... and work constrained to that ship in a bottle. No thanks! I do a lot of interaction between Bash and the rest of my OS X userland. That is something I found completely impossible with the Linux subsystem on Windows.
It looks like the things that are increasing the most in cost have government programs to give people money to pay for them. Maybe that's the problem! The free market has made TVs and even cars cheaper and better than ever.
There's certainly a correlation between necessities and government regulation, but I think that's an oversimplification. A more nuanced way to look at it is to consider the context in which a consumer needs to decide what to spend their money on...
* Necessities have a much different demand than luxuries. The free market may play against consumers when not getting healthcare or food is not an option.
* Markets like healthcare and education make the cost benefit analysis for the consumer so hard as to be effectively not done by most of the population. people find out the cost after they already owe the money a lot of the time. gov programs can exacerbate this but so can free market loans and insurance.
* As the article points out it's also got a lot to do with the production of goods. Mfg costs have come way down, innovations for lowering healthcare costs are much more complicated.
* Also consumers may have less money in their pockets to begin with because of some of the same reasons luxuries are cheap. Cheap mfg = cheap or no mfg paycheck in the us.
The market for healthcare is not free. If you don't buy it, you die or suffer in pain. There's no other transaction where that would be considered a free consumer choice.
If you walked into Best Buy and they said "Buy this TV or we'll kill you" that would be robbery, not a free market transaction, but that's pretty much the choice you have when you decide to buy healthcare or not.
Not only that but a lot of the time you have no reasonable way to know what a medical service will cost you until it's already done. You can't even reason about shopping around for a better price much of the time. Insurance coverage rules are so complicated and astoundingly open to evaluation by your provider after the fact that consumer choice is basically nullified. There's effectively no downward price pressure at all for this reason. Insurers and medical providers have built a feedback loop of ever increasing prices that consumers have virtually no power to stop except by risking their own health.
Contrast that with a typically optional and not insured procedure like laser eye surgery where prices have fallen over time and are clearly advertised. Consumers can shop around and know ahead of time what the price will be thus prices fell.
Without that option there's nothing free about the market for consumers.
Nonsense. Most cases of people going to the doctor are not immediately lethal. Broken bones, large skin lesions, rashes and the flu, back pain and tooth aches. With all of these things, it is really nice to go to the doctor, but you don't necessarily have to: You "just" face large amounts of pain and possibly long-term damage. Rational decision making takes place in a free market: You weigh your pain and the damage against the money spent at the doctor.
By socializing healthcare, we destroy its efficiency and drive up prices. If everyone goes to the doctor because of a little cough because it's "free", that is precisely the irrational uncapitalistic decision making we do not need. Another aspect is dumping millions into old people with end-stage cancer who die anyway, just prolonging the massive suffering by a couple of months or years (I personally know of such a case and it's heartbreaking how the greed of the doctors and the socialist health care system work together).
> By socializing healthcare, we destroy its efficiency and drive up prices. If everyone goes to the doctor because of a little cough because it's "free", that is precisely the irrational uncapitalistic decision making we do not need.
You say that like you are predicting the outcome of an experiment that hasn't been tried -- but socialized medicine has been tried in dozens of countries, and the price and efficiency outcomes you predicted have not happened in any of them!
In fact, people going to the doctor more often for things like a "little cough" is a good thing, because it increases the likelihood that serious conditions will be discovered early, in the course of treating less-serious conditions. The life expectancy of Japanese people, which is the highest in the world, has been largely credited to the fact that they visit doctors more frequently than most other people.
but socialized medicine has been tried in dozens of countries, and the price and efficiency outcomes you predicted have not happened in any of them
This is factually wrong. In countries where such a socialization has happened, a vast increase in medical spending happened as a result (depending on how much it was socialized). And there seems to be no end to the increasing prices of insurances and doctors.
You know, even if that were true (which I doubt) due to vast numbers of people now getting treatment they would have done without before, who is to say that the value rendered to society by that does not exceed the expenditure?
I don't think your idealized "market will fix everything" capitalist model takes account, among many other things, of the very true fact that people are frequently shortsighted and stupid.
> If you've had a cough for three weeks or more, tell your doctor. It's probably nothing serious, but you're not wasting anyone's time by getting it checked out. Call your GP today.
> By socializing healthcare, we destroy its efficiency and drive up prices. If everyone goes to the doctor because of a little cough because it's "free", that is precisely the irrational uncapitalistic decision making we do not need.
We know you're wrong by looking at rates of medication compliance. People who are prescribed medication often don't take it correctly. This is the case for minor and severe illnesses; it's the case for life-threatening illnesses; and it's the case if people get their meds for free or if they pay market price for their meds.
Worth noting that that website - probably the most down-to-earth, accessible public health resource on the internet - is the product of a socialized health care system.
I think there's significant evidence that socialized healthcare does not increase medical costs vs a system like the us has. Quite the opposite. In the us our costs grow dramatically compared to the rest of the world yet our outcomes are worse than many socialized systems.
Socialized healthcare can absolutely include limits on what they will pay for and not to reduce overuse. There's zero reason it has to allow for unconstrained spending.
Out of couriosity (non-us guy here), what kind of unnecessary regulations has the US in that matter?
But I don't think the analogy to cars or other goods is completely valid: You'd also have to mass produce the land to build the houses on, which, from what I know, isn't possible yet today...
Of course you can go another route and try to build many cheap apartments in a small amount of space. That's basically what has been done in Germany (both of them) in the 1950s and onwards: They were building many large, very dense apartment complexes with architecture optimized for easy construction and for providing living space for as many people as possible. (Typically implemented as high-rise "apartment towers")
Cities are still dealing with the after-effects of those projects today: The apartments are typically very small and far away from parks or playgrounds. Maintenance is slso lacking as the owners try to minimize cost. This has made them unattractive for almost everyone who can afford something better. The result of of course that the tenants are for a high part very low-income or "problematic" persons who couldn't get any other apartment. This creates an unsafe environment and makes the apartments even less attractive, leading to a downward spiral...
Modern urban planning had tried to learn from those disasters. We know today that "living quality" isn't just a luxury, it can have a direct effect on vandalism, the crime rate, etc.
The regulations that are overwhelming and unnecessary exist mostly in San Francisco (the biggest audience of HN).
In SF, zoning limits prevent you from building too high, and you have things like abandoned warehouses sitting unused because they are zoned for "light industrial" instead of residential.
And even IF your awesome new project to increase the housing supply follows all the zoning rules, it is likely to be blocked anyway. This is because the not in my back yard community will retroactively change the zoning laws to prevent the construction of new buildings.
And I'm not talking about governments preventing shitty buildings from being created. I'm talking about developers who want to build extremely high quality luxury apartments, while offering the community 30 percent of the units as rent controlled apartments and still getting blocked, because apparently some people prefer 100 percent rent controlled of a 5 story building instead of 30 percent of a 50 story building.
How do you mass produce childcare? Build a nice loving robot? It's a crappy job that pays minimum wage.
As for school, you could easily argue that we already have mass produced education. There is an abundance of low-grade colleges, pseudo-colleges and fake universities that charge fortunes (in debt of course) for an "education" that is worth about as much as grass clippings.
There already is mass produced housing too, they are mobile homes. Do you want to lift whatever local zoning regulation is preventing a mobile home park from popping up nextdoor to you?
Or maybe - and this is a crazy idea - but for thousands of years, the parents looked after their kids?? Having someone else do it for you, definitely counts as a luxury not a necessity.
Just in the middle of the last century, so within living memory, a household with a single earner, even blue-collar, could afford a house, a car, and to send the kids to college. So we do know how to do this.
none of these things can be mass produced, even in principle.
housing supply can be increased to a certain extent but it's not straightforward. increasing housing supply in marginal areas leads to untenable situations. increasing housing supply in high demand areas is incredibly difficult for many reasons, some of which are regulatory (and solveable) others are simply the hard fact that you can't add more square miles to the surface of the earth.
healthcare can't be mass produced. it is strictly limited by availability of medical facilities, doctors, nurses, and health care administrators.
education can't be mass produced. it is strictly limited by availability of educational institutions. the university is a smoldering ruin these days, if you hadn't noticed. its possible that alternative approaches to education might be a good way to dramatically increase the supply available. it's a conversation we need to start having as a society.
essential food products CAN be mass produced and they already are. increases in commodity prices are heavily linked to geopolitics, energy economies (processing, refrigeration, and distribution tend to dominate costs and those are all functions of energy price), and long established dietary habits. it would be much more efficient for people to eat 90% less meat than they presently do but good luck changing the habit on a mass scale.
I wouldn't go so far as "most of us". Having a home is a necessity; having a home with "character" is a luxury. Inexpensive housing needs to exist too.
Actually prefab houses can have as much character as any other suburban house (many will argue this is zero, but even those people will get an idea of what they can look like). Several of my neighbors live in one, and I didn't even know if for years: they look like a normal house. The need to bring it to the lot on a truck places some limits on the size of rooms and where walls much be to resist shipping issues. However a quality mass produced house is cheaper than regular construction.
Manufactured houses earned their bad reputation though. Many of them are/were junk. A lot of them are made by the same guys (and quality) who make trailer houses. Many city (suburban) codes, or HOAs will not let you put one up at all. This means that you don't see many of the quality ones. Most people are not actually qualified to judge quality of construction, some of them even today look nice for 10 years and then the maintenance nightmare begins: the parts are not standard home center sizes so it is a lot of labor to fix anything.
For most suburban houses you can take tens of thousands $$$ off the cost of new construction, get a good floor plan, and have your house built in 1/4th the time as regular construction. Anyone who is thinking about building their own house should look into this option (remember what I said about quality above though), but there are more energy efficient options that I think you should pay extra for even though it drives you back to site built.
I was frankly shocked the first time I saw Blu Homes. They look a helluva lot nicer than just typical 50 yr old wood frame ranches I see in the Peninsula. Including the one I live in.
If we're talking about cost here, "character" is a luxury. I personally would welcome lower rent (or lower building costs) in exchange for something generic.
Mass producing homes would likely mean more density/taller apartment complexes, not prefab mobile homes. And the necessity part of housing is having a decent home you can afford, having one with outward 'character' is a nice-to-have.
1. Largely above inflation are everything requiring local work.
2. Below inflation are everything mass produced in Asia.
3. Staying at 0 are the mix of the first 2, your car is built locally with automation and parts coming from everywhere in the world.
4. The last, housing and food is basically the center mass of the inflation calculations, this is basically normal that it is following the inflation.
The particular case of college tuition and textbooks is a US issue, we do not have it in the rest of the world. So, we just learnt that the higher education system in the US is broken or maybe we knew it already?
higher education, housing, healthcare, and many forms of essential food products (particularly produce and grains) have gone up in price by a hugely significant amount.
The other day I read a Volkswagen (VW Golf) today is ten times more expensive today then thirty years ago. And the modern one is cheating so it will be hard to sell, while the older models still work like a clock if there is no rust issue it will last another thirty years (if well maintained).
Also computers got cheaper and cheaper, but now with smartphones and tablets a desktop computer gets a lot more expensive again. A modern graphic card nowadays costs 500$, whereas in 2011 you got it or 200$. And CPUs got more expensive again as well. Five years ago you could buy a highend computer for 1200$, today you pay at least 700$ more.
> The other day I read a Volkswagen (VW Golf) today is ten times more expensive today then thirty years ago.
After adjusting for inflation? I'm gonna need a citation on that. This number sounds bogus.
> A modern graphic card nowadays costs 500$, whereas in 2011 you got it or 200$.
A high-end graphics card (like a 1070) costs $500. A mid-range "good enough" card (like an RX 480) costs $200. It's a segmented market, and it was exactly the same in 2011. Again, your claims are highly suspect and I want to see some numbers backing them up.
> And CPUs got more expensive again as well.
That's because AMD released a garbage fire architecture in Bulldozer, and Intel, no longer having meaningful competition, did what they always do and jacked up prices. Boo on Intel, but there's nothing macroeconomic about it.
A high-end graphics card is $700+, the 1070 you mentioned is toward the upper end of the "mid tier" market. Cards like the 1060 and RX480 are considered low tier.
This is nowhere close to true. A 1060 is only "low tier" for someone who subscribes to /r/pcmasterrace; for regular PC gamers it's a solid mid-range card.
Also remember that the GeForce 3, when launched, cost $600, which would be $800 today (and this was a consumer card equivalent to the 1080, not a professional card like the Titans).
Ten times more expensive over 30 years? What was inflation over those 30 years? Was it a factor of 10?
Even if not... how were the airbags in a VW 30 years ago? Oh, it didn't have them? You're literally not buying the same thing, even if it serves the same function.
The statement from the mid-to-late 1980s was that the computer you want always costs $2000. That quit being true from about 2000 to about 2010. But if you don't need high-end graphics (by current standards), you can buy a quite nice computer for $700.
The Golf is not ten times more expensive today than 30 years ago, not even close, non even in nominal dollar value. Adjusted for inflation, a 1986 Golf would have to have retailed for less than $1000 for the 10x number to hold (the 2016 starts at $20k, which is about $9k in 1986).
Also, FWIW, the Golf of today seems to be more of a upscale car, where the 80's models felt substantially more of a no-nonsense workaday car.
You are a bit off on the increase in auto prices. For instance, A 1978 VW Rabbit (Golf predecessor) cost around $5000. A 2016 Golf starts at $18,500. I haven't had a VW in a long time, but the Rabbit was a pretty bare bones automobile. Almost anything these days is way more luxurious than cars back then and way more reliable.
> while the older models still work like a clock if there is no rust issue it will last another thirty years (if well maintained).
There is every reason to believe that a modern VW will last for 60 years as well in similar situations. I would guess the new one will last longer than the old one: VW has been improving quality over the years.
Of course most cars are wrecked long before that 60 years: humans make bad drivers. People also tend to not want to take care of old cars as well. Cars don't hold value in general so keeping the car on the road for 60 years will more than once call for more maintenance dollars than the car is worth.
> There is every reason to believe that a modern VW will last for 60 years as well in similar situations. I would guess the new one will last longer than the old one
That's funny and must be a joke.
Cars since at least the late nineties are completely designed in 3D CAD (computer aided design). The manufacturer knows exactly what each part weights, how much each part costs, how long each part lasts and they increased the revenue margin tremendously while lowering the car quality to last just as long enough and earn a lot of money additionally with car parts that break exactly two weeks after the 3 or 5 year warrent. Or vital parts that aren't protected to corrosion, and transform a good car in a few years.
Look at the BBC TV show Top Gears (pre 2016). For their christmas special the hosts drove with older cars around the world in sheer unbelievable tortious conditions for the cars. An american or european car build in 2000s/2010s is made to last for x years, and need to replace several parts after every y thousends miles. If you take an old Mercedes, Volvo, etc from the 1970-1990s you can use it for thirty or fourty years even in demanding regions of the world. Such cars run in their later life after being a taxi vehicle in US/Europe for twenty years with the same car engine or a replacement another thirty years in Africa or parts of Asia. You can't do that with newer models, at all (with the exception of a few models like Mercedes G perhaps, but certainly not with Mercedes E or S class - the last "well" built ones are from 1999, the same or often a lot worse with most other US/European car manufactorer - like the 1970s VW cars run fine today, but don't even think about owning a new model for more than ten years - it would get very expensive fast).
I think the issue might be people requiring better and better products. Cost vs. utility is decreasing, but the absolute cost rises.
Graphics cards are a great example. The new gtx1080 is faster, and half(?) the cost, of the previous generation Titan, but costs a lot more than the gtx980 (previous gen card it replaced).
So you could say Nvidia cards are getting more expensive, but not really. Price vs. performance is falling.
A nVidia GForce GT580 was less than $500 (like $400), and a mid-to-highend GT570 around $250. The same class of cards the GTX 1080 costs now $650-$700 and the GTX 1070 $450.
"GTX 1070 prices start at $429 instead of $379, while GTX 1080 prices start at $649 (and if you actually want a card in stock, that’ll be $699). These are prices that are closer to last generations GTX 980 Ti/980 prices than they are 980/970, and it means that the actual GTX 1000 series price premium is much higher as it stands, at $100+ compared to the last generation. Given that these cards keep selling out, clearly there are enough buyers willing to pay these prices – it’s the free market in action – but it means NVIDIA’s MSRPs are for the moment an imaginary number."
Fact is computer components got more expensive, as less people buy a PC. It correlates with the stagnation of single core performance of Intel/AMD (aka no need to replace a years old PC at all) and the less than inviting situation that Microsoft introduced with Windows 8 and continues even more aggressive with Windows 10. The users simply buy an iOS or Android tablet and a Playstation 4 to prevent continues frustration.
People laugh at me when I tell them I switched "back" to Windows after decades of Unix and Mac programming. But it's a really good, productive platform. Microsoft really seems to be heading in the right direction now.
I hope .NET starts taking off on other platforms, too, because it really is a much better system than Brand "J".
Considering most OSS devs slam analytics on literally every website. Really there isn't much difference.
That's what windows is sending. Analytics information. Yet I can guarantee every major website developed by open source using devs is sending the same information for their apps. Yet no one complains.
Look at the comic. I'm talking about divisions inside Microsoft. I doubt it very much that Scott Hanselman (for example), who is in the camp that pushes Microsoft to open up, is the kind of person that designed the privacy controls (or their lack) in Windows 10.
If you meant Java, say Java please. Brand "J"? To me, that would mean J/K/APL/APL2 (MATLAB, Nial, S, R, and other array systems). But I guess Brand "J" is cute.
