Programming is basically research and development You are building something which has never been built before. As such how do you estimate something if you have nothing to compare it to?

Actually though I have a limited amount of experience using Function Point Analysis. Some of the aspects of it are old, it was created before web apps became pervasive, but that doesn't matter. The principles are the same and there are dimensionless constants you can use to tune the FPA model to your organization. Eventually you end up with an empirical model of your programming team, development environment, tool suite, management efficiency, complexity of the problem domain, people quitting or dying, etc. You need to avoid over fitting however and recalibrate from time-to-time.

Agile keeps story points and velocity which serve the same purpose as the dimensionless constants of FPA. Unfortunately managers try to translate them to mythical man hours. But if you keep velocity or function points, whether you are using Agile or not, you should be able to get some idea. You have to be a bit scientific about it.

That and 'T-Shirt Sizing' is about as good as it gets.

"God designed humans, but humans designed the robots."

That rules out intelligent design.

Where I come from having insurance is required to legally license a car. The type of insurance is actually up to the insurance company. They demand more coverage as the more miles you drive and longer hours driving put you into another risk pool. Basic Actuarial Science. Running the kids and their friends to the football game after school is very different from picking up drunks at 2 am.

I just want to add rape and robbery to that list.

Where I am from you are an independent, or the franchise you work for requires it, you MUST have business insurance. E.g. if a real estate agent driving a customer to a showing has an accident there MUST be insurance to cover any injuries to the customer. What Uber wants is a free ride.

Parasitic in that they hose their drivers. They produce nothing of real value, they just take a cut. Like a racketeer.

Yes, but the taxi company does have some responsibilities such as making sure the drivers have licenses. As well as some insurance liability so the driver does not get stuck with everything if there is an accident.

The job of the editors is to maximize profitability.

So what? That is maximal economic efficiency. You should be ashamed of yourself for flying in the face of economic theory.

Part of the problem is start up costs. To do serious research you need labs, equipment, researchers, staff, test subjects, etc. If you have that much money the bounty had better be huge so that you do not just decide to play the stock market or real estate instead. Government funding of reesearch is needed to overcome these inherent barriers. Government is probably the only real solution to the problem.

For a very hard core alcoholic NOT drinking can be very dangerous. If said alcoholic quits, or even reduces, alcohol intake seizures can result causing serious damage. The only way to properly handle it is by proper detox.

Whoosh!

It would take 600 years for us to find out.

I once had Chevy Nova insurance.

How would we know?

One can only hope they Darwin themselves out.