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Ridiculous. US is dead last of 17 major developed countries in recent study.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/new-health-rankings-of-17-nations-us-is-dead-last/267045/

1. US health care cost is 2x that of other developed nations.
2. Despite this cost it has 10's of millions uninsured.
3. Results are worse than lower cost systems. Look at life expectancy for US v. Canada for example.
4. Medical tourism (people leaving US) for foreign destinations is booming. 100 times more US citizens go to other countries than people come here. 1.6 million US citizens traveled abroad last year for medical care.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/luizaoleszczuk/2013/10/22/central-europe-becoming-a-big-destination-for-medical-tourism/

5. Illegal immigrants come here from UNDEVELOPED countries, not from developed countries. And the care they get here is shit. Walk into a hospital emergency room with diabetes or any other chronic disease and see what kind of care you get.
6. ALL medical systems have patients die needlessly from care problems. My mother died from a misdiagnoses. People get stuck with the wrong drug. Coma patients don't get fed. Fact of life. In fact the US Medical System is the leading cause of death in the US.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/medicine/usamed.htm

And there are plenty MORE stories about people getting screwed by insurance companies BEFORE the ACA. Even with the ACA, it's still the insurance companies screwing you.

Insurance companies were the problem, so we "fix" it by mandating that everybody do business with them? WTF?!

You just don't get it.... The biggest problem with our healthcare system is the cost, and the ACA did nothing whatsoever to address that. What good is universal coverage (which, FYI, the ACA doesn't provide) when healthcare costs are slowly bankrupting us? 21% of GDP and rising. There are a variety of reasons for this, few that can be boiled down to simple talking points, and the ACA did nothing to address them. Healthcare costs (by extension, health insurance costs) continue their endless upward march, consuming an ever larger slice of the national pie, while our body politic squabbles about stupid shit like mandatory contraceptive coverage, a non-issue (generic birth control pills: $30/mo, box of 12 condoms: $8.99 at the grocery store) except for those most partisan of asshats on both sides of the aisle.

Read this article, How American Health Care Killed My Father. It's old, but the trends that he talks about were not addressed by the ACA. These problems will remain regardless of the eventual success or failure of the ACA, and sooner or later they'll have to be addressed.

Every rig driver in America will soon be tracked by an electronic recorder. Proponents claim it will make the roads safer, but some wonder what else the data could be used for.

I think it's delightful that someone is bright enough to identify this as propaganda. Please help me fight such pernicious lies that Heritage purports to justify these "facts".

It seems to be amply footnoted, with 50+ references:
[1]Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, âoeIncome, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,â U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports: Consumer Income, P60-239, September 2011, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf (September 13, 2011). The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family cash income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2010, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $22,314. A family of three was deemed poor if its annual income was below $17,374.
[2] See Catholic Campaign for Human Development, âoePoverty Pulse, Wave IV,â January 2004, at http://old.usccb.org/cchd/PP4FINAL.PDF (September 7, 2011). Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level.
[3]These surveys include the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, What We Eat in America, Food Security, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the American Housing Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. See U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/ (June 22, 2011); U.S. Department of Agriculture, What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007â"2008, Table 4, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/0708/Table_4_NIN_POV_07.pdf (June 22, 2011); Mark Nord, âoeFood Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Household Characteristics,â U.S. Department of Agriculture, September 2009, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB56/EIB56.pdf (September 7, 2011); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, âoeAbout the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,â at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm (September 7, 2011); U.S. Census Bureau, âoeAmerican Housing Survey (AHS),â at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs.html (June 27, 2011); and U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2001 Panel, Wave 8 Topical Module, 2003, at http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html#sipp01 (June 27, 2011).
[4]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2009, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/h150-09.pdf (September 8, 2011).
[5] U.S Department of Energy, Residential Energy Consumption Survey.
[6]Derek Thompson, âoe30 Million in Poverty Arenâ(TM)t as Poor as You Think, Says Heritage Foundation,â The Atlantic Monthly, July 19, 2011, at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/30-million-in-poverty-arnt-as-poor-as-you-think-says-heritage-foundation/242191/ (September 7, 2011).
[7] C. T. Windham, B. W. Wyse, and R. G. Hansen, âoeNutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977â"1978: I. Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density,â Journal of

Incorrect. Their malicious software deployment system (FOXACID) is run by barely tech-literate morons following a fucking flow-chart. They needed the geeks once to build the infrastructure. Once it could be ran by idiots it was. This is exceedingly dangerous. It's the equivalent of being Very Strong and Dumb. In the NSA we have created Frankenstein's Monster. It's sad, but we have to put it down. It should have never existed in the first place.

How about this one:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/in-a-race-between-a-self-driving-car-and-a-pro-race-car-driver-who-wins/264342/

"Humans [win], but only by a few measly seconds."

Just wait until it starts working and healthy working people realize how much they're going to have to spend to subsidize all the lower-income and non-workers.

Uh, realize this first - before this they were ALREADY subsidized. Just in stupidly inefficient and terrible ways.

They go to ER and wait till they are sick enough for ER to treat them. Guess who pays[1] for that? Not them, they don't have money. Guess how expensive that is compared to treating them earlier at a GP or not at ER stage at least?

Or they commit a crime to go to prison and get healthcare treatment or just to get food and shelter. Yes people actually do that. Go google it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/on-purposely-getting-arrested-to-get-life-saving-surgery/273282/
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nc-man-allegedly-robs-bank-health-care-jail/story?id=13887040
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27/timothy-alsip-robs-bank-healthcare_n_3825492.html
Think about how expensive that is - getting the bank, cops, courts, prisons, hospitals and who knows who else involved.

Whether you like it or not if you pay taxes or insurance premiums you have already been paying for it. It's just been done in a very very inefficient and stupid way. Unless you wish to do mass euthanizations you are going to have to pay for it one way or another.

This "Frankenstein Monster" of Obamacare is not that efficient either but you can thank stupid selfish citizens like you and equally self-serving politicians for that who give voters like you what they want (which given rather polarized and conflicting wants creates mutated monsters like ObamaCare).

Careful - maybe one day 3rd world people like me who are smarter and cheaper than you will take YOUR jobs. Then you may realize you might need those subsidies after all. Or maybe you're one of the rich elites who don't have to worry about such "small problems".

The sad thing is the corrupt greedy politicians in my 3rd world country are trying to make our healthcare crappier- they've siphoned out billions of money so have to make up by cutting out stuff elsewhere.

[1] if you ever need ER treatment you also pay in ERs being less efficient, or even being closed down because of $$$. Google for: ERs closed down.

I'm going to preface my comment here by saying that I generally cook my own foods, and eat a lot of things fresh. I consume very little added sugars of any sort. But this ridiculous debate about sugar vs. HFCS is just idiotic. Both of them are bad for you.

there is no chemical difference between HFCS and Sucrose.

Wrong again. HFCS is high-fructose corn syrup. The ratio of fructose to glucose is higher in HFCS than in sucrose. That's why it is called "high fructose".

It would instill more confidence in your post if you actually showed that you knew anything about the substance you're discussing. The ratio of fructose to glucose in HFCS has nothing to do with comparisons to sucrose. The adjective "high-fructose" added to "corn syrup" is self-explanatory. Corn syrup (the kind of stuff you use when making candies that need a certain texture) is naturally almost all glucose. "Corn syrup" thus contains almost no fructose. Therefore, any "corn syrup" which contains more than a tiny percentage of fructose is automatically a kind of "high-fructose" corn syrup. Normally, HFCS is produced by taking normal (little to no-fructose) corn syrup and processing it in some manner to raise fructose, generally to around 50%

Sucrose is 50/50 glucose and fructose. The kind of HFCS normally used in most foods is either HFCS 55 (about 55% fructose, 42% glucose, 3% other) or HFCS 42 (about 42% fructose, 53% glucose, 5% other). The former is generally used in sodas; the latter in most other processed foods with HFCS (like baked goods, etc.). Please note that HFCS 42 actually contains LESS fructose than sucrose.

While we're on the topic of chemical breakdowns, I also think it's important to bring up honey, which is roughly the same as HFCS 55 in terms of having almost all fructose and glucose, with a bit more fructose. (Honey has a slightly higher proportion of other sugars than HFCS, particularly maltose, but still less than 10%.) Natural foods wackos generally hold up honey as an ideal "natural" alternative sweetener, but it's mostly the same as HFCS, particularly regarding the simple sugars the parent is so worried about.

Whenever HFCS comes up, why aren't people proposing a honey ban as well?

Anyhow...

The problem with HFCS is that it first bypasses the metabolic pathway that sucrose must go through, thereby creating a rush as the simple sugars are directly absorbed by the blood.

As pointed out by other responders to your post, this metabolic pathway doesn't appear to be that significant... it may not be on the order of milliseconds in the stomach, but downing a Coke with sucrose vs. downing a Coke with HFCS will both be causing a surge of simple sugars into your bloodstream in short order.

Most of the studies that purport to "prove" that HFCS is terrible are actually studies that compare pure fructose to other things. (Most people apparently, like the parent poster, are ignorant of the fact that "high-fructose" doesn't even necessarily mean that most of HFCS is fructose.) Yes, apparently eating a lot of pure fructose is bad for you. But the metabolic response is largely dependent on context, and HFCS in that respect is much closer to table sugar than to pure fructose.

Only in the past few years have there been some studies that actually compare HFCS to sucrose directly. Out of the handful that I've seen, all but one have shown no significant statistical difference between HFCS and sucrose consumption, and that includes human studies (for example, this recent one).

There is one intriguing rat study t

No they will not. They will pay the rate going on the black market, for the exploits they purchase.

I agree with the general gist, but if you're marketing to the NSA, you're also marketing to all the other black market exploit buyers. The price can be far higher depending on the exploit. Interestingly, this means the NSA is helping support the exploit vector black market, and this is a threat to national security...

From what I read, knowing someone who works at Google is a primary requirement for landing a job at Google. Seems dumb to me, but then Google will admit to doing dumb things with regards to hiring. They've admitted their entire interview process doesn't really work. But this is a place where top talent like Hugo Barra is forced out of the company, because Google's CEO started banging his girlfriend. Between this, and selling out to the NSA, I don't think I would want to work for Caligula anyway :-/ This patent application is equal parts disgusting and unsurprising to me.

There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them.

He did. The result was partly what convinced him to go another way.

The other part that convinced him? What happened to the others that tried before him.

It's so amazing to me that geeks can act so knowledgeable about the Constitution and be so ignorant of how it actually works in the real world.

If he got stymied by the Executive he was supposed to Check and Balance said Executive by snitching to Congress. Wyden would have loved this data dump. More importantly Wyden would have been able to decide which bits of it could be released without hurting legitimate intelligence operations, whereas all Greenwald can be counted on to do is make sure he gets paid for releasing the info.

There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them.

He did. The result was partly what convinced him to go another way.

The other part that convinced him? What happened to the others that tried before him.

Anyways, any sensible interpretation of the Golden Rule re-interprets it to treat others as they wish to be treated in preference to how you like to be treated, if you happen to know how their preferences are not yours. I.e. don't take a vegetarian out for steaks.

The people we are waterboarding, on the other hand, have demonstrated both the desire and the ability to do us harm

Except for the innocent.

A cursory search reveals:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/former-state-department-official-team-bush-knew-many-at-gitmo-were-innocent/275327/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantanamo-survivor.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8471907/WikiLeaks-Guantanamo-Bay-terrorist-secrets-revealed.html
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/19/ex-bush-official-guantanamo-bay-innocent/
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=1997083
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-wrong-place-time
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/25/wikileaks_documents_reveal_us_knowingly_imprisoned
And many more.

You've never experienced the fanatical hatred these "people" have for those who don't share their ideology.

I lived in Israel from 1973 to 2000, 7 of those years I spent in the IDF (mandatory + standing army) and then did reserve service (as Captain) before emigrating.
I have experienced the hatred of people that would bomb a school-bus just to make headlines and I still find your attitude toward torture despicable.

Encrypt the data. Then the NSA can say, "Well, we can't prove the data is a correspondence between two US citizens, therefore we assume it's not and use other methods to get at the data." These other methods involve purchasing zero day exploits and leveraging them via a big flow chart operated by skiddies. I shit you not. It's called FOXACID, and specifically Ferret Cannon.

Google uses Linux. All the encryption in the world will not protect you from zero day exploits infecting your systems and exfiltrating the data. Sorry, humans won't spend the time and money to ensure their code is secure. It's possible. I've written drivers and OSs for embedded systems that are absolutely secure -- They handle every input exactly as they should. Computers have finite state, computer security it's mathematically provable and very doable, but highly expensive and time consuming given that security has not ever been the prime goal of any computing or communication system.

TL;DR: Humans are Morons.

Funny, I just read this article last night. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/ It says there probably are some "math geniuses" out there, so doesn't totally contradict the Rotherberg/Tegmark research. But the thesis indicates we have plenty of computers for the genius level math, and that most of the problem (weakness in general population) derives directly from the myth that innate/genetic "math ability" exists at all.

And if the math ability is God-given, there are computer programs now to discover even that (computer proves God article in Der Spiegel). http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/computer-scientists-prove-god-exists/story?id=20678984

Wow, just wow. Here you are standing before us trying to argue that military spending, worldwide, should be increased to levels at least as high as they were at the hight of the cold war where there actually was a credible enemy capable of threatening our national security Vs today where terrorism does not even manage to be more threatening than your kitchen stool. This completely ignoring the fact that military spending is already a massive drain on the worlds resources and that Military spending, with few exceptions, is pretty much the definition of unproductivewe are quite literally paying people to blast holes in the ground.

I've got exactly what you need! Tinfoil hats are cheap. They are easy, to make too, it takes less than two minutes. Don't believe the MIT study that debunks the time honored tinfoil hat, it's a government conspiracy you know!

Don't worry, there are support groups for conspiracy theorists! Now I know like any number of other conspiracy theories those pesky facts might get in the way. However, learn from Joseph Goebbels and don't ever let logic, facts or reality get in your way. I know you look like a raving lunatic to any rational person, but not to worry, there is someone even crazier will soon show up to defend you, so cheer up!

Maybe I can help.

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - The Pentagon
Hunt the Boeing!
911 Debunked - Pentagon Flight 77 Photo Evidence
Pentagon & Boeing 757 Engine Investigation
Pentagon 9/11

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - Flight 93
9/11 investigators tell of piecing together mystery of Penn. crash
Direct Evidence
9/11: The Day of the Attacks
Response and Recovery - Shanksville, Pennsylvania

How do you reconcile that with the fact that flights get more expensive every year?

Well, I don't, since you're completely wrong.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/

This isn't an obscure fact, and the news doesn't get better with a different source.

Administration Still Double-Counting Medicare Cuts

Actually it benefits Ireland greatly....They actively sought out Apple among other companies to have a presence there...
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/you-cant-blame-ireland-for-apples-tax-avoidance-either/276120/

I've got exactly what you need! Tinfoil hats are cheap. They are easy, to make too, it takes less than two minutes. Don't believe the MIT study that debunks the time honored tinfoil hat, it's a government conspiracy you know!

Don't worry, there are support groups for conspiracy theorists! Now I know like any number of other conspiracy theories those pesky facts might get in the way. However, learn from Joseph Goebbels and don't ever let logic, facts or reality get in your way. I know you look like a raving lunatic to any rational person, but not to worry, there is someone even crazier will soon show up to defend you, so cheer up!

I find it interesting that the team behind the technical aspects of Obama's presidential campaign were so capable (more here...it's a great read) and yet he still chose the tried and false alternate model of outsourced government contractors to handle this.

A methodology more similar to what was used on his campaign would have been far more successful and cost significantly less.

What you do what those books were written in a culture different than ours, describing things that were normal, accepted or according with the moral values of that time or place compared with the ones of our times? what about the future with our own values? Oh, wait there is no place in the future for our current books.

Maybe most of what was banned deserved it, had no literary or any other value at all. But was all? And setting this precedent is opening the door for bad abuses of it, specially when people use their subjectivity (and political agenda, and economical interests, and so on) to decide what goes and what not.

Maybe will be for the best, it will open an opportunity for alternate/uncensored markets (and no markets as "selling" could not be the main target there), leaving the current "sell digital as if it were paper" establishment behind at last.

Books, songs, movies, comics, oral tradition, news, all of that brings a story with them, one were you can identify with it, recognize as a pattern, and use that pattern to seek a guidance for our actions to get a better outcome. They also draws a picture in how other people (should) think, the more clear is that picture, the better the concept is assimilated by us, and books usually have a bigger extent on showing how characters think and feel, but is not something exclusive of them. But books probably have the bigger set of good ones with different stories and good character exploration , even if copyrights are making a big portion of them almost invisible (and is important to see the vision of the world of previous cultures)

When actual capitalism with real competitors breaks out, they run screaming to the courts and the law makers to make it go away. This is usually all it takes. If they loose in the courts they just buy some legislation to get what they want.

Want an example? It's a felony to unlock your smart phone without approval from you carrier.

BY DECREE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

IT SHALL HENCEFORCE BE ORDERED THAT AMERICANS SHALL NOT UNLOCK THEIR OWN SMARTPHONES.

PENALTY: In some situations, first time offenders may be fined up to $500,000, imprisoned for five years, or both. For repeat offenders, the maximum penalty increases to a fine of $1,000,000, imprisonment for up to ten years, or both.

Yes, just like murder, bank robbery, smuggling drugs, child molestation, kidnapping, etc. The White House is trying to reverse this, but it's not clear if this is enforced at the current time.

Despite all the heated rhetoric, the US is the home of Not Capitalism. No one seems to notice or care. Shut up an pay whatever your owners demand. Or go to jail.

Nope, not forever, diamond is just transparent coal, it'll burn away to nothing in a hot enough fire.

Ssssshhhhhh! Don't spoil the industry's carefully nurtured romantic image.

Also, please don't spoil the manufactured illusion that diamonds are rare and valuable which you'll soon find some problems with if you try to sell a gem-grade diamond for anything like the price you paid for it.

Basically, the modern diamond industry is a scam designed to promote the illusion of value and scarcity around diamonds, and has been since mass diamond mines emerged in the late 19th century and the owners formed the De Beers cartel to promote their own self interest.
So, if these diamonds on Saturn were somehow accessible to us... well, yeah, diamond would become a lot less valuable. But it's not like they're actually *that* rare or valuable just now.

Nope, not forever, diamond is just transparent coal, it'll burn away to nothing in a hot enough fire.

Ssssshhhhhh! Don't spoil the industry's carefully nurtured romantic image.

Also, please don't spoil the manufactured illusion that diamonds are rare and valuable which you'll soon find some problems with if you try to sell a gem-grade diamond for anything like the price you paid for it.

Basically, the modern diamond industry is a scam designed to promote the illusion of value and scarcity around diamonds, and has been since mass diamond mines emerged in the late 19th century and the owners formed the De Beers cartel to promote their own self interest.
So, if these diamonds on Saturn were somehow accessible to us... well, yeah, diamond would become a lot less valuable. But it's not like they're actually *that* rare or valuable just now.

Sure there was some of that [...]

No, it was entirely that. What can we do in space to beat the Russians?

And while we're on the topic of charity, common sense demanding and answer to "If they're so generous, how come everyone else is so poor" notwithstanding, survey after survey indicates the wealthy give far less to charity than the poor. Click the link, it explains one reason why that might be.

Correlation or causation? But let me quote from "The Grapes of Wrath": “If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.”

The rich are afraid of turning their money into something people can eat, something that houses people, something tangible. They have to fight compassion like a farmer has to fight pests on a field grown in monoculture. And they fight it with a sense of entitlement: after all, most of them have been born into wealth already.

With the exception of public sector employees, where unionization is alive and kicking. The rest were pretty much done in with the wave of globalization that begin around 1990 and was accelerated by the Internet and vastly improved worldwide telecommunications bandwidth.

Sir, you need to get educated on the political realities of our age. "In 2010, the percentage of workers belonging to a union in the United States (or total labor union "density") was 11.4%, compared to 18.4% in Germany, 27.5% in Canada, and 70% in Finland.[1] Union membership in the private sector has fallen under 7% â" levels not seen since 1932." Source

That's not winning. That's losing. That's losing badly.

That may be, but it's not like those 1 percent are

It doesn't matter who, what, where, or when they are. The fact is, 1% controls 40% of the wealth in this country. This is not a good thing! Economies function best with high liquidity, when trade is abundant, when money trades hands quickly. This doesn't happen when a few million people are hoarding cash to the point it probably passes a clinical threshold. The end! They could be the patron saint of charity, but it doesn't change the fact that the money isn't moving. It's not helping anyone but them. And while we're on the topic of charity, common sense demanding and answer to "If they're so generous, how come everyone else is so poor" notwithstanding, survey after survey indicates the wealthy give far less to charity than the poor. Click the link, it explains one reason why that might be.

I completely disagree with that. Compared with Roman slaves, African-American slaves before the civil war, peasants who were indentured servants to feudal lords before the industrial revolution? Hell no. A slave is someone whose life is basically controlled by someone else, and who cannot escape even if they were willing to make financial sacrifices.

Yeah, small problem: While there were quite a few of those kinds of slaves, indentured servitude has historically been more prevalant, and socially acceptable. Did you know it took the United States until 2000 to outlaw it? And while it's now on the books under human trafficing laws, tens of millions of Americans are functionally indentured servants. Anyone here on a work visa; If you're fired, you gotta go home. Anyone who has ever been chased by debt collectors is well aware that they can take everything down to the clothes on your back legally for any debt, and many states allow ex parte orders to invoke police authority to confinscate any and all personal property.

We change the definitions around, you know, paint smiles on the bags over people's heads... but we're still abusing the crap out of the poor in this country. They are functional slaves. They do not have very many options, if any. It's shit minimum wage jobs, paycheck to paycheck living, and having to decide between pills and food. We treat our prisoners better than our poor in this country. At least in prison you get three square meals and basic medical care. Until a week ago, the poor didn't get medical care outside of prison. They're still going hungry.

Well, so do most of the top 1 percent you're talking about,

You know, having a 20 mil a year income means you can take regular vacations. Work short weeks. Take time off to see the kids. You know what having a 20 thou a year income means? Busting your balls 40-70 hours a week. No vacation. No sick time. Maybe seeing your family through bleary eyes as you collapse in your own bed. When I say "working to death", I assumed you'd be smart enough to realize I was talking about the quality of a person's life, not the quanti

Your main argument is how talking to the police benefits the society as a whole rather than the individual. Let's take a look at two recent high profile examples which contradict your point.

On the one hand we have Ross Ulbricht who was caught running Silk Road. The evidence that lead to his arrest is pretty solid as you can read in the criminal complaint. If he had cooperated with the investigation, he gets a reduced sentence. How is that fair to the society as a whole?

Well when I say that the defendant cooperating the police benefits society, I mean that the standalone act of his cooperating, benefits us (saves us some effort gathering evidence against him). Now, because that standalone act benefits us, we might offer him something in return, and after the quid pro quo is done, the entire net transaction might no longer be beneficial to us, if the quid pro quo was too generous. But that has no bearing on the original point, which is that the act of his confessing to the police would help us.

On the other hand we have Aaron Swartz. He clearly understood not talking to the police, but his girlfriend Quinn didn't, as a result subjected herself and Aaron to unnecessary harassment by the prosecutor. It costed their relationship, and eventually, Aaron caved under the pressure and took his own life. In Aaron's case, it wasn't clear what is the maximum extent he could be charged for what he did, but cooperating definitely made it worse. It's like the prosecution ripped him off by charging him 10x for his crime, and then generously offered a 10% discount as leniency.

If you believe what Aaron did was good for the society, you would have advised Aaron and Quinn not to talk to the investigators.

In the case of Aaron Swartz, I think the law he was being charged with was an unjust law (at least under the prosecutor's interpretation of the law and the penalties that they were seeking).

So of course that makes the prosecution's tactics look horrible, but the trouble with that line of reasoning is that every law enforcement method looks horrible, when the law that they're enforcing is clearly unjust. So you can't use that as the standard for judging a law enforcement tactic.

What if some guy Bob found himself in the same situation, except that Bob had robbed a liquor store, and the cops came to talk to him, and Bob lawyered up but his girlfriend Jane spilled the beans and ultimately got Bob arrested. Would it still look so unfair for the police to have used that tactic?

Your main argument is how talking to the police benefits the society as a whole rather than the individual. Let's take a look at two recent high profile examples which contradict your point.

On the one hand we have Ross Ulbricht who was caught running Silk Road. The evidence that lead to his arrest is pretty solid as you can read in the criminal complaint. If he had cooperated with the investigation, he gets a reduced sentence. How is that fair to the society as a whole?

On the other hand we have Aaron Swartz. He clearly understood not talking to the police, but his girlfriend Quinn didn't, as a result subjected herself and Aaron to unnecessary harassment by the prosecutor. It costed their relationship, and eventually, Aaron caved under the pressure and took his own life. In Aaron's case, it wasn't clear what is the maximum extent he could be charged for what he did, but cooperating definitely made it worse. It's like the prosecution ripped him off by charging him 10x for his crime, and then generously offered a 10% discount as leniency.

If you believe what Aaron did was good for the society, you would have advised Aaron and Quinn not to talk to the investigators.

Your skepticism is admirable, but Google is (mostly) your friend. For example, Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the U.S., or America's Most Obvious Tax Reform Idea: Kill the Oil and Gas Subsidies, or Happy 100th Birthday, Big Oil Tax Breaks. From the last article:

...The percentage depletion subsidy also increases when prices are high, at the same time that oil companies enjoy greater profit. It can even eliminate all federal taxes for independent producers.

Good point. I didn't realize hoarding was so bad in BTC. Your comment sent me off on a tangent to this article and it appears you're quite correct on that account. Even so, my question was intended as mostly hypothetical (hence the "some even slight"). It seems that if there's only a slight amount in circulation, the deflationary effects of any of the circulating currency being removed from the market (via seizure by authorities unable to crack the encryption) would have an amplified effect.

Authorities do not act against the banks in a major way for fear of the effects it might have on the market should one of the banks fail in consequence. If an authority wishes to seize private assets, however, they needn't worry about the deflationary effects of seizing currency since they'll easily come up with ways of getting that back into circulation. I'm just pondering whether encrypted and inaccessible-to-authorities-currency might not in some conceivable future be its own miniature too-big-too-fail.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/15/20026512-chinas-7-million-recent-graduates-compete-in-toughest-job-market-ever?lite

http://www.ibtimes.com/future-chinese-college-graduates-bleak-more-half-will-have-take-blue-collar-jobs-2020-1298875

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/05/why-chinese-college-graduates-arent-getting-jobs/276187/

No, it is not a proposal from the GOP, they don't have enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass such a measure. Meanwhile they do have enough to pass an ordinary budget, this is strictly a Republican extremist issue.

Some citations for my numbers:

http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/pre-existing/
http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/publications/reports/health-reform/pre-ex-conditions-findings.html

Notice that the non-government site posits a much higher number. I have more faith in the HHS numbers though.

Census data for the uninsured numbers: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb13-165.html

you're more likely not to be insured if you have a pre-existing condition

Citation please.

Logic. If they won't sell it to you if you have a pre-existing condition, then you're more likely to have a pre-existing condition if you don't have insurance than if you do. This is a direct result of Bayes theorem. Look into conditional probability.

And even if we accept your #'s as factual, why not consider the break down of them, to quote a book sitting on my shelf (Liberty & Tyranny (Page 107)):

Yup, that's a real impartial source there. ROFL. Actual studies, government or by a respected university (public or private) or STFU.

Also, use numbers that aren't most of a decade old and from before the worst financial crisis of the last 60 years.

One of the early features of Obamacare was expanding access to so called "high risk pools"... know what happened? Not a whole lot of people signed up: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/why-hasnt-anyone-signed-up-for-the-high-risk-health-insurance-pools/239833/

Mostly because people didn't know about it at first- it wasn't well marketed. But FYI, the Maryland plan was sold out for the year months ago. I tried applying for it and was put on the waiting list. And told not to expect to get it this year (I haven't).

Says you (if true)... but still ignoring the immediate secondary effects, not to mention tertiary items such as the loss of insurance by others due to the new law.

Not a single person will lose insurance due to this law. Blatant fearmongering.

Is that supposed to be an argument? You throw out some un-cited #'s... then make baseless judgments based on them.

you're more likely not to be insured if you have a pre-existing condition

Citation please.

And even if we accept your #'s as factual, why not consider the break down of them, to quote a book sitting on my shelf (Liberty & Tyranny (Page 107)):

In 2006, the Census Bureau reported that there were 46.6 million people without health insurance. About 9.5 million were not United States citizens. Another 17 million lived in households with incomes exceeding $50,000 a year and could, presumably, purchase their own health coverage. Eighteen million of the 46.6 million uninsured were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, most of whom were in good health and no necessarily in need of health-care coverage or chose not to purchase it. Moreover, only 30 percent of the nonelderly population who became uninsured in a given year remained uninsured for more than twelve months. Almost 50 percent regained their health coverage within four months. The 47 million "uninsured" figure used by [Speaker of the Houe Nancy] Pelosi and others is widely inaccurate.

that's 21 million people who are now able to get insurance who couldn't before.

You assume that they did not have insurance because they were unable to acquire it, but instead opted not to get it (such as you are doing by choice).

As they aren't independent, it's more likely to be 30 million.

Ahh more made up numbers!

One of the early features of Obamacare was expanding access to so called "high risk pools"... know what happened? Not a whole lot of people signed up: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/06/why-hasnt-anyone-signed-up-for-the-high-risk-health-insurance-pools/239833/

So 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 people.

That's a pretty dramatic positive benefit.

Says you (if true)... but still ignoring the immediate secondary effects, not to mention tertiary items such as the loss of insurance by others due to the new law.

Fudged #'s can be as dramatic as the fudger wants them to be... though that doesn't make them any more credible.

Yes, I find it quite amusing that America was schooled by Putin on exceptionalism.

Well, considering who named it..
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-joseph-stalin-invented-american-exceptionalism/254534/

How apropos. A False Comparison Between Terror Deaths and Bathtub Deaths

Same thing with Syria now. Same thing with Iran. The reason all these countries want more time to *negotiate* is because time is on their side. Wait long enough and it will be impossible to do anything about it. Iran will have nukes. Syrian resistance will be dead. N Korea will have even more plutonium to give to terrorist groups.

Here's what our hand wringing policy in Syria is forging for us:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/anti-americanism-spreads-in-syrian-refugee-camps/279538/

Long story short- the assurance that we lose no matter how it turns out; either Assad will stay in power, and we lose, or the rebels take over, and we lose.

Anyone who thinks Syria is just some place "over there" , like say former CIA director Gates apparently does, is a fucking asshole. There is no "over there' anymore. That's a side effect of something called "globalization". What happens in the geo-politics of far removed nations WILL impact us one way or another. A good way to make people hate us is to sit by while they're slaughtered for no reason. This isn't targeted drone strikes Assad is doing, it's mass murder.

Ditto N Korea. WTF are we waiting for? N Korea needs to be brought down through whatever means. How hard can it be to ruin this country? How hard a target is Pyongyang? We need to work out a deal with the Chinese , emphasizing that plutonium wandering the earth looking for a home isn't in their own long term best interests either. The squirt and his army have to go.

We can actually do this now or we can wish we'd done it later. If we can blow up Iran's centrifuge, if we can go into a gigantic fuckign tail spin and have repeated Constitutional crises over one day of terrorist attacks and we're a flexible democratic nation then guess how the Assad or N Korean political machine is going to fare under sustained American and allied firepower? That's the one thing we know how to do and we do well- ruin the other side's regime just like that.

  We need to fucking topple these dictators and remove the threat of proliferation of WMD now while we can. An no, this isn't Iraq II- we know they have them. With WRT to Iraq, ask Iraqis if they like the outcome of that war or they'd perhaps prefer to go back to living under Uday and Cusay. Because it seems to me that their opinions are the ones that matter.

Establishing democratic institutions once the dick-tater is gone is a multi generational a trial and error process . Ask Egypt. But they're as smart as anyone anywhere and they WILL work it out for themselves, in Egypt, in Libya in Iraq and in Afghanistan too. Over time, over a few generations maybe, but it will happen.

Terrorists take note: the globalization that permitted you to attack us, attacks back. you can't shut the flood gates against modernity and democracy once you open them, and open them you did.

But its implementation is flawed in a way that will prevent it from being a useful currency. Here's a couple good articles that explains a few reasons why (there are many such articles out there by various economists):

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/bitcoin-is-no-longer-a-currency/274859/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/?_r=0

I'm ready for a another attempt with the same goals as Bitcoin.

The prohibition on armed forces is written into Article 9 the Japanese Constitution of 1947, which states that Japan forever swears off war as a mechanism of foreign policy to resolve disputes. This was an article that was pressed in in order to ensure that Japan could never rise up militarily again - the Pacific campaign was incredibly brutal, and the Americans didn't see the worst of it (the Chinese and Koreans were treated worse). To this day China and both Korea's are still angry with Japan for what they perceive as a failure to sufficiently apologize for what the Japanese did earlier this century, and they would massively oppose any move by Japan towards returning to that state (i.e., getting a real military instead of the Self-Defense Forces they currently have).

Plus, the majority of the Japanese population supports Article 9 - the long-term suffering of the Japanese population via Allied air raids (read about the Tokyo firebombings that killed more people directly than the A-bomb attacks) punctuated by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has provided an inherent anti-war sentiment in subsequent generations of Japanese people.

In short, the US cannot decide for Japan whether to allow them to have an actual military - the US does not have the legal power to do so, and no one involved wants to eliminate this situation. (copy pasted from Yahoo)

The long;

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/89apr/defend.htm

...they arrest gay people simply for being gay, and have threatened to arrest gay athletes.

This man fled Russia because of the reaction to his paintings of Putin in lingerie: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/fearing-retribution-artist-behind-putin-lingerie-painting-leaves-russia/279181/

It's easy to take this as an opportunity to denigrate the US. The level of corruption is far worse in Russia and the civil rights protections a fraction of what US citizens enjoy.

If Snowdon has been Russian and escaped with FSB documents, he wouldn't be alive right now. In case nobody noticed, Russia assassinates inconvenient people.

It's just a shame that the U.S. with it's anti-freedom policies is no longer the obvious opposite to the dictatorship. There's enough doubt in the mind of U.S. supporters to subconsciously equate both countries as being against the people, despite the fact Russia is so much worse.

America used to be land of the free, home of the brave. A place to aspire to, a place to look up to.

That all changed because of an old man living in a cave who killed fewer people in September 2001 (3000) than died on america's roads in that same month (3500).

...they arrest gay people simply for being gay, and have threatened to arrest gay athletes.

This man fled Russia because of the reaction to his paintings of Putin in lingerie: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/fearing-retribution-artist-behind-putin-lingerie-painting-leaves-russia/279181/

It's easy to take this as an opportunity to denigrate the US. The level of corruption is far worse in Russia and the civil rights protections a fraction of what US citizens enjoy.

If Snowdon has been Russian and escaped with FSB documents, he wouldn't be alive right now. In case nobody noticed, Russia assassinates inconvenient people.

Actually, although I lean towards agreeing with the article, I think it sucks.
Here is a far better article about private schools and why maybe they are not good for society:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

So the plan is to have no accountability at all? There has to be some objective measure of performance. If the tests don't measure what is important for the kinds to know then change the tests.

"Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

Mostly agree that geography/demographics matters a lot. The article is terrible but she has an important point to make, which is summed up much better here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

Public school in America has declined as an institution because the wealthy have abandoned it and everyone thinks that's ok. But it's not. This is in part because the people who set public school policy happen to be wealthy, and therefore have no skin in the game. It's also because egalitarianism is all but dead as an American ethos. Level playing fields are for suckers.

If you're wealthy you look at the public system and decide you can do better for your kids. So you make a locally optimal choice which is perfectly reasonable in isolation. It's sort of an inverted tragedy of the commons.