The Chinese government does this a lot.

really doesn't seem to be as stark a difference as there once was.

You bought BYD after it had been hyped to the moon. Of course the price doesn’t move when it meets sales expectations.

Way back in the 50-60’s the government put in laws around “usual and customary price” in an attempt to rein in medical costs.

What providers were doing is charging cash customer $10, then when an insured patient came in (back when insurance paid 100%) they charged $100.

So a law was put into place to define what a “usual and customary price” is. The provider could not charge any customer more than this.

Like most well intentioned laws it created perverse incentives to jack up the public price as high as possible - if someone paid it, great, otherwise offer a discount.

The reason you care about germs on your hands is because they make you sick when you stick them in your body orifaces. Otherwise, those germs don't matter.

Wash hands before meals otherwise.

considering the topic is about airlines and flights, you would presumably be eating a meal after this and not be able to easily wash your hands again.

And sure some American cars are plastic and flimsy (particularly the low end models), but these are premium Chinese brands.

I disagree, again, pretty much all EVs handle like shit because they're very heavy and have a ton of torque. It doesn't help that most American cars are very large and particularly tall, which makes handling even worse. The reality is that a sedan will basically always handle better than an SUV, no matter what, even if it's a piece of shit sedan and a 100K Cadillac SUV. At least, on pavement.

> And sure some American cars are plastic and flimsy

No, like, all of them. You can't buy a Tesla with an interior that isn't mostly plastic. GM is still doing that bullshit where most of their components are binned from 20K shitboxes. There's SOME exceptions, but they're rare. And you'll find that what Xiaomi and some other's are doing is not plastic. They have leather interiors and stuff, this is all very easy to verify online. I'm not telling you anything that isn't trivial to find out.

It’s not hard to sell EVs when you’re losing money on each one.

$230B is the number thrown around, but those are the direct subsidies. When suppliers are subsidized it gets hard to account for all of it.

USAID isn’t an aid organization, it’s a front for CIA efforts internationally. It funded CORDS during the Vietnam War which was a paramilitary force.

DOGE didn’t get rid of USAID, Rubio did day one (since it falls under the State Department).

Whether or not they're credible to you, they're still the #2 ranked general medicine journal in the world, second only to the NEJM.

> USAID isn’t an aid organization, it’s a front for CIA efforts internationally

This is a conspiracy theory that can be trivially refuted by simply following the money. You can do this because their budget is public, unlike the budget of the CIA. The stuff you're citing from a half century ago isn't relevant to the work they've been doing when Musk said "Time for it to die."

What USAID actually was was a vital tool of US soft power and influence globally, and if you believe that it's important to wipe out the last remaining vestiges of the United States' perception as 'the good guys' then by all means it was very important to stop their work immediately.

Their ranking is based on how often papers are referenced in total, not the validity of any one paper. As I said, they been criticized for serious lapses in publishing fraudulent papers.

> The stuff you're citing from a half century ago isn't relevant to the work they've been doing when Musk said "Time for it to die."

I'm sorry what? It's the same organization? The fact that USAID was funding paramilitary organizations during war tells you USAID has nothing to do with aid.

> USAID actually was was a vital tool of US soft power and influence globally....if you believe that it's important to wipe out the last remaining vestiges of the United States' perception as 'the good guys' then by all means it was very important to stop their work immediately.

So you're saying unless the US can project soft power and influence (which is ALWAYS to the US' benefit, it absolutely is not altruistic) it won't be viewed as the "good guys"?

Wut?

That makes no sense.

Getting thousands of employees to all work towards a common goal is EXTREMELY difficult. Not to mention selling it to customers, investors, etc.

It doesn’t matter how technically proficient you are - you will fail if you don’t have people skills.

And people skills are far harder to measure, so we basically filter by success (which everyone knows is imperfect).

And there are far, far fewer people with the kind of people skills needed than people who can program a computer. Hence, pay is far higher.

Especially when there is no common goal.

The goal of a CEO is profits. As long as it goes up, everything is ok. As soon as it starts to go down: we have to sack people.

So what does that tell you?

It must be luck plus something else.

That is why I said “significant role”, not “the only requirement”, yes.

And what is typically done is you ignore it. It’s always there, it’s random, and it applies to all samples.

Same with luck and success. You can control luck, so you focus on what’s left.

The main job of CEOs is not decision making. 99% of company decisions are made below the level of CEO. For the ones that make it to CEO, the board tends to have final say.

It’s a leadership role where people interactions are the most important. The CEO sets the tone, gets people on the same page, and is the external face of the company.

It’s silly to think a robot can replace that.