I feel like there's very little engineering reasons why we can't, and it's mostly regulatory hurdles, that removes any economic incentives to do so.

I've recently read an article about what constitutes the right balance of regulations when it comes to aviation safety, and that while regulations have made modern planes extremely safe, overly stringent rules are also preventing planes from adopting modern safety features.

It's not an engineering problem. One could cut new holes in the front bumper of an old car, add forward-facing radar, tack on a display and a computer to drive it all, et voila! Now you have collision avoidance! Except even in volume, you've probably spent more than the car is worth (labor will be the killer, not hardware), or enough that the person whose economics dictate an older car can't afford the upgrade.

Lane keeping? I don't even want to think about what that retrofit would involve.

Similarly, we know certain preventative medical treatments are costly but save money for the system as a whole when universally applied, yet we still don’t do it.

I'm not sure why that needs to be the case. Open Pilot is essentially a working aftermarket kit, but they can't sell the whole kit legally, only the hardware.

Besides that older cars are less safe because they are old not because they lack safety features.

That airbag 15 years old might or might not work. You have 300k kilometers driven there will be rust here and there.

The difficulty of modifying the body, is mostly a financial decision I think. The body is by-and-large optimized for assembly rather than repair and modifications - that's why body shops charge an arm and a leg.

> Crumple zones are model specific you can’t just change those without making new car.

Yep, and I think that's the problem. Cars should be designed in a way that you can make this kind of safety upgrades. There's little technical reason why with a more modular body and platform, the manufacturer can't design a new crumple zone for retrofit, run finite element analysis, and crash test it.

They may need to rethink fundamentally how mass-market cars are made, like using more fasteners instead of welding in the body and frame, or using plastic instead of sheet metal when they are not necessary, like for the body panels.

That old malfunctioning airbags should be able to be replaced easily.

But then it would incentivize the customers to keep their old cars instead of buying new ones.

My guess is you know nothing about it based on malfunctioning airbags that should be possible to be replaced easily.

Airbags are one action components so until they fire up you don’t have certainty. You might check electrical connections or replace them „just in case”. Yes airbags might not be good after 15 years and I don’t think anyone who is driving 15yo car has money or is willing to spend money on replacing them.

It was a $120 option, and most buyers opted out. A few years later they were made mandatory.

In terms of how well expats integrate, I've seen people from across the spectrum. There are definitely those who are meshed into the local social circles. Foreigner privilege is a thing, and I find that how you view social status is a strong determinant in how well you integrate. Those with a more egalitarian mindset seem to do well in this regard.

Most of the art, music, literature before the twentieth century were created under censorships of authoritarian regimes, and they don't lack vitality. Creativity often thrives under constraints.

The main difference is the classics were often created by a single person, while modern entertainment are created by large groups through industrial processes. The latter are capital-intensive, and investors are risk-averse. The bigger the market, the bigger the investments, the bigger the risks, and censorship is not insignificant a risk.

I think as the cost of production shrinks with technology, there will be an explosion of "high-production-value" works created by smaller groups or individuals, many from the "soft-authoritarian" countries. Traditional entertainment industries may gradually fade away, or pivot to some new medium.

Unfortunately housing is super overpriced, due to the Asian mentality resulting in high property ownership.

Real estate is always the monkey wrench in the gears of capitalism because of high necessity yet limited supply.

I have no clue what this means and in countries like Japan, housing is a depreciating asset vs. an investment, so…?

Japan's urbanization stopped long ago, and it's not taking in immigrants fast enough, so the urban areas have stopped growing.

The mentality refers to East Asia's deep agrarian root that places high value on owning land that can be passed down the generations (the alternative was often quasi-servile farm labour that locks families in poverty). Property purchases are usually multi-generational efforts, so families can generally take the brunt of overinflated prices.

  1. Japan's urbanization stopped long ago,   
  2. and it's not taking in immigrants fast enough,   
  3. so the urban areas have stopped growing.

1 is 50/50. Urbanization is growing because the small town life is shrinking.it's wrong at face value, but there is a cost to this in the overall economy, since the country overall isn't growing.

I think GP is finding concept of land scarcity non-intuitive for some reason.

This only happens when the government becomes captured by land owners to constrain the supply, since otherwise you can build up. But governments getting captured by land owners happens a lot.

Btw, Thailand is solidly upper middle-income. I think you'll find them even in low-income countries.