lotsofpulp

So if capitalism resulted in higher prices that is causing consternation among small-scale buyers, what -ism is responsible for the investment in factories that increased supply of components that resulted in lower priced electronics for the past few decades?

Was that also capital looking for returns?

Is your claim that businesses that have to spend billions or tens of billions of dollars and years to bring facilities online to make the products they sell are owned (and influenced) by shareholders focused on quarterly numbers?

This “quarterly, short term” reddit-ism or internet-ism is baffling since the businesses that have earned the most money for shareholders (to the tune of trillions of dollars, eclipsing all other businesses), all have leadership making very expensive, very long term bets.

The US has long offered R&D tax credits, and the US has outputted lots of new products due to R&D during that timeframe seems like a positive correlation to me (not that it is proof of causation).

I also like to keep prices high for as long as possible for the things I sell. I bet most people I ask would answer the same.

Maybe, but I am hesitant to accept the findings of the studies in France given the enormous success of US R&D over the previous few decades, including by large businesses.

It’s difficult to define “research” and “experimentation”, but the spending seems to accomplish the goal of the tax credit:

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL31181

>The R&E credit is intended to encourage companies to invest more in basic and applied research and some stages of development than they would if there were no such credit. The credit reduces the after-tax cost of qualified research, which in turn lowers the user cost of capital for this purpose. In theory, a reduction in the user cost of capital would increase the number of R&D investments a company could profitably undertake.

>In addition, the returns on R&D investment can spill over to consumers and other firms through access to new or improved goods and services at prices below the prices they would be willing to pay for these goods and services.4 Empirical evidence suggests that R&D spillovers are "most powerful and diffuse most rapidly at the local and national levels.

I am not understanding the significance of the panopticon claim. It's common knowledge that camera price and bandwidth and digital storage prices have gone down significantly over the years, and quality has gone up.

That the government has used them to prosecute a man who assassinated someone or a large group of traitors does not seem to be an indictment of the capabilities.

An example of the government combing through records to pile on trivial charges to throw at a peaceful protestor or otherwise "over" charge them to create a chilling effect seems more apt for a discussion about the dangers of a panopticon.

Seems strange to use prosecuting a group of people attacking the democratic process, the basis of the country and a clearly treasonous act, as an example of cameras being used to “over” prosecute to intimidate the public.

Why should it matter if you are a 63yo grandmom or pastor?

How much closer can you get to “actual value” than a long standing publicly trades business with deep liquidity?

>Voters cave too easily to the "lesser of two evils" thinking

This is just a mathematical fact of first past the post elections.

I also don’t buy the captured media claim. Broadband cellular internet has allowed everyone instant access to basically all available information. If people choose to consume nonsense, that is an inherent problem with the people. Good information is literally a click or tap away, but people prefer the tribal stuff.

Assuming you are referring to the USA, are you claiming people have not been able to campaign for political positions and vote for their candidates for decades? Because that is the definition of "democratic elections" (except for the electoral college nonsense in the US and 2000 presidential elections).

Otherwise, your complaint is more about voters either being too stupid, too disinterested, or not having enough time participate in the democracy. Which is a problem, but real life comes with constraints and it isn't really easy to solve all of these by snapping one's fingers.

Claiming that there has been widespread election fraud when elections have been, by and large, free and fair, is anti democratic. Obviously, there have been issues with disenfranchising certain people's votes, making it harder for them, blah blah, but it had been trending better and better and access to information had been getting better and better.

It also might just be possible that people are too tribal and simply can't comprehend all the complexities of the world to make good voting decisions.

Which jurisdiction? I highly doubt your effective tax rate is anywhere close to that. Especially considering the myriad deductions and exemptions one should be able to take with a high income (401k, Roth IRA, HSA, 529, etc).

>The medical field as a whole isn’t generally interested in understanding how medication, only in empirical measuring and qualify the effects.

This is nonsense. Most, if not all professionals are interested in mechanism of action, but without Ms Frizzle, it is extremely difficult and expensive (time and money wise) to figure that out. So while the labs run the experiments with the very limited funding they have, we make do with using the second best thing we have, which are statistics.

I meant that I do not want to deal with taking a kid in and out of car seats, or traveling with car seats, or taking them in and out of cars, for more years of my life.

No, it didn't. If you didn't want to buy health insurance, you just had to pay a couple extra thousand in federal income tax:

https://landline.media/affordable-care-act-tax-penalties-end...

>The penalty for not having an ACA-compliant plan or forgoing coverage in 2018 is the greater of $695 per adult and $347.50 per child for a maximum of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of adjusted household income. The percentage penalty is capped at an amount equal to the national average premium for a bronze plan, the minimum coverage available by law

You would have about the same or less. Maybe UNH gets you a couple extra percentage points per year, but that's because they have an enormous healthcare provider business instead of just being an insurer. But it's still nowhere near a positive risk adjusted return when comparing to a relatively risk-less investment in SP500.

https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/

Since Jan 1, 2010, 18% for UNH, 15% for MOH/CNC, 14% for CI/ELV/HUM/SP500, 8.5% for CVS.

Also, these businesses are competing to sell a completely fungible commodity good with tons of non profits like Kaiser Permanente, HCSC, Cambia, Independence Blue Cross, and many others. It makes no sense to expect those businesses to be able to earn any decent profit margin when their competition only needs 0%.

Sometimes, I wonder what the societal costs of the ever increasing car seat requirements are.

I wouldn't want a third kid just because I don't want to deal with carseats anymore.

Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?

If their profits are so good, their shares would be worth owning.

Could it be because their profit margins are actually terrible (3% if lucky), and they have to get the price of their product approved by 50 different state government employees, and the federal government constantly changes their customer’s subsidies making revenue and expenses extremely volatile and difficult to forecast?

Most developed countries are ponzi schemes, since they all have old age benefits where new people pay old people.

Oracle failing will be a blessing for anyone not working at Oracle.

The roads and houses are constructed with such separation and space that it is literally impossible without eminent domain of basically every lot. It’s simply not a possibility to turn the suburbs with huge stroads and subdivisions into mixed use high density living.

I’ve had 3 LG french door fridges for 5 to 10 years and none have had any issues, and they cost half or a third as much as Bosch and Fisher Paykel.

I feel like I save a lot more money just buying whatever decent rated LG stuff on Costco and replacing it whenever it breaks (hasn’t happened yet).

Do you have a plan on preventing the effects of aging, such as mutations in DNA and wear and tear?

I assumed the linked article was written by a non American, given the use of kilometers and anecdote of a Brisbane doctor committing suicide.

Although the whole website has 1 post and there’s a prominent advertising link to some doctor book that then links to herbal stuff, so not sure if the whole thing is fake to advertise books.

>You might ask, why can’t you work less? It’s not as easy as that. If I decide to work less, who is going to cover the hospital? If the hospital aren’t employing other doctors, we can’t allow patients to go uncovered. I accept the fact that I have a duty of care to be on call.

Yes, you can allow patients to go uncovered. This hero mentality is what leads the bosses to not properly staff and the politicians to not properly fund in the first place.

It is not an individual’s responsibility to correct a societal failure by hurting themselves.

And low density suburbs in America are never going to get torn up and re-platted so autonomous vehicles is the only way to improve safety.

Meh, I’ve been giving out my credit card number willy nilly to merchants for 20+ years, and it hasn’t been used without my authorization over the course of what must be tens of thousands of transactions.

I have a text alert setup for transactions, so I presume I’d be able to successfully challenge any fraudulent ones pretty quickly.

What info can be gleaned from that? Surely the mere fact that you have a credit card means your name and billing address are floating around.

I guess your parking history around town could be valuable if someone is targeting you.

Does anyone use the App Store other than to search for an already known app name? I probably have not in over a decade, and I can't see a reason I ever would.

That applies to businesses with small moats.

Designing and producing a new smartphone with an equivalent feature set and performance and power efficiency is about as big of a moat as you can get.