Fascinating article. One sentence jumped out to me:
> So Chapter 11 is a relief valve for airlines struggling under the weight of their fixed costs; but it doesn’t really do much to help the system as a whole
The American founders writing a uniform federal system of bankruptcy was a stroke of genius that's been paying dividends for 250 years now.
Chapter 11 bankruptcy as well as all modern corporate law has its roots in the tycoons of the late 19th century. They lobbied and wrote it which is why it's corrupt.
Even if that's true, current bankruptcy law is still really far from socially optimal.
There are a lot more points on the "how does your system respond to business failure" spectrum besides low-consequence ch11/better-luck-next-time and debtors' prison.
What's a country with a more effective system? Not saying that the lack of a more effective system means the US's is optimal, but the outcomes for capital reallocation are far better in the US than the UK for instance.
In the US, workers at a bankrupt company can often show up to the same workplace the next day or week and not skip a beat, the customers might not even know they're doing business with a different entity - only the owners have changed - the old ones get wiped out and their debtors take control.
> was surprising. Goes against the idea that deregulation allows companies to squeeze consumers and earn excess profits.
That's because this assertion is economically illiterate. Deregulation can lead to increased profits where otherwise companies have monopoly power. But often, the regulation was there in the first place to ensure that companies had sufficient profit to invest in expensive infrastructure. (E.g. railroads).
For passengers, yes, but primarily it’s poor for passengers because the infra is owned by freight companies that aren’t interested in passenger service. And rail freight service in the US is mostly pretty good.
And, at the time, they needed a lot of rail across huge distances. The transcontinental rail lines were hugely expensive and had immense amounts of graft involved in every step of their construction, but they got built. Also enabled the crushing of Native Americans, which was a usually-somewhat-tacit (though sometimes very explicit) goal in Washington.
The U.S. has the best rail infrastructure in the world. It’s just designed for moving cargo across what used to be the world’s largest industrial center instead of moving passengers around.
> Its just mind boggling how Americans dont revolt against this, stop buying shit produce and suppliers will notice.m
There’s a large swath of America that has a deeply ingrained mentality of “food is for fuel, not enjoyment.” It’s a Protestant idea that entered the culture and became ingrained to the point where nobody remembers the origins but are still influenced by it.
I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. I don’t think the food in Iowa used to be great “100 years ago before modern factory farming,” etc. I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need.
And I don’t think it’s just “U.S. consumerism blah blah” either. The Anglo food in Canada and the UK sucks too. They just don’t care.
The “majority” of people aren’t so poor they can’t move over the multi-decade timescale this article is talking about. This country has a huge level of internal migration. 17 million Americans move every year.
Why do people have these blinders where they can’t view any issue except from the perspective of the minority of people who don’t have any resources? Why are so many people moving to places like Florida that are threatened by climate change?
>Why do people have these blinders where they can’t view any issue except from the perspective of the minority of people who don’t have any resources
I believe its because these people are young and repeating what they hear or they are old but have lived an insulated life and assume that people really cannot handle any upset in their life.
It’s not about being unable to view the issue except from that one perspective. It’s about having an aversion to mass suffering, and recognizing that this group will be subject to it.
You’re basically saying, why are you so worried about all of these people who will have their lives destroyed when there are a bunch of other people who will be totally fine? I hope that when it’s put that way, you can see how ridiculous it is.
No, it's an emotional obsession with small percentages of the population that makes it impossible to discuss realistic solutions to problems that affect everyone.
New Orleans is going to be underwater. That problem won't just affect poor people, it will affect everyone. So the first order of business is to encourage anyone who can do so to leave New Orleans to go somewhere that isn't underwater. That's the policy that's going to avoid the greatest amount of harm to the greatest number of people at the lowest cost.
What is there to discuss? If you have the ability to move away, then you move away, done.
We aren't discussing this particular group because we're a too emotional to think straight. We're discussing this group because it's the one that will bear the brunt of the suffering and it's the one where there isn't an obvious "just let them figure it out and it'll be fine" solution.
You’re both undervaluing and overvaluing collective action at the same time. We know from experience with people in disaster-prone areas that the majority aren’t going to do that. They’re going to stay, and when the disaster comes, it will be a huge problem and they’ll demand the Army Corps of Engineers performs some miracle to help them.
> it's an emotional obsession with small percentages of the population
Ah, right: it's a small percentage of the population, so we should just let them die, "and decrease the surplus population", right?
This kind of callousness is one of the biggest problem with the tech industry today. We learned to think in numbers, and some of us never learned to think about the people behind those numbers.
Yes, there are some kinds of problem where you really have to think about the numbers, and not the people, because if you try to save everyone you will end up saving no one.
This is not one of those.
The people who can move now, without financial hardship, get to make their own choices about when and whether to get out. The people we, as a society, should be thinking about are the people who cannot get out—either without financial ruination, or at all—because they are the ones we as a society must help.
Tragically, given the state of America today, we aren't likely to help them. And many of them are likely to die, whether by drowning when the next Hurricane Katrina inundates New Orleans, or by slow starvation and disease when they and everyone else in their community and support network are left homeless.
> The people who can move now, without financial hardship, get to make their own choices about when and whether to get out. The people we, as a society, should be thinking about are the people who cannot get out—either without financial ruination, or at all—because they are the ones we as a society must help.
This is exactly the problematic thinking I’m talking about. Your obsession with using society to help those whose problems are the most intractable leads you to conclude to majority should be left “to make their own choices.”
But the most effective use of social action is helping the majority. They can benefit from social organization and their problems are tractable. Here, leaving the majority to its own devices is going to cause the most damage in the long run. Society should push them to make good choices and relocate in an orderly manner while there’s time.
We don't need them to "leave now." We don't need them to move to California. We need them to move to Baton Rogue over a period of decades. Under a high emissions scenario, sea level is projected to rise 6 feet by 2100. New Orleans is on average 1-2 feet below sea level (up to 10 feet). Baton Rouge is 60 feet above sea level. The average elevation of the state is 100 feet.
In any given year, 15% of the population moves, and 40% of them move to a different county. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/why-people-mo.... It's insane to say that most people wouldn't be able to make a once-in-a-lifetime move just a couple of towns over sometime over the next few decades.
Baton Rouge is partially on a bluff. But didn't you see the 7m map? The coastline will be lapping at St. George, southern EBR Parish along Burbank Road and the south part of LSU campus at that point.
This is true. It is also true that waiting until things bottom out will make things even worse. It will be more expensive and options will be more limited.
There will need to be a federal bailout to relocate everyone who needs help. The government should also probably announce a policy that there will be no future disaster relief that involves rebuilding, only relocating.
New Orleans will be the first, but not the last American city to collapse. Miami is probably next. Salt Lake City could very well run out of water, nevermind the increasingly toxic lakebed. Phoenix too. In the next hundred years people are going to learn why environmentalists use the word "sustainability" so much.
You're demonstrating the point I'm afraid. Rather than think of anything which can help 90%, you obsess on calling the people who want to save 90% of the people evil instead of thinking of anything to reduce the 10% further.
But that ignores the mass suffering that pushing people to move will prevent?
It’s not
why are you so worried about all of these people who will have their lives destroyed when there are a bunch of other people who will be totally fine
It’s
Why aren’t you worried about everyone having their life destroyed, if we can encourage people to move it may be challenging for them but it will save their lives.
Because, friend, a lot of people believe climate change is a lib conspiracy theory.
And people bring it up because a lot of folks in New Orleans couldn't afford to flee Katrina and 700 people died. It was kind of an enormous humanitarian disaster. If we don't talk about it, nothing will happen to stop it.
I don’t understand this formulation of “no one will be relocated.” People have agency to move themselves. Maybe not everyone, but if the majority of folks started moving out due to the risk of flooding then that would create a strong impetus for the government to assist poor people in relocating.
Whenever such claims were made, it was correctly pointed that Tesla makes very few models, so their sales per model may be higher than for other vendors even when the total number of sold cars is higher for their competitors, where the sales are distributed over many models.
There are Chinese vendors who sell more electric cars than Tesla.
> for year 2025" was not a qualification the grandparent poster made.
I interpreted the comment to mean that Tesla model Y is currently the most widely sold car in the world, not historically. model y is less than 10 years old.
i think it shows that tesla is actually able to ship cars at a high volume, which was the point of the thread.
no you're right sorry it's not up to your standards of selling as many cumulative units as cars that have been sold longer than most readers of this website have been alive
Well, I raised an eyebrow at the claim that "The Toyota RAV4 is a very popular vehicle in terms of units sold worldwide over the last few years" as it just does not match what I see on the roads locally on a daily basis.
(There are tons of RAVs as yellow taxis in NYC though. That's the only place that I've seen them swarm)
But it is a defensible claim, and apparently globally it's true, even if locally it is not.
> Toyota RAV4, the most widely sold car model in the world.
Nope.
Widely sold cars are the likes of e.g Toyota Corolla, VW Golf, Honda Civic, Ford Fiesta, Toyota Camry and Hilux. The other reply gives the link. The RAV4 isn't ones of these.
> Why do you think the ranking changes that much from year to year?
I did not say that. Why do you think that I did say that? (I'm surprised that the RAV was #1 in 2023-24 too. I don't see many or even any around here. But even 3 years clearly isn't "all time").
Not that crazy. It's about the most basic structure you can make. Hard to make a better wheel.
The closest thing I can think of that's come close to maybe challenging DRAM is HP's memristors but those really didn't pan out (probably too much power consumption).
Pet peeve: stupid analogy seeing how wheels kept being improved throughout the millennia with every new technology. The only thing in common is that it's round.
Similarly, DRAM in any way you see it has been improving to the point of barely being recognizable since the 70s.
That said, DIMMs and the whole bus idea is in dire need of getting a new type of bearing.
Seems like a pretty good analogy as you admit there have been advancements while the basic structure has remained the same. Not sure why you have a pet peeve when it is highly analogous.
The ultimate shape of DRAM is the same, the main thing that's changed is the materials and techniques to produce it. Making it very impressive, but none the less completely recognizable by someone who was familiar with DRAM in the 70s.
The wheel is the same. Pluck someone from 1000 years ago and they'll be able to correctly identify a modern wheel even though they've never seen any of the composites that go into it. The function of the wheel is identical to how they used it.
> That said, DIMMs and the whole bus idea is in dire need of getting a new type of bearing.
IBM has been using their own memory bus technology for both their POWER and Z machines. IIRC, it’s somewhat reminiscent of CXL, trading latency for bandwidth and size.
You're right—the wheels on the Boeing 737 are, although made of forged aluminum or magnesium to withstand extreme force and heat, pretty much the same shape and operate in the same way as the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel of 3150 BCE.
Then again, flight itself has obviated—or, rather, introduced—many transit workloads that could be performed by wheeled vehicles, and operates on different principles entirely.
I found it fascinating that jetliner tires are designed to blow during extreme braking. An aborted takeoff (say microburst warning goes off), or an emergency landing will heat the brakes and tires to maximum. But there are plugs that will depressurize the tires without them coming apart. That way they don't catastrophically blow and spew tire pieces everywhere to get sucked into jet engines and damaging them.
pretty cool, sort of graceful (or at least planned) degradation of tires without cascading problems.
> So Chapter 11 is a relief valve for airlines struggling under the weight of their fixed costs; but it doesn’t really do much to help the system as a whole
The American founders writing a uniform federal system of bankruptcy was a stroke of genius that's been paying dividends for 250 years now.
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