eru

24 ms·

811.
by eru 4mo ago
The following two things can be true at the same time: - Frontier state-of-the-art performance keeps getting more expensive (and better). - Any fixed performance level is becoming cheaper. (And a third: if you still want to see improvements
812.
by eru 4mo ago
See also https://dhall-lang.org/
813.
by eru 4mo ago
> Compare AI costs per-engineer-salary-dollar, because more expensive engineers probably need more expensive AI. Let's see how this works out in the long run. For a historical analog, more expensive engineers don't use more ex
814.
by eru 4mo ago
That workaround justifies nearly anything.
815.
by eru 4mo ago
About (1): you know that USPS literally has a monopoly and several legal advantages? About (2): duh, yes, because they ain't stupid. For an analogy: if there's free municipal water, Coca-Cola would make use of that for bottling,
816.
by eru 4mo ago
Then they can use the money you give them to pay for the mule.
817.
by eru 4mo ago
Presumably the navy would sell military services to the government in that case?
818.
by eru 4mo ago
> For the same reason urban people deserve subsidies, for things like public transportation, by virtue of living in the city. They don't. > The first sentence of the US Constitution lists "promote the general Welfare" a
819.
by eru 4mo ago
Eh, just give them an absolute subsidy in terms of money, if you think they deserve it.
820.
by eru 4mo ago
> How would a state run service be better? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
821.
by eru 4mo ago
Thanks for your list. > Rural areas extract and produce many resources that urban areas depend on. Agriculture, fishing, oil, gas, uranium, wood, maple syrup, etc. Sure, and market prices reward them for that in relation to how useful th
822.
by eru 4mo ago
I get your argument, but I suspect it's far too general. For example, even if you charge people the same _per_ letter, if you just look at eg subsidy per user, it's gonna be widely divergent.
823.
by eru 4mo ago
Thanks! The free PO box is an interesting loophole that USPS can exploit.
824.
by eru 4mo ago
I suspect subscriptions will stay. But you will see more and more roadblocks that the 'barely goes to the gym' user barely notices, but that the power user will chafe under. I make that prediction, because the people who pay for
825.
by eru 4mo ago
For now, I can use Fable from the web just fine. > You're not likely to want to run Fable in a loop any more than you want to take a bunch of dollar bills and light them on fire. Every invocation of Fable has to be intentional, its
826.
by eru 4mo ago
See also https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
827.
by eru 4mo ago
Interestingly, both the US and German constitution were written explicitly to limit the power of the federal level. But in both systems the federal level grabbed more and more power as time went on. (Partially because that's also pop
828.
by eru 4mo ago
Well, if postal services were provided by normal private companies, then there would be none (or less) of that kind of political interference you are complaining about here.
829.
by eru 4mo ago
A privatised postal service could capture this as well to finance rural delivery.
830.
by eru 4mo ago
How does that square with their universal service obligation? Which county is that?
831.
by eru 4mo ago
Lower prices, bigger volume in the market. And the privatised Deutsche Post (/ DHL) is now a world beating logistics company that makes plenty of profit, instead of subsidies and bleeding red ink all over. However Germany still has pl
832.
by eru 4mo ago
> [...] rural and remote Americans would likely face exorbitant delivery surcharges [...] Surfacing the cost of service provision to end users is generally a good tool to align incentives. (Use welfare systems to give money to poor peopl
833.
by eru 4mo ago
> Post is a natural monopoly, at a national scale. It evidently is not. There's multiple providers.
834.
by eru 4mo ago
Just split the US into 50 individual territories, if you think that being small is a benefit in service provision. > There is really almost no comparison to the US in terms of rural areas anywhere in Europe. Why do rural people deserve s
835.
by eru 4mo ago
> There is daily USPS service to a postbox at the bottom of the Grand Canyon that is only accessible by mule paths. I guarantee this service would either be cancelled or go up in cost to thousands of dollars per letter if USPS was privat
836.
by eru 4mo ago
They could auction off a universal service obligation to willing bidders. No need to run a federal agency with a monopoly for that. (And everything you explain could also be accomplished by state-run services, no need to involve the federa
837.
by eru 4mo ago
You can auction off the universal service obligation to willing bidders without having a state owned enterprise with a government monopoly. > Either way, from a national policy standpoint there are very good reasons to subsidize rural ar
838.
by eru 4mo ago
> But no roads? What's so confusing about that? Presumably the constitution assumes that normal roads are for the more local layers of government to deal with. I interpret 'shall have power' to mean 'if they want to,
839.
by eru 4mo ago
Huh, where's the postal service in the constitution? As far as I can tell your constitution allows the federal level to regulate postal services, but it does not require the establishment of government snail mail.
840.
by eru 4mo ago
> The USPS is a no-brainer public service and the only reason there is any question of its value is due to the severely broken, dysfunctional, corrupt Congress. Huh? Even Germany managed to privatise their snail mail, and approximately

More ›