Thanks for the comment, I was trying to parse the meaning of "time needed to earn $1" for a bit. This just boils down to what countries have the highest floor for their poorest members.
There are plenty of public interest limitations on free speech. Food labels, cigarette warnings, deceptive ad laws. Regulating addictive social media isn't really an outlier here.
The parent comment set up a false choice and then had to adapt to the response calling their bluff.
The issue isn’t with reading or consuming content, as was set up in the challenge above.
The issue is with designing feeds and surfacing content in ways that take advantage of our brains.
As an analogy, loot boxes in video games, and slot machines come to mind. Both are designed to leverage behavioral psychology, and this design choice directly results in compulsive behavior amongst users.
I didn’t mention time? From Cambridge dictionary: ‘addiction: an inability to stop doing or using something, especially something harmful.’ I am in support of regulating things which are harmful and which people have trouble not doing
I don't impulsively drive to the store to purchase another bag immediately after finishing the one I have whereas (for example) many people exhibit such behavior when it comes to tobacco.
In the case of social media the feed is intentionally designed to be difficult to walk away from and it is endless (or close enough as makes no practical difference). Even if it weren't endless, refreshing an ever changing page is trivial in comparison to driving to the store and spending money.
An amusing question. Episodes are much longer and most shows only have one or a few seasons. I don't get the sense that streaming services optimize for difficulty to walk away and do something else any more or less than a good book does.
Maybe autoplay and immediately popping up a grid of recommendations should both be legally forbidden as tactics that blatantly prey on a well established psychological vulnerability. I'd likely support such legislation provided that it could be structured in such a way as to avoid scope creep and thus erosion of personal liberties.
In short I think Netflix is closer to a bag of Lays and modern social media closer to the cigarette industry of yore.
If you take out the abnormally perfect climates of Hawaii and California then lowest energy users for heating and cooling are Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
If you are doing it for the environment, you should forgo heat. 100F to 70F is only a 30 degree delta. If you have a heat pump, this is the same amount of energy heating your home to 70F from 40F. If you have natural gas heating, now we are talking about the same amount of energy when it is low 50's outside.
How many forests will you burn to not just wear two sweaters and blanket?
What? You pay property tax because local services schools, streets, police and fire fighters need to be funded. Having a property in the area is a pretty great proxy for using some of these services, hence the property tax.
There is no reason why tax has to be done as property tax. Property tax demeans actual ownership of a place for us to live. (And why the hell do corporations get away with no tax on intellectual property, or even pay on profits, whereas we humans pay on revenue and property?)
Worse yet, property taxes also enshrine the idea that the community's schools in poor areas deserve poor education. Do children in poor areas deserve poor education? Cause that's how you end up with "great and slum schools".
And the police in my area? Its sheriffs. And meh. I dont want them to keep getting military playthings.
Street? That's what gas tax and EV tax is for. And those built in with gas tax funds per gallon, aka use tax. Or vehicle registration tax.
Fire fighters? We have volunteer fire fighters.
I'm seeing a whole lot of tax and tax and tax, and shit for return on this forced investment. And property tax HAS had people end up homeless. 1 family homeless due to property tax is 1 too many.
Volunteer firefighters, public schools, and police/sheriffs still need equipment and facilities. Whether you call it property tax or "public services" tax, it amounts to the same thing. The community needs a way to fund the shared community services, and there has to be some sort of metric that determines how much each citizen contributes to the fund.
The community does, but the corporations have made not contributing back to their communities an international sport. There's an incredibly strong argument to be made that property taxes (and frankly, ALL taxes) are much higher than they should be because of the repeated tax breaks/loopholes/backroom deals that get them out of paying their fair share. So who pays for that? The rest of us.
As the article says, leveraged buyouts of retail end in bankruptcy only 41% of the time, and most of those bankruptcies are presumably not a total loss for the banks. So it's just a matter of pricing the loans to ensure the successes cover the losses.
(Why do private equity firms want to be in this business? Because the 59% that don't fail often generate very good returns.)
> (Why do private equity firms want to be in this business? Because the 59% that don't fail often generate very good returns.)
The way they limit their own exposure to risk seems to increase the odds of the targeted business completely failing, though. I think that's the part people have a problem with.
Agreed. I'm sure there's edge cases I don't know about, but in general I think it would be better to simply not allow leveraged buyouts and let businesses that would fail without the buyout fail.
I tried to look into this, and as far as I can tell the terms of LBOs are just so opaque there's no good way to tell. Maybe patio11 will do an article on it some day.
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