bobbydroptables

Machines, immigrant laborers and huge agribusinesses, mostly. I don't engage in the trendy family farm fad if that's what you're asking.

More to the point, are you implying that it wouldn't be possible for a dead end community to grow food? If so, why? Seems like a bizarre argument but I'll bite.

How is it undisputably bad? This woman now has access to higher quality men around the world instead of a random farmer without much to offer (no offense to the random farmers in the audience).

She now has the option to leave a dead end rural lifestyle is she chooses. And if she's into the dead end rural life (insert whatever dumb american tropes we have that idealize wasteful rural modes of living), she won't find rich, high flying city guys very appealing and it's all a wash. Or maybe she wants to move to a different dead end rural community with a better match than the random farmer she happened to be born next to. Now she can do that on farmers only.

You could say some good and some bad (and of course very bad for the random farmer whose main reproductive strategy was apparently counting on his mate not realizing he's not a catch and there are much better options), but you can't say it's only bad.

Ideally, none of these people reproduce at all since we already have plenty of humans. Hopefully the shift to digital relationships can greatly reduce our headcount in the long run. This trend seems well underway already thankfully.

Like rent an apartment? Have a car to get to work?

Then you rent an apartment or buy a car. Are you implying you can't do this after bankruptcy? It's much easier to do these with a bankruptcy on your "record" than with a $1000 monthly payment.

Fair points, although to your last point, I wouldn't necessarily agree it solves the problem well. AMP makes some websites almost unusable (intentionally disables core functionality) and there's no way to disable AMP except manually re-typing the URL for every page. If its goal is just to serve a smaller page, it is a rough workaround with high costs IMO (often slower loading times, weird performance issues, disabled functionality, less open internet).

I appreciate that not everyone has fast data, but not having data speed to read a basic web page is really becoming the exception, not the norm. Data transmission is getting cheaper and faster and available in more remote places every year.

I wouldn't have a huge problem with AMP if I could opt out. Unfortunately I can't. So despite my blazing fast unlimited plan on a flagship device, I'm getting served crippled pages with degraded performance. It's like I own a Ferrari kitted out with all the extras and Google is saying "here have you tried out this cool bicycle? It has special pedals so you can't go too fast and we reconfigured the handlebars so you don't accidentally do something like steering! It even has a bell. Ting-ting, ting-ting! How cool is that?"

In all seriousness, it is neat if it makes the web more useable for low-connectivity users, but maybe then limit AMP to those places (which are shrinking every year) and don't serve needlessly crippled pages when I'm standing in downtown Amsterdam or Hong Kong at the center of the internet, connected to blazing fast Wifi.

AMP seems like a solution in search of a problem. Are people really having trouble with loading speed in 2020? I travel to remote areas in third world countries regularly for work and still don't really have problems loading pages with mobile data.

Even if it didn't have all of the problems associated with it I just don't get the point. I don't need Google to repackage a website with less useability. It's frequently not even faster.

Preparing for expected catastrophes is not a fleeting desire. It's basically the opposite. There are entire industries built up around this (FEMA, insurance, flood control systems, the CDC, banking reserve ratios, backup servers, many safety rules and systems). Saying we need to adjust these efforts to reflect the real world cost-benefit trade offs is common sense. You can disagree with the particular calculus they're doing (e.g. by thinking a pandemic is so unlikely that we shouldn't prepare very much), but I don't see a sound argument to say "we don't need to prepare at all for these costly events".

If everything is turned into a priority, then nothing becomes a priority. Both time and the willingness to pay attention are in short demand.

I don't think people are turning everything into a priority. But if some ill-defined group is trying to do this, it wouldn't change the fact that certain things are a priority if we want to maintain our way of life. Disaster management is one of them.

I'm sure a bunch of people think irrelevant things happening on Instagram are a priority. But that doesn't change the fact that preserving infrastructure is a priority for maintaining our way of life.

As I said, if you don't care about maintaining our way of life, then of course you won't care about what we need to do to preserve that way of life.

Here's how the vast majority of people reason, then. There are only 24 hours in a day. And life is rather short with just a few precious decades. How can I spend those valuable hours and my own talents in a healthy balance between taking care of myself and my loved ones, and deriving a due sense of personal satisfaction, meaningfulness and purpose?

I think I see the disconnect. No one is saying that the fry cook at McDonalds needs to align global resources better to deal with potential catastrophe. You are reading "we" too literally. (Rather, you are just misunderstanding the word "we". "We" doesn't mean an has never meant every human. We really just means a group of which the speaker is part. It need not include you.)

"We need to better prepare for certain catastrophes" means that politicians and other key actors (say businesses, insurers, bureaucrats, researchers, engineers that have relevant assets, skills, experiences, etc.) need to think better about these and non-key actors (say voters, consumers) need to shift attention, money, votes, etc. to supporting those key actors in this goal. If you are okay with disruptions like pandemics, then you can disagree with this. I think most people would prefer to avoid these disruptions though, given the comparatively low cost for doing so.

at my doorstep, how am I as an individual supposed to even contribute towards solving that problem while including the entirety of humanity or society?

Support politicians that endorse science and logic, for example. Wear a mask as another example.

I don't think anyone is asking you to do anything that "includes the entirety of humanity or society". We are saying make the choices you can make and support the politicians and businesses that deal with these problems proactively.

But it's not an argument.

No one is saying "we need to prepare for a pandemic" as a standalone argument. But the argument is not complicated. A pandemic could disrupt our way of life greatly by "harm X" (lets say decrease in quality adjusted life years or GDP). It has a chance of occur of "probability Y". Y here is close to 100% as we know. The cost of preparing systems to mitigate the risks to "harm level Z" is "cost Q". As long as harm X times probability Y is really big (which as we see, it is) and cost Q is less than harm level Z, then it is rational to invest Q resources into mitigation.

You can disagree with whatever numbers we might pick for X Y Z Q, but to say we shouldn't perform the calculus is just to say you don't think society is worth preserving. Again, you can have that viewpoint if you want.

The conversation that I think people are trying to have is "How should we preserve, improve and maintain society" and you're basically saying "don't bother". It's fine to say that, but the people having the discussion obviously aren't going to listen to you.

If we're discussing whether Liverpool should trade Coutinho then no one will be interested in your view that "football is stupid".

How are you, as an individual acting on that sentiment? Who are you voting on? Are you making donations? Are you a researcher? Are you running for office yourself? Or are you endorsing politicians who will be making decisions? Or have you invested millions in factories that might one day supply vaccines, hopefully? What are you doing to show the way forward beyond a moot online demonstration of a due sense of self awareness?

I am doing things to my ability but this is irrelevant to our argument. I can make a powerful and logically airtight argument supporting thing X while selling a product that kills thing X. I can even make that same argument while personally killing thing X at that very moment.

I'm not holding this discussion to trumpet (or even to discuss) my own virtues or actions. I'm having this argument to disagree with a poorly reasoned argument made by the person I first responded to. I could be a computer simulation and it wouldn't take anything at all away from the logic of the points I make.

"We should have had a (non-false) sense of urgency about this last year?" Who is this we? Why are you involving me into this?

I'm not involving you. You misunderstand the definition of the word "we"

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/we

"People in general" does not mean every single person and certainly doesn't have to mean you.

I read the news and social media like the next person and I'm an individual with limited time and resources. I'm not an elected decision maker. I'm certainly not privy to intelligence reports. And when I voted for decision makers that ran for office, a pandemic sure wasn't on everyone's mind.

You shouldn't elect someone that campaigns on a single pet risk, so much as you should elect someone that takes a rational, cost-benefit approach to risks in general.

It's an argument that could easily be met with could have, would have, should have, but "we" - whoever that is - didn't. Hindsight 20/20.

Well, that's not exactly right is it? "We" certainly did meet the risk where I am. Americans (or more specifically, some Americans in some places) are having issues understanding science. There's not much hindsight involved. Were there epidemiologists that said we didn't need to worry about or prepare for the risk of a pandemic? Pandemics have happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future.

More importantly, everyone saw what happened in China. America saw this and part of it decided not to take steps to mitigate the risks. I can tell you steps to take to mitigate your risk starting tomorrow and many Americans will still ignore it. This is not hindsight bias.

You could argue China's failures shouldn't be criticized by hindsight bias. But why are many Americans continuing not to fix the problem happening today and tomorrow? Hindsight is not the issue. I can give you steps right now to fix this. But many Americans don't want to listen. As a result they are going to fail. When I point this failure out in the future, it won't be hindsight bias.

Instead, a better argument is "I feel it's important to vote for politicians that are aware of the importance of public health and who are willing to endorse increased public spending on public health and social security. I feel it's important to hold politicians who don't do this publicly accountable. That's why I openly voice my concern because I care about the impact of their policies on my own community and other communities. I also call representatives, I vote, I support news organizations through donations, I attend rallies to show support and so on."

Ok, that's what this article is doing. I'm not sure who you're arguing against here.

Showing how you're caring is far more important then just telling you're caring.

I don't care about showing or telling about my caring. I'm just trying to correct the person I originally responded to. What I do or don't do is irrelevant to correcting OP's point.

I typed out a much longer response but this will do:

I think you are not following my argument or the OP. Neither supposes that "we need" is a standalone argument. OP provides specific examples for why "we need" to do these things.

"We" doesn't mean literally every human. Do you think people are actually being misled by this? It just means something like "society at large".

"We" need plumbing. This doesn't mean you can't individually live alone in the woods without plumbing.

"Need" doesn't mean you "must" have something. You don't "need" water if you're suicidal.

"Need" is just shorthand for "sustains our current way of life". If you want to see the downfall of civilization, you don't "need" agriculture. If you don't care about people on dialysis or the millions/billions of others that would die without power, then you don't "need" electricity or internal combustion engines.

You're allowed to have these opposing views.

The "we need" arguments assume that most people want to maintain or improve standards of living.

If you want to decrease standards of living, that's a fine opinion to have (although weird). More importantly, if you don't care about society, why bother arguing this at all? Why post on HN? No one is stopping you from living a pre-plumbing, pre-agricultural life if that's what you want.

"Society" of course tries to sustain itself. If society wants to keep existing in its current form, it does need to do many things (indoor plumbing, running water, electricity, or as the OP talks about, preparing for certain dangerous situations).

Which part of the OP deals with megacorps?

I don't like megacorps either but I don't see which part of the OP you disagree with.

Isn't it hypocritical to ask for money from common man to fix problems that they created in the first place (like pollution)?

No. I think a better word is "unseemly". I don't think it's hypocritical for a company or person to use carbon and then buy carbon offsets or donate to the rain forest or something.

Even if it were hypocritical I would still rather have a polluting corporation that fought pollution than a polluting corporation that didn't.

if they really cared that much, why can't they donate a dollar (or whatever amount) from their profit every time I shop there?

Many of them do just that. I don't think corporate giving is the solution to society's problems but it is a real thing that happens and can make a difference for some people.

Corporations of course do things for marketing and PR reasons. If one of you things is to encourage you to donate or to donate themselves then I don't see the problem (although I am annoyed having to press a bunch of buttons to pay).

There’s way too much “we need to start...”

Not really. A world as complex as ours needs to be starting new initiatives all the time. Basically every convenience you take for granted (electricity, indoor plumbing, grocery stores) was because society said "we need to start". In places where they were slow to do that, it's generally less available and lower quality or they have to rely on technology from the places and people that took initiative.

We need to be starting much much more, not less.

We don't fully understand the long term effects. Many people are experiencing prolonged sickness that may never go away. The disease can do permanent damage to basically any of your organs.

Seems crazy to adopt a policy of infecting the world with a dangerous disease that we don't really understand.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7111094/coronavirus-scientists-he...

Maybe what he's getting at is that the technologies the west "can't dream of" were invented in the west. Drones, for example. The west doesn't use drones to deliver medicine because it has very well developed infrastructure to deliver medicine.

It is cool Rwanda is doing this but I would guess the west has dreamed of drone deliveries of things and decided that its current system is ok.

And "judicial power" includes the sole power to shape the boundaries of con law.

Who do you think can determine the boundaries of con law?

So why are you supporting a system that has assumptions of zero cost of CO2 emissions?

There is no reason whatsoever to think there is zero cost. Why would we implement public policy assuming this?

Yes, and I have already said that I oppose those decisions. The government should not be playing favorites.

So you agree that government should stop subsidizing roads and suburbs?

Cletus' behavior doesn't affect everybody; it only affects the few people who are within range of his coal rolling.

Actually air doesn't work this way. Pollution can and does carry for hundreds of miles.

But we can proceed with your fictional conception of aerodynamics.

How are the people that Cletus rolled coal on supposed to get compensated for their loss?

Do I have any way to verify this as a user?

Yeah you're pretty much right. But this can be solved pretty simply with a pigovian tax.

It's not inconsistent with any definition of rights that I'm aware of to say that you can't pollute our air without consequences. By contrast, the current state of affairs does not mesh with any philosophical system that I've found. Under what theory can some stranger pollute my air? That's no more justifiable than me pouring perchlorate in my neighbor's well. The stronger someone believes in individual rights, the stronger they support my argument.

I think it's a misreading of philosophy (not saying you're doing this) to say that we need to justify restrictions on obvious negative externalities like air pollution. The polluter needs to justify his actions, not the neighbor whose air is being poisoned.

(The science on the deleterious effects of air pollution is of course settled regardless of what anyone thinks about global warming.)

But public policy decisions affect everybody, so the criterion needs to be a lot stricter for how complete the information needs to be and how confident we need to be in our knowledge before we impose a public policy on everybody.

Again, your own logic destroys your argument.

We have made public policy decisions that heavily subsidize oil, cars, lowered air quality, etc.

These decisions affect everyone not just car drivers. These decisions were not based on complete information (in fact, we had very limited knowledge of global warming, air pollution, etc. when we made public policy decisions to favor air pollution).

The idea that public "leaders" should be able to take calculated risks with everybody else's money (and lives) is, IMO, pernicious. This is exactly the mentality that has created so much mess in the world throughout history. No, "leaders" should not take calculated risks that affect everybody.

So why should Cletus who like to roll coal on Tesla drivers be able to take uncalculated risks that affect everybody?

I seriously think you don't understand what externalities are.

You're misstating the alternatives.

No.

We're talking about public policy.

Yes.

The alternatives for public policy are "don't dictate what everyone must do in area X" or "dictate what everyone must do in area X".

The world is not this simple. Regardless, we must dictate that people cannot inflict externalities on third parties without compensation.

The former does not need a "higher justification". The latter does.

Where are you getting this idea? You're just stating a conclusion without any support. I can do that too:

You are wrong, I am right. You need to scientifically justify acts that have harmful externalities. You do not need to justify harmful acts that restrict harmful externalities.

Wow, this is easy! I should have been arguing like this all along!

No, a "subsidy" is not the same as a purchase.

Did I a say "subsidy" was the same as a purchase? Not sure what you're getting at.

Purchasing something at whatever the current market price is is just a purchase.

Um. It's a purchase. It can also be a subsidy and generally is when the government does it. If the government purchases a bunch of oranges to give away (or throw in the gutter) it is subsidizing the orange market. Are you not familiar with how government subsidies work in general?

Fixing prices at lower than the current market price, and making up the difference in various hidden ways, which is what the government does with fossil fuels, is a subsidy.

There are lots of ways to subsidize things. Almost everything (or maybe absolutely everything) the government does creates a subsidy of some kind.

No, it's an enormous investment in transportation infrastructure for the benefit of everyone.

It's not for the benefit of everyone though. Car-centric life obviously is not very healthy, so it's not healthy for the general public to subsidize this. More importantly, it creates dangerous externalities for people that walk, bike, etc.

It heavily subsidizes unsustainable suburban modes of living, etc. Can you imagine the shitfit people in Kentucky would have if they had to fund their own roads?

Which benefits all transportation technologies.

Wat? How does building a 20 lane highway in Houston benefit bikers? It doesn't. It actively harms them.

How does building a road to Dingleberry Alabama benefit people that ride the subway in DC (or want to ride a subway in Alabama)? It doesn't.

Unless you think that hybrid or electric or fuel cell or solar powered vehicles are somehow unable to use the same roads?

Again, this is taking kind of an autistic view. In theory, yes my fart-powered car can use the roads. In practice, since 99% of cars are powered by carbon, we know that a road subsidy benefits carbon users 99% of the time.

Which is a non-answer unless you know, with sufficient confidence based on scientific knowledge (not somebody's beliefs or speculations or hypotheses), the amount of the externality and who can address it at the lowest cost.

Huh? Why would we need to know this? If my neighbor is pumping carbon dioxide into my living room, I don't need to do any calculus or science to know that (a) he's wrong and (b) he needs to stop. That is a problem that markets can't solve.

Why would we need to know the person that can do it at the lowest cost? The person doing the bad behavior should bear the cost regardless of who the lowest cost avoider is.

Which nobody knows for the case of CO2 emissions.

We know a lot about the costs of C02 emissions. It's ridiculous to say we need to have perfect solutions before we can push back on our current failed "solution".

First, government solutions are violent: the government can dictate what everybody does only because it can back up what it says with violence if necessary.

Absolutely. That's a huge role of the government. If some asshole is pumping carbon dioxide into my living room, the government needs to correct his behavior. If a strongly worded letter doesn't do it, violent action must (ethically) be taken to correct the situation.

Second, you ignore the obvious third alternative: give people a better option in the market.

I'm not sure why you think I ignored this. I have literally written books on market solutions. But they can't solve everything.

If the government did not subsidize fossil fuels, gasoline would be more expensive and more people would be buying cars that used less, or no, gasoline.

But you would still have too many people buying. You need to read up on externalities.

No need to use force on anyone.

Yes need to use force. This is econ 101. When you have an activity that forces negative externalities onto third parties without compensation, you get sub-optimal levels of that activity. When you don't bear the full cost for polluting the air I breath (this is very well documented stuff here) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3155438/, then you'll tend to create sub-optimal levels of pollution that wouldn't exist if you had to bear those costs.

And if there were more entrepreneurs figuring out how to build cars that used less, or no, gasoline, they would get cheaper.

This helps but doesn't fix the problem.

That is true even for the SUVs that you apparently abhor: a hybrid SUV can easily get double the gas mileage of a conventional one. But with gas as cheap as it is now due to government subsidies, the added cost of the hybrid simply doesn't pay for itself over the life of the vehicle.

Even without government subsidies, gas is extremely cheap.

What I have said is that dictating a public policy to everyone requires a well-supported scientific rationale, or at least a much higher standard for one than has been used.

This is the part you still aren't addressing: We are already dictating a public policy to everyone without any scientific support whatsoever.

Then we simply disagree. You think this claim has a well-supported scientific rationale. I don't. I think it's a combination of ideological beliefs, speculations, and hypotheses, with no predictive track record to back it up. So I don't think dictating public policy on this basis is justified. If you want to base your own choices on it, go ahead.

You're misunderstanding. You are saying that the public policy you like (lets keep it simple and say "Ford Excursions") doesn't need any scientific backing whatsoever. But the public policy I like (lets say "bikes") somehow requires a "well-supported scientific rational". You need to explain this difference. Under your system, our current policies are also not justifiable (nor are the policies you are advocating for).

You're misstating the alternatives. The alternatives for public policy are not "keep burning carbon at current rates" vs. "burn less carbon". The alternatives for public policy are "allow people to make their own decisions about burning carbon" vs. "dictate everyone's carbon burning activities by force".

You are ignoring externalities. This line of thinking is fine for activities that don't harm others. It doesn't work if there are externalities. Unless you think I should be able to forcibly go stop my neighbor from polluting, you still haven't solved the problem.

The former does not need a well-supported scientific rationale. The latter does.

You can't just say this without justification. Or you can, and I can too:

The former needs a well-supported scientific rationale. The latter does not.

How about that?

We cannot justify most of the things we're currently doing on that basis.

Exactly my point. Why do you think we need to have a higher justification for good ideas (engaging in sustainable behavior) than for bad ideas (engaging in unsustainable behavior)?

We apparently don't agree on what "reality" actually is, at least with respect to how much of an emergency CO2 emissions are. You think they're a dire emergency.

Which is one of the key points the article we are discussing in this thread is making.

And the point you're still missing is that not doing anything to stop risky behavior is making an assumption that it is safe to continue the risky behavior. That assumption is not grounded in anything.

As I responded elsewhere in this thread, by this criterion, we should stop pretty much everything we are doing. Which is not a viable option, never has been, and never will be.

No, I'm not saying this. I'm saying we need to stop pretending its sustainable to keep burning carbon at the rates we are. It's not sustainable and we need to take painful steps immediately to stop this.

It does not mean we need to "stop doing pretty much everything we're doing". Not sure where you get that idea. It means we need to stop allowing every Cletus in Kentucky to buy an F-350 and pay $1.89 for a gallon of gas to cruise 56 miles to the local Walmart to buy factory farmed beef and a bunch of plastic sh!t shipped across the globe from 12 different parts of China.

The idea is we should live in reality, not that we shouldn't live.

I don't think the government should be subsidizing any energy sources or playing favorites with certain sources over others. That applies just as much to playing favorites in favor of "alternative" energy sources as to playing favorites in favor of oil, coal, and natural gas. (Actually the government subsidizes all of these.)

This is not possible. You might be misunderstanding how subsidies work. Everything the government does is a subsidy of something or other. Building out roads nice new roads in every podunk town in America is an enormous subsidy to oil. Allowing people to pollute my air with carbon is an enormous subsidy to oil. Again, it is literally impossible to be agnostic.

No, let's not. Let's ask, instead, why you apparently believe that the only way to fix anything that is "unsustainable" is government policy.

Where on earth do you get the idea that I think this?

Why not just let the market work?

Externalities. Unless you start making all carbon users bear all costs associated with their carbon use, I have to bear that cost for them. The market can't sort that out unless I can forcibly stop other people's carbon use myself. In that case, we would have a violent solution, not a market solution. Governments is justifiable largely on the grounds that it replaces the need for these violent solutions.

If governments would stop subsiziding fossil fuels, their prices would be higher, and there would be more market pressure to find alternatives.

Agree.

Just as we found alternatives to horses that saved us from the "unsustainable" practice in the late 19th century of using horses for transportation, which, if that had gone on the same way, would have us all by now, as the saying goes, knee deep in horsesxxt.

This move had nothing to do with global sustainability. It had to do with scalability, user friendliness, etc.

No, it's not, it's a fact of life. Most of the things we currently do are not "supported by science".

Agreed. So the question is why do you think some policies (like burning carbon) are justifiable without science. While others (like not burning carbon) need more science? You haven't justified this asymmetry.

We do not have well-supported scientific rationales for most of our current activities.

Exactly. So why do you think we need well-supported scientific rationales for new activities?

That's because we don't have a good scientific understanding of the relevant domains for most of our current activities.

Absolutely agree. You're talking common sense here.

But just stopping all of our current activities that aren't "supported by science" is not a viable alternative,

And no one is arguing we should. But pretending that we can continue burning carbon at current rates (without any scientific support for this) is not in any way more justifiable than saying "we need to start burning less carbon".

So it's you that is being illogical, not me.

Nope. It's you. We can't keep burning carbon the way we are and there's no reason to think we can. There are better reasons to think we can't.

I think only snowwrestler has a good point. "Waiting for the science" is the same as saying "we know for a fact that burning carbon is safe" if both of those result in burning unsustainable amounts of carbon.

I'd say having 70% of the information, something like that.

This is still missing the point. This means that you need only 31% of science to continue burning carbon, but you need 70% to stop burning carbon. You have created an asymmetry that's not justified by anything (let alone science). Public policy cannot be agnostic about the science. It's not possible.

If you say "let's wait" you're saying "it's safe to keep doing what we're doing" even though you don't have any justification for that.

To put it really simply, you've created a default bias. There is no reason to assume the default is better than a given alternative. It needs to be justified. If you can justify it, fine and good, let's do it. But no one has.

No, it's an affirmative choice to not impose a public policy on everyone based on what we think we know right now.

You're either misunderstanding his point or misunderstanding reality.

Our public policy today endorses (and heavily subsidizes) the burning of carbon on a scale never before tested.

Why should the default position be to subsidize this as opposed to alternative means?

Or are you arguing that we should be agnostic about the science and thus stop burning all carbon immediately (i.e., returning to a scientifically validated state in the past where we didn't burn carbon)?

You have this backwards. Claimed knowledge doesn't get to be assumed to be right until it's shown to be wrong.

I'm guessing you have it backwards but I'll let you explain. Which knowledge do you think we are claiming that we shouldn't assume to be right? Give a concrete example and we can discuss. If you think we can "assume its safe to burn obscene amounts of carbon" without any evidence of that safety, then you are the one who has it backwards.

You can't make a public policy that is agnostic to the science of burning of fossil fuels at current levels. It's clearly unsustainable, but let's set that aside. If you want to argue it's sustainable and should continue, you would still need to rely on (nonexistent) science to make your case. It's not an argument to say "this is how we done things for a long time so this way doesn't need to be supported by science." That's illogical.

So can too much air and water and literally anything else.

With a few exceptions, I learn more from user comments on sites like this than I do from today's "journalism".

Turns out, people willing to spout random ideas on a topic are not in especially short supply and 99% of them are willing to do it for free. The best part is, these free users usually get right to the point.

Long form and investigative journalism need to be funded but the kind of information I find junk articles on the homepage of CNN or Fox is usually better hashed out (and much less biased) in the comments section than reading an article.

In a sentence, most media doesn't have much value-add. Even less so if I have to click through 6 ads and be exposed to malware to see it.

Check out Marbury v. Madison.

Replying here since HN cuts us off.

The bad Yelp reviews is the tip of the iceberg, as restaurants are being squeezed out by the extinguishing embrace of food delivery apps and their fees. (This was covered in some of the links you've elided) The point is that the power of some tech companies backed by big money can lead to destructive effects on other industries. Ridesharing has also been criticized for more than their environmental impact, including points that I've mentioned.

Ok, so your complaint is that you don't like technology. That's fine but again nothing to do with cash flow. A cash flow positive business can still be an abusive food deliverer.

I'm not trying to defend startups. I'm trying to point out that cash flow negativeness is not the problem.

Point is that the road to an unending stream of ethical violations and scandal can sometimes be seen by the earliest of underhanded cheating. That behavior is indeed hilarious in that it's almost cartoonishly evil and low, like a schoolyard bully. Can't find an anecdote yet, but here's one early report of Uber's growth-at-all-costs strategy incorporating dirty tricks.

I'm supposed to be mad that Uber is trying to hire its competitor's employees? I don't get it. That's not evil, it's just a pretty good idea as long as they are paying their cab fare. Evil would be thinking that once you hire one of these drivers for $5 an hour or whatever that they can't take a better deal with a competitor.

Fire departments are a non sequitur.

Not at all. It's an example of one of a failure of capitalism. But it existed long before Silicon Valley. Cutthroat competition is both old and good. It seems like you're trying to say it's new (simply factually wrong) and bad (not really supported by the evidence). Competition gets us new technology, good prices, good service, etc. There is a very close correlation between high prices and bad service and monopolistic behavior.

This excuses poor behavior by suggesting it is fine when larger bad actors exist, which is a fine attitude for you to have, but others may disagree. That said, it's also possible to examine the current VC-boosted culture within tech- or tech startups- itself; are there more ethically questionable startups with flimsier, even scammy business models, than in the past? Other comments have argued that this is a progression on a trend, and not how things have always been. (Though one would think the dot-com bubble was also a time of similar widespread fraud.)

Not at all. I'm not excusing anyone for anything. I am saying that your complaint is with all businesses that harm the environment or do scammy things. You don't have a particular complaint against cashflow negative businesses. I may be having trouble explaining this. Here's an analogy:

All baseball players use steriods. This has destroyed baseball. Some newer players also chew bubble gum. This has nothing to do with steriods or baseball frankly. People are out here with signs saying "Bumblegum chewers ruined baseball".

They're missing the point. Bubble gum didn't ruin baseball. Steroids did. Even if some juicers also chew gum, while true, it's irrelevant.

Cash flow negative businesses aren't the problem. Companies that ruin the environment are the problem.

Even if the tangible economic impact of modern Silicon Valley and dumb money is negligible in the grand scheme of things (which is a debatable point), it's still possible for those working in tech to critique the business culture, which does change and isn't a static thing. The '80s were remembered as a particularly greedy and excessive time on Wall Street; certainly industry practices can change over time and the shared cultures of those businesses can change for the worse, to the dissatisfaction of those who disagree with it.

You might misunderstand me if you think I'm saying you shouldn't critique your own industry and culture. You are morally required to critique your own industry and culture IMO. But the critiques have to be meaningful. "Uber rapes people and should be punished" is a meaningful critique, based on facts, morality, etc. "Investors and managers tried a certain business model that lost revenue in the beginning to acquire customers" seems like a really bizarre thing to be upset about. No one is really getting fooled. The investors are smart enough to know what they're getting into. Especially investing in tech, especially in SV, especially in 2020. Most new businesses of any kind anywhere have a high customer acquisition cost and almost no businesses of any size are profitable in the first few years. This is not new or particular to SV.

That's fine as it is your opinion, but that is a subjective judgment and seemingly based on limited data.

I love data. By all means, do you have some data to show that DD is distorting the food delivery market in a way that hurts consumers?

Then's plenty of coverage about other bad actors, tech is just a highly visible target.

I don't see much. There should be headlines every day about how much oil Exxon and Shell have pumped that day and how much damage that will do to the environment. Why aren't there? Honestly these stories should be every hour of every day. We're watching the world be literally destroyed before our eyes and we're arguing about pizza arbitrage.

The question is, what is that long term endgame? Waiting for Google to both invent a viable self-driving car AND push through the relevant amount of lobbying and marketing to engender the legal and social acceptance of widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles? Til then, it just looks like they're burning through a lot of money trying to grow for the sake of growth. And making good on their valuation is still a technological and societal quantum leap away.

So don't buy their stock, as I haven't. I don't see why it's a morality play to not buy into someone's business model. I'm pretty sure 99% of people including me don't own Uber stock. It's not a big deal if you want to join our ranks. I'm just saying its silly (to me) to be mad at Uber for engaging in exactly the strategy they told their investors they would engage in.

It's not nitpicking to say that the court can invalidate legislation. It's one of the most important powers the court has.

the capacity to cause problems for the rest of the world is much greater.

And none of these problems should cause us to lose sleep. A few bad yelp reviews. Uh oh. Carbon emissions should cause us to lose sleep but nuking Lyft and Uber back to the stone age would probably have net zero effect on this.

Stories about early-stage Uber telling its drivers to drip off mustaches from competing Lyft vehicles come to mind, presaging the much more excessive and extensive abuses that later resulted.

If you think this is bad you should read about how fire departments used to operate. Fierce competition is one thing that even critics of capitalism should support. Maybe not fire departments brawling, but consumers generally win when competition is fierce. The mustache things sounds hilarious but can't say I've heard of it. Can you link me? Did Uber HQ order its people to vandalize Lyfts?

It would seem like in some of these examples, the promise of big dumb money, coupled with incentives to pursue cash flow-negative business models, coupled with the problems resulting from having to make good on the big dumb money investments while digging themselves in deeper with said half-baked business models, leads to them engaging in even more risky and externality-creating behavior. And generally promotes a toxic business culture that excuses bad behavior.

I don't see how this is any worse than the externalities and behavior of cash flow positive businesses. Are you arguing that Bechtel and Blackwater and Facebook and Amazon and Exxon have fewer positive externalities or better behavior?

Capitalism has problems. But Silicon Valley and dumb money aren't it. Destroying the planet is it, but you'll see that with 99.99% of companies. Absolutely nothing to do with SV or dumb money. "Smart money" often invests in planet destroying things because they happen to be really profitable a lot of the time.

If they had less money to play around with and lower expectations and thus less incentive to desperately flail around trying to justify their crazy valuations, could this behavior be preempted, or at least lessened?

I mean, none of the behavior you're describing is really offensive to me. I find the pizza arbitrage story funny and cute and probably a sign of running a sloppy business. I don't really care other than that because I don't own shares of Doordash.

And yet, their losses were mounting pre-pandemic:

So your distaste for Airbnb arose precisely when their losses mounted? Or is it fair to say that your dislike of Airbnb has nothing to do with their income statement? Trying to make sure we're not getting two conversations mixed up. I understand you don't like Airbnb but that's not a very interesting conversation. I'm more interested in people taking personal offense to cash-flow negative businesses.

You don't need to be livid with rage to mention someone is contributing to a larger problem, however proportionally small. You don't even need to mention climate change as a reason to blame ridesharing for driving up traffic; the increase in traffic is inconvenience enough, let alone its influence on public policy wrt urban planning, decrease in investment for transit, etc.

You don't need to do anything sure. It's just kind of silly to scream and shout about some dumb investors when a bunch of people are silently killing the planet and I rarely see these sensational news stories or comments about them. I see 10x attention about Airbnb causing rent prices in trendy neighborhoods.

Great idea!

It's a horrible idea actually! This kind of thinking is why people hate investors that are only interested in quarterly returns.

Will they?

If I were an owner, I would absolutely hope not! I guess I'm one of these strange investors that cares about long term value rather than short term returns.

If they can take over taxis around the world for the next 30 years, I don't really care if they had a few unprofitable quarters.

Can they?

Sure. If they just started charging the actual price for a ride, they would be making a lot of money. But that's not the business that investors wanted to buy.