Her contempt for our right to privacy makes her morally unfit to practice law in the United States.

-jcr

What about Steam on Linux, Microsoft charging a yearly subscription for Windows 10*, and nobody wanting to pay to continue using the computer they already bought?

*Windows 10 upgrades within the first year of release come with a free lifelong subscription until Windows 10 is discontinued. Corporate subscription is per-user on unlimited devices, rather than per-device.

Often, the reason something's been done the same way for 100+ years is because we know it works, and experimentation is dangerous. Sometimes, it doesn't even really work.

Yeah that's not going to be 100%.

Elevators already have phone and electricity to their control panels.

Actually...

Facebook hasn't silenced the voices and opinions of everyone around the world. It's just applied some tact in Turkey, where culture and leadership don't tolerate certain things. As for extremists coming from Turkey to blow up Chicken, well, people in Chicken can post pictures offensive to Rude and Reno at their own peril.

People believe that more businesses mean more competition. I've had long, drawn-out arguments that centered around this ideal that a basic income or citizen's dividend, creating a ton of people with guaranteed income streams, would draw out tons of landlords, who would create tons of housing, and then rent that housing at the bare cheapest "because of competition".

I tell people a Citizen's Dividend must be the minimum to get all basic needs. Basically, if landlords can rent a micro-unit at $300/mo, and people need $300/mo more to get food and utilities and such to live, you give them $600/mo. People want to give everyone $1500/mo, to which I say: the landlords will raise rent like fucking crazy and rent you the same shitty $300 apartment for $1000 (like in New York: $1500/mo for 425sqft studio; 425sqft rents for $500 here), because people just have $1000 to burn, and need houses. The overwhelming response? "Nuh-uh! Competition! Other landlords will get in on that, and the price will run down to the same price it would be anyway! Giving people more money doesn't cause inflation!"

They fail to consider risks, inelastic markets, the extreme cost of having empty units, and so on.

ROFL.

What a strawman. Which hypothetical investment banker will take Uber and what happened to his limousine and private driver?

Because other people will pay for your desire.

Economists are big fans of auctions and say that's the most fair method to distribute resources. Economists, however, are not known for taking social, cultural or human values into account in their simple models.

So yes, I would. Man, it really isn't so difficult. Get some history lessons on when and why the taxi business became regulated.

I bet i could outfit this thing with a lawn dart.

I'm sure all Uber drivers are responsible, altruistic people and they will only offer you a lift if they are in possession of specially equipped and certified snowstorm-safe vehicles.

In Econ 101 you also learn about horizontal and vertical pricing.

Basically, if the surge price is reasonably high, most drivers will be available. From 1.0 to 1.5 you may raise the number of drivers considerably, but from 3.0 to 3.5 you will probably not motivate many more drivers to go out and drive - most available drivers will already be on the road, and the few who decide against it will not change their mind here because if 3.0 doesn't motivate them, then 3.5 most likely won't because they have important reasons to stay home.

A cap on such elastic pricing is almost always a good idea.

This exactly.

Why do rich people not live in Africa and Asia where the climate is good? Safety and convenience. If you don't want to spend your life in a castle defending your riches, you go somewhere where culture, society and government will do that job for you.

Strangely, many don't see this as a service worth paying for, which is largely a semantic problem. Maybe we should tackle it there, and instead of taxes, we should collect a "wealth-protection service fee".

From the very article you link to:

That's not as magic as people want it to seem; but it is a force to be reckoned with. Do note that most goods are priced substantially above the minimum business viable price: there's huge mark-up on all kinds of shit, at all levels, even in markets with healthy competition. Apartments are practically divorced from price competition, for example, and tend to only shift prices with general demand (e.g. they get cheaper in a tough economy, they get more expensive when more middle class move to an area, but they don't become cheaper when more landlords own the same limited number of apartments).