> there's a valid reason as to why it's being done (to prioritize Americans out of work)
The "Fixed pie fallacy" [1] is probably both one of the most important tenants of modern policy-making, yet it's rarely explicitly discussed or debated.
Cyclone_, your thinking relies on this fallacy, namely that if one person is working a job, that's one less job available. [2]
In reality, there is quite a bit of empirical research that indicates when people work (especially highly skilled jobs like in tech), it does not reduce (and may even increase) the jobs available to others [3].
If globalization and automation are so good at job creation, why did the American manufacturing workforce collapse?
Economies are complex, counter-intuitive feedback machines, but the "supply and demand" model fits the last 40 years of data, while the "floats all boats" model really doesn't.
"Lump of labor is a fallacy, honest!" sure sounds like the kind of opinion I could get a good penny for if I were an enterprising economist, though.
Recent immigrants were responsible for creating tens of thousands of jobs, most of them for Americans.
Software isn't a zero-sum game even on a country level and certainly US benefits enormously because companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix etc. are global giants but employ massive amounts of highly paid people in US.
CNBC sure had to stretch that definition pretty darn far to get to "more than half," didn't they.
In any case, immigration is the least upsetting globalization policy IMO: it is exactly what it says on the tin, almost everyone agrees that too little or too much is bad, and the amount can be tuned using quotas. H1B, however, is not that. It pretends to be about scarce skillsets (which enter this calculation one way) when it's actually usually about standard skillsets (which enter the calculation in another). Further, it suppresses the bargaining ability of the people subjected to it, depressing wages for both them those they compete with. Worse still is "regulatory arbitrage" where low tariffs encourage companies to bypass environmental, safety, and labor regulation by shipping manufacturing (or what have you) overseas. I prefer immigration to both H1Bs and regulatory arbitrage, and not by a small margin.
As a more general point, exponential growth is one helluva drug and truly does create a "floats all boats" environment, but different economics apply once an economic sector plateaus. Those economics look much closer to zero-sum. Zero-growth = zero-sum. Low growth is low sum. That's why what happened to American manufacturing over the last 20 years is a good model for what happens to American software over the next 20, if we aren't careful.
We've had it good in software, but we're no longer in the phase where we can pretend the sigmoid is a neverending exponential.
Immigrants starting businesses aren't doing it on H1-B visas. Those are only for employees of existing companies and don't upgrade to permanent citizenship.
Because it was outdated technology, that’s not even what you are talking about. You’re talking about a fundamental change in technology, not production methods (automation) or market/labor expansion (globalization).
Frankly, I’m not sure what point you’re even trying to make.
Fair enough, replace a disrupted technology with census tabulators who were automated. My point stands: you can't look at job losses in the affected industry to tell the whole story. You have to look at jobs in the economy at large. Automation leads to new demands elsewhere, and so does globalization.
When I read these comments I'm left wishing we could be a more supportive community when peers try something new. I hope we can find a way to support Niko.
It saddens me that many engineers don't start projects for fear of embarrassment from forums like these.
My first startup failed for all sorts of legitimate reasons. My second startup sold to Facebook for millions. And all of them sounded like a bad idea at the start.
Let's not be a modern slashdot and miss the forest for the trees. What if Niko or someone here is successful? How will history judge the incessant critiques?
It’s a dangerous kit. There are no mounts included (zip ties don’t count) and the demo image on the website shows a panel sitting on a window ledge. Seems like a good way for a panel to fall and injure/kill somebody. Real solar panels installed on a home are bolted to structural members of the home so they can resist severe winds that happen yearly (60 mph+)
“Move fast and break things” is dumb when it comes to electricity or physical products that get mounted on the exterior of a building, and there’s nothing wrong with calling someone out for failing to take safety into account. It’s a huge oversight.
When I read these comments I'm left wishing we could be a more supportive community when peers try something new.
I've posted a critical comment to this thread, and I wish I could have been more constructive, too. But I am willing to risk ending up in the "iPod critic" bucket. We are being supportive by saying, "you better fix this shit". Because we as a community should not ignore safety issues, for instance. How supportive is it to let Niko sell this and then get the shit sued out of them because someone took their advice of sitting a rigid solar panel on a window ledge? How supportive is it to let ad copy ride that claims that weeny battery will run a fridge? How supportive is it when Niko asks, "why didn't anyone mention this?" and we all shrug our shoulders and say, "didn't want to be critical, bro."
"Constructive criticism" is a thing. I hope that my criticism was constructive. But even if it is not, I will not paint over issues with false praise.
> The prediction that participants in the sleep condition would have greater discriminability compared to participants in the wake condition was not supported. There were also no differences in reliability.
Society’s treatment of alternate hypotheses as somehow more interesting or sensational than null hypotheses leads to bad science. I think it’s interesting that sleep doesn’t seem to have an effect on eyewitness identifications.
Most cases are not caught because there is a direct march, but because there are multiple distant relatives that match and allow detectives to triangulate the suspect. Final confirmation is done w/ direct testing after probable cause.
Faking your own dna has little effect on this process of triangulation and can easily be identified as you won’t share expected traits with relatives.
I wish conversations about public healthcare in the US included discussions about innovation in the healthcare industry.
We don't need to argue that consolidating buyers (e.g. single payer) has more market power and can negotiate prices down. This is an accepted principle among economists.
I am very curious about what affects single-payer in the US would have on global healthcare innovation. E.g. concepts like:
> the high spending of health care consumers in the United States is arguably funding not only global pharmaceutical innovation but is also facilitating the availability of new medicines to other countries at much lower prices than domestic consumers pay.
To answer your question I think there's little doubt that dramatically cutting health (and pharmaceutical) costs per person in the US (i.e. with a single payer model) would dramatically impact global R&D spending on pharmaceuticals.
But are you saying that the average American citizen is ok paying ridiculous health care costs (with only a limited number of citizens having coverage) because their payments are subsidising global health R&D? I really, really doubt that. Also this idea is clearly socialist which is one of the main arguments against universal health coverage in the US.
Is there any serious research that shows this to be true?
In America, the Big Lie that all Americans tell about themselves and their country, is that the US is #1 in everything. And, if statistics happen to show that the US isn't #1, there's always a reason, an excuse, as to why in this instance the US isn't #1, but it totally could be, it just doesn't want to, or it has to deal with some exceptional circumstance that lesser countries just don't have to deal with.
To me, the idea that the US subsidizes global healthcare innovation feels just like such an excuse. It gives Americans an opportunity to martyr themselves. "We could have cheaper healthcare, but we bear this burden, for you."
Come on. It's a load of horseshit.
And even if it were true, why would you accept it? America hates altruism, deriding it as socialism, so much so that "socialized" healthcare is seen as a horrible thing. It's not ok for Americans to pay for each other's healthcare, but it's suddenly perfectly ok to pay for the development of healthcare for other countries?!? You're happily spending healthcare money for the benefit of other countries, but not your own population?
This makes no sense. This can't be true. It's a bad excuse to cover up failed exceptionalism, because the truth is simply that a lot of people with money to pay for lobbyists are benefiting from the current system.
1. American culture may be anti-altruism, but I can still argue that altruism is a good thing. Developing life saving drugs is a good thing. I'd like to think that on this forum everyone can agree that technological innovation is incredibly important. Of course I would prefer everyone contributes to drug research costs, but if others aren't willing to pick up the slack I am.
2. Drugs cost upwards of a billion dollars to develop. Plenty of failed drugs cost a billion dollars before they fail. If drug companies don't make money they will stop developing drugs.
> 9 of 10 top drugmakers spend more on marketing than research
> These spending numbers are at odds with a common claim by pharmaceutical companies that they need to patent drugs for extraordinary amounts of time to justify the massive amounts of money spent on research. Not only do many top drugmakers appear to spend more on advertising, but their profit margins, the BBC noted, are often larger than their research spending.
> The pricing appears to undercut a notion promoted by FDA officials that approving more generics can help relieve the pocketbook pressure many Americans feel over the cost of their medicines.
I'm surprised the author is making the arugment that more competitiion doesn't drive down prices - despite the large body of evidence to the contrary.
It's accepted belief that when competition fails to drive down pricing among pharmaceuticals, it's usually due to regulatory decisions. There are several studies that have been done on this exact topic, one even finds that price regulation actually leads to higher prices by discouraging market forces [1].
Normally competition means companies can make as many of a product as they want in order to gain market share from each other. FDA regulated drugs often operate on a production quota system where a given company is only allowed to manufacture a pre-approved amount. If the FDA decreased the EpiPen quota by the same amount that the generic was allowed to be produced in then you might not expect to see any reduction in price. Of course they might have just left EpiPen's quota the same, the article doesn't have that sort of information and it might not be publicly available.
There is no quota on EpiPen production, that is just for highly restricted drugs. (Did you know that cocaine has some medical uses and is almost certainly stocked in the hospital near you? That is the kind of drug that has a quota.)
> I don't think about this a lot, but I assume that all of the interesting ways to distribute power from a single engine to 1-4 wheels are, all of them, inferior to having a dedicated motor for each.
While off-roading it's not uncommon to completely loose traction on two wheels (search for cross-axle articulation for a way to mitigate this). I've also lost traction on three wheels during steep hill climbs, rutted, muddy traverses, and on sand.
In situations like that locked differentials are vastly preferred as you can transfer the majority of the car's torque to 1-2 wheels. A motor for each wheel (or each set of wheels) would not be preferred as 1/4 or 1/2 of the vehicle's torque is often not enough to maintain forward momentum.
The challenge is that the axles of many stock vehicles are not designed to withstand all that torque, so breaking your vehicle's axle when all the torque is transferred to one wheel is a real risk.
The article itself (despite the sensationalist title) is not extremely insightful - investors aren't expecting an auto-manufacturing startup to be cash-flow positive while quickly scaling production.
In addition the content at times even contradicts the title...
"RBC analyst Joseph Spak, who has a $180 price target, said strong initial orders for the Model 3 could help Tesla achieve positive free cash flow"
...
"In February, the company said it expected to be cash-flow positive in March."
A more accurate title might be: "High Model 3 demand poses growth challenges and an increased need for capital."
> "High Model 3 demand poses growth challenges and an increased need for capital."
which is a good problem to have. Especially for a company with the popularity and positive image of Tesla -- they should have a fairly easy time raising capital from outside investors, if they so desire. It's a challenge, to be sure, but not as difficult as the headline makes it sound.
(After a nearly 3-year hiatus, it's good to have you back on HN.)
Preorders are also not binding. Depending how long it takes, impatient customers or those who need a new car sooner could look at alternatives.
By the time the Model 3 goes into production, it could face stiff competition from several entrants.
The Model 3 might not have a lot of competition today, but it likely will in a few years time and it remains to be seen how many of the preorder customers will stick with their decision if/when other choices are available.
If Tesla can't meet their production schedule, many of those pre-orders will evaporate. Tesla now has to get a huge factory up and running, and then learn to run it cheaply. That's not easy. Fast, cheap, good - pick two. My guess is they'll be a little late with the new cars, they'll be OK, and their manufacturing cost per unit will be higher than expected.
Either they have properly modeled the cost of building a car they claim to be able to sell for $35k, or they are another failed Kickstarter making empty promises.
They know what they are doing with regard to expensive, luxury, low-production volume vehicles. The question is whether they know how to scale and make money.
This has always been the most laughable thing for me. Stiff competition.
As if anyone is likely to come up with a car this compelling in the same time frame. Like some mass-produced awesome car is just going to appear out of nowhere. Yes, the big manufacturers have some things like the Bolt in the works. Have you seen it? It's pretty meh. You wouldn't expect any of them to rack up hundreds of thousands of pre-orders before anyone's even gotten their hands on the car in person, non-binding or not.
Yet somehow all these internet analysts seem to think somehow all this incredible passion for the Model 3 will just magically fade away in favor of the exceptionally meh cars released by Chevy and Nissan and others. That's just not how things work. People have waited 12 years for this, you don't think they can wait two more?
I swear to god, even after Tesla is selling 10 million cars per year, you're still going to have people sitting here saying "But can they keep it going? Here comes the Tesla-killer~"
Extreme analogy, I know, but reminds me of Holocaust denialism. Some people are just determined to see past all available evidence to focus on one outcome which suits their personal biases.
"Extreme analogy, I know, but reminds me of Holocaust denialism. Some people are just determined to see past all available evidence to focus on one outcome which suits their personal biases."
-very extreme analogy to the say the least, seems someone else here has a strong personal bias to use a crazy analogy.
its great that you believe in a company strongly, but to downright shoot down any other possibility is bias.
personally not ordering model 3 as:
-dont want to be driving first iteration
-contrary to your comment, alot can happen in 2 years.
-i dont think they can meet demand, probably 2-3 years realistic
-i will likely be in a comfortable spot (hope) to afford Model S by end of 2017
A lot can happen in 2 years indeed. Can't wait to see what Tesla and SpaceX have accomplished by then. It's going to be nuts.
I am indeed biased: I focus on available evidence. That's my bias. And all available evidence screams that Elon Musk's companies succeed at the things they set out to accomplish.
I guess it depends on how you define success. Certainly it includes the word, eventually, because it's not ever happening on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd expected by date. The analysts do tend to be conservative but they're also advising on a lot more than $1000 buy-ins, so a lot of their hesitation is completely legitimate "show me the goods". Investing isn't exactly like gambling on chance you know?
In the real world, I've been listening to people like you predict Tesla's failure for ten million increasingly humorous reasons for 10 years, while I've watched my stock go up twelve times over.
Because Nissan cannot make a car as great as a Tesla. It's that simple. They are the wrong company. It's not different from Windows Phone trying to play catchup with iOS. It was never going to happen, and everyone knew it.
Tesla has already checked their box. The car is $35k. The price isn't going to magically change. Musk isn't going to be like, "Sorry guys, turns out it's $50k."
Nissan has not checked their box and there is zero reason to think they ever will.
The problem, as is often the case with stories like TSLA, is that the "investors" are often momentum chasers and unsophisticated. If you doubt it, go read some message boards in Reddit or elsewhere. Very little analysis is actually performed.
That is definitely not a Model X. It's a sketch of something Tesla-like. Of the two current Tesla vehicles the public knows of, it looks close to a Model X. For all I know, it may be an early sketch of a Model X. But it's not a Model E and it's not a Model X.
The beltline is a mess, especially the upward kink at the A-pillar. Something unpleasant has happened to the rear, as if the rear lights arc downward into the bumper. It's hard to tell, but the hatchback seems to flatten moreso than the Model X, giving it a Malibu Maxx flair.
If it's an early sketch of Model X from a while back, I am glad Model X has improved dramatically since then.
To reiterate: articles like this should not show a sketch without a proper caption (worse yet, the filename is tesla-model-e.jpg). That's all.
