iguy

34 ms·

301.
by iguy 6y ago
No, read it again. According to me, many people are unwilling to build a life on sand, it weighs negatively in their choices. The fact that some are observed to take the gamble proves nothing. (And the fact that some of those got nasty su
302.
by iguy 6y ago
What's to explain? All the people who chose not to do this, because it didn't seem like a safe enough business model?
303.
by iguy 6y ago
Have they killed many paid products? I think there is justified wariness about building too much on top of any service given away for free.
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by iguy 6y ago
Or not even an arm of the government. The same reasoning would be applied by other companies buying services. Vendors with a reputation for stopping service to clients because of bad news coverage are a risker bet.
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by iguy 6y ago
Aside, but do you know if that means net exporter in value or also in calories? I had the impression all those greenhouses were great at making relatively expensive things like fresh salad, which you can then trade for cheap Canadian wheat
306.
by iguy 6y ago
Yea, as I edited when I remembered, the strong trade-off on land area is biomass fuels like corn alcohol. If you can grow that you can certainly grow animal feed. Some tree-farming is indeed on steep ground, but I couldn't guess what p
307.
by iguy 6y ago
This is a good discussion of the accounting of biofuels, with a guy called Tim Searchinger (there is a transcript if you don't want to listen): https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2019/11/manifold-podcast-23-ti...
308.
by iguy 6y ago
> So there is no 'real' antifa groups. How do we actually know this? Or to put it differently, how much do we know about the interconnections of such groups? I'm sure that some are just kids who like the look & dress u
309.
by iguy 6y ago
Isn't all war "the continuation of politics by other means"? I presume what was meant here was that 20th C fascist movements got big by the strategic use of street violence, in a way that the relatively liberal societies they
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by iguy 6y ago
> They're judged for the actions that they take I wish that were true, but it more often seems they're judged by the worst dirt that can be made to stick. And they know it.
311.
by iguy 6y ago
We don't only want accountability, we also want good decisions, and good advice, even on delicate topics. IMO this is quite a difficult topic. Suppose you are concerned that some variants of a policy you're thinking about may be l
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by iguy 6y ago
Electric planes with swappable batteries exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipistrel_Alpha_Trainer#Alpha_... I guess the use case is that a flight school could have 2 planes & 5 batteries, and get more student f
313.
by iguy 6y ago
> only with the higher demand they can now sell a whole lot more of them But they can only sell what they have in stock, which is adjusted to normal times. In the disaster they simply sell out. GP is saying the high prices in a disaster
314.
by iguy 6y ago
The problem Amazon is solving also involves a lot of data, that is true. But it has lots and lots of price information to go on, both prices people are willing to pay for various goods at various times & places, and prices at which supp
315.
by iguy 6y ago
We're uncertain about the death rate by at least a factor of 2 anyway. This "about one year" comparison corresponds to an estimate around one percent. Whether you think it's a big deal or not, it seems like a useful way
316.
by iguy 6y ago
But the problem is wider than just not knowing what others are doing. Grant money for writing things tends to encourage everyone to start their own thing, because having something you own is a good story to tell, it makes you look like a le
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by iguy 6y ago
Kathmandu is far from this, by the way. IIRC a major component of the smog was from smugglers adulterating the fuel, e.g. adding kerosene to gasoline.
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by iguy 6y ago
And the fact that the average length of employment at this is measured in decades, possibly generations. It's an ecosystem not a startup. (Which doesn't mean there aren't things to learn, of course, for those trying to run mo
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by iguy 6y ago
Another reading of "We have to strive" is simply that, if we do wish to reduce various biases, it is something we must do consciously. That doing so runs against what's easy, our natural inclination is to extrapolate and gene
320.
by iguy 6y ago
OK, thanks. I am surprised though. Doesn't lots of employment law make a distinction between "fired with cause" and "downsizing"? Lots of questions, but also: Can they actually collect this? I guess my proposal of &
321.
by iguy 6y ago
An important distinction here is surely between voluntary departure, and being laid off. What did the clause you mention cover? Seems like a fair concern for a company not to have their freshly trained employees get poached by the competiti
322.
by iguy 6y ago
Starting an insurance company is surely a lot more tightly regulated than starting a fund. There are various values for "you" here: The professional who manages the fund day-to-day needs to be paid no matter what the company says
323.
by iguy 6y ago
If you made money on the funds invested, and lost money on every month's premiums & payouts, then why not close down that half of the business and become just a hedge fund? I guess it's life insurance that's a special cas
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by iguy 6y ago
Well perhaps I should have said, they don't have to. Right now they need not bother to charge at all. And how they set the sticker price is only a small part of the picture anyway, since they gather near-perfect information about your
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by iguy 6y ago
Clearly both would happen, right? Harvard doesn't set their prices based on loans, they wouldn't care. Some mid-rank colleges would disappear, and some would adapt to serve the new market.
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by iguy 6y ago
I agree it's higher, and while some of this is waste, some of the higher proportion is explained by the US being richer. Whether it will come down, I guess that's partly a forecasting guess. Will the healthcare sector be a smaller
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by iguy 6y ago
Cider was huge, the main reason to plant an orchard. IIRC selling the idea of apples as a healthy thing to eat (and perhaps even apple pie as patriotic) was a clever marketing "pivot" under prohibition -- orchards were otherwise h
328.
by iguy 6y ago
Right, this difference of scale is enormous. Back when hospitals couldn't do that much, and were not far from being hotels with better hygiene & worse food, then how to pay for them wasn't such a hard problem. But now US healt
329.
by iguy 6y ago
If all you take is bleakness, then perhaps. But Hobsbawm's bleakness is more specific, it's about the demise of actually existing Communism as a pole of the world order. And I would say that putting that anywhere near the top of y
330.
by iguy 6y ago
An interesting review / commentary on that book, and his worldview, by someone with a rather different one: https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/brad-delong-eric-hobs... "He is writing for readers

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