Tariffs don’t “work” or “not work” it’s not a binary outcome. Just as measuring “the economy” is pretty much impossible, so is attributing economic outcomes to one single feature of the regulatory environment, They interact with the rest of the economic environment and some variety or work, production, trade, investment and distribution will occur. Over time all aspects of the system will change, adapt and react. Most changes have winners and losers and they can be counted or balanced off differently.

It it were paired with bank regulation and asset ownership regulation and a coherent industrial strategy, maybe also forex controls, maybe some counter cyclical macroeconomic policy (extremely unpopular these days) the outcomes would likely be quite different from a low regulation free for “all”. “All” is probably “a few with relatively unconstrained access to enough capital or credit to hoover up assets of the losers”.

But then a smaller subset of those things might also change the outcomes on their own. Either way it would be a matter of time and adaptation of a complex system.

It also depends what you think the objective is before you understand “success” or “failure”, the goals might well be social as much as economic. If the objective is trash the small scale asset ownig middle classes and enrich the elites economically then it might be working already.

Don’t be so sure, did you see the quote fom next UK prime minister.

A total cunt admitted he would allow American chlorine-washed chicken to be sold in the UK as part of a free trade deal with the US.

That’s not something that I’d think is any of my business to want or not want.

I can’t really answer the last question, I’d need to know a lot more about all thendifferent things these microsoft users are doing; what’re the alternatives; and, how disruptive might the transition be. On balance, given the uncertainties, I’d have to say probably not.

I mean if i stopped using Microsoft entirely (i.e. at work) I’d have to find a new job, probably one I’m less experienced at. And likely I’d end up working for a bigger bunch of scumbags. Likely no net gain and a load of botheration in the meanwhile.

Also i might miss the regular BSOD inspired tea breaks . . .

Haha market cap, market share , they’re still all about selling stuff so dont really apply./ Market share is normally measured in share of revenue in most industries.

There are lots of webpages, tutorials, youtubes and stuff like that for these people already. I’m sure they can also pay companies like canonical for more dedicated support if that’s what they need.

If you want to welcome people, go ahead and do it, nothing stopping you. Create the webpage or forum or youtube channel, distribution, or write the book whatever is missing. Just make sure to moderate it to remove CLI based answers and block users like me.

“I” exist and I’m sure I’m never going to be part of your “we”. The current situation of linux home user base seems just fine to me without pandering to a load of windows users. I think you should work on your desired subculture and keep me out if it. Leave me out of it - i can stay over here under my bridge in linuxmemes wearing my new programming socks.

For the home market maybe you can look at valve and steamdeck or something as an example of an acessible linux sub-culture. Valve doesn’t maintain and support that for free though. It’d be interesting to know how many full time employees they have on steamdeck OS just for the one device (and maybe a few gaming perpherals) and one GUI. Then expand that to all esoteric hardware and all GUIs . . .
I guess chromeOS and a few forks of that is another similar example - i think that’s still linux kernel based - some limitations on hardware i think.

What I’d actually like to see is B2B growth (for user ) - but I don’t think linux will ever be bought by employers like mine - I know how the procurement department operates - and I can’t see that changing. There are plenty of people who don’t need my support trying business sales, redhat, canonical, suse etc and more power to them - but microsoft didn’t get big in B2B by being usable, nor by nor having “no CLI”, nor by having a supportive community to home users. They just packaged it in a way that ticked all the boxes for the corpo procurement types - though most B2B customers do need their own dedicated user support.

It’s open source, they can just make their own distro.

And something like a machine can “seize up” too.

I think the trick with English is to just keep seizing any old random words out of a hat until the other person nods convincingly enough.

Judge any service (and most other stuff) by its support, aftercare and how they handle complaints / fix problems.

That’s worth more than flashy front end, marketing bs or even technical performance specs.

Haha that would be awesome/softwaregoresome. I’d pay money (well not much money) to see it just to troll MS-GUI fanatics with it.

All I can find is some mention of libreoffice doing it. and yes I did try ddging with ‘safe search’ off.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=407404

Oh shit - I turned it on in my LO writer and I can’t find the button to turn it back . . .

Don’t fly in a plane until aftr you’ve applied and been rejected then, surely.

GNU Terry Pratchett

Fucking terminal, in many of them ctrl+c and ctrl+v don’t even work. and don’t get me started on how they implement ctrl+z. I’m waiting for a terminal to have the ms-office ribbon menu bar before I’ll use it.

Yeah built in user screening process. Screwed by endeavourOS though.

It could be a form of bundling, tacit veritcal integratation, magin squeeze , price discrimination, tie-ins etc.

Various tricks oligopolistic companies use to prevent competition from bidding prices down - trying to extract a bit of extra profit. The harm is that people are paying more than they might - or for extra features they cant opt out of than they would in a free or open market. Likely the harm is very diffuse and no one person is all that bothered to be paying 10% more or whatever, but it all adds up.

Anti-trust regulators are so weak they don’t really have to try though. TBF it’s very hard to prove this stuff in court even if there was a political will to improve competition to benefit consumers.

Yes surely fake.

But anyone using MS OneDrive for personal stuff might want to check with some privacy advice - and I doubt MS are going to recommend doing that.

If MS is giving large increases in cloud storage and bandwidth for free/very cheap one wonders whether there’s anything in it for MS. Again MS might not feel the need to say.

it’s a pointless statement to say if everyone did anything

I was agreeing with this part, except that I think OP statement was ‘hyperbolic’ not ‘pointless’; an exageration for rhetorical effect.

What I think is pointless is taking hyperbole (and most rhetoric) at face value and arguing about it. It is better to try to determine the underlying point being made (there probably is one if you look hard enough or enquire about it) and think about some more realistic scenarios.

I don’t think the original point was about <hyperbole> the vulnerability of the economy of mauritius due to overconcentration of the dodo industry </hyperbole>; or, the sustainability of a street entirely owned by landlords. Maybe someone wants to <hyperbole> make some Ronald Coase type speculation about how property rights could have saved the dodo </hyperbole>.

ok, nice and realistic. No hyperbole here.

Are you’re saying that if an economy has an increse the concentration of farming activity then economic ouput will deteriorate as fast as if it were to have instead had the same increase the concentration of parasitic activity? Very interesting idea.

Maybe I’m dense but the only way I can see that working is if the parasites become super-effective livestock and can be turned into food that is either more nutrious or has a longer shelflife than the feedstock.