We actually do need something like this, or at least the right to develop land.
Right now in Australia we have tyranny of the majority, because the 30% of home owners + 30% of mortgage holders have realised they can get rich if the government restricts supply (bans development) and increases demand (adjusts immigration yearly to outpace construction). For a century there seemed to be a 'social contract' that getting young people a home and helping them start families was important for the country, now though that concept seems to be totally dead.
Just creating a legal 'right' to build a house on your land would be the best fix and help a lot, but long term we really need to fix the social contract which held everything together in the first place.
In cold climates many people still use gas heating because its cheaper, making electricity cheaper would be the only realistic way to increase heat-pump usage in winter.
Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Prices are rising in Australia because the Central Bank created $450billion out of thin air during the pandemic [1]. The bank has persistently kept interest rates low, creating a massive housing bubble [2]. For everyone saying there was 'low' inflation in the 2000s despite cheap money, remember that China and Asia were rabidly growing, flooding the world with cheap manufactured goods and lowering real prices (often 10x reduction). The inflation can still be seen when looking the price of Australian real estate, or stock markets such as Nasdaq. As for this article, companies would always like to increase prices and profit. They can only do so in unison if there is suddenly more money sloshing around.
Heres what happened: The Bank of England (BoE) suppressed interest rates for 2 decades, driving government bonds from 6% to 2%. Pension funds typically had a high percentage of bonds, so they decided to borrow money (again, made artificially cheap by the BoE) to buy 2-3x the amount of bonds on leverage to be able to pay out the same as one 6% bond. Now the BoE is slowly raising rates to 'fight' the inflation it created over the past 20 years, which is causing these house of cards pension funds to start to tremble. The fund directors are relaxed though as have already paid themselves large bonuses every year, and after 2008 they realised they could rely on the government to come in and socialise the loses stemming from their financial recklessness.
It could of course be the AvroCar [1]. Although in this case they are referring to 'UFOs', there have been multiple experimental aircraft that look exactly like flying saucers.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar
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Yep, innovation means prices understate the true level of inflation. Eg: If technology reduces costs by 5% and the CPI measures 2%, then the real rate of inflation is at least 7%.
Defining inflation as rising prices is the newer, MORE narrow definition as measurements such as CPI are capturing the downstream effects of a fundamental cause (creating money).
Very true, as construction is not just new builds but also renovation and maintenance. Even a theoretical city with completely stable population still needs to keep its structures up to date and renew infrastructure.
Inflation is the expansion of the money supply (eg by money printing). A long term rise in prices (houses, stocks, CPI) is the consequence of inflation, just as a rising water level in a lake is the result of rain. The global economy is like a lake with growing capacity, so prices UNDERSTATE the true rate of inflation.
In reality of course central plannners 'pulling levers' and setting prices never works. The interest rate is one of the most important prices of them all, which is why having the government meddle with it has proven so destructive.
Inflation is an expansion in the money supply, such as new discoveries of gold or or printing paper money or creating credit. A baker would say he will 'raise' or 'lower' the price of his bread, not 'inflate' it. Defining inflation by the CPI or a similar measure is like defining the rain as a "increase in height of a river". It is the rain that CAUSES the rise in the river, and inflation CAUSES a general rise in prices.
Liberalism means freedom in all spheres (including economically and socially), no need to add the neo- prefix. When you have freedom in a global economy there will be massive income inequality (think about Lebron James or Elon Musk vs the average person) but everyone is better off. Technology allows the best athletes to entertain millions, and the best entrepreneurs to serve billions.
For $1.5 Billion, why don't they just build 1000 luxury 5 bedroom mansions? If they had the land area, they could even build 5000 individual detached homes for that budget. They could even splurge and give each bedroom a window!
In my town most of the upper income people live outside the city in houses with rainwater collection, septic tanks and increasingly no electric grid connection either (thanks to solar panels and battery). There is nothing self sufficient about this. Every one of these households still has 2 cars, fridge, tv, internet, computers, supermarket food, medicine, clothes and furniture from China etc. Most people who go off grid in developed countries probably consume more resources than the average city dweller living in a small apartment.
Strongly agree. Recently an important religious leader in my town died, and the police stated it was accident though they had clear evidence it was suicide because they knew it would distress the public less.
Yep. Without regulations that restrict people from taking new jobs, any labour 'shortage' can be solved by offering better conditions and/or higher pay. Take it to a hypothetical extreme: if truckers were offered $500k/yr and had to work 20 hours a week there would be no shortage.
The government completely messed up the messaging for the Astra Zeneca vaccine, a lot of people think it is very risky due to the reports of blood clotting (which are actually lower than for most common medicines!!). It doesn't matter though because even the AZ vaccine is hard to get, you need to be over 40 or have medical reasons and even then you need an appointment.
EDIT: And you can't even leave the country without government permission so its not like you can fly a country with vaccine availability to get it.
Even in Australia, where we have strong consumer protection, they still call it 'Full Self Driving Capability'.
Then underneath: "The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. Some features require turn signals and are limited in range. The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of kilometres of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates."
Bear in mind the photos will usually be viewed on a 1080p phone screen which is ~2MP. Or a 4k display which is ~8MP. The sensor has been getting bigger since the 6s which means more light for each pixel.
It's probably also because they couldn't turn a profit in a year where everyone stayed at home, the market conditions should have been perfect for a delivery company.
All current analysis misses the point. Tesla is not just a traditional auto company. Musk is involved with Space-X, which is likely going to be the company that takes humanity interstellar. Additionally, right now there is a Tesla Roadster floating through space which will likely be picked up by aliens in future. This means Musk will probably become a Steve Jobs like deity figure among advanced alien species, allowing Tesla to export a luxury product at high margins throughout the Milky Way. Conservatively assuming only 1 in billion stars with an advanced civilisation, thats still a market of thousands of billions of high income aliens. Stop thinking about traditional metrics such as 'global market share' and then current valuations frankly look too way low.
Bikes are similar to pedestrians not cars. In bike friendly places such as the Netherlands or Cambridge UK cyclists and those on foot share the same part of the city. It helps in these places that almost car drivers also use a bike to get around so they are more aware, but the main thing is designing the cities so that high speed 2-40 ton vehicles are totally separated from low speed 50-100kg cyclists and pedestrians.