>> Entry tickets, if handled properly, could be a great way to fix the issue.
I disagree.
This seems like a "great way" to damage the tourism industry in Venice. In other words, I think this is a terrible way to deal with tourists who are visiting Venice, yet aren't spending enough money in Venice.
I think it would be better to require every adult tourist to buy, say, €10 worth of "Venice Money" which they could spend at any restaurant or shop in Venice during the day they are visiting. Too many tourists? Then increase it to, say, €15. Too few tourists? Then decrease it to, say, €5.
Part of the goal is to require tourists to spend a minimum amount of money while visiting Venice. Charging an admission fee seems too heavy-handed. Sure, I realize that my suggestion is tantamount to an admission fee, but it's likely to be more palatable to tourists. The goal isn't merely to get tourists to spend a sufficient amount of money in Venice; part of the goal is to make tourists happy to do so.
Tourists are notoriously fickle. Furthermore, they have myriad places in and around Italy, Europe, and, well, the world where they can spend their money. The current problem of too many tourists could very quickly turn into a problem of a dearth of tourists.
"Killing the goose that lays the golden egg" would obviously be foolish. I presume the economy in Venice benefits immensely from tourism. This is precisely the sort of measure that people tend to look back at in hindsight and exclaim, "How could we have committed such a blunder! What were we thinking?!?"
Having opined all of that, sure, I can see why denizens of Venice would welcome a measure that would decrease the number of tourists generally, and particularly the number of skinflint tourists who visit Venice, yet don't spend a single euro in Venice.
Also, frankly, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for Venice to enforce dress codes and behavior codes. For example, nobody wants an endless "parade" of motley dressed drunkards wandering around their neighborhood.
Personally I happily shop at Costco, but haven’t set foot in a Walmart in perhaps 20 years. I detest Walmart. Why? Part of the reason is this: Costco has a “greeter” standing at the enterance. Ostensibly the greeter’s job is to verify that people entering are members. In fact, that greeter is also eyeballing each person who enters and is empowered to deny enterance to people who don’t meet Costco’s minimum standards (which aren’t very high, but are still much, much higher than Walmart’s standards).
Similarly, one of the "secrets" to the success of Las Vegas strip is this: although they allow a lot of rowdy behavior, frankly, they actually keep a tight lid on things: a very, very, tight lid, which I presume you would have noticed if you’ve ever actually been there and paid attention.
It's a delicate balance which requires discretion bordering on sophisticated and subtle diplomacy.
For example, when dealing with "drunk idiots" the Las Vegas police tend to use kid gloves as much as possible. Why? The powers that be in Las Vegas want "visitors" (tourists) to tell their family, friends, and associates they had a great time on the Las Vegas strip. They also want most of the tourists themselves to return over, and over, and over again.
The same is true for a myriad of tourist destinations around the world.
I live in historic city center with the exact same issue.
This is about creating a livable city, and this implies balancing commercial interests with the interests of the larger local community. Tourism isn't unethical or bad, but it does become an issue as far as the locals are concerned when unchecked growth and a focus to maximize tourist spending pushes everything else out. That's when a city stops being a city and effectively turns into a theme park.
When it comes to local politics, it's clear to everyone that tourism is a cornerstone of our local economy. But at the same time, having millions visiting one's city does come at a cost regarding pollution, noise, mobility, safety, prices of goods and services, upkeep of public infrastructure, etc. Tourism is an industry and it needs to be treated as such in terms of policies and regulations.
Externalizing all of those costs to the local population simply won't do. Taxing tourists is just one tactic to do just that. Other strategies include toning down city marketing, adapting fiscal / grant policies for commerce and hospitality, a permit stop for hotels / airbn'b / B&B's, banning cruise ships from ports, limiting admissions to public venues (museums,...), regulating guided tours, regulating bars / restaurants (closing hours, terraces, signage,...)
At the same time, it's the responsibility of a city council to also enact policies / investments in alternate industries to ensure a healthy mix which makes it attractive enough for a diverse population to stay and live there e.g. invest in research, tech, higher education, local economies, etc.
If you did this you would have to make the amount of money required very high (hundreds of Euro) before it would tip the balance on the number of people there at peak season. Then you would exclude budget-conscious travellers without raising any revenue for city services which tourists consume.
I travelled to Venice as a student. My girlfriend was from Australia, that was the one chance in her life to go to Venice. We lived on low 10s of Euro a day and would have been eating sandwiches we made in Venice and pasta we cooked for dinner. We could have paid 10-20 Euro as an entry fee (as we did for the Uffizi, the Vatican museum, etc.) but not 100 Euro, even for 'Venice Money'.
The other thing this measure would encourage is higher prices and scams. People waiting near the train station offering to change Venice money for real money. Shops selling cigarettes and other high-value stuff at a markup for Venice money. Low-quality art and souvenirs being targeted at tourists who haven't spent all their money on the way out (as used to happen in Warsaw Pact countries which had currency controls). Higher prices on basic food and drink as cafes know that tourists will have a 'sunk cost' feeling.
Some of the problems are solved by modest ticketing. As mentioned if you have 5 million visitors a year and 50 euro tickets you make 250 million in revenue. For the city proper being down to 50,000 people that’s $5,000 less in property tax per year if each person has one property. Given multiple people per property you could probably lower property taxes to zero and offset the higher cost that comes from tourist prices with reduced taxation.
It really sounds like you have not been to Venice. Venice is not some random tourist place, people will go there regardless as it is the most stunning city in the world. The gondolas are full even though they are like $100 for 15 minutes. As are the restaurants. It is not a problem that tourists are not spending money there.
>>>people will go there regardless as it is the most stunning city in the world
I think that's overselling it. Greatly. I took a day trip to Venice from Ljubljana to meet family there. The whole place reeked of sewage, and the crowds of aimlessly meandering tourists were stifling. Like most tourist traps, it felt shallow, with little to offer beyond staring at old buildings, tons of shops selling worthless trinkets, and pricey restaurants. I wanted to try mingling with the locals more, but wasn't able to quickly find information on nightclubs/raves/etc. in the immediate area.
I took some nice pictures, rode in the gondola, went to dinner, then returned to LJ. I actually wish I had spent more time in Trieste, Zagreb, or had linked up with a casual acquaintance all the way in Zurich. My dad paid for everything we did while IN the city, but if I was spending my own money I would probably never return to Venice. So an entry tax is definitely a "nope" for me.
Trieste seemed like a quiet coastal town. It has enough "old stuff" if you want to take day trips examining such but without it being overwhelming or overhyped. It's off the beaten path despite having decent international transit links. I also saw more than a few nice-looking ladies and I generally prefer women from mid-tier cities over the more cosmopolitan types.
I was only in Zagreb for a day. I took a train from LJ, then walked several kilometers to scope out a university with a Masters program that I was curious about. The city felt a little "rough", reminding me of Philadelphia but with much less urban decay. The staff and the students at the university were stacked with attractive and curious females. Being the only black guy in a 3-piece suit in probably a 1000km radius may have been a factor.
"unpolished, quiet, probably a little dangerous, but FULL of beautiful women". The Former Yugoslavia is kinda like the Thai or Philippine countryside, but with better infrastructure and weather.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would be if I had applied to the Bled School of Business, setup shop as a defense consultant in LJ, and rotated through a circuit of bachelor pads in LJ/Trieste/Zagreb....
The problem isn't primarily "tourists who are not spending enough". It's too many tourists in general to the point that the city infrastructure can't actually support that many people and is overcrowded making it horrible for anyone who is trying to actually live there.
Another point is that overcrowding also makes it less pleasant for the tourists themselves. If you charge people €10 and they find it more pleasant, don't have to queue for drinks or to take selfies, and can get help if they need it, they might consider it well worth it.
I wonder what percentage of tourists that visit Venice would see it as "bucket list" or "once in a lifetime" type opportunity to the point that even a €500 entry ticket wouldn't make a noticeable dint in numbers. A lottery system seems a better (and fairer) bet, and those that miss out would just have to try their luck finding accommodation (which actually wasn't that hard when we tried 11 years ago, and personally I don't believe you can meaningfully take in a city like Venice in a single day - or even two for that matter).
>> fundamental problem is cargo cult developers trying to copy massive companies architectures as a startup. They fail to realize those companies only moved to microservices because they had no other option.
This.
Microservices add complexity; therefore, they should be avoided unless necessary. That's Engineering 101 folks.
Your reasoning is faulty and very probably self-serving. More and more companies can and will outsource their infrastructure. IT guys hate this because it threatens their "paychecks."
The optimal amount of cloud services for an established company like FedEx is 100%, not merely with a "disaster recovery plan" but with live, 99.99% redundancy by which I mean two almost exact systems running nearly simultaneously (within a second or two of one another) on two completely different networks.
FedEx enjoys almost all of its competitive advantage from its physical network. IT is not core to its business.
Here's the problem... almost no company actually does disaster recovery and "parallel redundancy" properly because most C-level executives only pay lip service to it.
Therefore, the whole notion that disaster recovery and "parallel redundancy" don't work is predicated on the false notion that companies actually have proper disaster recovery and "parallel redundancy" in the first place.
It is surely true that I have a cognitive bias in the direction you say, and that many companies operate at lower levels of informatics infrastructure reliability than Azure.
> Then one of the big players comes in and adds the feature to their main product. Poof, everything somebody worked long and hard for disappears.
There's a lot of wisdom in the statement above, but you also have a point... which I think you went much too far with.
Basecamp is not a relationship; it's a brand, but it's much weaker than, say, Apple, Ferrari, Nike, etc.
See, Basecamp was what all the kool kidz were using. And the Basecamp founders were soooo koooool! They even wrote a book! Oh yeah, and they used "the hot new technology" red choo-choo trains, er, uh, I mean Ruby on Rails.
Hey, if people can feel passionately about sugar-flavored water with bubbles in it, they can feel passionately about software... I guess.
Buuuuut the inherent problem is this: you can show off your Apple, Ferrari, Nike, etc. to your friends and to the girls/women you want to impress.
Basecamp, not so much. Basecamp seems like a dying brand to me. I don't see why anyone would begin using Basecamp these days because it's waaaaay overpriced.
But for a 40 year old who started using it 18 years ago, sure, he might have enough money, nostalgia, and, well, laziness, to keep using it.
I doubt Basecamp has many users under the age of 30, and probably never will. And I doubt it has many new users. At the end of the day most software doesn't have a social aspect to it; these days I assume Basecamp essentially is seen as a commodity (like a pillow case) by most people, even those who use it. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are outliers which are extremely popular and have network effects.
Yeah. I agree. I often tend confuse the terms "mirage" and "oasis" in my own mind. After all, they are both things one might perceive in a hot desert, although the first is not real; whereas, the second is real.
>> Start with a monolith on two VMs and a load balancer. Chips and networks are cheaper than labour,
Kudos to you! You are a dangerous man for you opine the truth.
My advice is generally, "Build something. Then see if you can sell it." or "Sell something and then go build it." Either way, it all starts soooo small that the infrastructure is hardly a problem.
If you "get lucky" and things really take off. Sure. Yeah. Then get a DevOpps superstar to build what you need. In reality, your business will very probably fail.
You can’t just hire 1 DevOps superstar though because they need to sleep and not burnout. You’ll need ~7 people on a rotation if you need to really support anything worth really supporting. DevOps is about giving Developers a dedicated System Operations job for some small fraction of their time.
> DevOps is about giving Developers a dedicated System Operations job for some small fraction of their time.
No. DevOps is about the development and operations disciplines working together in a cross functional way to deliver software faster and more reliably.
In a small enough startup both disciplines may be represented by a single person, though.
I respectfully disagree. I’ve scaled these teams myself, and it’s about giving developers in a small organization the job of deploying the solution and ensuring that it runs. In larger organizations, DevOps becomes impossible and it naturally splits into Dev and Ops. It’s important to understand where it works and when it stops working to effectively manage the transition as the business grows.
> In larger organizations, DevOps becomes impossible
News to me. I work at one the biggest companies around, and our DevOps posture is pretty great, and that was achieved by cross functional teams from the historic dev and historic ops teams doing all the things that Accelerate codified.
You don't go from zero to needing global 24x7 support overnight.
Hiring 1 DevOps superstar is exactly what we did a few startups back and it worked great. Of course there was no after-hours support, it's a small startup. Eventually the team grew.
Fair enough. If you don’t need 24/7 and the bus factor risk is tolerable, then you might not need a rotation.
I’d just caution that when it comes to the mental health of the one person in this role, even if they seem like they are doing ok, check in frequently.
I’ve run DevOps and know from experience the pitfalls. I’m sorry that you’ve interpreted my general agreement and elaboration of your comment as nitpicking foolishness.
I think you are obsessed with ammonia as a fuel source. Ammonia might never make it to peaker plants, nor farm, nor construction equipment.
The sun shines brightly 100% of the time and the wind blows strongly 100% of the time... somewhere. California currently imports electricity from... Wyoming.
With a network of ultra-high-voltage electricity transmission (UHV electricity transmission) lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity... throughout the USA, the current concern many engineers seem to have with "the energy storage problem" associated with renewable energy might vanish into irrelevancy.
At 7pm on Tuesday, most of the East Coast might get 80% of its electricity produced by photovoltaics in the Mojave Desert in Nevada; whereas on Wednesday at 2am, Florida might get 90% of its electricity produced from wind generators in Custer County in Oklahoma.
Even if 20% of the electricity were lost due to long-distance transmission, it wouldn't matter much if the electricity were produced extremely inexpensively.
Currently, almost 100% of the aforementioned solar and wind energy are "lost" because almost all of the sunlight in the desert simply lands on the ground, and the wind in the prairies simply blows along without being utilized.
Sure, for airplanes and cargo ships, fuel is important. But for most terrestrial uses (such as in cities and farms) "just in time" electricity might be the best solution.
"But, what about outages?" I'm glad you asked. The military and hospitals have backup diesel generators. Personally, I think "evil" coal-fired power plants might be a feasible source of local, backup electricity which would normally be used very rarely.
The current "anti-coal" bandwagon is absurd. Coal is a great source of fuel. However, much of the world "went crazy" burning way, way, way too much coal for a couple of hundred years. We never should have done that because of the terrible pollution we suffered from.
My favorite things about coal are this: it's very easy to store and very easy to burn.
If people want to store tanks of hydrogen gas in their backyards above ground, or tanks of ammonia underground, that would probably be fine too. But for large scale, backup sources of electricity (say for a city like Portland, Oregon) "evil" coal-fired power plants might be the cheapest and easiest method.
As long as the ultra-high-voltage electricity transmission network has suitable redundancy, is maintained properly, and is not sabotaged (say, by terrorists) then I would guess that within 10 years or so, it would be up over 95% of the time; and within 25 years or so, it would be up over 99% of the time.
You could be right about the US, but other places are geopolitically less stable. And, transmission lines have outages, and there are never quite as many as you would like. And, the US is getting less stable as we speak, with avowed insurrectionist election suppressors poised to take over Congress and Senate, and maybe the presidency again.
Coal plants are monstrous beasts that need a long time to fire up and a lot of expensive maintenance whenever down. Combined-cycle turbines start up in a few minutes, are cheap to maintain, and a little one makes as much economic sense as a big one. But storing LNG, long-term, is a nuisance. So you want to fire them on something readily stored, liquid unless you have a salt dome. So, ammonia, or synthetic methanol, metal hydride, or even mined and refined kerosene. Because it is just for emergencies anyway.
>> So, ammonia, or synthetic methanol, metal hydride, or even mined and refined kerosene.
Perhaps one of those would be best. I really don't know. But based on my limited knowledge, at this point, I'd bet on coal over any of those.
>> You could be right about the US, but other places are geopolitically less stable.
Actually, in my penultimate posting in addition to terrorism I was going to mention, "As long as Idaho doesn't declare war on Oregon" but it seemed a little over the top to me.
>> And, transmission lines have outages, and there are never quite as many as you would like.
The rich run the world. They always have. When some rich guy living in a 10 million dollar home on the beach in La Jolla, California (near San Diego, California) has his power go out for a few hours several times in the same week, his wife will "read him the riot act." The rich got rid of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) down there (near La Jolla). They'll make sure they have a reliable source of power.
But yeah, in Flint, Michigan or rural Mississippi, well, the impoverished folks who live there are generally "hanging on by a thread." Those people invariably suffer. But their suffering isn't a result of technological problems; it's a result of political problems.
>> And, the US is getting less stable as we speak, with avowed insurrectionist election suppressors poised to take over Congress and Senate, and maybe the presidency again.
We've had an extremely long period of peace in the USA. Eventually war comes to all lands. It will return here one day. Regardless of the source of power, once war comes "all bets are off." That's part of the reason I like coal. Massive amounts of it can be stored cheaply and indefinitely. If I were in charge of running a state, I'd want a huge supply of coal on hand so we could produce electricity locally 24/7/365 for a long-time. Obviously, solar, wind, and hydro would be the ideal choices. But in case solar, wind, and hydro weren't producing enough, I'd want to have lots of coal to burn.
These days burning coal, as a first choice to generate electricity, would be absurd. But as a backup, it would be great. During peacetime it would likely be used very seldom in a country like the USA as we know it now. But, yeah, if we had something like a civil war, then coal might become a very important source of power.
>> Coal plants are monstrous beasts
That assertion is obviously false.
Certainly, most commonly used coal-fired power plants used to supply the overwhelming majority of power around the world are monstrous beasts.
Nonetheless, small coal plants are neither monstrous beasts nor difficult to fire up. They've been around for centuries, though, admittedly they aren't what most people think of when they think of coal-fired power plants.
>> and a little one makes as much economic sense as a big one
Nope. That's a common lie trotted out. Read what you wrote, and ponder about how inane it is. Utility companies lie... a lot. The problem is this: we are so accustomed to building huge power plants we simply overlook many smaller scale solutions.
Sure, the small ones tend to be much less efficient. But, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." During emergencies, "You do what you gotta do." Engineers get way, way, too focused on efficiency. Generals, particularly during wartime, hardly focus on efficiency much at all. Instead, they focus on effectiveness. In case of emergencies, effectiveness is generally much more important than efficiency. Sure. It's expensive. But, hey, guess what? Wars, which can be seen as the most terrible of emergencies, are expensive.
During wartime enemies are going to target power plants. I'd rather have a few dozen small ones to protect, than one or two big ones because I wouldn't want to "put all of my eggs in one basket." Most Americans are so accustomed to presuming that peace will continue indefinitely, that they fail to make calculations based on the assumption that war has befallen us.
"Economic sense" during peacetime is very different than "economic sense" during wartime. Put simply: when the enemy destroys both of your, big, efficient, coal-fired power plants, those plants end up being of almost zero economic value. As a result, you might end up suffering massive losses of human lives and you might even lose the war because you were unable to provide much-needed power.
It's common knowledge the USA squanders vast sums of money on its military. Nonetheless, these days most American engineers have an "efficiency during peacetime" mentality; whereas most generals (thank God) have an "effectiveness during wartime" mentality.
I am weary of Americans assuming peace will always prevail. It won't. When war returns, how are we (and, by the way, who are "we" in the first place?) going to produce power locally in case solar, wind, and hydro aren't producing enough?
Me? I'm a big, big coal guy. I think the stuff is great... as an emergency solution. But I hope we never need to burn any of it. Ditto for nuclear weapons. I hope we never launch any of them again. But I'm glad we have them. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible. But I presume you know how many Americans died in the "Battle of Hiroshima" and the "Battle of Nagasaki" that never occurred. 2 men, 1 plane, 1 bomb, 1 second (more or less). Then 2 days later: 2 men, 1 plane, 1 bomb, 1 second (more or less). Then the war was over. As a result on those battles that never occurred, in the USA, there were no grieving widows, nor any grieving children, nor any grieving parents. Obviously, that was not the case in Japan.
Any ordinary adult who is anti-nuclear weapons is a fool. I hate watching people protest nuclear weapons. Sure, the US military should be reformed. If memory serves, all retired generals and admirals who I've ever heard speak on the subject of reforming the military, have very strong opinions about the dire and urgent need to reform the military because it is currently incapable of protecting the US of A properly. But being anti-nuke is like being a pacifist: it's complete lunacy.
Having opined all of that I'll close with this: coal (and coal-fired power plants) as well as nuclear weapons are great to have... not to use. But if you need 'em; you'll be glad you have 'em.
Your liking for nuclear weapons will last up until Putin starts using them, "tactically", daring us to respond.
Generally, coal and its infrastructure are much less suited to automatic handling and to substitution for other things than is liquid fuel. A combined-cycle turbine is happy to run on NG, kerosene, ammonia, hydrogen, soy oil, or beef tallow. Meanwhile, steam turbines need frequent very expensive overhaul, because superheated, high pressure steam is nasty.
I, too, expect war, particularly after civilization collapses because we failed to slow climate catastrophe enough. The US will not survive that as a single entity. Long distance transmission lines will be destroyed early on, even before power plants.
I disagree.
This seems like a "great way" to damage the tourism industry in Venice. In other words, I think this is a terrible way to deal with tourists who are visiting Venice, yet aren't spending enough money in Venice.
I think it would be better to require every adult tourist to buy, say, €10 worth of "Venice Money" which they could spend at any restaurant or shop in Venice during the day they are visiting. Too many tourists? Then increase it to, say, €15. Too few tourists? Then decrease it to, say, €5.
Part of the goal is to require tourists to spend a minimum amount of money while visiting Venice. Charging an admission fee seems too heavy-handed. Sure, I realize that my suggestion is tantamount to an admission fee, but it's likely to be more palatable to tourists. The goal isn't merely to get tourists to spend a sufficient amount of money in Venice; part of the goal is to make tourists happy to do so.
Tourists are notoriously fickle. Furthermore, they have myriad places in and around Italy, Europe, and, well, the world where they can spend their money. The current problem of too many tourists could very quickly turn into a problem of a dearth of tourists.
"Killing the goose that lays the golden egg" would obviously be foolish. I presume the economy in Venice benefits immensely from tourism. This is precisely the sort of measure that people tend to look back at in hindsight and exclaim, "How could we have committed such a blunder! What were we thinking?!?"
Having opined all of that, sure, I can see why denizens of Venice would welcome a measure that would decrease the number of tourists generally, and particularly the number of skinflint tourists who visit Venice, yet don't spend a single euro in Venice.
Also, frankly, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for Venice to enforce dress codes and behavior codes. For example, nobody wants an endless "parade" of motley dressed drunkards wandering around their neighborhood.
Personally I happily shop at Costco, but haven’t set foot in a Walmart in perhaps 20 years. I detest Walmart. Why? Part of the reason is this: Costco has a “greeter” standing at the enterance. Ostensibly the greeter’s job is to verify that people entering are members. In fact, that greeter is also eyeballing each person who enters and is empowered to deny enterance to people who don’t meet Costco’s minimum standards (which aren’t very high, but are still much, much higher than Walmart’s standards).
Similarly, one of the "secrets" to the success of Las Vegas strip is this: although they allow a lot of rowdy behavior, frankly, they actually keep a tight lid on things: a very, very, tight lid, which I presume you would have noticed if you’ve ever actually been there and paid attention.
It's a delicate balance which requires discretion bordering on sophisticated and subtle diplomacy.
For example, when dealing with "drunk idiots" the Las Vegas police tend to use kid gloves as much as possible. Why? The powers that be in Las Vegas want "visitors" (tourists) to tell their family, friends, and associates they had a great time on the Las Vegas strip. They also want most of the tourists themselves to return over, and over, and over again.
The same is true for a myriad of tourist destinations around the world.