hnboredhn

The one counter is that commercial real estate is way cheaper than it used to be. The potential savings of putting everyone in a full open floor plan aren't as high as they used to be.

(Still don't think it will happen - but that shift occurred when leases on commercial real estate were at all time high)

I do think everyday behaviors have more single point of failures than they used to. The complexity has just gone up (with the example of needing to use the internet to get a parking spot) so almost by definition there are more ways it can go wrong.

That being said, I think you are just glorifying the past a bit. Watching on-demand television was impossible 15 years ago. People were still using tivo's you had to set ahead of time. I personally call my barber because its easier than the computer - and most places have both options.

If you were a random person in a town 1600 - how many people do you think you could buy meat form? I honestly dont know. I guess if everyone had subsistence farms with some chickens it in theory could be a lot, but not sure if it would be over 10 or not.

Its not like they had efficient shipping or storage back then.

I am not too in the weeds on this particular issue, but it seems not that crazy to me that "the biggest four companies" produce 55% of the US's chickens. Presumably that means there is much more than four who register in at above a couple percent nationally and possibly even at a local level different players. Its also for one market. While I eat a lot of chicken, I could substitute it for other foods or meats.

To be clear I think these companies would manipulate prices if they knew how and could get away with it, but having trouble seeing how "four companies control under 60 percent of one food's market" is that alarming. That seems like more competition than at any point in human history.

>But Mayor Femke Halsema complained last year that cruise tourists were let loose for a couple of hours, ate at international chains and had no time to visit a museum, consuming the city but doing little for it.

My guess is most of HN is relatively pro-market pro-business so this probably won't be controversial, but this seems like the type of thing that a government will regret in ten years. So many municipalities would kill for a large number of people to come in, pay locals and local taxes, and then leave without using any social services. I realize Amsterdam is very wealthy, but feel like we've seen countless times cities discouraging visitors and then surprised when tax revenues drop.

Harvard posted that 70% of their legacy admits were white and 30% non-white. That's higher than the population of 18 year olds but maybe not as extreme as some would think.

I'd actually love to see more data on this. My cynical take is that now people donate to schools they didn't even go to - and are concentrated anyways in a few big donations a year. So banning legacies could still just allow wealthier people to buy their in, even if not their own former college.

The other benefit is simply seeing the current subscriptions, even if you had to cancel elsewhere.

I should be able to see on my Bank of America credit card which companies are going to bill me within a month - and either be able to block it or click a link to cancel.

I feel like I've seen some smaller financial services which have this feature, but most people want to use a major credit card.

That double dipping doesnt make sense unless they are doing something more complex - like limit supply or time swings in the market.

Let's say there cut is 2%.

If I sell a ticket for $50 list price to StubHub and then they sell it for $50 list price then they got 1 dollar from me and one dollar from the eventual buyer. That's $2 total.

If I sell a ticket to someone else on Stubhub for $50 then they also get $1 from me and $1 from the seller. The "double dipping" doesnt work out even before you factor in the overhead.

This is not to say they aren't manipulating market. Maybe they think they can make more money because humans are risk adverse and sell tickets for less than they should to optimize EV, or somethikng.

I almost feel like it is competing more with FB than anything, which could possibly work. None of my friends use Facebook but presumably there is still a need for people to ask what restaurants or good or if anyone is available to be a babysitter?

People can obviously post on their stories - but I think there is something about a photo based medium that makes some people reluctant to post at all or slide into other people's DMs.

I am surprised by how little takes on this seem to address the fact this is likely to be bureaucratic. There are many people or departments who would benefit from increased fundings in these areas.

Not seven saying its overt corruption. But if you work for the military in collecting sightings on unidentified objects and earnestly dont know what 10% of the sightings actually were, it behooves you to fan the rumors on it a bit.

I guess I'm still not convinced the "reasoning" has anything to do with it.

If a company says the reason is inflation they can only maintain that pricing power if every other firm does the same thing. If no firm decides to keep prices the same, to steal more of the market, that suggests to me that either inflation is real (perhaps in a harder to quantify way than just supplies) or companies have much more consolidated competitors than they used to (perhaps start up costs are now high so new entrants become impossible).

I still don't find the argument persuasive. Companies have always tried to maximize profits, as you said.

To me this highlights more companies realizing they have pricing power similar to monopoly power or cartel power. A company that has lots of competition can't raise its profit margins. But a company with a moat, where no competitors are able to fund the capital needed to compete, can raise profits.

Agreed. In particular the fees paid to Booz Allen should be disclosed.

Looking back earlier this year I paid $40 for two cave tours of a national park through the site. There are no listed fees. It is a reasonable price for the tour and the site was pretty easy to use, but now I am curious what the cut is for the park. Definitely am not against a private company getting paid to manage reservations but seems reasonable that the info is disclosed.

I sorta hope they find some streets or avenues to convert to bike lanes. I do sorta feel like having a congestion fee without much added ways to get around for pedestrians leaves the typical person unchanged from this.

I suppose to expound on my point more - the graph is by people not housing units. Presumably if a cheap city, like Detroit, had a bunch of unused units the graph would not credit it for the built-in density because if its not being used.

I realize he is arguing for that but I think its pretty silly to have the chart there showing the correlation if so. He does address the point I made in the article but I think he dismisses it too fast without much evidence.

Isn't the obvious arrow here that high prices drives density? The fact that NYC is the densest and most expensive seems to be an obvious story of high prices incentivizing people to build up.

The question is whether or not an old building being replaced by a tower or a single family house will lead to more expensive housing throughout the city. I still am confused as to how density would hurt locally here.

I'm curious what the legal restrictions are here. I would imagine if a hamburger from a fast food restaurant could replace half of its meat with plant protein that I may not really notice if no one tells me. At the same time, the price differential is probably going to be very small that I would absolutely go for the pure meat option every time if its just within a dollar difference.

I can't find for the US but I know there are strict rules on what can be called juice, for instance. It looks like Europe is more lenient than the US: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/23/927278172/veggie-burgers-can-...