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I remember my Dad buying a 386 25MHz a few years earlier for a similar amount.

In 1984 he bought a TRS-80 for almost a thousand dollars. 32kB RAM, around 1 MHz 8 bit CPU.

I bought a Pentium 90 in the late 90's for several thousand dollars. It had the FDIV bug in it.

After experiencing a lifetime of high depreciation in electronics, I'm extremely price sensitive when buying it. I feel that if I wait a few years everything will become much cheaper. Maybe that's not the case with the slow down in Moore's law and the AI datacenter build out.


I think there was sometime that drowned that was, Angela Chao, sister of former U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. She backed into the lake or pond with her Tesla and was trapped.

I think that the Scout brand of trucks may also return to everything manual. They are supposed to be targeting cost.


I saw another model where the PE buys a hospital. They sell the land under the hospital, everyone gets a cut, then they spin out the hospital. Now the hospital has to pay rent on the land it sits on.

It seems like almost every decision made is for short term gain, at the cost of long term viability.


The diesel particulate filter (DPF) forces the engine to burn more fuel periodically in order to burn off the particles in the filter. The net result is more CO2 than would be produced ordinarily.

I watched some farming videos, and the farmers calculate the hourly cost of their combine, it's in the 100's of dollars per hour. They hate it when the engine goes into the regen cycle, and they are forced to let the engine run.


I used to enjoy going to them too. I remember price comparing though, and thinking that stuff seemed too expensive. Fry's started to seem run down over time.


They are a little bit like a sales tax, except only for things not made in this country.


Like, at least 50% of the things you use every day, from phone and laptops to kitchen utensils.


For today, sure. People act like 365 days is long enough to change consumer spending habits, and onshore production facilities that took years to offshore.

If tariffs are held strong, there will be two possible outcomes:

1) Domestic production will be increased (via American businesses as well as onshoring foreign businesses), providing jobs and ultimately lower-cost products

2) International tariffs will be decreased across the board - resulting in a more level field for American businesses to compete in foreign nations

Few realize American goods have been tariffed internationally for decades, resulting in a difficult-or-impossible business climate for American businesses.

The situation is akin to Wall Street's infamous short-term outcome favorability. Tariffs are a long-term game, and people have to be willing to trade some short-term outcomes for the long-term economic health of America and it's businesses (and jobs, wages, etc).


> ultimately lower-cost products

When has reduced competition ever resulted in lower-cost products?

Even for goods we already mass produce, companies respond to tariffs of their competitor's goods by hiking their own prices up.


Reduced competition is a near-term affect. Demand will remain constant (or increase) for goods, so businesses will open and compete over the long-term. In the future it will be cheaper to purchase domestically produced goods vs. import them from half a world away...


Not sure why you are getting downvoted - nothing you have said is incorrect. Given the parent comments my guess is that it's because you're speaking in purely economic terms and not grounded in political ideology.


It seems to me that risk pooling kind of negates of the intent of insurance, ie. to spread out risk.


Well of course, the actual intent of insurance today is to make profit.


[dead]


This might sound crazy, but what if everyone in the country gave extra and as a result everyone in the country was covered?


why would I agree to that when I'm not at risk of that? (Assume for discussion I have had this tested - whatever it is). I have my own life and like everyone more things (including vacation...) I want to spend it money on than I have money.


Some of us think that a key aspect of society is that we take care of each other. If something terrible happens to you before you manage to amass a fortune, it’s nice to live in a society that won’t leave your family destitute.


The problem I see is a meta problem to your statement.

1) We should do whatever it takes to take care of each other no matter the cost, equality

2) The actual details on how to do that for every person in every dimension is not affordable, meaning decisions have to be made to violate rule #1

So now we are back to politics and deciding which ones are more fair than others.

So writing your sentence maybe true, but it's actually naive at the same time to think it can be done in every situation.


True, but reductio ad absurdum is a good way to make any argument look silly without actually considering nuance. Of course, there's some limit to what society will do to save an individual. If someone is lost at sea, we'll try to save them, but we won't spend $1T rerouting all of our available naval capabilities to do it. How much should we spend? The math isn't clear, and thus the economics aren't clear. But, where we should fall is somewhere on a gradient between "Every man for himself" and "Save every individual at all costs."

The question is, where do we fall on that gradient?


Some of us don't like paying for other people who make objectively bad decisions that cause them to need to be bailed out in some way.

There's nothing wrong with taking care of others, but there has to be limits. Hopefully the limits are designed in ways that encourage objectively good choices and discourage objectively bad ones.


> I have my own life

... which is not truly separate from the society in which you live.

If life sucks for your countrymen, then you (not! the royal-you, I mean you: bluGill) will inevitably be stuck dealing with the consequences.

Neighborhoods & communities atomize. Crime increases. Fascism creeps in. The list goes on.


Things are not that simple. Spending money on the toys/experiences I want also increases my community. As does investing in the future. Helping the poor does increase society as well, but it isn't clear which investment helps society the most (there is no one correct answer).


I know of one crowd sourced witch hunt on reddit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi

A lot of the cancel culture is also crowd sourced on platforms like these.


I remember people complaining about the degradation of the Usenet experience after AOL brought more people online.


Probably the online dating platforms are the same way. Someone actually finding their mate, and no longer needing the platform is counterproductive to their business model.


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