>>They are fully capable, as am I, into taking into account tradeoffs and changing our opinions.
That may be, but people generally are incentivized to be far more charitable to their position than the opposition. Reading the opposition from the oppositions own formulation will be a far greater defense of what they actually think in terms of tradeoffs.
>>Like I have an aesthetic interest in disallowing corporations from implementing psychological manipulation to prevent me from e.g. quitting their services.
Ben himself in the article you are referring to says this is shady, but he also points out that its generally not nearly as bad as say the NYT which requires you to call via phone to unsubscribe, and that the conflict with the regulators is comparatively heavy handed and doesn't take into account the tradeoffs he wants to discuss in his article.
>>So, fine, he's not a person I want speaking for me or, like, affecting any policy on the matter whatsoever.
Ok, not really up to you though. Ideas enter the marketplace and compete with each other. The ones that people find the most persuasive end up affecting the policy. Clearly his view points are not affecting the policy that much seeing as he is directly responding to regulation that is occurring and antithetical to what he believes is correct.
And yeah of course it's not up to me, that's why I'm griping in a comment section.
If you're looking for tech-skepticism read any mainstream news outlet. Even the majority of articles on tech centered news like ARS or TechCrunch are from a tech skeptical viewpoint.
It has a bit more anti-tech vibe as one of the co-hosts comes from NYT. I think it's a good complement to Stratechery.
The average person would not have any issue with have a couple more buttons to press to cancel prime. Thinking this is the view of only “rich, amoral technologists” is just wrong. Extending that dismiss anything else they speak about policy is the point of view of an extreme zealot.
Most people like Amazon overall. The process to cancel prime is orders of magnitude easier and more clear than countless business that force phone calls, letters or in person to cancel. Most people would shrug if you told them about this case.
Like, my relatives will complain about e.g. things being hard to quit and literally not realize it was designed for that. It's really weird.
What I've found is that it's not at all hard to find someone who comes to conclusions that frequently make me feel 'satisfied'. But that, if I'm honest, it's often exactly the kind of echo chamber the parent post is warning about, precisely because the 'analyst' is avoiding transparency about their priors - and in fact avoiding any examination of them at all. And without that transparency and curiosity, the 'analysis' is really just very basest form of partisan politics, which is to say "We'll support each other as long as we agree."
I wish you luck in finding thoughtful and transparent analysis, though!
Stratechery's analysis is, when it broaches on ethics, based on ethics shared by a subset of rich people and (imo) amoral technologists and, I think, pretty much no one else.
Like I have an aesthetic interest in disallowing corporations from implementing psychological manipulation to prevent me from e.g. quitting their services. Ben can see no problem with Amazon's arcane process for quitting Prime. So, fine, he's not a person I want speaking for me or, like, affecting any policy on the matter whatsoever.