That's why I love the man...

Hey there, my friend. It's Calvin, your favorite CEO of Simplero, here to talk about how we handle these cookie warnings here at Simplero.

And the answer is very simple. We don't. We don't. You won't find on Simplero.com or any of our sites any of those annoying cookie popups that say, "Oh, you need to click here to accept cookies."

Why not? Civil disobedience. We may get in trouble for this, but I'm willing to take a stand on this issue. It's a menace on the web. It used to be just in Europe, so whenever I'd go over to Denmark, where I'm from, I'd notice that all the sites now had these popups and things that take up screen real estate, and you need to click on it to make it go away. But now, I think it might have happened after the GDPR fiasco back in May. It seems to have spread to even American websites, that they put this thing up as well.

Think about how many resources, economic resources, that saps the energy of every single person in the EU and America, in the Western world, in the entire world. I don't know how big this is, but even if it was just the EU, and now partially in the US, but I'm sure many other countries as well. Every time you visit a website that you haven't visited before, you need to ... this thing is in your way.

It's taking up space.

You need to read it, scan it, figure out what it says. Oh, it says the cookie thing, and then you need to click it to make it go away. Or it's taking up screen real estate that you've paid dearly to have in the first place. So it has a massive cost. Of course that cost is mostly invisible, at least to politicians, 'cause it's borne by each individual member. And for each individual person it's a nuisance, it's annoying, but it's not the end of the world. But in aggregate, obviously it's still not the end of the world, but in aggregate it ends up being a lot.

But it's mostly invisible. Kinda reminds me, I'm reading this book, Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell right now. Just a fantastic book. Where is it? Here.

I've been doing the audiobook and ebook version, but here's the hardcover version. It's thick, but it's freaking great. So he talks about this situation where there was a small shortage of gas, of gasoline, and it turned out to massive shortage because everybody would fill up their tank. Even though their tank was only half empty, they would fill it off. They would top it off just to be sure. And so all of a sudden, that inventory, instead of sitting in the gas stations, where people could get to it, it got distributed into everybody's individual gas tank.

And in aggregate that shit really adds up.

So it's the same thing with the cookie thing is the time consumed by reading this, clicking on this, is really big. It's massive, because it's everywhere. And what's the benefit to this? What's the benefit to this? Can you think of anyone who's in any way safer because of this? Does anyone actually read that thing and make an informed decision about whether they're gonna trade off their cookies, or personal information for this stuff? Did anyone actually read this stuff and then click no or then back out of the site 'cause cookies or whatever? Does that ever happen? I'm sure it happens every once in a while, but percentage wise, how often does that actually ever happen?

Every website uses cookies.

The only way to take notice of the fact that some person doesn't want you to use cookies is what? Using a cookie. That's the only way they can do it. Well, you can do it by IP address. Not very effective. So in order to register the fact that you don't want me to set any cookies, I need to set a cookie.

It's just how the web works.

A friend of mine who works for Google implementing some of the GDPR stuff told me actually that the EU was very much ... the Parliament, or whoever ... I think it was the Parliament ... was very much aware that the cookie thing was a completely idiotic thing. The cookie law, it was broken, and they really wanted to make the GDPR better. And I suppose to some extent the GDPR is a better law, although a it's really stupid, really shitty, really awful law that hurts small companies, small businesses like our customers mainly are, dramatically, and really doesn't do much to target what they're really trying to target.

Or at least it does so at a massive cost, again, to the general population and all the small businesses all over the world.

But it seems to have ... I haven't seen the cookie law being repealed lately, and it's still in effect all over the place. And so I'm like this isn't working. It's not making anyone any more safe. And so we just don't do it, honestly. We just don't do it. And so maybe at some point we'll get sued by someone who says we set a cookie, and we didn't tell them about it, and maybe we'll go out of business for that reason. Who knows? If that's the case then I'll promise you I'll do everything I ... I'll make sure that the software keeps operating, but yeah. I mean, this is, for me it's just we can't let stupid, stupid decisions like that drive us all.

So if we all just showed civil disobedience over this stupidity that doesn't help anyone and is obviously stupid ... I haven't talked to a single person in the entire world that thinks it's a good idea, that thinks it's smart or helpful or anything like that. And so if we all just agree not to do it, the world would be so much better off. Sure, there's a slight legal risk there, but such is life. There's always a risk to everything, and we're willing to bear that risk.

So that is our policy on the cookie thing.

We don't have it. So there you go.

Let's fight the stupidity of lawmakers just by doing what we know is right, even if they don't understand it. It's fascinating to me how little most lawmakers seem to understand. I think this book, by the way, should be required reading, just like the stuff on price controls and how prices function. To coordinate allocation of scarce resources, it's freaking magic. It's freaking amazing, and I think there's ... very, very few politicians understand how that stuff works, even though it's freaking amazing.

So anyway, that was today's chat, is we don't have the cookie popup thing 'cause it's harmful to humanity, and I choose to side with humanity. So there you have it.

I hope you have a fantastic day. Talk again soon. Bye!

Calvin Correli.