opo

>The ones containing glycerol are sugar-free.

Well glycerol is not sucrose but it has more calories per gram than sucrose and the FDA requires the glycerin content per serving to be declared as sugar alcohol.

>Glycerin (sometimes spelled glycerine), or glycerol, is a sweet, syrupy liquid that is about 75% as sweet as sucrose. It is chemically categorized as a polyol with 4.32 kcal/g. ... If the label has a statement regarding sugars, the FDA requires the glycerin content per serving to be declared as sugar alcohol.

https://diabetesjournals.org/spectrum/article/17/3/137/2007/...

>Is there a academic study of the heuristic of choosing between option A versus option B?

I don't know of a paper on that specific question, but for example, Gary Becker got his Nobel prize because he applied economics to a wide range of human behavior including crime and punishment. Here is a famous paper of his on crime:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c3625/c3625.pdf

>According to Statista the inflation rate has been equal or more than that with the exception of four years during that time frame.

The 57% growth is after inflation:

>>...median real income rose by 57% from 1990 to 2019.

('real' income means after inflation, 'nominal' income means before inflation.)

As a general defense, the research exemption is only applicable where you can reasonably claim you are using a patented invention for research purposes. But if it looks like the reason you are infringing on the patent is that you want to use the patent, but don't want to pay for the rights, that is not going to work. Even if your intentions are not commercial, making or using a patented invention is still infringement. Like I said before, it is highly unlikely that someone would know about the infringement if it was just done for personal use, but that doesn't mean it isn't infringement.

>...There were plenty of anti-federalists around during this time. They got to air their complaints and opinions. Nobody listened to them because the articles of confederation, and the loose, weak federal government it built was just that useless and broken.

Nobody listened to them? I think most historians would agree that they were instrumental in getting the bill of rights added to the constitution. For example:

>...Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York, three crucial states, made ratification of the Constitution contingent on a Bill of Rights. In Massachusetts, arguments between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists erupted in a physical brawl between Elbridge Gerry and Francis Dana. Sensing that Anti-Federalist sentiment would sink ratification efforts, James Madison reluctantly agreed to draft a list of rights that the new federal government could not encroach.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-anti-federalists-and...

>...You can take a patent and build that thing in your house. The government can’t stop you, neither the inventor. It’s when you try to sell it that they can come after you.

I don't think that is correct. The patent act states:

>...Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.

https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-35-patents/35-usc-sect-27...

Note where it says "makes, uses". In practice, it is highly unlikely that someone would know about the infringement if it was just done for personal use, but that doesn't mean it isn't infringement.

>...The way that the modern Supreme Court (starting with its extremely conservative turn around 2005 with the replacement of O'Connor with Alito) has treated Qualified Immunity is that the constitutional violation (in this case, the violation of her 4th Amendment rights) needs to have been clearly found in previous cases in this particular circuit (or by the Supreme Court itself).

The modern over-expansion of QI actually started in 1982:

>The modern test for qualified immunity was established in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982).

Since then, while several justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Sotomayor ) have sometimes dissented and criticized the over expansion of QI, the overall court doesn't seem to want to touch it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-lega...

>"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

That quote is from Ronald Wright. It appears to be a paraphrase from this Steinbeck quote. In the actual quote you can see Steinbeck is not trying to criticize the poor, but rather champagne socialists:

>...Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck

https://classic.esquire.com/issue/19600601/print

A big problem with US air traffic control is that you have the regulator regulating themselves. The USA is one of the few countries where the regulator also provides the ATC service. In comparison to Canada, the US government run air traffic control is noticeably less productive and more expensive.

The first proposal to break out the regulation of air traffic control with the provision of the air traffic control was done by the Clinton administration. Support since then has been bipartisan and opposition has also been from members of both parties for various reasons. (I read somewhere that one of the biggest long time opponents of breaking out the air traffic control has been the associations of owners of private jets as they currently pay about 1% of the cost of ATC, but are closer to 10% of the flights in major airports. In reality, owners of private jets can likely afford to pay a more proportional percentage of the costs they impose on the system.)

Somewhat related, there is also the famous quote by Teddy Roosevelt:

>...“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

>famously developed Alzheimer's...

This isn't what his doctors have said.

>...In 1989, just a few months after he completed his second term as president, Reagan underwent surgery to drain a subdural hematoma caused by a fall from a horse in Mexico. Such brain injury can increase the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease or perhaps even cause it.

https://hekint.org/2023/11/30/the-medical-history-of-ronald-...

After this Reagan had annual exams for signs of Alzheimers and was diagnosed in 1994.

Where are you getting this NATO target of 5% of GDP?

>...In 2006, NATO Defence Ministers agreed to commit a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defence spending to continue to ensure the Alliance's military readiness.

>...The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, is almost equal to that of the United States. However, non-US Allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defence.

https://www.nato.int/cps/em/natohq/topics_67655.htm#:~:text=...

Just because the far right complains about 'drugged out zombies' ruining cities thanks to drug smugglers from Mexico, doesn't mean libertarians think that. Libertarians have been opposed to the "war on drugs" for decades.

Lol. It is pretty clear that the key point of the summary I quoted was that the consensus among economists who have studied this was that at least 60% of the decline in airfare prices can be attributed to deregulation. You didn’t need to put in all this effort to misinterpret it. (No one was adding percentages or whatever you were claiming.) Them rounding to the nearest multiple of 10 is reasonable - not rounding would be implying a higher precision than is really warranted.

If anyone is reading this thread, it illustrates a problem common in on-line discussions. Someone will make a big claim that contradicts the consensus of the experts in the fields who have studied the issue. (I have found that when discussions touch upon economics, it is virtually guaranteed, but it happens in many areas.)

Someone then points out that if the person is correct and the consensus position of the experts who have studied this issue are all wrong, the burden of proof is on them. The original poster won’t try and do this but will instead try to come up with a reason that those who devote their careers to actually studying these issues can’t be trusted or are incompetent, etc. Unfortunately, at this stage, the person is usually even more entrenched in their personal pet theory. They usually aren’t so blatant as to say “Either they are utterly incompetent or lying.”, but that is where we are.

33 * .6 = 19.8

My general feeling is always that if someone is going against the consensus of the experts who have studied something (whatever the issue is - it could be climate change or GMO food or effects of airline deregulation or whatever) I think the burden of proof is on the person who claims the experts are all wrong.

The general consensus among economists is that deregulation had a big effect on airline prices. For example:

>...Every serious study of airline deregulation in the intervening years has found that travelers have indeed benefited enormously. As we documented in our 1995 Brookings book, The Evolution of the Airline Industry, airfares, adjusted for inflation, fell 33 percent between 1976—just before the CAB instigated regulatory reforms—and 1993. Deregulation was directly responsible for at least 60 percent of the decline—responsible, that is, for a 20 percent drop in fares. And travelers have benefited not only from low fares, but from better service, particularly increased flight frequency.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-fare-skies-air-transp...

>...When there is only one buyer or seller in any other case, we call it price gouging or price fixing.

Having one buyer or seller of a product or service is neither called "price gouging" or "price fixing".

>...Additionally, the "extra profits" or savings (in some cases) actually do contribute to maximum satisfaction of consumers.

There is really no evidence of that. (The basic concept of rent seeking is covered in any econ101 micro textbook.)

>...For example, if the only dealers were run by manufacturers then they could unilaterally decide that cars over 5 years old will never be repurchased, dooming those deals to private transactions with zero warranty, or else second-tier used-only retailers.

What a strange idea.

>...Again, appeals to authority do nothing for me.

No, that wasn't an appeal to authority.

>... It is impossible for independent resellers to compete with the manufacturer.

Yes, those who manipulate the legislature to do rent seeking, might lose those profits when the law is removed. That is actually a feature, not a problem.

>...We do, because these dealers make the market more efficient.

Again, independent economists and the Dept of Justice don't agree with you.

>...Maybe the car manufacturers take a public view that's different from their private view.

Maybe without the government forcing the manufacturers to go through 3rd party dealerships, they would still use them, but how about removing the laws and see?

>... Why would a state demand extra hurdles that cost its residents more money?

As the wikipedia article points out, this is really a textbook case of rent seeking. This is not what I would consider a controversial opinion.

Rather than hypothesize reasons why the current system is good, maybe first read through the 2 links referenced in the wikipedia article:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.24.3.233

https://www.justice.gov/atr/economic-effects-state-bans-dire...

Note that the second paper is written by the anti-trust division of the Dept of Justice.

>...However, I think the fact is that the manufacturers who set it up like this don't want to deal with customers, and they establish dealerships that agree to a certain quality of service that the manufacturer wants associated with their name.

No, this was not what the manufacturers wanted. States set up franchise laws to prevent car makers from directly selling their cars and they generally are not viewed as benefiting the producer or consumer:

>...Economists have characterized these regulations as a form of rent-seeking that extracts rents from manufacturers of cars, increases costs for consumers, and limits entry of new car dealerships while raising profits for incumbent car dealers.[2] Research shows that as a result of these laws, retail prices for cars are higher than they otherwise would be.[2] [3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_dealerships_in_the_United_...

When utilities are required to do net metering (i.e. buy power whenever it is produced at essentially the retail rate rather than buy what they need at the wholesale rate) it is a huge unsustainable subsidy to wealthier homeowners paid for by the less wealthy. It's free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting large costs on the less well off. As these costs grew, that has also provided an incentive for consumer solar installations to increase.

As the statista.com report says >...Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 117 and 282 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...

Looks like that report is a year old, but I doubt the installation costs have really gone down much since then. (Panel prices come down, but labor costs, etc don't.)

Providing the infrastructure and reliability of the grid is very expensive, so there is a huge difference between the wholesale costs and retail rates for delivered electricity. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much further than a dollar spent subsidizing rooftop residential solar.

>...Haven't we more or less concluded that a million piecemeal rooftop installations of solar are about the worst way to do it?

The data shows that you are correct. Utility grid solar provides low cost power and consumer rooftop solar does not and will not. The rooftop solar price is usually hidden because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme.

As the statista.com report says:

>...Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 117 and 282 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...

Looks like that report is a year old, but I doubt the installation costs have really gone down much since then. (Panel prices come down, but labor costs, etc. don't.)

>...rather than covering them up with spices (originally a measure to make up for the fact that things spoil easily in warm climates)

While salt was used to preserve meat, the idea that the huge historical demand for spices was to cover up the taste of spoiled meat is a myth.

https://culinarylore.com/food-history:spices-used-to-cover-t...

https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/revisited-myth...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vztzpd/where...

etc

>He was, after all, a physics professor.

Actually, he was a mathematics and computer science teacher at San Diego State University.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge

>We don’t need to adjust for inflation since we are comparing nominal returns across the board.

Well there are things like TIPS, so comparing real returns across the board might be more helpful. Some of the returns from S&P investing will be in the form of dividends, so ideally the amount of taxable gains would also be included to get a better comparison.

I agree that even with the history of long slumps that stocks are still one of the best investments out there.

>If multiple SP500 companies are at risk, then I am going to bet Congress is going to shift into high gear to find a solution.

I think we might be in agreement that bailouts come down to systemic risk and political pull. Silicon Valley bank fails and people got all their money bank even if the accounts were far above the FDIC limits. Other banks fail at about the same time and account holders get only up to the FDIC limit. Maybe there was systemic risk there, but it feels like political pull was at least involved.

When the dot com bubble burst, many large companies failed but there was no concentrated action by Congress or the Fed to bail them out. Hence the lost decade for S&P 500 investors.

>At its worst, 1999 to 2009, SP500 total annual return was only -0.2%, per dqdyj.

That might not be adjusting for inflation. According to the calculator on moneychimp, with adjusting for inflation, the cagr for the S&P 500 over that time period was -3.42%. (i.e. $1.00 shrank to 71 cents if invested in S&P 500 Jan 1, 2000 to Dec 31, 2009.

>...and it shows that the government is willing to pull out all the stops if the market is down just -0.2%.

I imagine the potential collapse of the financial markets, was maybe a more important cause of monetary and fiscal policy around that time.

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm

>They said Japan would collapse with their spending

Who exactly is "They"? What did they mean when they said it would "collapse"?

>Not only has that claim been proven false it has been the opposite.

The general claim is that Japanese economy has stagnated with low growth for decades and I don't think that has been proven false. For example, in the last year or two, the Japanese stock market has finally reached the values it had in the late 1980s. I am sure some Japanese economic indicators have done ok, but for example, one indicator of how well people are generally doing is to compare the GDP per capita over a period of time. In Japan, the GDP Per Capita in 1960 was about $500. In 1990 the GDP Per Capita was about $25,800 and in 2023 it was about $33,900. (In comparison, the USA GDP Per Capita in 1990 was about $23,900 and in 2023, it was about $81,700.)

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/jpn/jap...

>...And he's again been vindicated.

Saying that Krugman was vindicated is quite a stretch. As the economist Noah Smith wrote:

>...In 2021, Krugman tweeted: "I like it and plan to steal it. This report does look like what you'd expect if recent inflation was about transitory disruptions, not stagflation redux".

As Smith pointed out:

>...But in late 2021, inflation spread to become very broad-based. Services inflation was always significant, and took over from goods inflation as the main contributor in 2022.

>The notion that this was just some transient supply-chain disruptions that was only affecting specific products was absolutely central to Team Transitory’s claims in the summer of 2021. And that was incorrect.

>...Team Transitory also called the end of the inflation at least a year and a half too soon.

On October 13, 2021 Krugman tweeted "Three month core inflation. Why isn't everyone calling this a victory for team transitory"

>...So they didn’t entirely whiff here. They just greatly overstated their case. And their complacency in 2021 probably fed into the Fed’s decision to delay the start of rate hikes until 2022, which in retrospect looks like a serious mistake.

What did get vindicated was mainstream economics as taught in our textbooks. As Smith wrote:

>...Mainstream macro’s first victory was in predicting that the inflation would happen in the first place. In February 2021, Olivier Blanchard used a very simple “output gap” model to predict that Biden’s Covid relief bill would raise demand by enough to show up in the inflation numbers. His prediction came true. He didn’t get everything right — he thought wages would rise more than consumer prices, and he neglected the lagged effects of Trump’s Covid relief packages and Fed lending programs. But his standard simple mainstream model got the basic prediction right when most people made the opposite prediction, and this deserves recognition.

>More importantly, mainstream macro appears to have gotten policy right.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/grading-the-economic-schools-o...

>...Ozempic is for type-1 diabetes

At the present time, Ozempic is not approved for Type 1 diabetes:

>...Ozempic® is not for use in people with type 1 diabetes.

https://www.ozempic.com

Compared with Type 2, with Type 1 diabetes there are other risks that could occur:

>...While medications such as GLP-1 receptor agonists (Ozempic, Wegovy) and SGLT-2 inhibitors (Jardiance, Farxiga) demonstrated powerful benefits, they quickly were determined to pose too much of a liability for pharmaceutical companies or regulators due to concerns about safety. Specifically, GLP-1s can increase the risk of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and SGLT-2s can raise the risk of a serious, life-threatening complication called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA).

https://diatribe.org/diabetes-medications/why-diabetes-mirac...

>...but it's common practice.

There are many web pages claiming this, but I haven't seen actual statistics on this loophole. To be clear, many, many, people borrow against the value of an asset - from the middle class up to the ultra wealthy and they can defer capital gains in that way. The claim with buy, borrow, die is that you can borrow for decades and not have to pay back the loan until death. Some claim that the rich just keep rolling over loans on to new loans to avoid paying interest/principal for decades. The reddit posting discussing this has been edited since it was first discussed on hacker news, but now it emphasizes that the bank and the ultra wealthy person come to some sort of agreement to share in the gains of the asset upon death. Considering the length of the agreement it seems it would difficult to come up with an agreement that would be fair to both sides in that agreement.

I saw that on reddit, /u/Taxing responded to a different post by the author of the reddit posting and was skeptical of how common this approach is:

>...I too went to law school, earned my LL.M. from NYU and have been practicing in this area for decades with broad family office clients ranging from a few hundred million to many billions, and yes have clients with public companies, private companies, and taken companies between the two structures. I’ve worked at every level and now sit on the boards, manage the relationships, etc., which I enjoy more.

>...I struggle to think of a single family office interested in a lifelong arrangement with Goldman or other firm at that level, providing them strings of participation and control. Over time, circumstances change, and they are not your friend.

So, maybe, the "Buy, Borrow, Die" approach is common practice, but I have yet to see any actual stats on it.