Links: Healthcare, education, homelessness and weird public policies, the good life, and more!
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* “The Pedagogical Lessons and Tradeoffs of Online Higher Education.” Education and healthcare both seem to lack silver bullets, although we keep looking for them. See also us on the need to boost apprenticeships and vocational education. This is based in part on my experiences teaching college students.
* “The U.S. Furniture Industry Is Back—but There Aren’t Enough Workers: Companies expanding American production due to consumer preferences and tariffs are finding a dearth of skilled workers.”
* “As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash.” Who could have predicted that homelessness is part of the regulatory environment that precludes the building of homes?
* “Apple Commits $2.5B to Ease California Housing Crunch.” Unfortunately, money is not the big problem here—zoning policies that prevent new housing from being constructed is the problem. Until we decide that more housing is a good idea, more money is mostly going to be used to bid up the prices of existing housing. Oregon, for example, has legalized townhomes statewide, and California should be doing the same. We’ve worked on some homeless-service proposals, but it’s depressing to see California raise a bunch of money that then can’t be used efficaciously because of their zoning policies.
* “The Key to Electric Cars Is Batteries. Chinese Firm CATL Dominates the Industry.” Have not seen this triangulated from other sources, however.
* “Why It’s So Hard to Buy ‘Real Food’ in Farm Country. An exodus of grocery stores is turning rural towns into food deserts. But some are fighting back by opening their own local markets.” Seems like an Onion story, but seemingly not.
* “San Francisco Board of Supervisors questions $900K/unit cost for Sunnydale ‘affordable’ housing.” Until we do zoning reform, we can’t build affordable housing, as noted above. Meanwhile, southern California is little better: “Some of Los Angeles’ homeless could get apartments that cost more than private homes, study finds.”
* $30 million in grants to fund nuclear fusion research. That’s cool.
* Air Pollution Reduces IQ, a Lot. If you are worried about human welfare, attacking air pollution is key. Normal people can do this, too, by choosing low-emissions vehicles.
* Medical billing: where all the frauds are legal. We’ve heard that many healthcare providers, including FQHCs, are forced to be medical billers first, and everything else second, or third, or worse. In related news, A CT scan costs $1,100 in the US — and $140 in Holland.” You’ve heard it before, but: price transparency now. What’s stopping this? “Doctors Win Again, in Cautionary Tale for Democrats: Surprise billing legislation suddenly stalled. The proposal might have lowered the pay of some physicians.” There are few if any easy wins.
* Why white-collar workers spend all day at the office. It’s a signaling race. Most writers know we have 2 – 4 decent hours a day in us for real writing, for example.
* “California population growth slowest since 1900 as residents leave, immigration decelerates..” This is purely a political and legal problem, which means it’s very solvable. Also, “‘Garages aren’t even cheap anymore:’ Bay Area exodus drives lowest growth rate in years.” California is a gerontocracy ruled by zombie homeowners who bought their properties decades ago, pay low property taxes on them, and now block anyone else from building anything, anywhere.
* Magic mushroom compound psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study.
* AI and adaptive learning in education. This could and should be a big deal.
* “Denser Housing Is Gaining Traction on America’s East Coast: Maryland joins Virginia with a new proposal to tackle the affordable housing crisis. And it’s sweeping in its ambition.”
* Dan Wang on science, technology, China, and many other matters of interest.
* Letting nurse practitioners be independent increases access to health care? See also my post, Why you should become a nurse or physicians assistant instead of a doctor: the underrated perils of medical school. Healthcare fields seem to have near-infinite job growth, which is useful knowledge for job-training programs.