From what I gathered from the article, one of your problems is that you didn’t understand the economics before you launched, and therefore your pricing was disconnected from the true costs. Next time, try to anticipate these by breaking down the various input factors (material, machine wear, design time, desired profit margin, etc). You may get an answer that convinces you it’s not worth it before you invest time.
FSD is great for me, although I mostly use it on the highways. But 90% of my driving is FSD now. It can be more conservative for my tastes with street driving
That’s conspiracy thinking. The absence of your question being addressed doesn’t mean it’s plausible. The ocean is generally a noisy place, and the activities of a small submerged vehicle likely won’t raise notice without active listening.
I suspect the new normal of not requiring test scores has at least as much to do with university admissions feeling more free to mold their incoming classes without the pressure of maintaining a ranking stat (test scores).
My utility (SCE in the US) has traditionally had consumption based progressive tiered pricing for years (monthly basis). Recently, they have been pushing consumers to time of use pricing though (higher rates at peak time of peak consumption). So, consumers can adapt.
Prestigious schools are seeing record numbers of applications, and record low in acceptance rates. If there is a hit in college attendance, its not happening at the top of the food chain.
Why does scale matter? For every BCG, there are a number of capable boutique firms in each market, many that specialize in specific disciplines. The “big box” approach seems lazy.
And that’s pretty much how it’s done in the LL my kid played in a few years ago. Parents show up to a local pizza place during a registration day. They bring the filled out paper enrollment form, the kid tries on some jerseys for size, and then pay the fee. Congrats, Johnny (or Jane) is signed up for LL.
Not mentioned in your story is birth month of your two daughters, and how that aligned with the sports season. Its been shown that there are a greater percentage of summer birthdays in professional baseball, as an example. Older kids in the age group (particularly at young ages) have a developmental advantage going in compared to younger kids, which can result in more reps, more opportunities to improve, and more playing time. This all compounds over the youth years.
HSBC was busted in the early 2010s for enabling people to launder money. They were more recently fined by the US government for advising individuals on how to evade taxes. They have a history of questionable practices.
Who knows? I can tell you that my wife’s 60ish year old elementary school in Southern California finally got air conditioning last year. So the bond issues aren’t flushing schools in money.