @02:22PM (#35819914)
> Can you get better performance from your Mercedes EV through another provider? No?

No, but you can sell it and buy a Tesla. Having more features is just "selling a better product". By that standard any optional feature on a market-leading product is "rent-seeking", and that's silly. Is the App Store rent seeking? Is selling junk on Fortnite rent seeking?

No, that's just "selling products". Rent seeking is a specific form of market distortion, and the concept just doesn't apply to consumer products. It's about stuff like real estate control or regulatory capture. As always Wikipedia has a great page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Renting Horsepower by sleepybrett on Thursday May 04, 2023 @02:32PM (#35820035)
Tesla does the same fucking thing.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Renting Horsepower by r00fus on Thursday May 04, 2023 @02:38PM (#35820134)
One of the reasons I didn't buy a Tesla. Though to be clear with Tesla it's not a never-ending sub, it's a flat fee and transferrable.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Renting Horsepower by owisd on Thursday May 04, 2023 @02:31PM (#35820030)
For optional features it’s rent seeking if they’re charging much higher margins for the optional extras than for the base product.
[ Parent | on HN ]