Projects can still effectively be denied/delayed from discretionary environmental review. State is working on pre-empting or expediting that as well for these affordable housing projects.
797 karma · joined April 12, 2012
If we had high persistent inflation, we would expect long term, consistent increases in prices. This is compared to "normal" persistent inflation, which we typically target around 3%. This target is set by the Fed.
If we wanted, we could target 10% inflation on a persistent basis by using monetary policy that was deliberately inflationary.
The argument being made by the government and by the media is that our current inflation (40% for cars, etc) that weighs out to 7.5% is the result of a supply/demand shock, and which must be resolved by working out these short term market inefficiencies/failures.
There are real arguments for monetary inflation (especially wrt asset inflation), but the fact that cars are up 40% and housing vacancy rates are so low and our supply chain is so backed up makes a very tangible case for us being in a transitory period of inflation which can not be dramatically improved by monetary or fiscal policy.
There is a clear mismatch in demand and supply. Supply is booming and its taking time for supply chains to catch up because of the structural damage that was caused by COVID. It takes time to fix that. This is short term angst, not a monetary crisis.
If there's a monetary crisis occurring (asset inflation?) its been going on for almost a decade now, and its not reflected in the CPI.
is it 1 car garage or literally, a garage with no driveway? if a link to a specific example was mentioned above in this thread i missed it
The fact is that we're in a housing affordability crisis. We need builders to build "cheapest thing they can" right now because housing is insanely expensive in most urban areas. Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and the fact that people are buying these homes is saying something important: housing is more important than parking.
Yes parking is nice, and there are costs associated with not having a dedicated parking space for each person. But those costs pale in comparison to the costs we pay for having a severe housing shortage. The economic costs, the costs paid in rents, the costs paid in health.
There isn't a world where you can have it all. But its clear that we need more housing, not more parking, and there is an unavoidable trade-off between the two.
So I'm going to make the case for why public unions are _more_ necessary than private union--public unions are needed to make it possible to provide competent, professional public services--, and rather deflect the conversation to a bigger question (with to me, a very clear answer), which is whether there should ever be non-market-driven revenues.
There are some very hard-to-believe dynamics that occur in a public sector job. For teachers, air traffic controllers, police, etc, there is no competition in the labor market. If your boss is abusive, if you don't get paid fairly, etc, your only option is to change your career or leave your community. You cannot go to another employer. Management does not have the resources to provide relief when its objectively needed. Government effectively has a monopoly on that job, and if there are other jobs, they usually pay even less because of a compensating wage differential for the workplace being more tolerable (private schools, for example)
There is also no profit motive. Good, effective leadership does not have a natural system for "floating to the top" like you find in for-profit settings. It doesn't happen just by chance, but as bad as leadership is in large corporate environments, its even worse and even less accountable in the public sector. Nevermind that good leadership is expensive--the best leaders do not go into public service, unfortunately, because it pays a lot better in the private sector.
No profit motive also means that there isn't a single metric that aligns workers and management. Amazon may be abusing workers, but at least they can respond to clear issues by giving raises or bonuses. At least when a business succeeds, someone is getting paid and its about who should get that money. School teachers and police officers don't get more revenue if they succeed. Administrators and management don't get more money when they succeed, or when their workers succeed. Success does not feed success, in a financial sense (with exceptions, of course). If they fail, there is not a natural incentive structure that reflects that.
Ultimately, revenue and accountability for public sector work is driven by voters, many of whom don't feel like they benefit from the service directly (whether they do or not is a separate conversation). Voters want to minimize costs and maximize services, but there is not a market mechanism that defines the equilibrium there. Voters (like you) don't know what it takes to deliver the quality of service demanded, and the systems don't naturally align themselves in a way that efficiently executes on those demands anyways. Public services will always be less efficient than you would expect--but many times they're the only way to provide the service in the first place.
So you have poor leadership. You have totally decoupled funding from performance, and therefore compensation from funding from performance. Since there isn't a profit motive, aligning individual workers with the mission is a challenge. You have cost-sensitive, captive, and hostile benefactors and service users who have a dual demands: high quality of service, and lowest possible cost.
This is the perfect environment for abusive leaders to make unreasonable asks to people who provide services at a rate well below its social value, using resources that don't reflect the real cost to provide the adequate, competent services desired.
Unions are the only mechanism that exists for these people to protect themselves from that. Not only does the market have no power, it doesn't even exist.
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So yes, public unions serve the interests of workers, and "extort[ing] money from the citizens". Public unions cause some very obviously challenging circumstances--but the alternative is that public service workers are being asked to work in offend difficult, degrading circumstances where they are resourced in a way that sets them up to fail, asks them to make professional commitments to an employer who serves whims of public opinion rather than direct stakeholds are invested the complexities of their job, and which ultimately leads to a cycle of cynicism and further removal of resources. Nevermind that the nature of their work is inherently highly regulated and high-stakes.
How do you run a public institution successfully in the long run with these core dynamics?
This is an inherently messy world, and there is not a singular, cathartic solution for providing low cost, high quality, individualized, egalitarian public services. There needs to be some mechanism for finding a balance. The market is not an option. Privatizing all large scale government services doesn't change many of these dynamics, unless you remove any requirement for equal access or standards for quality of services provided.
Public unions are the best on a field of bad options.
> All but one of the jaywalking tickets issued by NYPD cops in the first quarter of this year went to blacks or Hispanics
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/05/07/nypds-racial-bias-in-...
> Climate hysterics want to avoid responsibility for the economic damage that their carbon-neutral policies are going to have on society.
Not a great start. I don't know of any clean energy policy advocates who _arent totally enthusiastic_ about an opportunity to take full responsibility (and credit) for migrating to a clean economy in the next 10 years. Who, at this point, is ignoring the economics of climate change? Nowhere in here are you even claiming that there is a specific, agree'd upon "consequence" of transitioning to renewable energy, you're just raising a vague spectre of economic collapse, which only implies that policy-makers haven't considered that possibility...which is provably false.
> Many of the most ardent callers for climate action are themselves not even climate scientists, but merely offload their thought processing to the intellectuals who are.
Sounds like a how functioning, science based democratic society should operate, right?
> Almost without fail, neither them, nor the intellectual are educated in economics.
Absolutely right--scientists aren't politicians aren't economists. Multi-disciplinary public policy requires input from many kinds of 'intellectuals' (also, hn is a weird place to be calling people who trained in, and do, a science professionally 'intellectuals', as if its a bad thing).
The alternative is that we live in a fictional autocracy lead by a god-like genius who is singular, all-knowing, and benevolent.
> The reality is that nobody can work out the second and effects and so on for these drastic changes, because they have incomplete information.
Semi-valid criticism. Implies no one has _any_ idea, but its true no one an predict the future with absolute certainty.
> The intellectuals and 'thought leaders' themselves have a fraction of a percent of the actual tacit knowledge that drives economic activity. The knowledge is very widely distributed, which is why central planning is less efficient than the market almost all of the time.
Ah... here is the god you're alluding to--anarcho-capitalism? The distributed knowledge of the market economy knows best.
There is even an anarcho-capitalist case _for_ renewable energy. If you could just price in the cost of emissions and remove subsidies of oil and gas, we would be decades ahead of where we are today on this issue.
> it is misplaced fear due to grossly exaggerated climate scare claims, drummed up by the status-quo.
So "climate hysterics" are the powers that be, and oil and gas is punk-rock. I guess on a millenia scale this is true.
> They won't put their own money or action where their mouths are, but demand it of others - many of whom are not in such fortunate positions.
Waiting to hear about the "climate hysteric" who thinks the solution requires higher taxes (or even, significantly higher cost of living) for people who make under $30k/year. The only reason this would be part of a proposal by a reasonable person is because they know they are negotiating against cynical "ideologues" who personally benefit more from the status quo of an oil and gas dependent economy, who will require this provision for a vote, because they know it sabotages the underlying goals. Why vote no when you can pass intentionally hamstrung legislation?
An overarching criticism of parent's point of view: The general theme of their criticism is that "climate hysterical intellectuals" don't know better than the singular, all knowing free market. It barely leaves room for any public policy position at all--which ignores the fact that the current market status quo is driven massively by public policy that has been in effect now for several generations. To say the current place even approximates a "natural, optimal equilibrium" is a gross misunderstanding of 300 years of carbon policy and political and cultural entrenchment.
edit: Apparently this is bad info. I'll have to give it a try again.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Work to improve our system rather than using our failures to normalize CCP oppression and violence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dissidents
Here's some internet-specific examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China#A...
Protecting free speech of geopolitical competitors (China) and their economic agents (TikTok) is legitimate avenue for democratic destabilization.
This would not be possibly if I wasn't using 4k monitors. That was a big shift for me, because now I think of each 4k monitor as 4 1080p displays.
Its talked about as "selling data", but its important to understand how that works, because its inherent to the value proposition of digital advertising. Its not "we have X data, do you want to buy it for $Y?". Its not about exporting CSVs or connecting data warehouses. Its "We have X data, do you want to buy inventory for that audience?". So the only way that a publisher can really sell ads without "selling data" is to do it on a non-targeted basis, so either through programmatic, non-direct, or through non-targeted direct campaigns. In isolation, a publisher who is selling non-targeted direct campaigns is not going to do well. Its just not a competitive offering to advertisers, unless the site's entire audience falls in a certain demographic--in which case, advertisers will just mark those users as having that characteristic, so in the end its still "selling data".
One way to look at the value of selling first party data is to look at the gap between programmatic and direct sold inventory. Direct campaigns in the US typically go for $10-50 CPMs (highly dependent on the audience, context, and units). Programmatic averages closer to $1-2. So having first party data _and scale_ can get you a 10-20X over not having data (and scale).
Specifically: excellent wifi support, 5-7 hours of battery life, never had a trackpad issue.
Risk areas that i haven't investigated: backlight controls aren't working right now...thats the only thing that comes to mine.
And this is using arch. I'm sure Ubuntu is even more seamless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration
The HN audience should be pretty familiar with this already considering how much we talk about startups and labor markets--proximity breeds productivity. Startups breed more startups, software jobs breed software jobs.
But it extends beyond that even. This is, in part, why similar stores cluster. The "cost" of doing business goes down when you're near other people who are doing the same business, for a variety of reasons. In writing, "cost" is feedback and gathering inspiration. Its hardly different at all.
Per capita or velocity are much more useful metrics.
*nitpicky
>There is not a lot of risk from your perspective
You mean, from my perspective, it sounds like I don't think early employees take on a lot of risk? I wanna be clear: Options are risky. Working at a startup for options is much riskier than taking cash. I hope it doesn't sound like i'm denying that.
If you're making market salary, and you're getting equity on top, then maybe its not so risky. But if you're taking a pay cut for equity in any form, you are absolutely taking a financial risk.
By BigCo standards, 10 engineers is a tiny startup. By venture/founder standards, I think 10 engineers is when you've already made it past the riskiest parts. You probably already have significant revenue traction, or you're past a Series A. You should be able to pay market, and equity is about alignment not risk compensation.
I think you can still get rich at a startup, but you need to take actual risk to be compensated for it. Join a 5 person company. Be the second or third engineer, and be able to become the CTO if the two technical people ahead of you leave.
We should all be extremely concerned about what the writer is getting at. If you're going to call it whining, and say they need to change their business model, what should they change it to?