He described “the missed acceleration in sales” of pumping Liquid Smoke down old oil wells as “a direct hard cost” of the regulatory regime. That tells me all I need to know about our narrator’s intellectual honesty.
I’m open to being convinced that there are better ways of doing things, but despite what half a century of propaganda has been saying, regulations generally aren’t enacted for funsies. They’re there for a reason, specially the reason that in the absence of those regulations, commercial actors were privatizing profit at the expense of society as a whole, and democratic society made a decision to make rules to stop that from happening.
“Regulation obviously has a critical role in protecting people and the environment”
and then quantifies “a mindblowing $40m/year in healthcare costs” and a total of “about $400M” in societal cost from one delay, mostly borne by the public.
In that context, the line you are reacting to is just one item in a long list:
“We’ve also spent untold millions on regulatory affairs at all levels of government, not to mention the missed acceleration in sales”
He even says,
“What pains me most is the 5 years of lost carbon removal and pollutant reduction”
So the piece is not “regulations bad, profits good.” It is: regulations are essential, but the current process is generating huge public harms by slowing down tech whose whole purpose is to reduce pollution.
Maybe he’s wrong on any given point, but he’s clearly trying to describe the utilitarian trade-offs in good faith
> regulations are essential, but the current process is generating huge public harms by slowing down tech whose whole purpose is to reduce pollution.
I hear this with a call to action of "we need to deregulate to help reduce pollution". And not the real call to action in that "these regulations need an overhaul". The title of "over-regulations" and the general tone seems to place the issue as an obstacle to be eliminated, not a system to be corrected.
But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” or did “virtually none of the neutron absorbers” reach the core? Those are both quotes from your post.
In literal or figurative battles, there are plenty of examples of actions that are simultaneously indisputably brave and utterly futile.
>But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” ...
I just naïvely assumed dumping 5,000 tons of material over a burning reactor probably did help significantly given the fire went out around days 10-12.
In retrospect, that assumption appears incorrect despite being congruent with the narrative of virtually every documentary I saw on Chernobyl in the late 90s/early 2000s:
"But I'm surprised that at Vienna they would have claimed that the core was smothered. It turns out, at least from my investigations, that the core froze by itself, solidified by itself, and stopped releasing." [0] (1994)
I was even able to find some research suggesting the aerial drops acted as an insulator, worsening subsequent radiation releases. At least they covered the glowing red target, which was thought to be a piece of the core ejected from the explosion and not the core itself as originally thought.
The divers at least appear to have saved the day from complete catastrophe, not to detract from the air crews' heroism.[1]
"Approaching" means to go towards the skillset. A home chef can develop better knife skills when cutting vegetables. That is approaching being a more professional cook, yet it does not mean the person could work in a restaurant. Maybe they could. We're talking about asymptotic.
If you are having understanding this distinction, then that is the exact point I am making about the Maker Movement. It is accepted that people progress if they do, and if they don't, then tough. There is a balance between perpetual tinkering, some sort of progression culture, and a full on degree.
Why must they “progress”? Why can’t people have hobbies? If they finish their blinky LED project and decide that’s enough investment into the hobby, why is that a problem?
Think about how many thousands have purchased a musical instrument only to abandon the hobby after a few months. Is that a failure of music-as-a-hobby or just humans being humans?
Most people I know who get into electronics as a hobby aren’t looking at it as a potential career. Myself included! This is the most absurd take I’ve seen all day.
I know how much fun it is to rag on lawyers, but this is pretty much exactly why companies have legal departments.
This should have been referred to the company’s legal department, who could have coordinated the response and/or investigation (if either were warranted), and then decided how to deal with something that sure looks a lot like invoice fraud.
This wasn’t a technical issue or a business issue; as soon as Monotype alleged a license violation, they made it a legal issue, and the lawyers should have been involved from that point on. It makes no sense for some random tech guy to be taking a meeting or handling the response on a licensing dispute.
And quite likely more expensive than the spurious license fee. Lawyers and businesspeople might pay them to go away, it takes a (self-proclaimed) nerd scorned to go for justice here!
Never pay scammers, they rely on your calculus and once they know you pay, just like bullies, they will keep coming back for more blood until you run dry.
I very much doubt it would be more expensive, even for whatever the going rate is for a spray-and-pray license scheme. In a half hour phone call, a decent lawyer can learn the facts and assess this fact pattern and say “this is a fishing expedition, don’t respond, call me back when they send a demand letter (they won’t) or file a lawsuit (they won’t do that either).”
100% this (for me at least). I’ve owned all the Xboxes since the first one up through the… Xbox One, I think? Was that one? I think I actually had an Xbox One X as a mid-lifecycle refresh, and when the next one came out and had a terrible name, pricing and storage situation, I threw up my hands and stopped trying to keep up.
Although it’s mentioned in the article, I’m surprised that the author didn’t place more emphasis on the different set of state laws that typically apply to mobile homes given their status as (theoretically) moveable property. The relative ease of eviction compared to real property (houses, condos, things without wheels) is probably the primary factor for the private equity investment thesis. It’s a material driver of the economics of these investments and substantially reduces the risk profile of the generally marginal tenant base.
Wow! I would have been absolutely fascinated by this when I was a kid.
I remember once wandering around my college library and finding the book “The Soviet Economy Through the Year 2000.” This occurred during the current millennium.
Wasn’t there also some issue with water when the A-12 or SR-71 was being built? Like the local water treatment plant started fluoridating the water or something, and it completely screwed up the production process?
"Completely screwed up the production process" seems a bit overstatement: with the budgets at stake for these projects, adding a distillation step to the water isn't some massive financial burden.
Fair enough! I think the primary issue was that for a while, no one had any idea why previous processes just stopped working. But my recollection of this is obviously hazy at best.
The modern day example that really made Baumol click for me is child care, particularly day care. It’s a highly labor intensive with basically minimal opportunities for productivity enhancements (due both to regulation and parental preferences, as well as just baseline sheer human decency). As the rest of the economy becomes more productive, the relative cost of child care goes up and up and up - which is why we now see situations where two-earner households can an entire after-tax income consumed by child care costs once they need to put 2-3 kids into daycare.
Daycare economics are just brutal. It's insanely expensive to pay for, the caregivers make peanuts, and the owners are always at breakeven if they're not explicitly non-profit.
US Big City numbers. I'm generalizing, but these are broadly accurate.
- employees all-in-cost is ~$5000 per month paying $20-something an hour (they will be hitting OT as well, because they arrive before dropoff and stay after pickup). Typical maximum legal ratio might be 5 to 1 kids to carers depending on age. This means just for basic labor, every parent is paying $1000 a month.
- Next there is commercial rent. In a metro area, easily $5-$10k a month. Amortize that across 50 kids and that's another $200 a month.
- 2 meals + snacks daily. Adds in another $250 a month per kid assuming $11 per day per kid. More if you're prioritizing healthy fresh foods and not prepackaged garbage.
- Liability insurance which is very costly (insurers dont love cases involving dead or injured 3 year olds!)
- Utilities in a building that houses 50 people for 200+ hours a month.
- Throw in all the other costs. You have the admin costs of running a business like accounting and billing, and you've got to buy diapers, replace worn-out toys, and purchase endless crayons, and so on.
By the end of it all, you're looking at very slim margins working 55-hour weeks, your employees are paid barely more than a barista, and the parents are taking on a second mortgage with every kid.
Let's say 4 kids per carer, 10 hours per day, minimum wage of £12/hour, an overhead multiplier of 3 (to cover rent, maintenance, insurance, taxes, sickness cover, etc), and you get to £72 per day per child.
Or about £1,500 per month.
Now, you can increase that to 8 kids per carer with older kids, but that's really stretching things if you want to run at all smoothly.
One way to measure the cost of human capital (the major component of childcare) is by the opportunity cost of that time spent. In Baumol's Effect it's not so much productivity stagnation that is the problem, it's the fact that there are so many better opportunities (jobs or otherwise) for a potential childcare worker to invest their time into.
For one, a higher child-to-caregiver ratio. There may be others, but this seems to be the easiest lever to pull to eke out some productivity gains.
Personally, I’m completely fine with having this be the subject of regulation - even if it’s possibly an overly blunt instrument, this is not an area where I’d be comfortable letting the free hand of the market do its thing. Further, I suspect that universal, subsidized, high-quality pre-K would be a net economic benefit in the long run, but I haven’t done the research to back up this assertion.
In my city, the regulations specify a maximum # kids per adult. So if you were to devise a way to supervise more children per adult, using technology, you would still have to hire the same number of adults.
The regulations specify that teachers must have completed a certain number of units of a specific type of education. If you create an AI Assistant that means you can hire people with less training and have the same quality, then ... you cannot.
The regulations regulate inputs rather than outputs.
Well I think the regulations regulate outputs as well (if a child dies or is injured in daycare, there are regulations to handle that). The issue is that people aren't happy with settling for reactive punishments when something actually goes wrong.
I’m open to being convinced that there are better ways of doing things, but despite what half a century of propaganda has been saying, regulations generally aren’t enacted for funsies. They’re there for a reason, specially the reason that in the absence of those regulations, commercial actors were privatizing profit at the expense of society as a whole, and democratic society made a decision to make rules to stop that from happening.
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