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1Mb Broadband Access Becomes Legal Right In Finland
An anonymous reader writes "Starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection, according to the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Finland is the world's first country to create laws guaranteeing broadband access. The Finnish people are also legally guaranteed a 100Mb broadband connection by the end of 2015."
Bastards! I still only have 215 kbit internet!
Don't they always chant population density as to reason why many people are stuck with dial-up?
"Reasonable speed access to free porn" has now become a basic human right?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Lucky them.
Here in NYC, Time Warner just released a 50/5 Mb DOCSIS 3.0 plan... For a whopping cost of $99.95/month.
... but seriously, how is access to a broadband Internet connection a legal right? Somebody please explain this to me, because the article doesn't give any supporting logic.
I need air to breathe, food to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to sleep at night. As much as I enjoy working in I.T. for a living, I do not need Internet access to survive.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
In the convenience of your own home, or similar to the right to access clean drinking water you find in some places?
The wording is something to the effect of no household being more than 2 kilometres from a high-speed connection. Are we talking about a pipe to the house, or having to line up to use the communal pump and carry your buckets of bits back home with you?
I'll wait to move there until they establish the right to winters that don't drop below zero.
A right is something that cannot be taken from you, not an obligation on someone else to provide something to you.
If your rights are an imposition on someone else you're doing it wrong.
Politicians with too much time and not enough to do.
I'll wait to move there until they establish the right to winters that don't drop below zero.
Trust me, they never have fewer than zero winters per year.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Once you've found the time to RTFA you might also want to read up on the differences between legal rights and natural rights. Also might want to throw social rights in there as well, if you believe in those sorts of things.
It really is good to know from where your various rights descend.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Isn't this just an extension of the universal service obligations commonly associated with telephone, electricity etc.?
Having said that, I don't really see the need for 100 Mbps internet access for everyone - it's expensive to provide, and what very important services does it provide that 1 Mbps won't?
The summary left out an important word. The right appears to be ACCESS to a 1Mb connection, not a right to the connection itself. In other words, the gov't isn't paying for the broadband, you are. The gov't (and therefore the people) just pay the lawmakers and if you're lucky enough to work in the telecom industry, you're set for life.
If you have the legal right to a broadband connection, do you have the legal right to get a computer to use that connection?
I wonder how are they going to guarantee it to reindeer shepherds in the far north of Finland, living in the taiga good 100km away from nearest electric power...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
(My) first post, from Finland. It doesn't seem that this connection is supposed to be FREE - just that some companies are obliged to provide such connections (at least 1 mbps, the local definition of "broadband") throughout the country. In other words, you would still have to pay for it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any mention of there being no charge.
They can, and they want everyone to have access to this. Finland isn't the USA, they can afford to concern themselves with things that to you must seem derisory. Also, this.
I can only imagine what this will do to Finland's taxes.
lol what?? What does it have to do with anything? If they're going to make it a right that means everyone is supposed to get it already. I don't see what sort of impact making it into law would have on anything. Are you one of those nutty libertarian guys who's obsessed with taxes?
You just got troll'd!
It's easy to defend the rights to freedom of speech or of assembly. Those can be rationally derived from the fact of one's existence.
You might want to talk to some philosophers about that. Defining just what a right is is pretty difficult, let alone deriving specific rights from reason alone.
So this new right is just yet another form of redistribution of the fruits of productive labor...
It is indeed. So what's your point?
Lets hope you stay living in the US of A then.
Second that. People who come from disadvantaged families who want post-highschool education should have the opportunity to get it and not just be told "no, you've got to take and bare some responsibility on your own life".
If you're going to go back to fundamental existeance-based rights, the "freedom of speech" is also an artificial construct, which denies my basic human "right" to bash over the head anyone whom I don't like. In truth, all "rights" are a social agreement by which we can try and live in peace. Others in these comments talk about "right to shelter", whereas such a concept doesn't exist in primal society. You can construct your own shelter, and try and use it, as long as you're able fend off anyone else who'll come and try to take it.
As societal values shift, so does the implication of these socially-given "rights", which is why "Freedom of Speech", originally intended and implemented in social contract as a means of allowing people to express their own values and beliefs without fear of lethal repercussion, is now considered by most to mean "Freedom to invasively force my opinion on other people who don't care to hear it."
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
that our ~75% tax rate is funding the worthwhile entitlement of blazing 1Mb/s connection!!
Exactly. This isn't really such an amazing news that people seem to think of it - it just means that the rest of population will need to pay the extra costs in taxes that goes into building the infrastructure for the 1-2% of people that have some stupid need to live in center of nowhere.
So this new right is just yet another form of redistribution of the fruits of productive labor, and more Nanny Statism. Of course. And when you make getting the use of a dermatologist or an allergist a "right," this is exactly the sort of thing that comes next.
Here in Europe we like that kind of thing, YMMV.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
I can understand basic inalienable rights like food, shelter, clothing, and adequate healthcare. But a right to have internet access?
The way I see it is that if you take your list of inalienable rights and classify them as "human rights", you can classify health care, internet access, etc. as "societal rights" (those rights granted by the state for their citizens).
internet access being a right is an example of liberalism gone horribly wrong
Do you mean liberalism as defined by the various political parties and interest groups in the US, or Liberalism, generally? Either way, I don't think that term is useful or productive, especially when the context here is Finland.
In the US, the crowds shout "We insist on being free so don't dare try and give us any stuff", while in Europe, it's "Keep giving us free stuff or we'll bring you down!" Left-wing? Perhaps. But I suspect one side is getting a good deal, while the other ... well, what's the state of broadband in the US? ;-)
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Pony trekking or camping
Or just watching TV
Finland, Finland, Finland
It's the country for me
You're so near to Russia
So far from Japan
Quite a long way from Cairo
Lots of miles from Vietnam
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Eating breakfast or dinner
Or snack lunch in the hall
Finland, Finland, Finland
Finland has it all
You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored
A poor second to Belgium
When going abroad
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I quite want to be
Your mountains so lofty
Your treetops so tall
Finland, Finland, Finland
Finland has it all
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I quite want to be
Your mountains so lofty
Your treetops so tall
Finland, Finland, Finland
Finland has it all
Finland has it all
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
You must not be from Finland. This will go directly in to our already huge taxes, and will mostly be any good for maybe 1% of the population in center of nowhere.
That might be soon enough. Seems global warming is doing it's job, as last winter and a few before that there was maybe couple of weeks with snow - long gone are the >-20c winter days.
No, we usually have just two. The other is called "summer".
Uh, you are aware that the US government has regulations requiring telephone access to everyone, right? This seems similar.
No clue if this was part of the rationale, but I'd consider the internet a tool for both speech and assembly. It'd rather difficult to carry on a conversation or assemble if you're not using the same communication tools as everyone else.
People who come from disadvantaged families...
That's a BS red-herring. Work hard, keep your shit straight, and you'll be able to save up for school. People expect far too much far too soon, and rewarding people for coming from a "disadvantaged" home encourages them to stay "disadvantaged", and to teach their kids how to be "disadvantaged" so they can get free stuff from people who feel sorry for them too. And "disadvantaged" in this case usually means "irresponsible shitheads leaching off the government".
I know from personal experience, there is a section of my family that is "disadvantaged" - the sad thing is my aunt has finally (after 30 some odd years) realized she has doomed her two sweet grandkids to the same life she doomed her own kids to, and she is nearly powerless to stop the cycle.
Wake up people, supporting education with grants and scholorships and low intrest loans is wonderful, but this attitude that the "poor and downtrodden" need constant support to do anything in life just keeps them poor and downtrodden! They must have the right to try, the right to succeed, and the right to fail. None of those three should ever be forced uppon them, and success should never be mandated. Otherwise they will forever live in mediocrity at the expense of society as a whole.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Ah, nothing like writing about an article when you didn't even read the headline of the article in question. "Right to broadband" sounds so much better than "right to access to broadband" when writing a flame about nanny states.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I believe philosophers speaking from a non-religious point of view would agree there is no such thing as "rights". We don't have contract with the universe when we're born. People use the word "rights" to describe what they think they deserve to get simply for being born. The truth is, which ScentCone seems to miss, that "rights" are an artificial social contract determined by whomever you put in charge to determine such. If Finland's government has decided 1mb internet access is a right, then it is just as much a fundamental right as any US Constitution-based rights are for Americans.
I'm not disagreeing with you Homburg, just expanding on the points you raise.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
It's called student loans, scholarships and jobs. I know people who have managed to pay for there entire college education with nothing but scholarships and one job while going to college full time. Nowhere was any government paying for them to go to school.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It'd rather difficult to carry on a conversation or assemble if you're not using the same communication tools as everyone else.
In the US, the constitution says that the government can't stop you from speaking or assembling. That's not the same as saying that government (through confiscatory taxation) is under some obligation to provide the means by which to communicate or assemble.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That might be soon enough. Seems global warming is doing it's job, as last winter and a few before that there was maybe couple of weeks with snow - long gone are the >-20c winter days.
It never gets above -20c? Wow, Finland must be another one of those screwy places where global warming causes it to get colder.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Almost second that. People who come from *all* families who want post-highschool education should have the opportunity to get it and not just be told "no, you've got to take and bare some responsibility on your own life.
Otherwise you just screw the middle class.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I still don't see how it's supposed to raise taxes, but by all means don't let that get in the way of your ranting. And if you had RTFA (I know, I know..) you would know that this wouldn't be for remote populations.
You just got troll'd!
You really think you understand where negative rights end? Imagine the person who buys all the property around your home and fordids you to cross into his property. Let's see how well your "right to travel" works then.
If you consider property to be a "negative right", then certain other negative rights become merely theoretical and can be violated in practice by people owning the air you breathe, and the earth you walk upon. Even freedom of speech can be violated in the name of "intellectual property".
The distinction between positive and negative rights is to some extent arbitrary, as even the hardest core of negative rights need be protected and supported with positive rights that will ensure that other people won't abuse *their* negative rights.
Liberty is violated in practice when Equality is absent. Equality is violated in practice when Solidarity is absent.
TFA says it will not include 2,000 households living in (very) rural areas. Considering Finland is mostly forest except for some of the larger cities, this *is* for remote populations. ISP's have been already trying to cut their infrastructure in areas where density of population gets too small and tried to provide mobile internet instead (gprs, not 3G, so it wont get up to 1mbit)
This doesn't even make any sense for other than the remote population, because we can already get 100mbit's in the largest cities, and even 8mbit is the minimum in smaller cities.
Oh wow wait, he thought it was supposed to be free?? lol, what's free? No one's gonna buy your food, your clothes or pay your rent, so I really don't see why anyone would have assumed it was about free broadband for everyone.
You just got troll'd!
Someone in Finland hold up a router and proclaim to the *IAAA alliance and those pushing 3 strikes laws "you can have my internet connection when you can pry it from my cold dead hands"
"It's easy to defend the rights to freedom of speech or of assembly. Those can be rationally derived from the fact of one's existence. "
Hardly. You're merely accustomed to rights only referring to issues of Liberty.
Here in Europe we are also accustomed to rights referring also to matters of Equality, and social Solidarity as well.
A right to broadband access (even if it meant publically provided free broadband access) is no different conceptually than a right to a public free education - a right pertaining to Social Solidarity.
What the hell are you drivelling about?? Redistribution of the fruits of productive labor?!? Where the hell is that coming from? This is about ensuring that most (not all, RTFA for details) people in the country can have access to broadband. No idea what you understood, but you're not the only puzzlewit around here who got it all wrong and started raving and ranting.
You just got troll'd!
Is equal access to roads a right? How about waterways? Electricity? Water?
The internet is just the newest form of a utility. It's an information network that has become completely necessary to anyone in the modern world, just as telephones and televisions were before it.
When you guarantee that everyone has access to something, the costs per person go down. Way down. Because on many levels, socialization works very, very well, especially where infrastructure is concerned. Businesses have access to larger markets. Quality of life goes up. Everyone benefits, even after the additional costs of investment.
If you really dislike governments that much, move to somewhere where there isn't a powerful state. You'll also find that there isn't any cheap infrastructure, because there's no entity wealthy enough to provide the initial investment.
The right to vote is a "civil" right, meaning it obtains to those who live in cities, voluntarily. The right to vote derives from the right to leave a city, and deprive it of the benefit of one's residence. It is not a privilege. It is not granted by government. It depends upon no law.
Free citizens may demand their say, or representation, otherwise leave the polity if it is not honored. By leaving, one regains a complete majority vote in one's affairs. Those who live in cities by necessity rather than by choice, who are not residents, have no such recourse, and no such right. They have abrogated it to the whim of the government.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
How do I get Finnish citizenship?
Is this the most tech friendly law passed by any country ever?
This sig has been distributed under the Creative Commons license.
It's not even "Keep giving us free stuff", because this is just about guaranteed availability of access, not free access. It's not even "free stuff" when it comes to healthcare and the like, considering that the citizens have to pay taxes.
What they're really saying is "Protect and manage our basic necessities, or we'll vote you out of office."
I can understand basic inalienable rights like food, shelter, clothing, and adequate healthcare. But a right to have internet access? I can only imagine what this will do to Finland's taxes.
Because having food, shelter and clothing declared as rights all mean increased taxes, right?
Oh, wait..
Because it's the people that pay for any free stuff anyway.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Second that. People who come from disadvantaged families who want post-highschool education should have the opportunity to get it and not just be told "no, you've got to take and bare some responsibility on your own life".
They do have an opportunity to get it, for example by taking a loan. The issue not that they can't get it, but who pays for it, and you seem to want other people to pay for their education. Well, at least as far as the current USA system of public universities goes, the (cruel) joke is on the disadvantaged families because most of the college students come from middle class families and up, while their education is in part subsidized by the taxes that poor people pay as well. What a nice scam to get the poor to help pay for the rich kids' education.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
The overall tax burden in Finland is 43% of GDP - quite high but you get a lot of services for it, including healthcare and free university education.
I'm not really on board with the 1 MB now, 100 MB soon for all but there are some signficant positive side effects - job creation, ensuring companies
keep investing in their infrastructure, possible stimulation of R&D in high-tech.
Where I live, in Southern Ontario, my DSL is limited by the line quality of my neighborhood, which is poor ( both the lines and the vicinity ).
I can do nothing about it except move elsewhere or switch to the monopoly cable company whom I despise.
If there was a minimum service level with a date for service upgrades, I would have both hope and recourse. As it is, I'm left to choose
either the devil I have or the devil I don't want.
Let me add that my DSL is resold - so I'm actually limited by the power and policy of the telco. They can't be forced to do anything about
the line quality and their traffic shaping impacts me even though I'm not their direct customer.
I wonder how hard it would be to emigrate to Finland? Cold weather doesn't bother me although lack of sunshine does.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
As an American living in one of the oft talked about rural areas of America with access to only dial up (which gives me a whopping 28.8k connection due to signal quality), or over priced satellite, I am more than ready for something along this line to be adopted here. At a time when more and more information and services are being distributed over the Internet, it gives us rural people a big disadvantage. For example, I work rotating shifts in a factory and would like to go to college to get a degree eventually. Due to my shift work, a physical classroom is out of the question, admissions would laugh me right out if the campus, but an online program through a local and respected school could help me to get to that goal. An online college course is not an option when it takes >30 minutes to load a 10 second video or when you have to split a 50 mb download over 5 nights to get the data. I promise, if the shoe were on the other foot you'd understand where I'm coming from.
In my view, Internet access is more important and powerful than the postal and library services combined. Surely if the government provides those basic services through taxation, a basic Internet communications infrastructure should also.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It's been pretty amazing over the last few months watching Americans demand that the government NOT guarantee them affordable health care.
And the temperature during those winters is always above zero. Kelvin.
That's the sound of 20 Million Australians crying in unison.
I really don't see why anyone would have assumed it was about free broadband for everyone.
It's the Libertardians who believe that anything a European has that they don't have must be provided by the evil, socialist government at gunpoint.
On another note, does anyone read this as a giant "Haista vittu and the m00se you rode in on!" to the **AA and their attempts to push the "three strikes" laws?
If something is a legal right, I imagine it would take (at the very least) conviction criminal court before it could be denied to you.
Most people who currently don't have health insurance refused the health insurance offered at work,
You are sorely, sorely misinformed. Go to a shopping mall, theater, restaurant, etc. and ask whether they offer health insurance to their employees. Nine times out of ten the answer will be no.
We are going through all this nonsense for about 10-15 million people. This is overkill.
The restaurant industry alone employs 13 million people in the US. Few of them have the option to get health insurance through their jobs. Furthermore, even people with insurance are getting screwed under the current system: high premiums, high deductibles, recission, refusal to cover pre-existing conditions, etc. Insurance that won't cover you when you get sick is worse than no insurance at all.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Nope, it has nothing to do with liberalism.
And, no it won't raise their taxes. It might raise their broadband bills a bit, but given that they pay about $35/month for 100/100Mb/s they probably wont bitch too much about it. You see that's how this kind of regulation works. Law tells commerce to do something. Commerce does it and profits.
What good is the right to a broadband connection if they don't have the right to an unfiltered connection? In case you didn't know, a filter maintained by Finnish police that's supposed to block child pornography also blocks other content, including a website critical of Finland's internet filter:
http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2008-02-18.html
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
carry your buckets of bits back home with you
In my experience, but buckets are no good. Everything I've ever heard of that goes into a bit bucket, doesn't come out.
How about environmentally-friendly reuseable bit bags?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Time to move to Finland.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
that our ~75% tax rate is funding the worthwhile entitlement of blazing 1Mb/s connection!!
In Finland Taxation of an individual's income is progressive. In other words, the higher the income, the higher the rate of tax payable. In 2009 the income tax rate (national tax) for an individual is between 7%-30.5%. In addition to direct taxation there is also municipal tax in Finland. This tax is payable by an individual on his or her income and it fluctuates between 16% - 21% depending on the municipal authority.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
You know that they voted Socialist Government in right? They wouldn't mind giving their fellow poorer countrymen, women and children the right and the ability to access the wealth of education and information. Honestly I rather the taxes go back people than to a CEOs pocket You may called "Nanny Statism", the welfare state had strong positive effects to manage poverty in many developed countries, I believe it's a necessity. I maybe bit bias, I live in a country with extremely high taxes and I don't mind the taxes going to social welfare, because I use some of these benefits as well, ie universal health care. Honestly, under a libertarian government how will the poor survive without welfare? You may say the magic of the free market. But I call it Social Darwinism.
You can spin things any way you want, to make whoever you want look bad. The people who demand that the government not guarantee affordable health care understand that someone is going to have to pay for it, and would rather negotiate those payments on their own terms rather than trust the government to do it for them.
Then there are people like me, who believe that healthcare should be made available to people who are poor or have pre-existing conditions, but believe that the current plans will make things worse rather than better. I'm even willing to pay higher taxes to help cover these people, but the current plan doesn't explain how it will be paid for, among other problems.
Qxe4
Some folks believe that the Federal government is incapable of properly "reforming" health care / health insurance in this country. I would much prefer that each state attempt to tackle reform on their own, much like Massachusetts has done. That allows people to vote with their feet should they not agree with policy they firmly disagree with.
Personally, I think a lot of good would come from simply allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines and from common sense tort reform.
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
Oh, bullshit.
The state doesn't have anything to give. In the US, the crowds you imagine that oppose this sort of thing are saying "Don't take stuff from us, waste part of it on needless bureaucracy, then give the remainder back!"
Where exactly do you think all your "free stuff" comes from, anyway?
That allows people to vote with their feet should they not agree with policy they firmly disagree with.
Substitute "disapprove of" with "disagree with" in the above. I need to work on my proofreading...
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
Most of the arguments that make it on TV that are at least somewhat coherent go along the lines of "but government services are way more expensive!" You've made a similar argument in your first paragraph. Yet many (most?) of the world's government health care programs are cheaper and are consistently rated as providing better care than the current US system.
While your second argument, that current plans are good in principle but bad in execution, might well be true, it certainly appears that a large number of Americans are opposed to health care reform simply because "government == bad."
When do they pass the law for the right to everything else, I mean I would like a right to a paycheck despite not working, a right to house despite not paying rent, a right to a signifigant other provided to me by the state of the gender of my choosing.
Screw work, it is for suckers, I want to play video games all day and make the state pay for it!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I would like correct some misunderstandings that several readers seem to have after reading the article title. This does NOT mean that every Finn will be getting a government-financed 1Mbit broadband starting next July (doh..) but rather it's something of an obligation to the government imposed by itself on itself, to provide every single address in Finland (including the extremely rural Northern villages in Lapland) with the readiness to start using a moderate broadband connection by next July. The customers will definitely still have to pay their TelCo of choice a monthly fee for providing the actual service (actually, I personaly just renewed my contract with the Telco for 24 months - I guess they would have said if broadband was going to be a free commodity by next year :).
The assumed logic behind this is, that as more and more of government functions and media are moving from physical media to the Internet, the technical readiness to access the Internet from one's home should be a civil right, just like running water, a telephone line and snail mail delivery. After this, the government can start moving more of its stuff to the Internet (e.g. some tax-money financed television content produced by the national broadcaster is already available only on-line), and they can rest easy that no one will file a complaint that a broadband Internet access is something of a luxury product (like it was in the early 90's), or that the government is giving priority to the South where broadband access was a few years back more abundant.
Of course, in practice 1Mb connections have been available in all urbanized and even less-urbanized areas for several years. I think this law will simply mean that the government will pay the TelCos some subsidies to build the last-mile cable even in the far, rural North, and in the very few Southern villages that are still without 1Mb broadband cables.
by 2015 if the telcos have their way broadband in the US will be defined as 256kbs, and ill be hitching a ride across the puddle
I'm writing to my local politician. I want them to legislate the right to a flying car at a reasonable price.
What bothers me about this isn't the free internet. No, that part is pretty cool. What bothers me is the underlying political philosophy. What is a "right?" When do they start? Who creates them?
According to what Jefferson laid out in the Declaration of Independence, rights are inborn into the nature of each person. They are endowed to everyone by their Creator. The distinction here is critical. Rights are inherent in the nature of the human being and an integral part of human dignity -- they are not given by a government. A government cannot give or abolish rights. A person has rights regardless of what his government says. A government can only protect or infringe them.
(That said, a person can abrogate his own rights through the exercise of criminal activity -- this is why governments can licitly infringe on the rights of criminals by imprisoning them.)
Now, if someone has a right to a broadband connection, that means he has always had this right. All humans in all times and places have always had the right to a broadband connection, because this right is a part of their nature. Now, given the fact that broadband connections have not always existed, it's difficult to see how having a broadband connection is an inherent part of human dignity.
It bothers me that lot of Americans seem a bit fuzzy on the concept of rights and are departing more and more from the Locke-Paine-Jefferson school of thought. Ask any given sample of Americans about the subject, and I'll bet 95% of them would say that rights come from the government. A people who look to their government rather to themselves as a source of their rights is a people cowed by tyranny.
Finland is a little slow to the gate.
The government of Saskatchewan mandated that SaskTel has to provide high speed access to the population of the province within another year or two, whether it be via DSL, wireless, or satellite. The key point is not that it will be free, but available.
Pricing is actually pretty reasonable, too, though if you're stuck with a satellite link you'll never get around the "lag" for anything like gaming.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Don't they always chant population density as to reason why many people are stuck with dial-up?
While there are indeed areas where cable or DSL isn't available, I think you're seriously underestimating the number of people that use dial-up simply because they don't see the need for broadband, nor the point in paying for it. I think you'd be quite surprised at the number of people that would tell you "Look, I don't want cable. I check email and look at the occasional news website.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
But until the libertarian dream is realized (at least as much wishful thinking as marxist socialism) I'll take public welfare over corporate welfare any day :)
When did the work ethic and plain, simple personal responsibility become libertarian utopianism?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Redistribution of the fruits of productive labor?!?
Right. Somebody is paying for this "right." The people who work enough to afford it. If everyone worked enough to afford it, then there wouldn't be the need for the government to create a new entitlement that forces the people who can pay for it to buy it for everyone else who has a "right" to it. The productive people always pay the tab for the ones on the receiving end.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You say that in a mocking way, but you're actually right. Freedom includes the risk of losing as well as the possibility of winning.
And your only TRULY free if you can walk up to a random guy on the street, knock him out, put him in a cage, hook up electrodes to his genitals and make him the electricity dance for your amusement. If you can't do that, someone's restricting your freedom.
Just because "freedom" lets you do it doesn't make it good.
"Freedom to lose at life" to lose everything and sit cold and sick and hungry under a bridge scrounging for edible garbage while you die of a perfectly curable ailment. What's so great about that that makes it worth defending?
If that's what you get with freedom, I'll pass. Maybe some restrictions aren't so bad. Maybe a the ultra successful should provide a safety net for the ones who lose... sure its not perfect freedom anymore... but perfect freedom is an ugly bitch anyway.
Like anything you need to find a balance. Abolulte freedom in anarchy. Nobody sane really wants that.
Lets hope you stay living in the US of A then.
Second that. People who come from disadvantaged families who want post-highschool education should have the opportunity to get it and not just be told "no, you've got to take and bare some responsibility on your own life".
Please point out how anyone in the US, no matter how poor, has been cut off from post-high school education? What rock have you been hiding under?
Everyone is being pushed to go to college now, whether they're cut out for it or need it. The government is about to essentially nationalize all student loans. The government has very generous grant programs for college and vocational schools. You can be in the middle class and still qualify for them. You don't even neccessarily need good grades to get into college now, just a pulse and a way to pay tuition, whether it comes from Mom and Dad or Uncle Sugar. If you serve in the military, they'll also not only pay generous amounts for tuition (I know, I had the GI Bill from my service), but they'll also pay previous tuition debts, and, if you become a career solider, they'll pay for advanced degrees, no matter where you get into. Harvard? They'll pay it. Stanford? Yep, they've got that too.
There are zero barriers to getting an advanced education in this country. If you want to do it, the opportunities are boundless for even the most poor.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures.
Yea, those silly Europeans and Canadians are literally knocking down the doors to get a health care system like ours. HA! Give me a break, what planet are you on?
America is the only 1st World country where filing for bankruptcies for unpaid medical expenses exists. Think about that.
It's been pretty amazing over the last few months watching Americans demand that the government NOT guarantee them affordable health care.
Why should it be? The whole idea of limited government is that the government is limited.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
While your second argument, that current plans are good in principle but bad in execution, might well be true, it certainly appears that a large number of Americans are opposed to health care reform simply because "government == bad."
Yeah, and obviously the government programs can work if they are set up right, but Obama hasn't made this argument. He hasn't even come close. If he did, then healthcare reform would be a lot more popular.
Yet many (most?) of the world's government health care programs are cheaper and are consistently rated as providing better care than the current US system.
OK, you're conflating two issues here, the first is, why is US healthcare so expensive? and the second is Why is American healthcare so bad? They should be answered separately.
Healthcare is expensive because doctors get paid a lot ($500k for a heart surgeon), because of government insurance mandates (for example, some states require insurance to cover acupuncture and massage therapy. So when you buy insurance you're subsidizing others' massages), because of emergency room costs for uninsured, and because of improving coverage (new treatments like hip replacement surgery that you will be happy for when you get old), among other reasons. Some of these problems can be easily fixed. Why don't we focus on the easy stuff first?
Secondly the US healthcare system is not so bad, if you can get it. Yeah, we hear scary stories, but there are scary stories everywhere. Here's a story of a Canadian coming to America where the service was better. The fact is, if you need a doctor, you're already in a situation where things are bad, and sometimes problems happen, no matter what country you live in. If you are basing your opinion of the quality of US healthcare on our longevity rates, then you've fallen into a logical fallacy, because longevity rates are determined by a number of factors, including smoking, exercise, diet, murder rates, retirement home quality, etc. Going by cure rates, the US does better at curing some diseases than other countries, and does worse in others. Going by responsiveness to patient problems, the US does very well.
Overall the problem is significantly more nuanced than a lot of people understand, but there are some easy solutions available that will make things better immediately. Why don't we focus on these instead of trying to force through a reform of dubious value at a significant cost?
Qxe4
Given that the telephone wasn't invented until 1876 or so, I highly doubt that a telephone tax was enacted to finance the war of 1812. Whoever told you that, you should not trust them as a source of information in the future.
Qxe4
We should take care to differentiate between what the media is payed to spout-off, those who have been trained to regurgitate what the TV tells them, and what ordinary Americans actually think if you ask them for an honest opinion without spinning the context.
What we are hearing right now is the old money interests talking, not the American people.
America is the only 1st World country where filing for bankruptcies for unpaid medical expenses exists.
Canada, they of the Great-White-Northern single payer system, has a substantial medical bankruptcy rate. It's less prevalent in Europe (though it still exists there too) but only because they have an even bigger social welfare state.
The majority of medical bankruptcies come not from lack of insurance, but from long illnesses that result in lack of income.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I think you at least have to add the people who are already eligible for Medicaid (and similar) programs but haven't bothered to sign up to get down to 10-15 million people.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
It is a good deal to get things for free.
But economists tell us, there is no free lunch.
Politicians show us, government cannot give anyone anything, without first taking it away from someone else, and then skimming off the top.
It is a terrible deal to be forced by the full power of a national government to pay for everyone else's "free" things.
So you see, it's not free. You just used the government to rob someone else.
Here's the ultimate question:
How long can you rob someone before they stop bothering to get any more money for you to steal?
"Maybe a the ultra successful should provide a safety net for the ones who lose."
Welfare? Food Stamps? Medicaid? Public housing?
The poor get all of those. We have a safety net. So are you arguing for a safety net, or are you arguing that government should give people a living?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I would like heathcare **OR** broadband from a provider that **I** choose. Not something the government decides is "best" for me. Or decide that, oh, well, you smoke, and drink, therefore we're not going to treat your colon cancer, you need hospice, not surgery. Or how about the other side of the coin? I can't afford private insurance, so i'll get it from the Government. Seems simple right? Well, the old saying goes "no such thing as a free lunch". Your neighbor just paid for your colonoscopy. See, this crazy choice thing, not so bad! If i want better broadband, healthcare, corrective colon surgery, I CAN. You may be willing to pay higher taxes to help pay for the under-priveleged, but hey, i'm suddenly under-privleged too even though i make $50k a year, so... uh, thanks!
In my mind, a mandate that a business or individual provide a service to someone below cost is a form of tax (which is paid by the business' other customers or the individual).
It seems to make little practical difference if the government extracts money from the business or individual and then uses those proceeds to subsidize the "below cost" service or if the government just demands that the business or individual provides the service below cost.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
The vast majority of developed nations have already figured out how to make health care affordable, its really not some big mystery. Cover everyone, and then its uniformly affordable regardless of your present need. The principle isn't any different than social security, which has been rock solid for decades.
For what its worth, this doesn't even require that the government actually run the plan, it works out just fine as a private affair as long as everyone is covered.
Of course there is always the possibility that lame politicians will cave-in to the point where the effort will be doomed, but thats a different problem not related to the concept itself.
Well, that's not entirely true. Europeans are voting for more right wing parties, but that's mostly the European population is shifting than anything else. I doubt many Europeans have a problem with the services they receive. What they have a problem with is the services all those foreigners(defined as anyone with a different skin colour) receive.
Europe is having a bit of a difficult time of it at the moment because of a mix of things. For one a few countries let their socialism go a bit too far, beyond reasonable services for everyone and reasonable workers rights into the usual inefficiency and over protection which destroyed most of the US automobile industry a few decades ago. For another, a lot of them suffer from the same problems the US has in that they don't actually make anything that anyone else wants anymore and they're not entirely sure what to do about it. The UK built its entire economy on exporting financial instruments and is currently pretty much screwed.
Whenever things get bad people start getting a bit xenophobic and despite claims about the cosmopolitan nature of Europe, they're as guilty of it as the rest of us.
I live in Australia and we have a fairly reasonable balance between the two(which might be why we've currently got the best performing western economy in the world). There's reasonable protections for workers, but for the most part, employers have rights too(there's a few issues here that need to be fixed, but the previous government instead of trying to fix the problems tried to absolutely dismantle workers rights and got kicked out so it's a bit of a sensitive subject at the moment). We've got excellent public health care, but if you don't want waiting lists or want private rooms or things like that you can pay for private health insurance(in fact if the government feels you should have private health insurance and you don't they'll tax you extra to encourage you to get it). Again it's not perfect, but it works pretty well.
Having the government take care of every aspect of your life doesn't work. It never has and it probably never will. Having the government provide a safety net of basic services so that people who aren't Donald Trump get a second change is a very good thing. Getting basic infrastructure and services provided by an efficient central provider and available equally and fairly to everyone is good as well, not just for individuals, but for businesses small and large. Government infrastructure is the only reason that competing telephone companies and ISPs can exist, and the US is actually better at that at the moment than we are. Sometimes it's best to buy once instead of many times, and since the government is somewhat more beholden to its shareholders(everyone) than most corporations, it's not as bad having them as a single point of service.
Don't you oppress me!
How free are you if you're walking on eggshells all the time? It's the same freedom you have when someone robs you at gunpoint. You are perfectly free to die if you like.
Taxes in the U.S. are about the same as those in Europe once you add them all up, it's just they they get more in return.
The best choice is probably to cover basic healthcare universally. Second choice is to revoke all medical patents, remove prescription requirements, make the FDA a purely advisory body and repeal the controlled substance act and all related legislation. If society refuses to provide for my healthcare, it can at LEAST not stand in my way when I try to take care of it myself or contract with others to get it taken care of. That also means if I want to import drugs from Canada, it's my right to do so.
Note that the complexities of opening and running a business are not at all intrinsic to decent healthcare. In an ideal system, basic needs could be fully taken care of by government and practically all employment laws could then be safely repealed as unnecessary.
Fucking dumbass, if you had more than a half functioning brain you would have understood that it's never been about the government giving you broadband for free. Why would anyone even think that? That's a preposterously stupid idea. Fucking moron.
You just got troll'd!
If that's what you get with freedom, I'll pass. Maybe some restrictions aren't so bad. Maybe a the ultra successful should provide a safety net for the ones who lose... sure its not perfect freedom anymore... but perfect freedom is an ugly bitch anyway.
You only have one life. At the end of it, you can say one of two things, you were either a pet, or you made your own decisions. Freedom is the former, and socialism is the latter. No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
This is my sig.
If something is a legal right, I imagine it would take (at the very least) conviction criminal court before it could be denied to you.
Oh yeah I was initially thinking that, before the discussion was taken over by halfwits who only see what they want to see, maybe that means you can't get anyone disconnected off the Internet if it's a legal right, and hence get in the way of "Big Copyright" and their "pull the plug on pirates" strategy. Can't tell from TFA if that would be the case though.
You just got troll'd!
You can spin things any way you want, you won't make your system look good to me. I am an electrical engineer, French, and living in Japan (That's two reasons for my poor english ^^). Both France and Japan have a fairly extensive healthcare system which covers the poor and the elderly. Yet, as far as I can tell, I don't pay more taxes for healthcare than what I would have to pay to a company were I living in America. How is it possible? Well, people with higher salaries pay more (some might find this shocking, but it's a good way to provide some equity in a society), we don't have insurance companies that make huge profits, and practicians keep their fares reasonable. (I don't know for Japan, but in France what they can ask for a given medical act is pretty regulated). And that may be the main problem with Obama's plan: you cannot just put patches on the current us system. Well you can try, but will it work? And in the case you'd like to see what is to my eyes the clearest proof public healthcare works, I invite you to look at the Infant mortality rate on wikipedia. You can also compare it with a GDP map, and wonder why America with its superior GDP lets its children die.
Well it depends on your definition of remote I suppose. I still don't see how it's going to be translated into taxes though, ISPs are private companies and their infrastructure isn't paid by taxes now is it?
You just got troll'd!
The filter isn't mandatory and as such not all ISPs use it(not that it makes it much better). For example my ISP(Saunalahti) doesn't use it. Though they often operate in Elisas network which does use the list so if your connection makes use of Elisas name servers you'll be on an filtered connection. To the credit of Saunalahti, all it took was one e-mail to them and I had instructions to use their name servers to avoid the filtering.
If summer and antisummer come together, does it create spring, or death?
Table-ized A.I.
The right to freedom of speech. For one person to have freedom of speech requires that others refrain from violating it. For example, I can say what I wish, when I wish, and the only requirement imposed upon others is to refrain from stopping me and thus violating that right. The same obligations then extend from me to others. This is a negative right as it requires others to refrain from acting in violation of that right.
The right to broadband. For one person to have this right requires that someone else provide it. This is a positive right as it requires one person/group to act to provide for another (same applies to healthcare "rights", education "rights", etc).
The essential feature here is reciprocity. Negative rights naturally extend to everyone (if person A must refrain from violating the rights of person B, person B must refrain from violating the rights of person A. Otherwise you must assume that one person is "superior", i.e. has more rights, than another), while positive rights are one-sided (one person's "right" to healthcare imposes an obligation on someone else to provide it). The assumption of equality involves assuming that all have the same rights. Presuming that one person has more or different rights than another presupposes that those persons have different worth, and if you start making that assumption, the idea of natural, inalienable rights flies out the window in favor of arbitrary rights determined by an arbitrary group of people based on arbitrary standards. You can't have rights for some at the expense of others. In the case of broadband (or healthcare, or education, etc.), everyone has the same right to work to acquire the resources need to gain access to broadband (or healthcare, or education, etc.). Any other concept imposes positive rights, i.e. rights for some at the expense of others.
Let's analyze this based on what we've learned. You're implying that because he's hungry, this individual has been deprived of his right to food. If he has a right to food, then someone else has a duty to provide it, which means that the provider is a second-class citizen, a slave to anyone who can't provide for themselves. Because he's homeless, someone has violated his right to have a home. Same situation, the provider of the home is reduced to involuntary servitude (slavery), forced to utilize their skills and resources to provide for someone who can't/won't work to provide for themselves. Because he's sick and dying, he has been deprived of his right to medical care. This means that his doctor is his slave, and has to be forced to utilize his knowledge and resources to provide for him.
I'm not saying that if a doctor sees a sick or injured person that they shouldn't attempt to help them. I'm saying that he has no moral obligation to help them. I'm not saying that giving to a charity that helps provide shelter or job training to the homeless is immoral. I'm saying that requiring a person or group to provide for the homeless against their will is immoral.
Or, you can turn your life over to a government with the promises of all your needs being taken care of from cradle to grave. All you have to give them is... everything.
"Everything"? I live in Finland, were we are apparently taken care of by the state from cradle to grave. Have we given "everything" to the state? No. Sure, we pay taxes (last time I checked, USA has taxes as well). But I own my home, my car, I'm free to marry whoever I want... How exactly have I given "everything" to the state?
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures.
It's fashionable to bash the healthcare-system. But if I feel that the public health-care does not fit my needs, I'm free to use private services.
They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes.
We are? In fact, several polls in Finland say that people would be willing to pay more taxes for improved public services.
They're starting to wonder why starting a business has to be a bureaucratic nightmare.
It is? There's plenty of entrepreneurs over here. My mother was one. It does't seem that starting a business is a "bureaucratic nightmare". Anyone who wants to start a business can do so.
And they're starting to vote appropriately
The right-wing parties they are voting at the moment are more or less equivalent to Democrats in USA. Some of them would be left from Democrats.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
if you had more than a half functioning brain you would have understood that it's never been about the government giving you broadband for free
Right. It's about one taxpayer giving it to a non-taxpayer. There is no free. It's never free - it's just the government saying who pays the way for someone else.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Is equal access to roads a right?
No. That's why there are taxes on the fuel you burn when you use those roads. That's why there are toll roads. That's why some roads are paid for by the business that needs it to be paved into their warehouse area or housing development. That's why there are substantial fees in some places to get a license to drive or to renew the registration on the vehicle you'll use on those roads. Don't want to pay those costs? You don't have to. And you don't get to use the roads.
How about waterways? See above. Electricity? Water?
No. You have to pay for those. And if you build a new house or put up a new business, you have to pay a lot to have those utilities extended to your doorstep, if you want them.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Read up on the unique not-for-profit and for-profit corporations who 'own' IKEA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA
"everyone" does not get it. If your selling broadband in Finland it will be at 1Mb +.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Dude....we aren't free to take water through an airport checkpoint over here. How can ANYTHING you hear out of America amaze you?
Pretty sure you mixed up "former" and "latter" there, unless it was your intent to contradict yourself.
If you see anything faster than 512K, it is NOT available in your area (I live right between the head office of MS India and NIIT - a very large software company) and have exactly ONE provider able to give me a connection - and it's a government run "I-would-give-you-service-if-I-understood-this-darn-technology-thing" provider that charges me $20/month (they reduced the charges from $24/month yesterday) and works almost 25 days a month!
Has anyone found a reliable source for this information? I searched around the Finnish Government web site and found nothing about it at all! I'd like to see some confirmation from, say, a Government office before I really trust that this will be law!
.sig
I sit here an american in the uk watching a great news story about how the everyone in the uk is guaranteed a H1N1 vaccine and think that is awesome, i wish we had that in the us... oh wait the rest of the story is that apparently there are 2 different vaccines, one that is tested on pregnant women, and one that is not(which is also apparently not WHO approved) and you have not say in which one you get, even if you are pregnant, it is what ever the doctor has... sounds like a great plan, i would rather pay and know what i get....
Well, people with higher salaries pay more
This happens in America too.
we don't have insurance companies that make huge profits,
You clearly haven't investigated this issue much. Insurance companies tend to have a 3% profit margin. They are not making huge profits.
Both France and Japan have a fairly extensive healthcare system which covers the poor and the elderly
America does too, believe it or not. We have medicaid for the poor and medicare for the elderly. That's not what the healthcare debate in the US is about.
I don't pay more taxes for healthcare than what I would have to pay to a company were I living in America.
In France you have a 15% VAT, which essentially a sales tax but more hidden. Your income tax rates also seem to be slightly higher than America, but it's a little hard to compare because of the exchange rates. We have no tax bracket that goes up to 40%.
And in the case you'd like to see what is to my eyes the clearest proof public healthcare works, I invite you to look at the Infant mortality rate on wikipedia.
The difference between France and the US is less than 1%. Essentially they are the same.
In fact it's not clear at all, because you are quoting statistics without looking into the underlying causes. What is the reason for this difference? Is it because of a poor US health care system? The #1 reason for US infant mortality is congenital disorders, so maybe the problem is we're just too inbred. We have a lot of rednecks here, after all. So which is it? The healthcare system, or the inbreeding, or something else? You don't know, because you haven't checked.
Qxe4
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures. They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes. They're starting to wonder why starting a business has to be a bureaucratic nightmare. And they're starting to vote appropriately.
While politics here in Sweden have slowly become more right-wing (despite claims from the right that politics have shifted toward communism(!)) most people are perfectly happy with "socialized" health care and fairly high taxes. That's not to say that the right-wing parties don't pull populist "teh commie govarnments are stealings yuor monies!!" crap every now and then (and occasionally get elected (only to get voted out after the next election because they never bothered to fulfill their "sound bite promises" they kept talking about on TV, instead focusing on ideological issues like selling anything the government owns)).
Yeah, I'm expecting the next election here in Sweden to get very interesting, seems a lot of people who voted for the right-wing alliance last time around aren't too happy about the way the country is being run now that they're in power (they're pulling their old "omg we have four years before the pissed off populace kicks us out because we acted like a bunch of zealots! better hurry and get some extra free market zealotry in before then!").
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
""Thank god I live in a country where I'm free to lose my home if my wife or kid gets sick, just as our Founding Fathers intended."
You say that in a mocking way, but you're actually right. Freedom includes the risk of losing as well as the possibility of winning.
Or, you can turn your life over to a government with the promises of all your needs being taken care of from cradle to grave. All you have to give them is... everything.
Ok, either you're trolling or smoking something you shouldn't smoke. Anyway, I'll bite. You apparently claim that someone else paying your medical bill restricts your freedom. Please, explain how. You realise, don't you, that nobody will force medical care upon you, unless you're seriously mentally ill. You're also free to pay the bill yourself, if you want to.
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures. They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes. They're starting to wonder why starting a business has to be a bureaucratic nightmare. And they're starting to vote appropriately.
You're making this up as you go, aren't you? Firstly, please explain which "bureaucratic nightmare" you're referring to. You can't, because you just made it up, or you got it from Fox "news". Secondly, it may be true that conservative parties get more votes now than twenty years ago, but guess what! They all agree that American healthcare is a disaster and should be avoided like the plague. Oh and one more thing. Please don't refer to Europe one country. There are tens of countries in Europe, all with their own legislation, bureaucracies and healthcare systems. They have one thing in common though, all have better healthcare systems than the US does.
Lemon curry???
Yup, and Finland doesn't have just one winter per year, either. You have Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Summer up there.
I'm even willing to pay higher taxes to help cover these people, but the current plan doesn't explain how it will be paid for, among other problems.
How much more are you willing to pay? Have you donated that amount to your local hospital this year? Kudos if you have.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's been pretty amazing over the last few months watching Americans demand that the government NOT guarantee them affordable health care.
Fortunately, some Americans still get that we have a system based on negative reciprocity. Unfortunately, those who want a system based on positive rights won't go where they can easily get it. Back to fortunately, such a system will necessarily collapse of its own weight. Hopefully, when that happens it'll be re-built with more safeguards this time.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that America itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without expensive health insurance. They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much.(I have to cut about the bureaucratic nightmare to start a business because it's true...) And they're starting to vote appropriately. Compare health expenditures and life expectancies. You will wonder why american people pay so much for an average result...
The uk are trying to roll out 2Mb broad band for everybody. This sounds like a good thing until you try using the internet on 512kb which almost every building in the uk can receive even those right at the end of a line. It is also perfectly useable for youtube etc. I think this is purely a subsidising scheme for the telecoms company ( cough bt cough ) to upgrade all it's lines. Effectively the users pay for the service and give the company that supply the service the funds to create the service that allows them to charge them at a higher rate whether they need it or not. (Just try getting 512kb broadband in a built up area theses days...possible but I bet you'll end up on a 2Mb package anyway). All a bit useless really if the house owners don't have a laptop / desktop that will work in the next 5 years ( due to vista and xp no doubt not being supported and unable to display the latest .Net advertising schemes that most websites are covered in). So the next great idea? Free laptops for everybody! Paid for by the tax payer!
If I want a laptop and broadband I'll buy one. If somebody is on the dole and can't get a laptop. Help them get a job dont keep giving them free handouts so they can buy a massive telly an xbox a wii and play online so they can sit on thier bum not looking for jobs whilst still getting job seekers allowance.
Sorry just realised I was ranting.
You're exactly right. Our healthcare system was in pretty good shape until the early 70's. A healthy young man would pay $25/yr for major-medical health coverage. Adjusted for inflation and cost of providing care (MRI's, etc.) it's still 6x or so what it should be.
What changed was Medicare and the HMO act in the US. The government began setting prices, not the market. An inpatient aspirin can run you $100 and the government will pay it. So, everybody else has to also.
Yes, US does have a higher infant mortality rate that brings its overall rate down. But when you separate them, the US does better on adult mortality. With Europe and Japan's GDP, why do they let their elders die? The US has some geographic challenges which may be implicated with infant mortality. It also has extreme poverty, created by entitlement programs that cultivate a sub-culture of non-achievement and laws that drive poor young people into crime and broken families (see "Good Intentions" by Walter Williams on YouTube). If we could fix those problems and bring up the infant mortality rate, the total rate would be among the best in the world and better than Europe's, not just the adult rate. It's probably not a coincidence that European leaders and elite often come to the US for treatment. It's amazing the US does as well as it does given the artifical price inflation in the healthcare (non-)market.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures.
They do? Why haven't I seen any of these ponderings? Most comments that I see are more along the lines of "I'd rather walk on bad pavement than cut any more from social services" or perhaps (if we are talking about right-wing supporters "we demand the right to get more of our money back when using private practisioners". BTW, I'm a Finn, with lots life spent in other EU-states. Posting as Coward to keep moderation.
I'd be willing to pay 10% of my salary. However, I should mention, I'm not willing to pay 10% to support the current healthcare proposals. And the hospital hasn't asked me, so I'm assuming they don't need it.
Qxe4
You do realize US spends more, way more, on health care per capita than Finland does, right?
Other countries have had such legislation for a while now. For example, Switzerland: http://www.heise.de/netze/meldung/Breitbandzugang-fuer-alle-Schweizer-162094.html . I'm sure there are more.
I just tried all the links myself and they work just fine and peachy. As said, the filter is not mandatory and I am personally not aware of a single ISP who did actually use it.
People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures.
Really? Where?
Shrug, I consider myself free because I can find a video of just that on the Internet and not have to risk doing it myself :/
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You only have one life. At the end of it, you can say one of two things, you were either a pet, or you made your own decisions. Freedom is the former, and socialism is the latter. No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
Why you think this kind of freedom is good? Whats the goal?
Wonder when you guys will learn that its not free and you're actually paying for it while at the same time giving up control to someone else who has no real interest in being efficient.
I'm not really against healthcare reform in America, but your comment
is exactly the problem. If they keep giving you free stuff, you'll bring the government down anyway, and yourself with it.
We'll stick with being free and taking responsibility for ourselves, you go ahead and expect someone else to spoon feed you everything ...
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Actually, Elisa dropped the filtering some time ago. Now it's available as opt in service.
If I recall correctly, only the smaller ISPs have the filtering in place.
In free countries, how did the powerful become powerful? Have they done something you couldn't do (honorably)?
In Germany at least, most became powerful by inheriting, as researched in the study "Repräsentative Analyse der Lebenslagen einkommensstarker Haushalte" by the German Institute for Economic Research in 2003.
No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
Odd. In my perfect free anarchist state, someone was STILL in a cage, and it wasn't a particularly nice one. Being free doesn't eliminate cages. Because the other guy was "free" to put him there.
Freedom is the former, and socialism is the latter. No matter how well intended the chains, how nice the cage, you are still wearing chains and living in a cage.
You are confusing basic society with socialism. Its in a societies own best interest to take nominal care of all its members. That's not socialism. It's simply a pragmatic method of increasing over all happiness, reducing disease, reducing crime, increasing employment, increasing productivity, etc. Taken to an extreme it can become socialism, but basic health care is no more extreme than public education or a centrally run military.
Natural rights are legal rights.
If you were to crush society as it exists today and just let humans ferment for a few hundred years, I doubt many if any of the "natural rights" would exist any more.
Right to free speech? Only if you can manage to keep yourself from getting killed by those who didn't like what you just said.
Right to bear weapons? All right, that'll probably be around.
Right to be free and not a slave? Doubtful.
Right not to be raped? Doubtful.
Right to travel? Maybe, but if you encroach on someone else's territory, I'd expect you'd need to exercise your right to bear weapons.
Just because someone decided that something should be a "natural right", doesn't mean it's something that'll remain so without a vigilant society maintaining it.
What good is the internet if they don't have the right to a private connection? blah blah blah Echelon
Look, I've run into that filter exactly once, which caused me to shrug and move on. It blocks child porn, some regular porn that looks like it might be child porn, and some guy's blog that contains a list of everything that is blocked. Yes, there is an ideological problem there, and yes, Finland isn't perfect. But are you seriously raising the question over whether having a broadband connection is any good if you can't access, what, a few hundred non-free porn sites and a single whiny blog?
It seems Switzerland beat Finland to it: http://www.intomobile.com/2009/10/14/finland-becomes-the-first-country-to-make-broadband-a-legal-right.html (scroll down to the update).
There's a national TV license fee in Finland which everyone who owns a TV has to pay. It has been customary that large part of the population does not pay the fee despite owning a TV. It's a national sport to tell the license inspectors to fuck off because they have no right to enter your home to find he TV unless you give them permission.
However, nowadays, increasingly large part of the population, including me, does not own a TV and welcome the impotent and frustrated inspectors to peek behind the curtains and sample your laundry basket in search of the elusive television.
SO!
Now there's plans to impose a "Media license", mandatory to every house hold no matter what. Sounds unfair? Have to pay some kind of license for nothing you have control over? No way to avoid? Which provides you with nothing you want? So thinks majority of the population. No-one wants this shit but everyone assumes it will be strong armed through the legislation by YLE, the national state owned "public service" TV and radio network, who is presumed to get all the benefits of this new fee.
Pretext!
This legislation seems to be pretexting to provide a mandatory service for the mandatory fee. What if I don't need or want the shitty 1MB mandatory tube? No matter, it is provided, so pay up or we'll break your legs.
Well, shit.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Shh ... don't tell them that. They'll just think we're liberal, commie bastards.
You're confusing (or are perhaps unaware of) positive and negative "rights"...
No, I'm not the least bit confused. If anything it is you who are confused, or worse... you are deliberately presenting a false argument.
This means that his doctor is his slave, and has to be forced to utilize his knowledge and resources to provide for him.
The moment you break out the term "slave" you lose ALL credibility whatsoever. The doctor is not his slave in any rational sense.
The doctor doesn't have to show up for work. The doctor doesn't even have to be a doctor. The doctor is not a slave. If he doesn't feel like caring for patients he can quit any time he likes.
The ONLY actual forced imposition on anyone is the taxation used to fund these programs. And sure, you can wave your arms all you like about how your a "slave" in your own country because they make you participate in funding the maintenance of the military too, and the police, and the fire department, and water/sewage, and public schools, and highways, and so on... but I'm not having any of it.
I refuse to be drawn into a debate with any idiot who thinks even the basic trappings of society amount to slavery.
They aren't slavery any more than hiring a contractor to do your kitchen is slavery. The fact that he now has an obligation to you doesn't make him a slave. Participating in a society is a social contract, with obligations to maintain and improve that society. That's not slavery.
Its a hyperbolic misapplication of the word to the point of absurdity.
According to who? Care to cite sources?
I'm well aware what I get for my 21% tax. I'm terrible at micromanaging my own life, so I'm happy that my government provides for such luxuries as health care in case I have stroke.
Also, many people who whine about high taxes around here, never bother to actually read the pamphlet which comes with the pre-filled tax form and consequently pay hundred if not thousands of euros more than they should. Why? Because they are too lazy to study what in their life is tax-deductible.
Bot Assisted Blogging
As a European (British) I can honestly say, wtf? British people aren't questioning the NHS, recently they were busy defending it from viscous and inaccurate attacks by US news channels and one deranged fringe conservative politician whose views were disowned by his own party.
Most Europeans don't worship their government in any way, which is WHY European governments offer such services - in order to justify their existence. We see far more unquestioning loyalty (from the supporters of the party in power anyway) from Americans than we do over here you know.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Actually, if your read some commonly used definitions of socialism, what you described IS socialism. It just isn't what the American right has made out socialism to be - i.e. a synonym of Stalinism.
Something as basic as teaching your children to share rather than snatch could be considered socialism. In fact, in their early years children are taught many socialist ideals - sharing, caring for those less fortunate, not being greedy - and then they become adults and suddenly get told 'right, every man for himself! grab what you can!'. I think the dissonance of this could be the cause of a great deal of malaise in the young (although I've no evidence for this right now; I literally just thought of it).
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Where do you get your information about what us in Europe think about our health care systems?
I live in Europe and have lived in (and still have friends in) 3 countries and you can be pretty damn sure nobody wants universal coverage to be dropped or have the health care system fully privatized like in the US.
As a mater of fact, of late there has been a backslash against the moves some governments were making towards more privatization of health care after it became clear just how much of a fuck-up the US system was (highest expenditure per-head for worse results than most other rich nations) and just how risky it is for the private sector to manage anything important (just recently, we all saw just how well the banking sector works).
In the UK (where I live now), people will bitch and moan about the low value-for-money of our health care system (just like in most other countries I lived in before: people always want more for less). This does not mean that anybody around here wants the NHS to be privatized (except maybe for one or two of obscure politicians who are trying to climb to fame by giving interviews to Fox telling they're audience what they want to hear - those guys are seen as a bit of a joke around here) - all the arguments I heard go around how the government need to improve and do a better job with nary a hint that anybody thinks that the private sector should replace the government.
I'm afraid that on this side of the pond, the political ideology that says that "Any Government Is Bad" simply does not exist.
The idea of negative and positive liberty is not universally accepted, and in fact contains very deep flaws.
Firstly, negative liberty requires enforcement, and that enforcement is not free. Everyone pays taxes for a policeman to protect their property, but clearly the millionaire with his mansions gets more out of that arrangement than the minimum wage stiff living in a rented flat. So what appears to be a negative liberty is in fact identical to a positive one. You can do this for literally any 'negative' liberty.
If you want a more detailed look at the failure of 'negative liberty' to live up to its ideals, I can recommend 'The Trap', a series of three documentary films by Adam Curtis. Seeing as AFAIK it has never been released on DVD, you can torrent it with a clear conscience.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
What this means is that nobody can cut you off for whatever reason.
If you do not pay for the broadband, then can sue you, then can claim damages, but they can not cut your internet line.
You can download terabytes of illegal porn, and they absolutely must not break your internet connection.
Just like wattery supply. It is a basic human right. As is internet in Finland, from now on.
Don't worry, be happy!
There's no point arguing. Americans have deluded themselves into thinking that because we, pinko commie europeans, let our governments take care of certain centralized matters such as healthcare that somehow there are massive bureaucracies etc. involved. The fact that here we still have multiple insurance companies competing to give us better healthcare at a lower cost is conveniently ignored in the rhetoric.
And yes, we're seeing a shift towards the right lately, unfortunately mostly related to "the evil furriners". There have also been a lot of experiments with privatizing various industries(public transport, healthcare, telecom, etc), which usually leads to a net increase in cost for the customer.
However, we're less "free" and living in a gilded cage which is about to get the cushion pulled out.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
As someone living in Finland, I feel this is a good step forward. 1mb here is considered bottom-tier broadband, but that doesn't mean it's useless, far from it. We have a solid infrastructure where I live (Helsinki), and 100mb has been available for close to a year. I have had a 24mb connection at home through one of the major ISP's for more than a year now. We don't have bandwidth caps, I can use all I want or need. I achieve download speeds pretty close to rated speeds most of the time. And it costs less than 50 bucks/month. The only reason I haven't upgraded to 100mb is it would mean a new ADSL modem (my current one tops out at 24mb) and I honestly can't see a need for something faster. I don't torrent music/movies, just normal usage. Occasionally I download a new Linux distro, but that's about it for my high-bandwidth usage. But even we are behind Sweden in this area, they had 24mb at least 5 years ago, and due to government subsidy they paid only about 1/4th of what I pay today for the same speed.
and would rather negotiate those payments on their own terms rather than trust the government to do it for them.
Why not trust the government? the government will achieve better prices than each individual.
Please check the date on that article. All of the sites that were claimed to be blocked, are no longer blocked (I know, I checked them all just now, and I live in Finland). Yes, there were some problems in the beginning when they implemented the filtering. And I absolutely do not agree that filtering should be allowed on the net. But I can say truthfully, I have never seen a site actually blocked by this filtering.
Let's analyze this based on what we've learned.
First and foremost, we've learned that you are an ass who uses emotive rhetoric to promote his agenda.
Secondly, we've learned that (at least) the 5th, 6th and 7th Amendments to the USA's Bill of Rights are "Positive Rights" and, therefore, all citizens of the USA are "second class citizens, slaves".
Finally, we've learned that all "rights" are, in fact, completely dependent on an individuals ability to enforce them and therefore not "natural", "god-given", or in any other way inherent.
Uhm, although I risk with this post as being marked as a commie, I assure you beforehand that I have trust in a free market.
Ok, I'm going to denounce every single statement you made and it would be nice if you could be a bit less partisan and try to see it from 'our' way.
Freedom includes the risk of losing as well as the possibility of winning.
Indeed, and it includes the possibility of sharing our losses and our winnings, and deciding to have an elected government to control these parameters. Thus it allows those under a more powerful government to take more risks, thus innovate more while keeping our streets relatively clean of the down and out.
Or, you can turn your life over to a government with the promises of all your needs being taken care of from cradle to grave. All you have to give them is... everything.
Wow, making a relative statement is not one of your strengths. Just as in your idealized free market system, we also negotiate about the amount of income we spend on taxes. Besides, many of our taxes spend flow back into the economic quietly and quickly. I don't give my government everything, just about 50% so I can keep living in relative equanimity.
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement.
You're late with that statement. Here in the Netherlands we were starting to question in the middle 90's. Right now we're actually seeing the damage done by blatantly privatizing many of our public sector and many are doubting the motives of our right wing.
People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures.
We're also wondering what the result is of an oligopoly marketplace in pharmacy and medicare without strict quality control. We are wondering how our residents can insure themselves sufficiently (and relatively independently) against malpractice and how we will provide security to an increasing individualizing (fragmenting?) civilization.
They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes.
We practically invented taxes. Right now we wonder why we have to pay for extensive media campaigns by our medicare providers and insurance companies. Also, we are wondering why none of the players in this oligopoly are providing sufficient data to make a well informed decision. Nor is the free-market working here, since nobody is stepping up (yet).
They're starting to wonder why starting a business has to be a bureaucratic nightmare.
In any one of your large organizations, starting a new subdivision is just as much a large bureaucratic nightmare. If you can't handle the bureaucratic stuff, maybe you should hire someone to do it for you, or you should have paid a bit more attention during business classes. Nevertheless, this point is a very interesting one, as information technology should prove to be a welcome hand to help newcomers to settle in the market.
And they're starting to vote appropriately.
Here in .nl we happen to have a handful of different parties who have an intricate underlying network. According to demand, our political frameset moves slightly to the left or right side of the spectrum (or any of the other dimensions). In this way we avoid extremism, which, unless you're an anarchist, you must agree with me, proves to always destroy more than it creates.
Many of our political parties are open and with enough intelligence, one can climb the ranks in those even when one does not own 10 oil-firms.
So, tell me, when one can only vote for one out of two media-crazy parties, when ones opinion on these parties is more influenced by ones neighbors or coworkers than by intellect, tell me, what does actually constitute 'appropriate voting'?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Someone is feeling sorry for him- or herself...
This is a replacement signature.
Freedom includes the risk of losing as well as the possibility of winning.
Oh brother. We have a name for that in here ... it's called "brain washing". People ARE the state. The state must also help them in times of need. We don't want a society full of greedy people that think only about themselves. This is a country and we all have to make for it. And "making for it" in here, doesn't mean putting flags in our window and joining the army. It means contributing so that the other can also feel happy to live here. After all, do you want to make us all a favor and compare the murders and violent criminality in USA vs Europe? C'mon, do it ... amuse us.
Or, you can turn your life over to a government with the promises of all your needs being taken care of from cradle to grave. All you have to give them is... everything.
Everything? The state in here pays for most of my education (not all, and "we the people" are against that, since now we have to pay €980 per year in the faculty and we are not liking it a bit). The state pays when I need to get medical treatment. The state pays (for some time until you can get another job) when I get fired or my company goes bankrupt. The state pays for my retirement salary. In return I pay taxes! But I don't have to pay medical insurances, I don't have to make retirement plans. I pay directly to the state and the state pays directly to me ... no, we don't feel the need to make some Insurance companies CEO rich with our money for them to act as a middleman in a system that doesn't need a middle man. It's just another scheme to make the rich richer and you in your country are pretty good at falling for it.
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures. They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes.
Wrong. 1st, actually in my country (Portugal) and in Greece, we turned left now. In the other countries that turned a bit right. They turned right not because they feel they are paying to many taxes for getting all that you describe ... they turned a bit right because they are starting to question all the benefits they are giving to illegal immigrants. And I cannot say that they are wrong, because after all, one thing is contributing to someone that is in your country to develop it-self and the country, and plans to have a future there and to make it a better place to their children. Another is to provide all that to people that just come there to get the most out of it and then leave after some years. And all the security problems that we are having because of that. In my country for instance, it's pretty easy for a foreigner to immigrate here, they just have to get a job and they can stay. After 10 years of work, they get nationality. But I don't want them, unless they are legal or legalize themselves immediately! After all, give me one good reason for someone not to be willing to be legal if they can, unless they intend to participate in criminal activities or not to have a job and stay begging all the time in the streets?
They're starting to wonder why starting a business has to be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Wrong again. You can create a business here, in less than 1 hour in the internet ! I'm quite sure it beats your country hands down in that.
We actually have those. We just use Kelvins to measure them :)
Where did you pull that 60%? Income tax caps at 60% and is progressive, thus majority of people pay 7-30% of income tax. Even if you include VAT from goods you buy, you wont get to 60%.
- Raynet --> .
I am not sure what you count as Southern Finland, but I live 100km north from Helsinki and we have had plenty of -20C winter days and -30C is not that unusual.
- Raynet --> .
the right to enjoy the freedoms of society. with your stupid, stupid, 200 year old gop logic, we should as well let go of human rights for all, and make them so that only the ones who can pay for something can enjoy them.
get a few brain cells. we arent living in 1800s. the definition of 'basic' conditions for life in 2009 are much different from 1809. and, corporations are invented to benefit mankind. not mankind to benefit corporations.
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Most US welfare recipients get off welfare within 1 year.
But according to some, we have a huge "welfare state".
I'm telling you, there's something in the water here that's making 30 percent of Americans complete morons. Or maybe it's something being broadcast over the airwaves.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My liberty ends where yours begins. Perfect freedom is to do whatever the fuck you want UNLESS you are directly causing harm to another or impinging upon their freedom, so your bullshit hypothetical about punching someone in the face is a straw man of the highest order. When will people stop making utterly asinine situations/analogies and just talk about facts?
despite not being 'an american', you are so 'american' in your viewpoint that you cant see anything from out of the box. therefore, i will take you as 'an american' and i will approach this from 'an american's' viewpoint so it will pass valid for you and all those 1800 AD & mccarthian fools out there :
I also wonder how "Europeans" are going to act when their federal government decides to take over all of it's member states health care and forms an all encompassing, all powerful, cross border police force, constantly expands into it's member states sovereignty and neighbouring countries lives and all the other lovely goodies that inevitably come with a huge central government..
in contrast with you 'americans's stupid, stupid, outdated, brain dead phobia of 'government' that is reminiscent of 300 years ago, european people arent afraid of government, and know how to use the government to better their society.
all of the member states of eu have to implement standards mandated by eu already. thats why healthcare and everything else in eu countries are top notch in the world. because the standards are mandated by an independent, almost impossible to bribe higher organization, no company in no country can bribe the local government and prepare grounds for sucking the blood dry of its citizens for its profit, in contrast with america and its healthcare (and other) lobbies.
we have all that schizophrenia coming from americans because their founding fathers have incorporated a lot of central government phobia into their constitution and their culture, and the following centuries of 'conservative' administrations has brainwashed entire nation even more to the point of paranoia.
however the government their founding fathers were afraid of was the king's government, or the possibility of any form of king establishing itself in a democratic government (much like caesar, napoleon or other petty dictators), so they tried to minimize the power of government as much as possible to avert that possibility.
but one thing they missed - corporations sufficiently large are little different than feudal kings in that when their reach of products and market share gets larger, they practically dictate the lives of the people. and that's totally leaving out bribery of government officials, or granted monopolies.
they missed this, because at that time no such thing was even conceivable. the corporations that existed and were big enough belonged to kings, and were seen as part of king's government, and all the other corporations and private initiatives were the size of mid sized shipping companies, small manufactories and whatnot. monopolizing the life of an entire nation by companies not belonging to a king's government was inconceivable.
today it is not the case. the corporations have more power than countries. in the list of world's 10 biggest economies, there are as many corporations as there are countries.
a corporation, no matter how big its shareholder base is, is a MINORITY private interest. NO different than feudal nobility, no matter how large it is. it will seek and protect its OWN interests, at the expense of EVERYONE else, IF let be. case in point - the unbelievable wall street SCAM, and alan greenspan's clueless excuse in the form of 'i cant understand why corporations didnt regulate themselves'.
so, 'letting corporations be' is little different than letting nobility be, in today's terms. priviledged minority who have been able to get to the top dictating the lives of everyone else through various means.
the only tool that can regulate the country so that no minority group (nomatter how large they are, they are still minority compared to all nation, and then the world) can claim partial sovereignity, is GOVERNMENT. that is so, because it is an overseeing power that is above every other organization, every citizen has equal share in it, and it has all the resources a country can muster.
even governments can be c
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if, you buy a fucking monopoly license that encompasses the lives of ALL people in an area, you are fucking obliged to fulfill the needs of people anywhere. it is the public that is selling that monopoly right to the company. therefore, company's obligation is to public. if it cant come up with a profitable yet acceptable scheme to cover everyone in its monopoly area, it shouldnt have fucking bid for the license in the first place.
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Too much porn in the winter months can do that.
But Finland does other things well:
* Beherit
* Demigod
* Belial
* Demilich
* Amorphis
* Sentenced
* Adramelech
Futurist Traditionalism
What about when the NHS was denying glaucoma patients a drug that would save their vision because they had decided that you had to lose one eye entirely to it before you could get the drug?
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
A right is a legal protection from the power of the government. So, if you have a "right" to a broadband internet connection, that just means the government can't take your broadband away from you. Which is, I've got to say, something I've not heard about being a problem in the USA neither.
By analogy, the "right to keep and bear arms" doesn't mean the government is required to start issuing rifles and ammo to the populace. It just means if you've got one, they can't take it from you.
An entitlement, on the other hand, is something that somebody is obligated to give you. In this case, it seems that the government of Finland is going to pay for stringing cables all over the country -- except for "about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country", as per the article. Actually, the article is sort of vague about exactly who pays for what. . .
The concept of freedom revolves around negative rights
Bullshit propaganda from libertarian play book. Your construct of negative versus positive rights is self-serving bullshit. When you stop forcing me to pay for policemen to protect your property and courts to enforce your contracts I'll start taking you seriously. (Or maybe not. But I'll at least show some respect for the consistency)
Alan Moore would disagree with you... oh wait... he's not sane. nevermind.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures. They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes.
Well, sure, the morons are.
The intelligent ones, the ones that understand the concept and consequences of the First Law of Thermodynamics (a.k.a. you can't get something for nothing, you fucking tool ) don't have a problem with taxes.
1. Because a private health insurance company would NEVER do a thing like that...
2. AFAIK, what you describe hasn't actually happened. The closest thing I can find in the news is this:
http://tinyurl.com/yjmn6s5
Which is a far cry from what you were claiming. Sounds to me like you were just mindlessly parroting anti-NHS propaganda. So why don't you just crawl back under whichever stone you came from?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The only large European country I can think of that has toll roads is France, the usual example of American right wing idiots claiming socialism is evil based upon 'facts' coming from /dev/random or worse (Fox News).
I must say, you've produced some lovely irony, there. Thanks! It's fun to hear someone who actually doesn't know the facts put the word facts in quotes as you derisively complain about someone else's ignorance.
Having spent about $100 in tolls while driving for only a few days in Italy just recently, I can assure you that they certainly don't consider the use of their roads to be a "right." There are also toll roads in Greece. And Austria. And Croatia. And Hungary. And Ireland. And Norway. And Portugal. And Spain. And Sweden. And Switzerland. And the UK. And more, of course - shall I go on?
Let me guess: you get all of your ignorance served up by The Huffington Post or the Daily KOS? You obviously don't have any personal experience in Europe, and certainly can't be bothered to lift a finger and use Google when stamping your feet and spouting fact-ish sounding nonsense that you hope nobody else will bother to correct. Classic lefty debating technique: sound offended, use an ad hominem attack, and then completely mis-state reality in hopes that by sounding eliter-than-thou, you'll score some points with a few people in the audience that react more to your drama than to causality, rationality, and actual information.
Thanks for playing, though! Sorry you're so new at it, and it didn't work out. Maybe you could ask for some legislation that makes the government responsible for making sure that everyone gets to win every argument - no matter how wrong they are - just so that it feels more fair, even for the people who don't know what they're talking about. We wouldn't want anyone's feelings to get hurt.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The only thing that the people of Europe are beginning to question is the bureaucracy related to running a business. Outside of that, they LIKE their health care system. They LIKE their social safety nets. All the Europeans i've talked to were horrified by the situation in the US and stated they would never switch to something similar.
You speak of higher taxes... but look at the average paycheck. I looked at mine, and after all the federal and state taxes, employee provided health insurance premiums, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, 401k deduction and a bunch of other small things, my net pay was about 50% of gross. About the same as in countries like Finland. So basically I am paying the same amount of money for what are arguably inferior services and inferior social security net. Most of which I stand to lose, if I ever lose my job.
I'm not sure how you can claim that people of Finland are less free. What is it you can do, that they cannot? What powers does the Finnish government have, that the US Government does not have?
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
--- tax only democrats - let them pay for the idiotic programs only the democrats want. --
Tell ya what. I'll agree to that if Republicans only are taxed to pay for the wars they started and Democrats didn't want. I'll see your idiotic programs and raise you your idiotic wars.
And while we're at it, draft only the sons of prominent Republicans to fight in those wars and die for their country that they are so proud of. And so proud of being ignorant about.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"Some stupid need" might be called "growing your damn food."
Just sayin'.
Dan
I wish they'd do that here in the US.
Even better would be if they could make your bandwidth symmetric and stop discriminating against servers. Seriously, apart from a choked upstream (which btw is a crock of rent-seeking bullshit anyway), why shouldn't you be able to do as you please with your own damn machine as long as you're not breaking the law?
My mistake it was over macular degeneration and not glaucoma. One article on it.
As a European (British) I can honestly say, wtf? British people aren't questioning the NHS, recently they were busy defending it from viscous and inaccurate attacks by US news channels and one deranged fringe conservative politician whose views were disowned by his own party.
Most Europeans don't worship their government in any way, which is WHY European governments offer such services - in order to justify their existence. We see far more unquestioning loyalty (from the supporters of the party in power anyway) from Americans than we do over here you know.
To follow this up, should they win the next election the only budget the Tories (our right-wing party) have promised to ring-fence and protect from cuts is the NHS budget. Sure, we think the NHS could improve (nothing's perfect), but I don't know anyone who wants to go down the American route.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
When did they graduate? Working your way through college was very possible in the 1960's, and is extremely difficult today.
The reason for this is simple: the inflation-adjusted cost of a college education has approximately tripled since 1970, and doubled since 1990. So what was a manageable cost for a Baby Boomer is not a manageable cost for a Millenial.
I am officially gone from
A lot of people have some funny ideas about rights are. Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness, and 1MB Broadband access? Oh, Finland, you're doing it wrong.
Perfect freedom is to do whatever the fuck you want UNLESS you are directly causing harm to another or impinging upon their freedom
So its ok to cause indirect harm? Or indirectly impinge upon their freedom?
Not ok to punch them in the face. Perfectly ok to explain to them that they can afford a house they can't, lend them money for that house, then take their house away because they can't afford it, leave them in debted to you, destroy their credit, and leave them homeless. I'd rather be punched in the face.
Oh they should have known better about compound interest, and variable rate mortgages,... right? Well they don't. So they went to someone with expertise in the field to advise them. Just like they go to a mechanic to fix their car because not everyone knows how to do that either.
I'm saying the guarantee of a broadband connection for all is meaningless if you don't also have guaranteed access to all legal content on the Internet. When police are able to block perfectly legitimate websites, and do so without even the due process of law, the guarantee itself becomes meaningless. That doesn't mean the connection is worthless in practice -- only that the guarantee is worthless.
Having said that, I'm happy to find out the filter has been nearly abandoned by Finnish ISPs.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
So, a single incident in one NHS trust, reported by the Torygraph - and you damn the whole NHS for it? Ridiculous. This whole 'death panels' thing is absurd and blown out of proportion.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
They aren't slavery any more than hiring a contractor to do your kitchen is slavery.
The contractor is accepting the obligation voluntarily in exchange for his/her pay. That is a significant difference which you are deliberately ignoring. Obligations you accept of you own free will are fine. Obligations imposed on you against your will are not.
Participating in a society is a social contract, with obligations to maintain and improve that society.
If there is such a thing as a "social contract", it is a contract of adhesion imposed on people involuntarily—from well before the age at which people are customarily considered competent to enter into contracts—and not accepted of their own free will. In short, the "social contract" you refer to is nothing which even you would recognize as a legally-binding form of contract in any other context.
In any event, the concept of the "social contract" proves too much. If you can impose one involuntary obligation on others in the name of a "social contract" then you can impose any involuntary obligation, including outright slavery. One could easily argue that what you would consider "real" slavery is merely part of the social contract, and that those born into slavery have an obligation to accept their place in society. It is just as ridiculous to claim that some nebulous "social contract" obligates you to forfeit a portion of your property rights to the government as it would be to claim that the same "contract" obligates you to forfeit a portion of your rights of self-ownership.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
So it is just DNS filtering(effi link in GP post confirms this)? There are tons of DNS servers that you could configure your connection to use, such as OpenDNS. I'd like to know how much they spent on this filter to "save the children", when it does nothing to stop child pornographers, and can be easily worked around by the perverts who view cp sites. Also, even if many ISPs offer an opt-out, depending on Finnish laws, it could be used to persecute those who opt-out even if they are doing so with the intent to access legal content.
This is why any government censorship of content needs to be opt-in only. That way those that want to "protect" their children from seeing any naughty content, they can do so, while protecting freedoms of the rest of the country. Please note that this post is from a US perspective, and I do realize that many countries do not have protected freedom of speech. Then again, our government doesn't seem to even play lip-service to freedom of speech anymore, but that is another issue.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
The social contract is not an unchangeable, inviolable institution. You are free to work within the democratic system to try to get said social contract changed. This is what differentiates the social contract from private contracts. Private contracts normally cannot be changed after they are signed.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
The distinction between negative and positive rights is an entirely false one. All rights are positive rights. You say that you have the right to free speech. If I disagree and punch you in the face, you don't have any ability to demand legal recourse without the infrastructure of the legal system. Guess what? The legal system is staffed by people. So, for any negative right that requires enforcement (i.e. all negative rights) there needs to be a system that enforces those rights. That system needs to be staffed by people. By your logic, every judge, attorney, and police officer is a "slave", since their jobs include enforcing the rights of others.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
...ISP's have zero incentive to offer anything better. The bandwidth that I have available to me right now is actually less than what I was getting ten years ago in a different metropolitan market. If an ISP has a local/regional monopoly, and there is no competing option for 100Mbps synchronous rates, then they will continue to gouge us for the equivalent of a shared cocktail straw.
The last mile network is key. Separate the ISP services from the network connectivity. Make the last mile network fast, and encourage an environment where many ISP's can peer with the last mile network & compete for customers on level ground. Then you'll see real change.
Sounds interesting, but it leaves open some questions, for example, Germany hasn't been all free for most of the last 50 years.
Also, what about the people who did not inherit? Those are the most interesting.
Qxe4
In any event, the concept of the "social contract" proves too much. If you can impose one involuntary obligation on others in the name of a "social contract" then you can impose any involuntary obligation, including outright slavery.
Yes, you could. Society isn't inherently good, that takes a lot of work and vigilance, and so far have never succeeded. But the benefits of living in society are pretty significant (everything from mutual protection to economic efficiency to mating opportunities).
and that those born into [society] have an obligation to accept their place in society
No one has an obligation to accept their place in society. They may work within the society to change their obligations and they are free to at any time leave the society and join any other society of their choosing that will have them.
Perhaps regrettably the planet no longer has a dearth of unclaimed space where one can go and form his own society, and/or exclude himself completely from one, but there are still several places that are pretty close.
I refuse to be drawn into a debate with any idiot who thinks even the basic trappings of society amount to slavery.
Huzzah. This encapsulates my frustrations with right-wing-nut arguments about the Obama administration in a concise and eloquent manner.
I might excise "idiot" from the phrase so that nobody can accuse me of being combative when putting them in their place, but otherwise, I think this line stands well on its own and doesn't require any other verbiage to be complete.
Further, I think that "slavery" could be replaced with "Naziism", "Socialism", "Communism" and any other terms which are hurled as insults (although I don't think that "Socialism" is a bad word) at the current POTUS.
Again, thank you and huzzah to you. I don't know you, but you have my respect.
The CB App. What's your 20?
No you fucking moron you still don't fucking get it. No one's going to pay for anyone's broad band you triple fucknut. It's about the government making sure most people *can* subscribe to broadband, as in, ensure it's available. I'm truly humbled by your idiocy, even when told right in your face that you've got it wrong and why, you still don't listen and cling on to your poor and idiotic initial grasp of what you thought you saw at first. No one's going to pay broadband through taxes, what kind of half-baboon would imagine something as stupid to begin with? Please tell me you're a meth head or something.
You just got troll'd!
Yeah, I don't know how a convinction would affect that new right. I guess it all depends on how that right is defined?
You just got troll'd!
Was it a right, or just a law passed to mandate people get this? If they consider it a fundamental human right, they have some real issues.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Are you deliberately obtuse? Yes, I think you are. It goes along with thinking and talking like a jackass twelve year old.
If broadband were already available to everyone, there would be absolutely no urge to address the issue, right? Right. So what's the problem? Why are there people in Finland who don't have access to broadband, who are now going to have their situation improved by this new right? Do they not have broadband because, despite having the service available to their residence, they can't personally afford the monthy costs? Or is it because somebody else hasn't felt like spending the much larger amount of money necessary to run copper or fiber out to their so-far-unserved physical address, and the person in question can't (or doesn't want to) spend the money to provision new service?
Perhaps you can think of some other thing that's getting in between the not-having-broadband Fin and his/her having it? Either of those scenarios can be addressed by one thing: money. It doesn't sound like their government is mandating that the end user pay to provision the services where they don't already exist, which means that they are mandating that someone else pays for that. The person who gets the service won't be paying for their shiny new connectivity's expensive provisioning, but other taxpayers will. Or a telco will, and will pass those costs along to other people they're already billing for services. So you have the government forcing one group of people to pay for something that another group of people now have the "right" to have. It's an entitlement paid for by other people. Even if the end user has to pay for monthly service, you're talking about other people having to pay to haul the service out to him.
If it made business sense for the service provider to already have service accessible to someone, it would already be there. So, who do you suppose will be footing the provisioning bill, now that the government is getting involved? Either taxpayers directly, or other ISP customers indirectly, as forced to do so by the government.
OK, so let's see how childishly you can spew your next comment. Fire away.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
My bad, you're not as incredibly stupid as I thought, you just sound that stupid (I'm actually being very serious). That's why your original post was modded troll. You're a misunderstood man, cause you suck at making yourself understood. Cause you actually make a fine point, but this last post of yours is the only time you made it correctly.
You just got troll'd!
I'd be willing to pay 10% of my salary. However, I should mention, I'm not willing to pay 10% to support the current healthcare proposals. And the hospital hasn't asked me, so I'm assuming they don't need it.
Every hospital has a charitable fund, usually several for people who prefer to give to certain causes (cancer, children, etc.). Give 'em a call, they probably figure everybody knows about them (hospitals can be insular). Perhaps you could peg your donation for efforts to raise awareness about their funds if you see that as a major need.
It's very admirable what you're doing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Bread and Circuses.
I'll take that over the American "no bread but more circuses" any day.
It has long been accepted by all, that it is legitimate for the government to deter monopolies (see anti-trust laws). Unfortunately, in several cases, the government chose to create monopolies under a foolish assumption, that it will be able to mitigate the drawbacks of monopolization by regulation. AT&T Corp. was the most infamous example of the spectacular failure of that illogic...
Yes, it does seem stupid and wasteful to have multiple ISPs run their own cables to each house. However, it is better in the long run, than to allow only one company (such as Verizon) run one cable and then "lease" access to competitors...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Most US welfare recipients get off welfare within 1 year. But according to some, we have a huge "welfare state".
Dude, that's a stupid thing. Welfare in means, any sort of government payout such that you don't have to work or work less, not a particular line item... it's social security, disability, medicare / medicaid long term care, wic, all that stuff... That comes to about half of person's wages, so pretty much, I'm spending half my working life to keep some fat slob into welfare.
I'm telling you, there's something in the water here that's making 30 percent of Americans complete morons. Or maybe it's something being broadcast over the airwave
You are absolutely right. All those poor people watching CNN....
This is my sig.
Hmmmm good to know. Thanks for the info.
Qxe4
No, it's not quite slavery. But what do you call it when a huge portion of the wealth you create (in some cases >50% even in the US, very often >50% outside the US) is taken from you at gunpoint*, and given to someone else? It's one thing if it's taken and spent on national defense, infrastructure, etc., but when it is just taken from the individual who produced it and given to an individual who did not, that's unacceptable (and eerily similar to slavery). If it were 100% it would certainly be appropriate to call it slavery. What if it's 90%? 75%? I'd say if over half my day I am forced to work for someone else (who is as likely as not simply unwilling to work for themselves), that is close enough to slavery to draw the comparison.
*If you don't think taxes are taken at gunpoint, try not paying them.
This law is not really about providing each citizen with broadband access, it's more about guaranteeing that the access is not TAKEN AWAY from people who already have it.. The thing is, maintaining physical phone lines in rural areas is expensive, and phone companies want to get rid of them. This law guarantees at least a reasonable wireless broadband option in that scenario. As it is now, DSL is available almost everywhere, including many rural areas. Cities of course have even more options like cable and fibre.
Almost anyplace a little further south has access to satellite (which sucks).
Saskatchewan is so far north I'm betting covering your northern most town via satellite will be a challenge.
Too lazy to do the trig GSO vs max latitude vs Northernmost hellhole in Sask.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This will guarantee internet will suck in Finland.
They graduated in 2004, they started in 2000. I still know others who are working or worked their way through college even now. And yes, while the inflation adjusted costs have gone up, so have the number of scholarships available and other things.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Social Security is not welfare, it's insurance.
Disability is not welfare, it's insurance.
Medicare/Medicaid is not welfare, it's insurance.
The GP was clearly referring specifically to welfare as in "You don't have to live on welfare your entire life. You could be going through a rough period in your life and then later in life be very successful." which was the entirety of his post.
If you're going to peddle right-wing bullshit, try to make it plausible right-wing bullshit, OK?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Social Security is not welfare, it's insurance.
Disability is not welfare, it's insurance.
Medicare/Medicaid is not welfare, it's insurance.
Only in the sense that you have changed the definition of insurance.
Social Security is not insurance. In insurance, you pay a premium to manage the financial risk of an exceptional event occurring. If the event happens, you get some big payment commensurate with the premium that you paid and level of risk. There is no "risk factor" to social security, so you get old.
Medicare/Medicaid are not insurance. In the case of Medicare, again, there is no risk management. You get old, you sign up for Medicare. It's not insurance.
Disability is not insurance in the SSI sense because the people who are on disability tend to be permanently disabled. Again, what's the "risk" that someone who is blind will need continued federal support. It's not insurance, it's welfare.
If you're going to peddle right-wing bullshit, try to make it plausible right-wing bullshit, OK?
How about, the left wing tells the truth about something, anything, please. For the life of me I do not understand why you self-styled lefties have to pathologically lie about everything you promote? It's so obvious that entitlements are welfare, and yet, you can't even be bothered to call them for what they are.
Even now, you call "health insurance reform" "insurance", when its not. You say insurers should "cover" pre-existing conditions, or buy prescription drugs, or mammograms, when none of those are -risk- factors. If you want to have a national welfare program for mammograms and doctors visits, call it that, and then, have insurance be just what it is - a financial vehicle for risk management. But stop going around and telling people that "insurance" is just another way to get something for free, when all that free stuff really is, is welfare.
This is my sig.
Jesus was a socialist.
No he wasn't, because socialists do not believe in God.
This is my sig.
Retard. Millions of socialists have been Christians.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
No, it's not quite slavery.
Its not even close to slavery.
But what do you call it when a huge portion of the wealth you create (in some cases >50% even in the US, very often >50% outside the US) is taken from you at gunpoint*, and given to someone else?
I call it tax. Same as most people.
It's one thing if it's taken and spent on national defense, infrastructure, etc., but when it is just taken from the individual who produced it and given to an individual who did not
That's a gross over simplification on multiple levels. The majority of the people who receive assistance do so for a temporary period of time. Its a safety net. Anyone can fall on hard times.
There are also crime and other arguments to be made as well. For example, if there were no social assistance there would be more crime. These people are not GOING to simply all quietly starve to death, they are ultimately going to do whatever it takes. Sure they can and will seek work, but if they aren't making ends meet they will be forced to turn to crime... shoplifting, theft, robbery, B&E, etc all go up. And that all amounts to wealth taken from those who earned it and given to those who didn't? How is that better? And what is the solution? More police, more prisons, more courts? That just raises 'infrastructure' taxes.
Ditto something like health care. Its simply expedient. We all need it. And regular health care is cheaper in the long run than emergency health care when a treatable condition goes untreated. Private insurance is delivering good health care to the elite, but the majority endure substandard care, if they get anything at all. And again, the costs of that substandard care still are charged against us (and amplified) by having to pay for emergency care of things that could have been treated much more inexpensively earlier on.
Again, its simply expedient. Its better to provide health care to all than to provide it only to those who can pay, and then pay for emergency care for those who can't. (And again, suffer increased crime etc, as the desperate look to cover health care costs.) The only way not providing health care would be cheaper is if it were absolute... and then if a poor person gets hit by a car without insurance, we let him die on the street rather than lift a finger. And I don't want to live in that society.
Some social assistance is simply economically expedient, unless you plan to literally execute people for being poor.
Now finally, yes there certainly is a segment that simply is a drain on the rest of society, that would become productive if the net were removed without turning to crime, etc. Some waste is inevitable. Removing social assistance to provide "justice" to this tiny segment simply isn't worth it. Just as a department store can't stamp out all shoplifting without making the store completely unpalatable to legit customers, society can't stamp out all abuse of public programs.
So that is why I think public safety nets are good thing. They don't cost nearly as much as you think once you include the costs of not having them. Either way you are going to pay, and having the safety nets is a much more humane, organized, and dignified way of handling it.
If it were 100% it would certainly be appropriate to call it slavery. What if it's 90%? 75%? I'd say if over half my day I am forced to work for someone else (who is as likely as not simply unwilling to work for themselves), that is close enough to slavery to draw the comparison.
But its not 100%. And of the taxes you do pay, only a fraction go towards that tiny of segment who are "simply unwilling to work for themselves". The rest goes to infrastructure, other programs, and as a stop gap to bridge people who ARE willing to work for themselves.
Further, taxation is progressive, which really invalidates it as a comparison to slavery. The income you need to live is virtually untaxed. The tax burden even at lower middle class is minimal. It ONLY starts to ramp up
Finland: 338,424 square kilometers
United States: 9,826,675 square kilometers
29 times the area to cover, and that includes wiring Alaska and Hawaii.