Welcome to how humans work. The concept of "fair" isn't about economic utility, unfortunately.

I think buyers of the iPhone would have been reasonable in assuming that their device would remain at its launch price for at least three months. It's really atypical to drop the price on electronics so quickly, and it really does slight early adopters. If I were one, I would be pissed.

I am so pissed that my million dollar cancer treatment has come down in price to $500. I mean, sure, I got treated two months ago, and I would be dead right now had I not, but that wasn't the point. Living is nice, but what I really wanted from this cancer treatment was to live while others who couldn't afford it died. I guess there is some small consolation in the fact that a lot of people died during a couple months there, but this whole thing just pisses me off. I don't know if my slight, smug satisfaction at their deaths was worth the million bucks. On a normal technology schedule, I would expect at least a year of deaths; didn't Apple know we were counting on that? I hate you Apple.

Because buying an iPhone was a life or death decision. It's really not that serious, but this is not a good analogy at all.

Basically the iphone had a $200 smugness cost built-in that provided way more than $200 of smugness, so all the smug seekers made out well--for a while. They forgot to factor in the fact that the smugness thereby provided was contingent on the absence of a near-future "now who's smug?" award for those society deems "not so smug as an early iPhone adopter," which, a some short time after all the shaken chicken-bones had settled, is exactly what happened.

Let's say the iPhone was given free today instead of just price-reduced: that would make you even angrier! Imagine the gall--other people getting things! Why, if we carry out your logic to its conclusion, you'd be happy if people had to pay more tomorrow than today, as though taking from others somehow justifies and internally authenticates your existence.

Sounds like someone is bitter he didn't get an iPhone and all his rich friends did...

Just kidding. I agree with your point. It's well documented that humans get psychological satisfaction out of having more and better stuff than those around them, not just content to have the stuff to begin with. I suspect that a big part of the appeal of the iphone was the bling factor, the exclusivity of having one and showing it off during the usual weekend mating ritual. If you had spent all that money to be quirky and unique (since that is really what Apple marketing is selling), wouldn't you be pissed if suddenly your unique feature became mainstream?

You can read more about the Ultimatum game that tests this here: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9...

it was still funny

I'm getting modded to hell here. Some real Apple lovers in the crowd. Not allowed to express an opinion anymore?

A) I didn't mod you down.

B) No one is forcibly stopping you from expressing your opinion. We can even still see your comment. Whining "look at me I'm being censored" when people disagree with you is dumb.

How you mod me (or not) is your perogative. However, I think the practice of modding people down on a piece of pure opinion is about as dumb as it gets. I make a habit of modding up anyone in the ditches (0 karma or lower) who made the 'mistake' of expressing an unpopular opinion. Why silence opposition?

Save the downmods for posts with poor quality.

That's a bit dramatic. How does downmodding "silence" you?

I think it's time to add another principle to the evolving news.yc list of house rules: don't add comments that do nothing more than complain about people downmodding you. This whole branch of the thread is a waste of pixels.

Ohh, let's spice up the Leaders page. Those are (I know how hard they are to earn) hard earned karma points. People should at least get to show their web app if they are in the leaders section. Or change the colors. Either way, it's a point of pride among those on it. Or let's increase the size of the Leaderboard to reflect growing YC traffic, or have a 'Most Karma' this month.

Anybody listening?

I'd love a free link without nofollow on the leaders page. I'm not sure that it's actually a good idea to have rewards for the highest karma, it seems like a bad idea to make the karma overly meaningful.

I also put this on the features page, but I think separating submission karma from comments karma would also be a useful expansion. Perhaps a few columns of leaders using different metrics would work. For example, top leaders, top submission leaders, top comment leaders, and then maybe some time ones, like upcoming comment leaders, etc.

Who honestly cares about Karma? I find it useful if I want to skim the posts/comments for a good one, but holding it up like it was some kind of achievement just distorts the whole point of the site, which is to keep up on things in startup-land. When you spend your entire day working on your karma score, you might as well go play WoW. No offense Paul, but WoW has way better 3d graphics!

I agree this little detour is pretty wasteful, but while we're on it, I might as well clarify. The silencing comes by way of a disincentive to post your opinion, at least until it's clear that no one's going to downmod you for it. How powerful that disincentive is hinges mostly on how much you care for your karma. Even if you don't care at all, it's an expression that the community's not really welcoming you/your opinions. Ultimately, I think it leads down the path of group think, but maybe that's too dramatic as well. Anyway, I'm more than done here. My apologies for the derailing.

I usually find that the community sorts itself out anyways. I mod up a lot of posts I find at 0 points.

If I get modded down to 0 or -1, it usually gets back up to 1 or higher. If I didn't, I probably deserved it.

If someone cares about his karma points, it may discourage him for commenting again in the future.

Maybe the best solution is to eliminate the "leaders" page and each user's karma score from public view.