rmuesi

I remember 2014 being a year full of these incredible claims of fully autonomous vehicles in the near future. One article in particular I remember, about some large car company expecting 80% of cars on the road to be autonomous by 2018.

I remember this vividly because I was house hunting at the time and became truly conflicted what location to buy. Should I choose a smaller more much more expensive house nearer to the city center, or a nicer drastically cheaper house further away? If I’ll be essentially chauffeured to work in a few years, why not go for the bigger cheaper house. I eventually chose the more expensive house nearby.

Since then, the small yet constant worry that Autonomous cars are going to show me what a mistake I’ve made has disappeared, in parallel with any noticeable progress of autonomous vehicles hitting the roads.

Thank god I didn’t choose that house in the boonies.

This is an unpopular opinion but one that seems to be self evident, at least from a demographic and perhaps cultural “win”.

Many articles, including this one, champion the cause of immigration as a positive to society, a reason of which is making up for the low birth rate of said societies existing members. And I’m not refuting that.

But since immigration tends to occur from undeveloped countries to developed countries, what happens when you apply this trend across many generations and across many developed parts of the world?

And what does this, or should this, mean for a society and culture in present time?

The arguments in this article seem extremely dramatic, simplistic and unsupported.

Just one example out of many I found in the article: jobs in big cities are the highest paying. Thus, the article quickly announces then moves on, living in a big city equals a “winner takes all” situation, which leads to dramatic inequality.

How does that remotely support such a dramatic conclusion? Does having a bit less paying job mean you have nothing? Do people not commute into the city for work? Do the lower costs of living outside big cities not offset the lower wages? How does this translate into high inequality? Where does all that inequal wealth go when these “childless couples” die? Etc, etc.

I haven’t read the Atlantic in awhile, but this seemed like something I’d find in the opinion section of my local newspaper. So many poorly supported points in this article.

>wholesale energy cost is only about $0.02 per KW/H

Doesn’t this contradict the oft repeated news that solar is so much cheaper than our predominantly oil generated power?

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out:

a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise.

But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on your roof, wouldn’t it be greatly more financially advantageous (given the main cost for solar installation is the labor) for energy companies to install solar at scale? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t the energy companies eventually do this, which, given macro market laws of supply and demand, would eventually cause the price of electricity to go dramatically down for their end consumer, thus eliminating the financial benefit of privately installed roof top solar for homeowners?

I live in the southwest, and based on online calculators it “makes sense” from a 10 year outlook to pay the money now and install solar on my home, but that’s only if the energy prices don’t fall. But nobody seems to even think that’s a possibility.

This was some weak ass logic.

Isn't that exactly how this program was operating? Short-term reward payoff: monthly cash; long-term reward: children graduate from school.

Created an account after lurking here for 2 years to say hell yes.