Dec 3 2012: I had a look at your document on "Changes in travel habits" and feel that the statistics and explanations do not fully agree with your presentation.
1. In the presentation you said that the toll led to a readjustment in travel times which means that the number of car trips in a 24 hr period is unchanged but the distribution within the period is different. In the statistics, it says that trip numbers dropped.
2. The number of cyclists fell by a larger % than car trips.The increase in public transport does not match the fall in car numbers. Overall there are fewer trips by all means of transport. Is something else happening here other than the toll? Unemployment, migration, weather?
3. What impact has higher oil prices had? The overall competitiveness of cars vs public transport/bicycles is down, the toll is only one factor.
4. The tolls were put on all roads at the same time. For a better scientific experiment, you could have kept one of the roads free for a while to see if drivers are irrational (would drive extra = more hidden costs in fuel and time, in order to avoid the visible cost of the toll).
Dec 3 2012: Keyboards are on the way out. Pens will be back in again before too long. Not the old type with ink in them but ones that write into devices. Not sure if you will need cursive but good handwriting will help you with the next bit of technology. Plus we need to reevaluate shorthand for writing on a tablet. Shorthand is still the fastest way of writing ever devised.
Dec 3 2012: Great talk. I have only visited an orphanage once in a developing country. A girl with her face badly burned showed us round. There were kids with heart problems, deformations plus lots of girls who looked healthy. The kids had nothing but the head of the orphanage looked so rich. What made me saddest was that all the children wanted to touch me, I felt for no other reason than they wanted to touch an adult. We learned that Christian missionaries often visited which was both a happy and sad thing: happy because the children need support, sad because the Christians seem to rejoice that a place such as an orphanage exists. Georgette's solution is the right one, help the families look after their children. The children need their parents more than anything else.
Dec 3 2012: Amos, this is a red flag that your partner in India is not sharing your vision and should be re-evaluated. From the information that you have given us, the additional cost of your invention should only be around $5 in terms of material and construction cost. The expensive part of the invention - the research - has been paid for by MIT, so your Indian partner should not use that as an excuse to charge higher prices to consumer. It seems like your Indian partner thinks that this project is a great way to make money which is not your dream. Your dream is for everyone who needs one gets one. You should think about an investor who wants to start a project on that basis. Hire disabled managers and workers, get them to make the wheelchairs. Get people who want to live your dream to work on it, not some petty capitalists.
Dec 3 2012: Agree with this method - solid economic theory, everything works better when it is assigned a price. The problem is that governments are not trustworthy. They forget that assigning a price is for the common good and start thinking of it as a way to raise revenue. They then raise the price above the social optimum and squeeze money out of commuters. The government will turn this good idea into something evil.
Sep 22 2012: There is a problem with Mr Stuart's logic in that part of the waste that he talks about is actually the hygienic safety buffer that prevents epidemics and food poisoning. He of course is right in that if you go and hand pick through the waste, a lot of this buffer is excessive but would the cost of supermarkets actually paying people to pick through all waste by hand negate the benefits of recovering this portion of the food supply?
Sep 22 2012: You are right in saying the problem with food waste is structural. Food producers try to maximize profit. This means minimizing cost (and maximizing revenue) and this is different from minimizing food waste.
Minimizing cost is not wrong. Cost is the sum of all resources used in production, such as oil, labor, land etc. If you don't minimize cost, you will be wasting these other things.
If you don't maximize profit, you will be out competed by the companies who do maximize profit and the overall result for the food production chain will be the same. In order to minimize food waste, we have to better price the inputs into agriculture, especially virgin land.
Sep 22 2012: You must be from Shanghai. Go to the north or west of the country and you will see a different story. Public displays of food waste = status.
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1. In the presentation you said that the toll led to a readjustment in travel times which means that the number of car trips in a 24 hr period is unchanged but the distribution within the period is different. In the statistics, it says that trip numbers dropped.
2. The number of cyclists fell by a larger % than car trips.The increase in public transport does not match the fall in car numbers. Overall there are fewer trips by all means of transport. Is something else happening here other than the toll? Unemployment, migration, weather?
3. What impact has higher oil prices had? The overall competitiveness of cars vs public transport/bicycles is down, the toll is only one factor.
4. The tolls were put on all roads at the same time. For a better scientific experiment, you could have kept one of the roads free for a while to see if drivers are irrational (would drive extra = more hidden costs in fuel and time, in order to avoid the visible cost of the toll).
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A reply on Talk: Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal
A reply on Talk: Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal
A reply on Talk: Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal
Minimizing cost is not wrong. Cost is the sum of all resources used in production, such as oil, labor, land etc. If you don't minimize cost, you will be wasting these other things.
If you don't maximize profit, you will be out competed by the companies who do maximize profit and the overall result for the food production chain will be the same. In order to minimize food waste, we have to better price the inputs into agriculture, especially virgin land.
A reply on Talk: Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal