Agreed. Never understood all NTB and tariff distinctions, except one suspects the pajandrums in Brussels and Geneva didn't quite believe companies could compete on price or product, and therefore needed a way to keep quotas and subsidies.
I'm not alone in this confusion. During oral argument, several Supreme Court justices asked repeatedly about the distinctions between quotas, tariffs, revenue-raising taxes, non-revenue taxes, etc. in IEEPA's statutory language and precedents like FEA v. Algonquin SNG, Inc., 426 U.S. 548 (1976).
The authors ask “who bears the cost of these tariffs?” and use S&P Panijiva data from Jan 2024 to Nov 2025 for their 96% pass through rate to conclude tariffs function “as a consumption tax on Americans.” However, Panjiva is limited to FOIA requests for bill of lading data for 22 countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico) and excludes major US trading partners, such as the EU, UK, and Canada[1].
The limitations of the data are highlighted by the authors’ somewhat bizarre claim that “a 10 percentage point increase in tariffs leads to only a 0.39% reduction in export prices.” Yet the luxury industry, a major component of European exporters, reduced prices in 35-40% of all products in 2025 and registered a drop in operating margins from 20% in 2023 to 15% in 2025[2]. European car manufacturers also had to adjust. Porsche reported a billion euro 3Q25 loss and a 99% drop in operating profit through 2025, leading to its removal from the DAX and the CEO’s ouster.[3]
The short answer to who pays: too early to tell. Many consumers balk at price increases and reduce consumption, while many foreign exporters seem to be waiting and seeing for the Supreme Court to rule against the administration’s IEEPA claims or the midterm elections before deciding permanent price changes. But exporters are experienced navigators of multiple tariff layers, both internal and external. Many economists have noted the “value-added tax (VAT) system, a tax on final consumption, which the US administration views as similar to a tariff.”[4]
You raise fair points. I'd also prefer a simpler solution for a human-only internet, but nothing has really worked so far. Bloomberg issued secure cards with fingerprint pads that you held up to the monitor to retrieve credentials to their system, so maybe a simpler physical authenticator could work at scale. I'm not sure how secure a pulsometer would be, but hacking an apple headset chip and retinal pattern seem harder.
Court: disagree in part. More judges are needed to address the severe backlogs, but as an example NYS judges oppose expansion (see [3] from previous post). A lot of calendar time is spent appearing before judges around a city (they're not all in one area) for motion hearings and the like despite all documents being electronically submitted. Also, there are frequent reschedulings when one party can't physically appear. Some state judges allow teleconference, but a lot don't. Appellate and federal courts rarely.
Checkups and social services: some secure way of monitoring client interactions and outcomes is needed. In Los Angeles, the homeless services agency has been criticized by a federal judge for incompetence [1] and more than half of the child-prostitutes in a notorious corridor were found to be "missing" from the foster system [2]. Maybe headsets are not the best answer, but govt agencies and social service NGOs need to record evidence of their efforts for accountability.
Many use cases come to mind. If (retinal?) identities were private, encrypted, and “anonymized” in handshake:
web browsing without captchas, anubis, bot tests, etc. (“human only” internet, maybe like Berners-Lee’s “semantic web” idea [1][2])
Non “anonymized”:
non-jury court and arbitration appearances (with expansion of judges to clear backlogs [3])
medical checkups and social care (eg neurocognitive checkups for elderly, social services checkins esp. children, checkins for depressed or isolated needing offwork social interactions, etc.)
bureaucratic appointments (customer service by humans, DMV, building permits, licenses, etc.)
web browsing for routine tasks without logins (banks, email, etc)
SB79 was “meant to address two crises at once: The state’s long-term housing shortage and the financial precarity of its public transit agencies.”[a] The 3rd crisis is the enormous budgetary deficits the state and cities are also facing: San Diego has a $300m deficit, SF $728m, LA $1b, CA $45b.
One suspects the 2nd and 3rd crises are the intended targets.
But it’s unclear how SB79 would fix transit’s fiscal cliffs. The SF BART system is facing a 2026 cliff and ascribes its steep revenue declines to high work from home rates and a struggling downtown area [c] The SD MTS system has a 2028 cliff LA Metro uses sales tax increases (measures M and R) to fund 50% of its budget (fare revenue funds only 1%), yet it still faces a 2030 cliff. RTO remains deeply unpopular and downtown commercial real estate has seen steep losses [d] However, SB79 does allow transit agencies to develop and acquire land adjacent to transit stops as an additional revenue source [e]
SB79 supporters seemed to be focused on lowering multifamily rental prices, but again it’s unclear how SB79 would accomplish this, since it still depends on market incentives to add multifamily units. Banks or investors won’t loan money to developers unless the net operating income (rent) is high enough to justify investment. The other factor is interest rates, but SB79 can’t change that. Many existing multifamily properties struggle to break even and now have the highest loan delinquency rate after offices [e] Manville points out new multifamily supply is constrained by recent “mansion taxes” (eg 2023 ULA measure in LA, 2020 Prop 1 in SF)[f]. Also, SB79 reserves only 10% of a multifamily building to low income and allows market rate rents in the other units.
SB79 would give even more leverage to institutional investors and developers over municipalities and communities. Their concerns are valid (eg zoning and development plans balanced over decades, gentrification, eminent domain, etc.) and shouldn’t be dismissed automatically as collateral damage in an attempt to drive down rental prices. One housing coalition estimates 2/3 of multifamily units in LA are owned by investment vehicles which historically have shown higher annual rent increases and eviction rates than local operators [g]
Your comments on sensor fusion seem to describe the weird results of 2 informal ADAS (lidar, vision, lidar + vision, lidar + vision + 4d imaging radar, etc.) “tournaments” conducted earlier this year. There was an earlier HN post about it <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44694891> with a comment noting “there was a wide range of crash avoidance behavior even between the same car likely due to the machine learning, and that also makes explaining the differences hard. Hopefully someone with more background on ADAS systems can watch and post what they think.”
Notably, sensor confusion is also an “unsolved” problem in humans, eg vision and vestibular (inner ear) conflicts possibly explaining motion sickness/vertigo <https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-025-00417-2>
Urban Scenarios: “a massive, complex roundabout and another segment of road with a few unsignaled intersections and a long straight...The first four tests incorporated portions of this huge roundabout, which would be complex for human drivers, but in situations for which there is quite an obvious solution: don’t hit that car/pedestrian in front of you” <https://electrek.co/2025/07/29/another-huge-chinese-self-dri...>
I'm not alone in this confusion. During oral argument, several Supreme Court justices asked repeatedly about the distinctions between quotas, tariffs, revenue-raising taxes, non-revenue taxes, etc. in IEEPA's statutory language and precedents like FEA v. Algonquin SNG, Inc., 426 U.S. 548 (1976).