I understand where you're coming from, but you'll be signing a different tune when your employer and/or client terminates you. While we may all hate P/E for fairly valid reasons, they also buy companies injecting capital back to founders and VCs, and either merge companies or tear them apart (not great) and take them IPO or sell them to larger firms. We hate them for when this goes south and people lose their jobs or what have you, but this turnaround of capital creates the next round of capital that supports the next round of startups or the vendors that sell to these companies. If those companies are going dark, or there's nowhere for them to go, the employees and the vendors who sell to them have a cascade of problems too.

The problem with that logic though is the definition of "might be a problem" turning to "requiring a fix". Anything might be a problem. It's all fine and dandy to be proactive about water management when it definitely has public health concerns attached to it, but a few of the stated examples appear at face value to have been extreme. And really the question is who gets to draw the line between requiring a fix for a "might be" and not requiring it? If the EPA has that unilateral decision making, then that's a pretty clear argument for bureaucratic overreach.

That being said, and to counter my own point, the case of Jefferson County's bankruptcy appears that while they may or may not have needed to repair those sewers, their bankruptcy had a lot more to do with complex financial derivatives on their debt, pork projects embedded into the taxes to pay for the bonds for the sewers, overbuilding the sewers themselves, the 2008 financial crisis and many other things that go far beyond the EPA and the Federal Courts forcing them to upgrade their sewers. So much of this summary and article should be taken with a grain of salt.

A couple of things, and caveat I spent a brief time working in the nuclear industry in a consulting capacity, and I was in a hotel on a business trip having a drink with the VP of Bus Dev of Westinghouse Nuclear watching the news reports of Fukushima as it literally happened right then.

First, in the Japanese cultural psyche nuclear power is a very prominent thing. Japan has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world to have been hit with nuclear weapons in anger, and the cultural shock of that paired with the utter destruction of their society after WW2 was very significant. You can see it in the subtext of their culture, for example the entire Godzilla franchise is heavily influenced by the fears of nuclear power and the devastation it can wreak on society. Even in anime, the various Macross franchises, they used the term "reaction engine" or "reaction warheads" as a coded word for "nuclear" because the word nuclear has a very strong cultural reaction to it, and nearly every Macross series you see has some angle of some super weapon that could, and often does, destroy entire worlds. It's deep in the cultural psyche there, so when there is a problem and the word "nuclear" is attached to it, the society there shifts around it.

After Fukushima, Japan shut down all 54 of their nuclear power plants in response. That of course made them a massive importer of fossil fuels, whcih they don't have natural access to. Fears and cultural issues with the term nuclear eventually were bested by pure economic factors; nuclear is cleaner than fossil fuels, provides more power, and has a less supply chain issues while giving Japan greater control over it's energy grid. Around 15 reactors have started back up under stricter safety guidelines.

To your point about plants having gravity fed cooling and multiple backups, that's not exactly true. Modern reactors, like the AP1000 use gravity cooling, this is called a Gen III+ reactor. The issue though is that reactors are really expensive to set up, and often times it's more economical to extend the service life of an older reactor than build a new one. So while you are correct about new built reactors, most Gen 1 reactors are retired but many Gen 2 reactors are still active and do not have those features. In the specific case of Fukushima and Japan, Japan has a very unique challenge. You always want to build nuclear reactors near water so you have active sources of cooling. For Japan, that means the coast. The problem though is that Japan is also very seismically active. Fukushima was designed to withstand some severe earthquakes and had pumps that were fully automated that should be able to keep the reactor cool for 1-2 days in an emergency, which is often enough to bring in more permanent solutions. What happened with Fukushima it was hit by a greater than 9.0 earthquake off the coast which created a tsunami (it's notable we use the Japanese word for tsunamis because they're so common there). The massive tsunami came in and wiped out the generators that run the pumps, knocking out all of it's backup cooling stations. The plant, 40 years old, did what it was supposed to do, but was hit with something beyond it's design specs.

And that's the real issue. An AP1000 could have managed Fukushima due to it's passive cooling, but the vast majority of active reactors are Gen 2. Most Gen 2s are good, but they don't have those passive systems, they still rely on generators and pumps for the cooling. Japan built it's reactors knowing their seismic situation, but the earthquake that hit Fukushima was exceptionally large and beyond what it could do.

THey use it to measure risk, but it doesn't measure risk at all. What happens when debt is 300% of GDP? 500%? Does it matter? if the government can cover the payments and still make essential services then it doesn't matter. However 50% debt to GDP with interest payments that a government can't cover will lead to inflation or cuts in services.

No, they use it as a normalizing factor, to measure nations of different strengths relative to each other. But even with a normalizing factor there's a huge difference between say Greece, who can't print money because they don't control the Euro, has an economy with only a few sectors and a smaller tax base, when comapared to say the US who can print money, has multiple sectors to draw on and an enormous tax base.

I prefer interest to GDP, and probably better interest to tax receipts, because it's more indicative of when a problem might surface. Debt is a balance sheet item, it carries over year after year. GDP is an annualized number, so even from a time-scale perspective they have very little relationship. Tax receipts are not quite as good because unlike a business, the government has the ability to essentially print money. But the current measure doesn't tell us anything; when and at what percent of debt-to-GDP is there a real problem? I feel like that number is used because it's so obtuse that they can make whatever political story out of it they want.

It's the one thing saving us from fascist control. They're good at talking a big game to their constituents, but ultimately can't deliver on anything.

Fair question. It's apples and oranges to compare other countries' restaurant business to the US.

In other countries, you have generally higher on average prices per menu item than equivalent in the US. Not always, and it doesn't always feel that way; I was in Japan a few years back and it felt cheap because the Yen was way down, but I also was in Norway recently, and every meal even at a standard restaurant was nearly US$100 for 3 people. However US restaurants also face much higher costs in overhead. Food safety and inspections are generally more common and more frequent in the US than other countries. The US tends to be more litigious as a society, meaning restaurants must have liability insurance, workers' comp insurance, etc. We also have some rather severe regulations for service based businesses, most notably the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). I've been to places in Ireland and China that wouldn't be anywhere near compliant with ADA; heck I've been to some nice places in downtown Tokyo that didn't have a bathroom accessible without going a block down the street. You also have more stringent building codes, which means capacity restrictions, fire department inspections.

I do like experiencing the culture of other countries, but restaurants in other countries definitely feel different because they don't have to live up to the American regulatory and legal systems.

So, as a result, margins are already thin for restaurants here. If you make everyone a standard worker, the restaurant would be forced to raise menu prices, which due to the elasticity studies mentioned above would drive down their sales revenue (and thus go out of business) or be unprofitable (and thus go out of business).

So if we could manage some things like Tort reform, loosen health and safety restrictions, allow restaurants to pack twice as many people in as they do now by altering building codes, allow them to force you out quickly to bring customer turnover (this is common in China, Korea, and Japan), alter health insurance costs, align regulations across state and municipal bodies, oh, and get Credit Card companies to lower interchange fees because US interchange fees are generally higher here than overseas, then yes, we could clear up enough room in restaurants' cost structure to allow them to pay full wages and move away from tips.

I have a feeling he's more interested in getting sweet deals for Oracle. Essentially they buy WB and make Trump happy; htey still own an asset that is worth something useful; all the IP and all the stations, so it's not like he's losing anything. And in return Oracle is currently bidding on JWCC. So he helps out Trump, and in return Oracle gets to be the backbone of the US military's cloud computing efforts for an extremely long time. JWCC is still out for bid between MS, Amazon, and Google.

My family is an anecdote that would agree with your assessment. We do quite well for ourselves, but balk at $50 for even a relatively fast meal to go out and stay in and cook. While we're pretty diligent about where we shop, our grocery bill is around $1200 per month for 3 mouths. $1200 month, 30 days, 3 meals a day, where each is home cooked with veggies and protein of all types (I do steaks, roasts, fish, chicken of a variety of styles), that equates to around $4.50/meal. The absolute cheapest i can find a take-out meal at a fast food restaurant will put you back $9 to $10 each for a far unhealthier meal.

So we at least are an example of what you're talking about.

The problem with what you're suggesting is that it assumes that people make logical choices. That people will make the best decisions based on the most information. It simply isn't true. It's what we discuss in economics, that informed buyers make rational choices to determine the best set price and value, but that's economics models not the real world.

Most people do not want to make informed choices. They just want their burger and they'll pay a tip because it's the custom. Will people buy more because they know a restaurant is paying a living wage and so they'll pay 20% or 30% more for the burger because it's better for society? No, they do not.

I'm not supporting it, it's just how it is, but to assume that it will change for the better because better informed customers will make better decisions doesn't hold true in reality. But I do disagree with you about "tricking" your customers. How are they tricking you? You know if you're going out you're going to pay the tip. that's literally every restaurant in the entire United States. If you don't assume you're paying the menu price plus sales tax plus 18-20% in tip then you have a problem. The fundamental difference though is to the buyer (the restaurant patron), you assume you're going to pay an extra 20%, but it feels discretionary. If it's roped into the price, it feels mandatory, and people reject the mandatory cost, but htey feel empowered when it's discretionary, even if by custom you're going to pay it.

There is a theory that tipping culture comes from Jim Crow/Reconstruction era laws to avoid paying newly freed slaves a reasonable wage, and it just became institutionalized. I don't fully support this theory; I think tipping has a lot of complex origins, but it is interesting particularly when you refer to it as a "tipping disease".

That feels good to say, but doesn't actually work in reality. If you turn to paying full wages, then the business has to pass on the cost of that wage in their meal prices. However restaurant meals compared to other types of products are "one of the highest elastic prices out there at 2.27. That means for a 10% increase in price, you have a subsequent 22.7% decrease in sales. Given most restaurants operate on very thin margins, many people simply wouldn't go out. While one could imagine that the overall net cost is the same if the tip is just factored into the price, studies show that segregated or discretionary costs, even if they are required due to cultural norms, have less of an impact on price elasticity; this is why for example the airlines offer 4 prices for the same seat, including a budget option where you can pay an extra fee to check an extra bag.

So I think what you'd find is that a lot of restaurants would go out of business, and a lot fewer would start, because it wouldn't be economical to run a restaurant anymore, and thus there'd be a lot fewer employed waiters and waitresses.

Hi ChatGPT, we're starting to fall off course. Can you redirect our thrusters so we don't fall back into the atmosphere and burn up?

ChatGPT: That's a great idea. I will align all 6 thrusters and calculate a trajectory to use optimal fuel burn and get us to LEO.

But ChatGPT, we only have 4 thrusters.

ChatGPT: you're right, my mistake. It seems I hallucinated how many thusters were on board. Unfortunately my calculations are off, and you are now going to die a horrible fiery death.

Would you like to notify your next of kin that your ashes have been spread across the Pacific Ocean?

I read it as not being about funding, it's about what to work on first. If you focus on an application sure that enhances revenue projections, but you might fall behind someone else who sprints ahead with research. They have the money to do both as you say, it's a question of prioritization.

But let's talk about the elephant in the room here, that's not talked about in the article: Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg went all in on metaverse to mediocre results, and now jumped on the LLM/AI bandwagon after people had already gotten going. So he spent ungodly amounts of money to just bring people in without any real way to align them with a vision or core focus or strategy; he just threw shares and money around like it was candy to recruit apparent top talent and just threw them all in a bucket to make it work. That's real Gavin Belson style leadership there. The fact that he hasn't' taken the time to organize the teams and leadership around a vision makes it look like he, and by extension Meta, is flailing.

And what is Meta doing in AI? I know OpenAI/ChatGPT, I know Microsoft/Copilot, I know Anthropic/Claude, Devon, etc. What is Meta's offering? It seems they are light years behind, totally disorganized, and no clear idea of what their angle will be.

All of what you say is true, but the short term is the point I think. I think they need to keep their stock price up given how much they're spending on AI that has no clear path to profitability and is tricky to measure if it's all worth it. If their profits look like garbage because of these investments, it could bring their stock price down quite a bit, creating a cycle that's difficult to escape from.