iCP2: They're throwing in the towel.

[_wb_]

There is no scam -- in a scam you collect money, you don't spend it on designs, prototypes and PCBs. It's just Craig's incompetence, nothing more, nothing less.

 
Except that we don't know where the money went for MOST of it, so I'm not sure you can rule out a scam by a certain person at this stage, even if the other members had nothing to do with it.

Define "most". As far as I can tell, the only "missing" money is what Craig got for case/keymat production -- I don't know what fraction of the total sum that is, but if you have some more information, feel free to share. We know where the money went for PCB design, case design, prototypes, PCB production, etc. Most of that money is gone because it has been spent, not because Craig ran away with it. We don't know how much money Craig spent on actual iCP2-related work and how much he just pocketed -- but if it was just a complicated scam, then he sure went quite great lengths to cover up the scam by actually doing real stuff and buying production quantities of actual components.

People like that often end up in important manager positions (in particular in "crisis manager" type of jobs, where they get paid huge amounts of money to restructure a complete company), where they can ruin many companies and the more companies they ruin, the more praise they get and the higher their paycheck. The whole Pandora Ltd / iCP2 story is peanuts compared to the kind of stuff that happens on a daily basis in large companies all over the world (especially multinationals). And it's all legal. It's just how capitalism works.

I think it's extremely unecessary to blame the system when we are just talking here about a person who has a history of being unreliable. This has nothing to do with capitalism, and let's not try to paint socialism in a good light either as it were better for people, because examples abound of the contrary. Unless you want to derail off the topic, but you will meet strong opposition here. 

There would be no computers in everyone's hands, btw, if not for capitalism.

I'm not blaming capitalism for Craig's incompetence. I guess my point was that the way the legal system works tends to make it hard for individuals to do anything about misbehaving companies, that there are many ways for a company to legally do unethical stuff, and that that is no coincidence but rather a core ingredient of capitalism. That seemed to be a more or less relevant point given that there are many people in this thread who seem to think that the legal system is designed to protect their consumer rights or something like that.

Let's not discuss capitalism versus other economical systems here though, unless you really want to derail this thread.

 

[Morn]

And as ekianjo implied, there is no political system that improves upon capitalism, which is millions of individuals investing their own money (capital) for projects that they (using their best information) think will succeed.

Well, there are many different flavours of capitalism. Almost every country has some regulations controlling companies: accountancy standards, audits, illegal business schemes etc. The trick is to balance public control and a free market properly. Of course you can not make an ideal system and Enrons will happen from time to time anyway.

--- Edited ---

Let's not discuss capitalism versus other economical systems here though, unless you really want to derail this thread.

Totally agree

 

[klapse]

But the legal system is, practically speaking, designed to protect consumer rights (their property rights). If there were good evidence that Craig had run away with backers' money, instead of investing it in production, there would be a case to be made in a court of law.

There is in fact a case to be made that "consumer rights" are overrepresented by the legal system. In the case of tort for example, a woman sued McDonalds for millions of dollars because her fucking coffee was "too hot"..

 

[ekianjo]

I guess my point was that the way the legal system works tends to make it hard for individuals to do anything about misbehaving companies, that there are many ways for a company to legally do unethical stuff, and that that is no coincidence but rather a core ingredient of capitalism. That seemed to be a more or less relevant point given that there are many people in this thread who seem to think that the legal system is designed to protect their consumer rights or something like that.

Capitalism has a lot to do about freedom to fund your own business and raise funds through groups of individuals.

As a consumer there are several things you can do against misbehaving companies:

- report them to the authorities

- take legal action

- stop buying their products

- talk about what they have done, on your own or via the press

- contact consumer groups

The reason why authorities and legal action won't work in these particular case is because it's too much trouble for too little money and effort to spend - you'll lose more than what you put in the first place. Note that people investing in ICP2 were WARNED (I remember the campaign) at least on these boards about the risks of supporting Craig.

If people had lost years of work in money, legal action would make sense, and would probably work.

Of course consumer rights are protected in our societies, that's why most successful companies actually CARE about consumer feedback and do a lot to actually keep consumers happy. The ones which survive without such mechanisms are usually the ones benefiting from monopolies, often sponsored by States or governments.

No need to derail on politics, but there was no need for you to blame capitalism in that particular example, again it was clearly off topic.

 

[Morn]

All right, braking my own promise.

But the legal system is, practically speaking, designed to protect consumer rights (their property rights). If there were good evidence that Craig had run away with backers' money, instead of investing it in production, there would be a case to be made in a court of law.

Good evidence is a key thing. It's pretty difficult to get one if you are a mere client.

There is in fact a case to be made that "consumer rights" are overrepresented by the legal system. In the case of tort for example, a woman sued McDonalds for millions of dollars because her fucking coffee was "too hot"..

Did she won the trial? If not then that' not an example for bad law but just a catchy headline for tabloids and another example of human stupidity.

 

[ekianjo]

All right, braking my own promise.

But the legal system is, practically speaking, designed to protect consumer rights (their property rights). If there were good evidence that Craig had run away with backers' money, instead of investing it in production, there would be a case to be made in a court of law.

Good evidence is a key thing. It's pretty difficult to get one if you are a mere client.

There is in fact a case to be made that "consumer rights" are overrepresented by the legal system. In the case of tort for example, a woman sued McDonalds for millions of dollars because her fucking coffee was "too hot"..

Did she won the trial? If not then that' not an example for bad law but just a catchy headline for tabloids and another example of human stupidity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

Apparently the decision was appealed but she probably received some compensation in the end, albeit certainly not in millions of dollars...

 

[kasp]

But the legal system is, practically speaking, designed to protect consumer rights (their property rights). If there were good evidence that Craig had run away with backers' money, instead of investing it in production, there would be a case to be made in a court of law.

There is in fact a case to be made that "consumer rights" are overrepresented by the legal system. In the case of tort for example, a woman sued McDonalds for millions of dollars because her fucking coffee was "too hot"..

Actually read up on that case.

They handed her a coffee that was around 90 degrees which would take less than two seconds to cause a third degree burn.The burns caused to the lady when it spilled in her lap damn near killed her and it took two years for her to recover.  She dropped down in weight to 38 kilo's.

McDonald's was grossly negligent having a standard practice of handing people coffee THAT HOT in such flimsy cups with people who are driving.  For such a big company to miss that is just staggering.

 

[WizardStan]

There is in fact a case to be made that "consumer rights" are overrepresented by the legal system. In the case of tort for example, a woman sued McDonalds for millions of dollars because her fucking coffee was "too hot"..

Did she won the trial? If not then that' not an example for bad law but just a catchy headline for tabloids and another example of human stupidity.

Yes she won. The coffee was too hot. It wasn't just "too hot", it caused 3rd (possibly 4th) degree burns that welded her labia together. Her vagina became a blistered mass of melted flesh. We're not just talking some redness and blistering that heals up after a few days/weeks, she needed skin graft surgery. This wasn't just "it was hot and I know coffee is supposed to be hot but I burned myself anyway teehee", they actually proved that McDonalds was serving their coffee quite a bit hotter than what anywhere else would consider "normal". Coffee temperature is one of those things that is regulated for safety and McDonalds violated that safety regulation and this woman legitimately suffered as a result. The reason she was awarded millions of dollars is because the penalty was one day's takings on coffee sales and because of the way McDonalds is franchised that meant one day coffee sales for the entire McDonalds corporation: several million dollars. If it had been an independent or privately owned franchise it would have been the sales for just that one store, a few thousand dollars. It was appealed for $600'000, and ultimately they settled for probably much less. She probably only got a few hundred thousand, enough to cover medical and legal bills, and a few years of hypothetical wages for suffering. She didn't get rich off this by any means.
Furthermore, she didn't originally sue them. At first she just went to them for $20'000 to cover medical expenses. It was only after they refused that she lawyered.

This story pisses me off in several ways. It is frequently used by media as an example of "frivolous lawsuits", they get the masses going "hurr a durr, people just sue over everything, coffee is supposed to be hot you twit", so they're laughing at this woman who suffered legitimate damages at the hands of a corporation that violated policy but they don't know any of that because it doesn't make a good story. Second it is my opinion that it has actually driven MORE frivolous lawsuits: the media reports this case as a frivolous lawsuit that won, some twit down on his luck thinks he can get rich the same way, takes a "fall" in some store and tries to sue them. It doesn't work, frivolous lawsuits actually making trial are few and far between. If you read an article about someone winning millions of dollars because of some stupid reason I guarantee there's more going on then what is being reported.

Like the guy who sued Winnebago: he put it on cruise control and then went into the back to take a nap wherein the RV promptly drove off the side of the road and wrecked. He sued Winnebago and won. The claim: this is frivolous because, duh, cruise control doesn't work like that and the guy is an idiot. The facts: the guy wasn't an idiot, he was ignorant and he knew it. He didn't know what cruise control was so he asked the sales representative who told him "cruise control is like auto-pilot for your car, it drives it for you". He didn't sue and win because he didn't know what cruise control was, he sued and won because the representative gave him misleading information about the abilities of the RV. And again, he didn't jump straight to lawsuit, he first went to the dealership and pleaded his case on why it was their fault (I imagine it involved a lot of yelling, but I wasn't there) and when they refused to do anything about it he lawyered up. The judge agreed, the sales representative gave him misleading information which directly resulted in the accident, therefore it was his responsibility. But of course none of that is ever reported, all you ever get is the quick blurb "man doesn't know what cruise control is; sues because he's an idiot and wins because the legal system is broken hurr durr"

 

[klapse]

Ah thanks for the corrections kasp and WizardStan!

 

[Exophase]

And as ekianjo implied, there is no political system that improves upon capitalism, which is millions of individuals investing their own money (capital) for projects that they (using their best information) think will succeed.

There is no übermensch that can direct an entire economy to successfully produce innovative and most-wanted goods. Spending other people's money that has been confiscated leads to terrible results. A good example is the new Berlin airport.

Veering way off topic on this, hope this doesn't bother people too much (I sense a thread split if anyone really responds to this )

Letting individual consumers spend as they please is fine, the problem is where all those consumers are going to get the money to spend if the producers require too few jobs to employ a majority of them. That part could have to be fixed somehow.. Pretty much everyone knows this, at least in the back of their heads, and it's kind of already happening. For example, my sister works for a major multinational, and during the recession they had to lay off a lot of people. After the economy recovered they found that they didn't actually need to fill in all those jobs they lost because they were doing okay without them. She gave specific examples of people they laid off that were never really doing anything. I doubt those people were barely doing anything from the day they were hired, they just got less useful as efficiency/productivity gradually increased elsewhere in the company and they were less needed. Think of the guy in Office Space who got in a car crash.

Somehow coaxing companies into hiring people to sit around and do nothing most of the time seems like the wrong solution, plus I can't see it working on a broad scale anyway. _wb_ mentioned earlier that the work week stopped shrinking as productivity increased. I agree with him that decreasing the work week and raising minimum hourly wage to compensate, or adding a mincome would be a good move. This doesn't mean going socialistic, there's still plenty of opportunity to make your fortune under this system.

 

[Jumpman]

And as ekianjo implied, there is no political system that improves upon capitalism, which is millions of individuals investing their own money (capital) for projects that they (using their best information) think will succeed.


There is no übermensch that can direct an entire economy to successfully produce innovative and most-wanted goods. Spending other people's money that has been confiscated leads to terrible results. A good example is the new Berlin airport.

Veering way off topic on this, hope this doesn't bother people too much (I sense a thread split if anyone really responds to this )

This thread is beyond "LOST" anyway, take it where you must, It won't matter

Chris

 

[ramboky]

Veering way off topic on this, hope this doesn't bother people too much (I sense a thread split if anyone really responds to this )

I'm liking the new direction of this thread, it had become way too toxic, even for my liking.

Our current capitalist, consumer driven system can't last. As the price of producing goods trends toward zero, along with the man hours required to produce them, capitalism becomes less and less a viable model. How to replace capitalism and what to replace it with is a pretty interesting problem which economists have been debating for some time. 

 

[ekianjo]

the problem is where all those consumers are going to get the money to spend if the producers require too few jobs to employ a majority of them.

Moot point. The fact that companies can fail and go bankrupt or fire some worforce is a component of capitalism, not a defect. Capitalism never meant "work for life in the same company, guaranteed!". Large companies who fire workforce anyway tend to be very administrative and can continue working fine once they realize they had too many people to do the stuff they needed. It's very normal.

People who are laid off find other opportunities... or they don't. And there is already a safety net in many european countries for people who can't find jobs, so asking for minimal income where it's already de facto in place seems a little nonsensical. In many european countries you even get free access to healthcare if you lack resources.

Minimal income is a dangerous idea because it removes the incentive to work among the lower and middle working class. There are already numerous types of jobs that people REFUSE to do (have you ever been in an employment agency? a lot of  unemployed people turn away most of the offers they get because its not exactly what they want or too far, etc...), and that will further inflate that phenomenon. 

And yes, capitalism works fine. It has provided more jobs to more people than any other system in History. What causes capitalism to fail is when tou destroy the free market environment and prevent companies for entering certain market spaces. That's happening when you close borders, when you put extreme tariffs on imports, etc. Less free market causes more unemployment, because opportunities shrink.

 

[Exophase]

Moot point. The fact that companies can fail and go bankrupt or fire some worforce is a component of capitalism, not a defect. Capitalism never meant "work for life in the same company, guaranteed!". Large companies who fire workforce anyway tend to be very administrative and can continue working fine once they realize they had too many people to do the stuff they needed. It's very normal.

I don't think you get what I'm saying. Pure capitalism means if you want to eat you work. If there are only enough jobs for a small percentage of people that starts breaking down fast.

People who are laid off find other opportunities... or they don't. And there is already a safety net in many european countries for people who can't find jobs, so asking for minimal income where it's already de facto in place seems a little nonsensical. In many european countries you even get free access to healthcare if you lack resources.

Yeah, well it sure isn't de facto in any sense here. Yes there are already countries that are doing it, that's great, there are already countries doing lots of things that aren't very capitalistic. What's your point?

Minimal income is a dangerous idea because it removes the incentive to work among the lower and middle working class. There are already numerous types of jobs that people REFUSE to do (have you ever been in an employment agency? a lot of  unemployed people turn away most of the offers they get because its not exactly what they want or too far, etc...), and that will further inflate that phenomenon.

And removing the incentive to work doesn't matter if there aren't enough jobs. If there's a mincome it has to scale with job availability. People won't refuse to do jobs if they're compensated highly enough. But no I haven't been in an employment agency watching numerous jobs getting turned down from people who are qualified.

You know what's a real disincentive to work? Going through dozens of failed interviews.

And yes, capitalism works fine. It has provided more jobs to more people than any other system in History. What causes capitalism to fail is when tou destroy the free market environment and prevent companies for entering certain market spaces. That's happening when you close borders, when you put extreme tariffs on imports, etc. Less free market causes more unemployment, because opportunities shrink.

Keyword here is "has." It's hopelessly naive to think that means it always will as technology shifts.

The whole situation is very easy to grasp, please explain to me how thinks are supposed to work when the vast majority of production and service is cheaper to do with machines than humans? I'm not talking about things today per se, but how should people be prepared for this possibility? Assume it can't happen?

 

[ekianjo]

The whole situation is very easy to grasp, please explain to me how thinks are supposed to work when the vast majority of production and service is cheaper to do with machines than humans?

Machines have been replacing humans at work for more than 2 centuries already, yet the job pool has never been "depleted" - this kind of logic "machines is going to replace everything humans do" is not new, people were saying the same thing when the steam machine was invented, when cars were introduced, etc... yet what happened in practice is that machines led to the creations to new opportunities, new industries and new jobs with them. Look at what happened during the industrial revolution. 

People ended up with a better level of life with industrialisation, and certain not poorer. The 20th century is the century where we had the most technological breakthroughs and at the same time the largest explosion in level of life and purchasing power. 

 

[Exophase]

Okay, so you don't want to answer my question, you want to work under the assumption that there will always be enough useful jobs for everyone.

Just because people have been saying something will happen for a long time and it hasn't happened yet is not evidence that it ever will. I'm more interested in looking at the realities of technological plausibility now than what people have said or what has always worked. What I see today is a lot of simple retail and production jobs that can be easily automated it the pretty near future, and am scratching my head thinking of huge new markets to replace them in the mean time. Feel free to give me some ideas of what you think these huge new markets will be. And it's not like it's not already happening. Do you think there are as many jobs in Netflix and Redbox as there were in Blockbuster?

And in the meantime, a lot of the stuff that'll be easy to automate is already being outsourced to places with much cheaper labor.

 

[ekianjo]

Okay, so you don't want to answer my question

what question did you ask exactly ? 

 

[ekianjo]

. What I see today is a lot of simple retail and production jobs that can be easily automated it the pretty near future, and am scratching my head thinking of huge new markets to replace them in the mean time. Feel free to give me some ideas of what you think these huge new markets will be. And it's not like it's not already happening. Do you think there are as many jobs in Netflix and Redbox as there were in Blockbuster?

I don't know what the new markets will be, just like people did not know that Amazon would be a major retail actor in the market 15 years ago when the WWW just started. That's the thing : You can't PLAN for what is going to happen, people will find and develop new opportunities by themselves, and that's why having the possibility to build up new companies and fund them is a key element of capitalistic markets.

And by the way, I'm not sure if you ever stepped into modern manufacturing plants, but in many industries the whole production process is already automatized, YET these companies still employ lots of people for quality control, release testing, maintenance, continuous improvement, etc... removing lowly qualified jobs will push for more jobs with higher education requirements, and I fail to see where this is a bad thing for society overall, since more and more people have access to education as time passes. 

Blockbuster is not a century old business, it does not employ millions of people, and of course these industries are going to get disrupted just like RIM is going to lose lots of people as well, but this is just a drop in the ocean of jobs out there. In reality the amount of jobs that can REALLY be automated from A to Z are very, very few, and I said automation and the widespread of networks is breeding new opportunities as we speak - so new jobs are constantly being created on the other end of the spectrum. 

Again, it's bee 2 centuries jobs are being replaced by machines, yet jobs don't disappear. The cake keeps getting bigger and there's more work for people than you could ever expect 2 centuries ago.

 

[F_Slim]

The cake keeps getting bigger and there's more work for people than you could ever expect 2 centuries ago.

The entire system is build upon growth, if the cake doesn't keep getting bigger at some point the system will break! I am pretty sure that this will happen someday ...

 

[_wb_]

OK, since this thread is derailed beyond repair anyway, I can as well share my views in some more detail

Capitalism has historically been a very progressive economic system. When it started, a couple of centuries ago, we were in feudalism, which meant underproduction and starvation for the majority of people. Capitalism has been very effective at increasing productivity, making it a better world for everyone -- although the rich got richer at a significantly faster rate than the poor.

However, this progressive role for capitalism came to an end in the 19th century, when its model of continuous growth first started hitting its limits. They first attempted to break these limits using colonialism and imperialism, but at some point the entire world was conquered and there was no where else to go. At that point, the economic struggle between the ruling classes of countries became military struggles, and we got the first and second World Wars, and many other military conflicts motivated by economic interests.

After the second world war, the destruction was so immense that for a few decades, a high growth rate could be sustained again, and together with the political pressure from non-capitalist systems, this lead to a significant proportion of the generated wealth to be distributed relatively evenly among the entire population, leading to the golden fifties and the golden sixties.

However, by the mid-1970s, capitalism was again hitting its limits, and went into crisis again. Essentially we're still in that crisis.

The fundamental problem is that, as capitalism progresses:

1) An increasing fraction of the population becomes part of the "working class", that is, gets his or her income from labor for some kind of employer (as opposed to e.g. independent farmers).

2) Profit is the only driving force of the economy; companies that don't focus on maximizing profit are not competitive and will tend to disappear, sooner or later.

3) To make a profit, one has to produce cheaply and sell expensively. This means paying your employees as little as what you can get away with, and selling as high as what you can get away with. Unless you're in a (semi-)monopoly situation, you will not be able to sell (much) above value, so most profit is derived from paying workers a salary that is (significantly) below the added value their labor produces.

4) Since most of the consumers are also producers, their combined purchasing power can never suffice to buy all of the produced goods and services.

This leads to crises of overproduction (or underconsumption). Attempted solutions can postpone the problem but not fundamentally solve it. These include: allowing more and more consumer credit (causing people to spend money they still have to earn), more public debt or just printing more money, and moving investment from the real economy to the virtual one (e.g. speculation and all kinds of strange financial "products"). None of these proposed solutions are actual solutions for the underlying structural problem.

In the long term, there are only two possible outcomes: another economic system (e.g. democratic socialism), or barbarism (e.g. more wars).