Group items tagged

The problem for consumers up to now has been that the negotiated prices were unknown, or impractical to raise in court due to evidentiary rules. The general rule is that witnesses must testify to facts within their personal knowledge. Notably, if a consumer contests a medical debt collection lawsuit, someone from the hospital must testify that the price charged is reasonable and customary-an assertion that, with regard to chargemasters, involves shading the truth and is vulnerable to cross-examination.

The U.S. shale-oil industry may collapse due to the sharp fall in oil prices because of the coronavirus pandemic, a new influential report predicts. The demand for and price of oil tumbled due to the economic slowdown and have since begun to recover, but Australian think tank the Institute for Economics and Peace warns that a low price will affect political regimes in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran.

In an open marketplace, such as a farmers' market where produce and other goods like candles and flowers are exchanged for money, the ideal prices for both consumers and sellers will quickly emerge. For example, if a seller tries to offer a bag of peaches for $10 but another vendor is willing to sell similar peaches for $5, the lower price will eventually win out and become the norm. This phenomenon, which is related to the law of supply and demand, was demonstrated experimentally starting in the 1960s by Caltech alumnus and Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith (BS '49), now at Chapman University, and later by Caltech's Charlie Plott, the William D. Hacker Professor of Economics and Political Science.

"What these examples have in common is that they illustrate two of the key tasks of the social sciences: to measure important social variables over time and space, and to identify the social mechanisms that lead to variation in these variables. There are large problems of methodology and conceptual clarification that need to be addressed in both parts of this agenda. On the side of measurement, we have the problems of arriving at consistent and revealing definitions of economic wellbeing, using incomplete historical sources to reconstruct estimates of prices and wages, and using a range of statistical methods to validate and interpret the results. And on the explanatory side, we are faced with the difficult task of reconstructing social processes and forces in the past that may have powered the changes we are able to document, and with the task of validating the hypotheses we have put forward on the basis of historical evidence."

"With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay

"The current paradigm of independent, inflation targeting central banks thus obscures the messy history of central banks as public institutions. Since their inception, monetary authorities have performed various different roles; while they served as guardians of price stability in Victorian England, they have originally served as developmental and fiscal agents for expansionary states, and have frequently continued to do so in the centuries since. Treating central bank independence as an ahistorical best practice approach is misleading, and we should recall that there have been alternatives to the current framework. As some have heralded the end of the era of central bank independence, while others have underscored the benefits of re-politicizing monetary policy, it is worth bearing this history in mind."