july

Markets gud, price mechanisms gud. Congestion pricing in NYC continues to be winning, just as it has been winning for years in Stockholm, Singapore and elsewhere.

When demand > supply, there is always an auction. Either you pay with money, or you pay by waiting in line, with often grievous costs to mental health ( https://nytimes.com/2019/01/21/upshot/stuck-and-stressed-the-health-costs-of-traffic.html ) and to no one's benefit.

Blockchain transaction fees are similar: in the dark ages we used to wait some random number of 5-60 minutes for a transaction to get included into a block, and made excuses about how this is a virtuous act of expressing "low time preference".

Today, transactions reliably get included in 1-2 slots, and the more efficient fee market design in https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1559 is a major reason why. Tomorrow, transactions will be included even faster.