HN user
When adding traditional PV panels to my house a few years ago, I talked to the designer about PV shingles. He said the problem is that PVs are black and get hot in the sun. Traditional panels are raised a few inches above the roof with a gap that allows air flow (stack effect) to cool the panel. Also, the panel shades the roof, keeping the attic cooler (less A/C). With shingles, when they get hot, the attic gets hot (more A/C).
Government is bad and should be restricted from interference and private enterprise should not be regulated and market forces will auto-converge to some nice maximum.
That is not how I understand libertarianism. It is not that government is bad. But that government's role is to be the rule maker and referee. The government should not be playing the game.
Rather than "regulate" a large company, the government should make sure the rules don't hinder competitors. Ultimately, it is more competitors each trying something different that drives price down and quality up.
Evan Sayet has some thoughts on this (many videos on youtube). In a nutshell, Liberals like to talk about things, whereas Conservatives like to do things. So liberals go into fields like journalism, acting, teaching, etc.
Why aren't the investment property homes being rented out? Seems like an entrepreneur could pitch a service to the overseas owners to rent out the house, do all maintenance and insurance, pay the property tax from the rental income, and get a slice of the remaining profit.
I have solar panels on my house. During the summer when they produce more than I use, pretty much all the excess power goes into my neighbor's house. So if the utility says "you pay retail when the meter spins forward, but get wholesale credit when it spins backwards", then I could make a deal with my neighbor to run some power lines from some of my panels to his side of his meter and charge him just below retail. That way my neighbor and I both pay less for power overall.
This arbitrage shows that only crediting wholesale prices is the wrong price.
I opted to have Amazon gift wrap and ship directly to my sister this year. The surprise was that what she opened was not what I ordered. I'm guessing they have a gift wrap station and once it was wrapped, it looked just like the other gifts, so the wrong one got put into the shipping box to my sister.
The return process does not handle this well.
There was a SF author (Bear or Brin?) who wrote an essay back in the 90's about the future of drug wars. Much of the enforcement back then was on stopping the import of drugs from overseas. But once gene splicing created a way to produce the drugs within the USA, the enforce would switch to raiding warehouses, etc. The next step would be when the technology reduced the drug manufacture to a table top box that could be in any home (think make your own insulin). Then the enforcement has to raid peoples homes. The last step is when the technology allows the drugs to be produced by symbionts growing within a person.
Its called "Regulatory Capture" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture>. It does not require intense lobbying or backrooms deals. To one side (dealers), this is very, important. To everyone else it is off their radar. So legislators get skewed feedback.