" There is a bipartisan consensus that the safety of the rail system is less important than rail company profits."
Any of us can buy railroad stocks and become - in your mind - wealthy. Perhaps the more important value being protected was, if the railroads stop working, many of us stop eating. Same reason we subsidized food production, fuel, etc. Our societies have grown too much to be able to go back to life without them, without huge numbers of deaths as we adjust.
Eh. Overfishing isn't a problem for the earth, or for the oceans, or for ocean life. It's a problem for the fishing industry.
We send certain types of boats with certain types of gear out to certain small areas where we have found concentrations of certain kinds of fish, and they catch lots and bring them back to factories with certain kinds of processing equipment which then send the product out to be consumed.
And after a while we've caught a good percentage of that concentration of fish, and then they start to peter out and it become uneconomical to run that entire costly process. And so we then identify other kinds of edible ocean life, and we change our boats and gear and locations and seasons and factories at great cost, and consume a different batch of fish.
And while we're on that second effort, the first area is being repopulated with the first type of fish, or maybe another, because the food sources for fish are still out there and available - the planktons and smaller fish - and nature abhors a vacuum.
It's all just a cycle. Fish stocks may move around in response to our overfishing - more reproduction over here, bigger schools back in the same place once we move on - but the net effect is that the biomass remains the same.
But change is expensive, and so we hear from the payers about how we're overfishing "their" fishstocks.
We're a tiny blip on the oceans' consumption radar. Don't mourn for the fish. Mourn for the people who need different boats and gear and territories every ten years or so.
I remember Ecology lectures, starting from Lotka-Volterra model... And getting into more complex scenarios. One, was an actual model of how much fishes the industry can predate while guaranteeing the sustainability of their biz. Of course, it only happens in books. Sadly, the seas are largely unregulated.. Or even if regulations are in place, enforcing is so difficult. In fact, it can very easily turn into conflict between nations.
IIRC, most of the models were predicated on, how can we sustain THIS small ecology in this spot with this type of fish so as to cause no change. But I'd argue that we change everything, and change isn't a bad thing by itself, and so if we go beyond the models - say, to the point of a cod fishery depletion - it becomes much like decrying an erosive path in a huge desert - fighting for stasis merely for the sake of stasis. The cod no longer congregate in this one area, but they're still out there in others and new species can easily swoop in (and will because the cods' energy sources are still there.)
We'll never be no-impact (at least until the asteroid hits.) But so long as we're not poisoning life away, we're just another niche species on the ocean.
I see so many ads speaking of "side hustles" that are all devoted to selling off the things you own, which makes me think that a side hustle is primarily a way to get through bad times.
Fun! Whenever someone asks me which book of his I like best, the answer always seems to be, whichever one I just re-read last. (Well, except for Dodo.)
Thank heavens...I was afraid I was the only one who hated Dodo.
More than any author I love, my history with Stephenson is mixed. Couldn't get past the first chapter of Anathem (though I plan to try again this year). Have tried twice to get through the first book of the Baroque Cycle (it's just a slog...a slog full of great writing, but a slog anyway). Those are huge pieces of Stephenson that are just blanks for me. I didn't finish Dodo, either (a minor piece). But the rest? Gems.
You aren't alone -- that pretty much parallels my own opinions.
Not to take anything away from his masterpieces such as Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, which I adore beyond measure, but my favorite book is still The Big U. It's simpler than his later works, and he was still learning his craft when he wrote it, but it brings me such undiluted joy that none of that matters.
Anathem and The Baroque Cycle both took me two tries as well. The second half of Anathem is an action-adventure book mix of Zodiac and Seveneves, so it gets really engaging. The Baroque Cycle eventually sucked me in because I felt like I really got to know the characters, but it never gets fast-paced.
> Thank heavens...I was afraid I was the only one who hated Dodo.
Couldn't finish it.
I've read everything else he's written and between liked it and _loved_ it... including the nonfiction. Only RAFOD was unfinishable, and _Fall ODIH_ I finished but didn't find worth it.
I think his point is that racism in this country right now primarily exists because it drives votes and so is encouraged by vote-seekers. I think he's correct, but he's being too cute by half in his approach. Subtlety doesn't work well for this issue.
Why are people trying to read some bullshit ulterior motives out of what this guy is doing?
He knows what he's doing. There's nothing "clever" about it. Someone talks about these things in this kind of way, it's clear as day what their intentions are
Seeing the people here trying to read "subtlety" out of this fuck is infuriating
If they have a monopoly control of the market, then the prices could be higher with sellers having little choice between paying and not selling at all.
Monopoly also means "exclusive or near exclusive access or control of something" for instance "she is monopolizing her time" and in that usage the original poster is using it correctly.
In fact, I think we should retire the term monopsony exactly because its actual usage is a subset of the usage of monopoly and nobody ever cares about the distinction.
I don't know if I would characterize them as having monopoly control of the market because nearly 100% of all of my purchases are made online and 0.0% of my purchases have been made using amazon.com (or walmart.com).
Generally speaking I prefer to buy a product directly, or from a specialized retailer.
Last week I purchased a stethoscope from an online stethoscope retailer. A benefit of doing this is that they offer laser engraving-- something that Amazon, with its warehouses of robots and robot-like employees, cannot easily do.
The specialty retailer also carries a wider array of color and finish combinations, because that's their product niche.
Using a specialist retailer has allowed me to flex on my fellow volunteer EMTs with a personalized Technicolor stethoscope, which is dumb but nice.
It depends on the exact market segment (Amazon does not have a monopoly on groceries, for instance), but yes, I think Amazon is effectively a monopoly. Or at least part of an oligopoly, which is no better.
I don't see how you can think this. Amazon is not the only payment processor, it's not the only inventory management company, not the only delivery company, not the only online store company.
There are any number of permutations of different service providers you could use to sell online. In fact, a very large number of people who sell online don't use Amazon at all. Or they will sell on Amazon as well as in other channels, or even direct.
Yes, I think you could argue Target. But Nordstrom? I don't think they have that sort of power.
Remember, an oligopoly (or even monopoly) doesn't necessarily mean there aren't other players, it means that the oligopoly is the only thing that can really influence the market. It's about who is writing "the rules", so to speak.
Amazon has a monopoly on creating a web page and selling and shipping stuff? There are literally thousands of merchants that setup their own sites or sell through Facebook, Instagram or Etsy
This is ycom, so the replies are of course biased towards the "I always have good internet" paradigm.
I live about 5 months per year in my RV in the middle of a desert. Internet is a phone-tethered experience. What is this "streaming" thing you talk about? I'd be buffering all night.
And so, yes, there are good reasons for many of us to retain, in some form, all the DVD's we can get.
