Here is a thought experiment, especially for people with pensions (unlikely on the HN comments board). PE's are being funded by pension funds. So, as a pensioner, maybe you get a slightly better return. However, the services you will need as a pensioner (hospital and nursing home care) are significantly degraded by private equity. Would it not be better if pension funds pulled out of PE entirely?
RFID is a possible solution. Tags are now about five cents, and likely to drop further in price with volume. Newer tag designs can be sewn in the seams of garments and shoes.
Commingling is optional to Amazon vendors, all they have to do is track each item with a plain individual sticker / QR tag. They opt not to do it and track using the generic product barcode since it's cheaper and simpler.
So if they can't be bothered to attach a zero cents sticker on the item, a 5cents rfid tag is out of the question.
The commingling thing is crazy overblown. One of those internet memes that just grows legs and the legend can never live up to its original source.
If it’s both fulfilled and sold by Amazon, I have yet to have anyone actually provide an actual first person story that their item came from commingled or forged stock.
Yes, I’m sure it has happened. It’s not a widespread thing. Amazon does not sell Tide detergent sourced from some random third party that sent in stock matching the SKU being sold because it happens to be in a closer warehouse.
Random listings on Amazon? Sure I’ve received fake stuff. That’s the risk of using a third party storefront.
I have also not heard or seen of a well sourced story recently where someone’s esoteric custom product SKU was being sent in by third parties as the same ASIN and comingled with the legit companies listing.
The shady listings seem to be where this all comes from to begin with. Amazon could cull those nearly overnight but chooses not to. This is where the main problem lies. The times you click the legit listing for the FBA/SBA Amazon item, and then there are 12 “options” like multi-packs that are random third parties trying to take advantage of the unaware type of dark pattern.
This: "Important caveat: I’m discussing only the implications of LLMs for software development. For art, music, and writing? I got nothing. I’m inclined to believe the skeptics in those fields. I just don’t believe them about mine". I want to emphasize this. AI seems like a great 'first draft', but not a 'finished product'. In the hands of a programmer, a first draft is a great start. But pushing AI to frontline workers or customer support fails, as Klarna learned, because a first draft is not good enough.
You move all the tools to debug and inspect slow queries, in a completely unsupported JSON environment, with prompts not to make up column names. And this is progress?
As someone who actually wrote a JSON to (limited) SQL transpiler at $DAYJOB, as much fun as I had designing and implementing that thing and for as many problems it solved immediately, 'tail wagging the dog' is the perfect description.
I used to live in Oakland, and am really sad to see continued failures of BART. They had started significant expansions right before the pandemic, allowing a long (but no traffic) ride possible from Oakland to San Jose.
A key challenge for BART is that they depend a lot more on ticket sales than subsidies, and as a result, have been hit much harder with lower ridership.
As an occasional BART rider, the changes they've made since the pandemic have been in the right direction. I'm mostly indifferent to the new trains and payment cards, but they've increased the frequency so that missing a train doesn't mean you can be waiting for over 30 minutes, which can be longer than your entire trip.
The main problem which BART cannot fix is that the trains usually don't go to where you want to go.
They are doing that in East Bay [1] on BART owned land. They had been blocked so far by the most virulent NIMBY trash leading to some of the most scathing coverage [2]. Most have been unblocked and are under construction. The one still being blocked is Ashby BART because of (say it with me folks), a "HIsToriC flEa MARkeT" (that mostly sells stolen goods)[3].
Ok but “historic flea market” cannot possibly a real reason; this must be a parody. What’s the real reason (I won’t click the links due to the cognitive risk of having this ridiculous story confirmed).
I think this is overstated, at least from an operations point of view. My mom has been using BART to commute to work for over a year and I can't recall many incidents like this.
> They had started significant expansions right before the pandemic, allowing a long (but no traffic) ride possible from Oakland to San Jose.
They're still working on this, with four more stations planned beyond Berryessa (Little Portugal, Downtown San José, Diridon, and Santa Clara), plus an additional infill station on the Berryessa line. I think that would be really cool. Unfortunately it looks like this new extension won't be that competitive with Caltrain as a way to get to San Jose from San Francisco. Maybe at non-express times.
Also, it looks like it won't be complete until 2040!?
i mean yeah if you’re in SF caltrain is super convenient, so its fine. Getting from oakland to south bay without a car was hell though. This line would make it so much better.
Plus: Oakland is actually building homes for people while SF remains laughably behind on building quotas.
Try the transbay bus. Depending on station location, it’s often faster than the bart. Also, it doesn’t smell like piss, and I’ve never witnessed an assault on it.
This is pretty common among transit agencies, I got on the wrong platform in Japan once and couldn't get back out until I talked to a station agent, the fare gate gave an error and wouldn't open the gates. Not sure if that's better or worse behavior than charging a fare.
It's called an "excursion fare", which is meant for those that just ride the train without getting off and come back to the same station. You can talk to a BART station agent (assuming you can find one) and they'll let you out, or call customer service and they'll reverse the charge.
Modern fare systems should be able to figure out when you've exited right after entering and not charge you. BART is supposed to be adding a 30 minute grace period so if you go in and out of the station within 30 minutes, you won't be charged.
Heh, I was in Japan a few weeks ago, and had left my bag in a locker at a station (inside the fare gates). I went back to get it later in the day (when I could check into my hotel), and the station attendant charged me 150 yen just to go in to get it and come right back out!
I get that they want to charge people who ride the trains for... fun?... and then get off at the same station, but it felt really silly.
Fun fact: the reason it's like that is because both levels were envisioned for BART usage before the Peninsula lines got cut. In the original design both levels would have been the same fare area and you would have been able to walk between them instead of having to take the big escalators down to BART caged off from the Muni level. It's comical to watch one of the Muni trains crawl to one end of the giant platform that was sized for 10-car BART trains.
Ah, I've always wondered why the Muni platforms (especially Powell) are so ridiculously long compared to the Muni trains themselves. Makes so much sense that they were originally designed for BART cars.
“The San Francisco Downtown element of the Bay Area regional rapid transit system consists of a four-track, two-level subway beneath Market Street and a two-track, single-level subway beneath Post Street.”
“At Montgomery Street, the Market Street subway joins the San Francisco approach to the Trans-Bay Tube. The subway extends up Market Street to about Van Ness Avenue where it swings lo the south to become the Peninsula Line in Mission Street. The lower level of the subway provides through regional service by joining the Peninsula and the Trans-Bay Lines. The upper level is built to accommodate local rapid transit trains at a future time and will be utilized initially by the streetcars of the San Francisco Municipal Railway.” (emphasis mine)
I too learned that the hard way when dropping a family member off. I naively assumed it wouldn't charge me if I tapped out at the same station 10 minutes later.
In The Netherlands you get a full refund if you tap out at the same station within 20 minutes. If you travel with NS (National Railways), you even have 60 minutes to tap out.
Having someone pay just to wave off someone is incredibly customer-hostile. Besides, how many people are even committing fraud like that?
A parallel comment suggests it might be an “excursion fair.” Although it is not really the intended use of a train, some reasons an individual might ride the train might be sight-seeing, or because they are homeless and want somewhere warm to hang out. In that case, IMO it isn’t really a fraud attempt to get off on the same stop you got in, it is just unexpected use of the system.
I don't see how it ever comes back. You used to have business people and engineers riding the train. But with Covid the enforcement policies got really bad and the trains and atmosphere are so trashy now. It's far easier for the aforementioned group to just hire an Uber than deal with the crime and trashiness that's plaguing the system now.
I ride the system all the time and I don't think it's trashy. Also there are the new gates all over that block people from jumping in as easily and that has been cut down quite a bit. I think it's tough for Bart to probably come back still because people don't need to be in downtown SF as much as they used to because a lot of people work from home now, but yeah I just don't think it's fair to say that the system is some trashy system. I think it's mostly pretty nice.
BART is unfortunately doomed. It had been running on federal aid, and with a deficit. Ridership is down 60% from 2019 (50 million vs 118 million). Now with San Francisco and Oakland in a long, slow downturn, it is unlikely to improve.
I'd say the BART administrators overpaying themselves is the bigger moneysink. Not to mention the spending 73M dollars to overhaul the gates to stop fare evaders, when it SHOULD just be free for bay area residents.
The problem is that the Bay Area needs a single transit agency. All the agencies fighting each other for funding doesn’t help. It’s a much easier task to levy a minuscule tax on the entire region that pays for free public transit. If BART wants to do that at the moment, they can’t.
I live in an area with a county-wide transit sales tax, and it just seems to result in them running a lot of empty buses around and building (and eventually abandoning) transit centres. Full price is $1.50 (which if paying cash means fiddling around with coins) except for the 50+ mile express routes which are $2.50.
Well you could be in the Bay Area where you’d have 27 agencies, that still run a lot of empty routes and build useless and expensive transit centers, and then charge way more than what you have.
They also need to get the roads, busses and ferries on board with this plan.
The goal (by law) should be twofold:
1) increase the number of people with a 90th percentile commute under 15, 30 and 60 minutes. (i.e., improve quality of life and encourage economic growth)
2) sharply reduce the average CO2-equivalent emissions of each commuter.
The current statewide policy (by law) is to reduce commute miles.
In practice, this means intentionally sabotaging commute corridors, which slows economic growth (fewer available workers and fewer reachable jobs) reduces quality of life and increases CO2 emissions (due to repeated idling and hard acceleration).
Bay Area has 27 transit agencies and MTC has limited control over them beyond dictating how the state funds are allocated. Thats not what I’m talking about. What I’m suggesting is that the 27 agencies be one agency operationally and get funded as such. You’ll have much better outcomes.
MTC is not just concerned with allocating state funds, though. They administer RM2 and RM3 and the AB1107 sales tax, and they put on a trench coat to act at BATA collecting and using bridge tolls.
But unless MTC is concerned with the operations, you cannot have decent outcomes. If BART has an over reliance on fare but MUNI doesn’t, a single agency would be better able to balance the budget. Similarly if one agency is spending more of the state funding on creating new routes while other is spending more on creating more frequent service on existing routes, MTC won’t be able to direct what needs to happen. If BART is running more often, but the bus I take to the BART station just cut service, I’m not taking BART anymore.
Point of a single agency is not just to collect taxes. It is to make sure there are better outcomes, so that when you do need more taxes to fund public transit, you don’t get the pushback from the public.
I guess I just don't believe in your thesis that larger scale leads to better outcomes. Wouldn't we just end up with Caltrans Lite Edition, spending all the money on car junk? BART already has this problem, with two elected directors who are more likely the chew off their own legs than to ever ride BART.
> when it SHOULD just be free for bay area residents.
There was a study done on this. It turns out that the median income of someone riding under the Bay Bridge in BART is higher than someone driving a car across it.
In other words the wealthier people are using BART. So if you made it free, you'd be subsidizing the wealthy.
That’s a very wrong conclusion to draw from the study. If median income of someone riding the bart is higher than someone driving, it could also mean that they drive because it is cheaper to do so. If you make it free, they would probably ride BART too, making it more accessible and equitable.
The study was more in depth than that. It found that BART goes to more places that wealthy people go (financial district, SOMA, etc) than where poorer people need to go.
That makes perfect sense. Poor people are attracted to cheaper real estate (residential and commercially). Real estate is cheaper because it is less accessible and convenient.
One area is concentrated and the other is decentralized.
So, force the rich people to use the bridge, and increase commute times for everyone?
Seems like a much better plan than synchronizing and expanding the train networks so they cover more neighborhoods in all parts of the bay (except Marin, of course…)
Please forgive me for the ignorance, but is there some significance of “under the bay bridge” for this study, or did they just pick it arbitrarily? It seems like picking a point arbitrarily like that could introduce some skews.
I'm pretty sure it's just being used as a turn of phrase here. Under the bridge means commuters are riding BART, over the bridge means they're driving.
Yes, let's ignore all data saying that it being free would make everything worse and not address any of your concerns about the environment or helping poor people.
I think there should be options for low income residents to ride for free or heavily discounted rates (which exists now). But it's all about implementation: simply letting anyone jump on turns the system into a madhouse. Making sure everyone pays (even if through a government issued pass) and works with the system helps balance equity considerations with maintaining safety and cleanliness.
The price is not the barrier for most people using transit. The service reliability and availability is more important. Would you rather pay fare for frequent bus or wait around for free fares?
Why not? Could you not make a pretty strong argument that avoided negative externalities (CO2 and air pollution from car engines and tires) make public transport worthwhile by itself, and just fund transport by taxing those (gas/cars)?
Saves you all the infrastructure for billing/access control and some enforcement, too.
1) it’s a funding source for transit agencies which are already facing shortfalls and at the mercy of voters for any tax increases or bonds.
2) we want public transit to be exclusionary on a fee-basis to exclude people who generally will not be able to pay for it on their own in order to avoid tragedy of the commons situations which actually suppress ridership by people who can afford to pay the fee: vagrants, criminals and people who smoke crack on the trains.
If you live in a region of the world that doesn’t have these issues, great, do what you want. We’re talking about the Bay Area specifically, and the thing keeping BART ridership down is that people don’t want to ride BART because it sucks. The actual service is mostly fine. The issue lies in the people.
I also have no interest in subsidizing the people I know can afford to pay. In the years prior to the new fare gates being installed, I could walk off MUNI and just casually catch every type of person from every type of walk of life, and by that I mean mostly regular commuters with decent paying jobs, just casually free loading because they could.
>we want public transit to be exclusionary on a fee-basis to exclude people who generally will not be able to pay for it ...
Public transit should be free (Or very inexpensive) to anyone who wants to use it. It's better for the environment, people's wallets, and the transit system itself if it was disconnected from ticket revenue. BART can certainly do more to enforce cleanliness and making sure no one is doing drugs on the trains, but that also requires more funding.
>I also have no interest in subsidizing the people I know can afford to pay.
Cars are subsidized endlessly via roads, associated maintenance, and parking on public property that could otherwise be used for something more productive. Many people with decent paying jobs own multiple cars banking on the fact that they can use public property to store their personal car, so they're also casually freeloading.
Living in a car-dependent world significantly drives up housing costs for everyone in the region. Many of BART's stations are surrounded by and zoned exclusively for single family homes with a lawn and a garage, which is ridiculous.
> Public transit should be free (Or very inexpensive) to anyone who wants to use it. It's better for the environment, people's wallets, and the transit system itself if it was disconnected from ticket revenue. BART can certainly do more to enforce cleanliness and making sure no one is doing drugs on the trains, but that also requires more funding.
The only mode of transportation that is truly free is walking. BART is already the economical choice compared to the $8 bridge tolls plus gas, but cutting off an existing revenue source hoping to increase service is either going to degrade service frequency, service quality, or both.
> Cars are subsidized endlessly via roads, associated maintenance, and parking on public property that could otherwise be used for something more productive. Many people with decent paying jobs own multiple cars banking on the fact that they can use public property to store their personal car, so they're also casually freeloading.
This is out-of-scope, but I have literally zero issues with making driving more expensive, however this also isn't the counter that you think it is. Both Bay Area roads and Bay Area public transit agencies are subsidized, in addition to having associated fees that add to the cost of each of them.
> Living in a car-dependent world significantly drives up housing costs for everyone in the region. Many of BART's stations are surrounded by and zoned exclusively for single family homes with a lawn and a garage, which is ridiculous.
Once again, out-of-scope, but I have literally zero issue with and would even advocate for upzoning around BART. I still would not make BART free after doing so.
>2) we want public transit to be exclusionary on a fee-basis to exclude people who generally will not be able to pay for it on their own in order to avoid tragedy of the commons situations which actually suppress ridership by people who can afford to pay the fee: vagrants, criminals and people who smoke crack on the trains.
These demographics have no issue jumping the gates/going through with someone else, are already present, and will be whether the ride is $1 or $1000. You're just excluding the honest people who can't afford it. I also don't know what makes you think that criminals have to be poor and can't afford a ride.
> I could walk off MUNI and just casually catch every type of person from every type of walk of life, and by that I mean mostly regular commuters with decent paying jobs, just casually free loading because they could.
I'm envious of your ability to access people's bank accounts and occupations by looking at them.
> These demographics have no issue jumping the gates/going through with someone else, are already present, and will be whether the ride is $1 or $1000. You're just excluding the honest people who can't afford it. I also don't know what makes you think that criminals have to be poor and can't afford a ride.
Something you may have missed in this discussion is that BART has hardened its most frequently-used gates and is still in the process of hardening all of them with new fare gates and other infrastructure. This has noticeably decreased the frequency in which people are casually engaging in theft of service. In all of Downtown San Francisco with the new fare gates installed, you can't just step over them anymore, nor is circumventing them a subtle and quick matter.
> I'm envious of your ability to access people's bank accounts and occupations by looking at them.
It doesn't require magic to look at someone and assess their clothes, the items they're carrying and general hygiene and clock that with the time of day, or even figure out what their occupation is: mostly office workers and others who work in downtown San Francisco. Most of BART's passengers are commuters with jobs after all, they're not just riding it for fun which is what you would expect from a commuter rail system. Paying for transportation whether that is the bridge toll or the BART ticket is each person's responsibility, and notably there are tax incentives for public transportation within the Bay Area already, and as I noted up thread, plenty of discounts.
> Paying for transportation whether that is the bridge toll or the BART ticket is each person's responsibility...
Sure. And you can do that with taxes, rather than charging at point-of-use.
I mean, we (very wisely) subsidize the absolute hell out of road construction and maintenance, and noone bats an eye. Folks get weirdly up in arms when the method of transportation being subsidized doesn't require a (typically) many-thousand-dollar up-front investment to use.
> Sure. And you can do that with taxes, rather than charging at point-of-use.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. As I addressed way above this comment chain:
> 1) it’s a funding source for transit agencies which are already facing shortfalls and at the mercy of voters for any tax increases or bonds.
Having a funding source tied to use is also pretty nice if you want to financially justify further BART expansions in e.g. the directions of Tracy/Stockton, Santa Cruz, Vallejo or an in-fill Diablo Valley run from Martinez to Pleasanton and provide more comprehensive coverage. It’s also nice to keep it segregated from having to compete within the legislature and on the ballot with highways.
> I mean, we (very wisely) subsidize the absolute hell out of road construction and maintenance, and noone bats an eye. Folks get weirdly up in arms when the method of transportation being subsidized doesn't require a (typically) many-thousand-dollar up-front investment to use.
We also subsidize the hell out of BART and public transportation. There isn’t a single mode of transportation within and between cities that isn’t heavily subsidized by the government. Maybe a smattering of fully private roads somewhere.
Those subsidies are also not mutually exclusive with direct fees for service and direct fees and taxes (e.g. vehicle registration and fuel taxes), nor do they justify removing fee-for-service from BART.
> Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you shouldn't.
> We also subsidize the hell out of BART...
For ages, BART crowed about how it got like 80->95% of its operating expenses from rider fares. If what you're saying is true, then one or more of the following must be true:
1) The BART directors were lying to the public
2) This change in funding mix happened when BART ridership fell off a cliff as folks fled the SF Bay Area
3) Rider fares have never actually been expected to cover system expansions to any significant degree
If #3 is true, then it seems to me that talking about fares in conjunction with future system expansions is totally pointless and a waste of time.
> Having a funding source tied to use is also pretty nice if you want to financially justify further BART expansions...
And yet we frequently build new roadways without any significant usage-based funding.
> Those subsidies are also not mutually exclusive with direct fees for service and direct fees and taxes...
Duh.
> ...nor do they justify removing fee-for-service from BART.
Nope, not in isolation. Of course not.
> As I addressed way above this comment chain:...
As you also said way above this comment chain:
> [I support suppressing] ridership by people who can['t] afford to pay the fee: vagrants, criminals and people who smoke crack on the trains.
On this, we disagree. I'm going to be kind and assume that the important part of your expressed concern is crime. The criminals are on trains with well-known stops; they're simply not going to force their way off of the train between stops. Like many other municipal railways BART has its own police force. Deploy the BART cops and get the bad guys at the next stop.
You might argue that this will be expensive, or that it will be ineffective. I'd argue that criminals have been able to jump over the faregates for nearly fifty years, so this thing we're discussing isn't a new problem.
As far as I remember, capital expansions have never relied on rider fares per se.
> And yet we frequently build new roadways without any significant usage-based funding.
And arguably we shouldn't be, or that we should be doing less of this. To be clear here, you are not going to find anywhere in this discussion in my own words that I am a friend of the institution of the automobile, the many highways built to support them, or suburbs.
> On this, we disagree. I'm going to be kind and assume that the important part of your expressed concern is crime.
The most important part is crime, but all the pieces matter. If you want to attract new ridership, that means improving service, improving QoL on BART (keeping both low level and overt crime at bay), and ultimately expanding BART's service area both making it more comprehensive in the areas it does serve and expanding it outwards to serve additional communities adjacent to its core service area attracting new paid riders who would otherwise probably drive. People who can take BART or MUNI but don't tend not to because to them, it is not a pleasant place for them to be and they will choose to drive or take a Lyft or make other choices. I'm sorry to say, but getting someone to drive you around no matter how many other people are riding with you is a small luxury[1] that people are not entitled to, nor should they be.
> Like many other municipal railways BART has its own police force. Deploy the BART cops and get the bad guys at the next stop.
> You might argue that this will be expensive, or that it will be ineffective.
I don't know why you think I would be making that argument. Part of having laws is the cost of enforcing them. If anything, I'd make the laws somewhat harsher and have a more active police presence throughout the BART system. One of the weak points now in the additional hardening that BART has been doing is that at some point, there's just no one minding the emergency exits and toll gates around downtown San Francisco. Take a page out of Japan's book, stop relying so much on patrol cars and install some kouban (and also better CCTVs) within the station infrastructure, enabling them to say, virtually fill in for when no one is visibly minding the booths. In terms of labor costs, I couldn't tell you if it would cost more because to be honest, I have no clue what BART Police are doing now when they're not actually on the trains and platforms.
> I'd argue that criminals have been able to jump over the faregates for nearly fifty years, so this thing we're discussing isn't a new problem.
Yeah, and we're discussing it because for the first time in BART's history, they're doing shit to actually address it in a productive fashion, rather than throwing up their hands and saying "free BART for everyone!". I think I like their new way at least directionally a bit better.
> Duh.
Bruh, that's how I felt when you explained we can "pay for things with taxes", or informing me that BART police exist, or that fare evasion isn't new. So, you actually want to go down this path? I know I don't want to. Let's be nice to each other.
[1] I know it doesn't feel like any kind of luxury, but it's true!
Contrary to the popular belief, more ridership makes it more safe and less dangerous. Pretending that a fee excludes the less desirable is laughable. Plenty of people that you describe, ride the trains even now, they just don’t pay the fee. By adding the fee you’re mostly excluding the people who would ride it if it were free: law abiding people who work hard to provide for their families, but can’t afford the fee.
And as for funding shortfall, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. You don’t fund transit, the agency needs to make cuts, making it less reliable, less safe and reducing capacity. Once that happens, even fewer people ride transit, creating even more funding deficits. This also increases the unwillingness of people to fund transit.
We use similar funding structures for roads all the time. Everyone pays, and people who own cars get to drive to their suburbs 50 miles away from the city. I don’t see people complaining about that at any point in time.
> Contrary to the popular belief, more ridership makes it more safe and less dangerous. Pretending that a fee excludes the less desirable is laughable. Plenty of people that you describe, ride the trains even now, they just don’t pay the fee. By adding the fee you’re mostly excluding the people who would ride it if it were free: law abiding people who work hard to provide for their families, but can’t afford the fee.
I've repeated this a couple of times already responding here, so clearly there's a bunch of people chiming in that just haven't on BART recently or haven't taken it into downtown San Francisco or Oakland. BART is currently in the process of hardening the paid areas against casual theft of service. IIRC most of their fare infrastructure has already been upgraded with the new gates that you can't just step over, nor even easily hop or climb over. There are still weak links, but it has had a noticeable impact. Beyond that, you should note that taking BART is the economic option, so if someone is law abiding and needs to get to work, then unless they live right by their job or have no commute at all, they're probably taking BART and paying for it.
> We use similar funding structures for roads all the time. Everyone pays, and people who own cars get to drive to their suburbs 50 miles away from the city. I don’t see people complaining about that at any point in time.
We use a mix of both fees and tax subsidies for both BART and public roads. If you have to cross a bridge and you're taking public transportation, you're paying at a minimum $8 plus gas which includes gas taxes which non-drivers are not paying for directly. Your other option is the Ferry which is like $9 or something like that.
Because capitalistic incentives work. More riders = more money => incentive to get more riders. More riders = more cost/hassle => incentive to have fewer riders.
I recently learned that my neighbor works for Partners in Health (pih.org). They have built an open-source EMR, which they use in far-flung regions like Haiti. I suggested that they can maybe sell their software under commercial terms in the US, to subsidize their international work. Her comment was that EMR systems like Epic are actually a billing system, less a medical record system. The whole system has been built to be opaque.
As a non-Christian, I highly recommend the writings of Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, and his metaphor of 'Two Halves of Lives'. The specific title of the book is 'Falling Upward'.
I work for a company, headquartered in the Mid West, that has been very public in their support of LGBTQ rights, among other things. Do you think corporations should take a public stance in support of abortion rights? Will tech companies continue to flock to Texas, in what will become a very difficult environment for abortion?
> Will tech companies continue to flock to Texas, in what will become a very difficult environment for abortion?
Recruiting for tech in Texas has already taken a hit due fear around abortion (getting employees to move down there can be quite difficult).
More broadly, I think this is likely to put a big damper on high-end knowledge work in conservative states. Educated people are overwhelmingly liberal. While you could certainly find a subset of knowledge workers who don't have an issue working in a state banning abortion, the difficulties with hiring and transfers probably won't pass a cost benefit analysis (again, we already see this in Texas).
I always find it a bit funny that HN/tech crowd is generally considered liberal, when I as a Norwegian feel opinions here are sooo conservative. Guess it depends on frame of reference. Democrats would probably be far to the right in Norway?
I'm definitely using the American frame of reference here. I'd totally agree most of my colleagues who self-describe as liberal would be conservatives through much of Europe.
No, it really depends on the issue - economics, speech, voting rights, gender rights, abortion rights. Of the later, Democrats are far to the left of Europeans.
Also, I’ll point out that HN (and SV) has a little “l” libertarian streak (entrepreneurship) which favors smaller government and personal accountability/agency.
"Knowledge" worker in Texas here (native; didn't move here). I don't feel this affects me for a few reasons, but I will say that I'm also aware that 1. I can travel out of state, and 2. drugs are available online and there are drugs that can provide medical abortions - perhaps those can be put together.
That said, in talking with a colleague this morning, we agreed that if the state does go completely crazy and manages to secede, we just want enough notice to sell our property so we can leave.
I'd assume the GOP leadership in TX will act in bad faith or for their protection first. If you have a single female friend or associate this ruling will impact you. It will have far reaching consequences beyond just abortion access including the possibility of IVR becoming illegal as well. We're about to see a huge slate of medical procedures and practices caught up in this ruling.
The Texas law makes it so any citizen can file a civil suit against anyone who has an abortion, including ones performed out of state. There are already pro-life organizations that will help people fund these civil suits.
While I am pro-legalised abortion I think this is a separate kind of issue to LGBT rights, racial equality etc. LGBT rights/racial equality is about treating everybody equally. Almost no 'good' people are opposed to those things. There are plenty of good people who literally believe abortion is the murder of a baby. I disagree but I don't agree that it's an unreasonable opinion. Given that, I think companies taking a stance on it would cause a lot more division than when they take a stance on more clear cut social issues.
> Almost no 'good' people are opposed to those things.
That is an interesting perspective. You just called something like 100M or more Americans not good people. I am not being hyperbolic. Talk to them. On the surface they are friendly, easygoing, etc, but switch the topic to LGBT rights and listen. The very fact that they believe there is such a thing as "gay rights" tells you a lot. Good luck trying to educate them on how "cannot discriminate based on sexual preference" is not the same thing as giving gay people special rights.
>> You just called something like 100M or more Americans not good people
Fair enough. So long as they believe they deserve more rights than another group of people, they're not good people. Hopefully they'll change their opinion. I've known plenty of people to change their opinion on this issue over the years and hopefully it'll continue on that trajectory. My point was more than on those issues it's simply one group that thinks another group does not deserve to be treated equally. With abortion it's more two sets of competing 'rights' - the woman and the foetus.
After reading a bit about Austin this morning (but before this news) I was browsing zillow + google maps, trying to get a feel for the city. Basically I'm tired of winter. It's a total non-starter now though.
Texas has no income tax. But the property tax functions as a backdoor income tax because there is rich school district to poor school district redistribution. Therefore property taxes are high in Texas, though not higher than, say, in New Jersey (which also has an income tax).
> Do you think corporations should take a public stance in support of abortion rights?
Some companies have even gone so far as paying for abortions. That's disgusting. It reveals that The Man doesn't want women's productivity to go down and would rather work them to the bone instead. Out of the kitchen and into the office? That might be a bad deal.
> Some companies have even gone so far as paying for abortions. That's disgusting. It reveals that The Man doesn't want women's productivity to go down and would rather work them to the bone instead. Out of the kitchen and into the office? Might be a bad deal.
Or it could reveal that abortions, even in the best circumstances, cost money -- time off of work and travel expenses for example. Perhaps these companies support women having access to it regardless of their economic status.
It'll blow your mind, but some companies even allow employees time off to vote in elections, partially for the same reasons.
While I think that these kind of things shouldn't require a company to take any action in, this isn't "going so far as" in a country where medical care is basically tied to your job. If your company guarantees medical care, why is paying for an abortion anyhow different?
But indeed I prefer a system of public health insurances which keep these matters independent of your employer.
