snrplfth

Not sure that "too many people in prisons for victimless crimes" and "tax law that makes employer-tied healthcare almost inevitable" are aspects of society's permissiveness.

There are definitely many variable-tolled roads. The trouble is that frequently they are embedded in a system of non-tolled (or, really, not-allowed-to-be-tolled) roads, and that the tolling is not well-focused on congestion. Basically, the Braess "paradox" emerges if you try to make a road network that's optimal for travel patterns over an entire day, without using pricing to ration scarce space.

Normally you would do this through prices, but most roads don't work that way.

Getting the material is not that difficult for a determined group. Truly dangerous isotopes like caesium-137 or strontium-90 are both used for medical and other applications, and have both been accidentally released from non-military sources after having been forgotten in scrapyards, then causing fatalities. They also have considerable half-lives, about 30 years, so you can't just wait a few months for it to decay out of an area. Dispersing them is also not that hard, and you don't even necessarily have to use an explosive. You could do an indoors release of a powder, or a release of a water-soluble salt into a pond or a fountain, or what have you.

Of course, other motivations, like the panic generated by a physical attack, may be more important to someone choosing methods.

The point of a dirty bomb is less so the actual effects of the radiation, and moreso the impression it gives and the fear it generates. The public is not easily reassured that an area that's been deliberately contaminated with radioactive particles has been sufficiently cleaned up to return. It's the doubt and uncertainty that really counts.

And they are quite doable as weapons - it just takes some careful preparation and handling, and access to some mildly expensive materials.

Yes, aggregate demand is increased but aggregate savings, which are the source of investment, are decreased. Those assets of the minority, we're assuming, are also productive. So the prices of the assets purchased by those with 'significant income' go down. So this might manifest as increased prices on low-end staple goods and decreased prices on durable assets. Still doesn't imply general inflation. (Of course, this is a major bone of contention of the whole Monetarist vs Keynesian debate, so if you think the Keynesian account is more convincing, then that's a sticking point.)

Yes, I suppose I can see how they might want that - I don't think it means that Uber is really obligated to give them anything though.

Oh okay, that makes sense.

I think what tomcam was wondering was where Uber specifically claimed to be public transportation.

Agreed. It seems that this is just because there's some precedence with the taxis, but that doesn't mean it should be expanded.

If Uber wanted to sell or give away data, properly anonymized and in accordance with their terms of service, that seems fine to me. But it's potentially quite valuable to Uber even in this state, and it doesn't really make sense to require a business to give them this data, any more than it would be to require other data-driven companies to do so. If it's not for public safety or something of that nature, I don't see why the government should really care.

Yes, an increase in real value of redistribution should raise the reservation wage and suggests increased wages for those people in the (somewhat smaller) labour force, but it will require higher taxes on those income-earners, reducing their real after-tax income. The money has to come from somewhere. I'm not saying that no prices for particular baskets of goods will go up, I'm just saying that general inflation will not occur if UBI is not funded through monetary expansion.

Those 200 years supply refers to currently known reserves, which is to say, lithium whose location is known, has been proven to be present at a certain level, and is economically feasible to extract with current technology. There's lots more lithium out there, there's just not much point looking for or proving its presence yet. That "200 years' reserve" is a small fraction of all the lithium available.

Well, I think advocates of UBI arguing that it would encourage growth by stimulating spending are ignoring the fact that a tax-funded UBI would take money from elsewhere. It doesn't necessarily matter what advocates of UBI say about its suppose growth-boosting effects or what have you - the parent post was saying that Econ 101 understanding affirms that redistributive policies increase inflation, and I disagree. I should definitely qualify that with the caveat that I'm talking about Monetarist Econ 101, where V is stable in the long run, and Q is determined by overall productivity. Therefore P is roughly proportional to M. Sure, there's short-term effects, but over the long run, by Monetarist Econ 101, a UBI, if funded out of tax revenues, shouldn't cause inflation.

Because claiming that UBI will cause inflation is not justified by an understanding of Economics 101. Most basic economic theory will state that inflation is basically a monetary phenomenon. (Now, if you use monetary expansion to pay for the UBI, as the occasional person has suggested, then Econ 101 would suggest inflation, but that's true for any expenditure funded that way.)

Why would the New York Times complain when Team Blue was winning?

Good thing we just invented replicators.

I have flown first class, not international business. Yes, there is of course a range of first class experiences. Many include expensive additional services.

But a sigificant component of the cost is simply that first class carries fewer people per linear foot than does economy.

Allowing the unbundling of services is much more likely to allow the emergence of an "extra leg room only" class, than is a situation where services must be bundled into a standard package. If the prices have to be the same regardless of seat location, and be packaged with an identical bundle of food, blankets, etc, then that's a strong disincentive to attempt to sell a separate class of legroom seats. And it's much more likely that a "standardized seat" will be too short for very tall people than it will be tall enough - and even if it were, that would mean fewer seats on the plane and thus higher prices.

But first class largely costs more because of its larger legroom. Certainly there's no problem with having a long-legroom-but-no-frills class of seats. Indeed, unbundling services would probably facilitate this.

Well, maybe you could have a price-compare thing, and that seems vaguely reasonable, but what everybody seems to be talking about and demanding is that there be a required bundling of certain services. A mere labelling is quite different.

>"did you ever had guests in your home? did you ever have them full day inside, and didn't give them a single thing to eat the whole time? (ie those magical 14 hours). well of course no, you're not an a__hole, right?"

An airline is a paid service. I'm not their friend, I'm their customer.

>"alternative - food stalls in airports serving specific food/packaging for flights. haven't seen a single one in those 30+ airports i ever visited." >"why do I need to wade through countless restaurants and boutiques just to get from checkin to gate? that's cheap. they could be in some designated accessible 'shopping area' for example."

Okay, I get it, you don't like the way airports currently are, nor all of their offerings. I still don't see why this requires that A Law Be Made governing what they are and are not allowed to offer.

I just don't think that "seeing what is included in a airline ticket" is all that complicated, or that it is simpler somehow than deciding on, administrating, and enforcing a "standard bundle" on all these different airlines. And there's nothing to say that the standard bundle will necessarily meet that many people's preferences. I mean, people distinguish between different services and goods all the time depending on how much they value them - I don't think they suddenly lose this ability when comparing flights.

I am not labelling all paid services as luxuries. But some are, and different people will consider different things luxuries. I mean, what is discomfort? (Should seats be leather, say? Should they recline? How far?) How much is choosing a seat worth? Some people really like an aisle, some like a window, some don't care. When you decide that a particular service is required to be included, you're saying that people that don't want it will have to pay for it anyways. I don't see why that is the default argument that doesn't have to be defended, while not having to pay for something you don't want is the idea that has a high burden of argument.

The heart of the argument made in the article is that somehow, by unbundling services that were bundled, airlines are somehow able to raise prices above what they were otherwise able to do. I don't think that's true at all.

I mean, I sure like a pop and a box of chocolate-covered raisins when I go to the movies. Therefore I demand that all movie tickets include food.

I like to watch streaming videos on my phone. Therefore I demand that all phone plans include unlimited data.

I like big comfortable seats and laptop plugs when I travel on the inter-city train. Therefore I demand that municipal buses include these things.

You see where this goes?

And US healthcare is totally not the same. Firstly, the majority of US healthcare expenditures are tax-funded, about 65%, mostly through Medicare, Medicaid, tax subsidies and other programs. Secondly, it is effectively cartelized by the government, through incentives that make it extremely tax-advantageous to get healthcare through employers, to limits on the training and numbers of doctors that drive up prices, to now, a system of exchanges that require that people purchase insurance from approved insurers at government-set prices. It is so, so incredibly far from "everyone pays for his own healthcare through a system of private insurers".

I think it's anti-humanistic to say that, because a small number of people are born a particular way, that others must be charged more money so that they can be accommodated by more services than they would want consume. See? It's so easy to call people anti-humanistic.

Most airlines that I've been on have started turning the exit row into a "non-first-class extra legroom" row. On a few occasions I've seen very tall people sitting there. And there's nothing wrong with building a range of legrooms into a plane. But I don't see why there should be some requirement that a costly good - legroom on a plane - be provided to more people than actually want to pay for it.

Yes, it might do so. Depends on how expensive the services are and how easy the process is. But what annoys me is the attitude of "I prefer that Service X and Service Y be bundled together, therefore it should be mandatory that they are." Sure, there are arguments for bundling, and for unbundling. I don't see that just because some people prefer one or the other that it should be required.

A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there; pretty soon you're talking real money.

>"Food service is efficient. It comes in bulk, everyone gets served, everyone eats, everyone throws things away, done."

Great. If an airline finds that it is more efficient that they bundle food with the ticket price, then more power to them. I just don't see why it should be required that they do so.

>""Amenities" like food courts and shops is a big reason why airports are annoying."

I am sorry that you are annoyed by food courts. On the other hand, I suspect that the fact they are usually full of businesses suggests that many people patronize them and find them useful. Again, I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Prohibit airports from having food courts?

I was responding to both. I simply do not agree with the idea that, if they were required to bundle these services together at some set level of service, that this would somehow make airlines unable to increase the prices. What I suggest is happening here is that the airlines would have increased their bundled prices, but aware of how price-sensitive flyers are, and how many of them are willing to forgo extra services, they've decided to unbundle instead.

I mean, what's stopping them from just raising prices for bundled services? Nothing, besides competition. The fact that these services can be paid for separately is not some way for them to "get you" somehow, it's just unbundling.

Yes, there's theoretically economies of scale for some things. But there's also a lot of potential advantages to pricing specific services - especially for things like luggage, where capacity per passenger often has hard limits. If there really are economies of scale, I suspect the airlines themselves will find them more effectively than blanket regulations requiring a particular service level.

How is the iPhone an example?

So people should have to buy more expensive services, bundled in a way they don't like, want or need, just so others can have the price for those services hidden in the overall price? Why?

If somebody wants to carry a lot of luggage on, or eat a bunch of in-flight meals, that's fine. Doesn't mean they get to demand that these things be included always, for everybody. We could demand that complimentary champagne and cheesecake be included in a flight; that doesn't mean that it wouldn't cost money or that people who didn't want it wouldn't be paying for the people who do.

It doesn't help people, especially those with less money, to demand that only comprehensive and luxurious services be available.

Okay, but if you are, on net, not paying in more to the system than you're getting, then someone is going to have to pay that difference. You cannot maintain all those social programs, and a UBI, without those very large tax increases to pay for those who are net UBI consumers.

To pay all adults in the US (240 million) a UBI of $13,000 would require $3.1 trillion. The entire US federal budget (which is still in deficit by $500 billion) is $3.8 trillion. That can't be made up just with a little bit of increased taxation.