asift

100% speculation on my part...but what would some type of radio communication have went out giving the license plate and make/model for the car associated with a missing person?

If so, Colburn could have wrote these down and was simply calling in to ensure he got it right.

More severe penalties for reneging would seem to make sense too. This could potentially be problematic in cases of scalping (e.g., the seller scalps a ticket right before someone else makes a purchase on SH), but this is simply another case where digital transfer of ownership would make way more sense. If SH could see a ticket had changed hands, they could immediately pull it from their site.

Or SH can work with other stakeholders in the industry to develop alternative systems of digital transfer and record keeping of ticket ownership.

Paper tickets have some benefits, but there should be a way to void a paper ticket and convert it to a digital ticket that can be transferred electronically. Escrow costs would be a lot lower of SH is only escrowing digital ownership that can be transferred back to the seller if the tickets haven't sold.

I want people in India to have a choice. They can choose to accept Zuckerburg's free internet or they can wait for something else to come along.

It's Zuckerburg's critics that want to deny Indians their right to choose by taking away their free service and leaving them without internet in the present. As was noted earlier, the most vocal critics in this situation are not the poor people in India that are most directly impacted by this situation.

I'm talking about right at this immediate moment. You're correct they can lobby, but while they take the time to engage in that process, they will either have Zuckerburg's free internet or they will have nothing. The dichotomy is very real in the present.

It's not that they don't see other alternatives. This is true, but the reality is that other realistic alternatives don't even exist.

Their realistic option set is: (a) free access to an incredibly valuable set of resources, or (b) nothing.

I would take (a) over (b) any day. I would hope that broader alternatives would eventually come along (and history tells us it will), but the crowd that wants the Indian poor to have nothing until that day comes is, in my opinion, despicable. Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs.

>you can't really create a government around it

You say that as if it's a bug and not a feature...

In all seriousness, I'm not sure I understand your claim that it's an impossible form of society. I understand the argument that the US or other existing nation states aren't going to become libertarian societies, but I see no theoretical reason why the creation of such a society is impossible (particularly when sea and space colonies start opening up new frontiers). I think this Startup School presentation by Balaji Srinavasan is relevant: https://youtu.be/cOubCHLXT6A

>would prefer the world to be sorted on raw power alone

Regardless of whether such libertarians are right or wrong in their beliefs about private governance, this is completely inaccurate depiction of their views. Peter Stringham's book Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life explores theoretical and empirical foundations for private governance and why it would not amount to sorting things out based on raw power.

The book received praise from Peter Thiel: "Stringham dispels state-worshipping fiction with historical fact to show how good governance has preceded Leviathan, ignores it when necessary, and can surpass it when it fails."

You're correct. Using swipe to type on my phone can lead to some dumb mistakes...

He accepts that this is true through various forms of rent seeking behavior. He even explicitly condones such forms of wealth creation.

Reducing economic inequality is merely a lesser form of eliminating it. I think the tough question people should consider here is whether relative inequality or absolute standard of living is the more important metric. If absolute standard of living rises faster as economic inequality increases, why should we try and limit economic inequality?

>The wealth generated by this astounding leap of productivity went entirely to the shareholders of the John Deere corporation.

Nonsense. The fact that people can buy food for an insignificant portion of their annual income and were freed from grueling manual labor to pursue more creative endeavors is a benefit to everyone in society.

This is just an all around terrible article.

The fact that they cite the claim that women are paid 79% of what men make (a statistic which is only true when you don't account for other important factors such as occupation, experience, and hours worked), tells you about all you need to know about how serious they take their statistics.

Beyond that, anyone who has ever worked in sales can tell you there are huge differences in buying behavior between men and women. Of course, I'm being overly general here, but men and women simply value different things. My wife looks for shampoo and carefully evaluates the scent, the brand, and any special additives that might make her hair more silky/shiny/etc. She's willing to pay a premium for the right combination of features she desires. I look for the cheapest price and could care less what the shampoo claims to do. Same thing with salons. My wife wants to be pampered, have a wonderful experience, and values working with the same stylist on a long-term basis. I don't mind being pampered, but if it costs me more than $30, I'd rather go watch ESPN while some new cosmetology grad cuts my hair for $19. My wife gets much more value out of salon services -- so they can charge her a premium.

They also seem to assume some gender neutral products are "male" products when it's unclear why that would be the case. Both boys and girls like the color red. Why is a red scooter a boy's scooter? Since many people like red, you can get your unit cost down with generic high volume products (though, I also believe Target when they say this was a glitch in their system). You start making modified products that clearly appeal to a more niche market and it's reasonable to assume you might pay a premium.

Lastly, if this was actually some big conspiracy against women, why does the ruthless financial industry seem to behave so much better than these alleged conspirators? My wife sure gets a much better deal on life and auto insurance than I do...

There are legitimate health risks associated with shunning modern technology in favor of organic food:

>"Contrary to popular wisdom, organic produce is not pesticide-free. Instead, it’s grown with primitive pesticides that can be significantly more hazardous to humans and to the environment. Organic agriculture also lacks the benefits of the many crops genetically improved with modern molecular techniques, like Bt-corn, which reduces the population of insects that allow toxic molds to infest corn. (Organic corn has higher levels of the toxins produced by these molds.)"

>"Chipotle rejects modern synthetic fertilizers in favor of suppliers who use manure on their crops. This approach may be “all natural” and “organic” and make some customers feel warm and fuzzy, but it should not come as a surprise that applying stool, feces and excrement to growing fruits and vegetables significantly raises the risk of spreading disease. Bruce M. Chassy, food science professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana scoured U.S. Food and Drug Administration data to conclude that organic food is four to eight times more likely to be recalled over safety concerns than conventionally grown products."

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2015/12/14/chipotle-...

Yes, but how does that apply to the sharing economy? Uber has added immense value to my life and the lives of it's millions of satisfied customers.

I know you're not OP and I understand this is the definition of rent-seeking behavior, but your examples are empirically and theoretically invalid. Landlords (renters of capital) and middlemen provide huge benefits to society.

Of course, this doesn't mean that it's impossible for a landlord it middleman to be a rent-seeker, but they would need to pursue some type of artificial benefit/restriction on others in order for this to be the case. This does happen often, but I have no idea why OP would suggest rent-seeking is the primary activity of sharing economy companies. One of Uber's greatest accomplishments has been significantly weakening the rent-seeking taxi industry.

Due you suppose consumers are only unable to determine pilot skill due to a lack of prior incentive to develop systems for disseminating this information or because it is technologically impossible?

Empirically that isn't always the case. Often rent-seekers who stand to profit from various regulations have far more influence on public policy than "safety" does.

What if I find 1.1 deaths per 100,000 flight hours to be a perfectly reasonable risk relative to the benefits I receive from using such a service? I can't make that decision for myself?

What do you mean by rent-seeking behavior?

It's too bad the game doesn't include an option to adopt Houston-style regulation and create a better institutional framework for regulating housing in the first place.

Right...because before the state department came along companies had no interest in feeding their patrons safe food... People are incredibly unscientific when attributing success to governmental regulatory bodies.

>they don't know enough to even know when it would be dangerous to fly

1. You do realize these pilots can already fly passengers, correct?

2. This is the type of problem companies help solve all of the time. The minimum wage worker making my burger has no idea when meat is safe for consumption, but a whole series of internal precautions allows him to serve me a burger in a safe manner.

Actually there is a tremendous amount of research on the importance of genetics (particularly twin and adoption studies). My quick summary here is going to be overly simplistic, but at a very high level, so long as a child wasn't raised in an abusive environment, genetics are much more important in predicting things like intelligence and future earnings than a family's characteristics are. That conclusion is not merely anecdote. It's one of the most extensively studied questions in parenting research.

There are a myriad of ways companies could develop and implement internal controls. I have no particular knowledge that would make qualified to proclaim the single best way for handling these problems, but from a historical and empirical standpoint, the world is full of examples of companies solving complex problems previously thought to be too difficult by the majority of people.

>Something automatic?

You seem to be assuming pilots and passengers have no regard for their own well-being. Just like the discretion shown by the OP in their story about canceling a flight, pilots have strong incentives to not fly if there is an increased likelihood they can't do so safely. I would see the "automatic" aspect likely being conditions which prohibit flying while even further discretion still being available to pilots.

Those aren't the types of safeguards I was referring to...but you know what also already exists? Pilots flying the exact same flights the FAA has decided must be banned (solely because of the commercial element).

My comment was narrowly referring to OP's lack of imagination in envisioning solutions to the "bad weather" criticism raised.

I was referring to the comment I quoted:

>Wealth, or relative wealth...

The problems you described seem fairly easy to remedy through means other than an FAA ban. As a customer, I have zero interest in taking an excessively risky flight. I would seek companies that provide internal safeguards, such as weather restrictions, that take this decision out of a pilot's hands.

>Seventy per cent of people born into the bottom quintile of income distribution never make it into the middle class, and fewer than ten per cent get into the top quintile. Forty per cent are still poor as adults.

I'm unconvinced this is a terribly concerning level of mobility. Some people seem to assume an ideal level of mobility would demonstrate no advantage to those born in upper quintiles (i.e., your birth quintile plays no role in your adult quintile), but given what we know about the importance of genetics in passing along favourable human capital characteristics, matching behavior in mating markets, and the importance of social capital -- it seems very reasonable that we would see less than "perfect" mobility.

>Wealth, or relative wealth or a class society is zero sum.

Relative wealth is zero sum. Wealth is not zero sum. You shouldn't muddle the terms like this.