As it almost always goes -- this legislation restricting direct vehicle sales from manufacturers is only around today because the car dealership middle-man is a powerful money-generating force, and most auto-makers seem to prefer it stays in place.

Tesla got their "carve out" because they had the money to throw at getting made an exception. Rivian should automatically get the same treatment, but we don't live in a country where laws are applied fairly to all.

In many ways, a dealership network acts as a shield to absolve a manufacturer of direct responsibility for dealing with their own defective products. Take Kia as a great example. They've been producing defective engines across a whole line of vehicles for something like 10 years straight. Most managed to hold up through their "generous 10 year, 100,000 mile" warranty but failed soon after it. The landscape is littered with Kia Souls with major engine failures. But dealers act like a filter, putting up barriers to getting them replaced or repaired, despite the manufacturer being legally forced to issue a recall. They'll tell people, "Sorry.. but the recall is only valid if we get this specific diagnostic code from the code reader. Yours isn't showing that one." Each time, the owner has to go to corporate and fight to try to get their engine replaced -- and corporate will counter that the dealer informed them the issue wasn't one indicative of the specific failure that's being recalled. Eventually? SOME people get their vehicles fixed, but a substantial number of others give up the fight, writing off their maybe 8-10 year old vehicle as trash and they buy something else. This constitutes a huge savings for Kia corporate.

It's tougher for manufacturers doing direct sales. They can still reject people for warranty work, or claim recalls don't apply. But now, there's nobody else to blame. They can't just get the customer mad at "Sellum Quick Auto Sales". Now, the wronged customer's response is to never buy from their brand again.

This just signifies the end of the era of "fashion model" as a lucrative career choice?

I'm not a fan of AI getting used in marketing/advertising at all. But that's mostly because I find most of it can still be picked out from reality. When they try to create new animated characters or mascots, for example? The AI attempts I've seen, so far, just have this set of features that clue you in that they aren't original drawings by a person. With people, they may be getting pretty good at starting with an AI generated person and letting a real artist Photoshop it to fix it/clean it up so it passes as real. But mostly, we're still used to seeing the people with odd numbers of fingers or toes and other AI mishaps.

When they get this honed to perfection? Yeah, it's not going to make a lot of sense to pay real humans to model clothing for your average sale flyers or online ads. The value will still be there for a popular celebrity figure to wear something in an ad, because then you're buying that association with their fame. But I think most models should come to grips with the idea the gravy train is reaching the end of the line.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes that number. It's called the employment-to-population ratio. Since there many different opinions on how to interpret the data, the BLS publishes it every which way. Most press reports what is called the U-3 number because most economists agree that it is the most useful one.

Ok, my title is half joking. But seriously? We've collectively gotten so used to just doing everything by pulling up some smartphone app, I think we've forgotten when it's a proverbial "sledgehammer to kill a fly".

Dog walking is a lot like babysitting. Used to just be a real basic job you'd pay a neighbor kid/teenager to do when you needed it. Cash payment direct to the person and nobody messed with things like taxes on it or some middle-man wanting a cut of the proceeds.

What next? Uber snow shoveling for your driveway?

It's really just not a viable business model to take these simple chores people want done and try to build apps around them. But worse yet? It accelerates the pace of society not communicating with our own neighbors around us.

This has happened to many a developer over the years because the shell scripting languages ignore errors. No AI required.
cd /
cd $targetdir # Oops! Targetdir doesn't exist!
rm -rf * # Deletes files from root directory

I don't even think this is a "MAGA" issue, as much as one for all Americans to seriously consider. The root problem is, back in the 1980's when America was doing really well overall? We collectively came to the conclusion that we were "too good" for factory work and manufacturing of hard goods. The future seemed to be leaving all of that physically demanding and environmentally damaging stuff to other nations, while we prospered other ways. Nobody fully thought out how that was going to work, it seems? Just a fuzzy notion that lots of formal education, intelligence and imagination would guarantee you success.

Of course it's not the 1950's anymore. But the real change came decades later. We pivoted to counting on intellectual property instead of physical goods. (Well, other than basic necessities like food/farming -- but that's always been heavily govt. subsidized anyway. Farming is hardly possible to make a profit on otherwise.)

It seems we put too many eggs in that basket, so to speak? And now people are trying to find ways to step that back a bit.

This sounds like the cookie cutter complaint I hear about Apple phones/tablets from every Android user I've run across....

Honestly? I've had my share of Android tablets and handsets, as well as owning pretty much every major iPhone revision from the very first release through a 16 Pro Max I use currently.

ALL the "high end" smartphones with larger screens and decent feature sets are really expensive these days, vs what people used to commonly pay for phones. That's because what you're buying now is a pocket computer with a high-res touchscreen. I'm ok with the cost, especially when I add up what a cellular plan actually costs me over the lifespan of a given phone. Doesn't make sense to me to pay that much out for a phone/data package, only to be limited in what can be done with it because of cheaping out on the handset itself.

But sure, Apple locks their ecosystem down more than Android. You use their App Store and not one of several random ones out there. You use only apps they vetted in some manner first. This has hardly ever been a concern for me. (If I wanted to get all bent out of shape over it? Then sure, I had one instance when I was playing with crypto-mining where I couldn't use an app I wanted because Apple wouldn't approve it. It ceased to matter after a short while though. I moved on and the phone worked great for 99.9% of what I use my cellphone for.)

I think you're correct. But I'd also just point out that society seems to be on a trajectory of making everyone's purchases 100% tracked and analyzed.
With recent legislation requiring services like PayPal, CashApp and Venmo to report income to the IRS? There's really nothing left anymore besides a cash transaction that flies under that radar. And we're seeing the push to reduce the use of cash. (Remember all the places that stopped accepting it during COVID, with claims they feared the virus getting transmitted on people' money? And after that, places refusing to take cash because of claims it was too high a crime risk, having to hold onto it....)

I feel like retaliation against "buy now - pay later" plans offered by private businesses amount to even more of this. The lenders want full knowledge of when, how much and what you borrow money for. (And by extension, that allows government to have that same visibility.)

Are there a few big corporate entities trying to invest in residential real-estate to rent back out to people? Yes, absolutely! And sometimes, that outcome isn't great, especially when they buy up too many properties in a given geographic area.

But the idea that 2,000 or so people vying to be the "first trillionaire" will happily cause the death of the elderly along the way, as part of a planned scheme to deprive them of medical care if they don't sell their homes to them? That's the stuff of make-believe superhero/villain stories.

For one thing? It's your older population who is most likely to own the home they live in; a home that typically went up in value greatly over the decades they lived in it. (I see this time and time again, in different cities I've lived in. You find a huge swath of $1 million plus residences and start asking how so many residents in the area can have that much money. Then, you find out that it's an area where homes used to be far cheaper because it was essentially undeveloped land or farmland, decades earlier. These people can't really afford to buy $1 million plus homes. They just bought a home for $200,000 or so and lived in it long enough.)

At a certain age, most want to downsize or maybe move into some form of assisted living. Selling their home is a big windfall for them, and something they WANT to do voluntarily. They're not getting forced to do so by the evil conglomerate trying to seize their home to rent it back out for big profits.

As a 50-something parent myself? I'm thinking:

1. You can't really expect to ask parents for "career advice" and then get upset they aren't giving you information you think is relevant to the current job market/hiring situation. All they really know is how it worked for them. If nothing else, that's useful information in and of itself, because it gives you a historical sense of how things were before they got to what you're dealing with today.

2. If you're trying to figure out how to get hired, you need to ask the people who do the hiring. Find some people who work in careers like HR or management in the field you're interested in and get their thoughts or advice.

3. AI or no AI? The most important part of getting a job has to do with interacting with as many other people as possible. (Sucks when you're an introvert, like me -- but it's just the facts.) Even the best resume and cover letter doesn't communicate your personality, enthusiasm, etc. I got over half of all the jobs I've held in my life because I knew someone already working for the company who could put in a good word for me, or had influence in the hiring process in some manner.

Irrelevant... I'm not even disagreeing with you in principle! I'm just saying, there are people who raise hell about every little thing they can find that isn't to the letter of some regulation or rule that was written down. And there are those who pick and choose their battles instead.

And like the boy in the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" story, the people you're constantly running to with your complaints (AND those around you observing it happening over and over) will eventually decide you're just a little too demanding for comfort. After all, if everyone else is ok with what's going on and you're always the one who isn't? At some point, they ask why you're still working there instead of someplace else.

The issue they're talking about here has to do with artists affiliated with multiple rights-holders, causing a big increase in costs to stay legal, trying to play their music in an establishment.

I'm no expert on this, but I did play in a local band once and got a taste of the music licensing "scene". Bars and other smaller venues NEVER liked paying these rights-holders, because the entire thing felt like little more than a money-grab. It's one thing if you set up a digital jukebox at your bar that makes the patrons pay for each song they want to hear. Then you can offload the costs on them. But most places just wanted to have music playing in the background, such as your corner bar where the bartenders act as the DJs, playing the CDs they think set the right mood for the establishment.

It's exponentially worse when you have these artists who might have signed deals so one of their songs' rights were sold to a movie studio to use in a movie, another is getting streamed from a site that paid for rights to do that with it, and maybe a whole album they released contains those tracks in a shared arrangement plus the rights-holder who released the album holding rights to the rest of it.

Now, the bar or restaurant plays the CD of music and suddenly, they owe ALL these people a cut as the tracks 1 - 13 play in sequence from it.

How many people can listen to your music you're playing at home before it constitutes commercial use of it you owe rights' holders for? I've sure been at house parties in the past that had more people there than my local corner bar did! It's all pretty arbitrary and they just go after commercial establishments because that's the easier money to milk.

Somewhere between 1 and 3.

Those are the kinds of moments where the population finds out if their nation is truly democratic or not. Any government that decides that turning off the ability to communicate is not doing so for the benefit of its people.

It's standard operating procedure in dictatorships to flip the "internet kill switch" as soon as something happens where the government needs to control the media.

That's an interesting take on it. I think most people taking a risk on starting their own business have a passion for it. Otherwise, it's probably not going to be successful, OR worth the long hours and effort.

As for your concerns though? I'd perhaps counter that someone needing the capital to expand their own business would be pretty motivated to do the job they're applying for. (Presumably, the work they're trying to do for you doesn't pay so well it would fund their own business venture's expansion without them being in it for the long-haul.)

I guess this is a bit like the employers who used to be super-paranoid to hire anyone who had a poor credit score or bankruptcy in the recent past. They'd argue that those things indicated the person had poor decision-making skills or was a higher risk of stealing from or defrauding the company. In reality? There's a strong argument those people can be your most loyal/reliable employees because they REALLY need the paycheck/work! They're trying to put their life back together, vs someone more complacent who can "take it or leave it".