Questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Questions

#181

Post by BenoitEssiambre » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

> Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?

Scott Alexander has a great post with lots of data on this:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...

The numbers are pretty incredible. There is no single clear answer as to the cause of it all unfortunately. It looks like funds becoming available allow a whole bunch of areas to suck more and more money arguably without providing a lot of value. Universities compete to have the biggest stadiums and the most luxurious dorms. Hospitals pay more and more people to manage, oversee, verify, systematize and inefficiently computerize everything.

In a lot of areas, we seem to pay a lot to achieve marginally safer conditions. In the case of health care, if paying 5x the cost extends the life of an additional 0.1% of patients, it's hard for deciders to justify not doing that spending since saving 0.1% of people in hospitals is still saving a ton of people.

Construction projects are like that too, you might be able make construction safer, have 1% fewer injuries, if you are willing to pay 5X more for the project. These safer, but much slower methods often become mandatory.

How do you decide on these trade-offs though?

Re: Questions

#182

Post by zbentley » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #33

tobr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very interesting and implies a kind of paradox. As some things become radically cheaper, it should leave us with more resources to spend on things that are difficult to make more efficient. But instead, it makes it appear as if they have become so expensive we can barely afford them anymore! Does this fallacy have a name?

Yes, it's called Baumol's Cost Disease [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

How is the Baumol effect relevant here? The posts you're replying to seem to be pointing out the perceptual increase in price in areas that haven't benefitted from cost reduction. To my (admittedly limited) understanding, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Baumol effect.

Re: Questions

#183

Post by tinco » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

notdang wrote: post #162

petra wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Israeli and it comes from a few factors: 1. Israelis basically have no choice. If you want to make a good income, working hard in a technology startup(we have very few big tech companies) is one of the very few good options. 2. The army: at a very young age,a decent percentage of Israelis who join the army lead, in high value, high risk situations. That creates a sense of responsibility and strong ambition at…

>and possibly higher intelligence Interesting what would happen if this is said about any other country

Obviously this discussion is a minefield. But there is some merit in asserting some relations there. In The Netherlands, Iranian and Afghani immigrants are often of a more privileged descent than Moroccan and Turkish immigrants, because of the reason of their migration. Moroccans and Turks generally migrated for manual labor, where Irani and Afghans usually fled religious oppression.

Of course this does not mean Dutch Iranians are smarter than Dutch Moroccans, but it could mean there might be more smart/entrepreneurial Iranians than Moroccans in The Netherlands.

These statistics might die out very quickly though, for example Turks are often already second or third generation, so many have been born in the privilege of The Netherlands.

Perhaps similarly, the second world war cost us a huge percentage of Jewish people, being privileged has meant having a larger chance of survival through moving to less dangerous countries (like the U.S.).

It doesn't mean Jewish people are smarter, it might mean though that you could find a bit more smart Jews in their population. Of course the second world war has already been a long time, so the effect might already be gone.

Re: Questions

#184

Post by raintrees » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #119

ddevault wrote: post #90

>Why do there seem to be more examples of rapidly-completed major projects in the past than the present? I'm no historian so this is probably misguided, but I feel like this is an indicator for a society on the decline. Corruption is increasingly rampant in both the public and private sectors, and money is being siphoned off at every step. If we don't figure out how to fix it, mounting costs and inefficiencies could…

> Corruption is increasingly rampant in both the public and private sectors, and money is being siphoned off at every step. This is utter bullshit when it comes to the sort of major public infrastructure projects hinted at in the original post. In fact, what slows things down significantly is the fact that there are so many controls in place to reduce and eliminate this corruption. Contracts that could have been sett…

I would think that potential litigation might be a determining factor, at least in the USA.

Re: Questions

#185

Post by 0x445442 » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

andrewmutz wrote: post #178

sakoht wrote: post #147

"Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?" Because we are lying about inflation. It's not a conspiracy, just a mutually agreed-to delusion. By pretending inflation is lower than it is, the poor feel like they are standing still instead of sinking ...though instinctively they know. And the people just keeping up get to feel richer. Since technology and efficiency improve, the people staying in the same p…

Do you have any evidence that “we are lying about inflation”? Unless you do, I think it those industries are getting more expensive due to Baumol’s Cost Disease: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

Re: Questions

#186

Post by zbentley » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #65

jaggederest wrote: post #14

The easy answer for the "Two Sigma" problem is that you... don't try to reproduce it on a large scale by finding some other method. You provide individual, one-on-one full time tutoring to each student, if that is the analytically best method. It's worth it, since educational spending is close to the most effective public spending imaginable - something in the $3-$5 return per dollar spent, which you'd be hard presse…

Isn’t one-on-one tutoring by an expert by over a quarter of the population just a return to the medieval craftsman & apprentice system?

Not at all. There are huge differences: trades/subjects of tutelage aren't foreordained or narrowly restricted; much more choice exists on the part of the student and teacher ('compulsory' education now is not the same as compulsory education then--the ply-your-trade-or-starve situation is not present int he same way); teachers can leverage much more effective tools (books! Simulations!) to convey concepts quicker than a 'watch me, then do as I do' apprenticeship; teachers do not typically occupy a simultaneous position of educator authority and parent/elder authority ... the list goes on.

Re: Questions

#187

Post by Aunche » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #143

> "Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?" Incentive. Something costs X dollars because there are sufficient number of customers that are willing to pay X amount. Even if the cost of providing goods or services gets cheaper, businesses will charge more if they can. Capitalism assumes things will get cheaper as a result of competition, but that does not take into account third party involvement. if the…

The American healthcare system is the perfect combination of misaligned incentives. In the US, patients are the ones who have to foot the bill, but they have no incentive to keep the costs down because things are covered by insurance. As a small example, I don't need new glasses every year, but I get a new pair every year because it's covered by insurance. On a much larger scale, in most countries, it doesn't make economic sense to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop a medicine that's 1% more effective than a currently existing one. In poorer countries like India, there will be very few people who could afford the new medicine. In countries with socialized medicine, the government would rather spend the money on something else. In the US, patients are more than happy to pay for the new medicine because it costs the same as the old one after insurance. Meanwhile, everyone's insurance premiums bump up a few cents and nobody bats an eye. Repeat this a thousand times and you're left with an incredibly bloated healthcare system.

Re: Questions

#188

Post by dotancohen » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

notdang wrote: post #162

petra wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Israeli and it comes from a few factors: 1. Israelis basically have no choice. If you want to make a good income, working hard in a technology startup(we have very few big tech companies) is one of the very few good options. 2. The army: at a very young age,a decent percentage of Israelis who join the army lead, in high value, high risk situations. That creates a sense of responsibility and strong ambition at…

>and possibly higher intelligence Interesting what would happen if this is said about any other country

The problem is that people (Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and non-Israelis) really believe and expect it.

I'm probably average intelligence, but I've had it expressed to me by people who hardly know me that they expect that I'm brilliant or something because I'm an Ashkanazi Jew. Its one of those stigmas that get attached to any race, such as Russians drinking Vodka or Argentinians eating meat. I'm sure that there are sober Russians, vegetarians in Argentina, and there's me!

Re: Questions

#189

Post by 0x445442 » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #106

> Why are programming environments still so primitive? Because we as an industry made a strategic decision in the late 20th century to value run-time efficiency over all other quality metrics, a decision which has manifested itself in the primacy of C and its derivatives. Everything else has been sacrificed in the name of run time efficiency, including, notably, security. Development convenience was also among the co…

Don't forget Smalltalk has these capabilities as well.

Re: Questions

#190

Post by nkurz » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

bostonpete wrote: post #159

> K12 education spending in the US has increased by 2-3X per student per year since 1960. Uh what? That's not even close to true...

I'm not familiar with the statistics, and may be misreading them, but for what I can find with a quick search, 2-3X seems about right, possibly even low.

Total expenditure per pupil in average daily attendance in constant 2016 dollars:

  1959-60: $3,890	
  2014-15: $14,013	
  $14,000 / $4,000 = 3.5x

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_236.55.a...

Separately, here's a link claiming a 3x increase for Nevada in particular: https://www.npri.org/issues/publication/nevada-has-nearly-tr...

And here's an article claiming a 2x increase since 1970: https://www.cato.org/blog/public-school-spending-theres-char...

What do you think the numbers are instead?

More meta, why do you post a harsh correction like this without offering any sourcing or evidence? If your goal was to provoke someone else into doing some research, I guess it worked, but this seems rude. What's your model for how others will react to your comment?