In a made up scenario let's start with a dumb 50"ish TV. That cost them around $100 to build. Add in another $50 for shipping and distribution fees. It's at the store for $150 cost. If they set the price at $400. There is $250 dollars of profit to share between the store and the manufacturer. The manufactuerer likely gets under $100.
Now for a smart TV the revenue stream looks different. First their costs only go up by a few dollars for adding the "smart" chips. So let's say $155 cost. Then they collect revenue from the streaming providers to be supported by their smart TV say $30 per set. Then they collect the $20 per set per year in user data collected. So if they price the smart TV the same as the dumb one they generate $95 from the sale of the set.
So the profit from a dumb TV is $100 at he point of sale.
The profit from a smart TV is $225+ in a constant revenue stream over 5 years.
And this is why we see so much advertising for smart TV's as being the best thing.
First job out of college was as a statistician. I couldn't lie that much.
Then I worked as a microbiologist. It stunk.
Then I worked as a plant breeder, it was fun but the pay sucked without a Ph.D.
Took a job as and international marketing and product manager (paid the same as the PhD). Traveled all over the world. It was brutal but fun. Jetlag and stress started destroy my health.
Took a job as a consultant to farmers. It wasn't bad until a new CEO decided to change things and lose a ton of money.
Currently working for a smaller company that basically doesn't care what I do as long as it's profitable. Contracting research, selling seeds & beneficial insects, etc to farmers. Set my own schedule and do my own thing. I let the CEO know what I am up too once a year or so. Spent most of the last month playing PlayStation after doing way too much this spring. Gotta pace myself after all.
Fusarium spores are viable in the soil for more than 30 years. They also tend to infect multiple species, once they are in a region they are there for good. The spores are transmitted around the world in on seeds or soil. The spores are found at a very low rate (like 1:1,000,000,000) on the surface of many species of seeds. It's well below the detection level of any test.
They are cheap because they are a commodity and exploit low paid workers.
Consumers adapt to observable diversification if the product is superior and significantly different. They are almost totally ignorant if the differences are small and the product is similar. That's not the reason.
The issue is that most of the banana production is handled by very few companies. Changing varieties complicates their internal processes, will cost them money, and they will not do it until forced to do so.
Have you ever looked up how long it takes for bacteria to evolve resistance after exposure to an antibiotic?
2-3 years.... Yeah...
More concerning is a virus in my opinion. Jumping species is common and it's the novelty to the immune system thats the danger. How much damage would an influenza strain from 3-4000 years combining with modern strains cause?
If you compared wait times in Canada versus wait times in the U.S., Canada would probably be shorter overall.
The U.S. system creates artificial shortages in many different areas. They seek optimal profitablity by staffing slightly below what the need requires. This shortage justifies charging higher prices.
You can also probably blame some of the long wait times in Canada for things on the U.S. Specialist in the U.S. make a lot more money.
Everything we produce in agriculture is constantly fighting off plagues. From insects, bacterial, fungal and virus infections. It is constantly under attack.
In crops on average farmers have to change to new varieties every 10 years. In some species it's every 3-4.
Global warming is also making it much harder for agriculture. Higher temps = diseases come earlier in the season and last longer. Pest populations are not reduced as much over the winter.
We have also reached the limits of traditional breeding in many species for disease/pest resistances.
There is ways we can prevent the pending collapse but not without some massive investments, a complete overhaul of the laws, and fundamental changes in how we do agriculture.
Airborne respiratory viruses in humans tend to decrease in lethality. This doesn't really transfer anywhere else. The decrease in severity in is due to selection pressure from human quarantine behavior.
Killing the host is normal in single celled organisms. The most common method viruses leave the cell I by causing it to burst open.
Killing the host is also common in the plant world.
They really don't care where the nutrients come from. However they take very little to keep going for a long time.
Cell biologist I worked with tested tested this one.
He placed 10 small plants into sterile agar made with diluted Hoagland's solution. He then sealed the petri dishes with petrifilm (gas permeable). Then placed them under a low light (4 T12's at 20cm and a 12 hour photoperiod).
He started them about 5 years before I met him. We worked together for 11 years and he never lost a plant.
A long time ago I was the guinea pig/first user for a company developed system.
I often had my 1 year old at the time son with me when I worked on the weekend. He had a great time smashing buttons on the keyboard and randomly clicking the mouse on the test version. He found most of the bugs.
They were a bit more tricky than that I believe. They capped the user page at 3 years of search. So when you delete everything using those scripts it deletes the newer stuff but misses all the older ones. Then after the script runs it shows - no comments.
From what I have seen, unhappy marriages are very common in highly religious/conservative groups.
Most of these groups have stupid "No Sex before marriage" rules. So two horny young adults (teenagers in some cases) get married quickly. Pregnancy follows immediately and they start being parents before they are fully mature.
Fast forward 5-6 years later and they don't even like each other anymore. The smart ones do the adult decision and divorce.
Way too many of them live misery constantly bickering while claiming to be "happily married" because "divorce is a sin". They then spend most of their time complaining about their spouses. The kids of course have all sorts of baggage from growing up in the toxic environment.
Why is basic math.
In a made up scenario let's start with a dumb 50"ish TV. That cost them around $100 to build. Add in another $50 for shipping and distribution fees. It's at the store for $150 cost. If they set the price at $400. There is $250 dollars of profit to share between the store and the manufacturer. The manufactuerer likely gets under $100.
Now for a smart TV the revenue stream looks different. First their costs only go up by a few dollars for adding the "smart" chips. So let's say $155 cost. Then they collect revenue from the streaming providers to be supported by their smart TV say $30 per set. Then they collect the $20 per set per year in user data collected. So if they price the smart TV the same as the dumb one they generate $95 from the sale of the set.
So the profit from a dumb TV is $100 at he point of sale.
The profit from a smart TV is $225+ in a constant revenue stream over 5 years.
And this is why we see so much advertising for smart TV's as being the best thing.