131–140 of 140 posts
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I think there's only one street in the whole state that gets bad traffic.
The bonus in vegas is more that you can be drunk and not have to worry about driving than it is the traffic. Of course, you could also just take a taxi.
Oh it will be a taxi all right, just not driven by a human...
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My guess is that we will have a very efficient Taxi system. Using a Smart Phone you will be able to request a Taxi where ever you are; it will already know your favorite locations; your favorite music; it will automatically charge you; we will not need so much parking space.
Economically that seems like a wonderful idea, but politically it sounds doomed to failure. Taxi drivers tend to be pretty well organized politically, and in most cities even have laws in place (usually medallion systems) to limit competition. If they can keep these laws in place with their current very weak justifications, I wouldn't be surprised if they can shut down automated cars very easily, since the public wou…
Maybe this won't be as widespread a problem as I think it could be. Zipcar seems to be rather successful, although I've never used one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is that we will have a very efficient Taxi system. Using a Smart Phone you will be able to request a Taxi where ever you are; it will already know your favorite locations; your favorite music; it will automatically charge you; we will not need so much parking space.
Economically that seems like a wonderful idea, but politically it sounds doomed to failure. Taxi drivers tend to be pretty well organized politically, and in most cities even have laws in place (usually medallion systems) to limit competition. If they can keep these laws in place with their current very weak justifications, I wouldn't be surprised if they can shut down automated cars very easily, since the public wou…
Generally, the number of livery service drivers and cars is not limited.
That said, the Washington, DC taxi commission has been hassling the Internet-based Uber. Last month they ran a sting against an Uber-arranged driver and impounded his car.[1]
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mike-debonis/post/uber-c...
[1] http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.13359,y.2011,no.5...
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Are you sure? How was this determined without doing experimentation with embryonic stem cells?
I thought the only 'difference' was the timeframe of availability, but apparently not: http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics5.asp One major difference between adult and embryonic stem cells is their different abilities in the number and type of differentiated cell types they can become. Scientists believe that tissues derived from embryonic and adult stem cells may differ in the likelihood of being rejected aft…
The difficulty isn't being able to research them. There's a lot of money flowing both ways that is very politically motivated, but it's pretty simple to say that the adult stem cells have actually resulted in recoveries and cures (embryonic have not) and do not have the ethical problems. Being able to research embryonic stem cells doesn't make them more viable. At this point, they don't have advantages.
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I think we should get rid of the 9-5 and have staggered times. Different companies start different times of the day... I'm fairly sure theres a group of who like to start at 10, and go home 6, or maybe start at 11.
> I think we should get rid of the 9-5 and have staggered times. Different companies start different times of the day... I'm fairly sure theres a group of who like to start at 10, and go home 6, or maybe start at 11. It's worth remembering that companies are free to do this already. Most don't, however, because they want to maximise the amount of overlap with other businesses they need to interact with. It also conve…
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Seattle has a light rail system they only booted up a few years ago. They had to build a completely new set of rails everywhere to do it. I'll admit I don't know the details of its history, since I wasn't paying attention, but it's utterly possible.
If you belive this ( http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2009/07/20/seattles-light... ) it took seattle almost 20 years to make that happen. Also, i think that city, in particular, was flush with cash.
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In an ideal world (according to economists), this isn't an issue. In the world we happen to live in, basic health research is publicly funded. Maybe it shouldn't be, and research funding should be purely commercial, or philanthropic. But with public funding crowding out commercial and philanthropic funding, banning public funding for some kinds of research has a similar impact to banning it.
How can public funding 'crowd out' other funding? There are more 'fund takers' than there is funding available, so if there were private funding available, it would be put to use. I don't understand your reasoning.
This is an empirical observation, and isn't based on micro-economics, though you could frame it as such if you wanted. It's not true in all cases - Google might lure a few top computer scientists away from academia by giving them massive amounts of funding. See, academia has non-monetary rewards - the glory of working for as an academic (this may be a con), and government jobs look stable and for the public good (though libertarians might argue). Thus public funding secures the scares resource (talented scientists) at a lower cost, and private funding goes down (supply and demand, unless research happens to be a Giffen good, which I doubt).