This merger might trigger an antitrust case. Although people who order stuff might have lower fees through economies of scale, restaurants and drivers could be negatively impacted (more of a monosopy). At some point we need to start considering gig workers as part of antitrust considerations.
A similar argument could be made for a whole host of subscription services (gyms, television, etc.) but I think they all keep the subscription model because the mental transaction cost of buying a small amount of the product creates a huge barrier to use. Mental transaction cost is the stress that the buying decision places on the buyer. Someone once said that the only two prices on the internet are free and infinity, so any incremental cost is stressful. Additionally the prices needed to sustain a per-unit sales model are so high that nobody wants to buy. A great recent example is ski resorts. Before the Epic and Ikon passes, day passes were expensive but not insane. With these passes, however, the ski companies have decided to dramatically increase the daily cost and lower the subscription cost to maximize revenue.
Former pizza delivery person (long time ago). Pizza works better economically because it transports better (stays hot longer) and has higher volume. I used to load up 5+ deliveries for the same small area of town. The dispatchers were hopefully good at grouping deliveries.
Regarding #4, with the ubiquity of call blocking, I don't see how it is possible for them to reach 90% of the people that may have been exposed, especially once people find out that picking up that phone call means you will be in quarantine. To make matters worse, the authorities likely won't be able to tell you where/when you were exposed and to whom (medical privacy). This target is basically unreachable IMHO.
A difference between drug discovery and technology is that in the case of drug discovery product-market fit is not as much of an unknown. If your drug works, there will be a market, it is pretty easy to estimate the size of the market, and you have market exclusivity for a period of time. In the case of technology, you need for both the product to work and for the market to materialize.
Statistically reliable purchases studies are very challenging. People have multiple credit cards and sometimes pay cash. If you are buying a car you don't put it on the credit card. Additionally, you have multiple cookies/MAIDS that may or may not be associate with the same person/credit card. Even companies with Google or Facebook resources can't get this to work reliably. If it is a direct response advertiser, of course, you tell Google/Facebook that a purchase is made, but these advertisers are not the bulk of the market and many advertisers don't want to give Google that data.
Measuring the effectiveness of brand advertising on YouTube is more difficult that measuring TV/newspapers. TV and newspapers have higher repetition at an individual consumer level so the "which newspapers do you read?" or "which programs do you watch?" survey questions work. Additionally TV and newspapers have older audiences who are both more tolerant to ads and susceptible to brand advertising. YouTube is not particularly effective for CPA advertising so the technologies from other Google ad products are not that relevant.
The thing I took away from Capital in the Twenty-First Century was his conjecture that the post-WWII (until about 1990) period was one of the few times in history that prosperity was widely shared with workers. The era that I consider to be normal (since I lived it) is in fact very abnormal.
But given that it only applies to a limited geographical region with free movement in and out not restricted it is unclear it will have the desired effect. This policy needs to be at the state or national level to be effective.
Compared to Spotify, SiriusXM has lower content costs (favorable statuatory licensing rates and a larger fraction of exclusive owned content) and a better user demographic (wealthy middle age Americans). Their churn rate is negligible.
Isn't the issue that Apple charges 3rd party manufacturers a licensing fee to use their proprietary designs? This raises antitrust issues (using dominance in one market to control another market).
Not true. A primary care physician at Kaiser makes a bit over $200K if they work full time AFAIK. Average American makes about $50K. Considering the 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency they are not overpaid. Specialists are the people making $500K+
I have 2 friends in their 40s who are primary care physicians at Kaiser (one in Bay Area, one in Sacramento). Both have dropped down to 60% time (3 days per week), explaining that 60% time is actually 40 hours. In the last few years Kaiser has added both EHR work and e-medicine work without reducing the number of appointment slots. So, it's about 7 hours per day of appointments and then catching up on all of the deferred paperwork and emails.
Before Uber, I used to call taxi dispatchers in Oakland to get a ride to the airport from my house. The taxis would rarely show up. One day I was getting a ride home in a taxi and I asked why this was the case. The driver explained that most drivers would not accept calls to certain "more dangerous" neighborhoods. I guess I won't be getting Ubers now for the same reason.
Companies used to prefer having a pension for their retirement program because any excess returns on the pension fund would become profit. Many of the ill fated leveraged buyouts in the 1980s/1990s were PE firms raiding these "excessively" funded pensions. This, unfortunately, was around the time people generally stopped smoking and having heart attacks right after they stopped working. Also, people that have pensions live longer. This has led to underfunded legacy pensions.
I always confused backcountry.com with The Back Country, a cool shop in Truckee (https://thebackcountry.net/). I wonder if The Back Country is old enough to predate the trademark, or they are about to get sued.
I've noticed a trend across many scientific fields where publications are basically irrelevant since nobody reads them. Status is conferred by high profile talks, which tend to be invited. The material discussed in high profile talks is eventually published in a journal or conference proceeding (in the case of CS) and will get citations, but ideas only spread if they are picked by the program committees. The academics who publish many low impact papers are not really relevant.
Unfortunately this is one of those issues that our current federal political system can't possibly address. The large companies know that federalizing this issue is functionally equivalent to killing meaningful privacy regulation in the US.
Large employers are self insured. The insurance companies just manage the benefits. In that sense there is no negotiation, beyond a manager fee. Price is determined by health of employees and benefit level.
Gravitational waves are indeed everywhere. If the early universe underwent inflation, they should be everywhere. Any object orbiting another object emits gravitational waves. These exotic events, however, are the only gravitational waves that are observable using the terrestrial light interference technique (LIGO and Virgo). A space based mission would be sensitive in a different frequency range (satellites bouncing light off one another over millions of kilometers). The primordial gravitational waves from inflation might be observed indirectly -- there was much excitement about the BICEP telescope observing indirect evidence of these gravitational waves, but I believe that other explanations have come forth.
Although unions have their flaws, they do help to keep wages high for skilled workers, both in terms of the prevailing wage but also in enforcing overtime rules (double time for Sunday work, for instance). They also prevent out-of-area workers from coming into an area when times are good. Skilled union workers in the Bay Area can work 168 hours per week right now if they want to.
A lot of long time and native Bay Area residents have favorable housing situations, either by owning a family home from before the latest bubble, or by living in a rent controlled apartment or an apartment with a landlord who prefers tenant stability over chasing market rents.
Article misses an important point. Free food is a benefit, and ERISA requires all employees get the same benefits. If you have a company with lots of low paid workers, it doesn’t work financially. Silicon Valley firms mostly contract out low wage jobs (janitorial, security) partially for this reason.
The US has a very high tax compliance rate because most of our income is reported through 3rd parties (w2, 1099, etc.). For income that is not reported through a 3rd party, we have low compliance rates as well. For income subject to little or no information reporting, the misreported income is 63% of total according to the IRS. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/p1415.pdf
There is an economics research paper that shows that ticket auctions on Ticketmaster can reduce the arbitrage profits of scalpers (https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/eric.budish/research/Ticket...) They compared the primary auction price to the ebay resale price and found they were about the same. It's unclear why ticket auctions never took off, although it may be that the only work well for shows with high demand.
Article misses best new feature: You can close apps on the iPhone X by swiping up from the app switcher, rather than holding down in a very small area to bring the red x forward.
A friend has an independent Mercedes/Porsche repair place in SF and told me that most of his business is repairing doors/windows and other issues like that. These repairs tend to be insanely expensive compared to what you think they should cost.
Owning stuff is essential at times of peak demand. It is essentially impossible to rent a nice ski house during Christmas week. Uber is not be trusted when it comes to getting home from a large event. The app was failing for me on Saturday at the Outside Lands festival -- i resorted to driving on Sunday.