HarryHirsch
Re:Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
on Monday March 09, 2026 @07:33PM (#47317253)
In Europe the law argues that cars are dangerous, and if you loan your car to a habitual bad driver, that's on you. You can either get the person who drove it to fess up, or the judge can fine you (because you lent out your car against better judgment) and impose a drivers log, so the circus doesn't happen again.
The arguing about having a constitutional right to drive bad boggles the mind, road deaths in the US are high, compared to civilized nations. Wikipedia states it's 14.2 deaths per 100000 inhbitants, that's between Sierra Leone (13.8) and Angola (15.0). For comparison, India has 12.6 traffic deaths per 100000 citizens and the worst country in Europe is Greece at 6.1.
The right metric is death per citizen, not per mile, because it's about the number of people who have lost a family member or friend.
When you get around exclusively on two wheels (motorcycle and bicycle) bad drivers are a direct safety threat. Even cagers ought to be careful about being permissive with red light running, side-on crashes are remarkably deadly for the one who got hit in the door because there is not much structural protection or space on the side of the vehicle.
Re:US economy sheds 92,000 jobs in February in sharp slide
on Saturday March 07, 2026 @11:52AM (#47289282)
Economists, of course - the confounder of discrimination is absent here. Recall: if something appears weird in the US, it's usually due to slavery.
Re:US economy sheds 92,000 jobs in February in sharp slide
on Saturday March 07, 2026 @10:14AM (#47288367)
The U-3 rate does not include those that drove for Uber one hour in the month. The gold standard metric is labor participation rate of white men over 20, and that's not looking good: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300028
Re:We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing Amer...
on Thursday February 19, 2026 @07:37PM (#47082057)
They imported top graduate student talent that went to the us and might have wished to stay but could not or wouldn't put up with the H1-B indentured servitude or was better paid back home or just patriotic.
Also - less financialization. In US, a statistician goes to work for any 3-letter agency or high finance. In a less financialized economy they might devote themselves to crystallography instead.
Re:Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
on Sunday February 15, 2026 @11:44PM (#47030980)
George Sheldrick wrote an important program at the age of 75. He chose not to follow a chess career as a young man, but he could have.
Re:How private equity is changing housing
on Tuesday December 09, 2025 @08:40PM (#46213066)
... pitching his books and preaching the Prosperity Gospel, which is antithetical to mainstream Christianity and not good financial advice.
Re:How private equity is changing housing
on Tuesday December 09, 2025 @02:33PM (#46209464)
Why would someone listen to Dave Ramsey of all people? He is neither an economist, nor a Christian, he has nothing to contribute to the subject!
His shtick is real estate investment, of course he wants to see Joe Public buy a starter home. The trouble is: real estate as a government-guaranteed investment vehicle is what brought us the housing affordability crisis.
Re:Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)
on Sunday December 07, 2025 @09:16PM (#46187562)
The decision to implement benefit cliffs is absolutely intentional, because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp, and maybe 10 % of the population rely on those. Obamacare subsidies are phased out gradually, because half the country relies on Obamacare, and if there were issues around Obamacare, that would have repercussions at the ballot box.
It serves to have an underclass that politicians can dump on, it seems.
Re:In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All
on Saturday November 22, 2025 @01:12PM (#46016861)
Their health would improve?
Re:In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All
on Saturday November 22, 2025 @11:43AM (#46016028)
It's not an unmitigated positive, instead it's a transparent move to paper over the high cost of housing by getting both parents to work. Of course housing prices will adjust accordingly, the supply remains the same, and the demand side has more money to spend.
Re:Goldman Sachs asks in biotech Report: Is curing patients a sustaina...
on Monday November 17, 2025 @07:35PM (#45960088)
It's not a surprise that especially at elite college it's classical economics that is taught in the gen. ed. courses. Its models are simple, and plainly visibly wrong.
If behavioural economics or political economics were taught instead, anything with models that have explanatory power it would be viewed as lefty and revolutionary, and that would really upset donors. Consequently we are stuck with homo oeconomicus.
Re:Goldman Sachs asks in biotech Report: Is curing patients a sustaina...
on Sunday November 16, 2025 @07:44PM (#45949904)
Yet meanwhile, women entered the legal profession in the 1920's but wages did not catch up until the 1960's when the Equal Pay Act was passed. Economics 101 would say you could snap up competent female lawyers for a little more than they were paid at their current firm and thus wages would creep up, yet this would not happen.
Re:Nevada Governor's office covered up Boring Co safety violations
on Saturday November 15, 2025 @10:08PM (#45942439)
The authorities aren't going to send you off to reeducation, they will just determine (accurately) that you are a me-first guy who must not be allowed on the public roads and won't return your license. A win for the general public because road traffic is a coordinated effort.
Re:Driver livestreams on TikTok as she apparently hits and kills man i...
on Saturday November 08, 2025 @02:20PM (#45859171)
Truth, but we need to consider road safety. Lock the lady up, and lock all other texters up. Motorcyclists all over the nation would agree.
Re:Trump proposes healthcare shake-up that would bypass insurers
on Saturday November 08, 2025 @02:09PM (#45859095)
School voucher 2.0, it's going to be great!
Re:Who Exactly Is a "Real Chemist"?
on Sunday October 05, 2025 @08:14PM (#45486424)
The authors of the paper are most certainly fake chemists, the idpol-centered vocab gives it away
Re:Alphabet launch GCUL supporting Hayek ideas of nth concurrent priva...
on Wednesday August 27, 2025 @07:14PM (#45046450)
So the argument is: if you were paid in any stablecoin then prices of housing, coffee and cat food would not have gone up quite as much in the last five years. That does not make sense at all, the recent inflation is caused by insufficient supply.
Re:HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development Under BARDA
on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @07:31PM (#44805807)
You can also provide clean air and mandate such and such a turnover of fresh air, and you can have paid sick days, so that employees don't drag themselves in with respiratory illness and infect the rest of the staff. But it's America, can't have such.
Re:Hydra: Vehicles on the island โ 'After the works they abandon them ...
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @01:39PM (#44089397)
They haven't done it yet, which would indicate that it's complicated, where is the nearest scrap dealer that would take the stuff? The Eastern Peloponnese is thinly populated, the nearest town is Nauplion with ~ 20 k inhabitants, else there is always Athens. Now you have an interagency coordination problem, Hydra town council would have to get together with its counterpart in Athens, acquire the title, collect them, charter a ferry and lowbed truck at the destination and assemble a crew get rid of the junk. Until sufficient tourists complain it's not going to happen.
Re:Trump Pulled $400M from Columbia. Other Schools Could Be Next
on Saturday March 08, 2025 @09:57PM (#43305753)
Carl Schmitt would agree, or maybe Helmut Schmidt, too, when he was Mayor of Hamburg in 1962: "We didn't refer to the Constitution much, in those days"
Re:The Secret That Colleges Should Stop Keeping
on Sunday February 23, 2025 @10:51AM (#43150115)
By outside forces, of course. Women entered the legal profession in the 1920's, but wages did not catch up until the Equal Pay Act was enacted under the Kennedy administration. There were plenty of labour market arbitrageurs profiting from the game, but the Civil Rights movement proved stronger.
Re:Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid resear...
on Saturday February 22, 2025 @09:13PM (#43145655)
If they are protected from competition they will end up like the US auto industry in the 1970's. They can try and do generics but Teva, Ranbaxy and Ratiopharm will eat them once patent protection runs out.
Re:Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid resear...
on Saturday February 22, 2025 @09:01PM (#43145552)
Back then it used to be the running joke about economists: "if everyone takes care of himself, everyone is taken care of"
Re:Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid resear...
on Saturday February 22, 2025 @08:58PM (#43145524)
Where's the pharma lobby? Pharma is the only industrial science left in the country!
Re:NLRB Acting General Counsel Rescinds Non-Compete Labor Policy
on Monday February 17, 2025 @10:09PM (#43085692)
Let's be honest, the other party wasn't much better. Lots of talk about "womens healthcare", but not a peep about funding OSHA properly. Me? Brought in to clean up after a major incident that made the regional news and cost the taxpayer ~ 2 millions.
Re:It's not a crime if we do it with an app
on Sunday January 26, 2025 @03:55PM (#42834004)
The wait time when you can't afford the physician is infinite. That's the market at work.
Re:KATRIN's Odyssey
on Sunday January 26, 2025 @11:47AM (#42831404)
The map shows the capacity of waterways. Down the Danube, across the Mediterranean and the ocean, up the Rhine, and only a few kilometers of road.
Re:It's not a crime if we do it with an app
on Sunday January 26, 2025 @11:37AM (#42831302)
Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though
That's an assertion, not a statement of fact. Pricing in natural monopolies is a mature subject, and public utilities have been a thing for over 100 years. Also, pricing for medical procedures is regulated in Europe, and it works extremely well.
Re:A 'warrior' brain surgeon saved his Malibu street from wildfires an...
on Saturday January 11, 2025 @06:00PM (#42669651)
Tolkien scholars would ask the question: is Sam Gamgee the warrior or the gardener? (The right answer is: he is a gardener, the Lord of the Rings is all about rebuilding after destruction.)
Re:Los Angeles fires expose inflated US home prices
on Thursday January 09, 2025 @11:22PM (#42652434)
It's scandalous, though, that the public will pay for firefighting efforts in areas that are unsafe to build in. It's insane to build on a slope or in a canyon that's plagued by katabatic winds.