Good, well written answer. You really did change my perception of the common core. However, I just want to further the discussion by saying that my comment was in response to your original comment, particularly the statement that it’s impossible to “judge[] something as complex as learning (or teaching!) by the…

That depends on how “complex” you define the learning/teaching. If you want to test basic knowledge and skills (that kids should have coming out of high school) standardized testing is the best, most efficient way of doing that (There may be arguments about whether the current test is optimized for that, but that’s a…

The current system, imho, is partly because of the dealer monopoly. Dealer's make money by getting artificially high margins over the price of the car from unaware customers which gives them an incentive to hide the price, and thus leads to an expectation of haggling. Apart from the car, dealer's also make money (as…

That's not what I meant by transparent. What I mean is being able to see the price you have to pay at all! You have no idea about the "true cost" or "commission" or effect of taxes on any other product you buy, eggs, a kindle, a book, a laptop. What's different is that you can go into Barnes and Noble, and see the…

It's not a dichotomy between independent dealer system vs. manufacturer owned distribution, it's why don't we have both instead of the current dealer monopoly?

The MSRP isn't a transparent price system, and not only for cars. Look at the price of say, a harddrive or mouse, the actual price is always below the MSRP. The msrp, even in other industries is basically there to make the actual price look discounted. But what's different is that, you go on Amazon, and you can see…

yea...just for most people it's a false sense of victory, because the current system of unequal price information just benefits dealers.

Tesla's flat pricing doesn't include financing, financing options are just how consumers want to pay for the flat full price of the car. Just like how a macbook is 1.2k, u can either pay cash outright, put it on a credit card with 10% APR and pay over 10 payments etc.

Because of competition, any law that exists to stop other people from entering a market pretty much only has the effect of raising prices. Add to that how dealers usually have deals that set them up to pretty much monopolize an area. Can you name any downsides to letting manufacturers open retail stores?

I don't see how car customers are any different than every other consumer for every other product.

Just the lawyer fees to respond to a lawsuit would probably cost more than a decade of internet fees you’d pay.

It wouldn't be a manufacturer monopoly, each car manufacturer would still be competing against each other, and I'm not advocating banning dealers, but banning the "dealer" monopoly. Basically, I'm suggesting something like, the apple store - where manufacturers are free to set up a "model" store, but other…

Yep, while rappers, athletes, and celebrities may be the most visible, all of them combined is probably dwarfed just by the number of doctors in an average sized city. It's educated professionals, like doctors, lawyers, accountants, and business owners/management that make up the bulk of the luxury market, and they're…

I think the problem is that haggling for car prices has become so ingrained in our culture that a "haggling markup" that's never intended to actually get paid by anyone, is built in to the msrp and the invoice even. This is seen elsewhere too, like how the set low price at Target failed, because customers like seeing…

I think part of that is because top quintile still isn’t enough to really access the advantages that keep people in the upper-middle classes. Really, 50-100k isn’t that much of a difference in terms of careers, (it may be in income) but it’s still in the general range of middle-class incomes, and probably comes from…

At smaller companies, while being able to be the “star” there’s also less redundancy. If you’re the “star” that means that if something needs to be done, there aren’t 5 other equivalent employees that can fill in for you.

I actually think there shouldn’t be a minimum wage at all, but public benefits should be expanded to allow families to survive + expanded education opportunities so that kids don’t get stuck in the cycle. That’s because with an artificially high minimum wage, companies would increasingly start shifting to technology…

I do that too, though I think it's a bad habit mainly for sanitary reasons. After you start drinking it, the backwash can make the empty bottle of water turn nasty after a while (though that's mitigated if you keep it in the fridge). I can see how it gets annoying if there starts to be such a huge backlog that t…

Yea...costco is $55 a year. Or $110 a year for executive membership that gives you 2% back (and if it doesn’t cover the difference in costs, they give you the balance). Even if I weren’t a member, it takes like 2 seconds to google it.

As well as the specific reasons why Mac OS is needed here (xcode, iOS/MacOS development), it might be hard for a worker bee to understand, but at the higher levels an hour of time can easily exceed the the cost/value of an entire Mac Pro. Your point of view is the classic penny-wise, pound-foolish approach. In my…