Silicon Valley is an area with high economic output, so the city should maximize the efficiency of doing business.
Yes, it should. But this is Silicon Valley in California, an enclave of spoiled rich people and the ossified Democratic machinery they elect to run the place.
In a high business area, there's no good reason for a business connection to cost that much more, especially not if you get lousy service for it.
Be that as it may, it's the same in many places in the world.
Eventually you may begin to understand why plantations work better with beautiful carriages and stables, despite it being a "cost" paid for by the slaves working in the fields.
FTFY
Why not save money by closing the city and forcing everyone to go elsewhere?
The only "force" that is involved here is the fact that federal, state, and local tax payers are forced to subsidize a transit system that most don't benefit from and will never use.
I don't know about "conservatives", but free market advocates like talking about externalities and how externalities are the result of exempting large parts of the economy from market forces. Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and progressives are all guilty of this.
Conservatives hate talk about externalities. Their so called free market relies on you not noticing, and God forbid holding them accountable for, pollution, congestion, oil subsidies and tax breaks, a huge military devoted to guarding overseas private assets (oil wells and shipping lanes), poisoning of water supplies, seizure of land for private gain, mandatory insurance at predatory prices (which is somehow not ok with healthcare, except for the predatory pricing part), inefficient use of resources (automobiles in daily service won't last 40 years), and the list goes on and on.
Those are all bad things. And they are almost all caused by government intervention, not free markets.
I've discovered I like not having to use a car for everything.
Everybody likes not having to use a car for everything. Public transportation is nice. But it's also too expensive compared to alternatives.
corrosion to roads and other vehicles from exhaust fumes,
Those are not "externalities" since they are costs drivers themselves bear and pay for.
air pollution causing acid rain
Acid rain comes overwhelmingly from power plants, not automobiles.
and green house effect
Personal transportation is only a small contributor to atmospheric carbon, and the difference between trains and cars is fairly small. With electric cars, cars are actually better than trains.
The most shocking part is that not every place in Silicon Valley already comes with a fast internet access, for a reasonable price.
What is "shocking" about it? It's Silicon Valley: everything is overpriced, highly taxed, and highly regulated. How could it be different?
Even if Comcast had been able to provide internet, it would have cost $189.90 a month for 100/20 Mbps! In other parts of the world, that's becoming a standard domestic speed, sold for a fraction of that price, available in a few days after you order it.
Business connections are more expensive everywhere. Home service is $60/month for 150 Mbps. Google Fiber is $70/month for 1000 Mbps.
It's inevitable over time more qualified humans will be replaced [youtube.com]. It's extremely short-sighted (or disingenuous) to blame government regulations for doing something that is inevitably going to happen just a few years down the line anyway.
Without minimum wage, automation drives competes with low cost labor, but it also drives down prices. The net result is that people at the low end might see their incomes stagnate or even decline, but they are still better off in absolute terms. With minimum wage laws that can't happen: people whose labor and skills aren't very valuable simple are priced out of the workforce entirely. And even the people who remain in the workforce don't benefit. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that costs in some key areas of the economy (housing, transportation, energy) are kept artificially high through a ratcheting up of regulations.
In both cases, the motivation is the same: voters are saying "we don't like seeing people with low incomes / people driving less safe cars, so we're just going to legislate the problem away". But that simply transforms poor working people with cars who could gradually improve their situation into even poorer jobless people without cars who will never be able to get out of poverty.
Support for minimum wage laws illustrates the economic and historical illiteracy that is so widespread in this country: not only are minimum wage laws ineffective and economically harmful, historically, they were motivated by a desire to hurt racial minorities. Minimum wage laws actually hurt low income and low skill workers twice: not only does it price many of them out of the labor pool, it also increases the cost of goods and services, which hurts low income groups the most. After a couple of centuries of enlightenment, history, and basic economics, you'd think that people would be smart enough to catch on to this, but I guess some superstitions just take a long time to die out.
If the US creates this precedent, the Chinese will take it even further, and while you may think the FBI is trustworthy I doubt most people would extend similar trust to the governments of every country in which Apple operates.
Keep in mind that Cook is a gay man... I wouldn't be surprised if for Mr. Cook personally, the idea that a government that would view people like him as sub-human or criminals due to their sexual preference might request the exact same tools that the FBI is requesting is terrifying.
Well, and I am a gay man and immigrated from a country where conditions were much worse than what Cook ever experienced. That's why I object to Cook's attempt at security-through-obscurity and the security fictions he is peddling. It's also why I don't trust or believe Apple when they say they have my best interests at heart: I've seen too many people like Cook stand up proclaiming that they are protecting privacy while quietly cooperating with governments to spy on people.
That does appear to be the way he is pushing his engineers.
The fact that iPhone encryption wasn't secure against government demands has been known for a long time. Tim Cook has been in charge of Apple since 2011, so he could have "pushed his engineers" to do this for nearly five years, but he didn't. The logical conclusion is he either didn't give a fuck about it until it became a PR problem, or the security holes in the iPhone's architecture are there deliberately to make the Russian and Chinese governments happy.
What your proposing is that Developer A can either 1, extort money, or 2, make Developer B's plans nonviable due to having to pay for Developer A's lack of plan.
That is exactly what I am proposing, and it is not only the economically right thing to do, it is also the just thing to do. When Developer B buys his land, he knows that there was no requirement for flood control on Developer A's land. What Developer B did was buy land that wasn't so valuable for his purpose and then force other people to pay for improvements that make his land more valuable in order to make a big profit. It's classic crony capitalism and rent seeking.
Notes, I am assuming Developer A knows or should know full well that the protection is needed, and that if they were developing for themselves or their loved ones, they would so do.
You are quite ignorant. As I was saying, Developer A developed in a way (in this example) that didn't need flood protection; look up "stilt houses": it's a traditional, sustainable, safe, ecologically responsible way of building near the water and in flood zones, and it's becoming increasingly popular again for those reasons. The irresponsible builder is Developer B, who wants to rely on expensive, disruptive, and unsustainable "flood barriers" to protect a kind of house that is completely unsuitable for flood prone areas. And to add insult to injury, Developer B wants others to subsidize his low quality construction, and will end up costing the community in perpetuity in order to protect him.
Case the second, "capitalism, red in claw and beak". Sure, but do you really want that? The meat you buy poisons you, "you should have " isn't so awesome when you or a loved one is victim.
It is ignorance and stupidity like yours that are responsible for both the economic stagnation and the social and environmental problems we are facing.
That's why Apple should never have started this case. They should quietly have rolled out bullet proof security on the next phone instead. With a few million actually secure iPhones in circulation, the FBI couldn't do anything, and Congress would be unlikely to pass a law prohibiting this.
If Tim Cook's premise is that big corporations like his are going to protect us from privacy invading evil governments, how far is his commitment going to go? He may be able to win this case against the FBI. Is he going to win it against a secret order from the NSA to spy on foreign terrorists? Is he going to win it against the German government, or the Russian government, or the Chinese government? Has he successfully resisted what even Microsoft couldn't resist, handing over their source code to the Russians? Are his employees willing to go to jail over this in countries like Brazil? Are we really supposed to believe that the American FBI is the worst and most serious threat to privacy his company has ever faced from a governmental body?
Cooks posturing may make him feel good and noble, but whether he wins or loses this case is irrelevant to privacy and security. iOS source code and signing keys are almost certainly in the hands of numerous intelligence agencies already, if not through secret legal orders, then through simple leaks and industrial espionage. Instead of this incessant posturing, Cook should build phones that just cannot be broken into, not even by someone with full access to the source code, firmware signing keys, and hardware. That's the traditional standard of cryptographic security, and it's easily achievable for phones.
On the off-chance that this isn't a religious belief of yours, this is the Chicken variation on the Prisoner's dilemma, bringing in the free rider problem. This is exactly what government is good at resolving.
The prisoner's dilemma doesn't apply because players are able to coordinate, alter the payout matrix via contractual agreements, and have many options besides cooperating or defecting. And it isn't a free rider problem because Developer A simply doesn't want flood protection in the first place.
Imagine, for example, I'm Developer A, and I specialize in high end homes for nature lovers. I built it with a small footprint on stilts, so that it is perfectly protected from any kind of flooding and doesn't disturb the wetlands. The construction is expensive and the house is small, but it provides an oasis for people who love natural environments and I'm betting people will pay a premium for that. Now you come in as Developer B, you want to build your standard cookie-cutter American McMansion, because that's all you know how to build, and so and demand that I build "flood protection". I say "hell no!" because not only do I not need it, it would ruin the value of my investment by destroying its natural character. As far as I'm concerned, Developer B can build whatever crap he wants to on his land, but I am under no obligation to ruin my land and investment to make his building cheaper. But because you're a big cheese lawyer who golfs with the mayor, you go to City Hall, throw your weight around, and next thing there is an ordinance and zoning change that everybody has to build flood protection, destroying the value of my investment and destroying the environment as well.
Your error is that you assume that flood protection is always good, and that both developers benefit from it. But that assumption is wrong: the optimal use of either parcel may or may not involve flood protection, and if the choice of flood protection is linked between the two parcels, then the economically optimal outcome of coordination can be either that both build flood protection or neither do, and that they split the cost or one developer pays for all of it. Your "government coordination" imposes a solution that is likely economically suboptimal.
On the off-chance that this isn't a religious belief of yours,
Well, it is obviously a religious belief of yours, since your attempts at giving rational economic justifications are farcical.
Scalia was a proponent of originalism, but he didn't practice it consistently. Arguably, he deviated from it more when it fit his ideological preferences. Have a look at McDonald v. Chicago.
The one thing you aren't going to get from private insurance is a coordinated plan, and an uncoordinated flood plan is useless. If Developer A, building on 2km of shoreline, doesn't want to build any flood protection, and Developer B builds protection on the next stretch, Developer A's land is going to flood Developer B's land, free market or no free market. This is something that pretty well has to be done by government.
When government does that sort of thing, it is, in fact, quite destructive and harmful. If Developer A does not believe it is in his economic interest to build protection and Developer B needs it, then Developer B should either offer to pay enough money to Developer A to make it worth his while to build the protection or Developer B should not buy (or sell) the property and put their money somewhere else. What you're proposing is forcing Developer A to subsidize Developer B's non-viable business, and to add insult to injury, to destroy coast line in the process. And most likely, Developer B will bring the process about by lobbying government with just your arguments. Your example illustrates nicely how our coast lines and environment get destroyed, courtesy of government and crony capitalism.
We need better flood maps and risk analysis systems too. Some places have gotten a "100 year flood" several times in the past decade.
That's no coincidence, since those maps and zoning are influenced heavily by political lobbying. You only get better flood map and risk analysis when people are forced to insure privately, that is, when people actually have to bear the costs of their decisions.
Flood control in the USA is a very large problem and anyone proposing simple or easy solutions doesn't understand the problem.
It's a "very large problem" if you try to solve it through government intervention, planning, and financing; like all central planning, that doesn't work. It's not at all a "very large problem" if the market addresses it.
Another problem is new development. New development paves over the earth with nonpermeable concrete and then disposal of rainwater becomes a significant problem.
And, again, this is best resolved through insurance and civil lawsuits; city-wide zoning and planning can help coordinate that, and they might require insurance, but the final decision makers should be the developers.
So, how's the FBI's latest end-run around the constitution, with presidential ascent, and bipartisan support, working out for you?
Doesn't affect me, and I couldn't care less. I think only a fool would trust the government to protect their privacy, just like only a fool would rely on government for health care, income, or housing.
Common sense is that you ban new housing, make it attractive to move somewhere higher - won't happen.
In principle, there is no need to ban such housing, we just need to stop subsidizing it. Right now, it's subsidized both through government-financed flood insurance programs, as well as through the provision emergency services. That encourages people not only to build in risky places, but also to pay for flood-proofing their homes. If people had to pay for the full cost of insurance and emergency services out of their own pockets, many people who currently build in flood zones would consider it too expensive and build somewhere else, and others would flood proof their homes instead of getting a fresh home every few decades courtesy of the tax payer. Attempts to reform the system have been repeatedly undermined. (I think the reform act was probably too heavy handed. A better and simpler choice might be to limit payouts from government subsidized flood insurance to a one time payment, both per site and per property owner.)
Set up Azure cloud in a foreign region. Because it's under the technical ownership of a German company named Deutsche Telekom, even Microsoft doesn't have access to the data
Deutsche Telekom is roughly the German equivalent of AT&T: a former government-sponsored monopoly. It is in bed with the German government; they are actually still 30% government owned. You can bet that if you put your data on that cloud, the German government, intelligence agencies, and police are going to get full access to it. And that's the best case scenario: their security and privacy record is actually pretty bad.
Yeah, the system is seriously fucked up because of selfish, greedy people like you, whether you vote for right wing populism (Trump) or left wing populism (Bern).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it should. But this is Silicon Valley in California, an enclave of spoiled rich people and the ossified Democratic machinery they elect to run the place.
Be that as it may, it's the same in many places in the world.
FTFY
The only "force" that is involved here is the fact that federal, state, and local tax payers are forced to subsidize a transit system that most don't benefit from and will never use.
I don't know about "conservatives", but free market advocates like talking about externalities and how externalities are the result of exempting large parts of the economy from market forces. Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and progressives are all guilty of this.
Those are all bad things. And they are almost all caused by government intervention, not free markets.
Everybody likes not having to use a car for everything. Public transportation is nice. But it's also too expensive compared to alternatives.
That's not an "externality", since it's the drivers themselves that bear the cost of congestion.
Hasn't been used in many years.
Those are not "externalities" since they are costs drivers themselves bear and pay for.
Acid rain comes overwhelmingly from power plants, not automobiles.
Personal transportation is only a small contributor to atmospheric carbon, and the difference between trains and cars is fairly small. With electric cars, cars are actually better than trains.
What is "shocking" about it? It's Silicon Valley: everything is overpriced, highly taxed, and highly regulated. How could it be different?
Business connections are more expensive everywhere. Home service is $60/month for 150 Mbps. Google Fiber is $70/month for 1000 Mbps.
Without minimum wage, automation drives competes with low cost labor, but it also drives down prices. The net result is that people at the low end might see their incomes stagnate or even decline, but they are still better off in absolute terms. With minimum wage laws that can't happen: people whose labor and skills aren't very valuable simple are priced out of the workforce entirely. And even the people who remain in the workforce don't benefit. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that costs in some key areas of the economy (housing, transportation, energy) are kept artificially high through a ratcheting up of regulations.
In both cases, the motivation is the same: voters are saying "we don't like seeing people with low incomes / people driving less safe cars, so we're just going to legislate the problem away". But that simply transforms poor working people with cars who could gradually improve their situation into even poorer jobless people without cars who will never be able to get out of poverty.
Support for minimum wage laws illustrates the economic and historical illiteracy that is so widespread in this country: not only are minimum wage laws ineffective and economically harmful, historically, they were motivated by a desire to hurt racial minorities. Minimum wage laws actually hurt low income and low skill workers twice: not only does it price many of them out of the labor pool, it also increases the cost of goods and services, which hurts low income groups the most. After a couple of centuries of enlightenment, history, and basic economics, you'd think that people would be smart enough to catch on to this, but I guess some superstitions just take a long time to die out.
You really are gullible and naive, aren't you.
In fact, unlike you, I trust neither Apple, nor the FBI, nor the Chinese government. You live in a fantasy if you think that Apple hasn't already cooperated with the Chinese government in order to get access to the Chinese market, just like Microsoft has already done with the Russian government. That is why I so strenuously object to the fiction that somehow Apple's public refusal to comply with the FBI amounts to anything in terms of security.
Well, and I am a gay man and immigrated from a country where conditions were much worse than what Cook ever experienced. That's why I object to Cook's attempt at security-through-obscurity and the security fictions he is peddling. It's also why I don't trust or believe Apple when they say they have my best interests at heart: I've seen too many people like Cook stand up proclaiming that they are protecting privacy while quietly cooperating with governments to spy on people.
The fact that iPhone encryption wasn't secure against government demands has been known for a long time. Tim Cook has been in charge of Apple since 2011, so he could have "pushed his engineers" to do this for nearly five years, but he didn't. The logical conclusion is he either didn't give a fuck about it until it became a PR problem, or the security holes in the iPhone's architecture are there deliberately to make the Russian and Chinese governments happy.
That is exactly what I am proposing, and it is not only the economically right thing to do, it is also the just thing to do. When Developer B buys his land, he knows that there was no requirement for flood control on Developer A's land. What Developer B did was buy land that wasn't so valuable for his purpose and then force other people to pay for improvements that make his land more valuable in order to make a big profit. It's classic crony capitalism and rent seeking.
You are quite ignorant. As I was saying, Developer A developed in a way (in this example) that didn't need flood protection; look up "stilt houses": it's a traditional, sustainable, safe, ecologically responsible way of building near the water and in flood zones, and it's becoming increasingly popular again for those reasons. The irresponsible builder is Developer B, who wants to rely on expensive, disruptive, and unsustainable "flood barriers" to protect a kind of house that is completely unsuitable for flood prone areas. And to add insult to injury, Developer B wants others to subsidize his low quality construction, and will end up costing the community in perpetuity in order to protect him.
It is ignorance and stupidity like yours that are responsible for both the economic stagnation and the social and environmental problems we are facing.
That's why Apple should never have started this case. They should quietly have rolled out bullet proof security on the next phone instead. With a few million actually secure iPhones in circulation, the FBI couldn't do anything, and Congress would be unlikely to pass a law prohibiting this.
Cooks posturing may make him feel good and noble, but whether he wins or loses this case is irrelevant to privacy and security. iOS source code and signing keys are almost certainly in the hands of numerous intelligence agencies already, if not through secret legal orders, then through simple leaks and industrial espionage. Instead of this incessant posturing, Cook should build phones that just cannot be broken into, not even by someone with full access to the source code, firmware signing keys, and hardware. That's the traditional standard of cryptographic security, and it's easily achievable for phones.
The prisoner's dilemma doesn't apply because players are able to coordinate, alter the payout matrix via contractual agreements, and have many options besides cooperating or defecting. And it isn't a free rider problem because Developer A simply doesn't want flood protection in the first place.
Imagine, for example, I'm Developer A, and I specialize in high end homes for nature lovers. I built it with a small footprint on stilts, so that it is perfectly protected from any kind of flooding and doesn't disturb the wetlands. The construction is expensive and the house is small, but it provides an oasis for people who love natural environments and I'm betting people will pay a premium for that. Now you come in as Developer B, you want to build your standard cookie-cutter American McMansion, because that's all you know how to build, and so and demand that I build "flood protection". I say "hell no!" because not only do I not need it, it would ruin the value of my investment by destroying its natural character. As far as I'm concerned, Developer B can build whatever crap he wants to on his land, but I am under no obligation to ruin my land and investment to make his building cheaper. But because you're a big cheese lawyer who golfs with the mayor, you go to City Hall, throw your weight around, and next thing there is an ordinance and zoning change that everybody has to build flood protection, destroying the value of my investment and destroying the environment as well.
Your error is that you assume that flood protection is always good, and that both developers benefit from it. But that assumption is wrong: the optimal use of either parcel may or may not involve flood protection, and if the choice of flood protection is linked between the two parcels, then the economically optimal outcome of coordination can be either that both build flood protection or neither do, and that they split the cost or one developer pays for all of it. Your "government coordination" imposes a solution that is likely economically suboptimal.
Well, it is obviously a religious belief of yours, since your attempts at giving rational economic justifications are farcical.
Scalia was a proponent of originalism, but he didn't practice it consistently. Arguably, he deviated from it more when it fit his ideological preferences. Have a look at McDonald v. Chicago.
Scalia wasn't the worst, but he did bring lots of politics and social engineering to the table as well.
Yeah, because SCOTUS is really hurting from its lack of Harvard law school graduates!
When government does that sort of thing, it is, in fact, quite destructive and harmful. If Developer A does not believe it is in his economic interest to build protection and Developer B needs it, then Developer B should either offer to pay enough money to Developer A to make it worth his while to build the protection or Developer B should not buy (or sell) the property and put their money somewhere else. What you're proposing is forcing Developer A to subsidize Developer B's non-viable business, and to add insult to injury, to destroy coast line in the process. And most likely, Developer B will bring the process about by lobbying government with just your arguments. Your example illustrates nicely how our coast lines and environment get destroyed, courtesy of government and crony capitalism.
That's no coincidence, since those maps and zoning are influenced heavily by political lobbying. You only get better flood map and risk analysis when people are forced to insure privately, that is, when people actually have to bear the costs of their decisions.
It's a "very large problem" if you try to solve it through government intervention, planning, and financing; like all central planning, that doesn't work. It's not at all a "very large problem" if the market addresses it.
And, again, this is best resolved through insurance and civil lawsuits; city-wide zoning and planning can help coordinate that, and they might require insurance, but the final decision makers should be the developers.
Doesn't affect me, and I couldn't care less. I think only a fool would trust the government to protect their privacy, just like only a fool would rely on government for health care, income, or housing.
Why, yes, your "facts" were flat out wrong.
I wouldn't consider the observation that someone didn't pursue an academic career after a Ph.D. an "insult". I'm sorry it seems to bother you so much.
Well, given that your political system is an ocean away, I can hardly be held responsible for its failings.
In principle, there is no need to ban such housing, we just need to stop subsidizing it. Right now, it's subsidized both through government-financed flood insurance programs, as well as through the provision emergency services. That encourages people not only to build in risky places, but also to pay for flood-proofing their homes. If people had to pay for the full cost of insurance and emergency services out of their own pockets, many people who currently build in flood zones would consider it too expensive and build somewhere else, and others would flood proof their homes instead of getting a fresh home every few decades courtesy of the tax payer. Attempts to reform the system have been repeatedly undermined. (I think the reform act was probably too heavy handed. A better and simpler choice might be to limit payouts from government subsidized flood insurance to a one time payment, both per site and per property owner.)
Well, your comments perhaps explain why you didn't manage to pursue an academic career.
Deutsche Telekom is roughly the German equivalent of AT&T: a former government-sponsored monopoly. It is in bed with the German government; they are actually still 30% government owned. You can bet that if you put your data on that cloud, the German government, intelligence agencies, and police are going to get full access to it. And that's the best case scenario: their security and privacy record is actually pretty bad.
Yeah, the system is seriously fucked up because of selfish, greedy people like you, whether you vote for right wing populism (Trump) or left wing populism (Bern).