Yes it is. There are copious amounts of dystopian sci-fi talking about why governments shouldn't control breeding.
The average number of children per woman in Switzerland is 1.29, about half of the population replacement rate. Stopping population growth in Switzerland has nothing to do with controlling breeding.
Traffic is largely caused by on ramps and exits.
Good point. A highway with no ramps and no exits would have no traffic at all.
It depends on where a tax regime is on the curve. If taxes are very high, it hinders growth and drives people to shelter what they have. In that situation, lowering taxes leads to increased revenue as growth increases and sheltering stops being worth it.
That was Laffer's claim.
The argument he used to support this was little more than "it seem obvious, doesn't it?"
There's very little actual data showing this effect. If there is a peak in the Laffer curve (above which the tax revenue decreases with increasing tax rate), that peak must be at a tax rate much higher than what we see now. In all the cases of the US or Britain cutting income tax rates, tax revenue did not increase.
https://maseconomics.com/laffe...
Wait, hold on, are you saying that you're aware that when taxes go up, tax revenues goes down, every single time it's ever been tried in all of US history at a regional level?
Turns out that this has not proven to be the case.
I think you misunderstand the Laffer curve. Laffer suggested that when tax rates are increased, the amount of revenue generated due to the tax would increase to some point, then at higher tax rates start level off and then to decrease, since there would be a point at which people would stop earning money if the government took too much of it away. There has always been fierce contention as to where that peak of the Laffer curve is.
The difficulty is that there never been a good analysis showing where that peak is. The US, for example, had a top marginal tax rate of 91% in the 1950s up until 1963, yet not only did corporate presidents not only stop working, the economy was booming.
So, no, the statement "when taxes go up, tax revenues goes down" is not supported by history.
...
If you want to say they are all different types of tax, fine.
Bingo!
You got it. They are indeed all taxes, different types of taxes.
The economic justification for nuclear power is weak in all but a few geographic locations occupied by humans.
You're rather of sweeping away a lot in that big "all but". Geographical locations are important.
And that word "a few" represents an opinion. (Which locations? What's the definition of "few"? Under what assumptions?)
I'm a strong advocate for solar power, but to be fair, the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for solar power is vastly determined by location. Most of the solar power fields currently being installed are going into places with good solar availability. That's as it should be, but as you increase the fraction of power being generated by solar, you're going to have to go to less favorable locations (or else put in transcontinental-scale transmission lines, which are expensive.) The solution is going to have to be a mix of power sources, which, yes, may well include nuclear as well as solar (not instead of solar.)
However, in support of your argument, here are a few sources for Levelized Cost of Electricity showing that, yes, for current installations LCOE indeed is favorable for photovoltaics:
https://ourworldindata.org/gra...
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/a...
https://www.iea.org/data-and-s...
And they pick the Russian disaster over the others... including the more modern Fukashima.
They used the Russian disaster as the starting point because the editorial is written for the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
I'm sure that when articles are written for the 40th anniversary of the Fukishima event, the articles will put Fukishima in the headline.
The anti-nuclear bias in the report is pretty mild compared to what has been printed in the past, but seems still to be there.
You are imputing bias where there is none. The statement " nuclear reactors have seen steady improvements, adding more safety features and making them cheaper to build and operate " cannot be interpreted as "anti-nuclear bias" in any possible way.
You seem to think any mention of Chernobyl or Fukushima whatsoever must indicates bias, but that's silly. Any article that discusses the modern state of nuclear power would be amiss if it avoided mentioning these, and this one does not go into any of the scare rhetoric you might see from anti-nuclear sources. If anything, I'd say that by leaving out even the slightest suggestion that there might be any problems with nuclear power, the article is biased in favor of nuclear power
Separate the kids into the Eloi and the Morlocks and let Darwin work his magic
I don't think Wells intended people to think that this was a good thing.
The various teams were compared to the prediction market, and in all three cases-- humans, AI, and human-AI teams-- the prediction market was better*. So... if the predictions in the prediction market are better...what other possible prediction method did they use that wasn't humans, AI, or human-AI teams?
There are two reasonable answers to this. One is that the prediction market includes some fraction of investors that have insider information, and hence the prediction market does better because some of the investors know the answer before investing. The second is that the people in the investment market are professionals at this, and self-select to invest in things they have studied and already know something about, while the teams recruited for the experiment were amateurs who didn't know anything to start with.
I certainly hope the second explanation is the right one.
--
*(yes, the article says 8-10% of the teams "rivaled" the prediction market's accuracy. But that tells us that 90-92% of the teams failed to rival the prediction market's accuracy. So, no, human AI teams didn't beat the market. And if you post-facto examine the results and pull out from a group a subgroup that does better, that's p-hacking, not statistics.
The point I was making was that when a builder goes into an area to build say 200 homes, the builder doesn't have to install an infrastructure to supply electricity or water/sewage, the utility adds the capacity and the municipal water department increases capacity.
Absolutely not.
When developers put in a new housing development, they absolutely DO have to negotiate with the community to get electricity supply extended, water lines laid, and sewerage. It is completely wrong to think that they just build the houses, and somehow the electric company, waterworks, and wastewater just pops up and builds service to them. Until they have these arrangements made, they don't get the permit to build.
The clocks are now so precise that they can detect changes in height (gravity) of around 1mm (it has probably gotten better since the last time I talked to some true time geeks).
Wow, I hadn't realized that measurements of the gravitational time dilation were now so precise as to be measurable on such a sub-centimeter scale! Amazing!
they are also working to stop fuel efficiency standards in ICE cars
Our state (Washington) is doing more by imposing high sales taxes and license fees on newer (like electric) vehicles.
Yes, lobbying for higher taxes on electric vehicles is also one of the tactics of the oil companies.
Everything there is sourced and verified reality.
Nope. The chatbot is giving you mostly vacuous scare-hype, and leaves out real comparisons. Billions of tons of mining will indeed be done... every year... because that's how much fossil fuels we burn now. Saying "gosh, but making cars takes minerals too!" leaves out the "...but we don't burn the cars when we drive them, and constantly have to mine new ones to replace the ones we burned to make energy."
Short answer, don't believe chatbots. They are crafted to please you, and will tell you what they think you want to hear.
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde
