A labor union wants to be, and often is, the exclusive provider (that is, seller) of labor to a company or industry. How's that not a monopoly?

That you might think it's for a good cause and/or justified doesn't change the economics. They're legally protected exclusive sellers which drive up the price of their product (labor) above market clearing levels.

That's all well and good. Remember the downside is they drive up the price of goods for everyone else in the society so they're not an unalloyed good.

So, that means that 70% of drivers didn't express any interest in union representation. That means a minority of drivers are forcing their preference on the majority. Seems unjust to me.

If drivers had an option to join the union or directly work with the company, that would be a different kettle of fish. But they won't, their choice will forcibly taken away from them.

I find it hypocritical. Progressives in this state hate monopolies, unless its a labor monopoly which shovels huge amounts of cash to the Democrats.

That's what the unions and CA Democratic party want.

Thing is, you poll the actual drivers, most like the flexibility of being able to schedule their own shifts and set their own hours. They like that it's gig work.

I'd even vote for Bernie or AOC if that was their first campaign plank.

The good news is I don't live in a swing state so it's very unlikely my vote will make any sort of difference and I don't need to sweat it.

Go to your Google settings page and change your locale to "Canada".

Problem solved, for now. I just have to remember to undo this when this clusterf**k is over.

I got to try one of Gen 2 devices a year ago. The stick was pretty minor because the needle is very thin. Popping a zit hurts more.

My problem is the sticky got unstuck in about three days :(.

It's also substantially smaller than the previous generation.

Yeah, that is the issue, isn't it? If PG&E and Anthropic were free to negotiate a plan, I'm pretty sure the agreement would be "In exchange for these large bags of money, PG&E will deliver power next week." That two self-interested/greedy companies don't reach that agreement makes me wonder what's stopping them.

Shortages of people and components are the sorts of problems markets are really good at fixing, maybe not today but in a year or so. If it's not getting resolved, something is keeping the market from working.

Are they not paying? The impression I get is AI companies are expanding as fast as possible (it's a virtual land grab right now) and cost is not the primary concern. Or in other words, if I'm springing for a $10B data center, I can pay $100M to build a transmission line.

If allowed, I'm pretty sure most AI companies would happily pay to build transmission lines and power plants if (a) it got done sooner and (b) they got assurance they'd get the power they need when they need it. They're talking about building their own on-site power plants, fer cryin' out loud, I don't think they're trying to avoid costs.

Dig one level deeper. If selling power is how PG&E makes money, and there's more power to sell if these projects to complete, why is PG&E, being a greedy company, not hiring people in droves to complete them? We've seen other companies, e.g. the AI companies, pay outrageous rates to get good people to complete projects. Why is PG&E (and friends) different?

One obvious difference is the energy distribution companies are regulated monopolies. PG&E, for example, can't just make investments willy nilly--infrastructure spending basically has to get approved by the Public Utilities Commission. They can't decide for themselves what gross profit margin they need to fund investment, that's also controlled by the PUC.

Infrastructure projects also tend to get tied up in the approvals and environmental review quagmire.

I'd be far more likely to believe the issue is heavy handed regulation which is keeping obviously valuable projects from getting completed, far more so than that PG&E is leaving money on the table for reasons.

Oh. I like having a moderate sized screen, about the size of an iPad Mini, for Android Auto and the camera views. My car also has a glass instrument panel which is really nice. It does, however, model physical instruments (speedometer and tach) for ease of reading. It's all the other chrome around the gauges which is nice (next turn, fuel efficiency, performance stats, entertainment details). Is it crucial? Absolutely not. Is it nice? Sure is.

To calibrate you, the car also has a heads-up display for navigation, alerts, and speed. That's one of those "once you try it you're never going back" features. It's so great not having to take my eyes off the road. I'd lose any display save for that one.

I don't generally use the touchscreen controls. It's quite difficult to do that while driving. I'm with you that physical controls are very important for anything you do while the vehicle is moving.

I use Android Auto in my car and that's great for maps and entertainment. It's better the software which comes bundled with the car. The beauty is my car, a BMW, comes with it's fabulous in-console controller, which lets me do virtually everything without moving my hand. Yes, it's a touchscreen, but I almost never use that aspect of it. My impression is other cars have adopted that paradigm.

It still doesn't handle the vehicle controls (heater, AC, sensors). I've got physical HVAC controls, and that's a necessity. All the other sensors (oil level, air pressure, brake pad thickness, etc. etc.) go through the car's software but for as often as I use that, I don't really care what the controls are like.

First, I can't imagine any reasonable need for the FCC to define "broadband" in the first place. What's wrong with letting ISPs and consumers settle on what broadband means?

Second, I have no doubt the goal was to force, jawbone, or subsidize ISPs to deploy 1000/500 network connections. But for the vast majority of people, that's wildly overprovisioned. If all you do is watch AmaFlix and cat videos, you don't even need the 100/20 service which used to be broadband.

So I personally would prefer the FCC would STFU about what is or is not broadband and get back to worrying about radio interference.

I thought the "hedge" in "hedge fund" meant the investment managers were constantly hedging investment bets. In other words, they would have a lot of bets, some of which would only pay off is other ones did not. For example, take some positions which paid off if gold rose, others which paid if gold fell, and now regardless of what gold does, you make some money. The net result is you get a more consistent return rather than what this fund did, spectacular returns followed by a crater. And with that reduced risk comes lower average returns.

What I'd call this fund is a "leverage fund", not a "hedge fund".

When did hedge funds stop hedging bets and become vehicles for highly leveraged, high risk, high return investing? I must have missed that transition.

I have a friend who's pet theory was HR's main goal was to tune compensation to keep the attrition level where the company wanted it. If too few people quit, you're paying too much. If too many, you're not paying enough.

I doubt anyone in HR would put it in quite such cold blooded terms but I think it's at least partly right. Any company needs to think about what type of employees they want and what compensation/benefits/physical environment/work culture will get them that. The right answer isn't always "pay the most for the best of the best".