"Tokyo has a lot of family owned shops."

Tokyo is a modern, walkable city with good mass transit. In the US most places are totally dependent on cars. Having separate, butchers, bakers, and so long would mean making multiple trips to multiple destinations with multiple stops. And that assumes said places could be priced competitive with the big box stores and grocery stores.

Costco offers a decent selection of foods and goods at affordable prices w/o the typical price gouging seen almost everywhere else. And they treat their employees well, including wages and benefits.

But instead of recognizing why people would prefer such things, they try to frame it as a cult.

"On every front it's the exact opposite of value."

It's not a "value" product.

"It doesn't do anything anyone needs or wants."

Makes the classic mistake of assuming that everyone's needs and wants are identical to your own.

So they only grossed $157 million on them last quarter??? Or $1.2 billion in 2024? I wish all of my failures were so lucky.

Then again, it's said that Apple has spent $7B on it. so I suppose that's a loss. OTOH, Meta has seen operating losses of more than $77 billion since 2020 in its Reality Labs/metaverse division.

(BTW, currently reading this page on my Mac using the AVP Ultrawide monitor.)

When I was young I read because books were my only escape. If born today I fear I would have vanished into video games, perhaps never to resurface and never even leaving my parent's basement...

Look at it this way. Reading literature, books, short stories, and so on is basically akin to reading documentation... about people. Hopes, dreams, aspirations, failures... all that and more.

To quote DPS, "We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

"The technical problems involving nuclear power have long since been solved. The social problems have not."

I have no doubt that the technical problems involving nuclear power have long since been solved. But as long as those plants are run by businesses and corporations looking to minimize costs and maximize profits, the "social" problems will never see solutions.

Which in turn probably means those plants will never, ever be safe.

"This is how all taxes should be. You should tax/charge the people who use or want to use services."

You should Google the definitions of public and common goods. National defense, clean air, street lighting, public roads and bridges, disease surveillance and epidemic control, basic scientific research, the court system, police and rule of law, public parks, and emergency services, public schools, education, and libraries...

You benefit just by living in a society where those exist, including on days you never personally use them. If you only charge direct users, you underfund the stuff that prevents disasters rather than reacting to them.

That’s why public goods are typically funded broadly: you can’t realistically gate them without wrecking them.

User fees can be a tool for scarce, excludable services. They’re not a universal principle for taxation, because many of the most valuable government functions are shared, preventative, and impossible (or harmful) to gate.

"and tax based on annually-collected odometer readings instead, adjusted by vehicle weight"

I also think vehicle registration fees should be based on weight, perhaps $1/lb per year. And the same amount each year, since the vehicle weight doesn't decrease.

Perhaps fewer folks would choose oversized, overweight pickups if their fees were $a non-tax-deductable 5,000 a year.

First, studies have estimated that 66.5% of all U.S. bankruptcies are tied to medical issues, including high costs of care and loss of work due to illness. And the majority of those filers HAD insurance.

Second, he's off on not dischargeable, but not by much since in 2005 Bush pushed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. And BAPCPA's "means" testing makes it much more difficult to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, pushing folks instead into Chapter 13 and forced repayment of said debt.

The law's impact on individuals facing medical debt was significant. Research found that after BAPCPA was enacted, individuals with uninsured hospitalizations were less likely to obtain bankruptcy relief, indicating that the law reduced the "insurance value" of bankruptcy against such shocks.

As mentioned above, other countries realize that free/inexpensive higher education is actually an investment in their citizens and in their country's futures.

But i the grand tradition of the American “free market,” the U.S. once again proves that if there’s a way to squeeze its own citizens for profit, it’ll find it.

Other countries invest in people; we just invoice them and call it freedom, leaving generations shackled to long-term debt.

Other countries realize that free/inexpensive higher education is actually an investment in their citizens and in their country's futures.

Truth. Ever notice how every single one of the politico's who've been railing against "elitists" and who continually warn us against the dangers of "liberal" colleges all have their own advanced degrees?

Trump graduated from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and from the Wharton School of Business. Marco Rubio graduated from the University of Florida and the University of Miami Law School. Jeb Bush? University of Texas. Rand Paul? Baylor and Duke. Tom Cotton attended Harvard and Harvard Law, and Ted Cruz hails from Princeton and Harvard. JD Vance? OSU and Yale.

But you? Nah. Can't have the common folk bein' "overcredentialed". Might start gettin' uppity and askin' too many questions.

Best to leave all that higher learnin' to our new ruling class and be properly thankful for any table scraps they toss our way...

Most of the vehicles sold internationally meet **EU** safety standard. Standards which are almost always higher than those here in the US.

(Even more so today, in fact, since Trump has been busy cutting back US agencies ability to actually do what they're tasked to do.)

But yeah, convince yourself that they're all cheap low-quality garbage and that fat-assed American SUVs and pickup trucks are exceptional....

Trump Derangement Syndrome???