Seems historically similar to the 70s/80s when automakers started positioning an alternator in such a way that it required removing an axle to replace it.
I was a Civil Engineer in hydrology. I built out a web app that integrated some local, clunky disparate software solutions so one could design detention basins in a matter of minutes to the local code (http://www.drainagebuilder.com).
I met with so much resistance from the local Regional Flood Control District that I finally walked away from the project (it was based on very local specifications, so the market was rather small). They ultimately "upgraded" the existing hydrologic component of what I was working on by making a web based form - but it was a step back from their desktop app (for one, it had no database, so the user is required to download and store hydrologic computations back to their client).
I have my PE but ultimately walked away completely from Civil. I understand why Civil is conservative - bureaucrats, especially those in public safety, are incentivized to always say no; such conservatism is not for me.
Google makes money (via ads) by showing the results the user wants, not by showing the results the user should want. If I want to go to an anti-vaccination site to reinforce my pre-pre-existing beliefs, it's hard to imagine Google will care, let alone make it more difficult to find it.
Mike Munger suggests that (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/07/michael_munger.html) by allowing Uber/Lyft the local government is committing a regulatory takings by devalueing the existing medallions. So not stealing, but not straight forward competition either.
I think there might be some selection bias there: if you are iretired from above, it sounds like you are choosing women based on appearance alone. While a fine pursuit, it won't necessarily lead to intellectual conversations.
the only real answer. idk why people think the voting system is a magical black box. to add, the top comment in the following link is paul graham showing the code for the voting system https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417
People think it is a magical black box because the code in the parent comment, and in the thread you linked, is three and a half years old, and HN does not run these days on exactly the same code that was open-sourced in news.arc.
I always respond with "Find the money." That is, find a buyer today for the simplest version.
THOUGH, this did not end well when after many drinks I met a guy who runs (presumably illegal) gambling out of his house and wanted to expand on it with an app to let people place bets on the players. I sent him an email as a record of contacting him with the single line "Find the money." Apparently he was scared shitless for a week before he remembered who I was.
Your timeframe is critical to the decision though. Most of us will not live in our home for 20 years, let alone 30. Some of us will move to other towns to take pay raises that (a) we could not have discovered in the town of our current home and (b) might more than compensate for any loss in savings.
Choosing to rent or buy on purely financial grounds must incorporate the length of time you will own the home.
As I understand it, Uber's prices are listed prior to contracting for a ride. Uber's market is clearly the middle to upper income brackets. If it's understood that the price is time and conditions-variant, I fail to see how their pricing method is unethical.
It's not unethical at all, it's just that mid-to-upper-class smartphone users in big cities have a wicked sense of entitlement.
They approve a dialog that warns them of 7x pricing (not with a button, mind you - but by explicitly thumb-typing the string "7X" into a box!) and then they complain on twitter when their ride is $300 and call Uber crooks.
The amount of entitlement found among the smartphone generation is staggering.
They might benefit from being a bit more transparent with pricing. From a customer's point of view, the multiplier is just arbitrary ("it's busy, so we're charging seven times what we normally do"), and they have to trust Uber that it is being set fairly. If it gets excessively high, like it has in these recent cases, they start losing that trust in Uber, and move to a competitor.
I agree, that the firm might benefit from transparency; but the article stresses the need for regulation in the interest of the consumer, not the firm.
This is how the price mechanism is supposed to work: it communicates inefficiencies over the long term.
