A man who destroyed his multimillion dollar company in 10 seconds (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/gerald-ratners-billion-dollar-speech <comment><USER3> So I've actually done a fair amount of research on this speech, and there a few skipped points most times people report on it.

Firstly the audience loved the jokes, they laughed at them all. It wasn't like he delivered them to stunned faces and immediate shock. The only thing that brought him down was a newspaper reporter noted it down and newspapers pushed it as an artificial scandal. Everyone buying 5 pound earrings knew they were of very low quality, they just didn't want it being shouted at them in their daily news.

Secondly it wasn't even the first time he had publicly made these sorts of jokes, in fact it wasn't even the first time they had been published in the papers.

This was entirely a newspaper driven downfall, they wanted to see him fail and wanted to sell papers about a scandal, so they did.

<comment><USER4> > it wasn't even the first time he had publicly made these sorts of jokes, in > fact it wasn't even the first time they had been published in the papers.

> This was entirely a newspaper driven downfall

That first point is good evidence that the jokes weren't very responsible for what happened.

But it seems like it's just as good evidence that newspaper coverage also wasn't very responsible. Why attribute it to the newspapers this time, when they tried and failed before?

<comment><USER5> It wasn't the newspapers, 1991 was the peak of the 1990 recession in the UK:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession#Civil_un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession#Civil_unrest)

<comment><USER6> Raters was well placed amongst jewellers to ride the recession. I remember the news coverage of this well - the decline in sales was rapid and directly attributable to the speech, and the implication that his customers were mugs.

<comment><USER5> Based on what? they were selling cheap costume jewellery to the working and lower middle class, both of which were exceptionally squeezed by the 10 years of thatcher that had just ended.

Luxuries are typically the first thing to go for those close to poverty in a recession.

I would argue that Ratners were uniquely placed to suffer the worst in a recession, and that they hadn't collapsed during the aftermath of Black Monday is the bigger surprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kudos to the guy for bouncing back though !!

"After losing everything, he toiled in misery for years — but he eventually made an improbable comeback. In 1997, he took out a £155k (US$203k) loan on his house, built up a health club business, and sold it for £3.9m (US$5.1m). He then used the profits to start an online jewelry company. (The Ratners Group rebranded as Signet in 1993; today, it is the largest diamond retailer in the world.)"

<comment><USER8> While he made a successful comeback (however far from his first success), saying he toiled in misery for years is a little bit exagerated. Indeed, he was still the owner of a house (and probably of other goods). And this house was big enough to have a value probably equal to a today million dollars. That's not what I call to be toiled in misery.

<comment><USER9> Whether or not he toiled in misery is independent of how much money he had. It only depends on whether he toiled, and whether he was miserable doing so.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. And I dare say living in a million dollar house is not so comforting if you've just forfeited $125m worth of profits year on year :-)

<comment><USER11> What happened to diversification??

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The modern examples cited weren't nearly as bad:

\- Lulumon didn't seem to be hurt by Chip Wilson. In fact, the "notoriety" made me aware they they sold men's clothes, too, and I went there and bought some great athletic wear.

\- Many customers appreciated Barclays' warning not to "pile up debts." That would give me a favorable opinion of a company that offers lines of credit, not a bad one.

<comment><USER13> Lululemon is genius, their quality is great, but the branding is even better! They revolutionized the exercise wear industry, were single-handedly responsible for "athleisure" and killing denim sales!

<comment><USER12> and maybe it's true that some styles of clothing are "not for everyone"

<comment><USER14> His comments weren't even controversial, as they echoed beliefs that are held by those in the fashion industry. Lots of clothing companies make it plainly obvious not everyone is supposed to buy their products.

<comment><USER15> He went into it in detail when he was interviewed by Guy Raz. Wilson defended himself by saying his comments had nothing to do with obesity, but rather material. He is a fabrics guy, and his clothes were being used to shape, a la Spanx, when they weren't built to shape at all.

It's a fascinating interview and one of the best in the "How I Built This" series.

<comment><USER12> I heard a tape of the original interview, too, and I was shocked that certain people with an agenda used it to ruin him. He very gently suggested that wearing them very tight and using the garments as a "spanx"-type girdle to shape wasn't how they're supposed to be worn. Plus-size activists hit the roof, for unknown reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always been amazed at how important it appears to be to lie about selling crap. I find that invariably, businesses who compete on price make it iff they _say_ it's good stuff, even if everybody knows it isn't.

Eg Holland has a number of cheap shoe chains. Schoenenreus and Scapino both breathe an air of cheapness, and one went bust and the other is struggling bad. Their direct competitor Van Haren sells exactly equally crappy shoes, and everybody knows it, but they are thriving, simply because the store feels like a proper high quality shoe store.

Or take ALDI, which competes on price and nothing else. In every country I visited has the words "the ALDI principle: low prices, high quality" printed on every storefront and on every _page_ of their paper promo flyers. Granted, little of what they sell is "total crap", but little is of truly high quality either. Their bread goes stale faster and their coffee is bitter. This surprises nobody.

It appears to me that this weird dichotomy is the only way to successfully compete on price. Make it perfectly obvious that you're cheap and of mediocre quality at best, while loudly shouting that the quality is high. Nobody believes you, but nobody wants to buy from you if you're honest about what you're selling.

I find this surprising because blatant lies don't generally work that well in the long term, so why do they here? I generally _hate_ dishonest messaging. Why don't I mind here? I buy ALDI and Van Haren all the time.

<comment><USER17> > Their bread goes stale faster

Interestingly, I wonder why this would be a metric of lower quality bread rather than higher? I mean, the obvious way to make the bread last longer would be to pump it full of preservatives, and the white stuff you buy pre- sliced in packs lasts for ages though it is not really bread and the quality is obviously low (or is it? The slices are so smooth, the bubbles so even and the crust not hard at all)

When I have been to France and bought a baguette in the morning, obviously it is normally eaten right away because fresh and delicious, but if you leave it until the afternoon it is already stale and chewy. Does that imply low quality?

(I do buy some food from Aldi, though I prefer my bread from the baker across the road :)

<comment><USER18> Common baguette is regarded as a low quality, industrial version of "real" bread (in France). Some traditional bakeries still use ancient methods (and flour and yeast), the bread is good to eat for more than a week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would say this is not the Ratner effect but the Othello effect (as in Reversi not Shakespeare)

Ratner merely put down the last piece that flipped almost the whole board. Marketing is usually the uphill struggle to persuade anyone looking at the board that "white is winning" when it is really anyone's game.

But eventually one piece is played, often a public failure, and everyone realises the board was destined to be black anyway.

It's much harder to play this marketing game when you are selling costume jewellery or other fashion lead items. And the odds of someone flipping the board are high without you realising it.

But people play it that way anyway.

<comment><USER20> That board didn't have to flip. Ratner could have just kept selling the brand instead of stating his true opinions to a media circus. And the brand would have retained its value, perhaps all the way to today if he could have kept the unit economics alive.

What made the brand successful wasn't what Ratner thought it was.

The word at hand here is 'hubris'. Successful people slowly lose touch with the rest of the world and eventually make a colossal screw-up.

<comment><USER19> No eventually it would flip - it happens all the time. It's just this time the boss of the company laid down the final piece so it sticks in the mind

<comment><USER21> The re-branded company he was forced out of is now the largest diamond retailer in the world- so I'd say that the problem was him and his mouth, not an inevitable flip in fortune.

<comment><USER22> It's also possible he wasn't a _real_ problem, but when his remarks caused a temporary (big) problem for the company, other stakeholders saw the opportunity to take control.

There's probably a counterfactual universe where he remained in his position, he learned a valuable lesson on keeping his mouth shut in public, and the company re-branded and recovered on a similar trajectory.

<comment><USER23> Zuckerbergs infamous "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumbfucks" springs to mind. While I'm sure there is some amount of long term damage, you'd be hardpressed to say it has crippled Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is really applicable to any products that are valued based on their marketing efforts instead of intrinsic value or utility. Costume jewellery, designer clothes, some kinds of art, all derive their value from the story the creators tell. The most expensive art seems to be that which has the most thoroughly verified, or at least the most believable story.

I like to think I'd prefer Apple products over the competition and pay a premium for them even if I didn't know Jobs or Ive, or watched the marketing videos - but I'm not entirely sure these days. I Tim Cook said Apple products were super cheap to produce, or Ive said he didn't design any of them and had some intern do it, would sales tank?

<comment><USER25> Price, value and practical utility are not really correlated.

A Rolex and a Timex will both tell you the time. An iPhone and a $129 Android will do mostly similar things. A Toyota Camry and a Porsche will both get you to work.

But practical utility and value aren't necessarily the most important thing.

Apple intuitively understood this, at a time when other computer companies didn't. Lots of people look at a Macbook and see an overpriced computer that costs a few hundred dollars more than a similarly equipped PC, albeit in a pretty case. But that's the point - lots of people want their computer to look good!

Apple products are relatively cheap to produce - and they make an enormous margin on their hardware. But it doesn't feel cheap. The boxes are substantial. The finishings are high quality. The user experience is taken care of. Other PC makers might have been much cheaper, but you notice that to do so, they've cut corners in places.

I don't think the lesson here is in what he said, but rather that he made his customers feel like idiots. Only a fool would believe that a ring for £1 has the level of quality and craftsmanship that you'd get with a £100 ring, but you don't want to feel like a dumbass for buying it. You don't go to McDonalds with expectations of buying a Michelin Star meal. You go there for something warm & tasty, that comes out quickly.

<comment><USER26> I feel the argument but I think I would need different examples to better understand.

There are reasons for owning a watch other than "tell the time," which could include "tell the time accurately without ever needing to change batteries," or "tell the time and date," or "tell the time while scuba diving."

Rolex may be overkill but different watches serve different roles, and it's not just brand name alone that makes Rolex cost orders of magnitude more - <USER2> many ways, it really is just that much better of a product. Same for Camry vs Porsche.

An Apple product, particularly a Macbook, on the other hand, not so much. It's a nice aluminum chassis over crappy, cheap internals that break so often people throw around words like "class action" to describe the keyboards. It's like cramming a knock-off Timex movement into a Rolex case.

<comment><USER27> > Rolex may be overkill but different watches serve different roles

A Casio is going to tell the time better than a Rolex. Quartz watches are much more precise, and they're powered by batteries, so last much longer without any maintenance. Rolex is simply in the segment of high quality, hand made mechanical watches. A segment people like for reasons other than its precision in keeping time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Michael O'Leary being incredibly rude is a key part of Ryanair's branding. If you're paying £19 for a two hour flight, you'll always have the sneaking suspicion that the airline is skimping on maintenance. O'Leary makes it absolutely clear that they save money by treating their passengers like cattle. He carefully cultivates the image of a man who utterly despises his own customers, but is far too miserly to allow an aircraft to crash.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O%27Leary_(businessman...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O%27Leary_\(businessman\)#Controversy_and_reputation)

<comment><USER29> _He carefully cultivates the image of a man who utterly despises his own customers, but is far too miserly to allow an aircraft to crash._

That image will keep them going right up until they have a fatal crash, at which point the press, the government, and victims' attorneys will use every word he has ever said about being cheap to crucify him and the company. Given their volume of flights, a fatal crash is statistically likely to happen at some point. I would be very careful ever making such statements if I were in such an industry.

<comment><USER30> Why would Ryanair ever have a crash? Their airplanes are usually quite new. The EU hasn't had an accidental plane crash in ages. Have you ever flown Ryanair?

<comment><USER31> Hang on, the EU has had heaps from small (the Piper that went down over the Alps _yesterday_ and the plane carrying Emiliano Sala come to mind) to large (Air France 447).

<comment><USER30> I meant large passenger planes. And I meant accidental crashes within the EU territory not extraterritorial. I believe the safety record is pretty good, but can't tell you it's perfect

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This reminds me of Adam Osborne, who tanked sales of his new Osbourne 1 by prematurely bragging about the future Osbourne 2.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect)

<comment><USER33> Interesting that much of what sunk Osborune was actually a sunk cost fallacy from the $150K of assembled Osbourne 1 boards... if they had been sold off to a liquidator or hobbiests, they might've still turned a profit on em in the end.

At the very least they could've scrapped the boards and taken the tax writeoff.

<comment><USER34> Companies like Osborne and many others in the early-80's microcomputer game were built by engineers who had taken a second mortgage. So when the cash ran out, there weren't second chances via creative finance. Many ended up going back to their old high-paying jobs to pay down their debt and keep the house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Remind me of the recent case where a person (Google tells me that her name is Maria Butina) got busted as a Russian spy after she had a habit of bragging that she was a Russian spy when drunk.

<comment><USER36> And George Papadopoulos bragging, kicking off the investigation:

> During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, > George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, > made a startling revelation to Australia's top diplomat in Britain: Russia > had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi- russi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia- investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html)

People love to brag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I did a ratner with a girl once. She said something like "well you have good genes anyway, right?". I listed a few of my imperfections. She said "oh", and went away.

It was a good lesson.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think the more interesting lesson to learn from this was how Ratner was able to deal and cope with the public embarrassment following the mishap. It reminds me of this TED talk where Jon Ronson talks about how public shaming has gone out of control with the advent of social media: [https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_what_happens_when_onlin...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_what_happens_when_online_shaming_spirals_out_of_control?language=en)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the best "public shaming" talk I've seen are the ones given by Monica Lewinsky. When you consider that Monica Lewinsky was 22 years old during the time of the scandal, a lot of the stuff going on was simply outside of her control.

Seeing things from her perspective is pretty interesting, to say the least: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7Eh6JTKIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7Eh6JTKIg)

John Oliver starts the discussion, but there is a Lewinsky interview which is very eye-opening for me.

<comment><USER39> I never understood why Lewinsky got ridiculed that much. If anything she was a victim in the whole thing. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER40> How is she a victim?

<comment><USER41> You can debate if Lewinsky was a victim of Clinton but she absolutely was a victim of Linda Tripp, who had her own vendetta against the Clintons. Tripp manipulated her, secretly recorded their conversations, lied, betrayed her confidences, and served her up to the machinery that was working to take down Clinton.

<comment><USER40> I almost agree, but Tripp didn't put that blue dress in the freezer.

<comment><USER41> When Lewinsky told Tripp that she wanted to have the dress cleaned, Tripp manipulated her into preserving it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In the 90s there was a popular, now-forgotten CRM/bookkeeping system for MS- DOS called Vega. When they launched version 2.0, the founder/CEO boasted to the press about how 2.0 was old hat, and how they were working on 3.0, which was going to be so much better. Subsequently, almost nobody bought 2.0, because the current product worked well enough and they wanted to hold out for 3.0. I believe the company went under as a result.

<comment><USER43> I lived through that exact thing a few years ago. Company never recovered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > so why did he do it?

This is the most interesting question, which the article doesn't answer.

<comment><USER45> He'd made the same jokes in speeches several times before, and it had gone down well with the audience.

Presumably he just didn't consider the possibility that the press would think it worth making a story out of.

<comment><USER46> I don't get it. So he made these jokes infront of shareholders just for kicks? Why would someone even say this infront of anyone, I don't understand. I am starting to think he might have been under the influence.

<comment><USER47> Shareholders and customers are basically on the opposite sides of a trade. All public companies have this problem to some degree: they want to tell their shareholders "we figured out how to offload stuff that we buy cheap onto unsuspecting customers, thereby making more profit for you". Meanwhile they want to tell their customers "look how wonderful and high quality our products are". These days this problem is solved with code-speak that wall st people understand but which sounds relatively benign and boring to cuswif they happen to see it e.g. "margin expansion through input cost reduction".

<comment><USER48> It is an excellent point about "code-speak" as a tool to be open with experts without pissing off clueless customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Article mentions that they had to change their name to "The Signet Group" ... the now parent company of Zales/Kay/Jared. I'd be interested to learn more about that transition

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signet_Jewelers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signet_Jewelers)

<comment><USER50> Indeed, in the UK they own H Samuel and Ernest Jones - with exactly the same business model and value as Ratner's. So you could argue it didn't have much long term impact.

<comment><USER51> Well they closed hundreds of shops in the years immediately following, and already owned H Samuel back then. Not sure about E Jones, which is a little more upmarket anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This situation sounds like more of an indictment of the media and sensationalist journalism more than the entrepreneur himself. People make mistakes and say stupid things sometimes, after all, they're human.

Expecting leaders to be perfect 100% of the time will only result in leaders that are good at appearing perfect.

<comment><USER53> I think you can expect a CEO of a company not to call their own products "crap".

<comment><USER52> Maybe from a marketing perspective, sure. But from a truthfulness perspective, I think you'll find that most people are annoyed by the fake opinions that come from most businesses. Indeed a number of companies have been successful specifically because they talk like real human beings and readily admit the strengths and weaknesses of their products.

<comment><USER54> > Indeed a number of companies have been successful specifically because they > talk like real human beings and readily admit the strengths and weaknesses > of their products.

I'm curious - can you name a couple?

<comment><USER55> Dominos used the lousy quality of their pizzas to market a revamped recipe.

<comment><USER53> That's not quite an apples to apples comparison. CEO of the jewelry store was saying that his current products were crap. I'm assuming Dominos was saying "our old recipe was crap, new receipe is good."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> What kind of jewelry did people think they were getting for a few quid?

<comment><USER57> Of course, everyone who bought it already knew it was crap. It's the same thing for buying $15K engagement rings. Everyone knows it's a stupid use of money and that the rings have no value. Same goes for clothing, cars, and many other things.

These types of products succeed because of a shared delusion. Take fashion for instance. Everyone believes some clothes are more fashionable than others. The way you dress says a lot about you but why? It's simply because other people think it does. If the delusion runs into reality from the person hawking it, it can collapse quite quickly.

<comment><USER58> That's a far leap from engagement ring cost being the result of society sharing a delusion and believing there is a delusion with some clothes being more fashionable than others.

Psychology has a definition named the halo effect and it's very real. A person definitely gains advantages in society when they appear more attractive than less attractive. Naturally people associate good health with attractiveness and it's hard wired in us for finding a healthy mate compared to an unhealthy mate. Good choice of clothing for the frame of a person can enhance personal features and make a person look better than if wearing something less fitting. So there is some benefit & gain that can be made with understanding fashion of clothes as a real benefit. Is the advantage based on a delusion of a person being more healthy than another? Sure, but it isn't because people intentionally have a delusion about one shirt looking better than another.

<comment><USER57> I absolutely agree with some clothing is used for health/sexual/wealth signaling and it works to some degree. But these simple ideas don't nearly explain fashion. If fashion didn't include a huge amount of delusion, it would converge. It wouldn't shift with each generation.

We are more than hardwired to find the most capable mate. We're also hardwired to pick up social cues so if a large enough group of people believe something, we believe it too. If everyone you knew started wearing those MC Hammer pants tomorrow, how long would you hold out? If people suddenly and entirely stopped wearing ties with suits, would continue to wear the most unnecessary accessory ever? Why does everyone in tech dress so similarly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Having contempt for your customers is not a good long-term business strategy. Some people get away with it for a while, but eventually they get found out.

</comment><comment><USER60> This should be a lesson for adolescents who wonder why people tend to get less and less "edgy" as they grow up.

Just takes one moment of too much edge to lose the gamble and end up throwing everything away.

<comment> seph-reed I think the adolescents might be on to something with that. I tend to do a good job of keeping my unpopular opinions between me and close friends, but I can't say I'm thrilled with the dependency on nepotism that's creeping into my life.

Perhaps being edgy is the best way to force oneself into self reliance, and self reliance being the best way to hold ground against corruption... maybe the edgelessness of "adults" is just a sign of forfeit within a corrupt system.

<comment><USER61> Being "edgy" is a symptom of still having a mindset that there are railings between you and the abyss, and/or someone whose purpose in life is to tackle you before you go over the "edge". Believing that you can avoid it in the long run, while fearing you're not an adult if you stay where it's safe.

<comment> seph-reed There are some interesting adventures over the edge.

<comment><USER61> Once you've been there, you no longer focus on the boundary so much. Because the tension between going over vs not going over is resolved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> What I find most fascinating is that a multimillion dollar company was destroyed simply because the owner told the truth. Imagine if fast food CEOs were honest about the quality of their food instead of just parroting marketing bullshit.

<comment><USER63> I rarely eat at the big fast food chains--and it's usually because I have no other options. But what's the "truth" about the quality of the food?

The CEO could quite honestly say that their goals are consistency, speed, food safety, and affordability. Quality? I expect the honest response would be something along the lines of 1.) Millions of customers apparently like our product and 2.) We try to deliver the best quality product we can subject to our customers' other priorities. The CEO probably believes this to some degree or other. They're not trying to deliver a high-end steakhouse experience. McDonald's isn't even trying to deliver a Shake Shack experience--which maybe costs 2x (at least)?

<comment><USER14> I eat McDonalds rather frequently for lunch because there's one nearby, a double cheeseburger is $1.89, and has 26g of protein and under 500 calories. I think they taste fine; I wouldn't pay more for a better tasting one.

I'm pretty sure nearly every McDonalds customer thinks the same way. They want quick, cheap, safely prepared food that tastes good enough to eat.

<comment><USER63> I pretty much can't stand them personally--except for the fries and maybe a couple of breakfast items. But I readily admit I'm a bit of a foodie. I'm certainly not going to begrudge others who find them a good value or even, gasp, like them.

<comment><USER64> I would also identify as a foodie. But I don't always need a 12 course tasting menu, and sometimes a dollar cheeseburger with a mild and predictable taste is a good source of calories.

<comment><USER63> Fair enough. I just find McDonald's sort of ick. I'd rather (and am in a position to) spend a few bucks more to eat something I actually enjoy. And I'm happy to just skip an ick meal.

But that's not a value judgement. Just how I personally prefer to eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> What I don't understand, is how it wasn't immediately apparent this stuff was junk? You couldn't possibly think that it was equal in quality to much more expensive competitors. I guess it's just the case of not being real, until someone says it.

<comment><USER66> Diamonds, especially the recent craze around discolored ones might be a good comparison. They are valuable mostly because of years of shrewd marketing. If DeBeers started telling the truth, they could drop in value pretty quickly.

<comment><USER67> I was absolutely floored when I started seeing advertisements for 'chocolate' diamonds a few years back, and even more floored that people I knew just HAD to have them.

I had dealt with 'chocolate' diamonds for years, I currently have hundreds in my wood shop! My father works as a machinist, and brown, low-quality diamonds are their abrasive of choice for many jobs. They're (or rather, they were) super cheap because they were such low quality. I always swiped a handful when I visited him at work as a kid, because they made great pellets (they were exceptionally tiny and really hard) for my slingshot. I had a whole jug of them and just forgot about the things.

And now here we are.

<comment><USER54> Just look at the mania for wearing torn jeans.

<comment><USER68> At least jeans manufacturers weren't marketing based on the unblemished workmanship of their jeans. Their typical message is "Jeans are worn by rugged, individualist people. You want to be a rugged independent person, right?" And I think that torn jeans can fit into that. Like, a farmer might rip his jeans and keep wearing them or something, so ripped jeans might make you look even more rugged and individualist.

Chocolate diamonds are a direct contradiction of regular diamond marketing. If you go to great lengths to talk about how important clarity is when justifying your diamonds' prices, it's particularly silly when you start selling _the least clear diamonds possible_.

<comment><USER54> Black pearls were worthless until some enterprising jeweler made a thing out of them being black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> All the guy did was be honest, and its not like he revealed anything people didnt know already. Seems like an emperors new clothes kind of situation.

<comment><USER70> You can't offend anybody more than by telling them a truth they don't want to hear.

If you insult someone with something that is clearly not true, they will brush it off.

But tell the truth they don't like and you will be hated more than anyone.

This is coming from someone who was frequently hated for saying the truth, because I come from a different culture and hadn't figured out how to navigate human interactions in the west. Especially when it comes to points that are related to people's identity formation (jewelry being a part of that)

Or as a favorite song says:

When the truth walks away

Everybody stays

Cause the truth about the world is that crime does pay

<comment><USER71> I guess the working class buyers knew they were buying cheap stuff. They just don't want to be humiliated or joked for doing so.

Often people buying these women's jewelry are men. A lot of women care more for their men who take time out and care to buy anything for mush more than the price itself.

Why humiliate them this way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> > Elon Musk (right) has drawn comparisons to Gerald Ratner in recent years

The 1980s British businessman who Musk most reminds me of is not Gerald Ratner but Robert Maxwell.

<comment><USER73> Really I don't recall Elon doing any of the really shady shit that Maxwell did.

<comment><USER25> You should take a closer look at Elon Musk (starting with some of the sketchy shenanigans at Solar City).

<comment><USER73> Your probably to young to recall Maxwells shady dealings in the political/spook world (some people think that is what killed him)

And also stealing hundreds of millions from pensions funds that lead to wholesale reform of the pensions industry in the UK

<comment><USER25> Yeah, both are shady AF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-raccoon I wish more CEOs were as witty, plain and blunt as his remarks were. All his talking points were true, all of his jokes on point, and the only people who probably gave a crap were a very small handful of financial investors that are easily (and completely unreasonably) spooked.

I say there should be __more __Ratners. Standardize his personality-type across all industries and political spheres.

</comment><comment><USER74> I guess I'm weird compared to most consumers or investors. I applaud and enjoy when company leaders call out their products or services as crap. Because frankly, they mostly are. Most business is partially a constant lie about how good, reliable, or worthwhile they are. This is constant across the global economy. So why not embrace it? We all know you get what you pay for...

</comment><comment><USER75> What were the effects it had on the company? They just mention the stock tanking which, by itself, is pretty meaningless. I'm assuming people stopped buying the stuff?

Secondly, why did it have any effect? Who would change their practices because of this? It really rams home how deeply brands are integrated into our understanding of value.

How depressing.

<comment><USER76> It became a national joke in the UK. Nobody would be seen dead going into one of their stores or giving their jewellery as a gift. It basically put them out of business : [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/22/gerald- ratn...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/22/gerald-ratner- jewellery-total-crap-1992-archive)

<comment><USER77> But did it really put them out of business? They did a re-org as Signet Jewelers and is now the world's largest retailer of diamonds.

<comment><USER76> As a brand it put Ratners out of business. Your average man in the street isn't aware of the corporate structures behind the high street brands.

<comment><USER75> That's way less of an exciting headline, though. The company is the only way to realize the value of a brand, and if the company is still doing fine today, it considerably weakens the lessons here: it's apparently not even that bad in the worst case scenario.

<comment><USER78> They did manage to salvage the company, but they lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. It was an absolute disaster for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I think a lot of people, then and now, miss the important takeaway here. It's not about Ratner or his products; it's about all the other products that we continue to use and trust every day, because their creators are smart enough to maintain the lie.

<comment><USER80> Most people on HN just treat it as a cautionary tale, as the implicit lies that underlie most SV companies are piled high and deep. Everyone knows they are standing on a rug, and are anxiously looking around for any pulling.

<comment><USER79> Yeah, exactly. Whether someone takes this as a lesson for _business owners_ instead of for _consumers_ tells you something about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Ah yes, the Ratner effect [1]. See also the Osbourne effect [2] and the Elop effect (which did Nokia no good) [3].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#%22Burning_Platfo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#%22Burning_Platform%22_memo)

</comment><comment><USER82> I don't really have a particular desire to be the public face of any organization (although, having joined some pretty small groups lately, the odds of this happening have increased from 0 to >0), but a lot of the other examples in this article reinforce for me the advice about phrasing your criticisms constructively or as a value statement.

It's harder for someone to blow them out of proportion or context when they are phrased that way, although people can still play the hypocrisy card.

</comment><comment><USER83> Anyone have data on the Ratner Group's shares prior to Feb '91? I'm sort of skeptical because the chart begins there. It could have been on a downward trend anyway.

</comment><comment><USER84> Reminds me of the recent Patrick Byrne CEO of Overstock resigning after making comments he's involved with the deep state (which also crushed Overstock's stock price): [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/overstock-ceo-patrick- byrne-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne- resigns-following-deep-state-comments.html)

</comment><comment><USER85> Ratner apparently bragged too much, which cost his company a fortune, which apparently was not his intent.

I wonder, if there is a documented case of someone causing similar loss just for the reason of "having enough" with the pure intent of causing as much damage as possible or just for causing as much evil/pain as possible. In the sense of listening to his/hers dark triad temptation.

</comment><comment><USER86> It's funny how people will paint being honest as a gaffe.

The original gaffe was selling people crap and not telling them it's crap.

<comment><USER87> Imagine the difference in how you'd feel as a middle-class working guy buying from them. The CEO could say:

"We work hard to keep our prices low by carefully selecting affordable materials while still providing stylish, attractive and fashionable products our customers love."

...or:

"Our products are crap, the materials in them are crap, and by virtue of buying them, our customers assert that all they want is crap."

Producing low cost items is not the issue, and naturally the quality is less with low cost items. People understood they weren't buying high-grade platinum. It's the expressed sentiment of the company leader was the gaffe.

<comment><USER88> The implied sentiment was "You're poor and I've been treating you as a joke."

The previously implied sentiment was "I'm selling you upmarket glamour at an affordable price."

Branding isn't about the product, it's about buying a relationship with an entity that has more power and charisma than you do.

If you change the implied terms of the relationship, you damage the brand's value.

It's why people get so furious when Apple stiffs them with products that fail and then fobs them off with poor after-care.

Apple's implied sentiment used to be "You're an important and unusually gifted person with excellent taste."

After Cook it's more like "We've taken your money. Why are you still here?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Wow...insert foot in mouth. It is pretty unbelievable that today leaders of immense influence i.e. Elon Musk, others referenced in the article aren't more careful with what they might put out in a Tweet. Truly amazing.

<comment><USER90> Musk will say some stupid garbage, but he'd never call his own products crap. He really believes in them.

<comment><USER91> Also, the products are not crap. Can't argue with rockets going to space for cheaper than ever, whatever the CEO says on twitter. Rockets aren't earrings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> _-___________-_ Maybe the deeper lesson here isn't so much "don't be indiscreet about how shit your products are", but rather, "don't work on something you're not proud of".

</comment><comment><USER92> The key mistake here is not respecting your customers. Unsurprising in an inherited business, and in many corporations, which are essentially inherited by promotion.

</comment><comment><USER93> Or was it that he decided to come clean, because he felt shame for what he had done, and didn't mind the consequences?

I think it was unlikely but just posing the question.

</comment><comment><USER94> Maybe he was fed up and wanted a real exit.

There are other stories of people giving away huge fortunes prehumously because they might think the money is better used elsewhere.

<comment><USER95> Money isn't a finite resource that "goes elsewhere" if you don't generate it through business activity. This is probably one of the biggest popular misconceptions of how business works, that there is only a limited amount of value to go around, instead of it just being a near unlimited balloon that can expand or contract.

<comment><USER94> I'm well aware that money moves all the time but giving it away removes the burden of making "good" and rational decision, especially if you have a lot of it.

Or Maybe you don't like hanging out with rich people, when you're very rich you can't hang out with poor people. You can but you have to probably lie about your wealth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> To anyone else similarly confused, this is NOT the same Gerald Ratner for whom the gym at UChicago is named.

</comment><comment><USER97> "the truth is like poetry and people hate poetry" -steve carell as mark baum

</comment><comment><USER98> And this is why most corporate communication is so bland and stereotyped.

</comment><comment><USER99> I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for sharing it.

</comment><comment><USER100> The speech was in April, and there was an impact from it, but on the chart the stock didn't start plummeting until September. What's the real story?

<comment><USER101> The chart shows a 20% drop within 2 weeks.

<comment><USER100> But only after gaining immediately prior to that, after having already started a slow tumble a month before. That April spike looks like an outlier gain during a slow, 4-month decline (March through June).

Over in September and October however, it suddenly dropped about 45% in about 4 weeks, after having nearly stabilized, and then dropped 60% over November. It absolutely didn't start plummeting until months after he made these jokes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> "When Gerald Ratner took the stage before 6k high-powered businesspeople"

The phrase "high-powered" has never sat right with me. It sounds so hand- wavey.

</comment><comment><USER103> Sobering, softening article.

Perspective.

</comment><comment><USER104> Perception is reality.

</comment><comment><USER105> Smells like clickbait

</comment><comment><USER106> This is possible only in capitalism, where the demand doesn't come from people's needs but is simply created by the sellers themselves. I've seen successful online businesses based on selling people animal feces.

</comment><comment><USER107> I couldn't help but think of Trump and his superlatives. Lots of people joke when he says something is "the best" or "the greatest it's ever been". Trump does this quite a bit with respect to the economy and the markets.

The engineer in me takes things at face value: measured, empirical and framed in the right context. But I can understand the salesman approach to selling: you need to promote your product as the best.

This is especially true for the markets where valuations are pretty much "maxed out" and at all time highs. So the market runs on optimism and future expectations. The market will go up because I say it will go up! Nothing wrong with that perspective IMHO - insofar as talking about the markets.

</comment><comment><USER108> I see Tesla in the Horizon.

</comment><comment><USER109> This article is basically the same story, but more detailed and better- written:

[https://thehustle.co/gerald-ratners-billion-dollar- speech](https://thehustle.co/gerald-ratners-billion-dollar-speech)

<comment><USER110> OK, we'll change to that from [https://www.businessblogshub.com/2012/09/the- man-who-destroy...](https://www.businessblogshub.com/2012/09/the-man-who- destroyed-his-multi-million-dollar-company-in-10-seconds/). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> Interesting anecdote, but holy minimal-effort-article-writing, Batman:

> Have you ever heard of the "Ratner effect"?

> Well by the end of this post you will know what it means.

<comment><USER112> While long-form writing is an enjoyable endeavor, I appreciate the direct approach most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> My dad, a working class man, must have bought my mum jewellery from Ratners in the 80s, because I remember this scandal and how genuinely furious he was. I remember him saying to me words along the lines of "of course we know deep down that it's crap, but it's all we can afford so we kid ourselves that it's not". Ratner saying out loud that it was crap was destroying people's private delusions, which is all some people have. It was idiotic of Ratner to say it and I don't blame the newspapers for printing it at all.

</comment><comment><USER114> God forbid a business leader should tell the truth!

</comment><comment><USER115> Someone speaks the truth for once, and they call it "the effect". Reminds an episode it the Water World, where everyone says to Deacon how good his artificial eye looks (they are too scared of him), and only one kid says "it looks like sh __*t ".</comment>


Chart: Female Graduates Outnumber Male Graduates in OECD Nations - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/female-graduation-rates?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/dc/degreesofequality

<comment><USER2> Interesting chart. I'm from France and I can confirm that most women I know graduated from art or humanities, thus widening the salary gap between gender.

For the anecdote, on 80 students in telecommunication and networking, 75 were male.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Part of the original report: <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/1/48630719.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> And, for example, as at Wikipedia, recently in Finland the number of children per woman is 1.5. Most of the OECD countries are killing themselves off. Finland beat back Sweden, Russia, and Germany but is losing to the feminists.

Just what is it about the importance ot being mommies those women don't get?

Whatever, the situation is self-correcting: Women who don't REALLY want to be mommies won't be and, thus, will have their genes removed from the gene pool. What will be left are women who DO want to be mommies. With the current situation, that change might take only 100 years. We are likely in the biggest change in the human gene pool going back at least to 40,000 years or so ago when the lines for Europe and the Far East split.

In another 100 years, the population should be smaller but growing more rapidly.</comment>


The teenage girl who is allergic to water - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-520329/The-teenage-girl-allergic-WATER.html

<comment><USER2> The article is from February of 2008. Is there any reason to post this?

<comment><USER3> It's also from The Daily Mail, which is one of the most untrustworthy sources of information.</comment></comment>


10 features in C# that you really should learn (and use) - PVS-Studio http://www.codeaddiction.net/articles/15/10-features-in-c-that-you-really-should-learn-and-use <comment><AUTHOR> Well worth reading for any C#-developer :)</comment>


Show HN: Wrote a Book – C# 5 First Look - <AUTHOR> http://codecube.net/2012/12/c-5-first-look/

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the book release! Sounds really cool. And don't worry about the Xamarin.Mac release, it's based on MonoMac so the work you put into this section of your book wasn't wasted. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it ... definitely planning on digging into Xamarin.Mac soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for covering Mono. Does it also cover other alt.NET technology?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, the book doesn't really focus on individual libraries (EF, MVC, etc.) as much as it just tries to focus on the language itself. I wanted to drive home the point that if you use C#, you can target all the major platforms :)

<comment><USER4> That's great. Focusing on specific MSFT technologies or frameworks is a waste of time. For one, they're not very good. And two, you never know how soon it'll be deprecated.

On the other hand, C# the language is not terrible.

<comment><USER3> The C# community is trying. It's hard to separate C# the language from C# the Microsoft product. People just have it in their minds that you're stuck with the MS tools and libraries. Things like Nancy and Albacore is where C# should be headed.

<comment><USER4> How does Nancy (which I had never heard) compare to something like ServiceStack?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On a sidenote, C# blog entry URLs always confuse me for a second because default rewriting rules strip out the "#".

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome - congrats :) Packt is a really good company too IMO.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats! Looks interesting, and at a pretty decent price. I've been meaning to update my C# knowledge (as a non-.NET developer) and your book has piqued my interest even more.

What exactly is 'PacktLib access to the book' included in the print version as opposed to just the eBook?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

PacktLib is their online repository of titles, similar to Safari Books Online - <http://packtlib.packtpub.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The projects in the book look like actually-useful case studies. Yay!

</comment><comment><USER8> Would this be the book to get if I want to develop desktop apps for Windows?. Does C# 5 support Win 7 , XP ?

<comment><USER9> You could start with C# 4.0 / .NET 4.0 which is supported on XP.

.NET 3.5 has a much higher install-penetration than .NET 4.0 though, so if you're really concerned with making installations hassle-free, you might want to consider starting with C# 3.0 / .NET 3.5 (using Visual Studio 2010).

Also, I would suggest starting with Windows Forms (WinForms) instead of WPF because it's super simple and easy to wrap your head around. You can get something built very quickly with WinForms. In WPF you'll be spending _at least_ a month studying before you start to feel confident.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I temporarily forgot (it was in the book :P ) ... you can actually target .NET 4 and still use C# 5 if you use the Async Targeting Pack for Visual Studio 2012 - [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=2957...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=29576)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking about writing a book in my spare time. Can you provide some details on your experiences?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, this will be my 3rd published title (<http://amazon.com/author/joelmartinez>), though first as the sole author. From first contact with the publisher to today was about six months, actual writing time was approximately 3-4 months, and the rest of the time was the editing process (still have to review/approve the final laid-out PDF tonight, actually).

Process-wise, the first step is to have a solid outline and target audience in mind. That will inform the book's style and keep you on track as you put the proverbial pen to paper. When working on an individual chapter, I like to write most of it longhand. That forces me to rewrite it as I transcribe it to the computer and I find the end-result requires many fewer iterations to complete when I do that. Aside from all that, it's all the same things any author will deal with, things like writer's block, etc. Just make sure you are prepared to really focus on getting it done once you decide to write it ... because there's nothing worse than starting a project like this, and then letting it languish. It will always be on the back of your mind and you won't be able to enjoy relaxation time until you get back to it.

Anyways, hope that helped, happy to answer any other questions you might have :)

<comment><USER11> Congrats on the release. I just preordered a copy of your ebook. After writing articles on some networks, I've decided to start working on a monotouch ebook. Your tips of your process will come in handy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much!

Great news on the book, we definitely need to start seeing more books out there on Mono/Xamarin tech. Hopefully we can help people understand what a great opportunity C# can be when you embrace it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Really cool--congratulations!</comment>


The Humble Weekly Sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

<comment><USER2> Check out the trailer for Transistor, the next title by Supergiant Games (creators of Bastion)

<http://youtu.be/GTik6sYT_BE></comment>


Scientific research piracy site hit with $15M fine - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/scientific-research-piracy-site-hit-with-15-million-fine/ <comment><USER2> I cannot say how useful Alexandra's work has been for me. Apart from the fact that subscription prices to scientific journals have increased significantly in the last years, in the same period Italy has severely cut research funding. As a result, my department's library has had to cut a number of subscriptions to journals that are very important in my field. (The funny part is that since a few years the Italian government is evaluating universities according to the number of articles published by the staff, their citation count, and the prestige of the journal where these articles have been published...).

Without SciHub, my research and my work would have been made much more difficult. Thank you, Alexandra!

</comment><comment><USER3> Why Elsevier would feel entitled to the copyright of publicly funded research is beyond anyone's guess.

This ruling actually makes me realize that SciHub is a single point of failure, and if it gets closed, there won't be anything else to replace it. Unlike the thousands of torrents and streaming sites for movies and TV shows, research paper sites aren't something that the average Internet users care about.

<comment><USER4> If you have a few petabytes of disk handy, you can in fact torrent the lot.

[http://libgen.io/repository_torrent/](http://libgen.io/repository_torrent/) [http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/](http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/)

<comment><USER5> Buying a bunch of disk space isn't impossible. What I don't have is unlimited downloads.

<comment><USER6> Buy VPS hosting in a place with sane ISPs and unlimited data, then torrent at a responsible rate of like 1MB/s, max ~50 connections. It will take about 694 days to torrent the 60TB at that rate. If you can afford to pay for better bandwidth, say 10MB/s sustained 24/7, it will take only 2-3 months. BitTorrent being what it is, if enough of us torrent it, we should have all chunks between us much sooner than the estimated 2 years, so even when SciHub goes down, we'll be able to piece everything together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of academics I know point people to sci-hub!

For example, the American Psychological Association has been issuing take-down requests to academics who distribute final article PDFs on their sites. As a result, there's been a fair amount of activity on twitter telling people that they can get them there.

<comment><USER8> Why not just post the finalized version of the manuscript instead of the journal's typeset version? It's the same content, and most journals seem to be ok with this practice -- are preprint versions against APA's copyright policy in some way?

<comment><USER7> Preprints are fine to post, and that's definitely what some people are pushing for. There's a good article on how some psychologists have responded here: [http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49670/...](http://www.the- scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49670/title/Authors-Peeved-by-APA-s- Article-Takedown-Pilot/).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because of sci-hub, scientists such as myself no longer need anything more than food, an internet connection and some shelter to do first class theoretical work. It cannot be emphasized enough how much of a boon this is for scientists who don't have good journal access, _which is the majority of scientists_.

In creating it, Elbakyan has probably done far more for humanity than Musk will do in his life, and I am a massive fan of Musk. If it goes down, it will be a tragedy for our species.

</comment><comment><USER10> The 2nd time in a week I need the wisdom of Pravin Lal in a thread about free information?

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

<comment><USER11> Who or what is Pravin Lal?

<comment><USER12> A fictional character in a 1999 sci-fi strategy game Alpha Centauri. It has some quite memorable quotes about technology and society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What the academic publishing industry calls "theft", the world calls "research".

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4p2rwk/what_the_academic_publishing_industry_calls_theft/)

Thank you, Alexandra, for your library.

<comment><USER13> The second great library of Alexandr(i)a.

<comment><USER11> Her name is most apt.

I'm hoping it doesn't burn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of:

Sci-Hub As Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

[http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/02/sci-hub-as-necessary- effect...](http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/02/sci-hub-as-necessary-effective- civil-disobedience/)

<comment><USER15> The web site is being hostile by thrusting this message upon me: "Your browser is blocking some features of this website. Please follow the instructions at [...] to unblock these."

Does the author not believe in the civil disobedience of ad-blocking?

<comment><USER16> Looks like this comes from a wordpress plugin (The Champ), I don't think the author knows that blocking JavaScript triggers this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another reminder to donate. Thanks, Alexandra!

</comment><comment><USER18> If history tells us anything another Sci-Hub or more powerful reiteration will surface and will eventually "win." You can't contain ideas.

</comment><comment><USER19> How many people used sci hub to this day ? how many donated ?

150K persons donating 10$ (even though the fine basis is debatable)..

<comment><USER20> ...is $1.5M.

<comment><USER19> Maybe we were a million users ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Elsevier is from the Netherlands, not the USA.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is the kind of thing that should be massively mirrored in onion links.

<comment><USER23> I think that you can download the 10s of terabytes using the torrent files found here: [http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/](http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Elsevier is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier)

</comment><comment><USER25> I had access through my job and through university to Elsevier and other paywalled repositories.

I avoid papers found in "ScienceDirect", not because of some moral position, but I found often that their abstract does no seem so useful for me. Oftentime there are lot of jargon and it is hard to figure out what is new and what take home points there are. The reader may get the impression that they try hard to oversell their stuff.

I even prefer some free publishers who have a much lower reputation like Indawi.

I have a different but still related problem with IEEE: On every subject it seems there are tons of papers, so it is difficult to appreciate the relative value of each paper.

I have no problem with Nature and some other paywalled publishers.</comment>


Extremism pays. That's why Silicon Valley isn't shutting it down - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/18/extremism-pays-why-silicon-valley-not-shutting-it-down-youtube <comment><USER2> "Extremism" is a misleading description of the examples given. Strongly held political beliefs are being conflated with tabloid-style conspiracy. Such a lack of nuance devolves the conversation into a chaos of mostly useless and misdirected opinionations.

The biggest risk is in the rhetorical miscategorization of the content, which sidelines critical voices from the popular discussion by conflating them with those of conspiracy entertainment.

We should abandon the use of terms like "extremism" and the like, in favor of more specification. This will lessen the unwanted side effects of marginalizing important voices.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why does anyone trust essentially unaccountable big advertising companies like Google and Facebook to correctly draw the line on extremism?

</comment><comment><USER4> While that's definitely a factor, I wouldn't umderestimate just how much shutting down expression rubs a significant number of people in tech the wrong way. Some will object on libertarian grounds, some will object on slippery slope grounds, even when the examples are obvious and heinous. A lot more will object to "shutting it down" when the line is blurry, or object to the notion of the likes of FB, Google, and Twitter as arbiters of what is and is not extreme.

I'm in the middle. There is a lot of obviously violent, vile crap on places like Reddit that needs "shutting down." I'm unconcerned with the rights of child and animal abusers to freely express themselves. I'm equally unsympathetic to Nazis and white supremacists, but after that it gets a little hairy.

Are people in the "Drop The T" movement extremists? I disagree with them, but I don't think they should be "shut down," but plenty would leap at the chance. I think Peter Thiel is a blowhard and a prick, but I don't think he should be censored. Who gets to draw the line? And redraw it? Who gets to say there is a line? I wouldn't trust myself to do it. I'm not sure I'd trust anyone else either.

Maybe it really is better to have a free for all, than a free for none.

<comment><USER5> > I'm equally unsympathetic to Nazis and white supremacists

What about Communists?

<comment><USER4> a lot of regimes call(ed) themselves communist while being something very different. I'm not a fan of the ideology, not in the least because it always seems to fail in spectacularly ugly ways, such as Stalinism, Maoism, or that tragicomic Juche shit in North Korea. Having said that, I don't believe that I've ever met an actual Communist, so I couldn't say. If I did, I'd mostly point out the history of their ideology in practice, and be massively skeptical of either their motives, or intellect.

Does that satisfactorily answer your question?

<comment><USER5> > Does that satisfactorily answer your question?

No, not really.

> Having said that, I don't believe that I've ever met an actual Communist, so > I couldn't say.

Goalpost moving. What does meeting them have to do with it? I strongly doubt you've ever met any _actual_ Nazis, either, since there haven't been any of those for about seventy years.

Dude, there are Marxists everywhere, primarily because it's somehow still socially acceptable to be a Communist -- which is the issue I'm trying get you to address.

> I'm not a fan of the ideology, not in the least because it always seems to > fail in spectacularly ugly ways, such as Stalinism, Maoism, or that > tragicomic Juche shit in North Korea

But not enough of a non-fan that you'd advocate that Marxist material be banned from, say, YouTube?

Communists have murdered far more people than the Nazis ever did.

Also, communists still control entire countries, with standing armies and nuclear weapons.

By contrast, the "Nazis" of today are mostly small groups of rednecks who can barely make the payments on their mobile homes.

Why is one worse/more of a danger than the other, to the extent that one group should have its material banned, but the other not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Come again? Youtube isn't shutting down leftist extremist content. But right- wing channels are getting banned by the dozen. Even relatively moderate right- wing channels are going down.

<comment><USER7> Post some examples of this "leftist extremist" content? I'm curious.</comment></comment>


Writing the next chapter for Prismatic - <AUTHOR> http://prismatic.github.io/next-chapter/ <comment><AUTHOR> Oddly, they already shut their website down a week after the announcement, it seems: [http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://getprismatic.com/](http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://getprismatic.com/)</comment>