> use of AI has indeed lowered the story point cost

It should not have. At least not significantly. Points should represent complexity, risk and overall effort (review burden, testing burden, dependencies, etc.), and so AI should increase velocity before it decreases story point estimates.

Over time, if a team's baseline delivery model genuinely changes, then reference stories can be recalibrated, but casually saying "AI lowered the point cost" is usually a smell that points are being treated as time estimates.

This is the same reason points should not = days even without AI. Velocity is what tells you if a team is getting better through training, tooling, hiring/firing, or process improvements. Re-pointing the same class of work downward hides the gain.

> I don’t want APIs, I want agents to use the same CLI tooling I already use that is locally available.

I do not want agents using the same elevated auth I have via my CLI tooling. One hallucination with your gh cli and the blast radius is every repo you have write (or worse, admin) access to.

MCP lets you scope tokens down (on supported platforms), or at minimum gives you something you can revoke independently.

The real cult is the engineers who refuse to shift their perception of what "good" or "quality" means in a world where humans, for the most part, won't be reading or writing code anymore.

I get it, existential threats are scary, but you can't just shit talk them and hope they go away.

Welfare should rightly fund "survival" and "levelling the playing field" resources, but charity can offer more than that - it can offer quality of life and a sense of community/belonging. It's nice to be around other people who are going through the same things, and people who support you.

So I think charity will always have a role, both financially and socially.

Publicly funded institutions such as libraries and community centres can also offer this. There’s no reason other than political ideology why welfare cannot fund these things too. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a place for charity.

But of course there is a reason. A government-funded institution has no one with a stake in its long-term success. Its only goal is preserving itself and capturing more resources from the government. Small-scale philanthropy thus has a key role to play here.

Funding for basic educational standards and a minimal social safety net is already a huge spending commitment for even the most successful governments, and it's not clear if "welfare" can expand beyond that.

> A government-funded institution has no one with a stake in its long-term success. Its only goal is preserving itself and capturing more resources from the government.

Why would you say that? By that logic a charitable institution has no one with a stake in it's long-term success. It's only goal is preserving itself and capturing more resources from donors. There's nothing about governments which makes them inherently incapable of hiring motivated staff.

In my experience, government workers, be they school teachers, nurses, librarians, or community workers are often some of most highly motivated workers I have met.

> it's not clear if "welfare" can expand beyond that.

It is clear if you believe that such funding is available from philanthropic sources. It's just a question of who we wish to give control of those resources to.

Is this feedback process the explanation for why those previously underperforming and frequently complained about government departments have now been fixed?

> Is this feedback process the explanation for why those previously underperforming and frequently complained about government departments have now been fixed?

Perhaps the constant demonizing of public services by private interests, (who btw often rely on government contracts to function), and certain politicians bought by these interests could be a contributing factor in why not?

But let me hear about how private healthcare and broadband is killing it please.

I think that's a lot of the issue: many people (including myself) are in fact happy with their private healthcare and broadband service.

(I have Comcast, so it's not like I've even got the "best", but I'd way rather deal with Comcast or Blue Cross than any government agency...)

Counter-anecdote: I've only had AT&T and Time Warner Cable (now "Spectrum") and I would rather deal with any government agency than either of those two. Specifically I would rate my water+sewer and electricity 5/5 stars while I would rate TWC and AT&T something close to negative infinity.

Are you imagining a monolithic federal-level agency? Most municipal broadband schemes are run like small non-profit businesses that just happen to be publicly/community owned.

Let me put it this way: Comcast is the only reason why a lot of the US doesn't have gigabit internet at cheap prices.

It seems to be mostly cultural inertia. People accept that the government department is underperforming because they expect government departments to be underperforming. Which they expect because that has generally been true in their experience. Which is the case because nobody demands better.

It's a vicious circle, but not an inevitable one. There are plenty of examples of well-functioning government departments, and in some countries there is no significant difference between the performance of publicly run institutions and their private counterparts (although there is of course plenty of variance within both of those groups).

Yes.

Charity in the form of "the community is coming together to do something of common interest" sure.

Charity in the form of "one rich guy writes a check because he felt like it" is too dependent on the capricious whims and priorities of a handful of rich people.

Thank you for the kind words! I’m glad you appreciated my writing.

False modesty wasn’t my intention, I’ll do better to explain myself next time. I didn’t mean to address any view of my own competence, more that I was able to build a successful career without going through conventional channels, and with an anxiety disorder. I was by all accounts, a drop out with mental health problems.

My writing skills come from a career in writing government policy documents and stakeholder communications. Not formal education channels.

> My writing skills come from a career in writing government policy documents and stakeholder communications. Not formal education channels.

Impressive. Did someone in your previous job look out for you? Did you have a mentor?

> False modesty wasn’t my intention, I’ll do better to explain myself next time. I didn’t mean to address any view of my own competence, more that I was able to build a successful career without going through conventional channels, and with an anxiety disorder. I was by all accounts, a drop out with mental health problems.

I was being ironic about the false modesty, wondering whether you know you're good and whether you know that you know you're good.

Unaccustomed as I am to spurning sage advice on never giving unsolicited advice, allow me to make the once-in-a-lifetime exception by suggesting that you keep posting your writing here on HN.

Clearly, your article didn't manage the page views it deserves for reasons you must find out. If you scrutinize what hauls in the eyeballs here you'll discern the sovereign narratives that rule the readership.

I look forward to your future submissions.

The London tube system is one of the oldest underground networks in the world. There’s no air conditioning, in fact it’s gotten so hot down there that the network has heated up the soil and clay around the tunnels. Heat management is a big infrastructure problem for Transport for London.

You’re completely right though, feeling too hot in a crowded space made me claustrophobic and became a significant environmental factor for me.

That’s interesting about financial/housing anxiety in NYC. I wonder if that’s something to do with renting? I was fortunate to be able to buy a place in London which meant my outgoings were fairly stable and predictable. Working in government also meant my job was pretty secure.

I own my place in the city but the carrying (tax, insurance, mortgage) and opportunity costs are not insignificant. I actually have enough saved that I can manage the payments and other living expenses based on my investments, but it's closer to the edge than I'd like to be. Then again I am a person who desires certainty in all things so it might not be the same for most people in my position.