alexanderstears

The doctrine of States' rights is presupposes federal supremacy and a legalistic viewpoint. Marijuana can't be a State's rights issue because it's a federal issue. This is why you often hear the states' rights advocates call for a smaller federal government - states rights can only flourish without the shadow of federal jurisdiction.

Right now marijuana is illegal federally - all States' rights proponents acknowledge this. The old policy of being hands off but reserving the right to bring the iron fist down on otherwise legal businesses was a bad policy. The uncertainty and risk profile killed a lot of investment - to this day, the tax burden on pot businesses is insanely high because they're not permitted to deduct business expenses related to growing/distributing marijuana because those activities are federally illegal.

Thankfully, Sessions is legalistic. If congress got off their butts and legalized it/returned the legality decisions to the state, Sessions would surely respect their decision.

I enjoy marijuana more than most and I suppose Sessions enforcing the law - it's a bad law and collectively we need the motivation to make it better. This legal twilight zone is complete bogus - bring it into the open and drive out the criminal element and let the best organization flourish.

Good for them highlighting the issue of poverty, but the ideology is palpable and too adversarial for what could solved collaboratively.

Too much social welfare is driven by 'good intentions' rather than emphasis on changing people's lives. I'd be more inclined to support larger budgets if I knew they were spent better.

Bezos, Gates, and Buffets aren't the reason that healthcare and housing can be cripplingly expensive. My neighborhood has houses that cost about 20-40x the city's median earnings, I can't throw a stone without hitting an "all are welcome here" / "we're glad you're our neighbor" sign - it's a nice sentiment. But these same people would freak out if a developer tried to build a 400 unit apartment down the block. IF we don't allow housing stock to grow, spending our way out of homelessness won't be feasible.

When it gets cold here, indigents show up at the hospital complaining of "chest pain". they get monitored for a while, some respite from the cold, and meals but in the most expensive way imaginable. If we could just exchange a right to emergency healthcare for a living stipend and a place to live, both parties would be better off. That deal should be on the table.

During the D maintenance, every part should be inspected. Things like fuel lines should be inspected much more regularly, ideally more often than it would take to rub through a fuel line.

But a visual inspection on a fuel line can be really difficult. I had a motorcycle with a leaky fuel line once, luckily it sprung a leak while warming up in my driveway and I turned off the bike before anything bad happened but it was almost impossible to tell where the leak was without pressurized fuel, the hose looked pristine without positive pressure to highlight the crack.

In race cars, they sometimes 'overpressure' the fuel line (above operating pressure but below max pressure) to check for leaks, I wonder if they ever do that routinely for aircraft.

This was shockingly charitable. So many leftists hate the tenants of science, western culture, and wealth that they want to crush it under their heel.

The same people who oppose life extension on the grounds of the environmental cost probably applaud uneducated africans having 7 kids.

The people who oppose understanding a genetic basis of intelligence would tell you that each human is blank slate with equal potential to every other human.

The people who oppose wealth are the ones who advocate for full luxury socialism/communism.

Frankly, the only reason we have so many voices opposed to these good things is because our welfare state is too generous - people can survive on food stamps and ruminate about the moral evils of capitalism. If they had to get a job, their idle hands would do less of the devil's work.

It's good to see people waking up to the intolerance in San Francisco. I used to enjoy going there, now whenever I visit I have to change my phone background (away from a picture of a greek sculpture and the quote "tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire") so no one tries to accuse me of being a n*zi and derails the business at hand. The world is worse for the intolerance but hard times make stronger people - what the world needs is titans and if we make a crucible for the titans then mission accomplished.

I wouldn't bet on it. Japan was making state of the art products by the 50s - within 15 years after the war. I've heard people say that China is going to become the next Japan for at least 15 years and it's still not true.

how does it make the least bit of sense to focus on increasing volume?

It's easier to amortize the investments in quality. Also, a less expensive car tends to be less complex, it's easier to make a high quality bare bones car than a high quality luxury car. Tesla is unique in that they started with luxury cars, all the other car companies that have started in last 100 years have started with more basic cars.

Electric cars being simpler to manufacture makes it more of a red flag that Tesla is struggling with build quality

Yes and no. Compare Tesla to a bespoke car manufacturer, Tesla isn't shipping cars with loose radiator hoses but Lotus sometimes does (or they used to).

It indicates that build quality is the harder-won competitive advantage, rather than the ability to design electric cars, the PR boost of having a "visionary founder", or being able to tap Silicon Valley for cash.

I think you're right on this point. It's a fundamental reason I'm not an investor in Tesla.

If that's the case, it's probably easier for Toyota to design, build, and sell electric cars as well as Tesla than for like Tesla to manufacture cars as well as Toyota.

I completely agree. The only reason we haven't seen a battery electric, mass produced Toyota is because batteries just don't perform well enough. Toyota has uncompromising quality standards for all their cars - they need to work in hot deserts and cold tundras, batteries can't function in those environments very well. That's one of the reasons they stuck with NiMH for so long in their hybrids and one of the reasons they seem to have the most interest in glass batteries.

However, quality isn't the only thing that sells cars. More people bought Mitsuibishis/Nissans/Renaults from Jan to October 2017 than they bought Toyotas. I think there's room for one more good automaker, and I think Tesla's quality is 'good enough' for rabid fans, I think they can get there for 'normies', but the overlander / jihadist / 3rd world taxi crowd isn't going to give up Toyotas for Teslas any time soon.

Correct, the 17 year old Lexus LS400 had as many issues as the 0-12 month old S-class. I'm trying to find a link but coming up empty.

The Lexus LS is an exceptionally well-built car. The quality took a bit of a dip from 2007-2011 but it was still head and shoulders above the rest of the full size luxury cars. But the other years aren't just reliable for full size luxury cars, they're among the most reliable cars on the road.

People joke that the LS series is the gold standard of quality but the 1993/1994, 1999/2000, 2005/2006, and 2012-2017 cars are the platinum water mark.

If you're at all interested in mechanical engineering and you get a chance to ride in one take it. It's really something else. The 1993/1994 ones are a special treat, they're astonishingly like a modern car in all but their infotainment capabilities.

A prominent member of the auto blogging crowd has one that he's trying to get to a million miles. Here's a story of one guy driving it cross country:

https://thegarage.jalopnik.com/im-driving-a-lexus-with-900-0...

This is an over dramatic take. It's too soon to know how Volvo's China factory is working, the initial signs are promising but there's so much more to car quality than how the manufacturer assembles it.

Historically, we've seen inconsistent quality out of Chinese car parts and there's nothing you can do on final assembly to make a defective wheel bearing work better (the only option is to assemble the car with a better wheel bearing). To the extent that the Chinese volvos have Chinese component quality problems, the Chinese factory is further removed from production heaven.

Toyota's Tahara plant is recognized as the plant capable of the best car manufacturing in the world and it wouldn't be possible without the Japanese supplier base. It would have been nice if they compared and contrasted Tahara with Fremont but the Chinese Volvo plant offers a better comparison in terms of modernity.

But I had a horse in the race. I was a model 3 reservation holder but opted for the refund when the quality issues came to light. I take machine quality very seriously and I was worried about resenting the build quality on my model 3. Though I think Tesla can get it right, the complexity of an electric car is much lower than an ICE car.

Toyota has had a target on its back since about 1973 (when its quality advantage became decisive) - everyone benchmarks Toyota's manufacturing. When Toyota launched the Lexus LS400 in 1989, GM engineers concluded that they couldn't replicate the precision and quality with a blank check and an aggressive time frame. In 2010, Consumer Reports estimated that an average 1993 Lexus LS400 had as many trips to the dealer / failures as a brand new Mercedes S class. Now there are more issues at play with a 17 year old car than build quality, but good build quality is a good place to start.

I think Musk has called out Toyota by name as their benchmark. Tesla has a long way to go but I give them the highest odds of making it. They have the most opportunity to consolidate their supplier base. They have one of the most simple cars to manufacture and they have some the cheapest capital - they can turn it into a money game just like Amazon would. They're in the best position to actually hit the target on Toyota's back.

My informed opinion is that Toyota's software is robust but crappy.

The software you would use to configure the parameters in the car (e.g sensitivity of headlights turning on, whether or not it'll chime when you're not wearing your seatbelt) hasn't even been ported to 64 bits yet. It seems to have been written by one of their O.E.Ms (Denso) and it seems like the cars have used many of the same design patterns since the 90s.

Look no further than the infotainment system, it's always a generation behind other automakers and we all know that most automakers don't set the high bar of consumer technology.

Note that before Bitcoin it was impossible to diversify away from all nation-specific risks.

Except for gold and tangible capital. How did Germany get through hyper inflation and Zimbabwe didn't? Germany had a real economy and an industrial base.

A person who owns a tractor owns a tractor regardless of the money printing going on. Sure, the State can seize the tractor but the United States can (and has) seized bitcoins - go tell the folks with bitcoins in the Silk Road that there's no nation specific risk exposure.

Winter tires + wheels. Driving in the winter used to freak me out and it was so worrisome to feel as though I was at the mercy of all sorts of yahoos. Now, I feel in control and I don't have to pay more for an AWD/4WD vehicle.

Are you talking about the F-35? The latest estimates peg our total expenditures on the F-35 at 1.5 trillion through 2055:

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-br...

We've spent less than a trillion on it so far. I don't know where you got your 13 trillion dollar expense, but I'd like to know more about the claim.

I don't argue that we don't have the money to take better care of the poor. I'm just reluctant to advocate for more money until our welfare system demonstrates its efficiency. If it kicked butt, I'd want much more money going into the welfare system. But it's awful that so many good intentioned people run a system so poorly and the most vulnerable take the hit.

It's a hard read given what's happened with all the waste and excess in the social safety net. The social workers in my neighborhood live in nicer houses than me and lease vehicles that people purchase when intelligence isn't the limiting factor (e.g FCA products), and they leave for work after me and arrive home before I do. Yet I see stories about their clients needing winter coats and socks.

I look at how much of my paycheck goes to taxes and it seems like there should be enough to ensure that kids don't go hungry but apparently not.

But the solution remains the same as always. The bureaucrats bleat "we need more money" - I don't think I've ever heard one say "we need to do a better job with the budget".

This is interesting, but it seems like sodium is the best alternative to lithium. Sure, there's a voltage trade-off, but the abundance of sodium is super compelling.

Unfortunately, I don't think humanity can count on a silver bullet to bring about an energy revolution. We'll need lead bullets: everything we can bring to bear on solving the problems.

Are there that many women and children coming out of Syria? It seems like most of the migrants into the E.U are working aged men.

It's more difficult to gain admission to veterinarian school than medical school (in America).

Veterinarians pay about the same for their schooling (but they don't really have residencies) and vets make ~70k-80k/yr.

If we think of a job's salary as a function of the talents used by the job and the cost of admission to the job, it's unclear why doctors and vets should earn substantially different amounts of money.

But I agree that it's easier to accumulate wealth as a non-doctor than a doctor. Just treat the first couple years of your career like medical school and it shouldn't be too hard to crack 6 figures - if you live modestly outside a megaopolis, you can save 40k/yr and get a six figure headstart over a doctor.

Oligopoly? Most people seem to be served by a monopoly.

However, few mediocre software engineers make 200k/yr. Most mediocre doctors do make >200k/yr.

I don't dispute your logic though I would prefer more traffic law enforcement.

But the uber situation would be closer to this - the parking meter costs $20/hr and a parking ticket costs $5. We're creating a situation where people who break the law get ahead of those who obey it. Either we can ramp up enforcement (good luck with that happening) or we can level the playing field.

It wouldn't. But I'd wager that Uber isn't going to be held accountable (or not very accountable) for this, so why not write the rules so that everyone gets to be as cavalier? It'd save a lot of companies the headaches that go along with I.T security.

Less regulation would be better than the system we have now - where large and connected corporations can buy get out of jail free cards.

1. Expelling a student for bringing a gun to school is hardly tantamount to 'kicking kids to the curb the minute something bad happens'. It's preserving the safety and the integrity of the school.

2. We can also reduce the cost of prison by keeping more kids in school

To the extent that school can persuade people to trade a life of crime for a more virtuous path. There are some people who are going to be criminals regardless of how much schooling is available to them, those people are lost causes and we should stop investing in them the moment they reveal themselves.

3. The cost of incarceration is high because people are concerned with human rights and getting their cut of the expenditures. Prison would be much cheaper if we just put all the convicts on an island and catapulted basic supplies to them, and just made sure no one swam off the island.

4. I never claimed that my plan would produce more scientists and fewer criminals - just that we'd spend less money on criminals and free up resources that could be spent on educating scientists or funding their experiments.

5. Part of being a teacher is interacting with parents, but some parents demand extensive communication that's above and beyond what we should expect. And you're right that parents talk to teachers outside of school hours, however, there's no free lunch - we have to pay for it in some way whether that's teacher job dissatisfaction, teacher salary expectations, etc. We should respect parents' interest but empower teachers to tell them to hit the sand if they're overbearing.

6. the 60% of the budget that goes to normal and high achieving students is the only part of the budget that has a positive ROI. Ideally we'd have more of it, but at the least we'd do better if we didn't spend 40% on the failures.

Kids who molest other kids and bring guns to school are criminals. We should lock them up early, and we can reduce the cost of prison by getting more labor out of prisoners and busting the guard unions.

Teachers spend a non-zero amount of time dealing with parents. I know a few teachers personally and all of them have stories about parents who take up too much of their time.

In the school districts near me, special ed and admin costs can take ~40% of the budget. I wouldn't displace the students onto social services because there'd be no social services.

If you think taking away resources (which people are not entitled to) is tantamount to murder, then every regime that collects taxes is murderous.

Your definition of 'killing people off' is asinine and lacks nuance. I'm not strong enough take your points seriously, so allow me to take them to absurd conclusions:

Right now, you're taking oxygen out of the air and depositing CO2. Right now, people are dying from polluted air and lack of oxygen, are you responsible for their deaths?

How? What actual change are you proposing here that utilizes short term profits to produce more scientists than criminals?

I'd make it much easier to expel students. Some bad kid brings a gun to school in elementary school? They're out for the rest of their life - freeing up resources to spend on better kids. Some bad kid molests another? Gone for life. Some bad kid punches a teacher? Gone for life.

I'd bust the teacher's unions just so I could align pay with performance. They complain about being underpaid, but they have Cadillac health insurance and defined benefit pensions - both of those have astronomical costs and make their compensation much higher than their salary.

I'd also give teachers top cover to conduct the classroom how they like. Teachers shouldn't have to waste time talking to idiot parents about dumb topics. Ideally, teaching would be a six-figure position (albeit with an HSA and a 401k) so we would want to respect teachers' time.

I'd fund it by cutting the administration and special education departments to the bone.

I don't support the right to an abortion, but I do support abortions. My motivation for donating to planned parenthood is altruistic - if the mother doesn't want the kid, society really doesn't want the kid and doesn't want the mom to have a kid. Society can't be more invested in the kid than their parents.

Ideally we'd tie (reversible) sterilization with welfare participation but the horseshoe of fundies / progressives make that neigh impossible.

And I don't support eugenics at all. I just think that the social contract should have an 'out' and there should be a place in the world where we can put the undesirables (a la Australia). This is why we need to colonize mars (and other planets). There should be enough societies that people can find one that works for them and that societies can isolate themselves from factions they don't want. Look around, liberalism is failing and doesn't offer a credible alternatives to tribal politics. The only way we can make tribal politics safe is to reduce friction in interactions which means more space.

I donate to planned parenthood, I do back it up. I raise the point in internet discussion, I do back it up.

you might have had a point about spending on education for mentally disabled people far outpacing that for the average student, but adding in the part

Do you discredit an idea because of the person espousing it? If so, go hang out with normies who read gossip mags.

you might have an ulterior motive beyond fixing the education system.

My ulterior motive is a society where the productive people are unleashed to be as great as they can be, and the lazy/incompetent aren't given things at the expense of better investments.

I also want to point out that you included teaching to read in you list of things parents should be doing and not the teachers.

Yeah, I want to live in a society with a norm of parents reading to their children and participating in their child's development. The expectation that only teachers are responsible for an individual's education is the reason we can dump so much money into the system and have little to show for it.

It's another case of "if you want something, you have to pay for it".

The senior executives at my company are very responsible people, however, how could they be irresponsible? They make millions/yr, they have secretaries, and they a lot of autonomy in deciding how they should be judged. It'd be unusual for someone to be irresponsible in those conditions.

Meanwhile, worker bees balance sick kids, uncooperative coworkers, shifting priorities/deadlines, and taking the time to be price-conscious because they can't really afford to waste money. Is it any surprise that sometimes things fall through the cracks?

Sure, there are people who turn up on a tuesday and that's ill-advised. But presumably they're an at-will employee. If it's a problem, replace them with someone better. IF you can't find someone better at the same price, that's your sign that you're not paying enough for what you want. If you like the person, make the investment in their responsibility.

It's important that businesses answer the question and stick to it. Do they want people to work a set schedule or not?

Or businesses can make demands, but in this labor market they'll have to pay for people to meet 'em.

I can promise to be in my chair at 9 am everyday, but I want to leave at 5 and if I'm tired, the business gets to pay for a less than productive day.