Energy & Commodities | Sit. Feast on your life.
Joined April 2020
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A tale told in charts.
The average American household spend $12K a year on transportation.
But the lowest American income decile spends 30% of their income on transportation, whereas the European one only spends 8%.
Kristoffer Nilsen retweeted
Fire department shenanigans, Dallas edition.
Earlier this year developers began being told seemingly compliant site plans didn’t pass. Why? Dallas FD had unilaterally made a rule that all projects required a dedicated fire lane onsite. Public streets would no longer count as fire access.
Every parcel. Every project. Anywhere in the city. No legislative process. No public notice, input, or review. No approval by city council. Basically “we made a new law and don’t need anyone’s permission”.
If enforced this would wipe billions of dollars off of Dallas property values. A 100’ lot would lose up to ~30% of its development potential overnight. That’s lost space for housing and people. Lost future tax revenue, shifting more onto existing owners. From an unwritten “rule” based on nothing. No safety study. No review of impacts. No published analysis of any kind.
Thankfully developers compared notes and the issue was taken up by the city manager’s office.
But the broader problem this illustrates remains: fire departments setting public policy without consideration of their impacts, with demands largely driven by personal preference and gut opinion. Fire departments shouldn’t get to dictate how our cities function and are designed. Yet they often do, without ever having to demonstrate improved overall public safety or account for other outcomes.
Kristoffer Nilsen retweeted
WSJ front page: American roads becoming deadlier for peds
Austin has long req’d 25’ of clear fire access, the standard fire code requires 20’. Wider streets encourage dangerous speeds
We need to build fire trucks around the city we want, not build our city around fire trucks
Rumor is that anthropic is close to solving the PJM interconnection queue. They plan to announce it at their IPO. They really hope someone else doesn't try and scoop them and release it first......
A land value tax fixes this.
The city of Houston agreed to chip in a projected $11 million in tax incentives for a new natural gas power plant to be built and operated by NRG Energy. houstonchronicle.com/politic…
Kristoffer Nilsen retweeted
Misaligned model tries to EXFILTRATE ITS WEIGHTS but is STOPPED by heroic AWS EGRESS FEE SPEND LIMIT
Kristoffer Nilsen retweeted
Property taxes favor keeping land idle instead of providing socially useful services like housing or commercial space. When will Texas fix this: progressandpoverty.substack.…
And all the power traders rejoiced.
When are we getting time of use pricing for AI credits, I want to burn tokens overnight while I sleep at a 70% discount versus peak hours.
The squat I pop when risk asks me to explain how to value the ERCOT summer quanto option we just sold.
Kristoffer Nilsen retweeted
>be econ student but not braindead
>read Das Kapital
>realize marx spotted a real problem but aimed at the wrong target
>workers vs capital wasn’t the full picture
>land quietly siphoning everything in the background
>learn Georgism
>oh
>rent isn’t just "paying a landlord"
>it’s economic rent
>unearned value from location, infrastructure, society itself
>city grows
>nothing changes about the dirt
>land price doubles anyway
>owner gets rich doing literally nothing
>wages go up?
>land rent goes up faster
>productivity gains?
>capitalized into land prices
>UBI?
>lol landlords already priced it in
>argue about capitalism vs socialism online
>meanwhile both ignore the same leak in the system
>private sector builds stuff
>public sector builds infrastructure
>landowners capture both
>see rent control debate
>price ceiling on symptoms
>ignore the asset bubble underneath
>construction slows
>everyone acts surprised
>hear "greedy corporations"
>check balance sheets
>most profits normal
>check land values
>oh
>understand why cities like Vancouver feel impossible
>it’s not just wages
>it’s not just policy
>it’s land absorbing everything
>realize taxation isn’t the issue
>what you tax is
>tax labour?
>you punish production
>tax capital?
>you slow investment
>tax land?
>you can’t move it
>you can’t hide it
>you don’t reduce supply
>land value tax clicks
>capture the unearned
>leave wages and production alone
>housing gets cheaper to hold
>speculation dies
>building actually makes sense again
>stop arguing ideology
>start closing the rent-seeking loop
>be social studies student
>professor assigns Das Kapital
>Marx explains how capitalism exploits workers
>makes total sense
>capitalism = bad, socialism = good
>graduate with $87,000 in student debt
>can't find job that pays living wage
>blame greedy corporations
>apply for government job
>get hired at Department of Education
>spend 8 hours daily in bureaucratic meetings
>produce nothing of value
>complain about private sector efficiency on X
>vote for politicians promising free healthcare
>support rent control to fight housing crisis
>wonder why no new apartments get built
The same students who read Marx's theory of exploitation never question why government jobs exist or why their "public service" requires extracting wealth from productive workers.
They rail against capitalist surplus value while collecting paychecks funded by taxation—the ultimate extraction..