nope. i have no cites. i just think it’s quite obviously true.

emigration has always been a thing, but the frequency of people living an inconvenient distance from family increased dramatically over the 20th Century (for better and worse) due to economic and technological developments.

Cars are really great for intercity travel, for getting between cities. It’s what they’ve done to cities that is terrible. A park-and-ride model where highways (among other modes) take you between cities, but you park them at the edges and ride in could be great.

yep. it’s time to try again, change things, make new mistakes this time.

I wasn’t accusing you of conspiracizing. I was accusing you of accusing me of conspiracizing when I was putting out a quick tweet. I was not twirling my mustache about how to defame zoom, even if i am very tech-co (not tech) skeptical.

there sure isn’t! but conventionally we most frequently use GDP per capita, and this kind of remedial GDP growth is one of many reasons we should be skeptical of that convention.

sure. defense rationales were part of those choices. as was active lobbying by auto, oil, entrepreneurs in an housing development industry. as was consumer choice. lots of reasons we collectively did the thing. we’ve enough experience now i think to regret the mistake. wasn’t obvious ex ante though.

because it was an accurate and really easy example to fit in a tweet? it popped into my head in short sentences? i don’t know how much conspiracizing you do before you post a 300 character masterpiece.

dude, i have always lived far from my family and remember well trying to game international phone services. don’t make assumptions. zoom is progress, given the distance. the point is the distance itself is a result of economic change. it’s progress against a baseline of new costs. it’s remedy.

you’d think a kind of darwinism would have selected against groups with worldviews so inefficient in practical terms. but maybe the social order associated with such worldviews more than compensated.

(there are definitely rationales for credit card fees. the question is whether the rationales justify the price. given the regressive rebate economy that has grown on top of the industry, i’d say the answer there is pretty clearly no. when you’re giving away toasters, a rigid price is out of whack.)

i think they are, at baseline, substantially cheaper, although as @nosunkcosts.bsky.social points out people have snuck in wrinkles and loopholes to pad things with fees under some circumstances.

the MAGA Civil War is when Georgia secedes from Massachusetts.

so when is it sub 50 bps, vs when does this loophole apply to feed vampires?

yeah. i think to be cheap it’d have to go through the chip+PIN flow, rather than the signature flow. but it seems like a thing merchants and customers could learn!

i’m glad more places are offering cash discounts, to help expose and wean us from the credit card fee racket, but i wish they’d also offer debit card discounts, inexpensive without the inconvenience of carrying cash.