Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats fine. Just curious why would you do that?
Because it went on a generic political tangent.
Would it make sense to break out the parent that first brought up Why Nations Fail? I'm curious what the logic is.
It’s Time to Build
991–1000 of 1001 posts
Re: It’s Time to Build
#992Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still don't understand that it's not financially feasible, for many reasons. I love nuclear, I fucking operated nuclear plants, but until we have passively safe designs that are tested and proven, it's not an option. You're totally correct on the facts, but no one is willing to fund it, that's the fact that killed nuclear.
I was not questioning the financial part. Just the severity of issues.
The problem is that there's tons of deaths from accidents that we can't quantify due to cancer or the like. If we expanded nuclear, who's to say the deaths from mining nuclear materials, cancer, etc wouldn't outstrip those of wind, solar, etc.? Severity and probability are hard to quantify, and with the financial argument, I'm kinda saying that it doesn't matter anyways because no one will fund one of the most expensive forms of energy that has high enough risk profiles that you cannot even insure it in many places.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#993Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it interesting how affordable housing must be very near high economic opportunity. Seems to me it's a fight for convenience too. They built Las Vegas in the desert to avoid restrictions, what's preventing this generation to build new cities? The whole Covid problem will make quests to increase population density more difficult. But perhaps will also spread opportunities around, or move them online, so this zon…
I fight for both market rate and subsidized housing in high-opportunity cities because it's the easiest way to life people out of poverty. Being able to live near high-income jobs is the most direct path to the middle class in America. If we want people to not live in poverty, then it makes sense to subsidize their access to opportunity. That means subsidizing education and housing. I've had fun nights talking with f…
Education already is subsidised through state and private scholarships. And I believe rent is also capped in many places.
Seems a tautology that access to high-opportunity would help an individual. But if rent is too high as to be unaffordable, then the place is not so high-opportunity. Cost of living can't be excluded from the opportunity calculation.
I get that some sort of 'jump-start' in life might be required but can't help but feel that deep down this will hide a dysfunctionality somewhere.
Maybe something like Lambda Housing would prove this economical theory. Signing an ISA for subsidised housing if this proves to significantly raise the person's income seems a no brainer.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#994Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively, as we're seeing now, more and more people will ignore government orders until the election (at which point we'll see a huge change in tune from leaders), and go back to work. At some point, like in the past, people stop caring about diseases.
More and more poor people who do jobs to serve the rich will definitely have no choice but to go back to work despite the disproportionate risk they take on due to their lack of adequate health care and prevalence of preexisting conditions. I doubt you will see the ruling class rubbing elbows with the plebs again until there is a vaccine, or at least very comprehensive therapeutics available.
More and more poor people who do jobs to serve the poor will also have no choice but to go back to work I'd imagine?
Re: It’s Time to Build
#995Okay but how does a "knowledge worker" like me, and many of the other readers of HN who work in jobs with little exposure to large-scale structures, get started building the city of the future? I have no idea where to even begin. I learned how to program by watching tutorials and doing online coding classes. This is how I am used to learning. This method of learning isn't going to work when it comes to say, starting…
I feel the same way. Hundreds of resources for learning programming online, but little else.
I would love to take a class on "Building plant based proteins" but can't find anything online.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#996Re: It’s Time to Build
#997Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're actually not running out of ventilators anywhere. Existing installed base is sufficient and moreover, it turned out the federal government had a large stockpile anyway, which rather invalidates the central thesis of the article re: lack of preparedness. The claim about ventilators was one of the first dodgy claims I noticed but really the entire first part of the article is a pack of lies. Andreessen says: "We…
> I'm actually on Marc's side on this one, in that I suspect current FDA approval processes are overkill. As I understand it FDA didn't approve Pandemrix, while EU regulators did give it fast track appeal. Pandemrix causes narcolepsy in 1 in 60,000 people who take it. (so, for the entire US that's about 5000 with a life long debilitating illness that requires constant care.) The risk is very low, but it's there and w…
It's hard to form an opinion on that case without knowing more about Pandremix. How many people did it help? Is the illness it treats worse than narcolepsy? How many people are wrongly prescribed it?
I also wonder what kind of study found such a tiny effect size. 1 in 60,000 would require a staggeringly powerful study to successfully link it to Pandremix.
Not saying you're wrong about any of that, and I suppose I could go research these questions myself. But based solely on what you wrote I don't think there's any way to tell if that decision was good or bad.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#998Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people should have a share of the proceeds if their tax dollars funded the work. I don't think printing money is the answer, if I'm understanding you correctly.
They do get a share already through taxation and it doesn’t matter. Money isn’t a good incentive for the government to care.
I don't follow. I'm talking about giving people shares or proceeds from projects that were funded with the people's wealth.
Re: It’s Time to Build
#999Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you say the same when talking about drug addiction, rather than just weight gain? Would it matter to drug addiction rates, if there were cheap Fast Drug stores all across the country, akin to fast food stores? I think it's quite clear that here it makes zero sense to just say 'try to resist taking these ubiquitous drugs which give short-term satisfaction' as a policy measure. You'd need to treat it as a public…
To what end do we put the onus of an individuals poor decisions on “policy measures”. Should we put a tax on minutes playing video games? Should we reinstate prohibition? It’s dangerous to equate someone choosing to “get fries with that” in the same vein as a chemical addiction to drugs.
> Should we put a tax on minutes playing video games?
Of course, if it was necessary?
80% of US men for example are overweight, obese or extremely obese, all of which have substantial and known effects on health, with about half overweight and the other half (extremely) obese. Further, the trend is worsening. You also have a context in which one of the main reasons for caloric surplus is sugar which is priced in the food industry at 7700 calories per $1, way more expensive than many healthy choices, and is known to be addictive.
Then you have studies which show a gradually implemented sugar tax has beneficial policy outcomes, without destroying industries, saving many lives and reducing healthcare costs by orders of magnitude greater than the revenue losses (for which the food industry could be compensated, if you'd want), and improving the quality of life for many people who'd otherwise be diabetics, unhealthy, unhappy.
Now if you can show me statistics where 80% of your friends, colleagues, parents, teachers etc, have some kind of addiction to a particular niche of games, which have widely studied and known impacts on physical and/or mental health, and where a small gradual tax can be introduced to nudge people to other games, without destroying the gaming industry, and being able to compensate any losers in the market due to this policy change, then yes... absolutely I think we should put a tax on that.
> Should we reinstate prohibition?
No, we should not reinstate prohibition. We have no evidence that works. There's lots of evidence that a sugar tax works. As is there evidence that alcohol taxes work. All to a limit, introduced in balance.
I'll grant you that these are not trivial questions and we should not try to control people's lives. But I also think there are some policy decisions that make complete sense. Alcohol taxes by the way, are already quite widespread. This isn't some new big-government idea. It's science-based, experimental based, balanced policy making, that aims to give people a choice, but also incentivise the right choices. It's not treated as a moral judgement question, I love sugar, I keep consuming it, but it's also a public health problem and I'd really benefit from not being able to get a big coke for $1 with every meal, but rather for $4 every now and then. (That by the way, is a way more extreme example than any policy recommendations, which is typically 15%, e.g. $1 to $1.15, and works)
Re: It’s Time to Build
#1000Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do get a share already through taxation and it doesn’t matter. Money isn’t a good incentive for the government to care.
I don't follow. I'm talking about giving people shares or proceeds from projects that were funded with the people's wealth.
What people? The government (of the people by the people for the people) already receives all of the tax revenue from successful companies. I don’t see a reason to double dip here.