I created a video presentation: Elliot's Thoughts on Pricing. Features:

• Shares interesting thoughts on pricing
• Elliot talks through the topics rather than reading slides
• Discusses Elliot's Gumroad product pricing and broader issues
• Learn common ways people are irrational about prices
• Not a complete pricing guide
• Not an introduction
• Provides food for thought and insight into Elliot's thought process

(Under promise and over deliver! I don't want people expecting something they won't get.)

And I've set up a store page which I added to the blog sidebar.

Lots of edits went into the video and the bonus audio discussion, take a look:

Those edits were done in Screenflow.

I do image editing for the cover images with Pixelmator.

And I now have a mic with tripod and pop filter :)

EDIT: I removed the store link from the sidebar because Gumroad doesn't work very well (e.g. crops images to look awful on mobile, has scrolling and blank space bugs on mobile). I looked at some competitors and found similar problems, e.g. the homepage of sellfy currently has an image with a person's head cropped off and some text cut off mid letter. I don't know what to do because I don't want to code a whole store myself, but I also don't like using broken and unprofessional-looking stuff. I haven't decided yet.

Ted Cruz has endorsed Donald Trump. It's late. He should have done it at the convention. But it's a lot better than nothing.

Cruz was asked today whether he agrees with Trump's comment that Putin is a stronger leader than Obama.

Cruz said he isn't going to defend everything Trump says, and he's made his disagreements clear, but the two months before the election isn't the time to focus on those disagreements and Trump is way better than Hillary.

Here's what I think Cruz should have said:

I don't agree with Donald about everything. But I'll tell you, I do agree with him that Obama is a weak president. And Hillary would be weak too. Donald would have the strength and stamina to lead us, and I think that's important.

The differences between Donald and Hillary couldn't be clearer. It's a productive businessman running against a career politician who is also a lying criminal. Donald is going to build a security wall and he's going to do his best to Make America Great Again. When Donald makes a promise, he always promises to do something good like appoint constitutionalist supreme court judges or help lift blacks and hispanics out of poverty by protecting their civil right to school choice.

Hillary is a stark contrast. It's a certainty that she will appoint radical leftists to the supreme court, as she has promised to. It's a certainty that she'll do her best to keep our border open, and bring in more refugees we can't vet from areas controlled by ISIS or Al Qaeda. She has promised us more of the same: high taxes, the war on coal, Obamacare, and a divisive administration that considers half the country deplorable. And she would continue the same weak policies we saw with Obama's apology tour.

What Makes You Beautiful Lyrics

You're turning heads when you walk through the door

song sings about girl turning heads when she walks thru door. but like they can’t see she’s hot BEFORE they turn their head. so it doesn’t actually make much sense. or if they could already see her, they don’t have to turn head, yaknow?

You don't know you're beautiful, oh oh,
That's what makes you beautiful

also the song says what makes her beautiful is ignorance of the beautiful face she spent 2 hours in front of a mirror designing before the party. blatant fucking lie? and is that ignorance what ppl r looking at when they turn their heads..?

Everyone else in the room can see it,
Everyone else but you

she'd have to be terribly naive and ignorant to have no clue how people see her. especially given lots of people have told her by hitting on her, singing love songs to her about her beauty, etc. do they want her to be naive about our society's thinking on sex so she's easier to fuck? sounds unrealistic. maybe they just want her to pretend to be naive about it so she seems more like a virgin. a lot of girls do that kinda thing. they put on an act about their sexual inexperience and then lots of guys like fucking them more. it's very silly.

i stopped at a park and sat on a bench for 15min today and there were parents and little kids

they did a lot of awful things in that short time

like 6-8 different parents came by. there's like a daycare or something next to the park

i got there at 1pm

one thing i noticed is sometimes parents hold their kid's hand while walking

and i saw a kid trip a bit

and i realized holding hands wasn't affecting parent's balance or stride

but it WAS affecting the kid's

to have his hand held upward and immobile

and also to try to match parent's pace

and i thought parent contributed to the tripping

and prolly thinks kid needs hand held to yank him up to prevent falls

but i think parent causes more falls

another parent said kid could only go down slide once and then they had to go

so kid delayed. a lot. and banged on the slide. and sat on top.

and parent got impatient asked him to come again before he'd even gone down once. and parent gave the reason that his brother was in the car waiting.

which is so nasty to put the two siblings at odds against each other. to create a conflict btwn them, where the brother is the excuse for why he can't use the slide

and the amount of time before the left, i figure the kid could have gone down the slide 5 times if he was reasonably quick

but the parent told him once, so he did it really slow

if the parent had said "you can slide 3 times if you are quick"

they might have left faster and with a happier kid

it's so wasteful to drag it out enough time for 5 slides, with parent resenting it, and kid resenting only getting to slide once. so inefficient.

there were 3 trikes someone had left at the park. it's in a good neighborhood, small park, bit isolated, low theft risk.

a mom praised the hell out of a dad who she found out was the owner

she gushed about how big a difference the trikes made. later she said she had one on her porch she never remembers to bring.

it was very like boring smalltalk, very low content, very gushy and exaggerated

but also note the trikes are a big deal for the kids – that she'll gush about – and she just keeps forgetting to bring one she already has. that's how much she actually cares about about kids. not enough to make the effort to remember.

and she said something about 3 trikes being a good number. i was thinking if it was only one then some parents would prefer zero trikes instead of one to avoid kids fighting over it. they'd rather have no resources so kids don't expect anything than some resources kids really want and have to deal with resource allocation. (and these people have plenty of money and other resources to provide plenty for the kids. they all present as being well off financially and it's not a neighborhood for poor people. they just, in various ways, choose not to provide their kids with resources.)

then later i saw a little girl, like 3, was on a small plastic trike. and her mom tried to help her peddle but it wasn't working. she pushed along with her feet on the ground. the mother just gave up and ignored it. she was obviously way too big for it. her knees were bent heavily for her to sit on it.

while the mother was standing 2 feet away but ignoring her, the girl, on her own, noticed the 3 trikes the other guy had left at the park. they were metal and larger. they fit her better. she went to one. the mother followed.

and then she put her doll in the seat and then realized it blocked her from sitting on it herself, and tried to figure out what to do

sigh. and the mother was not helping or offering to hold the doll or suggesting how to handle it

and the gender roles. none of the guys had this problem. they would play. the girl is taught priorities that get in her way.

the girl is taught to treat a doll like it's special and important and fragile

which is inconvenient

so she manages to get on the trike and hold the doll in her lap. and her mom pushes it around for her some. it had a poll sticking up the back the mother could push. kid didn't figure out how to peddle and mom didn't even try to help with that this time.

with the first trike the mom was physically grabbing the kid's feet and putting them on the pedals

and then spun the pedals with her hands when kid had feet on ground like a demonstration

i think she was very bad at explaining it and was not a patient helper

anyway mom says something about time to go, pushes the trike onto the grass instead of stone, stops pushing it, leaves kid stuck and not moving, and stands there

i thought she did it on purpose to end the activity but later found out she didn't have much trouble pushing the trike on the grass, it still rolled fine

but kid had to wait a while. mom talked to someone else or looked at her phone or just stood there, idk, but kid wasn't moving for a minute

and for some reason mom got the doll

and dropped it into a little basket on the back of the trike that was like 2 inches above the ground

mom was unaware or uncaring that her daughter cared about the doll, and treated it very carefully

which i knew from watching her with the doll for 20 seconds a few minutes earlier

and then what next? mom just looks away or ignores kid, doesn't pay attention

and kid tries to reach back and arrange doll better in basket

and spends like 30s trying to get doll more comfortable and properly taken care of for the ride

and mom isn't helping or paying any attention or realizing she just fucking dropped the doll like 1 foot into the basket, carelessly, that kid is trying to treat like a fragile baby

then mom pushed her on the grass some more then made her leave

all the parents were pressuring their kids to leave and no one stayed for long

my friend commented, "Ppl think my sister is weird cuz she asks toddlers for permission to like pick them up"

it's so sad how the parents consistently aren't interested in helping their kid get plenty of trips down the slide, get his fill of the park.

and it's so sad how parents mostly just don't pay attention to what their kid is doing. they can't help much because they don't pay attention. they say "we're going soon" and then talk with another parent and look away and then a few minutes later say "we really gotta go now" without even checking or caring what their kid is in the middle of. they mostly don't play with their kids. they don't try to understand what their kids are thinking. they don't try to help with it. they just don't care or pay much attention.

the one mom did help push the trike. but she wasn't paying any attention to the great care and attentiveness with which her daughter treated her doll. and i'll bet the kid has been loving that doll for months and treating it much the same and mom just doesn't care or have any respect for her kid's wishes and goals. and she just stopped in the middle of pushing the trike for a while for no apparent reason and then kid was stuck sitting still for a while. and she's not a good enough helper to help her kid peddle a trike. and she doesn't care or have the patience to keep trying. she just grabbed her kid's feet, placed them, didn't seem aware the trike was way too small for the kid (knees super bent), and then promptly gave up. kid will have to learn how to use a trike later from some other kid who knows how to use one. or maybe figure it out herself if she gets the opportunity to spend more time with a trike instead of being made to leave. or maybe, being a female, she'll just go through life being bad at that kind of thing because if a girl apparently "doesn't like trikes" parents think that's normal and ok and ignore it instead of figuring there's a problem to help with. but if a boy isn't playing with trikes, a lot more parents would figure something is wrong and help him solve the problem instead of just thinking it's a matter of taste. stuff like that, which isn't very blatant, is how a lot of gender role stuff ends up happening.

my friend also commented:

and it's so sad how parents mostly just don't pay attention to what their kid is doing. they can't help much because they don't pay attention.

when ppl do try to “help”, they mostly just interrupt with their kid is doing

they aren’t paying attention to what the kid is trying to do

so they interrupt and are like “here, do this”

but that won’t even help with what the kid is trying to do

like, say kid is trying to make swing twist around

parent will kind of see what kid is doing, but will think they are just incompetent at swinging

so if they try to “help” it will be either by pushing kid on swing, or trying to make them pump their legs

or maybe they know kid is trying to twist swing around, but they just think that is the wrong way to use the swing. so they are trying to make him use it right

i think both things happen

i don't entirely get how people are so blind to this stuff. you watch anyone interest with kids for a few minutes and you see horrors. they consistently don't pay attention to what their children or doing or why. they consistently don't try to understand. they consistently suck at helping or explaining anything, or don't even try to.

and they try to control their kid and make him leave. with no idea what kid is doing, they have no idea how important staying more is. they don't care. they don't try to figure out if it's worth staying because kid is in the middle of something great. they just have a very limited amount of patience for kid to delay them and they don't care about the park.

some reason people are blind to these horrors:

• they don't think of children as people
• they see it all the time so it just looks normal to them
• they make excuses like parenting is tiring enough without actually paying attention to your kid and his activities and having to help
• they don't respect children "playing", don't regard it as important or having anything to do with learning or education
• they're not very nice to anyone in their lives, including themselves. this isn't all kid-specific
• they treat people by categories (e.g. "child") rather than worrying about specifics like what that individual child cares about

it's so fucking simple though. your kid treasures a doll. you don't just drop it. the parent is just doing generic actions without knowing about her kid as an individual.

if your kid wants to use a slide, that's great. he likes it. this thing exists, people built it, and then other people enjoy it. they didn't have to build it but they did. and here it is. and your kid didn't have to find things in life he likes but he did. liking things and thinking things are good is not automatic. people take it for granted but it's wonderful and takes some positive human spirit and thinking. and then people grow up and don't actually like much stuff, or feel much joy, or have many interests, and they wonder why their lives are so empty. it's because their parents crushed their interests young and had no respect for their joy and preferences.

then people cover up their empty adult lives with a bunch of lies and make excuses for their parents and then do it to their own kids. they pretend getting drunk and partying and having sex are interests, when they're really just doing it because they have no idea what to do with their lives and that's what society offers. some pretend their profession is an interest. some pretend to like video games but play "casually" – meaning without really thinking about it much, just to kill time like watching TV. (some people don't even want to watch TV at higher speeds because then they'd just need to watch more shows to take up the same time slots in their life. they don't actually care about what they watch, and aren't interested in seeing more, they are just killing time.)

A lot of bad thinking involves:

• creating arbitrary mental categories, then addressing each small category with its only parochial answer
• arbitrarily separating things with shared attributes into separate categories
• selective attention
• impatience, intolerance, deciding right away some other idea or person is dumb, unreasonable, or "crazy"
• authority, prestige, and generally judging the speaker instead of the speech
• low standards for what is considered good or succesful

Elliot Temple:

    http://libertyunbound.com/node/858

She thought that the heroes she created were exemplars of pure, uncorrupted capitalism. In fact, the heroes she created in Atlas Shrugged came from her sense of life, which was not only un-capitalist but anti-capitalist. I will also show that this contradiction is extremely fortunate because it illuminates why capitalism is the most efficient and humane economic system ever implemented.

    and

When the heroes who embody her sense of life engage in economic activities, they function like Communist administrators, not capitalist businessmen.

Justin Mallone:

    maybe he mixed up the characters

Elliot Temple:

When Nathaniel Branden was the official Objectivist expert on psychology, he wrote,

    this precedes any args @ AS being mixed up on capitalism

    which i haven't found yet

    instead we hear about eg

In her short story “The Simplest Thing in the World” (1975: 173-85), Rand depicts a writer of fiction who cannot make a living because he has the same sense of life as Rand. The writer decides he has to create the type of story that will sell: “a simple, human story,” which consists of “lousy bromides.”

    lots of refs, no points

In all of Rand’s novels, only one business owner completely embodies the capitalist ethos. That is the press tycoon Gail Wynand, in The Fountainhead, who becomes fabulously rich through selfless service to the public, by providing it with what it wants: a lowbrow, sentimental, lurid newspaper.

    oh, she's not a capitalist b/c she's not an altruist?

Wynand’s opposite is Nathaniel Taggart, in Atlas Shrugged, who is supposed to be the archetypal capitalist. As Dagny recalls (I.8), “He said that he envied only one of his competitors, the one who said, ‘The public be damned!’” Nothing could be more antithetical to the motivation of a successful business owner in a capitalist society.

    lol yeah

    note that apple famously doesn't rely on customer surveys and focus gorups

    so uhh

    gg

    he's like mad anyone would use their own judgement instead of doing whatever the public demand assigns the highest wages too

    ok i finally found his point

    i can see how someone could think that

Nevertheless, the economic decisions of the heroes of Atlas Shrugged are constantly motivated by the human element. That is true even of the one major character in Atlas Shrugged who is a pure capitalist, Midas Mulligan. He says he joined the strike because of a vision, in which he “saw the bright face and the eyes of young Rearden . . . lying at the foot of an altar . . . and what stood on that altar was Lee Hunsacker, with the mucus-filled eyes” (III.1). In Part II, Chapter 3, Francisco asks Rearden: did you want the rail you made for the John Galt Line used by your equals, like Ellis Wyatt, and by men such as Eddie Willers, who do not match your ability but who “equal your moral integrity” and “riding on your rail — give a moment’s silent thanks”? Rearden answers Yes. Francisco then asks, “Did you want to see it used by whining rotters?” Rearden answers, “I’d blast that rail first.” Francisco then explains that by "whining rotter" he means “any man who proclaims his right to a single penny of another man’s effort.” But no economy, whether socialist or capitalist, could function for one day if producers acted in this way.

    and

In Part II, Chapter 10, Dagny says that Nathaniel Taggart, supposedly the archetypical capitalist, “couldn’t have worked with people like these passengers. He couldn’t have run trains for them.” But no one running a train line, even in a socialist economy, could possibly consider the moral worth of its passengers, or any consideration besides their paying for the ride.

    tldr Rand sucked at capitalism b/c she advised against selling your soul for a larger bank account as, obviously, any true capitalist would do, money being the root of all good and souls being communist propaganda.

Justin Mallone:

    “capitalism is value-free dollar chasing. rand’s heroes aren’t like that, thus anti-cap the end”

Elliot Temple:

    ya

    but with more scholarly references