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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35017 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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What consensus*-defying beliefs did you hold that turned out to be right, and what consensus-defying predictions would you care to make now?

*in the most loosely defined sense--I just mean something that seems to go against the general public mood, not something you alone out of 8 billion people had a unique insight over.

Over the past few weeks, /r/technology has voted to the top numerous threads outlining deep-rooted issues with Amazon, from its trillion dollar market cap contraction, 11k layoffs, workers strikes and union-busting, and more recently, its Alexa division that's supposed to lose $10b this year.

Regarding the last headline specifically, I'm no superforecaster, but I've always avoided voice assistants and found the rest of the world's apparent eager adoption strange. I think my avoidance is potentially irrational: I generally distrust always-on-mics, but there is massive legal and reputational risk for any large tech firm to spy without court orders and there isn't a clear profit incentive to do it; my impression that the tech is clunky and dumb is probably 5-10 years out of date given all the improvements since; I also haven't identified a clear personal use case, but since I've never used it, I may well be missing out.

Now, there are plenty of goods and services that I don't consume that offer real utility to many other people. But I'd always thought voice assistants overhyped because I couldn't relate to just how much utility they were able to provide the average consumer and how profitable they are to their makers, considering how prevalent they are--new phones goading you into turning them on, perennial sales on voice gadgets, the cultural relevance of Alexas/Siris/Google Assistants/Cortanas/Bixbys etc. Like, I find the similarly free Maps app to be 100x more useful, and yet no one tries to shove Maps down your throat, maybe because they don't need to do it considering how useful it is. And so, while I don't share the fairly obvious undercurrent of anti-Amazon schadenfreude on /r/technology, the news that Alexa is actually failing badly and has always failed badly as a business investment comports with my preferences, and that's reassuring.

I recognize it's super hard to actually predict the future with real stakes (say, a financial investment), or else we'd all be billionaires. And left ignored are the many more incorrect forecasts that I/we don't write/talk about. Still, it's fun to casually celebrate moral wins, and I think useful to constantly tinker with your mental models based on new data points, especially when it relates to things that you strongly disagree with the rest of the world on. So what examples can you think of?

P.S. A couple more random and completely inconsequential things that I turned out to be right about:

  1. About a year before COVID, someone very senior at work pointed to Peloton as an example of an exceptional business model, saying that it was able to earn a huge premium thanks to the self-actualization provided by in-store sales reps who supposedly had sophisticated scripts that effectively bucketed leads based on demographics data etc. that resulted in outsized closing rates. I was skeptical, but its valuation kept on skyrocketing so decided to believe it. It now seems my skepticism was warranted.

  2. I've always held a grudge against Grubhub since back when it was the dominant market share leader in food deliveries circa 5-7 years ago. Can't remember the exact reasons why, but it was probably a combination of what I felt to be dishonest or dark pattern UI/UX for its end users, stuff like defaulting to outrageous tipping % to trick/shame users, or applying that tipping % to the grand total instead of before taxes and fees, or a sanctimonious interview given by its CEO. I'd always thought its dominance was unsustainable because of these red flags, and did enjoy a healthy dose of anti-Grubhub schadenfreude as its valuation cratered and market share dwindled.

And a couple of consensus-defying (again, very loosely defined) predictions:

  1. Asians in the US will go reliably majority conservative by the 2030 midterms (okay, it's not a crazy claim, but most pundits focus on Hispanics and Blacks shifting away from Dems, and largely ignore Asians; also, I've thought Asians were overdue to vote GOP for probably a decade now, which probably actually means my prediction has been very poor considering this hasn't materialized yet).

  2. Blended salads will go mainstream by 2050--that is, people will blend up what is very obviously originally a salad based on the ingredients (and so different from today's veggie smoothies) and drink it for efficiency's sake.

I also don't have a need for voice assistants. A solution for problems I've never had. I would never have gotten one. But the children's edition echo dot was on sale for $25 so I got it for my 3 year old. He loves it. He plays music and dances every day. He makes it count or set timers or list the colors or otherwise recite lists of information. And now my wife is using it as a music speaker.

It isn't for me, but it sure is for my wife and kid.

Ooh I love talking about how right I am.

I'll join you in the voice assistant and food-delivery service skepticism train. The latter in particular has always been a hilariously bad value.

I've also been correct in not jumping on the hype train in the software industry for Crypto or Machine Learning. The former has extremely limited use cases, and the latter is the last 5% of a process where 95% of it is excellent data engineering (which has been going on for years and is in many ways a harder problem). Even once you do great data engineering people are trying to apply ML to tiny data sets etc. etc. etc.

( or they dip their ballsack in your salsa )

I've definitely started seeing a conscious effort to make this more difficult. In more than 75% of the deliveries I get now have the bags sealed in some way--stapled together or tagged with some "tamper resistant" tape. Though I admit in cases where this isn't the case, like a cup of soda with a standard plastic lid on top, whether there is any chance someone crazy might throw a pinch of fentanyl in it and then I just die.

Ideal for end consumers, restaurants, and the platforms will be drone deliveries. I imagine this wouldn't become default for another 5 years, but whenever it happens, we'll have a true food renaissance, as expensive human labor and car traffic are eliminated, and deliveries become once again affordable (and much safer from tampering).

Low capital intensity, low productivity, high labour requirement services are, IMO, not sustainably accessible for lower-middle income unless there is a very large gulf between their incomes and unskilled labour incomes. The go-to example is that the cost of childcare is only affordable for the middle class when those doing the childcare are paid extremely poorly, and hence affordable childcare actually signals greater inequality, rather than equality. Food delivery also fits into this pattern. Prior to the proliferation of venture capital cash burning apps, food delivery in the UK, for instance, was limited mainly to chains where the cost of delivery was built into the higher price they'd charge, and you'd usually see this achieved through various half-price collection-only offers.

I was early on the Covid skepticism train, but I did accurately predict the overreaction- that there would be a lockdown following media driven freak out, the approximate timing of when republicans would shift to be after lockdown, and that essential businesses would often be no such thing. I also predicted very early that Covid would fizzle out due to mutating into a more contagious and less deadly form, not through vaccination.

My counterintuitive prediction I’m registering now is that men in skirts of some description will be normal by 2050. I’m expecting something like camouflage cargo kilts that come with a beard comb, not frilly pink skirts, by the way.

It's interesting how conservative men's ware has been. Men's suits from the 1920s don't look much different from modern suits.

I was very very early on the covid skeptcicism train. In fact I never bought into the idea of covid being a large enough risk to warrant lockdowns and anything else to begin with. As soon as the Diamond Princess data came out it was clear as day covid is a meaningful risk only for those over 70.

And I intuited that lockdowns will be massively net negative QALY because of that highly age stratified risk.

However, to be completely honest, the idea of not beingallowed to leave my house or being forced to wear something on my face for the first time was such a stark blow to my libertarian sensibilities, I had a knee jerk reaction. It was really a "They cant be fucking doing this, this is beyond unacceptable" moment for be back then.

Now I am more "they did all that with thundering applause, fuck everyone".

I am skeptical of anything using computer vision. 3-d flattened to 2-d at the mercy of CNNs doesnt inspire hope in me.

I cant explain exactly why in technical terms, but its similar to your distrust of audio assistants. Who the fuck needs anything to do with computer vision?

Counterintuitive prediction: There will be a period of peace and prosperity within the next 10 years, that compensates for the loss of the early 2020s.

Reason? Pure hopium, nothing else.

I cant explain exactly why in technical terms, but its similar to your distrust of audio assistants. Who the fuck needs anything to do with computer vision?

Comes in handy in a number of scientific fields.

But for cars, yeah I doubt it’ll be much of what it’s cracked up to be.

Maybe people just really liked Knight Rider. Who knows?

Computer vision doesn't technically require machine learning, that's just a big portion of the cutting edge. I personally don't like the AI/ML trend either due to aesthetic preferences, but it's quite useful in an ugly way. Pragmatic. Regardless, there are roughly a billion reasons to want visual data as a computer input.

Signed, a missile engineer.

Mainly that supergreens et al. are designed to still be tasty beverages foremost. I'm thinking instead of consumers who want to "eat" healthy, i.e. a standard salad, but find the process of eating it so boring (especially without dressing) and time consuming, that they blend a traditional salad and drink it instead. It would not taste very good, and perhaps even somewhat bad, but the "eater" knows it's a healthy salad.

I refuse to let a remote connected microphone into my home. I don't trust that the connection on the other end is not storing all the data for some future nefarious purpose.

Do you not let any smartphones into your house?

I can turn off all the permissions to use the microphone on a smart phone.

I also haven't identified a clear personal use case, but since I've never used it, I may well be missing out.

Here are some good use cases that I've found for mine.

  • When I'm busy cooking, it's really clutch to be able to say "Alexa, set timer for x minutes" while I keep working on my cooking.

  • Similarly to the above, when I'm planning a shopping trip it is useful to be able to verbally add things to my shopping list as I go through the kitchen identifying what things I need. And when I'm at the store, I can use the app on my phone to pull up the things I need.

  • Simplifying things for my wife on occasion. She is terrible at remembering the details of how our AV receiver is hooked up, and she used to always ask me "hey which input is X on?". But now (with the assistance of a Harmony hub to be fair), she can go "Alexa, turn on the PS4" and all the devices get turned on and to the correct inputs.

  • Triggering home automation routines. For example, when I say "Alexa, good night" I have a routine which turns off every room light, turns the TV and related devices off, locks the front door, and turns the hall lights to a dim nightlight setting. Sure I could do a button to kick off the routine, but it's a lot nicer to be able to issue voice commands and not have to have a physical thing to trigger for each routine I want to setup.

Overall, I would say that it is legitimately useful to have in our household. Granted I'm looking to jump ship, but that's because Amazon has been adding user hostile behavior and not because the core use cases aren't good for me. I would say that voice assistants are kind of like In-N-Out Burger: ridiculously overhyped by the hardcore fans, but still legitimately good as long as you don't let those hardcore fans set your expectations too high.

What user hostile behaviour are they doing that is making you jump ship?

the "good night moon, good night amazon® co ltd." thing is where it starts to look risky to me, especially if kids learn from it. Feels much safer to be able to say "computer: engage evening mode" in the famous "earl gray, hot" voice of command.

Once you start exchanging pleasantries with the abominable intelligence, it's all over. I know an old widow who started to chat with her Alexa thing during lockdowns, and building that sort of exploitable customer "relationship" with vulnerable lonely people is what some Amazon marketing ghoul drools over.

This is my issue as well. I want them to respond with an R2-D2 beep, not a "sure! One sec, let me find that for you! :) "

I actually was very pleased that the Amazon engineers let you set the device so that it responds to "computer". I had great fun for a couple of days going "computer, do this. Computer, do that." Unfortunately, it kept trying to respond when I was watching Star Trek, and it got annoying so I turned it back to the default of "Alexa". I want to be able to watch my TNG in peace, and all that.

That's hilarious, no wonder they always try to make the activation word something weird by default (although "Alexa" must have caused some embarrassing issues in strip clubs)

All those algorithms and they don't have voice print registration? Seems like it should be a simple update.

They do have some mechanism whereby the device will ignore the TV, but at the time it didn't work for not picking up Star Trek. Not sure if they have improved it since, though. It was 4 years ago, so it's certainly possible.

I don't use any of these home assistants, but I think the examples you gave are precisely why it's not profitable.

Amazon wanted/wants to use it to make money, ideally by you ordering and buying things off Amazon. Householders wanted to use it for things like "set the timer" or "what's the weather like" or "play that song". Amazon gets nothing out of you using it as an oven timer, and for shopping lists they want you to order what you want off Amazon Fresh or something, not bop down to your local grocery store.

They sold it as that kind of personal assistant, but the idea was to be a money-maker steering orders and purchases Amazon's way. That people used it for the unprofitable functions that Amazon marketed as the ostensible purpose is just icing on the cake.

play that song

I believe that requires a subscription to Amazon music. I think selling subscription services was their big plan.

It does, and it will endlessly remind you of it. At a AirBNB place we stayed at, they had Alexa, and you could sort of trick (play channel X, or play a different song, which it then tells you it can't, and plays something close). Super-obnoxious, further turned me off assistants.

The weird thing is that Amazon's E-commerce arm isn't even that valuable. The bulk (maybe 80%) of Amazon's market value comes from AWS. E-commerce is now being recognized as a not-particularly-good business, and Amazon loses money on it.

So spending billions on a device that encourages buying stuff on Amazon wouldn't be a great idea even if it worked, which it doesn't.

The weird thing is that Amazon's E-commerce arm isn't even that valuable. The bulk (maybe 80%) of Amazon's market value comes from AWS. E-commerce is now being recognized as a not-particularly-good business, and Amazon loses money on it.

Source? According to Amazon's most recent annual report to the SEC (Ctrl-F "Note 10"), operating income was 18.5 billion $ (74.5 %) for AWS, 7.2 billion $ (29.2 %) for e-commerce in North America, and −0.9 billion $ (−3.7 %) for e-commerce outside North America. At least on the basis of those numbers, e-commerce does not look unprofitable.

Going off memory, last quarter they were negative profitability on non-AWS. Cash flow numbers are going to look even worse because of that ungodly capex.

Edit. Found the slides from their latest earnings. North American e-commerce segment had losses in each of the last 4 quarters, with the most recent quarter being -412 million. International might as well get axed. Earnings are hugely negative and getting worse. Last quarter was -2466 million. Maybe you are looking at older pandemic-era data?

In the document that I linked above, which is an official filing with the SEC, e-commerce in North America is shown as profitable (positive operating income: net sales minus operating expenses) in 2021, 2020, and 2019.

Oh I have no doubt of that. Especially because of the user-hostile behavior I mentioned. These days it's hard to use the damn thing without it advertising some "feature" to you, in the form of saying "by the way, did you know you can blah blah blah?". And if that wasn't bad enough, they straight up put ads in the shopping list section of the app trying to get you to buy their food deals. It's pretty clear that they are trying desperately to get the sort of usage you state.

I admit to some enjoyment that the marketing bods at Amazon thought they were being stealthy and getting one over on people: "We'll sell it to them as a handy aide-memoire and chat buddy, and once they're dependent on it as their computer friend, they'll move right along to buying stuff from us as is the plan!"

People just used it as the aide-memoire and didn't turn over their bank accounts to Amazon. I like that.

advertising some "feature" to you, in the form of saying "by the way, did you know you can blah blah blah?".

This seems like an unavoidable consequence of the difficulty in making an unintelligent auditory interface into a discoverable interface. I glance up at my desktop right now and I can see a couple application menu buttons, one for an OS menu, a half dozen icons for various utilities, a half dozen launcher icons for common applications or searchs or such, a virtual desktop panel with a few other applications visible ... and none of that was obtrusive in the slightest. My eyes can glaze over the parts I don't need a thousand times without bothering me, but then if I actually need something I don't have to have an exact invocation memorized, I can open up a menu and skim down to look for it.

How do you do that with a voice assistant right now? If it was practically passing a Turing test then I could describe vague needs or it could anticipate needs accurately, but with modern not-quite-there-yet AI what's it supposed to do? My ears can't glaze over "did you know you can" the way my eyes can glaze over a menu item or an icon, but I need some sort of indication of a feature or I just don't know the feature exists.

(it also would be nice if it actually had the same basic features as my computers, at the same price; now that's a problem they should have been able to avoid...)

The tech-horny have been pushing voice controls as the technology of the future for decades now, but the public has been slow to catch on. I think it's largely because there's something inherently weird about talking aloud when there's nobody else around. Either way, the Alexa was sold as a voice-activated solution to various problems that no one has (telling it you need to order more laundry detergent, really? Who orders laundry detergent anyway?), but the reason I think it caught on is because it was convenient as a music player. Alexa came out around the time that people were switching to streaming services en-masse and switching from laptops to phones en-masse. The problem was that at the time there weren't a lot of wireless options to allow you to connect your phone to a speaker; most people were only familiar with boom boxes and the like that used aux cables, which meant your phone was tethered to the stereo. The Echo came out around the same time as other bluetooth speakers and was able to advertise a lot of these fringe Alexa services to go along with it. So in a brand new marketplace with a bunch of untested options, the Echo comes out ahead to a lot of people because it seems to have the most features. The problem is that once everyone bought an Echo they quickly came to realize that they only really used it as a music player, so when they wanted to upgrade they looked not to the new Echo models but to whatever bluetooth speakers Wirecutter or whoever was touting as the best at actually playing music. And without the Echo, Alexa's pretty much useless since every phone has an equivalent voice assistant feature.

As for Peleton, I predicted that as well, though I admittedly haven't been paying much attention to their downfall. First, it's a "smart bike" that's more expensive than a regular exercise bike. Second, half the appeal is being able to pay for a subscription that costs between 12 and 44 (!) dollars per month to stream spin classes. Exercise bikes are pretty readily available for not a lot of money, but let's be honest, they weren't peddling the thing as just another exercise bike. The app subscription is where the real money was at. The problem was that the material available on the app appears to be no different than similar stuff you can get for free on Youtube. If they had made it an interactive cycling experience similar to Zwift then maybe they'd have something, but that would actually cost money to implement. The problem is that, even if the app was an essential part, it's in the nature of exercise equipment that most of the owners don't use it nearly as much as they intend to. Then people start cancelling subscriptions and the next big exercise trend is upon us so sales of new machines start to slacken and befor you know it your stock price is 1/10th what it was at its peak.

I doubt Asians will be reliably conservative on that timeframe. Asians tend to be more educated and more urbanized than blacks or Hispanics, and in recent years the educated, urbanized vote as a whole has been trending less conservative, not more. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any broad reason for Asians as a group to switch political allegiance. Affirmative action is probably the most obvious reason, but I'd wager that half of all Asians in the US live in states where the practice is already illegal, and it may be illegal everywhere less than a year from now. Even if it's allowed, it's really only an issue that affects a relatively small number of people. Most Asians aren't having problems getting into their preferred schools because there isn't a shortage of good schools, or even a shortage of excellent schools. There's a shortage of elite schools, but most people, Asian or otherwise, aren't getting anywhere near an elite school regardless of what their affirmative action policy is. And I haven't heard of any kind of ripple effect that goes all the way down, or even that it's prevalent at all elite schools. Overall, I just don't think it's enough of a concern that someone is going to shift their entire political ethos over it.

IIRC the recent red shift in the Asian vote is confined to a few specific ethnic groups that are pretty much all socially conservative anti-communists. The idea that they’re a majority of the Asian vote is foolish and the idea that the factors which apply to them apply to other Asians is equally foolish.

Yah all the Asians who vote conservative are immigrants from the old country- as they die off and immigration flows decline due to Asian nations experiencing population decline you should expect higher levels of Asians to vote Democrat.

I’m not sure that’s actually true- Vietnamese are split 50-50, but I’m pretty sure less than 50% are actually from the old country.

I think there’s pretty hard caps on how high the GOP vote can go among Asians. I don’t think we’re quite there yet and I think that age is probably not a major factor in it.

By the way, if I had to pick a minority group that I expected to swing republican in a big way in the next few cycles, it’d be Muslim Americans. Conspiracy theories about creeping sharia have mostly played out, they’re disproportionately kulaks, and they probably tend socially conservative on average.

84% of Vietnamese over 18 were born overseas according to PEW in 2012. Couldn’t find any newer figures for 18+ but in 2021 62% of all Vietnamese were foreign born and the average US born Vietnamese is 17 years and thus can’t vote, which leads me to believe at least 70% of Vietnamese voters are foreign born.

If they had made it an interactive cycling experience similar to Zwift then maybe they'd have something, but that would actually cost money to implement.

Yeah, as I was reading you commentary, I was thinking about Zwift, and Zwift is legitimately fantastic. You're on the bike that you're going to ride outside anyway, so the hardware cost is just a Wahoo Kickr or similar (still expensive, but if you're the kind of person that cares about cycling wattage, you probably have some expendable money). The gamifying of the experience got me to train harder on a bike than I ever previously had and I showed up to spring group rides quite a lot stronger than I otherwise would have been.

In retrospect, I think this may have been a Peloton mistake - they probably missed out on the more performance-oriented fitness crowd to a significant extent, which may well be the people that most compulsively stick with the product.

Peloton was aimed at a different and probably much larger segment; it wouldn't make sense for them to pivot and go after the Zwift/TrainerRoad/TrainingPeaks/Sufferfest* set, because that group is smaller and they had no advantage there. Their mistake wasn't the segment they went after, it was in not realizing the obvious -- that the pandemic wasn't a windfall that was going to last.

*excuse me, Wahoo SYSTM. Also to be fair Zwift is aimed at a broader market than the others and likely has more overlap with Peloton.

I think it's largely because there's something inherently weird about talking aloud when there's nobody else around.

I'm the opposite. I love voice assisted stuff, but hate doing it when other people are around.

As for Asians becoming reliably conservative, I think it'll be more that Democrats leave them behind. Asians tend to have more traditional views around family, marriage, sex, education, work, etc. When it comes to urban living, they want safe streets, low-crime, not to be stepping over drug addicts. The successful pushback against progressive policies seems to come from Asians.

There are all kinds of ancillary voice assistant-ish stuff like voice to text, or text to voice, or doing voice driven commands in an Apple TV search (so incredibly superior to having to punch text with a button), or just setting reminders - as opposed to voice-driven shopping or games/trivia - so this is by no means a lost industry. Ambient computing and its contactless, labor-saving attributes is not going anywhere.

I worked with chatbots and voice assistants for about a 3-year period ending in 2018, but looks like I might have dodged a bullet long-term. In fact I worked on Bixby which everyone knew was dead in the water even before now. (Samsung attempted to have their own standalone device ala the Amazon Echo which was even more outlandish.)

I think I was one of the first people to say that being outside was probably not only safe but one of the best places to be during the pandemic. I was also one of the first to argue that the lockdowns and masks would likely go on for a lot longer than most people realized. I also predicted the reversal of most remote work.

Current consensus defying beliefs:

  • current efforts to fight climate change are causing more harm than good. (75%)

  • congestion pricing is very good (99.5%)

  • there might not be a recession within the next year (50%)

congestion pricing is very good (99.5%)

What do you mean by "very good?" The objections I've heard from left-ish friends is that it prioritizes rich people, which is both true and also exactly the point. People whose time is worth more don't have to waste as much of it in traffic, and in turn everyone else in the city gets their taxes offset a bit. Deciding whether this is good or not depends entirely on how the good is measured. How would you measure it?

https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/loc16y/congestion_pricing_is_an_underrated_and_poorly/

It's also just good to prevent overcrowding. Highways reach a congestion inflection point where each additional car results in less throughput (fewer people-miles delivered per hour) and that's a classical tragedy of the commons. Even allocating space by lottery would be better than letting everyone on. (Which is not to deny that an auction is better than a lottery, just that preferring the wealthy is only part of the benefit.)

This podcast on congestion pricing was really good. Good in the way that it clarified some unique aspects of the problem in my mind that I hadn't previously understood. Primarily, one issue is that there is no mechanism for the money acquired from the people willing to pay to access to road to end up compensating the people who choose not to use the road because of the price. For many other goods, this isn't as big of an issue. If there is a shortage of apples, it's good to allocate them to the people most willing to pay, but the other folks don't feel as much like they just lose out entirely. There are probably plenty of folks willing to bring a plethora of oranges to the market, and while they're not the same, I mean, eh?

Whereas, having more roads is valuable to people. So if the default solution is "just add a congestion price; that'll fix the problem; don't need more roads; screw the people who can't afford it", it's going to be tough. Those people still really want roads and access to them. They probably can't just go buy a close substitute. Their only real hope is to lobby the government to build more roads, but if the accepted solution is "just add a congestion price; that'll fix the problem", then it'll be more difficult to actually accomplish that (after all, the 'problem' was 'solved' by the congestion price!).

The hypothetical ideal would be if we could magically take the money gained from congestion pricing and give it to the marginal consumers who will now choose to not drive because of the price. That would provide them some compensation for their loss that could replace the hopelessness of wanting to lobby for more roads, which would greatly ease the tension/discontent (it would make the political fights over building/not building new road capacity less contentious, because there would be less of a cliff in loss-of-value), while still allocating road usage as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, IIRC, the podcast basically left this point with, "...and we have no idea how to actually implement something like this," and I agree. Simply slapping a congestion price on it might be the least bad solution that we've currently tried/figured out, but the nuance here leaves room for hope that we can devise something better.

Primarily, one issue is that there is no mechanism for the money acquired from the people willing to pay to access to road to end up compensating the people who choose not to use the road because of the price.

They are compensated as long as the money is spent on something that benefits them. It could be spent on some public service, given back as a rebate, or used to lower taxes.

So if the default solution is "just add a congestion price; that'll fix the problem; don't need more roads; screw the people who can't afford it", it's going to be tough. Those people still really want roads and access to them. They probably can't just go buy a close substitute.

The money can be given back in a targeted way. It could be given to poor drivers such that no one won't be able to afford the congestion charge and everyone will be better off.

Totally disagree. If you think it's an injustice if some people aren't willing or able to provide valuable enough labor in the labor market to entitle them to consume enough scarce goods and services, then we can have a social safety net. But it's economically incoherent to argue that the specific dollars that we collect when we auction off access to a fundamentally scarce service (even if it's a government provided service like roads) need to be handed to people who don't use the service.

I'm 100% on board with not screwing with the price signal in an effort to try to redistribute wealth (if you've ever listened to EconTalk, you should be convinced of that), but this isn't that.

The core observation is that when I sell a scarce good, say an apple, to you, I'm giving something up - the ability to use the apple. But what I'm getting in return for giving that up is money. That's what makes it an exchange.

In this case, that two-sided thing isn't happening. The people who are giving up the ability to use a scare resource are not getting something in exchange for it. It's weird, because the process is being mediated by a gov't who gets to 1) set the quantity of roads, and 2) set the one-sided price for them. So, it's simply not an actual exchange that follows the normal principles.

Instead, the people who are giving up their ability to use the roads view it as purely an imposition of government choice to force them off the roads, with no benefits (only pure costs) coming their way. Does it need to be the specific dollars that are collected by the congestion tax? Not necessarily. But further fundamental theorizing needs to happen to figure out how to structure the system so that all parties are properly incentivized to desire that the gov't build the efficient number of roads and charges an efficient price for it. Without these incentives done properly, we've already botched the price signal's ability to regulate the number of roads/price for them (it becomes a matter of pure political power), without even having the motive of trying to redistribute wealth! We're already causing the very problem that you're now desperately trying to avoid!

The people who are giving up the ability to use a scare resource are not getting something in exchange for it.

They aren't giving up the ability to use the roads any more than you'd be giving up the right to eat an apple by not purchasing the apple.

Should the apple industry be taxed so that the proceeds can be specifically distributed to people who have chosen not to purchase apples?

Instead, the people who are giving up their ability to use the roads view it as purely an imposition of government choice to force them off the roads

They could view it any number of ways, but idiosyncratic views don't make good policy arguments.

They aren't giving up the ability to use the roads any more than you'd be giving up the right to eat an apple by not purchasing the apple.

That's because it's possible to not purchase the apple.

Roads are not entirely funded by congestion taxes placed on road users, even in this scenario. You can't avoid paying for the road.

The government also used eminent domain to build the roads, which is inherently a non-market activity, and its police powers to control road usage, and central planning to decide where to build the roads. Apple sellers lack this power, and we only give the government the power to do this as part of a bargain which includes the government letting us use the roads.

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They aren't giving up the ability to use the roads any more than you'd be giving up the right to eat an apple by not purchasing the apple.

In your scenario, whence my right to eat the apple in the first place? It doesn't even make sense to talk about "giving up" a right that never existed.

Should the apple industry be taxed so that the proceeds can be specifically distributed to people who have chosen not to purchase apples?

No. The apple industry is giving up their use of apples in favor of money, so their incentives are properly aligned.

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When the Chinese needed Beijing not to be a smoggy dystopian hellscape for the Olympic games, they barred people from driving on a license plate basis. It's quite the elegant way of handling these sorts of things.

Rationing some scarce, car related resource, based on the licence plate has occured many times.

Ah, well. Fair enough. I'm not old enough to remember the 1970s.

Where are good statistics on the reversal of remote work? That still seems very much up in the air. Office vacancy is still high in the flagship coastal metros, though I hear offices are fuller in the heartland.

I've had uninterrupted remote work since March of 2020 (which included switching jobs) so at least for me it's all alive and well. Incredible life-changer in fact.

I don't have any good stats on it. I thought it was common knowledge that most people had returned to working in person. But maybe I'm wrong.

My impression is that it's a bit mixed. People are back from working 100% remote, but very few are back 100%.

But perhaps this is what you meant?

current efforts to fight climate change are causing more harm than good. (75%)

Could you expand on this? Curious as to what exactly you mean by this

Climate change is only expected to harm world GDP by about 4% by 2100 (the worst estimates put it at 20%), and the range of likely temperature increases has narrowed recently, for the better. A lot of people talk as though humanity is going to go extinct. Young people are even choosing not to have kids because of it.

In my work and personal life lately, I have seen an absolute take over environmentalist ideology. It produces huge amount of bureaucratic waste and endless non-sensical decisions. There are endless complex government rebates and regulations designed to fight climate change. I meet so many people whose work is somehow related to some kind of government program to fight climate change. I haven't tried to quantify it. But I find it hard to believe it isn't going to greatly exceed 4% of GDP in the next 77 years.

It seems to be taking on some features of religion, where people want to endure painful sacrifices to show their allegiance to a social cause. Just in the last few years, ridiculous and pointless inconveniences have been imposed and more are coming.

  • We have banned plastic straws and replaced them with soggy paper ones.

  • We have banned plastic grocery bags and replaced them with paper bags that rip and dig into your skin.

  • We have have banned clear garbage bags to make sure people are recycling and composting even though this has been shown for some time to be wasteful.

  • In my city there explicitly deliberate attempts to increase congestion and reduce parking to discourage people from driving.

  • They want to ban gas engines by 2030.

  • There's even talk of banning oil fired furnaces.

All of this in a country which will likely benefit from climate change. A carbon tax (which we have already) would probably be beneficial, but instead, we get a hodge podge of minimally helpful and maximally inconvenient regulations.

Some of these may seem like minor inconveniences, but they are a sign that people are focused on showy sacrifice and not actual progress. This attitude pervades the entire movement and means it is probably going to be net harmful by its very nature.

There is no economic or rational thinking driving this. Every decision seems to begin and end with whether or not it helps the environment. There is no talk of trade-offs or how to most efficiently help the environment.

The government is using climate change as an excuse to meddle in every aspect of our lives for the worse. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve has lately been making up nonsense about accounting for climate risks in its regulation of the financial sector.

This is all very dangerous because something which has a far bigger effect on our future prosperity than climate change is very small changes to the rate of economic growth. A 4% decrease in GDP by 2100 is equivalent to a 0.05 percentage point reduction in economic growth.

But environmentalism has become something opposed to progress itself. It views our future as one where everyone's quality of life is worse. The enormous convenience of plastic and personal vehicles will be gone.

Do you mind if I link this from the Heat Pump culture war post? It's everything I was trying to say but better.

I have so many graphs of absurdities like Germany's "sustainable energy revolution" fueled by burning wood chips and brown coal, and all I can do is gesture in helpless rage at how evil I find it all.

Go ahead.

Not OP, but I believe the same thing, more or less, so I'll give it a shot.

"Renewable" energy is likely not a good long-term solution to our energy needs. It is very poor at providing stable base load power. At one point yesterday, something like 45% of Germany's power was generated by coal. Contributions from wind and solar were essentially zero. The very expensive renewable infrastructure built throughout Europe is only utilized to a small percentage of its capacity. Meanwhile, nuclear plants are being retired. We are treated to absurdities such as France being fined for not reaching its renewable goals despite having by far the lowest carbon intensity of any major European country. Or forests being felled in the United States to import "renewable" wood pellets for power generation in Europe.

A renewable power transition will require vast amounts of copper, lithium, and other base metals. It is very unclear where these metals will come from. As batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels age they will require disposal and replacement, meaning that this is not a one time cost either.

Various sources of power have different returns on investment. For something like natural gas, you might get 100x the energy from burning it than you need to acquire it. For solar, this number is much lower. Exact estimates differ, but the true number is probably much lower than overly-optimistic government estimates, somewhere in the low single digits. Building a less efficient energy infrastructure will stifle development in the third world and lower standards of living. Of course, people in China and India understand this which is why they are building new coal plants hand over fist. One new coal plant raised eyebrows as it was built to support the massive energy needs of the nearby solar panel manufacturing facility.

In my belief, nuclear power is the one and only solution to solving the energy crisis while preserving the environment. Sadly, the environmental movement has prevented nuclear energy from reaching its full potential. In my opinion, organizations like Greenpeace bear a higher share of responsibility for climate change than oil companies like Exxon.

I'm sure I'll get pushback on a lot of this, and I could do a better job with citations, etc.. It really deserves an effort post but buried in the thread this feels like the max level of effort that can be justified.

Yeah, I agree with you on all these points. As an environmentalist it often feels my biggest opponents are other environmentalists. : (

Blended salads will go mainstream by 2050--that is, people will blend up what is very obviously originally a salad based on the ingredients (and so different from today's veggie smoothies) and drink it for efficiency's sake.

I doubt this because people don't actually like the ingredients. They like ranch or whatever other gross and caloric dressing they put on, and they don't want to actually know how many calories of it they are consuming, because it will obviously be so much that their salad is about as healthy as fried chicken in ketchup sauce.

People should probably just be like me and admit vegetables are gross, and force yourself to eat a bowl of kale or romaine before the meal starts in a quick, but unsatisfying fury.

For years now, I've eaten my veggies by ditching side salads and just replacing my secod meal with a bowl of self-made salad consisting napa cabbage (much better for salads than lettuce), tomato, cucumber, carrots, red onion or yellow pepper, a squirt of light dressing and a protein source (usually tuna, salmon, chicken or pork). It goes down very well.

  1. Salads done well are delicious, 2) calories are not a great indicator of what’s healthy vs what isn’t

Are carrots all that healthy? If so not a bad option, but much slower I'd think because of all that chewing (which might be part of the satisfaction to you, in which case think of mixing in celery).

Eating a health mix of vegetables would be better, but eating raw carrots is at least much better than drinking OJ.

Calories in salad dressings mostly come from fat, and fat is typically more filling than carbs. Of course the war on fat has eliminated it from many products, replacing it with carbs that leave you craving more.

Vegetables coated or cooked in fat are delicious.

You can drown your salad in dressing, and you're still adding fewer calories than a single twinkie. 4 twinkies have as many calories as a steak. The steak will leave me feeling fuller, as will the salad.

People should probably just be like me and admit vegetables are gross, and force yourself to eat a bowl of kale or romaine before the meal starts in a quick, but unsatisfying fury.

Or they could find vegetables they like. If you think all vegetables are gross, you are either a picky eater or ten.

I hated vegetables as a child, like most kids. When I started eating them again as an adult, I learned that brussel sprouts (!!) properly sauteed, are actually delicious, fresh green beans can be good, and raw spinach is superior to lettuce for just about any purpose.

(Cooked spinach, however, is still disgusting.)

I can't handle Brussels sprouts, not because of the flavor, but because they smell like death. Had a roommate who would cook them all the time and it would stink up the whole house.

If you think all vegetables are gross, you are either a picky eater or ten.

Or I just know that they are worse and ruin the meal. Just like a mixed drink is inferior to just drinking the cheap vodka and then enjoying your soda. There is no single malt vegetable that I've found. Better to just chug a handful of spinach and then get on with the good part of the meal.

When I started eating them again as an adult, I learned that brussel sprouts (!!) properly sauteed, are actually delicious

Oft alleged to me. This comes in two forms in my experience: Tastes like bacon, because its actually like 30% bacon, or bad.

No reason for me to deal with these illusions. I just eat raw spinach or kale, in 25 seconds, and move on with life.

Dude. Bake or roast some cruciferous veggies with some root vegetables. Add some salt and butter. It’s divine.

False. It is mediocre at best. Easily outdone by any non-green thing. Adding butter is defeating the purpose of consuming calorie free fiber. Why not just eat mac and cheese if you are doing that?

I don’t eat veggies so that they’ll be calorie free, I eat them for fun and profit (nutrients + fiber).

I’ll give you a secret. Mac and cheese is better if you add chicken and broccoli to it.

But it’s clear I will never convert you to my culinary religion, I’ll go evangelize elsewhere :(

I really like asparagus and Brussel sprouts baked on a sheet with butter. Tastes great. Also plenty of fiber, etc. I'll keep eating it. Perhaps with some mac n cheese.

I learned that brussel sprouts (!!) properly sauteed, are actually delicious

Brussel sprouts of the past are different than the Brussel sprouts we eat now:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo

force yourself to eat a bowl of kale or romaine before the meal starts in a quick, but unsatisfying fury.

You can just not eat the vegetables, you know.

And do what with the daggers coming out of my wife's stare? Also, calorie-free fiber has benefits.

The taste of vegetables depends very much on how fresh they are. Carrots eaten right after being pulled out of the ground taste very good, while old carrots taste horrible.

Old tomatoes are gross, but fresh tomatoes are good, and tomatoes eaten right off the plant taste like a completely different vegetable.

Carrots eaten right after being pulled out of the ground taste very good

They feel gritty and taste like dirt to me

You are supposed to wash the clay off first 😁

True, but they all taste worse than steak, cheese, and chicken. So whatever it is it is just a roadblock to the good portion of the meal.

Indeed tomatoes taste so different they become a fruit ;)

But I'd always thought voice assistants overhyped because I couldn't relate to just how much utility they were able to provide the average consumer

The primary use case seems to be for a parent with an arm full of infant to call out "Ok Google, distract the toddler!"

Just replying to your first one, I would love to use voice control for a lot of my devices, if there was trustworthy on-device software for it. It would save me several minutes a day tapping on phone keyboards to get the weather or schedule info from some shitty website, which would add up to at least 15hrs a year saved, conservatively valued at $450.

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