Viewing profile — pmwhite

An important example would be a family with children where both parents could work but do not have to. From the GDP POV, it is a huge boost to have a second parent earning an incom…

The small responsive unit of Delaware has an outsized effect on how corporations are run in all 50 states, and it cuts out the legislature of my state on certain aspects that were …

I could be wrong, but I would have guessed we were onto the next phase by now, that could be labelled: "Brilli-ant rhymes with grant" That tenure would come from earning grants. No…

That was my conclusion, too. The personal economics and the carbon footprint correlate surprisingly strongly. The CO2 costs of hybrids look attractive on a 5-6 year timescale, but …

Sure. Self-taught systems put a lot on responsibility on the student. Apprenticeship systems are very mentor-time-expensive and/or put responsibility on the student. If the student…

I wonder if hydrogen is practical to transport in large quantities. My guess is no. Your idea of methane, if it could be done efficiently, seems more likely.

Plate tectonics is a candidate to go on that list, and it was controversial until good undersea maps were available circa 1970. That is 50 years ago, not 30.

True. But I presume that Asimov is answering the letter using the language of the same. Translating "wrong" to "incorrect" does not add anything, better to take the issue head on u…

To oversimplify the issue a bit, it boils down to which you believe is more auspicious for both the planet and humankind: (1) a mix of housing with more dense housing, or (2) a mix…

That only makes sense for absurdly aggressive speculators or people with the political connections to borrow money for 1% or less. I have a fixed 15 year loan at 2.75%, which seems…

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point, but that still sounds like a fundamental problem with the originator. If you are lending money with the unspoken understanding that the no…

In the SF Bay Area, the East Bay may relieve growth pressure to some degree. But fundamentally that can only go so far. If we cannot figure out how to develop wisely along the tran…

That is the fear, yes, but housing prices do not jump so quickly. They really are not likely to drop, as, perhaps, climb much more slowly. It seems we have achieved a self-reinforc…

China was nearly crushed by the Mongols but absorbed the invaders into their society and rose again to great heights. The Roman Empire cracked under the pressure of mass migrations…

That is not so clear. The Bitcoin network can easily be devoured by another cryptocurrency, if that other currency provides greater returns for a unit of work. The larger network w…

"California, an extremely liberal state, voted in a 72% majority referendum for the three strikes policy." Incorrect. In 1994, when the three strikes legislation passed, CA was a p…

But it is not even "a lot". $5000 can be acquired by scrapping together $500 from family/friends and giving that to a bail bond company. Not all poor people can accomplish that, bu…

The second. In the given example, if skilled programmers cannot find the bug in a couple dozen lines of code within an hour, it is not an Agile vs Better Agile vs non-Agile questio…

Preferring a promise of $50 later depends on trust. Economists are much too emotional to understand that kind of thing.

"And if they were a "hero" and increased taxes to try and tackle it, they'd only get voted out next election, so someone else can come in, undo it, then spend all the savings." Geo…

In the traditional one room school house, once the student was beyond the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, teachers did very little teaching as we know it. If you think …

The missing ingredient from your description is: freedom. It is not degrading for a parent to choose to prioritize family matters over income. It is degrading for society to tell a…

Yes, definitely true. If (1) everyone is highly effective in getting tasks done, and (2) working on tasks that are reasonably well prioritized by both technical risks and business …

The US failed to achieve a South Vietnamese gov't that had reasonable support from the general populace, which was nominally on the list of US policy goals since the beginning, but…

It is a little handwavy, but perhaps the BG worked for generations to achieve key areas of hybrid superiority by honing pure breeding lines in these two families? Does not seem to …