> Aside from that, there are people who go into consulting and gain a lot of skills
If what the author claims is true and consulting is basically making up numbers to fit some conclusion and general fluff work, I'm not sure that's a valuable skill to pick up. Sure, you could pick up networking and ...?
That's one way of encouraging investment in green energy sources but may not be perfect. Again, it's a wait and see game. Further, for a firm starting up mining ops your cost isn't just the variable cost of electricity, you also have the fixed cost of the plant. If the cost of a coal plant + cost of electrical production/maintenance + carbon tax < cost of a solar plant + cost of electrical production/maintenance then clearly coal here is the winner.
Exactly. If bitcoin mining drives demand for solar, leads to solar production jobs in the US and increases R&D leading to more efficient panels - awesome. But if companies start to go public based on the premise of mining bitcoin at the cheapest possible price - I doubt they'll invest in Solar/wind/geo[0].
[0] Yes, I know mining in Iceland is a thing. But mines in Iceland don't make up a huge chunk of the network.
The issue is finance firms will get (are getting) involved. It becomes easy to purchase an inefficient energy production source (old coal, natural gas, etc.) that cities/counties/states are trying to get rid of which would otherwise sit dormant and require some sort of upkeep. As soon as such a company goes public they'll have more money to purchase up more (financially cheap, environmentally expensive) sources of direct electricity and they'll be bound to do so since it's in the best interest of the shareholder to continue to mine.
Perhaps bitcoin is a nice academic theory and would work well if humans were responsible. Just like nuclear cars are nice in theory - so long as people don't have accidents.
Edit:
> If needed, we can better incentivize green bitcoin mining with carbon taxes or renewable energy mining subsidies.
Plastic is a wonderful material but virgin plastic is cheaper than recycled and various attempts to artificially decrease the price of recycled plastic via government incentive programs haven't worked.
Electronics are awesome, but despite efforts to recycle electronic waste it all ends up in third world countries where it gets burned off. it's just cheaper that way. Some ecyclers were even caught trying to game the system. Taking government incentives and still shipping e-waste overseas.
I'd like to believe in the idea that some sort of incentive program would come into place but so far none have worked in the may other industries that desperately need it.
Being subpoenaed makes sense. If SquareSpace (or cloudflare, namcheap, etc.) is required to police content, hosting goes back to costing hundreds or thousands of dollars a month just to pay for the content moderators (at every level?).
How do these laws affect companies like SquareSpace[1] (companies which provide a site builder and hosting)? If someone builds a site which violates these laws is SquareSpace held responsible? Is it up to SquareSpace to police the content on their customers sites (comments sections, content, etc.)? Or do they have some sort of immunity or contractual immunity from these laws which places the responsibility of content on the end customer/site owner?
[1] I'm using SquareSpace as a placeholder. I think netfliy, wordpress builders and hosts, and other similar companies could also be impacted(?)
Are you accounting for family connections? High income families tend to have connections which can help. If your parents are good friends with a lawyer at a top law firm you no longer have to apply on your own merit. Poor families lack these connections and students have to apply on their own. Something to consider.
A gift is just that, a gift. The party giving the gift isn't expecting anything in return. In the streaming example, you're providing entertainment for "gifts". That's an exchange of goods/services for monetary gain and hence taxable.
Yup, kept my 2015 13" pro till I bought the 16" a few months ago. The touch bar is meh for me though. I find it quicker to change volume with physical keys than touch bar but it's not a huge issue. However, love that the physical escape came back. That was big.