kingsuper20

Put an Ironman suit on a cop and he isn't going to much care if the potential perp is carrying a knife.

It's a weird gig (street patrol) and it's hard to have a strong opinion on it without actually being a cop or going out on numerous ride-alongs. Naturally, it's easy to come up with 'solutions' behind the safety of a screen.

One thing that brought that home to me is having several friends who are retired COs (Correctional Officers) from the California state system and several friends who are released felons. One thing their stories taught me is that people who are uninvolved in those systems don't know a thing about it and have nearly useless theories on the way things-oughta-be.

Sure it does. It's pretty much unchanged since 1980 (in a sawtooth, they build up some pressure due to inflation and then it jumps up due to legislation).

1960-1980 looks to average around 20% higher.

It's funny how these charts differ.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-abo...

https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/103807392-min-wage-inf...

A strong argument can be made that minimum wage should track GDP, not inflation.

Some things you have to watch, especially if you are selling domain knowledge as an employee, is that products in a given subindustry will tend to become cheaper/higher volume/lower margin over time, the push for Asian manufacture always becomes a reality, and as companies age they acquire the anchor of supporting and repeating old products.

In California you may well have doubled your annual property tax bill.

Realistically I think you'd have to drastically lower the perceived risk of a public interaction to the police. As long as they think they are going to get hurt, they'll feel the need to get in front of the problem.

I'm going to have to vote for the death penalty, of course with high standards of proof. If anything, the whole idea of bolting people into a small box for 50-60 years is a much more perverse idea. Only the US could invent something like a Supermax prison (although the Black Dolphin looks like no picnic, the Russian answer to abolishing the death penalty).

edit: I'll add that the US justice system (and probably any other) appears quite arbitrary in it's punishment. The sentences people receive and actually serve can be all over the map.

Given the tendency for programmers to be that edgy libertarian atheist guy, it's easy to be unthinkingly rude to a coworker who is of a churchly persuasion.

Seriously, just how many startups in the last ten+ years involve anything but some sort of internet service/social media/advertising software construct with (usually) the hope of selling the company? It all sounds kind of depressing.

. The police never check.

You'd be surprised how expensive an old pickup's registration can be in CA.

The main problem isn't the cheating by low-end tradesmen but that the average schlub's truck is considered a 'commercial' vehicle including registration cost by gross vehicle weight. (at least that's how I understand all of this).

They never make it easy here to do anything, but people will put up with a lot of rules and taxes if it mostly happens to others.

Registration is much cheaper if you have a camper shell because the vehicle ceases being 'commercial'.

"For example, Ford sells both the Focus, a mid-size car that gets 31 mpg on highways, and the F-150, a midsize truck that gets 25 mpg on highways."

I mean, just think about how similar those numbers are given the vehicles. Pretty wild.

Folks who sit in their Civic every day for a couple of hours because they need to live here and work there.

Folks who own Subarus who rarely, if ever, make use of the AWD.

Folks who never ever use the back seat of their cars and might as well have a car that's 3 feet shorter.

Folks who own cars that can go over 70 mph.

There's a lot of $10k-$15k natgas whole house generators going in around my neighborhood.

Your view of electricity reliability depends on where you live.

In my case (not that anyone cares), lower end trucks are fairly optimal. Low repair costs, don't care about gas mileage (not enough miles/year), good visibility, don't ever need a back seat, ease of repair and accessibility, need space for transporting big and tall stuff often enough. Kind of a no-brainer.

The emergency house power angle is the killer app for me. Plus never going to a gas station, changing oil, etc.

You do have to wonder how much longer any EV subsidy can last. It highly favors wealthier people (due to the tie to income tax in many cases) and won't hold up to widespread adoption of EVs

I give them six months of survival.

Which seems pretty crazy if the net effect is that any car manufacturer has to produce a full line if they want to build any inefficient cars.

It's worth checking out the 1/4 mile times from guys with RCSB F150s, whether it's an Ecoboost or a Coyote.

At this point, I'd say that the main limitation tends to be traction issues.

Of course, they'll always cost more than the estimates, plus you get to throw in sales tax and the annual registration tithe to the state.

I'm always surprised that people are willing to spend so much on new vehicles but I guess it keeps the money moving through the economy. The spice must flow.

Remove the imperial capitals (DC or London) or financial capitals (London or New York) and the next tier down ain't so much.

Counties are perfectly capable of being 100% in charge of their own schools, roads, police. They largely are, but subject to a great deal of probably unnecessary state control.

Given the metastasizing of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sections of the economy, and their typical concentration in urban areas, I'd say that rural areas are basically in the same position as a colony to a colonial power.

Shipping cheap raw materials to the cities, who in turn own the shares, banks, and mortgages, has always been pretty common.

Of course, if you are in favor of colonialism....

In the sense that any modern trend (let's say 1920-2020) isn't old enough to really compare to something that's truly long term. It's to early to say. That, and we all have to deal with Historian's Fallacy.

I also have to say that I think that most of the Earth's land surface has more value as real estate (above and below ground) than it has as some sort of tech/people stack.

I freely admit that German is less likely to invade France (or France to invade Germany or Russia or Russia or Italy for that matter) in the modern era...assuming that wars are fought for purely profit-seeking motives.

Typically, there's a kind of time dilation where things that have happened recently seem both historically normal and of a longer duration than they really are.