Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | rhuru's comments login

> the NLRB and FTC—are "unconstitutional."

Neither of them are "core public institution". NLRB has probably destroyed more jobs that all recessions combines and might have hurt the poorest and most vulnerable population lot more. They have worked to spread the cancer of collective bargaining powers, coercive unions and other protections for their favourite people at the expense of american consumers.

> FTC

This should be considered unconstitutional. If you provide a service that is cheap you are "predatory", if you provide a service that is very expensive you are "price gauging" and if you are average your are "colluding".

FTC is an evil eye of sauron that is on every damn successful business.

I hope "trader joes" succeeds in putting a stake into hearts of these two vampires.


I see the temporarily embarrassed aristocrats are out in force again.

I'll put it as simply as I can: the NLRB and FTC are there to prevent force and fraud, same as every other liberal institution. You just don't like it because you want your particular brand of coercion to be treated as a right.

The NLRB protects workers' freedom of association from capital's long-standing, multigenerational attempts to cancel[0] that freedom. The FTC protects the market from privatized attempts to impose price floors or ceilings. Large businesses wield power commensurate with governments and should be regulated proportionally to their ability to do government things.

Big business has spent over 50 years insulating themselves from market forces through regulatory capture, selective deregulation, and the complete dismantling of antitrust. Hiding your coercion behind the guise of helping the American consumer is unhelpful, because those consumers are also workers. You are beating up kids for lunch money with the promise that you might give some of it back.

[0] Cancel as in Twitter.


> If you provide a service that is cheap you are "predatory", if you provide a service that is very expensive you are "price gauging" and if you are average your are "colluding".

If you unsustainably provide a service for less than it costs you to undercut competition then yes it is predatory.

If you coordinate a standard price with your competitors then yes that's collusion.

If you overprice your service or good to extract a massive margin now that there's no competition (or the competition is also doing the same thing) or the consumer otherwise has no other choice then yes of course that's price gouging.

These really aren't that complicated of concepts.


Sure but often these are levied by insiders to shut down outsiders. The long term problem with regulatory bodies is capture. Which is another reason that the core of this issue the Chevron doctrine is bad law. Regulator should be required to hue closely to their legislative mandate.


Businesses are collective entities. They enjoy efficiencies of scale when crafting legal strategies and negotiating with workers. Workers should enjoy collective rights similar to business owners.


Workers can 'enjoy' ponying up the capital and risk and start employee owned business.


Employees already shoulder the most risk in business due to how much of their income comes from the business. You can’t diversify your job across an arbitrary number of employers like a shareholder can diversifying their portfolio across many asset classes and potential movement directions as a hedge.


Very few people have the resources and connections to be able to do that.


In the top 10 most sold vehicles in USA 8-9 are trucks if I remember correctly. Ford F150 and Chevy Silvardo are typically number 1 and 2 consistently for decades. At that scale everything is likely to be diverse.

For the soyboys drinking their vegan milk and driving their lime bike to pride parade, it might come as a surprise, but it in indeed is. (<= This is an attempt to show that how any group can be dangerously maligned)


Exactly, "in USA". That's where the "only popular in a single region of the world" part comes in.

Trucks, especially the variety seen in the US, are practically unheard of anywhere else in the world. When a specific style of vehicle is that popular in a single country it probably has more to do with legislation than driver preference. There is almost certainly a decent portion of people driving trucks who would prefer an alternative form factor - if only it were available. It'd make sense to distinguish "truck drivers" from "people driving trucks".


Common sense is the first casualty when any topic has political bias to it. This comment demonstrates that.

Large vehicles are important part of American economy and mostly driven by blue collar workers doing their work. For example things like plumbing, construction site work etc. Now a days environment scientists and engineers too drive these large vehicles as they are very important for their day to day work. Not everyone can drive Tesla Model 3 everywhere.

In fact majority of those large vehicles are you see are mostly driven by such needs ( pun intended).

But the research on this topic itself is pretty shoddy. For example one has to look at other variables. Who was driving when the accident happened ? Chances are someone who was rushing to his work.

A lot of other data points out that the drivers are at fault are often poor people going to their work in their work vehicle. Another data is he victims too are poor people going to their work and disregarding basic pedestrian safety.

These are not men pretending to be rugged.


> Large vehicles are important part of American economy and mostly driven by blue collar workers doing their work. For example things like plumbing, construction site work etc.

The problem is that this argument is demonstrably not true. Trucks vastly outnumber blue collar workers, and most blue collar workers would be better served by a Volkswagen Transporter or a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. You're not seeing those in the US because they have an insane import tax.

The traditional target for pickup trucks, farmers, almost universally hate modern trucks because they are simply way too tall to be practical - they'd rather have a 1990 model than a 2024 one.

The vast majority of pickup trucks see zero offroad use, and practically never carry anything in their bed. They are essentially pavement princesses used to commute to an office job.


So in my professional life I work optimising operations for large fleets of maintenance workers.

The UK Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate (ZEVM) is setting annual targets for the sale of new EVs in the UK, including vans. The govt stick is large penalties against motor manufacturers for non compliance. Fleet operators are beginning to come under pressure because they can't buy new ICE vans as they are not being made, forcing a transition to EVs.

This is an issue, because the traditional work van (Ford Transit or similar) has about a 150KwHr battery. So you can't do a full recharge on a 1 Phase 7Kw charger in less than 20hrs. And most of these vans have sat outside the drivers house at night so they can go straight yo the first job in the morning.

At the moment the answer looks like data science (but hey I'm a data scientist). With better data on root caused of problems, and on what equipment is actually where, we are able to get much better at knowing what the right tools and parts are for each job. And that enables the vans to carry less stock, which in turn enables us to reduce the van size down to something more like a Berlingo, which has a smaller battery and can be charged overnight on a household EV charger.


> Large vehicles are important part of American economy and mostly driven by blue collar workers doing their work

Aaaaaaaabsolutely not! Trucks outnumber cars in every U.S. state. "Blue Collar" workers represent something like 16% of the U.S. workforce. The vast majority of truck drivers are not blue collar workers.

Other countries have blue collar workers too. And trucks! Have you seen what they look like? Check this bad-boy out. This is peak performance when it comes to manly-man workin' trucks. [1]

[1] https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2FA3BTR/a-small-blue-pickup-utilit...


Not to forget the ubiquitous small delivery vans all over Europe that seem to work fine for craft folk. Not everything that's been turned into a culture war by those who are up for profiting needs be.


> Large vehicles are important part of American economy and mostly driven by blue collar workers doing their work. For example things like plumbing, construction site work etc.

So explain the difference between the twentieth century (and the first few years of the twentyfirst), when trucks were an exception and cars were the norm, and now. Are you saying there were almost no plumbers and construction workers around then, or that almost everyone is a plumber or construction worker now?


It doe not matter for Apple. If the competition is offering an equivalent car for $20K apple will simply charge $40K or $200k and there will be enough takers.


> oddly imprecise position to me

Yes. It is intended to be so. Because being pedantic is now how you define these levels.

The ultimate goal is to run a large fleet of robo taxies wherever possible and Level 5 tech can do that everywhere on globe. One can get pedantic and ask if this would work in Antartica or on Dead Horse Bay or whether driving in sand dunes of Saudi Arabia is possible. But the folks who are trying to pedantic wont be happy with any definition either here.


It does not have to go to NYC at all. If Waymo can show profitability is some city it is good enough. If it gets love in one city is is good enough for the rest of the world to put a red carpet before them.


Apple will come up with a car to signal wealth. Like a $20K camry disguised in $200K white colored unrepairable car which will demand money if you want to drive it outside your city.


Only if they do their current business well others can create effective competition for Amazon. It took me 3+ hours to just get a label from their website for a special hardware I had to ship. Fun part is that after I signup and create and account and login, they want me to "Create an account", which I suppose it is their internal terminology for some kind of payment profile. Then they did not allow me to create that either demanding I call up their customer service.


Similar here. I blew half an hour trying to schedule a Fedex pickup. Which left the 2 kinds of accounts on their site. Which recently they decided to start carpet-bombing with marketing emails. With unsubscribe links that led to runarounds, and no way to get to a place to opt-out in my account. Eventually got to somewhere they said I had to call their customer service to make them stop. At this point, I took the unprecedented step of adding an email rule to never see any email from that company again.

Of course Fedex figured out logistics decades ago. But their consumer IT experience I've seen thus far is ridiculously bad, and has a vibe that they really don't care. (Contrast with Amazon's vibe: Bezos once cared, and that will take a long time for the company to completely unlearn, although lately they can coast and cash out on legacy goodwill and entrenchment.)

Are businesses going to let Fedex operate any consumer-facing facet other than the package showing up on doorstep?


Same experience here, seems like a bit of Conway's Law. Their website is set up to mirror their own internal structure instead of a way that is actually customer friendly. My first thought of shopping on FedEx is how awful it would be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law


It's a really bad case of Conway's Law if it doesn't only impact the design of the underlying system, but even impacts the UI


There is a reason why layoffs always happen as a surprise and kept a secret. Now everyone thinks they might get laid off. The folks who are easily employable will switch. This might be the end of Pixar.


> This might be the end of Pixar.

Classic overreaction on HN. Did you say the same when Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft slashed huge number of employees in last year? How about Spotify?


No because:

1. Layoffs were a surprise. 2. When you leave Google there isn't a better option + you are easily employable elsewhere.


Common sense. EVs are amazing but they are not where close to being practical replacement for ICE engines. Governments should stop subdizing rich people's EVs and insteead help make more efficient and cheaper ICE engines.


> Governments should stop subdizing rich people's EVs and insteead help make more efficient and cheaper ICE engines.

In the US the government has been helping (by a definition of "helping" that means "forcing the development of by tightening emissions and efficiency requirements") that development of more-efficient for decades.

It's not an either-or for that vs EVs. And it's also not exactly popular either; not hard to find people bemoaning the loss of naturally-aspirated engines and higher displacement. The market has repeatedly also chosen "more powerful" over "cheaper" for decades now.

Possibly some targeting of hybrid subsidies as well would help, but it seems like a lot of hybrids are already doing quite well in the market (e.g. Ford Maverick), so I'm not entirely sure why manufacturers aren't already moving in that direction more after being initially surprised by the demand.

But I'm also very unconvinced that cheaper ICE engines or more hybrids are what Buick dealers want.


I could be wrong, but I think the current "EV Tax incentive" applies to PHEVs and that it is actually easier for a manufacturer to take advantage of it with a pHEV than a full EV.


I’ve replaced my diesel with an EV and it’s better in every way. Cheaper to run, less waiting since I charge at home, faster car, more spacious inside, better tech. Definitely a practical replacement for some.

The fuel savings alone are around £1,200/year for me on 10k miles per year. Once the price of the cars come down this will be a big saving for a lot of people.


It's a bit weird because electricity delivered to your home is generally more expensive than fossil fuels. What currently makes EVs cheaper to operate is that at the pump, you pay hefty taxes that go toward road maintenance and related purposes. For now, this taxation disparity incentivizes driving EVs. In the long haul, this will probably go away.

I'm surprised by the "more spacious" comment, however. In the same size class, EVs tend to be more cramped because of how much space is needed for batteries. Even for large cars, like the Cybertruck, the trade-offs are fairly evident. No spare tire, for example.


> For now, this taxation disparity incentivizes driving EVs. In the long haul, this will probably go away.

31 states already have an extra annual/registration fee for EVs to make up for the lost gas tax revenue. Often the annual fee on EVs is higher than the average amount of state gas tax paid by the average driver, but this still comes out to just $100-300 per year. This is like 25-50% of typical fuel savings of EV vs ICE vehicles even at today's very low gas prices.


Per unit of work? I highly doubt it, because you're losing at least 60% of the fuel energy to heat.

Ah, but the EPA did the math for me, and you're pretty much correct, even considering efficiency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent


>What currently makes EVs cheaper to operate is that at the pump, you pay hefty taxes that go toward road maintenance and related purposes. For now, this taxation disparity incentivizes driving EVs. In the long haul, this will probably go away.

It will certainly go away, and with it one of the major non-environmental reasons to own an EV: fuel costs.


My Model Y has over 900L of storage. The frunk and space below the boot combined are almost like having a second boot. Plus the lack of “middle hump” makes the back more roomy.


Well thats the rub innit. I loved the bmw i3, I love my tesla even more, but they are f'in expensive cars, my coworkers are coming to work in beaters that cost less than a fifth of what I spent on my model 3, my down payment was more than several of the cars in my parking lot.


>less waiting

This is such a nonsensical argument. I own two cars, and have a bit of a commute. I gas up once a week, it takes 10 minutes. What are you "waiting" for? There's a gas station on the corner in every town across North America.

Meanwhile, the same EV crowd talk about stopping for 30 minutes at a time on road trip to charge and go to the washroom.


I think the idea is if you plug it in every night you will never have to stop to refuel for every driving scenario except long roadtrips.

EV > ICE for commuters and local driving.

ICE >>> EV for long distances the commonality of which seems to be grossly downplayed for most of the US.

The estimated range for a 2023 Chevy Bolt is 259 miles where hitting 250 miles is a short drive for a weekend trip in the midwest. For a friend's bachelorette party which was a 4 day weekend we drove 600 miles one way nonstop. If you're a 2+ car family an EV is a no brainer for the second car.


10 minutes a week is 8 hours a year you are waiting. I don’t have to do that. I plug in at night and unplug in the morning. I haven’t used a public charger for months.

On the last long journey I did the car was charged before I’d finished eating, so no waiting there either.


If by, "more efficient ... ICE engines", you mean, HEVs and PHEVs, I agree. They're not cheaper though.

Until EVs have matured more and become less expensive than ICEVs, PHEVs are the best option and HEVs are the second best option.

Also, the term, "ICE engines", is redundant.


Gotta love the comment section, anyone can write anything they feel like, regardless of...well anything.


As shown by your comment


You should visit Norway sometime.


every year that 400k number gets whittle down. pretty soon someone making poverty level wages at 24k a year is going to be in the group that gets "taxed".


- Average miles driven per day: 67.

- Average cost of a new vehicle: $48,000

- Fastest selling vehicle ever made: Tesla Model Y.

Just some data points to consider.


Damn I am such an outlier if those numbers are actually true.

Avg miles drive per day:5 (1.5mile commute each way + some extra generous miles)

Avg cost of a new vehicle: idk I've never bought a new vehicle. My last vehicle was a used repo and purchased in 2009. Still going strong.

Fastest selling vehicle ever made: without some data point this seems like complete bs. Toyota, Ford, Honda, insert every major car company, makes more vehicles per year than Tesla could dream about.


their data seems sketchy to me, I'm pretty sure 67 miles a day definitely isn't the average. and yea "fastest selling" seems like a bs metric to boost Tesla


Sorry that was a typo. It was 37.

Fastest selling car, most units sold in a day/week/quarter/year… I don’t know how else to say it. My point was about EV popularity not trying to boost Tesla.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: