In theory, yes. In practice typical insurance requirements are already far below realistic modern-day damages possible from vehicular collisions, and people still routinely drive without even that minimal insurance.
Without better mechanisms to actually meaningfully enforce insurance requirements, changes to those requirements are unlikely to be effective.
The elephant in the room in the US is that although driving is a (very dangerous and extremely socially-costly) privilege, any attempts to hold drivers accountable and take away that privilege from repeat offenders is treated as a rights violation, so instead we just accept many deaths of innocent people from repeat DUI and speeders.
No, draconian punishment of uninsured drivers should go way up. I am already paying a lot of money to compensate for them; I shouldn't pay more. Auto insurance is extremely expensive already.
My point is the overall cost of any level of insurance is way higher than it should be because of uninsured drivers. Maybe, if we solved that, everybody should be able to afford a higher level of coverage to better account for serious accidents.
Just put it in yearly registration fee, like most modern countries do.
The profits stay within the government, fees can be easily adjusted to inflation and is enforced onto everyone thus reducing the headache for drivers and cops.
Then you'll have people not registering their cars. Which already happens a lot. They steal a plate or renewal sticker from another car or just drive with it expired.
Maybe. I see cars driving around without any visible plates at all sometimes, and they don't seem to get pulled over. Traffic violations seem to be the lowest priority for cops the past few years.
I think if you're the sort of person who would drive with a suspended license you would also drive with expired plates and no insurance.
I recognize that anti-abuse is a neverending cat and mouse game, and hindsight is 20/20, but it seems like malicious activity like this should be easily detected - how often does a legitimate account suddenly post 300 issues across many different repos?
Part of the challenge may be the moderation effort with false positives if you make detection more sensitive, but it seems like some investment in a pending/flagged activity section with approval delegated to repo owners could work well?
In a past life, one of the more effective anti-abuse mechanisms was intentionally introducing latency between attempt and confirmation, on the order of a week. If every time you try to see if you've evaded detection takes a week to confirm, you can't iterate on abuse nearly as quickly and are more likely to give up and move onto other targets. Obviously the amount of acceptable latency you can introduce will depend on the system/product...
Before this event, I've has another encounter with GitHub.
What happened is that an AI coding assistance startup seemed to have created bots that would:
1. find new GitHub issues on random repos
2. fork the repo
3. make a commit, trying to implement whatever was requested in the issue
4. reply to the issue with a link to the commit, indemnifying themselves of the code quality (which was very poor), and linking to their platform
I reported a few of those issues to GitHub. To me, the problem seemed almost obvious:
1. they were using sketchy GitHub usernames
2. there was evidence of similar replies having been mass-deleted in the past
3. some of the issues also seemed to have been opened by sketchy users
GitHub took a few days to reply and didn't seem to understand how bad the situation was, and basically allowed them to continue. I don't expect to have to spend a lot of time writing an elaborate "criminal case" to convince GitHub that they are allowing their platform to be abused by these bots.
Will they be sending all customers "Audio recording in progress" signs to post at the entrance of their homes? Or will the Alexa now say "By continuing to talk to this device you consent to audio recordings" every time the wake-word is detected?
Otherwise I can't see how this isn't blatantly violating 2-party consent laws in every state that has them, as Amazon can't reasonably claim they've received affirmative consent from every guest in their customers' homes...
But, "we have x million monthly users _in Arizona_" would be using your personal data, from a legal standpoint. And if they provide that aggregate data in exchange for money, they are selling your personal data (but not in the way many people think of it, like in a Google/FB sense of building an individualized profile and selling ads against that).
Mozilla might be doing very sketchy things with your data, but it's also very plausible that they are doing a reasonable job at anonymization of data but in a way that is still technically classified as selling personal data (in aggregate form).
> Exemptions:
> (6) Collect, use, retain, sell, share, or disclose consumers’ personal information that is deidentified or aggregate consumer information.
I understand that people who have a vested interest in eroding any possibility of online privacy and data protection would want us to believe these laws are vague and overreaching - but that doesn’t mean they actually are vague and overreaching.
CCPA/CPRA has no private right of action for this kind of thing. Only the CA AG can bring forth claims, and penalties would be paid to the state, not individuals, in that case.
And if everyone switches to Librewolf, Librewolf will die because Mozilla will no longer make money and won't be able to devote resources towards maintaining upstream Firefox.
I use Firefox. I hate ads. I don't love that Mozilla engages in some level of affiliate deals to pay the bills, but it's the only viable alternative to Google controlling the entire web and doing much worse tracking/advertising at this point, unless Mozilla can figure out some other revenue stream.
Chromium-based "privacy-focused" browsers can only exist as long as they're not popular enough to move the needle on Google's ad business. Firefox derivatives can only exist as long as Mozilla can pay the bills, which they almost certainly can't do if nobody uses Firefox (no reason for Google to pay for search priority for an audience of zero, and no affiliate deals for an audience of zero).
The more people use Firefox forks, the sooner Google controls everything. You might personally benefit in the short term, with "complete" privacy, so I can understand why some might choose that option, but you need to accept that you're contributing to Google's dominance by doing so.
Mozilla could have added years ago a donation or subscription to fund the development of Firefox, but they don't want that. Mozilla wants all the money for its charitable activities instead.
There will be a time when they have no money anymore, but it's only their fault.
I think it's not that they don't want it as it's difficult to mix money from commercial activities with donations. That's why they keep the two cash flows separate and are only using Google money for Firefox development, and spend donations exclusively on political bullshit very few people care about.
Although their $7 mil CEO could have found a way to handle this while not running afoul of the IRS, but she decided to play with a bunch of dead-end commercial endeavors instead. So that's on them.
If even a tiny appreciable amount of user move to librewolf, Mozilla will fix their business model.
They were doing fine as a business under Eich, whatever you think of him. They make over $500M just from their search box - and frankly, that is way more than you need to make a fantastic browser. And Thunderbird.
Baker took home over $7M a year for the past six years, and though she stepped down as CEO, we don't know if they even cut her pay, or what the other top tier salaries are [1]. Mozilla is a "open" company, but they announced that they will "not be disclosing salaries" after Baker stepped down.
Kagi makes a browser with 35 employees and ~200K inn sales. And I know, they are not building from scratch - but neither is FF at this point. It is ridiculous to suggest that Mozilla will go under if they don't become spyware.
> Maybe you can source from ShenZhen in person but I'm not sure how the Custom office deals with this. I guess it's OK as long as you don't bring in quantity.
Historically this was true, because the de minimis exemption meant small value imports didn't get charged tariffs. But the recent tariff EO both increased existing tariffs AND removed de minimis, meaning even a $5 import now needs to go through the overhead of tariff calculation and payment.
The de minimis change is temporarily paused because there's no way carriers or enforcement could actually handle the change in tariff volume with no warning, but broadly speaking, the low value direct import route is going away.
I run a tiny (<$30k annual revenue and much much smaller profit, or negative if I paid myself an hourly wage) side business that relies on custom manufacturing of open source hardware products I've designed. So very much not a "wealthy fat cat" - here's my experience with manufacturing:
For die-cut plastic cards (think custom-shaped gift cards or hotel door hangers), I reached out to several US manufacturers for quotes and most never even responded. The one that did respond basically laughed at me and said my design was impossible to cut. So I went on Alibaba and had tons of quotes instantly and found a manufacturer. Not one of the responses were concerned about the design's manufacturability. And the manufacturer I picked does an incredible job with what is admittedly a challenging die cut design.
As a tiny business, most of my orders end up being under de minimis (which is actually great for helping small businesses avoid the overhead of dealing with tariffs and level the playing field against large players that can be much more efficient at handling regulatory overhead through high volume).
But with the change to eliminate de minimis and increase tariffs another 10% essentially overnight, my COGS is going to increase ~30%, which means either I shut down my business due to losing nearly all of my margin, or I increase prices substantially. It just hurts consumers AND small businesses like mine in the US.
There isn't a US manufacturer I can switch to (again, price wasn't the issue). And the US manufacturers in the space that WERE still selling products despite the international competition will just increase their prices now that competition is more expensive.
That is what people like trump don't understand (not surprising). Instead of gradually rebuilding the manufacturing capabilities of the US while supporting essential industries (like steel production) to create competition, they think slapping tariff will magically make the domestic manufacturing come back. Like you said, the US manufacturers will just ride along the coattails of tariffs instead of trying to be competitive and/or expand their production (they have no incentive to do so).
Again, knowing how short-sighted the US politicians and the society as a whole (e.g., look at how a majority of corps only care about short-term/quarterly profit) have become, it is not surprising but saddening to observe (because I have been living in the US for a bit over two decades and cannot move back to my home country, which is, at the moment, riddle with civil war).
> they think slapping tariff will magically make the domestic manufacturing come back.
Certainly not when tariff policy changes every few days on a whim. That doesn't make you want to build a chip resistor plant in the US. Or even a smartphone plant.
> Instead of gradually rebuilding the manufacturing capabilities of the US while supporting essential industries (like steel production) to create competition, they think slapping tariff will magically make the domestic manufacturing come back.
So what would you propose as the proverbial kick in the butt to encourage domestic production? And before you say “subsidies”, remember that a large segment of the population isn’t wild about those either because they perceive it to be some sort of evil tax dodge for big corporations (see: literally every time some state gives a company incentives to build a plant or office).
The reason we’re in this mess in the first place is because we chased cheaper means of production and once everything at home was gone, we just threw our hands up and went “well it’ll be too painful to fix it, anyone who tries is an idiot.”
We've moved away from lower value manufacturing and are moving higher in the economic chain - that's great for us and how economics works. It isn't just chasing cheaper means of production - we can (and in a limited way have) put people to work elsewhere.
We dodged this in the 90s, but we
need massive training programs to move those displaced workers to new jobs + resettlement assistance to get them to where the jobs are.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of jobs and manufacturing is in The lower value manufacturing chain. So by chasing only the high value chain, you abandon the manufacturing operations that actually hire workers, thereby hollowing out the middle class of your country and reducing the consumers of the products that you sell. A counterproductive and shortsighted strategy.
> see: literally every time some state gives a company incentives to build a plant or office
You're conflating two things here, the subsidies are one issue but the bigger issue is the ability for large companies to "shop around" states looking for the most favorable tax incentives. Our government shouldn't be bidding against ourselves.
Our government shouldn't be bidding against ourselves.
Yes, it should, because that's how individual companies (and governments for that matter) find their optimal operating points.
That is the explicit central dogma behind the United States' system of government. It works pretty well for the most part. If all the states had the same laws, policies, and taxes, there would be no need for federalism at all.
But there is new incentive created here. Now someone can create a small business to serve die-cutting like the parent needs because they have the extra edge over the Chinese competition. These sorts of small shops that did small runs used to be part of the economy before they closed after they couldn't keep up with the low cost coming out of China and they can in theory come back if making stuff in China becomes expensive enough.
Is that an immediate win for the consumer and the economy? Probably not. In the long term it could be reversing the globalization which is maybe a good thing (or at least that's the argument).
Anything imposed on the whim of the executive can be taken away just as easily, so building an entire factory based on an assumption about tariffs remaining in place is probably a hard sell.
> But there is new incentive created here. Now someone can create a small business to serve die-cutting like the parent needs because they have the extra edge over the Chinese competition.
You’d need dramatically higher tariffs for there to be any chance of that. Or a complete trade embargo. And either way, it’s gonna mean much more expensive goods for consumers.
I don't get it. You go into the grocery and pay sales tax on food for the week, but you import random trash from China, pay nothing and this is "great for helping small businesses"? No matter what you think about wholesale tariffs, surely this particular arrangement must strike you as odd and impossible to compete with for local producers?
In the EU we pay full taxes on every import, it's really not that complicated once you explain to the Chinese guys to not mark it as "gift" like its 2005.
You're mixing concepts. In the EU you'll generally pay VAT on all imports, but there are still often de minimis rules for import tariffs. This is not unlike the US - I have to always pay sales tax on imports regardless of value (unless it's being resold or incorporated into a product and I have an appropriate resale certificate, because sales tax is generally only required on final sale in the US), but import tariffs have a de minimus threshold.
I'm not saying the primary objective of a de minimus policy is to help small businesses, but in practice it can make a huge difference to correct for economies of scale to promote competition. I can't afford a team of lawyers and lobbyists to creatively classify my products to avoid tariffs like the big companies do; regulatory burden disproportionately hurts smaller players, so it's typically considered good policy to promote competition to phase in regulations based on size/volume/revenue etc.
You pay the same taxes on imports too. In fact in the USA some states will hunt you down to ensure you pay tax on interstate purchases let alone imports.
“And the US manufacturers in the space that WERE still selling products despite the international competition will just increase their prices now that competition is more expensive.”
And an industrial entrepreneur, such as yourself, might start a new business, making these products at a cheaper price in the US due to the new inefficiencies of simply raising prices by existing manufacturers. It takes time for these things to move through the system.
Just got a JLCPCB order this week (below $800) via UPS and it arrived no problem with no tariffs since the de minimis exemption is temporarily still active from the latest of the tariffs EOs.
In the past with a DHL order over $800 they just sent me an invoice to pay before they'd deliver the package. Make sure you check the invoice though - DHL screwed up the HTS codes and tariff calculations and substantially overcharged, so I had to talk to DHL support to get it fixed (which ended up being really straightforward).
And yet, despite the wild west regulatory situation you claim, bicycles kill and injure way fewer people than cars, and don't require insurance because it's nearly impossible to cause the level of damage with a bike as even a minor fender bender in a car. And, even considering how "dangerous" bicycles are, studies have repeatedly shown them to increase life expectancy of the rider. Meanwhile cars are among the highest cause of accidental death of children of nearly all ages in the US.
Your argument is actually a strong one in favor of bicycle-favoring transportation policy: despite limited existing regulation they're still incredibly safe, and we can always tweak policy to handle the worst case exceptions as needed if they end up causing significant problems as bicycle share grows.
Without better mechanisms to actually meaningfully enforce insurance requirements, changes to those requirements are unlikely to be effective.
The elephant in the room in the US is that although driving is a (very dangerous and extremely socially-costly) privilege, any attempts to hold drivers accountable and take away that privilege from repeat offenders is treated as a rights violation, so instead we just accept many deaths of innocent people from repeat DUI and speeders.