Hacker News Reader

HarryHirschon Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

In Europe the law argues that cars are dangerous, and if you loan your car to a habitual bad driver, that's on you. You can either get the person who drove it to fess up, or the judge can fine you (because you lent out your car against better judgment) and impose a drivers log, so the circus doesn't happen again.

The arguing about having a constitutional right to drive bad boggles the mind, road deaths in the US are high, compared to civilized nations. Wikipedia states it's 14.2 deaths per 100000 inhbitants, that's between Sierra Leone (13.8) and Angola (15.0). For comparison, India has 12.6 traffic deaths per 100000 citizens and the worst country in Europe is Greece at 6.1.

The right metric is death per citizen, not per mile, because it's about the number of people who have lost a family member or friend.

When you get around exclusively on two wheels (motorcycle and bicycle) bad drivers are a direct safety threat. Even cagers ought to be careful about being permissive with red light running, side-on crashes are remarkably deadly for the one who got hit in the door because there is not much structural protection or space on the side of the vehicle.

HarryHirschon US economy sheds 92,000 jobs in February in sharp slide

Economists, of course - the confounder of discrimination is absent here. Recall: if something appears weird in the US, it's usually due to slavery.

HarryHirschon US economy sheds 92,000 jobs in February in sharp slide

The U-3 rate does not include those that drove for Uber one hour in the month. The gold standard metric is labor participation rate of white men over 20, and that's not looking good: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300028

HarryHirschon We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

They imported top graduate student talent that went to the us and might have wished to stay but could not or wouldn't put up with the H1-B indentured servitude or was better paid back home or just patriotic.

Also - less financialization. In US, a statistician goes to work for any 3-letter agency or high finance. In a less financialized economy they might devote themselves to crystallography instead.

HarryHirschon Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship

George Sheldrick wrote an important program at the age of 75. He chose not to follow a chess career as a young man, but he could have.

HarryHirschon How private equity is changing housing

... pitching his books and preaching the Prosperity Gospel, which is antithetical to mainstream Christianity and not good financial advice.

HarryHirschon How private equity is changing housing

Why would someone listen to Dave Ramsey of all people? He is neither an economist, nor a Christian, he has nothing to contribute to the subject!

His shtick is real estate investment, of course he wants to see Joe Public buy a starter home. The trouble is: real estate as a government-guaranteed investment vehicle is what brought us the housing affordability crisis.

HarryHirschon Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

The decision to implement benefit cliffs is absolutely intentional, because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp, and maybe 10 % of the population rely on those. Obamacare subsidies are phased out gradually, because half the country relies on Obamacare, and if there were issues around Obamacare, that would have repercussions at the ballot box.

It serves to have an underclass that politicians can dump on, it seems.

HarryHirschon In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

Their health would improve?

HarryHirschon In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

It's not an unmitigated positive, instead it's a transparent move to paper over the high cost of housing by getting both parents to work. Of course housing prices will adjust accordingly, the supply remains the same, and the demand side has more money to spend.

HarryHirschon Goldman Sachs asks in biotech Report: Is curing patients a sustainable business? (2018)

It's not a surprise that especially at elite college it's classical economics that is taught in the gen. ed. courses. Its models are simple, and plainly visibly wrong.

If behavioural economics or political economics were taught instead, anything with models that have explanatory power it would be viewed as lefty and revolutionary, and that would really upset donors. Consequently we are stuck with homo oeconomicus.

HarryHirschon Goldman Sachs asks in biotech Report: Is curing patients a sustainable business? (2018)

Yet meanwhile, women entered the legal profession in the 1920's but wages did not catch up until the 1960's when the Equal Pay Act was passed. Economics 101 would say you could snap up competent female lawyers for a little more than they were paid at their current firm and thus wages would creep up, yet this would not happen.

HarryHirschon Nevada Governor's office covered up Boring Co safety violations

The authorities aren't going to send you off to reeducation, they will just determine (accurately) that you are a me-first guy who must not be allowed on the public roads and won't return your license. A win for the general public because road traffic is a coordinated effort.

HarryHirschon Driver livestreams on TikTok as she apparently hits and kills man in Chicago

Truth, but we need to consider road safety. Lock the lady up, and lock all other texters up. Motorcyclists all over the nation would agree.

HarryHirschon Trump proposes healthcare shake-up that would bypass insurers

School voucher 2.0, it's going to be great!

HarryHirschon Who Exactly Is a "Real Chemist"?

The authors of the paper are most certainly fake chemists, the idpol-centered vocab gives it away.

Science is a social endeavour, identities as a scientist are relational. A chemist is someone whom the scientific community identifies as one, and it would certainly not call the authors on that paper chemists.

HarryHirschon Alphabet launch GCUL supporting Hayek ideas of nth concurrent private currencies

So the argument is: if you were paid in any stablecoin then prices of housing, coffee and cat food would not have gone up quite as much in the last five years. That does not make sense at all, the recent inflation is caused by insufficient supply.

HarryHirschon HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development Under BARDA

You can also provide clean air and mandate such and such a turnover of fresh air, and you can have paid sick days, so that employees don't drag themselves in with respiratory illness and infect the rest of the staff. But it's America, can't have such.

HarryHirschon Hydra: Vehicles on the island – 'After the works they abandon them here'

They haven't done it yet, which would indicate that it's complicated, where is the nearest scrap dealer that would take the stuff? The Eastern Peloponnese is thinly populated, the nearest town is Nauplion with ~ 20 k inhabitants, else there is always Athens. Now you have an interagency coordination problem, Hydra town council would have to get together with its counterpart in Athens, acquire the title, collect them, charter a ferry and lowbed truck at the destination and assemble a crew get rid of the junk. Until sufficient tourists complain it's not going to happen.

HarryHirschon Trump Pulled $400M from Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next

Carl Schmitt would agree, or maybe Helmut Schmidt, too, when he was Mayor of Hamburg in 1962: "We didn't refer to the Constitution much, in those days"

HarryHirschon Despite sticker prices, the real cost of getting a degree has been going down

By outside forces, of course. Women entered the legal profession in the 1920's, but wages did not catch up until the Equal Pay Act was enacted under the Kennedy administration. There were plenty of labour market arbitrageurs profiting from the game, but the Civil Rights movement proved stronger.

HarryHirschon Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts

If they are protected from competition they will end up like the US auto industry in the 1970's. They can try and do generics but Teva, Ranbaxy and Ratiopharm will eat them once patent protection runs out.

HarryHirschon Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts

Back then it used to be the running joke about economists: "if everyone takes care of himself, everyone is taken care of"

HarryHirschon Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts

Where's the pharma lobby? Pharma is the only industrial science left in the country!

HarryHirschon NLRB acting general counsel rescinds non-compete labor policy

Let's be honest, the other party wasn't much better. Lots of talk about "womens healthcare", but not a peep about funding OSHA properly. Me? Brought in to clean up after a major incident that made the regional news and cost the taxpayer ~ 2 millions.

HarryHirschon It's not a crime if we do it with an app

The wait time when you can't afford the physician is infinite. That's the market at work.

HarryHirschon KATRIN's Odyssey

The map shows the capacity of waterways. Down the Danube, across the Mediterranean and the ocean, up the Rhine, and only a few kilometers of road.

HarryHirschon It's not a crime if we do it with an app

Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though

That's an assertion, not a statement of fact. Pricing in natural monopolies is a mature subject, and public utilities have been a thing for over 100 years. Also, pricing for medical procedures is regulated in Europe, and it works extremely well.

HarryHirschon A 'warrior' brain surgeon saved his Malibu street from wildfires and looters

Tolkien scholars would ask the question: is Sam Gamgee the warrior or the gardener? (The right answer is: he is a gardener, the Lord of the Rings is all about rebuilding after destruction.)

HarryHirschon Los Angeles fires expose inflated US home prices

It's scandalous, though, that the public will pay for firefighting efforts in areas that are unsafe to build in. It's insane to build on a slope or in a canyon that's plagued by katabatic winds.