311–317 of 317 posts
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But a 30-story apartment building will block my view of the river!
You can mock, but if someone bought a house, and paid a lot for it so they can view the river, then this is a reasonable concern.
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At one point I made a list of biggest expenses a person faces in their lives and was shocked to realize that pretty much everywhere there is either a company or consortium that has captured the market and manages 'access' to it. This is not surprising. in fact I would imagine that as more and more automation takes hold & marginal cost to produce real goods falls to near zero you'll see only the players left standing…
> At one point I made a list of biggest expenses a person faces in their lives and was shocked to realize that pretty much everywhere there is either a company or consortium that has captured the market and manages 'access' to it. None of healthcare, education or housing have even as high a concentration as online retail unless you’re going to count government provision of primary and secondary education. I struggle…
Anyways, Lets start with housing. Every housing transaction hold about 10% [of sale price] of commissions on both buyer & seller side. [If you dont know] you'll be surprised to learn that the govt taxes & fees are a minimal portion of that. its mostly realor commissions & bank fees. why can they do that, its because they have had a monopoly on MLS listing service forever. to have access to the MLS you need to be a realtor. if anything these commissions should be fixed cost rather than a percentage cost. to give you a sense of the severity of the situation, on an average people stay in a house for 7 years due to labor mobility & other reasons. so over a carries of 30+ years its likely you'd do 4 such transactions. That essentially means you've worked for realtors & bank for about 40% of your carrier (assuming shiller is right in concluding that it takes 30yrs of work to build/own a house).
Now Healthcare, why do you think nothing Martin skerelli had done was illegal? recall that he wasnt indicted for price gouging on the meds. I actually think he did a service to america by exposing the flaws of pricing system. Also regarding medical professionals AMA works hard to maintain control of certification process and not flood the market with doctors. believe me they are not that hard to make. infact they have been fighting efforts to allow RMPs to practice basic healthcare in rural areas just to maintain the scarcity.
there is a reason healthcare and college education sectors are the most inflation heavy sectors in america over last to decades. its by impeding price discovery and free market.
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Chromatic aberration drives me nuts, especially when driving at night or using a computer. LED headlights are particularly irritating; if I don't look through the centre of the lenses, the way they separate into distinct blue and white lights creates a visually chaotic scene. The last time I got new glasses (from Costco), I specifically requested lenses that would minimise chromatic aberration. But they didn't have a…
I know exactly what you're talking about. The Microsoft logo drives me nuts, in that I know the colored squares are equally separated from each other, but I don't see them that way. They actually move towards and away from each other as they move around my field of view.
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I think there are a few interesting wrinkles with regards to rent seeking in the current economy and how that works out for the middle class. • As a few people have pointed out, people often buy sunglasses for fashion and social signaling rather than on price. Wearing Tom Ford glasses means you're getting very good quality glasses, but mostly you are paying to wear Tom Ford glasses, in the same way that a Rolls Royce…
I like this way of looking at it. The $15k Rolex is expensive because you’re paying them to tell other people how cool you are through branding. So when you wear the watch other people already recognize the brand and you get to flex on them.
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Clearly.ca in Canada is doing a decent job. They have quite a few in-house brands and stock store fronts in major metro areas for trying on frames.
They’re owned by Essilor. TBD what the merger with Luxxotica will mean. My guess is that the online model will replace the costly in-store model, capturing more profit.
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Sure. You want businesses you deal with to make profit, otherwise they won't be around to do business with in the future. In industrial supply chain, if you have two suppliers who are each charging the same price and you know that one is making higher profit margins, go with the one with higher margins - they're more likely to be stable.
Some profit is useful for saving as a cushion. But in general remember that profit is money that the business literally didn't find a way to spend, to the extent that they're willing to throw away 20% of it as tax. I'd rather deal with a company that ploughs surplus back into salaries or R&D or even charity than squandering it as profit.
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I recently purchased glasses online for the first time, from EyeBuyDirect. I got a pair specifically for computer use, with a weaker prescription, smaller pupil distance, and lower index of refraction to cut down on chromatic aberration. For $45 I'm fairly satisfied, even though I haven't quite got the frames adjusted for a perfect fit yet. The chromatic aberration is still noticeable when I look for it, but definite…
How did you adjust the correction to get focus at say 3 ft / 1 m for computer use? Why a smaller PD?? I thought it was fixed by your skull anatomy?
The PD for near vision is only slightly smaller than for distance vision: 60mm instead of 63mm for me, less than 5% reduction. I doubt it is all that important since I've been using distance vision glasses to read with for decades, but it is a fact that you have to go a little bit cross-eyed to properly focus on something close to you. I think it might help a bit for looking at very small objects just a few inches away, but ditching the glasses entirely works even better for me when I need to read eg. markings on a 4mm IC.