aljg

What percentage of your examples would not be wildly better served by owning USD?

Maybe China?

Certainly Venezuela, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, and other countries around the globe already use USD as a de facto currency. Heck, in Zimbabwe and El Salvador it's de jure as well!

To be fair, China is a big chunk of the global population already. But crypto enthusiasts are wildly unaware of what little use it actually has. It comes up over and over again in HN threads and on Twitter.

Half as much damage as coal is a pretty low bar! Natural gas also meets it, for example.

Your broader point is strong though, and there's no reason 4th-gen nuclear power plants being designed now couldn't deliver a quarter (or less) the damage of coal while still being economical.

"Pole" in English is derived [1] from the Latin palus (from whence "palo"). The archaic English word "pale" (also meaning stick or stake) survives in the expression "beyond the pale."

[1]https://www.etymonline.com/word/pole

Let me know when google undermines American democracy, enables a genocide in Myanmar, or casually starts kicking human rights activists off its products.

Or by “squint” do you mean “close?”

I'd guess that being coastal is pretty important here as well. But definitely interesting to think about in the context of a hypothetical new landlocked city.

Pedantically, I think you probably mean 105 mile/(2*pi) radius circle.

Civil asset forfeiture is another great example (analogous to these towing companies) of how a profit motive should not be associated with critical societal services. When there is a large incentive to steal or defraud (whether police or tow trucks) it's likely to happen.

This comment just further supports that there should not be such a profit motive.

>Even substantially expanded rail will never solve the problem of "I want to get from point A to point B, as quickly as possible, whenever I'm ready to leave" in a fundamentally different way.

There is nothing ordained about this. If we stopped giving away billions of dollars of the most valuable real estate in the world (in the form of parking mandates and street parking) or stopped ruining neighborhoods with freeways and car-centric development then rail (and transit more generally)_could very well be better by these metrics.

This would almost certainly be illegal (antitrust violation) and probably wouldn't be worth the firestorm even if it was legal.

Good point, I retract my blanket statement of "no legal liability." I should have said that they are not criminally liable.

Your link [1] shows how rarely police officers are found criminally liable for murder even in the most egregious of circumstances (only the most egregious ones are prosecuted at all and even most of those result in acquittals).

On the other hand you are right that link [0] shows that it is much more common that the police are found to have civil liability. Not personally, of course, the payments will come out of liability insurance (and, therefore, taxpayer coffers).

The person you are replying to just pointed out the race of relevant parties.

> Are you sure it’s as simple as “this guy was black”? If you aren’t sure it seems like a bad accusation to make.

Come again? First, the post doesn't rise to the level of "accusation." In fact, it explicitly leaves open the possibility that it's a coincidence.

Second, should we just not mention statistically relevant variables? Not report on facts? Do you doubt that race played a factor in this specific case, or that it is often relevant?

I don't believe they are opening themselves up to any legal liability. See [1] and links for a disturbing list of recent examples of police receiving qualified immunity. One example from the article:

> On May 18, the court turned away three of these appeals, including a jaw-dropping case in which police were granted qualified immunity after literally stealing $225,000. (There is no clearly established right not to be robbed by cops, the court held.)

[1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/george-floyd-sup...

Imagine: if half the single family homes were replaced by duplexes half the neighborhood could be green space ("natural settings")!

From an environmental perspective there is no contest between single family suburban development (aka sprawl) and dense urban living with plenty of parks.

Also, you won't find bigger bike/transit activists than the people advocating for the abolishment of single family zoning.

>>> "no empirical reason to believe it is the case."

It takes chutzpah to assert a negative. But I appreciate that you honestly don't believe it. Perhaps this will cause you to update your priors?

[0]: https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325...

Of course it's a universal right. I don't think there's an idealogical gap between us on that front.

The other side of the "or" is a particularly egregious example of the excluded middle (separate from the missing middle housing shortage). The idealogical gap, if anything, seems to stem from willingness to believe that supply and demand affect housing affordability. I believe they do. The "regulations making housing artificially scarce" are exactly those inhibiting supply.

To that point and your question---of course landlords will always raise rent to the extent that the law allows it and the market will bear it.

No, that would be patently absurd. Of course they're vacating (the upper end of) mid-priced housing.

It's almost as if an equivalent amount of mid-priced housing would suddenly become available. I wonder who you think would move into that?

Build up.

Yea to the space museum (why only focus on the Apollo program, though?) and housing!

Nay to the Victorian theme park part of Alcatraz.

Not sure if this is sarcasm. Certainly some of the stories (“Marin Highway System,” for example) should be regarded as bullets dodged.