Viewing profile — aljg

What percentage of your examples would not be wildly better served by owning USD? Maybe China? Certainly Venezuela, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, and other countries around the globe alre…

Half as much damage as coal is a pretty low bar! Natural gas also meets it, for example. Your broader point is strong though, and there's no reason 4th-gen nuclear power plants bei…

"Pole" in English is derived [1] from the Latin palus (from whence "palo"). The archaic English word "pale" (also meaning stick or stake) survives in the expression "beyond the pal…

Let me know when google undermines American democracy, enables a genocide in Myanmar, or casually starts kicking human rights activists off its products. Or by “squint” do you mean…

I'd guess that being coastal is pretty important here as well. But definitely interesting to think about in the context of a hypothetical new landlocked city. Pedantically, I think…

Civil asset forfeiture is another great example (analogous to these towing companies) of how a profit motive should not be associated with critical societal services. When there is…

>Even substantially expanded rail will never solve the problem of "I want to get from point A to point B, as quickly as possible, whenever I'm ready to leave" in a fundamentally di…

This would almost certainly be illegal (antitrust violation) and probably wouldn't be worth the firestorm even if it was legal.

Good point, I retract my blanket statement of "no legal liability." I should have said that they are not criminally liable. Your link [1] shows how rarely police officers are found…

The person you are replying to just pointed out the race of relevant parties. > Are you sure it’s as simple as “this guy was black”? If you aren’t sure it seems like a bad accusati…

I don't believe they are opening themselves up to any legal liability. See [1] and links for a disturbing list of recent examples of police receiving qualified immunity. One exampl…

Imagine: if half the single family homes were replaced by duplexes half the neighborhood could be green space ("natural settings")! From an environmental perspective there is no co…

>>> "no empirical reason to believe it is the case." It takes chutzpah to assert a negative. But I appreciate that you honestly don't believe it. Perhaps this will cause you to upd…

Of course it's a universal right. I don't think there's an idealogical gap between us on that front. The other side of the "or" is a particularly egregious example of the excluded …

No, that would be patently absurd. Of course they're vacating (the upper end of) mid-priced housing. It's almost as if an equivalent amount of mid-priced housing would suddenly bec…

Yea to the space museum (why only focus on the Apollo program, though?) and housing! Nay to the Victorian theme park part of Alcatraz.

Not sure if this is sarcasm. Certainly some of the stories (“Marin Highway System,” for example) should be regarded as bullets dodged.