Back when Netflix/Prime were the king of paid premium (ad free) streaming essentially being the only players, there were definite months where I barely watched any content and I was a pure source of subsidy for all the other viewers. There are other times, where I swear they (Netflix) start throttling my use to sub-VHS quality. Macroblocking the size of your fist that looks like a 320x240 image scaled to the size of my TV.
Cars are the one thing I don't want to buy. It's not an asset. It depreciates.
I'd like to pay a reasonable monthly subscription with a small fee per mile once I go over some minimum for my tier.
Once autonomous vehicles are stable, I'm presuming I'll be able to hail a car in 5 or 10 mins via app. I guess the only question is what to do in full-on emergencies. For example, when the zombie apocalypse begins, or the aliens final attack. How do I get out of town?
>Cars are the one thing I don't want to buy. It's not an asset. It depreciates.
If you look at a car as an investment, "you're holding it wrong" is the best I can come up with as to how I feel about it. To me, a car is just a really specialized tool. I don't expect my wrenches and socket sets to appreciate in value the longer I hold them. Cars are made by the thousands every day/week/month/year. We don't expect our mobile devices/laptops/desktops to appreciate either. This whole depreciating argument confuses me. Maybe some people just have a hard time equating something with that kind of price tag as simply a tool?
There are very few cars that are investment worthy, and if that's the kind of car you're after, then so be it. But to the 99.99999% of people looking for a car, it is simply something to serve a purpose.
Similar use case that actually happens: hurricanes. Entire large cities evacuate. The Miami and Houston metro areas are both over 5 million in population.
Forecasts give days of notice, so I guess an autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service could have a million extra cars drives themselves in overnight. But refueling them would be a challenge. It's already a challenge for normal cars today (without using more fuel by rearranging fleets of cars between cities).
Also, sometimes they change traffic flow for evacuations, like contraflow lane reversal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraflow_lane_reversal) or using the shoulders as extra lanes. I wonder how well autonomous vehicle software handles that.
You can live without a car. You can't live without food.
You can take raw food goods. Prepare it. And charge more than the cost of the goods. Restaurants do it all the time. Or even if you prepare it for yourself, you saved money.
Only if you're wasteful does food depreciate, but I'd argue that's not the correct word. Food is consumed after you buy it. It was used precisely for what it was intended. That's not depreciation, but I'm guessing you know this and trying to be cute?
My car that I bought was used precisely for what it was intended. And it depreciates through its life until it is no longer useful and its value is zero.
We buy lots of depreciating assets because we need them. That’s not bad, necessarily. But don’t buy a car as an investment.
I brought up food because it’s a depreciating asset. You buy it, you eat it, its value depreciated to zero. It’s not cute, just pointing out that “don’t buy depreciating assets isn’t a very useful life choice.”
Yes. But cars are expensive *and* for the most part they are unutilized. When you're slepping...the car sits. When you're working...the car sits.
An given society that's based on personal transportation (e.g., USA) at any given moment has a significant amount of resources sitting around doing nothing. In a world now based on not-so-infinite resources less cars (via, car on demand) is more than just a biz model. It's good for the world we live in.
Most of the depreciation comes from wear and tear of using it. If you let it sit for an inordinate amount of time that will have a significant impact, otherwise your car isn't going bad when you sleep at night.
Not really. Another issue I have with ownership (or leasing) is usage. While I'm sleeping...the car sits. I'm at work...the car sits. In fact, a whole lot of resources and effort goes into something that spends most of its life under utilized.
Car on demand would mean less cars per person. Perhaps the UAW sees this coming?
True, but there's also the reality that maintenance costs increase over time for software projects as upstream vendors change their pricing models and codebases grow in size and complexity. I can see why a product like Kagi wants to keep their traffic tied to recurring revenue instead of selling a bunch of credits upfront.
People would need to buy more credits. I’m not asking for an eternal membership where I pay once and am done.
There would be many customers buying on different schedules and that would aggregate into a predictable cash flow.
This is a solved problem as companies have sold software for 50 years.
Subscriptions are more profitable, that’s why companies do it. Not because there’s any realistic business reason (other than wanting more money for less work).
The incentive for the company is also different depending if they sell subscriptions or credits/usage. Kagi doesn't have competition in the paid search so space so they shouldn't need to go the subscription route yet as a differentiator.
Using dark patterns like subscriptions at this point seems to me that kagi doesn't trust their product or its users.
I think the point is having stable recurring revenue. Giving you unlimited usage means on average you'll be paying more than you use, but, unless you're seriously abusing it, you can technically cost them more than you pay.
Just like you can go to the gym every day - if everyone with the membership did that they would not be able to function. But it doesn't mean you can't.
Unlimited isn’t real, especially for something like search where it’s not like I need unlimited searches.
The best gyms are pay per session. Gyms are also special because people who buy memberships and never use them subsidize real gym goers who would have to pay more for 20 sessions per month.
The best gyms aren’t pay per session in my experience - and I’ve been to a lot of gyms around the world.
Sure, most gyms let you buy a day pass but compared to the monthly membership it’s very expensive.
My current gym is £40 a month which gives you access to every gym in the country as well) or £10 for a day pass just for that single gym for that single day.
The fanciest gym I’ve ever been to was the equivalent of £30 for a day pass and like £300 for a monthly membership.
Also you example of gyms being special isn’t specific to gyms, that’s also how insurance works, spread the cost out over a lot of people and everyone pays less.
I agree Unlimited PTO is a con though, just give everyone an allocation and let them choose how much they use (most will use the maximum)
Fair enough. Sell in bulk but have some minimum credits per month requirement. More or less, use'em or lose'em. Not super painful, they are paying customers :) But enough to keep it fair to the vendor. This way there's a path to paying for those who don't want or need a monthly unlimited subscription.
I really liked the suggestion from somewhere else on this topic of paying a set fee for an amount of credits to be charged against. When the balance gets low, allow them to re-up. Of course, there shouldn't be some BS type of expiration date like food products or airline miles. Pay as you go type of plans. In that way, you are paying for exactly what you use, and not just donating each month like it's a charity.
In this case expiring is not the same as airline miles. The product doesn't run itself. If you only want to use your credits on the odd numbers months and you expect it to be there and ready, well it still has to be there and maintained on the even numbered months.
I guess you can bake that into the credits price. But if you say, purchased 100 credits today and don't use it for a year...well, who is paying for that year? Adding a small monthly fee, oddly enough, keeps the customer engaged.
I see this as the point to any subscription model. Of course they want you paying for more than you use/consume.