"To ensure funding of the SO, Congress and the President established the Private Express Statutes (PES) and the mailbox access rule, which together comprise the postal monopoly"
The PES defines requirements 3rd party carriers must abide by to deliver a letter. The mailbox access rule is further defined on:
"Our regulations cover what can and can’t be placed in a curbside mailbox or mailbox outside of your house, which generally includes only mail that has been sent through the USPS. However, our regulations don’t govern what can be placed in a mail slot on your door."
No, the point is, you can't deliver a letter except through the USPS unless it is overnight as an "urgent message". Also, only USPS can deliver to mailboxes.
I agree with you that profit comes from charging more than your cost. But it doesn't have to come through lying or cheating. Let's look at tips at a restaurant. I am not a fan of the way tipping is an obligation, but the point is, it is not required, but people pay it. If you truly appreciate the service a company is giving you, then is it so unreasonable to expect them to get a profit? If the service is not worth the cost+profit, then don't use the service... It's really that simple.
Our government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. However, you may have noticed the government recently ignoring the constitution. The existence of the TSA is not something that I instituted, it is not something I would support, and it is certainly not making my life better. The government cannot possibly make decisions that everyone will approve of. Nor can it make decisions that will improve everyone's life. The only thing the government can do is take and give by force. Now I'm not saying the government should go away, but they should limit their use of force to enforce agreed upon laws, like property rights, civil rights, and even defending our country against outside invaders. These are all constitutional mandates.
What is not in the constitution is any sort of welfare, corporate or individual. In a constitution bound government, no one has any incentive to bribe politicians, because politicians do not have any power to transfer money from the people to special interests.
Your suggestion that somehow it would be far easier to limit the size of corporations and to "reduce risks associated with their limited liability" (WTF does that even mean?) than to just stop having the government being involved is crazy. The government has no ability to judge what is "too big to fail" in a company, nor do they have any ability to judge anything about a business at all. Let business be business, and government be government.
I agree, make things rounded for convenience. And then instead of printing stupid 5c stamps, just let them tape a frickin nickel on the letter. Or if you're concerned about the extra weight, make it a 10c rounding and let them tape dimes. They'd only have to stay on until the post office anyway.
Profit, you fool, comes from voluntary transactions. No one forces you to use UPS, but you are forced to use USPS if you want to send a 1st class letter.
As far as the government is concerned your money is their money, and they will lie, cheat, and steal to recover it. They will even make tax cuts and credits sound like they are giving you free money.
And PS, the easiest way to end corporate welfare from the government is to stop giving money to the government.
Aha, spreading the wealth around. This is the fundamental problem with communism (what you are suggesting). It makes everybody equal, even it if makes everybody poor.
And you are right, it was a small scale example, which is why I mentioned you could technically hire 1.5 more workers. The problem is, why couldn't you just have the company hire twice as many people for half as much? Wouldn't that do the same thing?
The answer is because those workers have an intrinsic value to the business, which the market has priced at 120k. So in the real world, when the government puts a 50% tax, they don't cut people's pay in half and hire another worker, they are more likely to fire one person, and double the more productive worker's pay. Thus increasing the tax rate actually INCREASES unemployment. You can't suddenly make a job be worth half as much. You'll just only be able to afford half as many workers.
This is why there is something called a Laffer Curve. Under your theory, why stop at 50% for the tax rate? What about 75%, 90%, hell even 100%? Government revenue is maximized with a tax rate somewhere between 0% and 100%, and those who believe taxes should go up believe we are under the optimum, and those who believe taxes should go down think we are above the ideal spot (or don't want the government to maximize revenue).
I am in that parenthetical group. You are saying that the money will make its way back into the market one way or another (which I don't disagree with) but I believe that the money is more efficiently distributed by voluntary transactions rather than force.
I have to reverse my prior mods, but you are so wrong, I had to post.
You are talking nonsense. Let's examine your scenarios:
Scenario 1) We have person A, B, and C: Person A makes 120k (assuming 0% taxes) Person B makes 120k Person C makes 0 (assuming he can't find other employment) The company is paying out 240k total. The government gets 0. Thus there is 240k exposed to the free market.
Scenario 2) Person A makes 60k (120k Company, 60k to gov) Person B makes 60k (120k Company, 60k to gov) Person C makes 60k (120k Gov, 60k back to gov) The company is paying out 240k total. The government takes 180k, 120k of which is paid to Company to pay person C. This leaves 180k to the free market, and nets the government 60k.
In scenario 1, you have 2 people employed at Company and 240k to spend vs scenario 2 where 3 people are employed at Company and have 180k to spend.
Are you seeing where I am going with this? The market just lost 60k. Your assumption is that Company is the only employer. If you made twice as much money, would you create jobs? The reasonable assumption is that there are 2 outcomes: The government provided laborer is more efficient than the free market increase or the converse. Which is more likely; that the government is efficient, or the free market?
And of course this whole thing leaves me with one question... What happens to the other 60k? I'd bet you a ton of money that it got wasted from the stupidity of the government. (ok, ok, if you scale it up, you could call it half another job in a perfect world).
The moral of the story is the same as the broken window fallacy. You neglect the jobs that were lost due to cutting everyone's pay in half. You can't just get free money through taxation.
In those historical cases, were the police protecting rights, or were they doing wrong themselves? I don't defend police who don't defend rights. You don't beat and attack people with dogs for trespassing. And quite frankly, under those Jim Crowe laws, it wasn't businesses that excluded people, it was the government requiring it. Many private businesses embraced minorities because they realized that they were paying customers.
I don't find it plausible to exclude minors from stores, or letting women get in without a cover charge, or even giving a discount to seniors. Yet those are all forms of discrimination that persist. Why is race different? I can't control my age or gender any more than I can my race, but somehow people think they can force integration on people.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Racists exist. As long as they aren't actively hurting other races (ala KKK), let them be wrong. Now if they make a business, let them lose potential profit by excluding half their market. In fact, if you don't agree with their discrimination, vote with your dollars and don't buy their products or services. But don't force people to do things, or it makes you no better than slave owners in the first place.
You have a point that a small government does not guarantee large freedom, but the converse is not true. A large government does indeed guarantee a loss of freedom. The more power the government has, the less an individual does. That doesn't make it true if one individual is taking power from another.
Freedom can be taken by any number of entities, government being one. But if the government is increasing in scope, you are definitely losing freedom.
I fail to see how this is true. Where exactly does the government come in to enforce discrimination? Or do you mean enforce property laws when whatever discriminated group trespasses?
Think about homeless people loitering. They are undesirable for businesses and they have every right to ask them to leave their property, and if they don't comply, the police will force them to leave.
Oh no, that money sits in a bank account and ONLY produces interest. Keynesians forget one important fact: Interest is paid for a reason! You get interest because other people are paying you to use your money. When you put money in a bank, it is LOANED to other people. The money is still working even if you are not actively using it. Nobody stuffs their money under the mattress, so it is still working in the economy.
The government and individuals have forgotten that there is nothing wrong with saving, and it's a good idea to have a rainy day fund. If people and the government did have that, we wouldn't have had a credit crisis in the first place.
Amendment 16: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Umm actually, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways disagrees with you, as it was built for military purposes and thus is well within the constitutional bounds of government. Also, it does facilitate and aid interstate commerce, while still being managed by the states.
The internet? Again, developed for the military, and then expanded to allow for private use. And electricity was completely private and had no issues until the government forced a monopoly, and I think it should go back to being deregulated.
Oh ok, they can't put you in jail, but they can extort money from you and take your stuff. That sounds totally legitimate coming from your Lords... I mean government.
Nonsense, it is around Jupiter either way. The first book talked about Saturn, but the movie and the later books all used Jupiter because originally they weren't able to get a good rendering of Saturn's rings for the movie, and then Clarke discovered that Europa was more likely to support life than any of Saturn's moons and went with it.
See I have the reverse problem. UPS I have given up and just ship it to their warehouse in the first place... They won't leave it at an apartment. FedEx on the other hand, dropped off my $150 shipment on black friday, and I won't be back until monday. Hope no one steals the shit off my porch in 3 days! Luckily I live in a small town, so stealing isn't much of a problem, but seriously, no signature required?
Rail efficiency: `450 ton-miles per gallon of diesel fuel
Shipping efficiency: ~500 ton-miles per gallon of bunker fuel
Note that boat shipping doesn't have to go around the long way, and that bunker fuel is cheaper and uses less energy to refine. Shipping wins hands down.
In a free market, YOU CANNOT ABUSE WORKERS. Or at least you can't abuse them worse than the alternative of being unemployed.
What you are saying is that workers in China should get the same benefits as workers in America. Maybe Americans are just spoiled union workers that make unreasonable demands, and there are millions of unemployed Chinese begging for American's jobs.
The sad reality is, the alternative to working in the US is receiving enough government assistance to live comfortably. The alternative to working in China is poverty and death. That is why jobs are moving to China.
I have a Archos 5 Internet Tablet velcroed above the factory head unit hooked up via the Aux In port. Music, videos, games, GPS navigation, wifi, and hot swappable microSD card slot. About the only thing that sucks is the GPS software since most Android GPS programs rely on the cell data connection to retrieve maps, so I had to settle for the GPS program provided by Archos that installs to the internal storage (which is pretty much shit).
How is this insightful, it's also more jobs and benefits to Google employees and probably more benefits to Google users. Does it break even? I'd like to think that Google makes better use of the money than the government.
Except basketball arenas are generally MUCH smaller than football stadiums. Population per volume, I'd bet basketball arenas have a higher density and therefore should have more noise. But the real question is, can it filter out vuvuzelas at (insert preference of soccer/football here) games.
Go back and re-read my statement. We do use models in real life. We use models all the time in engineering. My point is that these models have been proven to be reliable by actual experimentation. I would have no problems with the computer models of the climate if we could create a small scale, representative environment and then do tests to validate the model. But we don't.
Let me give you a concrete example (pardon the pun). ACI (American Concrete Institute) has a series of equations (empirically derived) that engineers use to design beams. Obviously since they are empirically derived, we did experiments. However steel design uses theoretical equations that engineers can use in SPECIFIC situations where actual testing has shown that they are reasonably accurate. Depending on the accuracy of the theoretical vs experimental results, engineers apply a strength reduction factor to account for the variability. For tension (very predictable) that is 90% of the theoretical limit, for compression (buckling is much less predictable) is it much less (depending on the cross section).
Try limiting the number of connections. I had a problem with Uverse when downloading torrents because they would saturate the number of connections and slow down the connection. Also, if you saturate the uploading bandwidth, you won't be able to download except at a crawl. I'm waiting for them to allow me to use Windows Media Center for my TV before I'll pay for that service. Until then, internet only please.
No, things we use mathematical models on (at least in my experience) are things that have been extensively tested to verify that the equations are valid. An example comes to mind: ALL ENGINEERING DESIGN is based on computer models based on repeatable experiments. Yet for some reason some people have a desire to ENGINEER our climate, despite the fact that we don't have any repeatable experiments.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.usps.com/postallaw/_pdf/USPSUSOReport.pdf#search='pes%20mailbox%20access%20rule%20comprise'
Page 2, Executive Summary:
"To ensure funding of the SO, Congress and the President established the Private Express Statutes (PES) and the mailbox access rule, which together comprise the postal monopoly"
The PES defines requirements 3rd party carriers must abide by to deliver a letter. The mailbox access rule is further defined on:
http://www.usps.com/receive/mailboxstandards.htm
"Our regulations cover what can and can’t be placed in a curbside mailbox or mailbox outside of your house, which generally includes only mail that has been sent through the USPS. However, our regulations don’t govern what can be placed in a mail slot on your door."
No, the point is, you can't deliver a letter except through the USPS unless it is overnight as an "urgent message". Also, only USPS can deliver to mailboxes.
I agree with you that profit comes from charging more than your cost. But it doesn't have to come through lying or cheating. Let's look at tips at a restaurant. I am not a fan of the way tipping is an obligation, but the point is, it is not required, but people pay it. If you truly appreciate the service a company is giving you, then is it so unreasonable to expect them to get a profit? If the service is not worth the cost+profit, then don't use the service... It's really that simple.
Our government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. However, you may have noticed the government recently ignoring the constitution. The existence of the TSA is not something that I instituted, it is not something I would support, and it is certainly not making my life better. The government cannot possibly make decisions that everyone will approve of. Nor can it make decisions that will improve everyone's life. The only thing the government can do is take and give by force. Now I'm not saying the government should go away, but they should limit their use of force to enforce agreed upon laws, like property rights, civil rights, and even defending our country against outside invaders. These are all constitutional mandates.
What is not in the constitution is any sort of welfare, corporate or individual. In a constitution bound government, no one has any incentive to bribe politicians, because politicians do not have any power to transfer money from the people to special interests.
Your suggestion that somehow it would be far easier to limit the size of corporations and to "reduce risks associated with their limited liability" (WTF does that even mean?) than to just stop having the government being involved is crazy. The government has no ability to judge what is "too big to fail" in a company, nor do they have any ability to judge anything about a business at all. Let business be business, and government be government.
I agree, make things rounded for convenience. And then instead of printing stupid 5c stamps, just let them tape a frickin nickel on the letter. Or if you're concerned about the extra weight, make it a 10c rounding and let them tape dimes. They'd only have to stay on until the post office anyway.
Profit, you fool, comes from voluntary transactions. No one forces you to use UPS, but you are forced to use USPS if you want to send a 1st class letter.
As far as the government is concerned your money is their money, and they will lie, cheat, and steal to recover it. They will even make tax cuts and credits sound like they are giving you free money.
And PS, the easiest way to end corporate welfare from the government is to stop giving money to the government.
Aha, spreading the wealth around. This is the fundamental problem with communism (what you are suggesting). It makes everybody equal, even it if makes everybody poor.
And you are right, it was a small scale example, which is why I mentioned you could technically hire 1.5 more workers. The problem is, why couldn't you just have the company hire twice as many people for half as much? Wouldn't that do the same thing?
The answer is because those workers have an intrinsic value to the business, which the market has priced at 120k. So in the real world, when the government puts a 50% tax, they don't cut people's pay in half and hire another worker, they are more likely to fire one person, and double the more productive worker's pay. Thus increasing the tax rate actually INCREASES unemployment. You can't suddenly make a job be worth half as much. You'll just only be able to afford half as many workers.
This is why there is something called a Laffer Curve. Under your theory, why stop at 50% for the tax rate? What about 75%, 90%, hell even 100%? Government revenue is maximized with a tax rate somewhere between 0% and 100%, and those who believe taxes should go up believe we are under the optimum, and those who believe taxes should go down think we are above the ideal spot (or don't want the government to maximize revenue).
I am in that parenthetical group. You are saying that the money will make its way back into the market one way or another (which I don't disagree with) but I believe that the money is more efficiently distributed by voluntary transactions rather than force.
I have to reverse my prior mods, but you are so wrong, I had to post.
You are talking nonsense. Let's examine your scenarios:
Scenario 1) We have person A, B, and C:
Person A makes 120k (assuming 0% taxes)
Person B makes 120k
Person C makes 0 (assuming he can't find other employment)
The company is paying out 240k total. The government gets 0. Thus there is 240k exposed to the free market.
Scenario 2) Person A makes 60k (120k Company, 60k to gov)
Person B makes 60k (120k Company, 60k to gov)
Person C makes 60k (120k Gov, 60k back to gov)
The company is paying out 240k total. The government takes 180k, 120k of which is paid to Company to pay person C. This leaves 180k to the free market, and nets the government 60k.
In scenario 1, you have 2 people employed at Company and 240k to spend vs scenario 2 where 3 people are employed at Company and have 180k to spend.
Are you seeing where I am going with this? The market just lost 60k. Your assumption is that Company is the only employer. If you made twice as much money, would you create jobs? The reasonable assumption is that there are 2 outcomes:
The government provided laborer is more efficient than the free market increase or the converse. Which is more likely; that the government is efficient, or the free market?
And of course this whole thing leaves me with one question... What happens to the other 60k? I'd bet you a ton of money that it got wasted from the stupidity of the government. (ok, ok, if you scale it up, you could call it half another job in a perfect world).
The moral of the story is the same as the broken window fallacy. You neglect the jobs that were lost due to cutting everyone's pay in half. You can't just get free money through taxation.
In those historical cases, were the police protecting rights, or were they doing wrong themselves? I don't defend police who don't defend rights. You don't beat and attack people with dogs for trespassing. And quite frankly, under those Jim Crowe laws, it wasn't businesses that excluded people, it was the government requiring it. Many private businesses embraced minorities because they realized that they were paying customers.
I don't find it plausible to exclude minors from stores, or letting women get in without a cover charge, or even giving a discount to seniors. Yet those are all forms of discrimination that persist. Why is race different? I can't control my age or gender any more than I can my race, but somehow people think they can force integration on people.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Racists exist. As long as they aren't actively hurting other races (ala KKK), let them be wrong. Now if they make a business, let them lose potential profit by excluding half their market. In fact, if you don't agree with their discrimination, vote with your dollars and don't buy their products or services. But don't force people to do things, or it makes you no better than slave owners in the first place.
You have a point that a small government does not guarantee large freedom, but the converse is not true. A large government does indeed guarantee a loss of freedom. The more power the government has, the less an individual does. That doesn't make it true if one individual is taking power from another.
Freedom can be taken by any number of entities, government being one. But if the government is increasing in scope, you are definitely losing freedom.
I fail to see how this is true. Where exactly does the government come in to enforce discrimination? Or do you mean enforce property laws when whatever discriminated group trespasses?
Think about homeless people loitering. They are undesirable for businesses and they have every right to ask them to leave their property, and if they don't comply, the police will force them to leave.
So you're saying that increasing government debt is part of the problem? Imagine that...
Oh no, that money sits in a bank account and ONLY produces interest. Keynesians forget one important fact: Interest is paid for a reason! You get interest because other people are paying you to use your money. When you put money in a bank, it is LOANED to other people. The money is still working even if you are not actively using it. Nobody stuffs their money under the mattress, so it is still working in the economy.
The government and individuals have forgotten that there is nothing wrong with saving, and it's a good idea to have a rainy day fund. If people and the government did have that, we wouldn't have had a credit crisis in the first place.
Amendment 16: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
I don't see a fine anywhere on there...
Umm actually, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways disagrees with you, as it was built for military purposes and thus is well within the constitutional bounds of government. Also, it does facilitate and aid interstate commerce, while still being managed by the states.
The internet? Again, developed for the military, and then expanded to allow for private use. And electricity was completely private and had no issues until the government forced a monopoly, and I think it should go back to being deregulated.
Oh ok, they can't put you in jail, but they can extort money from you and take your stuff. That sounds totally legitimate coming from your Lords... I mean government.
Nonsense, it is around Jupiter either way. The first book talked about Saturn, but the movie and the later books all used Jupiter because originally they weren't able to get a good rendering of Saturn's rings for the movie, and then Clarke discovered that Europa was more likely to support life than any of Saturn's moons and went with it.
See I have the reverse problem. UPS I have given up and just ship it to their warehouse in the first place... They won't leave it at an apartment. FedEx on the other hand, dropped off my $150 shipment on black friday, and I won't be back until monday. Hope no one steals the shit off my porch in 3 days! Luckily I live in a small town, so stealing isn't much of a problem, but seriously, no signature required?
Rail efficiency: `450 ton-miles per gallon of diesel fuel
Shipping efficiency: ~500 ton-miles per gallon of bunker fuel
Note that boat shipping doesn't have to go around the long way, and that bunker fuel is cheaper and uses less energy to refine. Shipping wins hands down.
In a free market, YOU CANNOT ABUSE WORKERS. Or at least you can't abuse them worse than the alternative of being unemployed.
What you are saying is that workers in China should get the same benefits as workers in America. Maybe Americans are just spoiled union workers that make unreasonable demands, and there are millions of unemployed Chinese begging for American's jobs.
The sad reality is, the alternative to working in the US is receiving enough government assistance to live comfortably. The alternative to working in China is poverty and death. That is why jobs are moving to China.
I have a Archos 5 Internet Tablet velcroed above the factory head unit hooked up via the Aux In port. Music, videos, games, GPS navigation, wifi, and hot swappable microSD card slot. About the only thing that sucks is the GPS software since most Android GPS programs rely on the cell data connection to retrieve maps, so I had to settle for the GPS program provided by Archos that installs to the internal storage (which is pretty much shit).
How is this insightful, it's also more jobs and benefits to Google employees and probably more benefits to Google users. Does it break even? I'd like to think that Google makes better use of the money than the government.
Except basketball arenas are generally MUCH smaller than football stadiums. Population per volume, I'd bet basketball arenas have a higher density and therefore should have more noise. But the real question is, can it filter out vuvuzelas at (insert preference of soccer/football here) games.
Go back and re-read my statement. We do use models in real life. We use models all the time in engineering. My point is that these models have been proven to be reliable by actual experimentation. I would have no problems with the computer models of the climate if we could create a small scale, representative environment and then do tests to validate the model. But we don't.
Let me give you a concrete example (pardon the pun). ACI (American Concrete Institute) has a series of equations (empirically derived) that engineers use to design beams. Obviously since they are empirically derived, we did experiments. However steel design uses theoretical equations that engineers can use in SPECIFIC situations where actual testing has shown that they are reasonably accurate. Depending on the accuracy of the theoretical vs experimental results, engineers apply a strength reduction factor to account for the variability. For tension (very predictable) that is 90% of the theoretical limit, for compression (buckling is much less predictable) is it much less (depending on the cross section).
Try limiting the number of connections. I had a problem with Uverse when downloading torrents because they would saturate the number of connections and slow down the connection. Also, if you saturate the uploading bandwidth, you won't be able to download except at a crawl. I'm waiting for them to allow me to use Windows Media Center for my TV before I'll pay for that service. Until then, internet only please.
No, things we use mathematical models on (at least in my experience) are things that have been extensively tested to verify that the equations are valid. An example comes to mind: ALL ENGINEERING DESIGN is based on computer models based on repeatable experiments. Yet for some reason some people have a desire to ENGINEER our climate, despite the fact that we don't have any repeatable experiments.