jwc1

It's amazing how once you put a label on something, you start noticing it _everywhere_.

Someone pointed out "confirmshaming" to me a few years ago...and since then I feel like it shows up on > 50% of the sites I visit.

https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/confirmsh...

I agree with your core point, but I think it would be unfair to avoid noting some of the clear ways that SaaS has benefited users.

Accessibility: Individuals/businesses who couldn't afford a large, upfront expenditure for software but can afford the smaller, monthly expense now have access to the best tool for the job.

Flexibility: for sporadic consumers ("I use Photoshop/Illustrator once a year to make my Groundhog Day card"), the ability to subscribe for the one month of the year they use the product and subsequently cancel is incredible.

Could you share some examples of that occurring? To my knowledge, a lockup period is almost always a standard requirement from the underwriter (on any larger IPO), and in some states is even required as part of their Blue Sky Laws.

If a founder/VC wants to get out before the IPO, they usually just do so on the secondary market. Example: Benchmark cashing out a portion of their Uber stake to SoftBank pre-IPO.

https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answerslockuphtm.html

In a traditional IPO, there is generally a 90-180 day lockup period for existing shareholders (to prevent shares from flooding the market on day 1). This is one of the big benefits of a direct listing (see Spotify/Slack)...any shareholder can sell stock on day one.

I find a decent percentage of influencer marketing is still just affiliate marketing with a slightly different delivery channel.

Have you ever read about Prop 13?

Basically it set property tax rates at 1% of a property’s sale price and capped annual increases at no more than 2%.

The only time a house sees fair reassessment is when it sells...which means a lot of people end up sitting on land.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-friedersdorf-prop...

"Perhaps most perversely, Proposition 13 has made it harder, not easier, to become a homeowner. California has one of the lowest rates of homeownership (55%) in the nation, second only to New York and nine percentage points below the national average.

The pernicious incentives that led to these outcomes are obvious in hindsight. With property taxes near frozen, local governments began to see residential development as a liability and commercial development as an income stream. For 40 years, that perspective shaped which new projects cities approved. Homeowners, meanwhile, had a disincentive to move if they had a low property tax bill locked in. Finally, these relatively low property taxes made California an attractive place to undertake speculative real estate investments and leave valuable parcels of land undeveloped."

I think there's a great deal of evidence to suggest Capone was more than a run of the mill tax evader even though all they nailed him for was tax evasion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone#Saint_Valentine's_Da...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Outfit#Al_Capone's_emp...