Bad news for Rivian: the electric Ford F-150 is at least pretty good

by philg

From November: What edge does Rivian have in the truck or EV market? (market cap: $127 billion)

From January: How is Rivian still worth $78 billion?

The market cap today is $18 billion, an 85 percent loss for those who bought the stock at the time of my November post (or a massive profit for those who went short!).

Today’s Car and Driver review of the F-150 Lightning:

Though this truck has many parlor tricks—a big frunk that can swallow 400 pounds, an optional tongue-weight scale, and BlueCruise hands-free driving—none are as impressive as how quick it builds speed from a standstill, thanks to 775 pound-feet of instant torque. Mat the accelerator and the front tires spin. Actually, the fronts will spin if you floor the accelerator at any speed below 50 mph or so. The effect is amplified as you load the truck closer to its 2235-pound max payload capacity.

It even drives and feels a lot like an F-150. A 50/50 weight balance contributes to very good road manners. … A low center of gravity keeps the truck relatively flat through corners, too.

The base vinyl-lined Pro model starts at $41,769 and comes with the 98.0-kWh battery that’s good for an EPA range of 230 miles, while the upgraded extended-range battery brings 131.0 kilowatts-hours of storage and 320 miles of range. … On the not-so-good front, the Lightning can tow up to 10,000 pounds when spec’d with the Max Trailer Tow package, but it can’t do so for very long between charges. We pulled an 8300-pound boat and trailer at about 65 mph, and the on-board trip computer indicated we were getting less than one mile per kilowatt-hour. This puts the highway range with a trailer of decent size and mass somewhere around 100 miles.

[A friend has a reservation for the F-150 Lightning and they won’t let him order the base model, so the $41.7k price is maybe just a theoretical one. The real price is at least $60k.]

So the Ford product is at least pretty good, is backed by a company from which people have been buying trucks for more than 100 years, and is much cheaper than what Rivian charges for a similar capability.

Ford even shows a great place to run out of battery power:

If this vehicle had dog mode, it would certainly be a better value than anything from Tesla!

Circling back to Rivian… after they run out of Silicon Valley enthusiasts, who is going to pay $100,000 for a non-Ford, non-GM, non-Toyota pickup truck? And what is the stock/company worth?

Rivian stock versus the S&P 500 starting on the date of my first post:

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Where the Biden administration diverges from George Orwell’s 1984 playbook

by philg

Comparisons between the Party in George Orwell’s 1984 and the Democrats currently ruling the U.S. are becoming more frequent, e.g., referring to the Silicon Valley censors as the Thought Police (from 2016), the new Disinformation Governance Board as the Ministry of Truth (WSJ), etc. Democrats are now apparently about to receive comprehensive data on which Americans support their opponents (see “Judge rules January 6 committee can obtain RNC and Trump campaign email data” (CNN)).

There is at least one area where today’s Progressives diverge from Orwell’s Party. From the appendix to 1984:

[a Party member’s] sexual life, for example, was entirely regulated by the two Newspeak words SEXCRIME (sexual immorality) and GOODSEX (chastity). SEXCRIME covered all sexual misdeeds whatever. It covered fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions, and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for its own sake. There was no need to enumerate them separately, since they were all equally culpable, and, in principle, all punishable by death. In the C vocabulary, which consisted of scientific and technical words, it might be necessary to give specialized names to certain sexual aberrations, but the ordinary citizen had no need of them. He knew what was meant by GOODSEX—that is to say, normal intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children, and without physical pleasure on the part of the woman: all else was SEXCRIME.

Regarding sexuality, in other words, 21st century governments that decide how to allocate an ever-larger share of GDP and thus occupy an ever-larger role in an individual’s life went in exactly the opposite direction predicted by Orwell. Orwell was correct in predicting that church-established moral rules would be dead, but he thought that even more strict sexual morality would be imposed by the state.

(Note that, in 1984, the Proles enjoyed more freedom of all kinds, including sexual, than Party members, but their sexual freedom was pretty similar to what was available in 1940s England not what we have in the U.S. right now. Contraception is never explained in 1984, unlike in Brave New World. The only women who have babies are married women, despite the existence of some sex outside of marriage, and family sizes seem to be small.)

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A hero flies the Cessna Caravan to Palm Beach

by philg

Tom Cruise is a pretty good pilot in real life and an even better one in Top Gun: Maverick, but my vote for pilot of the year goes to Darren Harrison, the passenger whose journey from the Bahamas is covered in “Air traffic controller guides passenger to safe landing at PBIA after pilot has medical emergency” (WPBF). The audio is available at liveatc.net (search for KFPR, then KFPR Tower, then click the “archive access” link and finally May 10 at 16Z. The action starts at 11:21 into the clip (the passenger’s full phone number is on the tape so you can text him congratulations!).

The aircraft is N333LD and here’s the path from flightradar24:

The passenger’s task was made more difficult by modern avionics. This ad for the plane shows that it is equipped with the Garmin G1000 flight deck. So the controller asked the passenger-turned-pilot to press the IDENT button, but there is no button labeled IDENT as there would have been with a discrete transponder. (With the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, what the controller should have said was “press and hold the button that has two arrows on it to tune the emergency frequency of 121.5” and then the talk-down wouldn’t have had to occur via mobile phone (good thing the passenger’s phone battery did not run out!).)

The turboprop-powered Caravan is pretty slow,, but it is not a beginner’s plane. Fortunately, the float gear had been removed! Here was what the plane used to look like:

What did he have to deal with at KPBI? The good news is that the big runway is 10,000′ long and there were just a few scattered clouds 4,200 and 4,600 feet above the airport. The bad news is that it is 10/28 (east-west) and the wind was reported from the north at 11 knots gusting 17.

KPBI 101553Z 02011G17KT 10SM SCT042 SCT046 26/15

A student pilot with 20 hours of training probably wouldn’t have been signed off by his/her/zir/their instructor to operate in that kind of crosswind.

liveatc.net also has the KPBI Tower archived (May 10 at 1630Z). Almost everything that we desperately want to hear was being said on a mobile phone call directly between ATC and the newly minted Caravan pilot. (Contrary to popular belief, the typical controller does not know how to fly a plane. My sources suggest that the phone call was between the passenger and Robert Morgan, who is a controller but also an FAA certificated flight instructor (“CFI”).) Perhaps worth a listen to PBI Tower starting around 5:00. At 8:45, a few minutes after the landing, we learn that the winds were 050 at 10 gust 16 (not quite as bad a crosswind as indicated by the METAR of 40 minutes earlier, but still more than a soloing student would likely be signed off for).

Update: interview with Robert Morgan… “a Jupiter resident”! (Trigger warning for Californians: the page shows Morgan and “the passenger” (still anonymous) without masks and less than 6′ apart.)

Loosely related, “you should be sitting back with your slippers and pipe”…

Garmin tooketh away to some extent with the G1000, but Garmin giveth back with Autoland, which would have been perfect for this situation.

Related:

  • Talk-down aircraft landing (Wikipedia), in which we learn that many of the people described by the media as “passengers” turn out to be either student pilots or rusty but fully certificated private pilots.
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Why are residents of Democrat-run states so upset by the leaked Supreme Court draft regarding Roe v. Wade?

by philg

Friends in Maskachusetts, New York, and California have been raging against the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus enabling states to make their own laws regarding abortion. They say that they would personally suffer from any change in the status quo and that, in particular, they would lose their “freedom.”

Why I find this confusing is that the same people say that they will never visit a Republican-influenced state. So I don’t see how the abortion laws that prevail in the 28 states that are officially boycotted by San Francisco could cause them any personal suffering.

Here’s a Facebook exchange example:

  • me: How would someone in California experience any of the feared changes as a result of forthcoming Supreme Court decisions? How many California Democrats will ever visit, for example, Arkansas? Or talk to anyone in Arkansas?
  • Bay Area Righteous: Ha! It’s not just because of abortion. I’d be hard pressed to visit you in Florida, Philip, but not because of you. 🙂 Between humidity, anti-abortion, guns and…DeSantis (!), why would I? Okay, I’m being a bit snarky, but in general I do have more interest in visiting the more liberal parts of the country and the world. Well, that’s not entirely true. In the past 11 years I’ve visited Egypt, Turkey and Jordan (among other places).
  • me: Were you upset that abortion was strictly illegal in Egypt? Or how about Costa Rica, a much more popular vacation destination for Californians than most of the states where the Supreme Court’s return of this issue to the states would result in the law being changed? Do Californians protest the illegality of abortion in Costa Rica?
  • Bay Area Righteous: I was “upset” about all sorts of things in Egypt. We were in Cairo on January 25, 2011, the day the revolution began there. Learned a lot about their oppressive regime at the time. And since. But the difference (same for Costa Rica) is that it’s not our country. We have no standing there. The same is true about Arkansas, but unlike Costa Rica, we do have political interactions with Arkansans. We both vote for people in the House, Senate, White House, etc. Arkansans have influence over federal aspects of Californians. That’s not so for Costa Ricans.
  • Bay Area Righteous: I don’t avoid Arkansas only because of their stance on abortions.
  • me: So you would celebrate every additional abortion in Arkansas because it would mean one fewer person who could potentially vote for policies that you don’t like at the national level?
  • Portland (Oregon) Righteous friend of the Bay Area Righteous guy: master of the straw man! I’m against the upcoming ruling. It limits freedom and will likely pave the way to erosion of more freedoms. And until the crowd that applauds the decision also works for the rights and needs of the born, then I’ll gladly continue being sanctimonious.
  • me: How would [our mutual friend in San Francisco’s] freedom be limited by the Supreme Court saying that abortion was not a federal matter? Wouldn’t it be increased? The California legislature and Gavin Newsom would be free to establish any laws (or no laws) related to abortion that they desired. Or are you saying that Californians will somehow vote themselves into slavery (“un-freedom”) at the state level? ([our friend] has already explained that, even prior to this leaked draft, he was boycotting any state that he does not consider to be “liberal” so he is not going to travel to any place where a Republican might have any influence on abortion laws.)
  • Portland Righteous: I don’t really care about how this law affects [our friend]. It’s likely that any actual effects will be limited to his relations living in affected states. Though he might change his actions by giving more to pro-choice causes and maybe even host an abortion refugee from one of the affected states. It might affect other California residents who might consider relocation — depending on their level of tolerance for increased state scrutiny of reproductive rights. Being an Oregon resident, my state is actively supporting Idaho residents in need of abortion services though money and hosting. Anyway, bummer about how the state is getting all up in people’s business.
  • me: why do [our friend’s] relations choose to live in states that [our friend] had found (well prior to 2022) sufficiently deplorable to boycott and never visit?
  • me: the effects that you cite on OR and CA residents all sound positive to me. You now have a charitable cause that you believe in. When you take in a refugee or give money you will feel better about yourself and your life. See “Being Generous Really Does Make You Happier” (TIME) for some references.

Given that, from these Democrats’ point of view, the U.S. is already functionally split up into at least two countries (one good and one bad), why is the availability of on-demand abortion in the bad sub-country of more interest to someone who lives in the good sub-country than the availability of on-demand abortion in, say, Costa Rica? (the latter being a matter of no interest at all to the people who are outraged regarding the potential unavailability of abortion in Idaho)

Another example, this time from a woman in her early 50s who lives in Maskachusetts (she divorced her husband some years ago and therefore is not subject to male supervision):

  • Boston Righteous: A heartfelt “fuck you” to everyone who told me I was overreacting in November 2016″
  • “Joseph”: Wait you’re in Mass they will always allow abortions your reaction has no context
  • Boston Righteous: the fact that I happen to live in a state currently governed by sane people doesn’t negate the fact that as a fundamental rule, it’s not a problem to restrict my rights as a human being. The fact that some people don’t see that as a huge issue is repugnant.
  • Righteous Maryland female: The fact that you actually think [Boston Righteous]’s reaction “has no context” just illustrates the incredible privilege from which you are able to view this issue. You have absolutely no idea of the effects of this decision. Your rights have never been threatened. your gender has shielded you from many horrible things that women deal with every single day. to say that because [Boston Righteous] lives in Massachusetts and has no context for reacting to this issue is unbelievably insensitive and ignorant. If you don’t remember, [Boston Righteous] has a daughter. Perhaps her daughter may choose to live in another state at some point. … please, try to see that not everyone has the incredible entitlement that you apparently have. [But why would the daughter of a sane person who votes for sane politicians choose to live in a Red State?]
  • me: Where are the geographical limits of your concern? You’ve said that your concern extends beyond Massachusetts. Does it extend to Costa Rica where abortion is strictly illegal? If you accept that Costa Ricans can make different choices for their laws in this area than voters in Massachusetts have made, why can’t you accept that voters in Arkansas or North Dakota make different choices from yours?
  • Boston Righteous: I am quite aware of the atrocious laws against women’s rights in other countries. I had always believed that my country was better in this regard. Silly me, apparently. [Other than prejudice, what is our basis for thinking that that our country is better?]
  • me: Now that we’re deep into globalization I can’t figure out why an issue “in my country” is more critical than the same issue across a border that has become arbitrary. (It might be the case that people who live in Massachusetts are more likely to visit Costa Rica than to visit North Dakota or Arkansas. That wasn’t true before the Jet Age.) About 30% of residents of Massachusetts are immigrants or children of immigrants. They’re probably more connected to various foreign countries than they are to Arkansas or North Dakota.
  • Boston Righteous: I didn’t say that I didn’t care. But it’s substantially more personal now that it impacts me. Which of course you realize but for some reason are being obtuse.
  • me: I actually don’t understand how the laws of states other than Massachusetts impact you, any more than do the laws of other countries. Separately, Happy Mother’s Day!
  • Boston Righteous: because I’d rather not be trapped in MA? Because I’d rather my children not be trapped in MA? Because I’d prefer that the country of which I am a citizen doesn’t allow individual states to treat its residents as second class citizens? Weirdest conversation ever….. and finally, I’m not a jackass who only thinks of herself. I fully realize that as a wealthy, white woman, none of this REALLY matters to me personally. I can buy my way out of whatever I’d need. But I realize that makes me very, very privileged, and I don’t want others to suffer because they are not in the same boat. And frankly, just because. This is obscene and any rational person knows it.
  • me: people who love the Massachusetts laws are already unable to move to a lot of other states. Consider that Massachusetts shut down schools for more than a year and kept marijuana stores (“essential”) open, then ordered kids to wear masks in schools. Shutting down a school is illegal in Florida. A school system ordering children to wear masks is illegal in Florida (not against a governor’s order, but against a statute passed by the legislature). Running a recreational marijuana store is illegal. Is there a Red State that you would have previously considered moving to and now must be crossed off the list? … that circles back to my earlier point. If it is about concern for others, why not be upset about the unavailability of abortion after 12 weeks in Germany? (I never have heard you mention this.) That’s a population of more than 80 million under a law that you consider intolerable. And you would be willing even to support Germany by traveling there and spending money?

I remember her talking enthusiastically a few years ago about a vacation trip to Germany, which is why I picked that land of oppression for people who might become pregnant (to avoid inflaming the above folks, I did not point out their cisgender-normative prejudice in assuming that abortion is somehow an issue particular to “women” and did use the pregnant man emoji, though I was dying to do so.

I do find it genuinely confusing that folks in Maskachusetts, California, New York, and other states with sane government want a uniform national law. First, wouldn’t the Supreme Court just strike down any such law if the draft opinion turns into a final opinion? If this is a matter for states to decide, what difference does it make what Congress and Joe Biden do? Second, if this were a matter of federal policy, why do they think that the federal policy would allow as many abortions as MA, CA, and NY law allow? If the federal policy is set to some sort of consensus opinion, wouldn’t it more likely end up being kind of an average of current state policies rather than all the way at one extreme (abortion allowed at 37 weeks in Maskachusetts, for example)?

Finally, look at all of the times that the concept of “privilege” comes up in the Maskachusetts-centered conversation. This is why people need to attend liberal arts colleges. How else would they decode and participate?

Related:

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Return of reasonably pleasant commercial air travel will devalue small airplanes?

by philg

The value of little airplanes has soared in the past two years, more like South Florida real estate than inflation in general. Planes that are reasonably good for transportation, e.g., the Cirrus SR22, are up 50-100 percent in value as used aircraft. There have been substantial price increases on the new ones, but it is unclear what they’re worth because they’re impossible to buy without at least a one-year wait.

If a Cirrus, which has no pressurization, no ability to climb over thunderstorms, no kitchen, and no bathroom is “reasonably good for transportation” what is “excellent for transportation”? JetBlue! At a price that is essentially free compared to operating the Cirrus, JetBlue has pressurization, the ability to fly over weather, a kitchen where coffee is brewed, and three bathrooms on every Airbus. In the unlikely event that JetBlue’s plane is broken, there are spares that are rolled out within a few hours.

Commercial airline travel in 2020 was perceived as unsafe. You were informed that SARS-CoV-2 would probably kill you. Commercial airline travel in 2021 was correctly perceived as unpleasant, with constant announcements regarding masks and a constant reasonable fear that a mask dispute would break out on the plane, potentially leading to a diversion and not getting to your destination on time. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to pay $1.2 million for a piston-powered airplane, endure the noise, vibration, and uncertainty about whether one would reach one’s destination (weather, mechanical, fatigue?). And the $10,000 per year hangar bill? A small price to pay to avoid a killer virus. Another $20,000 per year for data subscriptions, maintenance, and insurance? Where do I sign up?

Could a little downward nudge from the stock market decline combine with rediscovery of the pleasantness and practicality of commercial air travel to make people rethink whether they want to elbow their way past 15 other people and be the high bidder for a Cirrus, Bonanza, or turboprop? A friend who owns a jet charter business says, regarding airplane valuations, “they follow the stock market triple leveraged”. The market has already declined quite a bit in 2022 and it is unclear that his formula is in operation yet, but there might be a precedent for a General Aviation Winter caused by the airlines.

The glorious years of mass production for generation aviation were 1960s and 1970s. Upper middle class people thought it was a reasonable idea to buy a Cessna or Piper for family transportation. Gerald Ford began the deregulation process for the airlines and it was completed by Jimmy Carter in 1978 (history). By 1986, fares for leisure travelers had fallen dramatically and Cessna stopped making little planes. Part of the justification for the shutdown was liability, but there was a glut of small planes that lasted until roughly 1996 when Cessna started up again. Piper was similarly afflicted, but never shut down completely. See “Airplane production to resume June 1” (UPI, May 1986):

Floundering Piper Aircraft Corp. will resume production of its entire line of small airplanes June 1, having sold off more than half of its oversupply of new planes, the company said Friday.

Piper, which like other small aircraft makers has suffered from a severe downturn in sales since the 1970s, suspended production of eight of its nine models of small piston-driven planes in February and laid off 630 workers.

The company has laid off several thousand employees as it trimmed operations. It now has 1,800 employees, down from 8,000 a few years ago.

I’m not expecting a mid-1980s-type crash due to the restart of mask-free airline flights, but that’s only because the piston aircraft industry is already so tiny that it can’t shrink much. The question for this post is whether the return of reasonably pleasant $200 airline flights will cause small planes to revert to their historical values, adjusted for Bidenflation.

Related:

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S&P 500 down at least 6 percent since Joe Biden took office

by philg

Not a great time for us buy-and-hold index investors….

Since Joe Biden took office, the S&P 500 is down at least 6 percent in real terms (up 3.9 percent nominal, but up is the new down in a high-inflation environment).

Who wants to get bragging rights by calling the bottom on this market slide? I’m going to say that the correct value is 3,200 (pre-coronapanic value) plus 0 percent growth for 2020 when Americans cowered in place and 8 percent growth for 2021. Then add 20 percent for the inflation rate that is experienced by people with enough money to buy stock. So today’s correct nominal value is 4,096. Markets tend to overshoot, though, so let’s take 5 percent off that for the bottom: 3,891.

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Apply for a permit to set up an abortion clinic in Chevy Chase?

by philg

“White House warns against ‘violence, threats, or vandalism’ after protests outside Supreme Court justices homes” (CNN, today):

The White House on Monday condemned “violence, threats, or vandalism” after protesters held demonstrations outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court Justices over the weekend.

And over the weekend, pro-abortion rights protesters gathered outside the private homes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts in Chevy Chase, Maryland, outside Washington, DC.

“Keep abortion safe and legal,” a few dozen protesters chanted on the street of the tony, tree-lined streets outside the justices’ homes. Many held handmade signs.

“Keep your rosaries off our ovaries,” they said.

The protests were organized, in part, by Kavanaugh neighbor Lacie Wooten-Holway, who told The Washington Post, “I organize peaceful candlelit vigils in front of his house. … We’re about to get doomsday, so I’m not going to be civil to that man at all.”

I wonder what Mx. Wooten-Holway would say if someone applied to open an abortion clinic in his/her/zir/their neighborhood.

CNN continues:

Following the court’s confirmation that the leaked draft opinion was authentic, President Joe Biden condemned it. Psaki also reiterated the White House’s calls for Congress to act to codify the women’s reproductive health protections established in Roe v. Wade.

I wish someone would explain how a federal law would be Constitutional if the Supreme Court holds that Roe v. Wade was a mistake because abortion regulation is a matter of state law.

A quick Google search did not turn up the precise street addresses for the hated justices or Mx. Wooten-Holway, but one of the protests started in Chevy Chase Park, so that’s presumably nearby. Zillow shows that 5BR houses are available for $3.5 million. One of them could become the new clinic.

Related:

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Toyota pits all of its engineering prowess against Tesla

by philg

One of my enduring theories was that the electric car market would work like most of the markets described in Crossing the Chasm. The pioneering company selling to early adopters gets bypassed when the mainstream companies piled in and sell to mainstream customers who don’t care about the features that the early adopters were passionate about. So Tesla, with its limited engineering capabilities and manufacturing experience, would be leapfrogged by Toyota, Honda, Ford, et al. when it was time for the typical Toyota Camry or Honda Accord owner to buy an electric car.

“Tested: 2023 Toyota bZ4X Gets Toyota into the EV Game” (Car and Driver) proves that I’m wrong yet again. The car is neither significantly cheaper nor significantly better than a Tesla. With all of their marketing experience, Toyota couldn’t even come up with a decent name. Also note that the marketing materials imply that you need a $3 million house before you can think about purchasing (and that bZ4X drivers should adhere to an obsolete cisgender heterosexual nuclear family lifestyle).

Most egregious: no dog mode!

Can we conclude that the only human on Planet Earth capable of doing things in a reasonable way is Elon Musk?

(Like those announcing receiving an award on Facebook, I am humbled and honored that my prediction turned out to be dead wrong. Well, maybe not honored. Just humbled (but not humbled enough to stop making predictions, sadly).)

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Why doesn’t Twitter’s chat service support PDF files?

by philg

As you might have gathered, I’ve been using Twitter lately to see what the fuss is about. A friend messaged me on the service and I tried to send him a 105 KB PDF file. This was impossible to do. Only images and text can be sent through Twitter’s “Messages” chat system. Facebook Messenger, on the other hand, which would be the obvious system for Twitter’s programmers to copy, can handle this easily (up to 25 MB).

Is there a good reason that Twitter left this out or is it an example of the kind of obvious flaw in their product that Elon Musk can correct to boost the enterprise value? It is never good to force people to hop over to Facebook or iMessage or Gmail if they want to communicate on your own platform, right?

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Should we beg the Turks for advice on how to build affordable housing?

by philg

The U.S. features a growing population and a fixed supply of housing and thus has become a textbook Econ 101 example of how rising demand lifts prices. Who has figured out how to increase housing supply dramatically? “Turkey’s Plan to Draw Refugees Back to Syria: Homes for 1 Million” (New York Times, May 4):

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey will build homes, schools, hospitals and more in northern Syria, but experts question whether refugees will return willingly.

Mr. Erdogan’s announcement on Tuesday came amid a grave economic crisis that has hit the wallets of many Turks and fueled widespread anger toward the large number of people displaced from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere who now live in Turkey.

As the anger has grown, Turkish social media has lit up with furious posts about foreigners flying their flags in Turkish cities, enjoying themselves while Turks struggle to make ends meet and changing the cultural fabric of Turkish communities.

Mr. Erdogan’s announcement on Tuesday provided an update on those efforts and expanded their scope. So far, more than 57,000 out of 77,000 planned homes in Idlib Province in Syria’s northwest have been completed and now house 50,000 families, he said.

In the future, that number will grow to 100,000 homes, and a new project will be started, he said, to build enough homes for an additional 1 million Syrian refugees to move to other parts of northern Syria where Turkey holds sway.

In addition to homes, the project will provide schools, hospitals and “all the needs of daily life and self-sufficient economic infrastructure, from agriculture to industry,” Mr. Erdogan said.

All of the above happens to some extent in Florida, but the new houses are tough to characterize as “affordable.” Obviously, the Chinese have achieved dramatic results in building new cities, but the Chinese way of doing things doesn’t seem to work here (see Netflix: American Factory for example, unless you’ve desubscribed as I have!).

(Separately, we are informed that low-skill migrants make existing residents of a country wealthier. Yet the Turks are willing to spend whatever it costs to build hundreds of thousands of houses in order to rid themselves of migrants. It is a mystery!)

The backyard of a Turkish-built house that I visited in 2007:

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