And from what can tell, this advice is "move fast and break things. YOLO!"

"Courses were taught in a range of subjects, including Latin, chemistry, education, music, Esperanto, and primary mathematics. The system included a number of features useful for pedagogy, including text overlaying graphics, contextual assessment of free-text answers, depending on the inclusion of keywords, and feedback designed to respond to alternative answers."

"PLATO III allowed "anyone" to design new lesson modules using their TUTOR programming language, conceived in 1967 by biology graduate student Paul Tenczar."

"The largest PLATO installation in South Africa during the early 1980s was at the University of the Western Cape ... For many of the Madadeni students, most of whom came from very rural areas, the PLATO terminal was the first time they encountered any kind of electronic technology. Many of the first-year students had never seen a flush toilet before. There initially was skepticism that these technologically illiterate students could effectively use PLATO, but those concerns were not borne out. Within an hour or less most students were using the system proficiently, mostly to learn math and science skills, although a lesson that taught keyboarding skills was one of the most popular. A few students even used on-line resources to learn TUTOR, the PLATO programming language, and a few wrote lessons on the system in the Zulu language."

The full PLATO system included grade books, attendance tracking, and class scheduling, as I recall. Perhaps a University of Illinois alum can say more.

I would really like to know how much more useful the current systems are over, say, PLATO in 1992, when evaluated for pedagogy and course management benefits.

"Although our meta-analysis revealed a higher risk than previously reported of myocarditis/pericarditis attributable to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (among adolescent and young adult men), this does not negate the recommendation of COVID-19 vaccination for this population. Our previous study showed that the benefit of receiving the BNT162b2 vaccine or the mRNA-1273 vaccine was much higher than the risk of the vaccination across all age group and sex.59 Though the AR of myocarditis was assumed to be 12.1 per 100 000 for the primary series of the mRNA-1273 vaccine in men aged 18-29 years for the original benefit-risk calculations, if we updated the AR to 22.26 (2.84 after first doses plus 20.0 after second doses) per 100 000 for the primary series for men aged 18-24 years, based on the results of this current systematic review with meta-analysis, the benefits of vaccination would still far outweigh the risks in this age group." - Epidemiologic Reviews, 2025, 47, (1), 1–11 https://doi.org/10.1093/epirev/mxae007 Advance access publication date: December 13, 2024

"Compared with unvaccinated groups or unvaccinated time periods, the highest attributable risk of myocarditis or pericarditis was observed after the second dose in boys aged 12-17 years (10.18 per 100 000 doses [95% CI, 0.50-19.87]) of the BNT162b2 vaccine and in young men aged 18-24 years (attributable risk, 20.02 per 100 000 doses [95% CI, 10.47-29.57]) for the mRNA-1273 vaccine ... Young people’s risk of developing myocarditis is higher and longer lasting after covid-19 infection than after vaccination against it, the largest study of its kind suggests ... Over a six month period the researchers estimated that covid-19 infection led to 2.24 extra cases of myocarditis or pericarditis per 100 000 children and young people. This compares with 0.85 extra cases of myocarditis or pericarditis per 100 000 children and young people in those who were vaccinated." - BMJ 2025; 391 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.r2330 (Published 05 November 2025)

Though at some point I would have realized that Atlassian was the wrong fit for my needs as a single-dev, no-AI project and switched.

The heavy users have more influence over the laws which govern the infrastructure, as the history of water rights in the West clearly shows. We see it now when secretive organizations negotiate with water companies under NDA to get water for new data centers - something a smaller water user couldn't do.

The riparian doctrine of the East, with its high rainfall, don't work so well in the dry West, which is why it generally uses the prior appropriation doctrine. Water management was traditionally under a communal system. Some of these still exist as acequia associations, which include equity and fairness in their decisions, which doesn't follow the prior appropriation doctrine.

Econ 101 doesn't handle these issues.

If the Native Americans have water rights, they can also sell them. They can choose to use it inefficiently on subsistence farming, or they could sell at the going rate. A normal market itself doesn't imply any particular allocation of water rights, just that they should be as fungible and transferable as possible.

Why are the laws that govern the infrastructure particularly important? It only matters now because its a tangle of regulation. Yes, big users can often get bulk discounts or other special arrangements by committing to use. This happens in many areas.

There's no law governing what products my grocery store must carry. Yet, I can still choose a store with many things I like, at affordable prices. My store may (and frequently does) exclude all products containing some chemical considered harmful even if it isn't banned. Of course, water has more of a natural monopoly problem, but that's more for last mile infrastructure and not broader supply.

I don't understand the details of the riparian vs prior appropriation doctrine. How does this create an issue? If the water rights are defined somehow, in a usage-independent way, only in terms of the net water removal, to account for runoff from local use, and the water from them can be traded, then a market can work regardless of the specific nature of the right.

Any association holding the rights could allocate its water internally as it sees fit. Just like any other asset? Or it could decide to sell it and distribute the money instead- perhaps even better for fairness to it's members!

You've just described the standard practice for taking over Native American lands by economic coercion instead of direct force. Take away land and water using market forces, and a culture based on land and water shatters.

That's precisely why the Native Americans protected their rights by treaty, not market forces.

Econ 101 was created to justify British colonial expansionism. Econ 101 justifies indentured servitude. Econ 101 justifies vote selling. Econ 101 justifies rule by the rich.

We've collectively decided that some part of life are off-limits to Econ 101.

Water is not simply a commodity. Water is life. Water is culture.

> How does this create an issue?

Water rights in the West are at least a Econ 400 level course, if not graduate school.

I am suggesting expanding their water right- instead of only the right to do X, Y, Z with the water, take whatever right to the water they do have, in terms of amount of water, and say "you can do whatever you want with this much water". How to allocate resource rents doesn't have much effect on the market structure itself.

A lot of vitriol against supply and demand without any evidence.

Food is life. Food is culture. Just as much as water. Which countries have had famine, those that allocate via some system of food rights, or those that had a free market in food? The largest examples of famine I am aware of, in the USSR and Maoist China, were driven by some central allocation of food rather than a market. Not a good record.

One of the great features of markets is that things don't need to be decided collectively. Perhaps 90% of people want to wear blue T shirts, but I want a red one. If we collectively decide, I get a blue T shirt. In the market, I buy a red T shirt- perhaps at a very slightly higher price due to less economy of scale.

We certainly know of areas where vanilla markets can fail- externalities etc, but these do not apply to the situation here. The existing system of water rights doesn't feel like a collective decision, but rather entrenched special interests and lobbyists.

It's very odd that you talk about a decentralized market when water allocation in the US Southwest was decided by the Colorado River Compact in 1922. This is central allocation and, famously, based on over-estimated flow numbers.

Most large famines were caused by flooding or drought. More people died in the Chinese famine of 1906–1907 than the Russian famine of 1921–1922 and the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 combined.

> The existing system of water rights doesn't feel like a collective decision, but rather entrenched special interests and lobbyists.

That is absolutely correct, and would covered in the first week of any water rights class. In the West, "water flows uphill toward money", as I learned from reading "Cadillac Desert".

Or if you want a novel, read "The Milagro Beanfield War." The small farmers (mostly Hispanic) were drafted for WWII and couldn't farm, so lost their water rights, while the large farmers (mostly Anglo) could hire help.

And who got to set up the water law? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Ring

"The Santa Fe Ring was an informal group of powerful politicians, attorneys, and land speculators in territorial New Mexico from 1865 until 1912. The Ring was composed of newly-arrived Anglo Americans and opportunistic Hispanics from long-resident and prominent families in New Mexico. Acquiring wealth, both groups realized, lay in owning or controlling the millions of acres of land which the Spanish and Mexican governments of New Mexico had granted to individuals and communities. The acquisition of grant lands by members of the Santa Fe Ring was facilitated by U.S. courts who had no allegiance to Mexican claims and land practices which featured allocating most of the land in grants to the common ownership of the first settlers and their descendants vs. legal private ownership."

What exists is a patchwork of economic systems, there is no cohesive whole, and you clearly prefer the US one which prioritizes the private ownership model of Econ 101.

That's why you can't view it simply through an Econ 101 lens.

Nominally is exactly right! The treaties have been violated many times.

You're missing the 1959-61 famine in China! Sure, famines have happened for other causes. Typically 100+ years ago before technology advanced. Now, famines largely come from poor governance.

Thanks for the background info!

Yes, I agree it is a patchwork system- and its probably quite difficulty to analyze! I'm arguing that a private ownership model with trading would lead to better outcomes, and basically end for all practical purposes water shortages.

For example, the smaller mostly Hispanic farmers you described above wouldn't lose their water rights in a rights ownership system- they could hold them, rent them out, sell them etc. But they wouldn't lose them merely for being unable to farm. Of course, water rights are a resource rent and it might be desirable to tax them as well- effectively economically partially public ownership- but this doesn't change the core argument about the efficiency of tradable rights.

That said, those effects would have been small, and likely handled in practice as "some arbitrary consistent (or random) error."

> The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. .. A wide range of empirical evidence strongly favors the Big Bang event, which is now widely accepted. ...

> The Big Bang models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundances of the light elements, the cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure, and Hubble's law.

> Precise modern models of the Big Bang appeal to various exotic physical phenomena that have not been observed in terrestrial laboratory experiments or incorporated into the Standard Model of particle physics. Of these features, dark matter is currently the subject of most active laboratory investigations. ... Viable, quantitative explanations for such phenomena are still being sought. These are unsolved problems in physics.

We still refer to Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism as a theory even though we know quantum electrodynamics is a more precise match to the primary simulation loop.

I suppose a few might have decided to rename it Maxwell's hypothesis of electromagnetism, but I would consider them crackpots or dilettantes with little understanding of the meaning underlying those terms.

I got your joke and I appreciate the effort you put in to make it. :-)

Think Varian, which developed military applications for the klystron, including nuclear bomb fuses.

The first semiconductor companies were considered too risky for military funding, so used risk capital.

See Steve Blank's writings on the Secret History of Silicon Valley for more, like https://steveblank.com/2009/10/29/the-secret-history-of-sili... .