Maarten88

> We can moralize 2nd but fundament is always numbers.

So you think it is moralizing to take people and fairness as the fundament? I certainly prefer that over numbers, if that makes me moralizing then so be it.

What you are implying is that you think the janitor (not an employee of course) of that hightech company who can't afford insurance does not deserve treatment when she gets hit by cancer. Paying for that would be too disincentivizing for the employees and shareholders, and the company should consider moving to another place that is more considerate of its needs.

I think the whole idea of poor people getting the same healthcare as rich people is really what is putting off many people in the US. Even if it would be better for everyone and have no downsides at all, it would still face opposition.

> socialization of the health-care system shall produce the following [...]

It should also produce better health outcomes for the people living there. Maybe you have a well-paid job and good insurance plan, and can enjoy good healthcare now, but that is not the case for many others and can change for you if you are unlucky.

Even a very poor country like Cuba has higher life expectancy than the US. Most developed countries have better health outcomes than the US, while spending way way less on healthcare.

There may be deeper causes for this beyond the privatized healthcare system in the US, such as the legalized political corruption (lobbying, PAC's) and litigation law leading to huge overhead costs in everything. These will be even harder to change.

A sugar tax will accomplish a lot and is much easier.

So this year they'll build around 700.000 normal F-150 trucks and only 15.000 electric ones, when they could sell many times more.

It seems they are out of touch with the market.

That may be understandable, as it is a bit nonsensical. 90% of the people who buy these trucks buy them as a status symbol: they are wasting resources, energy and emissions to signal they are active/outdoor types while driving to work and the mall. I read trucks do not count as part of manufacturer fuel efficiency targets, which is why they started marketing them to consumers in the first place. Buying an electric version of this still seems quite wasteful.

I hope people will think again and buy something right-sized.

Cuba?

They are a monopoly in search, right? Doesn't that place extra obligations on them, such as to not abuse their power against competitors or the public?

I would not want to stop these people. As an engineer, I find the technology very interesting and cool. And it is electric, so it is relatively less harmful than normal jets and helicopters.

I do think that there are big challenges in people transport (mainly around cars and planes) and this does not solve any of those challenges, as it does not scale. So I see it as a gimmick: cool tech to show off.

A high-speed train can connect inner cities just as fast as this gimmick jet. It is orders of magnitude more efficient and scalable, and much more safe. A good train could easily be more comfortable, if there is a market for that. Do you think that jet will have dining rooms, sleeping cabins, ample room for luggage? Do you think it will even have a toilet?

Just. Build. A. Train.

Carbon Tax money is not thrown out of the window. It will mostly stay in the same country, and it will create jobs and wealth for people who are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

If you build more dense and closer to work and shops, people can travel smaller distances. Public transport, walking and biking will become viable alternatives, resulting in fewer car trips. You could have less traffic when planning it well.

> no-one actually believes that is going to happen

That is the problem exactly. We do not listen to scientists, because it's more convenient to ignore it. And when their models become reality, we'll just blame them for it, as they "knew" and did not prevent it.

A bike lane can carry more people than a car lane.

Especially in the US there is plenty of space you can take away from cars, both lanes and parking.

The Netherlands did not knock down and rebuild Amsterdam to build bike paths. They took space back from cars.

That just adds another argument against safe bike infrastructure in US politics. Poor people are even more undeserving than lycra-clad yuppies ;-\

I'd suggest starting with bike paths to schools. Kids don't have the problems you mention, they also don't have an alternative when they want to travel independently.

That reasoning illustrates the problem exactly. You should have read the article until the last line, I'll quote it here for you:

> That is our failure, and it's a failure brought about to a large extent by bad policy that tells us we can't have nice things, because nice things are for the rich

> You do realize that this is just your privilege?

This is exactly what TFA is about. It should not be a privilege, but it is, because we made it scarce. Not because it is more expensive to create, it is not.

> remember those freedoms can also destroy your life, if you end up on the other end. Americans have to step over homeless people on the sidewalks, who got fired, who got sick while uninsured, who are addicted or mentally ill. Those who do well live in suburbia, where their kids are also not that free, going outside alone is too dangerous.

Those taxes pay for other forms of freedom

How much growth and revenue would they have missed had they allocated more resources towards better security and recovery plans before this, instead of better features?

As a shareholder, you own the company including its problems. You don't get to complain like a customer, you did not buy any product or service from them, it's the other way around.

> Washington must protect and nurture these engines of competitive dynamism, but instead they're conspiring to kill the golden goose.

I was with him throughout, until this. Here it seems, also for him, his personal interest gets in the way of rational problem solving. He may be a hero for helping solve a problem, but he is still human: just another tax-exempted billionaire business owner, no problem here.

I think the problem was there wasn't a US canal available.

Seriously: this shows to me that people will use any infrastructure that is most convenient/fast for them. If there are highways people will drive. Build public transport and people will use that. Build bike paths and people will bike. If you have canals like Amsterdam, well...

Canals are probably not very fast nor scalable for mass transit, but they may be useful for transporting heavy things.

> Typically in the scale of millions per year. Which is nothing to walmart guy.

Building a modern subway network with a couple dozen stations will cost a few billion easily. And that is just one small thing on a long list. I think you underestimate what infrastructure for a city of millions would cost. Maybe you think cars are ok, but they really are not, if you want a great city.

> I dont understand what you mean here. I suspect you're referencing Detroit as a key point.

No, What I mean is that most US cities, especially those with large suburbs, cannot cover their existing maintenance costs unless they grow, this will stop working in the near future, see: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growt...

> this is north america in a nutshell. Virtually everywhere you go there is examples of success...

I would argue that most US cities rank low in quality of life comparisons when compared to cities in other developed parts of the world. When planning utopia, I would start looking in other places.

I think infrastructure will be hugely expensive. When you want to build a city that is sustainable, you'll need to build subways, infrastructure for cars, bikes and walking, sewer systems, garbage collection, energy, communication and something for distribution of food and goods. All these things will be better when doing them collaboratively, instead of individualized. You'll need taxation to pay for them collaboratively. But they should be designed and built up-front, before anyone starts living there - because otherwise people will start doing things the wrong way (i.e. traveling by car instead of public transport) and after that it is very hard to change.

Also: paying for utilities and infrastructure from rising value of land seems not very sustainable at all. It can't cover maintenance in the long run. Many US cities already suffer from that.

Utopian dreams like these usually do not end well. It took many decades for visionary developments that were planned in the Dutch polders (Almere) to become something approaching a good city, and the results are quite different then the original vision.

I wonder if this is true for me as a EU citizen. Per the GDPR, companies can use personal data without consent when there is a legal requirement, but I think they can't just hand it out without consent when they just feel like it.

Maybe that is where the warrant comes in, to make it plausible that it is required?

I guess we'll find out when they arrest the first EU citizen based on this data.

> A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average person hard.

I think that is just an excuse to not make changes that are necessary. Saying that something will hit the poor/average person/working family is an argument about wealth/cost distribution, which is separate from the actual problem.

When we, as humanity, have the natural resources, the technology and the labor required to do something that is objectively necessary, the only thing that can stand in the way is cost/wealth distribution: who gets to pay the bill.

So when objectively necessary changes do not happen, the only possible reason for that is that maintaining wealth/power are more important than suffering the consequences of not implementing the change.

Isn't the IRS just executing the policies that elected politicians decide? It seems the IRS wanted to do the right thing 20 years ago, but they were stopped by politicians who were corrupted by lobbyists.

Maybe US people should elect politicians that represent them instead of business. And stop buying the incredible amounts of double-speak that is always present in discussions like these.

That is projection.

I think if you look around in the world you could see many countries where government works quite well, with little corruption, maybe a bit slow, yet offering services that are better and more efficient than businesses could. In the US people have been led to believe this is simply impossible.

Government may be the enabler of corruption but there is no alternative other than to fix it. Libertarians may believe you can mostly do without a government, but they are mistaken.

VAT comes close to that and is common outside US.

> ... a 5% fee. This is roughly in-line with baseline credit card transaction processing fees ...

Dutch consumers mostly pay using IDeal, a payment standard created by all Dutch banks, that costs < 0.5% in fees to merchants. It has fewer consumer protections than what credit cards offer, for that there are consumer protection laws.

These same consumer protection laws should make things like cancelling a subscription easy. Of course many companies fail to do so properly. One day I hope the government will enforce these like Apple protects their platform, and we'll end up having what we have now, just cheaper.

OP probably also thought about other societies involved, like the Indonesians, who did not really benefit, quite the opposite, and with far more people.

> If things should be changed, the public should vote to regulate.

How can the public form an opinion if the information they get about it is skewed by the affected companies?

What if their politicians get “donations” from the companies that need regulation, to influence them into not doing so?

Catch-22