michael_vo

You're missing the point. This has nothing to do with politics. I'm demonstrating how economic incentives could be used to change the outcome.

And car companies DO get fined. Kia was fined (lawsuit) $200MM in USA for not using modern standard anti-theft tech in order to save money.

Insurance companies DO give you a discount if you use the chubb or install other anti theft devices.

Economic incentives work!

In Canada the towing truck companies stealing cars are all part of the Mafia or gangs. It got so bad that sometime recently the government only certified a few tow truck companies. When you get into an accident you can't call a tow truck company. The police will call the reputable tow truck for you.

This happened to my next door neighbor. I saw them loading up his car at night, my dad went outside and yelled at them. They soon drove off.

"Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome" - Charlie Munger. Car companies don't need to care, if your car gets stolen the insurance company buys you a new one. You do lose some customers who won't buy your car if it's in the top ten most stolen list.

We could implement a law that fines car companies who are in the top ten list, and pays out to the car companies who are at the bottom.

What do you propose for reducing car fatalities and accidents?

"You cannot see the wood for trees"

I'd argue there is so much good that the tradeoff of trees killing a few humans is worth it.

The biological diversity that returns - birds, carbon soil. The air quality. Less chance that the heat will kill our senior citizens. Trees prevent floods.

From NotJustBikes channel, trees and bushes can be used to obscure road visibility, which naturally forces drivers to slow down at a curve, which makes streets safer for pedestrians (43k deaths a year in USA from cars)

24 hours post operation is fine. But giving them for weeks after an operation seems unnecessary. I've also heard that oxycontin in the USA is given to pregnant women to deal with pain.

Yeah totally agree. Every form of payment comes with pros and cons.

Maybe one idea is to come up with many alternative payment methods. In Africa I've read everyone pays with a phone number.

In USA government gives food bank cards loaded with money. Maybe a system where anyone can load cash onto a card easily through any ATM machine.

Exactly! Opioids increase suffering and ruin the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of Americans. 80k+ yearly overdose deaths, plus a percentage of those using opioids for recovery become addicted to it.

Is that a worthy tradeoff? I presume (could be wrong) but we did fine recovering with surgical operations 80 years ago without opioids.

Could you have recovered without pain killers? Or maybe used a pain killer that is much weaker that doesn't kill all the pain but is much safer like marijuana?

Are there scientific studies that shows that opioids help patients recover quicker?

I would disagree with the leech characterization. In an interview I watched, she talked about how she chose the property based on astrological alignment and her feelings when she was on this plot. She may be irrational but I think that's a perfectly valid reason to want to keep your own plot of land.

Well a lot of discussions due lead to some actions that I wouldn't have done on my own like reducing animal proteins, or shopping local for everything.

I don't see why caring about plastic bags is mutual exclusive from caring about automobile free cities. I'm 40 and have never owned a car. I'm a big NotJustBikes and StrongTowns proponent. We can for sure debate car dependence and what policies we should advocate for. But this was an article about biodegradable plastics.

Montreal is shutting down a ton of streets every summer to make them walkable, and we've built out an extensive bike infrastructure. All great things! We could make public transportation free.

costco has been doing this since the beginning!

I've heard this argument before and totally agree that single use plastics are a tiny fraction of the total problem. But as a Canadian I like that the law forced me to think about my consumption habits, as well as it helped create conversation topics with other people.

Same in Canada. The reusable bags that the stores sell are 5-20$. You get hit once with that and you'll start bringing your own bags.

It's actually really simple to influence human behavior with pricing!

There's a whole ecosystem for used nike shoes. https://www.youtube.com/@Ramitheicon gets over 500k each video and he's got a physical storefront where he trades cash to kids for their used nike shoes. There's so much hype for these shoes from NBA players, tik tok, instagram, and youtube.

Hermes monitors the resale websites. If they can find out the identifier then you will be banned.

Actually the whole sneaker market is like this too now. They have weekly drops where inventory is restricted to create hype.

I went to a buy.

Hermes gives you 24 hours to go into the store and buy the item. Otherwise the bag goes to the next buyer on the rolodex.

Buyers call their friends and make it into an event. They’re literally giddy and excited to go. It’s like winning the lottery.

You’re ushered into a private room with nice couches, mirrors, a phone. You choose a scarf and wrap the scarf around the strap.

Buyers text their sales rep almost daily.

In a way it’s like a drop in the NFT space.

The whole Debeers diamond ring scam has worked for decades until the last few years where synthetics are crashing the market.

VPN companies celebrate.

Yea I briefly glance over and struggle to recall what I bought. I was going to dispute a charge that was 15 minutes apart and a few Pennies different for the same grocery store. Then I realized it was the gas station outside owned by the grocery store.

What a scam! I have seen companies who offer to check your subscriptions and automatically cancel for you.

The elderly forget. My dad forgets his login password every single time. He does a password reset to login to anything.

I wish there was a way for the public to vote on all of these bills! We need to be able to give feedback to these senators about what the public wants. And to me the public wants DJI.

My dad was accidentally paying 89.99$ a month and hasn't used their service for a year. I cancelled it for him after going through his taxes/finances. They use all sorts of dark UX practices at signup and cancellation.

Honestly there should be a law where if you haven't logged into your account in 3 months you should get a notification asking if you want to cancel. It's one thing if the company is storing your data (like google photos) as that has an associated cost, but inactive accounts just feels like corporate theft.

There’s a Forbes article that cites the FDIC stating that you are only covered if you open a bank account in your name - which isn’t the case here for all these users. And they further warned to not use these neobanks for every day banking.

Since synapse isn’t a bank, technically there hasn’t been a bank failure so fdic doesn’t step in.

There’s over 128BB in the fdic fund so we can easily bail these customers out. But they should figure out if it’s fraud or what not.

How does this happen? Isn't there a board for these companies where they are advised not to pivot to gambling?

I've been told by current military folks that they are forced to use outdated windows (the ones without security updates) on official military computers on base. So this is where they access emails, surf the web, and all of that. They had to use IE instead of the evergreen edge browser.

It's well known among the people who serve that it's a joke.

That was not a compliment, just reporting the way btc is used.

For a regular human in the real world they will make very rational economic decisions in their best interests.

If the ATM fees are taking 20% of my money, of course I'm going to look for alternative systems of payments. If I can't use my Russian Rubles, of course I'm going to use BTC.

As someone who's travelled to about 30 countries in the last 2 years, I used to dismiss until I went to Turkey few months ago. It is the only country I've been to where there are BTC ATMs and signs everywhere. At the Airport there are bitcoin company logos on hangars, and in the terminal. On the streets you see the bitcoin logo everywhere.

It's very useful for Turkey as it has 100% inflation yearly and the ATM fees are 10-20% to withdraw money. Apparently (from other travellers), it's very useful for the Russians to withdraw money in Turkey as well.