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.

While I agree that I don't understand how this is price fixing, I'm not sure your argument is valid. Standard Oil is a pretty well-known example of producers colluding to keep the price up, but they still kept it low enough that people found a ton of ways to make use of oil from transportation to heating to labor productivity. Using the "loss of demand" measurement we would probably have missed it.

I think the issue here isn't collusion per se, but rather that an information disparity exists and disadvantages tenants and is being perceived as "price fixing" because there really isn't any other mechanism currently to deal with the problem.

One alternative solution would be to level the playing field by finding some way to make tenants and landlords alike have access to the same level and quality of information. I would suggest perhaps all rents and rent offers should be published in a way that anyone can apply their own algorithm on either side of the negotiation.

The legislation introducing tax breaks and similar subsidies for PHEVs was argued for by larger savings in gasoil use. They don't realize, so what's to do about the subsidies? Why should PHEVs in some places get the same subsidies as EVs, despite only saving 19% instead of 100% in local emissions?

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.

Uh, the Trump administration is staffed by a bunch of people with openly anti-democratic views and they have strong opinions on how other countries should run their affairs as evidenced by J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. From a non-US, non-Chinese point of view, while China is anti-democratic, it is still better than the US in that China at least leaves you alone as long as you don't step on it's tail while the US will without any provocation try to force you to run your country the way they think you should, or outright annex your country like your orange king has threatened Canada and Greenland. For most of the world China is bad but the USA is actually becoming worse and that took some doing on the part of the US.

I essentially made the argument that if we want capitalism to work the way we were taught in civics class it is supposed to, companies must be forced by regulation not to undermine the basic assumptions that lead to efficient operation of the free market.

I am neither here nor there on a basic income. I think it depends on circumstances, which of course are changing as more and more labor -- including routine mental labor -- is being automated. We are eventually headed to a world of unprecedented productive capacity and yet very little need for labor, but we aren't there yet.

Anybody who is pushing AI services, particularly *free* AI services, is hoping to mine your data, use it to target you for marketing, and use the service to steer you towards opaque business relationships they will profit from and you will find it complicated and inconvenient to extricate yourself from.

The question is -- ideas that are bad for *who*? This may be a very bad idea for you and me, but it is a very good idea for Microsoft, especially as, like their online services, they will make money off of us and it will be very inconvenient for us to opt out.

In civics-lesson style capitalism, which I'm all in favor of, companies compete to provide things for us that we want and we, armed with information about their products, services and prices, either choose to give them our business or to give our business to a competitor.

Not to say that stuff doesn't *ever* happen, but it's really hard to make a buck as a business that way. So what sufficiently large or well-placed businesses do is earn money *other* ways, by entangling consumers in business relationships that are opaque and which they don't have control over, may not even be fully aware they're signing on to, and which are complicated and awkward to extricate themselves from. In other words a well placed company, like Microsoft or Google or Facebook, will constantly be looking at ways to make money outside the rigorous demands of free market economics.

The problem was that you were part of that chain of obligations to, and the guy above you could grab your wife, or in the case of James II of England (James VI of Scotland), he could grab you.

China's population decline, as standards of living increase, will largely take care of the problem. China, like every nation that is now on the other side of the economic growth-population growth curve, will have to figure out how to deal with the next half century. But nothing is going to make factories less automated, and between population decline and foreign tariffs, they are only going to push automation further to fill the gap.

Which will not prevent automation. Look at the history of technological advancement, from the Paleolithic to today. Each major innovation has disrupted labor in some form or another, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, in a proximal sense, but in the long run societies adapt. You cannot block innovation, and if you do, you simply surrender the field to the nation that is willing to throw out the status quo.

All North America can think about is building more pipelines. The oil obsession, in the face of climate change and economics, means we're just going to fall further and further behind. Sure, for a while tariffs will serve to keep EVs and economy cars out, but not even the United States can defy gravity forever, and when it all comes crashing back to Earth, North American automanufacturers, the heart of North America's industrial capacity, will be shattered.

Or the automakers could just ignore the dictates of the White House. But at this point, we're stuck in a tragedy of the commons, with strong encouragement from political leaders in the US and Canada, who lack either the wit or the courage to make the final break.

If anyone had been listening to what he was saying, they would have had no idea what he was saying? The grandiosity masked the complete deficit not merely of ideas, but even of reason and coherence? They elected a mean-spirited moron.

Is it April 1? Or is this another manufactured moral panic?

Xi is a lot of things, but a tinpot dictator he isn't. I despise everything the regime running China stands for, but if we're going to look at the PRC's ability to maintain itself and even expand itself economically and scientifically. Xi may die tomorrow, but the PRC isn't going anywhere. If progress is measured in research, have you paid attention to how much basic research is coming out of China these days, as compared to the West, which seems bound and determined to decimate academic capacity, or hand it over to a bunch monomaniac billionaires.