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Authorization and authentication will be the main challenge to solve here: who is authorized to issue those signals to the automated driver, and how are they authenticated so that malicious actors aren’t able to hijack the automated driver.

It could still protect you from one or more strains that you haven’t been exposed to through sexual partners and avoid contracting or passing it along to a future partner. There’s no practical way for a man to be tested for HPV (I asked and the doc said “it’ll be very painful and the result will be the same: get the vax”)

I experienced zero side effects when I got HPV vaxxed at 38yo.

I don’t think there is a threshold for intervention in setting prices. If a $100/hr minimum wage is too high, then a $20/hr min wage will also be too high for plenty of employers and would-be employees who are now unable to legally transact. Safety standards create similar issues, but most typically require capex that can be amortized or depreciated (unlike labor opex).

I’m not opposed to taxes. When designed properly, they’re transparent and avoid excluding economic activity like min wages do.

Rhetorical questions are real questions and useful for exploring the logical fallacies that are embedded in ideas like minimum wage.

As shown by comments elsewhere, picking a minimum wage is often based on some imagined everyman/woman’s standard of living that may preclude others from earning a livelihood at all due to jobs never created or capital replacing labor because government decided by fiat that no work that generates less than $X/hr in output shall occur. Human skills and living arrangements are infinitely variable, and governments fail when they attempt to preclude people with lower skills from finding work.

In practice, very few workers earn the minimum wage, but union contracts are often tied to it, so unions like to advance laws that increase the minimum wage, which leads to the outcomes described in the parent post.

As economic policy, they’re also bad because inflating the price floor of labor fairly quickly feeds through to higher costs for housing, food, and services.

Safety standards (ie rules of the road) and competent enforcement are good roles for government, and while they do tend to increase operating costs and function as regulatory barriers to entry, setting prices is best left to markets.

Monopsonies are easily solved by workers moving out of the (labor) market controlled by the buyer to better job prospects. Claiming ancestral ties to a place, etc, as reasons for remaining are then the choice of the worker. If enough people leave, the employer will be forced to increase wages to attract workers.

Yes, I agree: this research shows that governments do a poor job when they attempt to set minimum wages, and they would do better to focus on accomplishing income redistribution policies through the tax code.

When government tries to set minimum wages, they often result in job losses (or foregone jobs that were never created) which, as you wrote, is known in economic circles as "deadweight loss."

It's the same question, really. If we make housing too expensive to build through stricter codes, then housing won't get built and at some point (e.g., last decade in California discussed in the parent article), the homeless population increases and people/businesses decide to relocate because the math doesn't work.

I don't think a full look at the history of minimum wages will be kind to their supporters. Minimum wages were created by labor unions for the sole purpose of excluding other workers who are more productive or less expensive than their members[0].

Going back further, labor unions were created during the railroad boom by racist white workers to exclude Chinese laborers who were 2x more productive for the same price. Instead of responding to competition by getting better, American railroad workers formed labor unions and lobbied politicians for relief, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act [1] that forcibly expelled 400,000 Chinese immigrants and led to some horrific violence and racism towards Asian people in this country.

In all cases, the role of government should not be to mandate wages or prices or anything else that markets are better suited to establish, or there will necessarily be higher unemployment. Governments can help by establishing some health and safety standards and policing abuses, but when it comes to accomplishing the social goals that minimum wages intend to, that's better done through tax policy and income redistribution (e.g., guaranteed minimum income, earned income tax credit, welfare benefits).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workingmen%27s_Party_of_Califo... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

Another reply already addresses your question about speed limits, which is another great example through which to examine these questions.

"Reasonable" is a completely subjective standard and not a good way to run a complex economy with an infinite combination of job seekers and providers.

Who gets to decide what is reasonable has big real world implications for millions of people. Get it wrong, and as we see in California here, people lose their jobs and businesses close all because some politician or bureaucrat (or misinformed voter) thinks they know better than workers and employers what the correct price for labor should be.

Exactly. Minimum wages are an attempt to solve economic redistribution policies by obfuscating the cost to employers rather through the tax code, which is the cleanest way to achieve the goals of broad based prosperity.

It also has consequences like increasing the attractiveness of substituting capital (i.e., automation) for labor or simply leaving some work undone (e.g., many smaller restaurants in CA are going out of business due to multiple government policies, including very high minimum wages).

Please define basic necessities.

Is a three-bedroom house in [pick nicest neighborhood in any metro area] a necessity?

How about a one-bedroom apartment in the same neighborhood?

An in-law unit (e.g., "granny flat") on a farm just outside town?

A room in a six-bedroom co-op house where meals are collectively prepared and shared?

Same could be asked about food, clothes, etc. I can buy used clothes for $5 or new ones for $100.

"Basic necessities" is woolly term that in practice is full of paternalistic value judgements. Every individual has a variety of resources to draw upon that would make them willing/unwilling to work a job at a given wage.

A government-mandated minimum wage means some people who could find employment will not because their output do not exceed the wages the government has declared must be paid. In practice, it also means many people starting out in life or who are less skilled never get the chance to be hired and learn new skills that increase their pay.

Minimum wages remove the lowest rungs on the job ladder that often teach skills required to be successful higher up.

This already exists: Earned Income Tax Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit

Real question: If government-mandated wages are good policy, why not set the minimum wage to $50/hr?

Why not $100/hr?

Real question: If government-mandated wages are good policy, why not set the minimum wage to $100/hr?

(Btw, the American healthcare system is about as far away from a free market as it gets. Don’t think that example supports your point.)

A corollary to this is that “tech” is simply the method of accomplishing a business’ goals/objectives. At this point, all companies employ lots of hardware and software in their operations. No one working in a modern company can “leave tech,” but OP’s comment about “big tech” stands.

Ok, now do restaurants!

The Innovator’s Dilemma supports your last paragraph but will likely make your first two paragraphs age poorly.

The tech will continue to improve if it finds its niche. Dynamic, low power, color informational signage displays are a big enough market by themselves to adopt and support enough product cycles to address shortcomings that advertisers have.

The potential for no mains power (e.g., small solar panel or a vibration energy harvesting power source) means virtually any flat wall could be turned into advertising inventory. Do accident lawyers need their ads to pop or just be displayed over and over again?

Is X vulnerable to Chinese government interference because its American executive has other business interests in China at stake?

I’d argue the TikTok remedy should be applied to X, too.

Or the nanoplastics that commercial RO filters appear to create [0]?

[0]https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121

Note: CA (un)FAIR Plan is not underwritten nor operated by the State of California. It is a state-mandated insurer of last resort run by an association of admitted insurers. If it experiences losses that exceed its assets and reinsurance coverage (which its president has said is a real probability), then every admitted policyholder in CA would be assessed a fee over the course of 1-3 years to cover the gap.

The CA FAIR Plan only offers $300/sq foot to rebuild, which is far less than the $500-1000/sq foot it costs to build new construction in most parts of the state.

In other words: the backstop for the CA FAIR Plan being unable to charge risk-appropriate premiums is an involuntarily assessment of policyholders in lower risk locations.

CA (un)FAIR Plan is required to periodically attempt to find and place policyholders with alternate carriers if there are options. They operate a clearinghouse to do this.

While the FAIR Plan is not required to help a policyholder mitigate their risk, it does offer up to 14.5% discounts off the wildfire peril premium for those who take mitigation actions prescribed by CA Department of Insurance (CDI), including being a member of a Firewise USA Community in good standing, screening vents with 1/8in metal mesh, etc.

All admitted carriers are also required to consider these mitigations actions when determining premiums; however, most of these rate filings have not yet worked their way through the overly bureaucratic CDI review process.

The bigger trend right now is the Wildfire Prepared Home program, which is the only science-based standard recognized by insurers.

I’ve concluded that this is likely the only solution despite the energy required.

Are you able to share any information about your setup for those who might be interested in replicating?

Any concerns about the nanoplastics that commercial RO filters appear to create [0]?

[0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121

Correct. To the great dismay and anguish of the Mexica at the time.

The hubris and bigotry of the Spaniards (repeated elsewhere by them and other Europeans) was truly a loss for all of humanity.

It’s on par with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in my book (pun intended).

This: https://rizomebamboo.com/

“ Fermilab irradiated these samples with the electron beam and shipped them back to 3M.

3M sampled both the headspace—the air at the top of the container—and the liquid to verify that the PFAS of concern had been destroyed without releasing hazardous products to the air.”

I think this is what we call fox guarding the henhouse. 3M has EVERY incentive to declare this whiz bang treatment effective because of the legal liability and financial incentives involved.

I’d want independent test results and a full accounting of the byproducts of this treatment before putting any faith in it.

TIL the Romans invented the first steam engine but didn’t seem to grasp its revolutionary potential and used it mostly as a party trick:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile?wprov=sfti1

I’m curious to learn more about your suggestions, but Icebreaker’s website [0] suggests this isn’t necessary:

“Use a normal warm or cool machine wash cycle with regular powder or liquid detergent. Separate light and darks as usual. Don’t use softeners or bleach.”

[0] https://www.icebreaker.com/en-us/caring-for-your-icebreaker....

One has to imagine the build, test, release iteration cycle for consumer-grade transportation is quicker than commercial trucking. Most trucks have an expected life of 30-40yrs vs 3-10yrs for passenger vehicles (yes, the used auto market exists but luxury buyers always buy the new model). Electrification is a major component in any fleet-based strategy going forward, and that’s going to happen quicker on passenger vehicle platforms than commercial trucks as well.

Also, the potential damage and liability differential between a 90,000lb freight truck and a 4000lb passenger vehicle has to factor in, too. All collisions and fatalities are unfortunate, but better to limit the liability early on in the scaling phase and come back to commercial trucking later once the company and tech are further along.

I'm not going to win points for defending a megacorp, but if this person wants to self-insure (and owns his home outright), then he would be entitled to do so. But until the mortgage is paid and he is able to self-insure, the insurance company sets the rules.

Put differently, if a fire were to happen and this open air mechanics/tire shop were to ignite and destroy the three neighboring properties, is this homeowner entitled enough to pay all damages caused by his negligent storage of combustible materials?

[edit] Plenty of notice should have been provided so the property owner had an opportunity to address the issues found, which may or may not have happened. We only have one side of the story here.