Re: trifecta
 

Who doesn't want a third party? It's been the white whale for how long now?

I think sometimes we'll one day see a minimally administered/low cost/low spending/free trade/socially tolerant/uninfected with religion/smart on immigration party emerge.

Then I wake up and realize, "America... shit; I'm still only in America... " And up the river the Republic continues, riding "a main circuit cable plugged straight into... Trump."

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It takes a few years to get the data. We started getting it in bits and pieces in 2011, but it didn't really start rolling in until 2014 or so.

What you might have been hearing about is that in the last three or four years, payment models have moved from volume based to value based, which takes into account outcomes, so there is a dollar amount associated with good results. Hospital program started in 2013 and the physician side started in 2015. I haven't been to a health care seminar in the last two years that hasn't spent a lot of time on MACRA and it seems that the insurance companies are following suit. Even if the ACA goes away, I think this model probably is here to stay. On a personal note, I've been working on a lot more data projects in the last 18 months or so many of which involve outcomes research and a ton of quality assessment and review.

The first MACRA annual report came out earlier this month.

Also, the ACA created the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which is sort of like the National Academies or the Institute of Medicine, a non governmental research oriented body.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's what we evolved to do. Insert another plug for Think, Fast and Slow here.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Is that book really as good as so many people have advised? I've almost bought it a few times, but the prose struck me a bit dry, even for that sort of topic.

I'm thinking audiobook might be the best course with it. Strikes me as possibly a good driving book.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I favor audibooks for most things.

I think the ideas in it are interesting and worth knowing about, which is enough to make it a good book to me, although you can get shorter treatments of many those ideas elsewhere.

Re: You've got no love for the underdog/That's why you will not survive...
 

National Review article (David French) on the Castile verdict. The dashcam video is just plain disturbing.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...rriage-justice

The Daily Dose is the Universals with some laid back soul-funk. "New Generation":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmYvlrX2g4M

Re: You've got no love for the underdog/That's why you will not survive...
 

And this just in from Milwaukee -- if you are a black man and you are being chased by police, throw your gun away (so you no longer have access to it), are shot and lying wounded on the ground with your hands up, that does not mean the police do not have the authority to finish you off at point blank range. Because who knows, you might have another gun. So you die. And the police officer walks.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This!

More fault lines
 

Re: More fault lines
 

this is a blog post. it really says little. other than maybe showing what you read to inform your word view?

Re: More fault lines
 

This reply says It Worked.

Re: More fault lines
 

What the antitrust problem with Amazon?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Re: More fault lines
 

The better question might be, what's antitrust law's problem with Amazon? http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/a...itrust-paradox

Re: You've got no love for the underdog/That's why you will not survive...
 

Some on the right get it, apparently.

The 74 Seconds treatment of the video was pretty good. In addition to talking to a former MPD trainer who says Yanez failed completely - not shocking - it goes through the audio of Yanez's very first explanation of what happened. Between him saying he didn't know where the gun was and that Castile's grip looked wider than a wallet, I don't know how he could credibly testify that he saw a gun. He heard "gun" and then assumed it's presence in Castile's hand.

Re: More fault lines
 

I suppose I need to read that, but for now just let me say that buying a specialty retailer doesn't seem like it makes much difference to Amazon's role in retail markets.

ETA: Btw, my favorite lefty "antitrust" freakout over the deal is "Amazon's going to get 451 locations they can use as distribution centers."

Because, right, the expensive real estate that Whole Foods uses for super fancy and expensive grocery stores is perfectly suited to use as a logistics hub and can totally handle hundreds of trucks coming and going every day and Amazon certainly couldn't comparable industrial space for way cheaper than it's paying for Whole Foods.

EATA: Not sure I can finish that article. She's wrong a lot. What she describes as narrowing is actually having to articulate the actual harm. Vertical theories are certainly still viable, just rare, as they should be because the harm is rare. Economies of scale and scope are absolutely barriers to entry under the "Chicago School." Market power is, in fact, often fleeting.

EATA: I really could not care less about the original intent behind 100 year old statutes. Indeed, much of the what motivated the Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman was wrong.

Re: More fault lines
 

It shouldn't surprise you that I'm familiar with that article. Who ought to be suing Amazon, and for what? Or do the laws need to be changed, and if so how?

Re: More fault lines
 

My son told me at 9:30 last night that he needed an external hard drive to download photos because he had filled his laptop. I got on Amazon and ordered a Seagate drive which they will deliver, at no extra charge because I'm a Prime member, today. Amazon is not monopolizing the market for external drives. There are many other places where I could buy that drive. Nor are they monopolizing the provision of next-day delivery services. Other companies could build that if they want to. As a consumer, I think it's awesome that Amazon will sell me what I want so quickly and conveniently. So what's the argument that markets are not working well?

Re: More fault lines
 

You gotta stop focusing on consumers, man. What about "the health of markets as a whole?"

I mean, how is the higher-cost, lower-service incumbent electronics retailer going to survive? And what's going to happen once it's gone?

But sarcasm aside, not unlike Walmart, I could see potential monopsony issues in theory, but most of what people complain about for both retailers is competition on the merits. It's supposed to be entirely legal to build a monopoly that way.

Nonetheless, get big and successful enough and you're eventually going to get into some antitrust trouble. As usual, I'd expect it from the EU first, but the US agencies will probably come up with a theory right about the time Amazon's being overtaken by whatever's next.

Re: More fault lines
 

E-commerce is killing traditional retail, because it's just not efficient to have to go to store to buy many things. This will cause a lot of dislocation.

Re: More fault lines
 

Nobody. That's the point.

The sole effective change would be to bar predatory pricing of the kind in which Amazon engages. I'm not even remotely close to qualified to comment on the acceptable breadth of antitrust law, but that sounds like outlawing loss leading as a business practice. That seems extreme.

I only offered the article because you asked the question. I was more interested in the question of how people like Bezos view the world (the bit in the editorial I posted earlier, where the author described tech oligarchs as believing they were entitled to outsize influence, as they were emerging as masters, with superfluous labor serfs below).

Re: More fault lines
 

The evil thing is it sells infringing stuff from whomever, but insulates itself from infringement suits.

Re: More fault lines
 

If you want to figure out how Bezos views the world, reading stuff he wrote would be a better place to start.

I don't think Amazon engages in predatory pricing. To the contrary, Amazon often offers pricing that is no better than the competition, but gets business from consumers who like the convenience, who can't be bothered to shop around, or who think it's too déclassé to shop at eBay or Walmart. What Amazon does ruthlessly is try to reduce its costs, and keep its margins low. That's hard for traditional retailers to compete with.

Re: More fault lines
 

One thing she didn't talk about - for some reason - is the types of predatory price cases that have actually been viable post Brooke Group, which are in industries characterized with high fixed costs as a barrier to entry and very low marginal costs - basically, airlines - where recoupment actually sounds plausible.

Of course, that's not at all Amazon.

Re: More fault lines
 

Matt Yglesias's take from four+ years ago still holds up pretty well:

Re: More fault lines
 

I just want to know if I can buy The Slants at Amazon?

Re: More fault lines
 

Our village kicked him out of Gigsville (the village) at Burning Man in 1999. He rode in on a bike, hung out for a little bit, and then tried to throw his bike into the Car-B-Que (our firepit). He was dissuaded and ordered to leave, and I think he's permanently banned from Gigsville. I don't think he's tried to come back.

Re: More fault lines
 

Was he entitled?

eta: I've been both attracted and repelled by the prospect of working for Amazon. It sounds like a well-run company that knows how to execute, and gets things right. But it also sounds like it can be miserable.

eta: To avoid confusion, I'm not working for Amazon, but I've thought about it.

Re: More fault lines
 

Immigrents r tekin mer job. So wat I got a c in chem, I wanted too be a ducter

Re: More fault lines
 

Predatory pricing is only when you price low to wipe out your competitors, then raise your price to one you couldn't if you had competitors.

Amazon hasn't done that for anything I bought. Generally, AMZN prices low and keep them low.

Re: More fault lines
 

It's the Utah Pie case (described in Sebby's law review note). Amazon is killing retails by being better, cheaper and more convenient. Some think that's a problem.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Republican moderates ("moderates") always cave.

Re: More fault lines
 

I found myself standing next to him at a bar. Seemed pleasant enough. Did not throw his empty glass into the fireplace.

Re: More fault lines
 

I read WaPo.

Re: More fault lines
 

In that case, you now know that we had intelligence showing Putin personally ordering interference to harm Hillary and help Trump.

Something that Trump should have learned shortly after taking office, like before he fired Comey and invited the foreign minister & ambassador into the Oval Office without the US press and told them that he fired Comey to take the heat off.

If the GOP functioned or cared at all about this country, pre-election collusion would be irrelevant. The way this administration has conducted itself toward Russia and its election interference after taking office is borderline treason.

Re: More fault lines
 

I've had "Holiday in Cambodia" and "Police Truck" in my running mix for as long as I've had digital music.

I can't help thinking a lot of this dimwitted tone deafness to irony accrues from people communicating more over disconnected tech mediums than in person. They learn sarcasm late, and badly. I've no doubt 7 out of 10 millennials would recoil at Jello Biafra's lyrics.

Yes, with the surf guitar, the affected lisp, the sneering delivery, and with that band name, Biafra is, of course, an earnest bigot.

Oh, and there's nothing funny about assassinations!

Re: More fault lines
 

I have a serious problem with Russia trying to hack voting machines.

I have no problem with anyone hacking either political party and leaking internal communications to sway public sentiment. The more dirt exposed on the rot within the parties, the better. But I do wish it would be done to both parties as equally as possible (imagine what the RNC said about Trump, and how it attempted to fix things for Jeb, behind the scenes).

Trump doing nothing about the former is a gross abrogation of duty. Doing nothing about the latter is also an abrogation, but a much smaller one, and one that doesn't very much bother me, or anyone else who wishes to see the two parties discredited (read: most of the country).

Re: More fault lines
 

I could read a Tesla owner's manual, but I don't think it would give me any special insight into how Elon Musk thinks.

Re: More fault lines
 

Obama fucked it up too.

Re: More fault lines
 

They did more than that.

This is idiotic, unless the exposure is reciprocal. Exposing one side's dirt and not the other isn't cleansing.

Especially when it's not the dirt that makes a difference but rather the continual coverage of exposure as though the dirt amounted to something (case in point, you still think something shady happened at the DNC, when there's no evidence of that).