> We're not going to have famines if SpaceX has a month long strike.
But Ukrainian soldiers can and will die on the battlefield if Starlink has issues. We already know that it is vital for the Russians because their battle plans fell apart once SpaceX, the US and the Ukrainian government finally introduced a whitelist for terminals allowed to connect on Ukrainian soil. And SpaceX IIRC also operates a separate Starlink system for the US military.
This didn't pose an issue in the past because the DoD ran stuff on its own, no third party companies required... but heh, privatization rules...
I have no doubt that it works and it's hilarious that it works, but is there a way that does not involve my Google search history look like I've applied for a KKK membership?
> The worst part is that most of number 3 is self imposed by the ridiculous amount of environmental review and litigation delays surrounding that process.
Because, surprise, we do not want more Superfund sites. Like, the Silicon Valley is the US' biggest cluster of Superfund sites by far.
At the same time, it is very convenient that there are lots of piss poor countries that have very difficult/dirty to mine resources... be it China, Congo or whatever. These countries didn't have the luxury to think decades into the future, and capitalism doesn't have built-in ethics, and this is how we ended up here.
The EU tried to introduce supply chain laws aiming at cutting back at this kind of exploitation, but the pressure from industry was immense.
> IMO, these industries need to be heavily taxed if not owned by the government.
... or for every building and infrastructure, a bond needs to be placed with the government to be a safeguard for its demolition cost, and for projects that risk environmental damage (mining, oil drills), proof of insurance needs to be provided before the construction begins, and should that insurance ever lapse, the entire property gets seized by the government.
And don't forget retroactive claw backs on any profits taken; otherwise they'd make sure the assets to be seized are of absolutely no value (and canonically, negative value: all the environmental disaster and other collateral damage is offloaded to the public)
> so these ships are abandoned by the companies that own them, with the crew still on board? and then the crew is just stuck there with dwindling food supplies until somebody comes to rescue them?
Yes, basically. The situation is really really nasty, every year thousands of sailors are stuck aboard abandoned ships [1][2]. Sometimes, crews get stuck for years [3] - and the situation is made worse by the fact that leaving ship means forfeiting payment.
That's how fucked up our world is outside the jurisdiction of a well functioning government and an engaged and educated populace. It's only as nice as we decide to make it.
the thing is, technically "convenience flags" are outside our jurisdiction... but the companies owning the ships? the companies chartering the ships?
these are in Western jurisdictions. We could hold them accountable, but we don't, because freight companies are insanely well connected in politics and too many too rich people profit too much from this kind of exploitation.
Why the fuck do people still use Ivanti, and while we're at it, Cisco gear? How many backdoors and vulnerabilities can these two companies produce until they get put out of business?
If you ask me... both these companies should be treated similarly to misbehaving banks: banned from acquiring new customers, an external overseer installed, and only when the products do not pose a threat to the general public any more, they can acquire new customers again.
Ivanti is a necrotic acquirer of things. Kind of like a poor version of Microfocus or Broadcom pre-VMware and pre-AI hype. (Broadcom even bought CA, which was the ultimate company of this type.)
This product was MobileIron, which was actually a pretty decent MDM platform, except like most acquisitions like this I'm sure they purged anyone with a clue. Unlike something like Pulse VPN, MDM is a sticky product and difficult/time-consuming to transition from.
Yeah well fuck insurers. We are supposed to get spied upon by our cars with their blackboxes, by our insurers, by Google, by national security services of various countries... and what do we get in return? Dinged for other people's bad behavior which we cannot reasonably control. Either you follow the car in front of you very closely and get hard braking events, or other people switch lanes in front of you and in the worst case slowing down during lane change, provoking yet another hard braking event.
Credit scores are universally hated but they make it possible to offer lower interest rates to more people. Without credit scores, fewer people would have access to credit.
Similarly, people often don't like it when insurers track and score their driving. However, this allows insurers to offer lower insurance fees to more people by _not_ offering lower insurance fees (or instead charging higher fees) to people that are driving in a risky manner. This does of course assume a competitive market for insurance but I think in most countries that's a reasonable assumption.
There's nothing fairer than user-pays, especially when users can choose to pay less by changing their behavior.
> Credit scores are universally hated but they make it possible to offer lower interest rates to more people.
That's probably true in theory, but not in practice, given how high US credit interest rates are compared to European countries for instance.
> Without credit scores, fewer people would have access to credit.
Too many people having access to credit is exactly how we got the worst financial crisis of the century, so it's not really something to brag about… People talk about US public debt a lot, but private debt is even more worrisome.
>There's nothing fairer than user-pays, especially when users can choose to pay less by changing their behavior.
If user pays is so fair why does anyone who could access credit or liquid assets in excess of their state's minimums have to pay hundreds to thousands per year for auto insurance?
Most states allow you to go without insurance by fronting the cash. It's called self-insurance. You put up some minimum amount, file a form with the state DMV, and keep the approval certificate in the vehicle like normal.
It's relatively unknown for individuals because most people have no desire to lock up tens or hundreds of thousands of spare dollars just to avoid car insurance. As far as I'm aware it's primarily used by rich collectors who need to insure large collections that don't fit more traditional insurance profiles. Much more useful for businesses.
>Most states allow you to go without insurance by fronting the cash.
That's BS on it's face. Most states don't allow it or they restrict it to big business and government agencies.
>because most people have no desire to lock up tens or hundreds of thousands of spare dollars just to avoid car insurance.
Most people's money isn't making a return greater than what insurance would cost them.
Second, this completely ignores my point about credit. I can easily get hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit secured against my house or tens of thousands in unsecured credit (credit card). Why must I pay to keep the lights on at some insurance firm?
And I'm not particularly rich. If the numbers pencil out for me then surely they must pencil out for millions of people.
That's BS on it's face. Most states don't allow it or they restrict it to big business and government agencies.
It's 11 states, covering roughly a third of the US population. There's a quite few more if you own significant numbers of vehicles. You can s/most/many/ if it makes you feel better.
Most people's money isn't making a return greater than what insurance would cost them.
You wouldn't be making money on a self-insurance bond either. It's locked up with the state or in a surety account. You can also expect to pay a significant fraction of your regular insurance costs to maintain a surety bond.
Second, this completely ignores my point about credit.
Credit lines expire when you die (say in an accident), they're not guaranteed to pay out the full amount at any particular time, and the courts probably shouldn't go around binding third parties to pay out on your behalf.
States' interest here is in guaranteeing that there will always be a minimum amount of money to compensate victims, regardless of what other financial shenanigans you have going on in your life. That's not a standard that lines of credit and investment accounts meet. Self-insurance is simply a terrible option for most consumers, so no one does it.
That's an entirely separate issue, isn't it? In my country (New Zealand) there are no requirements to have auto insurance. If you don't have insurance and you hit a million-dollar car you're gonna be in an awkward situation, but that's a risk you're allowed to take.
Note that you _are_ legally required to pay your annual ACC levies, which fund no-fault cover for injuries. However that doesn't cover property damage.
This. If you're nearly "perfectly" pricing risk on an individual level then you defeat the point of insurance which is to pool risk.
If my hypothetical cost over an N decade period is within a fraction of a percent of payouts in that time what do I gain by paying for insurance other than creating a principal-agent problem?
But Ukrainian soldiers can and will die on the battlefield if Starlink has issues. We already know that it is vital for the Russians because their battle plans fell apart once SpaceX, the US and the Ukrainian government finally introduced a whitelist for terminals allowed to connect on Ukrainian soil. And SpaceX IIRC also operates a separate Starlink system for the US military.
This didn't pose an issue in the past because the DoD ran stuff on its own, no third party companies required... but heh, privatization rules...
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