mlinksva

Yes they (land rents) deplete access to opportunities (don't know about _your_ situation in particular) -- the "housing theory of everything" is one articulation -- far greater than platform rents (which I'm also not a fan of; look at my comment history and you'll occasionally see me calling for ad taxes). Even platform (or more broadly tech) rents are often taken by landowners, who are not as subject to competition.

You're dramatically underestimating land rent, probably well over $10t/year, total land value over $200t.

The simile works for me, illustrated by something earlier in the blog post:

> If a junior programmer does not learn to write code and simply generates it, they are robbing themselves of the opportunity to develop the visceral understanding of code that comes with being down in the trenches.

I never learned to write any assembly language and am pretty sure as a result I do not viscerally understand what a compiler generates, though I enjoy recreationally looking at godbolt as much as the next person. Given a lot more time I'd get to assembly (and below) but I don't feel that I robbed myself.

There's a difference in how you can reason about a nondeterminstic system from how you can reason about a determinstic one, but you can reason about both, and you can develop a visceral understanding of both.

Including on the dimensions of (1) having a very fast website and (2) not having any paywalls. Feels very good to read.