This is a case where NIMBYs seem to have a point - those who love the new promenade are not the ones paying the cost, whereas nearby homeowners are suffering the increased congestion and reduced home prices.
3,630 karma · joined June 26, 2012
not really. VAT is popular because it is straightforward to implement and hard to evade unless someone is outright cheating.
> it won't [put large landlords out of busine-]
It won't. But like any complex regulations, it will give large landlords an upper hand over smaller ones. Large ones have economies of scale to rely upon (eg. one dedicated lawyer to deal with govt for 100 properties). Will just worsen the inequality.
Literally that's why I wrote: "I know some people who strictly prefer fully remote setup. Over time, I think companies and employees will self sort themselves into those who prefer office vs those who prefer remote. That should work out for most of us."
100%. Speaking only for myself, I was fully remote for a few years and that was a miserable experience. Now everyone is mandated to be in office 3 days a week and that works better for me. Uber is going one step further and structuring teams to be colocated with their manager. That solves the problem of team members distributed across multiple offices, which is still a real pain point in the hybrid model.
I know some people who strictly prefer fully remote setup. Over time, I think companies and employees will self sort themselves into those who prefer office vs those who prefer remote. That should work out for most of us.
NYC's TFR was 1.55 in 2021. London's TFR was 1.35 in 2024. Paris TFR was 1.27 in 2024. Other US cities are not really comparable to the European ones, but the broader point is that parental leave has nothing to do with TFR. Norway and Sweden have TFRs around 1.44 while the US has it 1.6-1.8
> it's more like "having a child could cost me my high-paying job so I better not"...having a child is an opportunity cost in an urban environment
At least in the US and speaking generally, people with high incomes in urban areas move to suburbs once they have kids. I would like to see a citation for your "opportunity cost" claim, because high income jobs also come with good benefits like generous parental leave policies.
It seems you haven't discovered podcasts yet :)
And they exist because of demand from the consumers. All those providers have no incentive to invest and upgrade their offerings if there is no demand. Said otherwise, without the likes of YouTube and Whatsapp video chat (and many other ad-funded social media apps), we would be stuck in 2010-era infrastructure.
> You don't need a centralized service for video calls.
Need is a funny word. You need a centralized effort to enhance the user experience of video calls which is very expensive. And very companies have resources to pull that off and offer a great experience for free. Only 3 I can think of - Google, Facebook, Apple (via Facetime). Only Apple is not ad-funded and they keep it to their devices only which is for rich people. Ad-funded products at least made it available to the entire populace.
> The ad companies destroy every market they infect. Because they use predatory pricing.
I gave you a counter-example to your thesis about Youtube Premium which was offered at a reasonable price. Its failure shows that predatory pricing is an excuse - real reason is that people simply prefer to not pay.
What is "worth" is ultimately decided by the market.
What should be allowed, like sacrificing children, is decided by the society. Two very separate topics.
Even AOC is now running away from woke 1.0 and admitted that there was a lot of craziness. That says a lot.
underlying technology doesn't materialize out of thin air though. Google and Facebook have invested lots of dollars and engineering hours into making Youtube or Whatsapp video a seamless smooth experience for billions of users. That's why the technology seems cheap now. Early on, there were big concerns about Youtube profitability.
> it's that even cheap phones are absurdly powerful
Again, thanks to Android which was funded indirectly by ads.
> c.f. bittorrent
That is plain old theft.
> And some of those problems (e.g. content moderation, discovery) don't exist when self-publishing or curating partners.
Curating partners have economies of scale. That's how you get Youtube. And for self publishing, you can see that most of the "self publishers" on internet are at the mercy of adtech giants (Google and Facebook) for distribution.
> destroying competition from companies that just want to fairly offer a service
That's why I cite Youtube premium. Google offered an ad-free option at a fair price and yet hardly anyone wants to pay for that.
Apparently, they have 3B MAUs and 2B DAUs. So you are in some real bubble. While I don't use it, my parents and all their friends use Facebook to share pictures and exchange messages.
we still have it. WhatsApp video chat is the most widely used video chat app.
> we already had p2p calling with Skype; we've regressed in that area
Skype was barely present on mobile and got acquired by Microsoft before Mobile took off. Then it was as good as dead. So we have in fact progressed massively that anyone in Asia with a crappy handset and a decent connection can still have a video chat with anyone else in the world.
> Music, movies, TV could be mostly free if we had retained the original 28 year copyright period
And world would be so much better if no one was greedy. The fact is that we have not retained original copyright period and the reasons are beyond adtech, so what are you gonna do about it? Also, that doesn't solve the problem of long-tail content which is massively entertaining.
> The things you list are all free or nearly free to run with modern technology
Lol wut? Try running your own Youtube and you will discover massive technical problems (storage, network bandwidth, content moderation, discovery etc).
> Ads enable market capture
Google tried YT premium and look at its adoption numbers. It starts at 89 INR in India (less than a USD) and yet its adoption is minimal. 89 INR is cheap for at least a few hundred million Indians. People simply prefer ads over paying up.
There are two parts - one which most of us would support (being against misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc) and one which most of us would oppose (defund the police, abolish ICE, trans women in sports, DEI quotas and promoting people because of their race or gender, etc).
Woke 1.0 lumped both of those buckets together and faced an appropriate backlash which resulted in Trump's reelection.
By that logic, all the laws, regulations and norms would possibly be meaningless. So if we were to ignore those, we all would descend into anarchy.
> A morality by plurality is arbitrary and non-universal
In fact, a majority of popular support is a necessary (may not be sufficient) condition for morality of a society. Something is not considered moral if it is not supported by most of the members.
> society A vs society B
irrelevant. Morality based laws in a society generally consider morality only of that society. That's why we have the notion of sovereignty.
As a framework - death penalty should be legalized when a majority members of the society support that as a punishment.
When applying that framework - it should be applied for the cases beyond any reasonable doubt.
Once you agree on these principles, all other details can be easily negotiated.
What kind of life experience would lead to such a conclusion? It's almost like you have no idea what a community is - with one's friends, neighbors, familiar shops, clubs, church etc. Money is not everything in life. Any policy which forces people in their late 60's to uproot and go somewhere else to rebuild their lives is bound to face a very angry backlash. A mindset like yours is why we got prop 13 here in California.
I see this trope often. Citation needed!
> If the board is unable to bring their house in order, the state should fire them, not let their incompetence ruin the lives of the working class.
Oh no please! Last thing I want is letting Donald Trump (or AOC if you are a right-winger) decide which board to fire based on their whims about a company.
> I disagree with the assessment of that being a good thing.
What you are suggesting is much worse.
Again, working as intended. There should be no free lunch or bailouts for incompetent work.
It doesn't seem to be working as intended. Look at the reports published by European leaders, like Draghi for instance.
Affirmative action was gutted by SCOTUS when Biden was president. Not that it was popular before. California of all places rejected it by 56-44 margin in 2020.