This is a common strain of misunderstanding I see all over the place. People think that evolution is somehow magical and that what it produces is mystically better because it's "natural". That's all garbage.

Evolution is a random process. There's no intelligence guiding it, nothing that ensures that the "choices" it makes are the best alternatives or can't have horrific consequences. In fact, the vast majority of evolutionary changes are utter failures that immediately get selected out.

Also, it's silly to claim that climate change is moving "too fast for evolution". Evolution absolutely can and will respond to climate change... it might be that corals go extinct and something else evolves to fill their niche in ocean ecology, or it might be that corals do evolve in something like their current form. Evolution is fine either way and will produce something that settles into a new equilibrium. It might not be an equilibrium humans like, and it might not settle fast enough to make us happy, but we need to realize that what we're concerned about isn't the ecosystem -- that will survive regardless, unless we get into some runaway feedback loop that turns Earth into Venus, or Neptune -- what we're concerned about is maintaining an environment that we're accustomed to.

Given all of that, our potential creation of genetically-modified corals isn't somehow subverting evolution, it's just another evolutionary avenue. Rather than random mutations, we'll create some specific ones and then we'll throw them into the mix and see if they get selected for or against. The same mutations we create deliberately could also have occurred randomly and would that make the outcome any less "natural"?

And if we've already altered the environment so much that our preferred ecosystem is going away anyway, what's the harm in trying to use CRISPR CAS-9 to "guide" evolution in a direction we'd prefer, rather than letting it randomly go in whatever direction it will? Could our genetic modifications make things worse? Sure! Could random mutations also make things worse? Sure! Which is more likely to maintain an ecosystem of the sort we enjoy? No one can say for sure, but in general if you want to get from point A to point B you're better off aiming for B rather than just walking randomly.

Even better would be to stop changing the climate, but at this point all we can do is try to limit the amount we're changing it. And we should do that! But the best that we can do might still not be enough for corals as we know them, so if we like reefs and reef ecosystems (and we really do; I'm an avid SCUBA diver and I love reef ecosystems), then we should probably put some effort into researching modifications that can survive warmer and more acidic oceans.

Both are true, I think. Without discussion and care the numbers would probably be an order of magnitude larger, maybe two... but that's still very small.

And if they find that it's not helpful to them right now, there's no point in learning something about it for the future -- because it's going to change. If it ever achieves its full promise there will be no need to learn how to use it, because it will learn how to work with us.

Well, assuming it doesn't kill us all.

Right, the economist refer to this as "externality". Fossil fuels aren't cheap, if you factor in the costs that people using them transfer to third parties. Theoretically, if the true cost of using fossil fuels were factored into every pound of coal or gallon of gasoline consumed, then we would use *exactly the right amount* of fossil fuels. Probably not zero, but not as much as we do when we pretend pollution isn't a cost.

I notice that you didn't provide any counterexamples which is, of course, because there aren't any. No planned economy larger than a few hundred people has ever succeeded. While capitalist economies do go through cycles of expansion and recession (which a well-functioning central bank and adequate regulatory oversight can ameliorate but not eliminate), capitalism consistently makes the entire society wealthier, top to bottom. Yes, it does tend to produce inequality, and that has some negative social effects, but over time even the poorest end up better off than under any other system, assuming modest government regulation to prevent abuses.

There really isn't; definitely not compared to central planning. The results speak for themselves, but it's useful to understand why, I think. When people look at the way capitalist economies tend to produce 10 factories making similar shoes while it seems obvious that one big factory would be more efficient, the mistake they're making is in looking only at what they can see with their eyes: Buildings, machinery, people, all making shoes, redundantly. What they fail to see is the knowledge about how to make shoes efficiently that ebbs and flows through those same enterprises. This is the core flaw in the Labor Theory of Value, actually, which was the basis of Marx's understanding of economics.

The Labor Theory of Value will tell you that the value of a product is determined by the resources that went into producing it, material, energy and labor. But it omits the knowledge required to produce the product and the right knowledge can decrease the resource requirements by orders of magnitude. Capitalism works because it incentivizes the creation of knowledge that enables more efficient production, as well as the creation of better products (where "better" means "optimized to consumer desires in context").

This is why the 10 shoe factories end up being more efficient than one.

But that's not where capitalism provides the biggest efficiency boost to the economy. The biggest boost comes from the knowledge it generates about the most efficient way to allocate capital. Wall Street looks on its face like an incredible waste of money. All of those people generating massive personal incomes by "gambling" on stocks and bonds. In truth, that competitive game is the knowledge engine that no central planning board has come remotely close to matching, and certainly has never exceeded. All of the money to be made in trading incentivizes brainpower to concentrate on solving the problem of making sure that the most productive enterprises have the resources they need.

Any system that fails to replace the knowledge generation capitalism provides will ultimately be far less efficient, and will generate production shortfalls. No one has yet proposed any system that even attempts to cover that critical gap.

So far, the absolute best economic structure we've devised -- as evidenced by actual outcomes, not just theory -- is lightly-fettered capitalism overlaid with a redistributive social safety net.

I'm glad you looked up the real number as I usually see estimates of 65% of USians or something like that living in apartments (zero of which have chargers installed in the parking lot of course).

But what you are saying is that no progress can be made on the other 66% who can install a home charger until absolutely every possible case is covered, which is not out of touch but simply pro-Big Oil propaganda.

Here come the edge cases! Apartments! Towing a trailer from San Diego to Maine. Driving from Little Rock to Boise to return that tool you borrowed but being back in time for work at 0700. Nothing is decided until everything is decided.

Sure, whatever.

Auto industry analysts and enthusiasts alike have a hard time understanding how Stellantis is still in business, particularly now that they have screwed up the Jeep line in North America. I wouldn't take them as indicative of anything.

Beg to differ a bit: while GM made some missteps, particularly in handing the VOLTEC technology over to their PRC subsidiary and dropping it in North America, they took their time to develop a well-engineered and manufacturable EV platform for the next 10-15 years. The problem is their executive team is now living in fear of what a fascist regime could do to them if they don't toe the line and that has given the anti-progress faction at GM operations HQ the chance to counterattack and put anchors on EV marketing and sales. Really a shame and it will cost them dearly over the next 20 years [1].

[1] the anti-progress faction at GM will be well-retired to their backwoods Michigan cabins with their 2,847hp offroad pickup trucks by then

There's only one question in my mind: when the United States wakes up 10 years from now and realizes we have fallen 20 years behind in basic and applied science, EVs, public transportation, and re-creating our built environment to center humans instead of machines (ok, we're already 30 years behind on that last) WHO ARE WE GOING TO BLAME?!? SOMEONE DID THIS TO US - THEY MUST BE PUNISHED!!!

"Electric vehicles are one of those things that are a really good idea in theory but out in the real world they are just simply unworkable. "

EVs are like the apocryphal bumblebee: they don't work in theory, yet millions of people use them every day with no more serious inconvenience than ICE vehicles experience from time to time (e.g. the mythical 'range anxiety' = running out of gas on a back road).

I've had people give me long lectures about the un-usability of EVs while I have driven them across the city, errands, and back on purely electric power in my PHEV.

The study said that they're better: 19% better. That's not nothing! It's just not the 75% better that lab testing showed.

The link you provided is the experience of one driver, one who is conscientious and focused on minimizing fuel consumption (within reason; hypermilers would do better). The study looked at the real-world results across 800,000 drivers, most of whom apparently didn't take so much care to minimize fuel usage.

Also, it's not true in general that "hybrids use generators rather than ICE". That's true of PHEVs that are strictly serial hybrids, but most are series-parallel or "power split" hybrids, meaning they can drive the wheels with the electric motor, or the combustion engine, or both. Often both the electric motor and the ICE are too small to provide the target maximum performance so must be used in parallel when you step hard on the accelerator.

One fascinating strategy for power splitting is "through the road", which has no mechanical connection at all between the ICE and the traction motor, and uses the wheel-driven traction motor as the generator. The way it works is the ICE drives one axle and the traction motor drives the other. Battery charging is done "through the road", using the road itself to transmit power from the ICE-driven axle to the electrically-driven axle. The ICE spins one pair of wheels, driving the vehicle forward, which forces the other pair of wheels to spin which turns the electric motor which charges the battery. This only makes sense in AWD drive cars but it's peak design elegance.

If 100% of jobs meet some standard, we'll pick a higher standard. For example, consider the standard that employees not be chained to their benches, fed nothing but moldy bread and be brutally whipped if the overseer feels like it. 100% of legitimate jobs in the US exceed that standard. OSHA exists to ensure that jobs meet minimum workplace safety standards and minimum wage laws ensure that jobs pay at least a certain amount, so we don't discuss whether jobs meet those standards, we take them as a given and set the quality bar higher.

If a study finds that 40% of jobs meet some standard, it means that the researchers did a reasonably good job of writing a description of the median job, then tweaked it upward just a bit. It's not like there is some universal, eternal standard for what constitutes a "quality job". It would be interesting to take the current standard and apply to historical working conditions, 50, 100, 200, 500 years ago. I'll bet the 1975 percentage would be half of the 2026 percentage and the older percentages would quickly tail off to ~0.

Of course if you get rid of capitalism then you get a different systemic problem, massive shortfalls in production, making everyone worse off. Much like democracy, capitalism is the worst system except for all of the others.

That's what they've done. Or rather they've bought the politicians who create the regulatory frameworks. But if people woke up and realized they've been frog-boiled into giving away their privacy, then that would be prohibitively expensive.