kavabean

This is a political disaster. Fracked crude is only profitable because the externalised costs of the catastrophic environmental damage are born by others.

This is another direct wealth transfer from the general population i.e. 99% to the 1%.

If instead of allowing fracking we invested massively in renewables we'd have more jobs, a path to much-cheaper-than oil energy, and we wouldn't be leaving toxic residue all over our water tables to make our children and grandchildren sick with any number of diseases.

As usual capitalism is taking the quick easy cash with large externalities because they aren't affected by them.

They do absolutely apply. And they work. Look at two incredible examples. Russia, post 1917, went from a third world feudal economy (albeit with incredible land resources and considerable intellectual institutions) to the second largest industrial economy in the world in 30 years. China: I will leave off their incredible growth curve over the last 40 years.

There are obviously downsides to top-down centrally controlled economies but to say they don't work is ridiculous.

I don't want to live in a top-down economy. It's too oppressive. I would prefer bottom-up socialism based on worker cooperatives.

But there are some services that are so critical that they cannot be left to the market with it's wealth-centralisation and pay-to-play politics leaving the vast majority in destitution.

Housing is one of these critical services.

Top down state organisation is prone to corruption. It takes effort to keep that at bay. The public oversight required is an overhead that should only be used in select tasks.

The state is not suited for all tasks, especially those with rapid iteration, experimentation, low capital costs, and low cost of failure. Housing technology moves slower and is dominated by capital and bureaucratic concerns. It is also one of the dominating costs in modern life. The state is capable of doing this task and the public oversight burden is warranted.

For products and services that do not absolutely require the state, I believe worker cooperatives, incentivised by the state are a much better solution

The housing and urban development department puts out price indices for construction of various types per sqft. https://www.amazon.com/Construction-Cost-Indices-Supportive-...

You will find these are not far off industry average.

I don't know of a quantative model of the local financial system that fully implements the factors I mention, but these ideas are getting more traction because of the practically western-world-wide housing crisis.

I guess decent models are forthcoming to study these effects.

citation?

Also it's natural that public housing is at least somewhat more expensive. They have to follow code and not take shortcuts. Also there isn't the predatory, crushing, pressure to exploit the workers on the job in the same manner as in the private sector.

In general the difference is not very big. The bigger problem is graft and corruption.

The general story, told by who exactly? Oh right, the corporate press.

I live in the UK. For every careless ugly tower (there are some) there are solidly build, even solidly designed housing units that hold up over time. Many built in the 60's in a more politically active era won design awards. In general the initial construction quality of the public housing is much higher than private construction. From the thatcher era on maintanence was cut drastically which led to much of the decay.

The problem of insider graft and corruption is a real one. But it is fixable if citizens have real power and there is transparency and accountability instead of corporate funded elections which guarantee a disenfranchised population.

The market can never provide housing as cheaply as a properly functioning local/state government.

* The state can borrow money far cheaper than private developers.

* The state has far fewer regulatory risks (getting permits, etc).

* The state does not need to make a profit but only needs to pay the bond payments.

* The state profits even when it doesn't make immediate profits on the particular housing development. It does so by increased local spending (by housing tenants who pay affordable rents instead of every penny they earn, etc) and also by higher taxes on increased incomes/output due to higher productivity, the higher productivity due to reduced stress and churn in the community caused by a lack of funds for life expenses due to high rents. (Remember lower income tenants spend _all_ of their money, with a high proportion spent locally. High earning landlords are exactly the opposite. A much larger proportion of their income flows internationally, to wherever capital gets the highest return, or whereever luxury goods are made)

* The state gets an implicit discount on labour costs in development since it gets tax income from the workers.

With all of these incentives in play the state can provide housing for less than the state borrowing cost of the money for labour/materials to build an apartment. Since in Portland it costs 175-200/sqft to build multifamily units, a 1000sqft 1BR should cost the equivalent of state borrowing costs/month for $175k at 2.2% = $320. Imagine how much better life would be if we had a government that used all of these incentives to provide well-built housing for its people.

There is also the cost for land but the state owns a lot of land, and it has the ability to get land by rezoning, and also by using eminent domain as a last resort. At any rate for high density buildings, this is not the dominant cost.

Don't hate the player hate the game :) The human genome is what's screwed up. Things well covered in recent years: Power increases hypocrisy and cognitive bias over-values our own contribution to our success (it is my capital and my idea that made all this wealth, not your work). Also capitalism is explicitly about extracting surplus value from employees. I think this type of behavior from people like Scott is, on the whole, to be expected. But... anyway our genetic predisposition towards fairness makes a rage reaction to this behaviour expected too so hate away. :)

I would rather look at 500 people for one year than 50 people for 10 years. It is really important to understand how people's lives are affected and whether the positive outcomes that have been seen in the third world are replicated in modern economies. And here by "people" I mean a wide variety of personality types. Hmmm maybe it would be better to have a pool of people for 1 year of support and another for 2 years of support. Then you could also get an idea of how perceived duration of the support changes their reaction to it.

I wonder if the following could be relevant.

1. In my experience, Europeans are less dominated by the "newer is better" desire to constantly get the latest gadget/technology. I wonder if others agree.

2. European money appears to be more dominated by old money / aristocracy and that these people like to invest within that network. Engineers are less likely to be part of the aristocracy and are treated more like commodities than the enabling superstar athletes they are (at least the kind that make unicorns). I know quite a few engineers that make over $200k in SV but only one who makes over 100k GBP.

Note there is a typo in the def of the predecessor function

"The following function generates from the pair (n, n − 1) (which is the argument p in the function) the pair (n + 1, n − 1):"

which should be

"The following function generates from the pair (n, n − 1) (which is the argument p in the function) the pair (n + 1, n):"

OK. Yes the framers of the constitution did create protections from the government for themselves, and shared that with the rest of the population. As you imply it is hard to know if the general case was a side-effect or original intent.

At the same time they purposefully sought to disenfranchise the majority so that they might change the rules at any time.

So the constitution within the constitution is that the government will protect the wealthy, and that makes sense given who was writing it.

It appears that the ruling elites now value control of the population over privacy. I see two possible explanations but perhaps there are others.

* They see the incredible growth of poverty in the US and there is no vast neighboring region in which to exterminate existing inhabitants and settle. Hence wealth protection from the masses is a higher priority than the privacy protections.

* Mass media has distorted the scale of the disenfranchising effects of our system (rich have more control and poor even less) and the wealthy realise they can use their control of the government to make huge fortunes. For example the profits of the banks are derived by transfer of wealth from taxpayers through implicit insurance since insurance allows highly profitable high risk strategies. They then choose short term profits over privacy / human rights.

In any case they choose to exercise their rights under the constitution within the constitution to change the laws to bring about repression and control.

I'm not really rebutting your point here. Instead I want to highlight that what is happening now IS consistent with the ideals of governance around during the formation of the US and what has changed is likely a lower level 'priority'

I agree with the main thrust of your comment but perpetuating the 'immaculate conception' myth of the US as a government of, for, and by the people is counterproductive. In particular the war on drugs absolutely goes against the ideas 'espoused' at that time. But that still holds. Ask any senator what America stands for and they will say something like "liberty, freedom, and justice for all". That doesn't mean it is what they work for in the background.

Even while framing the constitution the controlling landowners of the US, i.e. the "US", were aware of the internal enemy that needed to be controlled.

"The framers of the constitution made the determination that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent"

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19970303.htm

Where the "opulent" are the class from which the framers originated.

This is not a new development.

Interesting. I like the idea, but I'm not fond of the chaotic layout. I'd prefer that the hype dimension be color or text size rather than x-dimension of text location.

Also the word hyped has a negative connotation in my mind, in particular that of exaggeration and b.s. As you mention perhaps this meaning is optional but for me the connection is strong.

I'd prefer another word. I thought the word hyper, for example hyperHN, might be better but anyway something else.