I imagine economies of scale are much greater with cars than cargo bikes. If it was possible to charge, say, 50% less for a cargo bike I’m sure someone would be, and they’d be taking the entire market with them.
Not to mention, every government tripping over themselves to hand out all kinds of multi billion dollar subsidies to any car manufacturer willing to set up shop in their jurisdiction. And a slew of implicit subsidies to car manufacturing, use, storage/parking, legal frameworks ("if you want to murder someone and get away with it, do it with a car"), etc.
Yeah, scale is the problem. The market is tiny compared to cars and even motorcycles. Brands like RAD and Lectric do compete on price and as a result they sell higher volumes than the nicer expensive R&Ms or Urban Arrows or whatever.
It clearly is. As the article makes out, the tax code and regulation favours large vehicles. Gas is cheap. Acting alone, there are few reasons to buy a smaller car if you can afford a bigger one. This is exactly the market “working” and why regulation is necessary to change it.
More rules aren't going to fix the problem that more rules created. We need to reduce the amount of regulation on vehicles, specifically the CAFE regulations which are the driver behind large vehicles, and let the real market forces play out. Whenever governmental regulations get involved, the market forces are distorted to what the regulations incentivize, rather than what the people incentivize.
Only if you think that the market should encourage everyone to buy the most expensive thing they can afford. Larger cars are popular with manufacturers and dealers because of higher profit margins. A consumer should be able to pick a smaller, cheaper vehicle if they want it, but this makes their business less desirable. Just because there are few reasons to buy a smaller car does not mean there are no reasons, nor does it make it illogical to prefer one.
I don't know if this is an economic concept that exists, but I'd call it an "accidental cartel." Corporations noticed that serving a particular customer base was less profitable than giving customers fewer, more expensive choices, so the market participants aligned themselves around this strategy until there are no cheaper, lower margin options left. In theory, that leaves an open market for a competitor, but to occupy that niche would be to spend resources on attracting a lower-quality customer (one who is less able to pay more, less interested in paying more, less susceptible to marketing, etc).
This is more like it. The Thai rail network is not that extensive so trains probably aren’t part of daily life for that many. India has a huge rail network. In both cases, though, train tracks are much more accessible than in developed countries and it’s common to see trains clanking right past people walking along. In India people happily walk across tracks at stations and hang off the side of moving trains.
Compare this to the UK and Switzerland, two places I have lived with extensive rail networks. I can’t think of anywhere that the train tracks aren’t clearly separated from everything else — either by fencing or raised platforms or level crossings with barriers. I have never had to think “better look out for a train” living in these places.
Edit: Zurich does have a freight train that runs down an inner-city street a couple of times a day. It goes very slowly and has many staff monitoring:
If a DB check is needed to see if a sub is private or not it has to happen for every request. You can’t just limit the check to private subs because it’s not known if they are private or not at the time.
Reddit goes wrong often so I expect this outage could have any number of causes.
> You can’t just limit the check to private subs because it’s not known if they are private or not at the time.
That's not necessarily true. Perhaps the status of subreddits is cached (because there's no reason to hit the DB 100 times/second to check if r/funny is private or public). But for a given request to a private sub, it would need to check each user.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Anyone who claims being a parent is "super easy" is immediately outing themselves as either someone who has never done it or someone who is really bad at it.
It is incredibly hard to deal with kids while working — for either the kind of job where you have to sit and mindlessly make widgets for 8 hours a day or the kind where you need to think and focus. Kids are not awake 100% of the time but a) when they are they demand up to and often 100% of your time, b) you don't get to decide when they are awake. As for your idea of "oh just reschedule the meeting or delay it": sure, once or twice that's fine, but if you had kids you'd know that this happens _all the time_ and feeling like a total flake who can't concentrate sucks for the parent and the employer.
(Yes, they can find a new job blah blah. I'm more concerned with your lack of empathy though.)
It seems like the only thing you're interested in is insisting that your work arrangement is the best and every other one is wrong, even when you aren't doing them or don't understand their challenges.
Amazon is miserable unless you know what you’re looking for. If I have to search for something it’s almost game over immediately — I’m not going to wade through page after page of cheap junk with no sensible way to filter the results.
OTOH the casino in the Nevada side of Tahoe that I went to a few years ago reeked of smoke. I came out smelling like I was 18 and hitting the UK pubs again (which was late 90s for me).
> Counterintuitively, the “correct” way to deal with phantom braking is to avoid the accelerator entirely and instead dive right for the brake pedal: this instantly disengages cruise control. But this is not an intuitive response, you have to learn it the hard way.
It is absurd that Tesla is allowed to sell cars that have this problem. Why isn't the NTSB (or whoever) insisting this is fixed and/or removing these cars from the road? They're unsafe. (I had a Tesla; glad I don't now)
It’s clearly not intended to compete with a smartphone. It’s 50 times the size and mains powered. It’s intended to be an always-on device with a wide camera and large screen that makes it easy for a few people to talk on video. Like video conferencing.
My family uses them so my parents can see my kids and they are great. We plop down on the floor in front of it and everyone has a chat, sees the kids, etc. propping up phones and straining to hear/see things is much inferior.
