The trick is to have the infrastructure run as an utility, whether government owned or regulated private company. As there is no competition, it has to be regulated. Then you can have lots of private companies using the infrastructure and competing with each other, on a level playing field.
In Canada, the Provinces with only 3 telcos pay at least a 1/3rd more then Provinces with 4+ telcos (not counting the bargain ones that are owned by one of the big 3).
As a Canadian I can tell you 3 is worse than 4. In provinces like Ontario, they have 5 or 6 carriers and their prices are 2/3 of what we pay in Alberta with 4 carriers. (I don't count the 'discount' carriers because they are owned by the big 3)
This is true, it's the same in BC, with 3 carriers we get raped whereas the Provinces with more carriers get at least a 1/3rd price reduction. Currently there is a fourth carrier attempting to enter the market, suddenly the main carriers can offer lower prices, and get line ups around the block of customers trying to get the deals. Otherwise they claim the best data only deal they can do is $30 for 1/2 a GB a month. The solution down there is for T-Mobile and Sprint to share infrastructure if they can't afford to go it alone, not merge.
Which is the same or worse in Canada. Wiki says 64,000 deaths in 2016. Here in BC with a population of about 5 million, it was about 1400 deaths and our lifespan didn't drop.
Yet the opioids only killed 64,000 people in the States in 2016, which isn't that much. Shit here in BC with a population of about 5 million saw 1,400 deaths and out lifespan is still increasing.
It is capitalistic, just late stage capitalistic where monopolies, cartels and other middlemen arise to funnel money to themselves, often by buying rules from the government. Capitalism rewards efficiency and it is not efficient competing.
What is really needed is a free market, something capitalists hate and work against as it is not profitable.
I thought America was a Federation of States. Why does the Federal Government spend so much on healthcare? Veterans? You could do like Canada, where healthcare is a Provincial thing with the feds setting minimum coverage and some equalization payments as well as handling veterans, the natives and such. 14 healthcare systems, and it is a lot easier to replace the Provincial government then the Federal as your vote counts more and it is a different election, often with different political parties.
Yes, and before that the Therapsids (our ancestors) had a good run as the dominant type of animal, until the Permian–Triassic extinction event wiped most of them (and most everything else) out and allowed the accession of the Dinosaurs. The birds did recover fast before being passed by mammals as the apex hunters.
The terror birds repurposed their wings as daggers. They were pretty scary. Hmm, wiki doesn't mention the wings, so perhaps I'm wrong, still a 10 ft bird that can run fast, extend its neck when striking with its large head and hooked large beak would have been scary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Arcosaurs (ancestors of all reptiles) and Therapsids (ancestors of all mammals and the like) split off a long time back. The closest living relatives of Dinosaurs, including the birds are actually the crocodilians, which have advanced features like a 4 chambered heart and apparently were warm blooded and then reverted to cold blooded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nothing wrong with throttling, as long as it is done in a non-discriminatory manner. Whether your using bandwidth to watch Netflix or Joe's cat video server should not matter, just have a line where if you go over, throttle. And be upfront about it. I pay for 250 GBs, it shouldn't (and doesn't here) matter what I use it for.
My ISP does the same thing, I get x amount of bits (250GBs) and then they charge like hell for any overages. Up to a point I can pay for more bandwidth but there is only so much that the infrastructure can supply. If the electric company wants to do similar, and they've put in meters that are capable and are considering tiered plans as well as time of day differences, why not? There's only so many dams and importing electricity gets expensive.
It's never totally legal, as in non-regulated. Here the proposals include a limit of 4 plants that have to be non-visible to the public and originally had a height limit as well. Depending on how the taxes go, it may still be profitable to sell on the black market. It'll take a while for industry to ramp up as well so at first they'll probably be a shortage.
There's still a black market in tobacco and alcohol here as well, not to mention certain drug store drugs
The problem with pensions is they're too easy to raid. Pay into it for 30+ years and it gets bought out, used as collateral, and disappears in a bankruptcy proceeding.
So you're fucking lucky, actually paying into a retirement fund at 31 and being able to retire at 70. As a boomer, there was promises of pensions, that went away after some rich fucking punk bought out the business, went into massive debt and used the pension fund as collateral. The workers are the last to get payed in a bankruptcy and lots of boomers are now old and homeless due to young fucking MBA's and such leveraging the system to suck up pension funds. When you pay into a pension fund for most of your life and it is gone, there is no 401k to fall back on. And this blaming a generation because the 0.1% do what they've always done is bullshit, all my peers, boomers, are facing the same thing as retirement looms, promised pensions that are gone and suckered into paying into pensions instead of savings.
I thought it was a little later then the 1870's but you're right, by the end of the 19th century, investors were hell bent on buying up businesses, breaking them up and selling the parts for massive short term profits and damn the long term consequences. Buy that railroad, which owns all kinds of properties that are actually worth way more then the railroads value and sell them. This may have happened previously but really took off back then and has continued. Seems throughout history there has been a certain class of people who cared for nothing but power, and in a capitalistic society, power is represented by money.
Yes, America pressured Canada to drop the Arrow, that way getting a bunch of engineers to work with their Germans to build Apollo and also so they can forever bitch about Canada not doing enough for defence. Same thing happened earlier with nukes.
Don't you mean "more non-floating ice to melt"? Reading the page, it seems that Antarctica is still mostly below freezing, precipitation has been up for the last 10,000 years and is now slowing down.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.
And it is on track to stop increasing in 20 to 30 years, when it will add to the raising sea levels caused by Greenland, and many of the glaciers in the world melting. As well as the thermal expansion of the oceans.
So good point that you make, the oceans aren't raising nearly as much as they will.
Then there's the Toronto policeman convicted of attempted murder for the last 6 shots fired at the guy he'd already killed. From http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
A jury has found Toronto police Const. James Forcillo guilty of attempted murder in the 2013 shooting death of Sammy Yatim.
Forcillo faced two charges related to the shooting death of 18-year-old Yatim on a streetcar in 2013, but was found not-guilty of second-degree murder.
The jury believed Forcillo was justified in firing the first three shots at Yatim, but not the second round of shots, and hence was guilty of attempted murder.
If, in fact, only citizen's are supposed to be voting, then it is not depriving anyone of a right to make sure that they ARE a citizen before allowing them to vote, so long as the process of validating their citizenship isn't itself used to disenfranchise someone. And there is the rub, isn't it?
And there's the rub. My country has required ID to vote for the longest time, it was minimal ID to prove residency, not citizenship and there was the option of signing an affidavit if you had no ID. Right wing government gets power and gets advice from the Republicans, they make the ID requirements way more onerous, which disenfranchised my son who only had a birth certificate, CARE (medical) card and student ID. Given more time he could have paid the $75 for ID after traveling close to a hundred mile round trip to the government office but he wasn't motivated enough. It's a long walk or 2 day Greyhound trip. For my wife it was even worse. She'd always voted under her maiden name, all her ID was in her maiden name, and we checked the government web site the day before the election to make sure we were both registered, her in her maiden name. Upon going to vote, her registration had mysteriously changed to my name, which she had no ID for. Fun of being a minority who the government expects to vote against that government.
One of the founding principles of America is no taxes without representation. This points to anyone who pays taxes in America being able to vote. Federal taxes for Federal elections, particular State taxes for particular States etc. Now it can be argued about how much taxes, I don't think I should be allowed to vote based on the couple of dollars of American sales tax I payed but for someone who is resident (perhaps with a few years requirement) and paying income tax and/or property tax, why shouldn't they be allowed to vote on what is done with the tax money that was collected from them? My country is simple, Constitution says all citizens of age have the right to vote. There is still on going legal battles about whether long term non-resident citizens are allowed to vote. My other country is more complicated, basically lots of permanent residents have the right to vote as well as citizens
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The trick is to have the infrastructure run as an utility, whether government owned or regulated private company. As there is no competition, it has to be regulated.
Then you can have lots of private companies using the infrastructure and competing with each other, on a level playing field.
In Canada, the Provinces with only 3 telcos pay at least a 1/3rd more then Provinces with 4+ telcos (not counting the bargain ones that are owned by one of the big 3).
As a Canadian I can tell you 3 is worse than 4. In provinces like Ontario, they have 5 or 6 carriers and their prices are 2/3 of what we pay in Alberta with 4 carriers. (I don't count the 'discount' carriers because they are owned by the big 3)
This is true, it's the same in BC, with 3 carriers we get raped whereas the Provinces with more carriers get at least a 1/3rd price reduction.
Currently there is a fourth carrier attempting to enter the market, suddenly the main carriers can offer lower prices, and get line ups around the block of customers trying to get the deals. Otherwise they claim the best data only deal they can do is $30 for 1/2 a GB a month.
The solution down there is for T-Mobile and Sprint to share infrastructure if they can't afford to go it alone, not merge.
Yes, it is more efficient to buy laws/regulations then to actually compete on a level playing field and the medical industry is well aware of this.
Which is the same or worse in Canada. Wiki says 64,000 deaths in 2016. Here in BC with a population of about 5 million, it was about 1400 deaths and our lifespan didn't drop.
Yet the opioids only killed 64,000 people in the States in 2016, which isn't that much. Shit here in BC with a population of about 5 million saw 1,400 deaths and out lifespan is still increasing.
It is capitalistic, just late stage capitalistic where monopolies, cartels and other middlemen arise to funnel money to themselves, often by buying rules from the government.
Capitalism rewards efficiency and it is not efficient competing.
What is really needed is a free market, something capitalists hate and work against as it is not profitable.
I thought America was a Federation of States. Why does the Federal Government spend so much on healthcare? Veterans?
You could do like Canada, where healthcare is a Provincial thing with the feds setting minimum coverage and some equalization payments as well as handling veterans, the natives and such. 14 healthcare systems, and it is a lot easier to replace the Provincial government then the Federal as your vote counts more and it is a different election, often with different political parties.
Could be worse, you could be shelling out for a cat.
Yea, the government is as bad as private business when it comes to raiding pension funds.
Yes, and before that the Therapsids (our ancestors) had a good run as the dominant type of animal, until the Permian–Triassic extinction event wiped most of them (and most everything else) out and allowed the accession of the Dinosaurs.
The birds did recover fast before being passed by mammals as the apex hunters.
The terror birds repurposed their wings as daggers. They were pretty scary.
Hmm, wiki doesn't mention the wings, so perhaps I'm wrong, still a 10 ft bird that can run fast, extend its neck when striking with its large head and hooked large beak would have been scary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Arcosaurs (ancestors of all reptiles) and Therapsids (ancestors of all mammals and the like) split off a long time back. The closest living relatives of Dinosaurs, including the birds are actually the crocodilians, which have advanced features like a 4 chambered heart and apparently were warm blooded and then reverted to cold blooded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nothing wrong with throttling, as long as it is done in a non-discriminatory manner. Whether your using bandwidth to watch Netflix or Joe's cat video server should not matter, just have a line where if you go over, throttle. And be upfront about it.
I pay for 250 GBs, it shouldn't (and doesn't here) matter what I use it for.
My ISP does the same thing, I get x amount of bits (250GBs) and then they charge like hell for any overages. Up to a point I can pay for more bandwidth but there is only so much that the infrastructure can supply.
If the electric company wants to do similar, and they've put in meters that are capable and are considering tiered plans as well as time of day differences, why not? There's only so many dams and importing electricity gets expensive.
It's never totally legal, as in non-regulated. Here the proposals include a limit of 4 plants that have to be non-visible to the public and originally had a height limit as well.
Depending on how the taxes go, it may still be profitable to sell on the black market. It'll take a while for industry to ramp up as well so at first they'll probably be a shortage.
There's still a black market in tobacco and alcohol here as well, not to mention certain drug store drugs
The problem with pensions is they're too easy to raid. Pay into it for 30+ years and it gets bought out, used as collateral, and disappears in a bankruptcy proceeding.
So you're fucking lucky, actually paying into a retirement fund at 31 and being able to retire at 70. As a boomer, there was promises of pensions, that went away after some rich fucking punk bought out the business, went into massive debt and used the pension fund as collateral. The workers are the last to get payed in a bankruptcy and lots of boomers are now old and homeless due to young fucking MBA's and such leveraging the system to suck up pension funds.
When you pay into a pension fund for most of your life and it is gone, there is no 401k to fall back on. And this blaming a generation because the 0.1% do what they've always done is bullshit, all my peers, boomers, are facing the same thing as retirement looms, promised pensions that are gone and suckered into paying into pensions instead of savings.
I thought it was a little later then the 1870's but you're right, by the end of the 19th century, investors were hell bent on buying up businesses, breaking them up and selling the parts for massive short term profits and damn the long term consequences. Buy that railroad, which owns all kinds of properties that are actually worth way more then the railroads value and sell them. This may have happened previously but really took off back then and has continued.
Seems throughout history there has been a certain class of people who cared for nothing but power, and in a capitalistic society, power is represented by money.
Yes, America pressured Canada to drop the Arrow, that way getting a bunch of engineers to work with their Germans to build Apollo and also so they can forever bitch about Canada not doing enough for defence. Same thing happened earlier with nukes.
Don't you mean "more non-floating ice to melt"?
Reading the page, it seems that Antarctica is still mostly below freezing, precipitation has been up for the last 10,000 years and is now slowing down.
And it is on track to stop increasing in 20 to 30 years, when it will add to the raising sea levels caused by Greenland, and many of the glaciers in the world melting. As well as the thermal expansion of the oceans.
So good point that you make, the oceans aren't raising nearly as much as they will.
Then there's the Toronto policeman convicted of attempted murder for the last 6 shots fired at the guy he'd already killed.
From http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
If, in fact, only citizen's are supposed to be voting, then it is not depriving anyone of a right to make sure that they ARE a citizen before allowing them to vote, so long as the process of validating their citizenship isn't itself used to disenfranchise someone. And there is the rub, isn't it?
And there's the rub. My country has required ID to vote for the longest time, it was minimal ID to prove residency, not citizenship and there was the option of signing an affidavit if you had no ID.
Right wing government gets power and gets advice from the Republicans, they make the ID requirements way more onerous, which disenfranchised my son who only had a birth certificate, CARE (medical) card and student ID. Given more time he could have paid the $75 for ID after traveling close to a hundred mile round trip to the government office but he wasn't motivated enough. It's a long walk or 2 day Greyhound trip.
For my wife it was even worse. She'd always voted under her maiden name, all her ID was in her maiden name, and we checked the government web site the day before the election to make sure we were both registered, her in her maiden name. Upon going to vote, her registration had mysteriously changed to my name, which she had no ID for. Fun of being a minority who the government expects to vote against that government.
One of the founding principles of America is no taxes without representation. This points to anyone who pays taxes in America being able to vote. Federal taxes for Federal elections, particular State taxes for particular States etc.
Now it can be argued about how much taxes, I don't think I should be allowed to vote based on the couple of dollars of American sales tax I payed but for someone who is resident (perhaps with a few years requirement) and paying income tax and/or property tax, why shouldn't they be allowed to vote on what is done with the tax money that was collected from them?
My country is simple, Constitution says all citizens of age have the right to vote. There is still on going legal battles about whether long term non-resident citizens are allowed to vote.
My other country is more complicated, basically lots of permanent residents have the right to vote as well as citizens
Doesn't the Constitution over rule any law? But then it is a Liberal document so ignore it.