Right, there is no ban, you just won't be able to buy inexpensive traditional incandescent light bulbs. Oh, yes, if someone manufactures a new design incandescent light bulb (with fresh patents so they can sell it for a premium price), that would be perfectly legal, but they can't use the traditional design because it doesn't meet the mandated energy efficiency standard. Why is it any of the government's business how efficient the light bulbs I use are?
The problem is, how sure are you that this ban/energy efficiency requirement does a better job of managing the externalities than the market? What about the externalities of the manufacture and disposal of the new lightbulbs? You assume that because the market does not make the decision that you think it should, that the market has failed. It is more likely that there are factors that the market has adjusted for that you are unaware of, than that there are factors you are aware of that the market has not accounted for. The reverse is not impossible, just less likely.
The only reason they haven't been glass cratered is because the important parts of S. Korea are just too damn close to do it safely so the world is stuck in this retarded diplomacy dance.
Actually, the reason that N. Korea has not been taken out is because China has an interest in maintaining it as a client state. I am not entirely sure what that interest is because every time I start to think I understand the relationship between the two countries, one or the other (usually N. Korea) that does not make sense in that context. However, I think that ultimately it comes down to China feeling that, even though the current N. Korean regime is an unreliable client, the risk is too great that any replacement will be more inclined to reunite with S. Korea and move into the U.S. sphere of influence.
The funny thing about that is that a united Korea would be significantly less in the U.S. sphere of influence within a generation than S. Korea remaining separate will be over the same time frame. S. Korea would like to steer a more independent course (although they would remain within the U.S. sphere of influence because their national interest lies within that area), but because of the threat of N. Korea, they need to maintain the U.S.'s kneejerk reaction to come to their aid should N. Korea attack. I'm not sure how long that U.S. reaction would last, but almost certainly for S. Korea to withstand the initial onslaught and be able to deal with whatever force N. Korea had left at that point (basically, S. Korea is perfectly capable of defending itself against N. Korea once it has time to mobilize its forces).
NO, actually, they don't. Constitutionally, spending is a different authorization than debt. The Treasury Department does not Constitutionally have authority to issue any instruments of debt. The only authorization that Treasury has to issue an instrument of debt is the law passed by Congress which, also, establishes the debt ceiling. When the debt ceiling is reached, Treasury no longer has any authority to issue instruments of debt (bonds, etc) because their authorization to issue instruments of debt is part of the same law that establishes the debt ceiling. Outside of the law that establishes the debt ceiling, all instruments of debt issued by the U.S. government must be individually approved by Congress.
Yes, but there is nobody else to pretend to get the money from, so the IMF would not be able to "lend" the money to the U.S. to "bail" it out. I understand what you are saying and am quite sure that the IMF would happily do it to the U.S.. The problem that the IMF would have is that there is nobody out there who could pretend to have enough money to bail the U.S. out if it got into the position of not being able to maintain the illusion of paying its debts.
Absolutely correct. The fact of the matter is there are good reason why people are nervous about new technologies. What the author conveniently leaves out is that around the time that electricity was being introduced there was another great new technology being introduced that was going to lead to wonderful improvement in the health of everyone. It was radiation. There were a whole bunch of devices whereby people irradiated themselves. They were touted as things that would result in all sorts of positive health benefits. It turns out that they caused all sorts of health problems.
Exactly, I cannot understand what relevance the fact that she would not be forced to disclose her password has to the argument being made about self incrimination.
The study talks about the fact that distracted driving involves more than just cellphones, then most of their recomendations involve restricting the use of cellphones while driving. When they talk about the only objective basis they have for analyzing the impact of distracted driving (the actual accident reports) they lump all distracted driving into one category and do not give you any idea of what percentage of those involve cellphone use and what percentage involve other things (like changing the radio station). This is the problem I see with all attempts to push laws increasing restrictions on cellphone use in cars, they either do not point out all the other things that people do routinely while driving that are just as big of a distraction as cellphones, or if they do, they use the impact of those things on the incidence of accidents to support restrictions on cellphone use while driving.
The thing is, driving is dangerous. People need to be reminded on a regular basis that they need to pay attention to what is going on around them when they are driving. New laws are not needed.
Who wrote such a narrow-minded license and for what purpose? I would like how they thought this would benefit end-users.
It smells like greed, incompetence and arrogance.
They wrote it this way to prevent people from creating cables that would allow you to work around the DRM that HDMI was designed to facilitate. HDMI was never about benefitting end-users, it was about restricting end-users.
A couple of points, the Founding Fathers did not target civilians. The military arm of the American Revolution wore uniforms (or at least could be easily distinguished from civilians when they went to battle). The cases where the Founding Fathers acted without uniforms (things like the Boston Tea Party) the targets were inanimate and there was no risk of people being injured accidentally.
Traditionally, paleoanthropologists have defined "tool" to mean something that was modified in order to accomplish a task. To me this seems to be a more useful definition than defining a tool as an object that is used to accomplish a task. The intentional modification of an object to make it more useful for a particular task is a category of thought further than using a found object to accomplish a task.
Those who use the fact that most of us do not actually make the tools we use are overlooking the fact that the tools we use were either made by other humans or by machines (tools) made by other humans. If they are claiming that another blackspot tuskfish had modified this stone to make it better for cracking open a clam, their argument might have some merit.
Actually, the Constitution says that Congress must authorize all debt that the U.S. government takes on. Before the first debt limit law was passed, whenever the Treasury Department needed to borrow more money, Congress had to pass a law authorizing the specific instrument of debt that Treasury was going to issue. In the 1917, Congress decided that Treasury needed to be able to adjust the type of instrument being used to finance government debt according to market factors and that this required being able to change things more rapidly than a bill could be passed in Congress, so they authorized Treasury to borrow up to a particular amount. This means that Treasury does not have Constitutional authority to borrow beyond that amount. Only Congress has Constitutional authority to borrow money for the Federal government.
Actually, someone did calculate the optimal tax rate. If I recall correctly, it is to decrease income tax significantly from where it is right now and increase capital gains slightly (although it may be the other way around). It wasn't as completely proven as the falsity of Keynesian economics, but the numbers looked about right because they disagreed with the doctrinaire positions of both sides of the tax debate.
What I love about the current debate is that the Democrats are arguing, based on Keynesian economic theory, that you can't cut government spending during an economic downturn without making things worse. Yet they want to raise taxes during that same economic downturn, which Keynesian economic theory says will make things worse, as well.
The IMF will bail you out, and they will have their list of conditions as to how the US should be run.
With what money? The reason the IMF insists that the U.S. must raise its debt limit is because the money it uses to bail out other countries mostly comes from the U.S. government. If the U.S. does not raise its debt limit it will not be able to borow the money to fund the IMF.
The problem is that is not really true. He arrived at that conclusion by calculating taxes she pays that his payment of is capped (FICA) and by not calculating in taxes he pays that she doesn't (certain parts of his capital gains taxes). Warren Buffet says, "I should pay more tax," then he takes advantage of every tax loophole available to him and doesn't take advantage of the fact that he is free to pay more to the federal government if he feels that he is undertaxed. All of which means that when Warren Buffet says, "I should pay more tax," what he really means is that other "rich" people should pay more tax.
That would be an interesting point, except for the fact that the countries they took that land from don't want it back (well ok, Syria wants the Golan Heights back, but that's just so they can use it to launch rockets against Israel from it).
He asked permission to take pictures, not to install software on the computers. The only person who might have had the authority to allow him to install software on the computers in the store is the store manager. While the involvement of the Secret Service may be overkill, he is clearly in the wrong. I may be wrong about the law he is being tried under, but if it is the one I am thinking of, it was definitely intended for cases like this one.
The problem with smart phones is that while the price of the phones is coming down, as far as I can tell, the cost of the data plans isn't. It isn't the price of the phones that causes people not to have a smart phone, it is the cost of the data plans.
The flooding in the central US is a result of the Army Corps of Engineers failing to release sufficient water before the snow melt. The last time there was a winter with a similar amount of snow, they released enough water from the dams in the early spring before the snow melt started and then held most of the snow melt in the reservoirs.
What do you mean "all your cards will be digital"? I'm going to guess you are saying that they will be on my phone, but I am going to tell you that I think it improbable that my driver's license will be on my phone in my lifetime. Especially considering how small a percentage of the total population actually owns a phone capable of having those cards on it.
If a relationship is to the point of a person needing to track their significant other's movements with a GPS device, why do people even bother continuing the relationship? Seems to me that suspicion of that magnitude is pretty much in itself a sign of a failed relationship. I mean, if there's no trust, what's the point of the relationship at all? Why not just end the relationship and go your own way? People get divorced or break up every single day...it's not the end of the world.
So that they don't get stuck on the short end of the divorce settlement. Or, so that they can use the evidence to get a divorce settlement that will punish the other party for cheating on them.
Absolutely correct, and they have been doing it for decades. Back in the late 60s one of the biggest bands was Credence Clearwater Revival. They sold a lot of albums and made a lot of money for the record company. Then Fogerty asked why they weren't making any money and the record company explained it was all in the contract he (and the band) had signed. Their manager basically owned all the rights to everything they had recorded and they were only entitled to a pittance of the money being made. He demanded to renegotiate the contract. They told him that he was locked in for a certain number of years, he could either live with the deal or give up music. So he gave up music. About 20 years later, when that contract had finally expired he came back and started making music again, successfully. Think about how much money the record company gave up because they didn't want to give him a fair shake.
Shutting down a botnet can be rather straightforward, although not necessarily easy. As far as I know, all current botnets are designed to make money for their controllers. This means that shutting them down can be done in the same manner that most organized crime organizations get shutdown, by following the money. What makes this difficult is that many botnets will cross jurisdictional boundaries, at least some of which will not be inclined to be cooperative.
There are two problems with your scenario. One is that the Chinese have a surplus of men (or a deficiency of women..either way of looking at it works). Historically, every society that has had a surplus of men has descended into one of two destructive patterns. The first is internal chaos as riots break out all over the place. The second is aggressive wars of conquest.
The other is that China has an even more serious age bubble than either the U.S. or Europe This age bubble lags that of the Western countries by 10-15 years and so is often overlooked by many. The result of this is that a significant portion of their economy will be dedicated to caring for their aging population in a few years. The ratio of the bubble to the rest of the population is, also, larger in China than in Western countries.
From the point of view that people are generally good...
Well, there is your first mistake. People are not generally good. If properly trained (which includes a significant fear of sure punishment early on), people can learn that being good has more positive results than not being good. However, people naturally tend to be not good.
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Right, there is no ban, you just won't be able to buy inexpensive traditional incandescent light bulbs. Oh, yes, if someone manufactures a new design incandescent light bulb (with fresh patents so they can sell it for a premium price), that would be perfectly legal, but they can't use the traditional design because it doesn't meet the mandated energy efficiency standard. Why is it any of the government's business how efficient the light bulbs I use are?
The problem is, how sure are you that this ban/energy efficiency requirement does a better job of managing the externalities than the market? What about the externalities of the manufacture and disposal of the new lightbulbs? You assume that because the market does not make the decision that you think it should, that the market has failed. It is more likely that there are factors that the market has adjusted for that you are unaware of, than that there are factors you are aware of that the market has not accounted for. The reverse is not impossible, just less likely.
The only reason they haven't been glass cratered is because the important parts of S. Korea are just too damn close to do it safely so the world is stuck in this retarded diplomacy dance.
Actually, the reason that N. Korea has not been taken out is because China has an interest in maintaining it as a client state. I am not entirely sure what that interest is because every time I start to think I understand the relationship between the two countries, one or the other (usually N. Korea) that does not make sense in that context. However, I think that ultimately it comes down to China feeling that, even though the current N. Korean regime is an unreliable client, the risk is too great that any replacement will be more inclined to reunite with S. Korea and move into the U.S. sphere of influence.
The funny thing about that is that a united Korea would be significantly less in the U.S. sphere of influence within a generation than S. Korea remaining separate will be over the same time frame. S. Korea would like to steer a more independent course (although they would remain within the U.S. sphere of influence because their national interest lies within that area), but because of the threat of N. Korea, they need to maintain the U.S.'s kneejerk reaction to come to their aid should N. Korea attack. I'm not sure how long that U.S. reaction would last, but almost certainly for S. Korea to withstand the initial onslaught and be able to deal with whatever force N. Korea had left at that point (basically, S. Korea is perfectly capable of defending itself against N. Korea once it has time to mobilize its forces).
NO, actually, they don't. Constitutionally, spending is a different authorization than debt. The Treasury Department does not Constitutionally have authority to issue any instruments of debt. The only authorization that Treasury has to issue an instrument of debt is the law passed by Congress which, also, establishes the debt ceiling. When the debt ceiling is reached, Treasury no longer has any authority to issue instruments of debt (bonds, etc) because their authorization to issue instruments of debt is part of the same law that establishes the debt ceiling. Outside of the law that establishes the debt ceiling, all instruments of debt issued by the U.S. government must be individually approved by Congress.
Yes, but there is nobody else to pretend to get the money from, so the IMF would not be able to "lend" the money to the U.S. to "bail" it out. I understand what you are saying and am quite sure that the IMF would happily do it to the U.S.. The problem that the IMF would have is that there is nobody out there who could pretend to have enough money to bail the U.S. out if it got into the position of not being able to maintain the illusion of paying its debts.
Absolutely correct. The fact of the matter is there are good reason why people are nervous about new technologies. What the author conveniently leaves out is that around the time that electricity was being introduced there was another great new technology being introduced that was going to lead to wonderful improvement in the health of everyone. It was radiation. There were a whole bunch of devices whereby people irradiated themselves. They were touted as things that would result in all sorts of positive health benefits. It turns out that they caused all sorts of health problems.
Exactly, I cannot understand what relevance the fact that she would not be forced to disclose her password has to the argument being made about self incrimination.
The study talks about the fact that distracted driving involves more than just cellphones, then most of their recomendations involve restricting the use of cellphones while driving. When they talk about the only objective basis they have for analyzing the impact of distracted driving (the actual accident reports) they lump all distracted driving into one category and do not give you any idea of what percentage of those involve cellphone use and what percentage involve other things (like changing the radio station). This is the problem I see with all attempts to push laws increasing restrictions on cellphone use in cars, they either do not point out all the other things that people do routinely while driving that are just as big of a distraction as cellphones, or if they do, they use the impact of those things on the incidence of accidents to support restrictions on cellphone use while driving.
The thing is, driving is dangerous. People need to be reminded on a regular basis that they need to pay attention to what is going on around them when they are driving. New laws are not needed.
Who wrote such a narrow-minded license and for what purpose? I would like how they thought this would benefit end-users.
It smells like greed, incompetence and arrogance.
They wrote it this way to prevent people from creating cables that would allow you to work around the DRM that HDMI was designed to facilitate. HDMI was never about benefitting end-users, it was about restricting end-users.
A couple of points, the Founding Fathers did not target civilians. The military arm of the American Revolution wore uniforms (or at least could be easily distinguished from civilians when they went to battle). The cases where the Founding Fathers acted without uniforms (things like the Boston Tea Party) the targets were inanimate and there was no risk of people being injured accidentally.
Traditionally, paleoanthropologists have defined "tool" to mean something that was modified in order to accomplish a task. To me this seems to be a more useful definition than defining a tool as an object that is used to accomplish a task. The intentional modification of an object to make it more useful for a particular task is a category of thought further than using a found object to accomplish a task.
Those who use the fact that most of us do not actually make the tools we use are overlooking the fact that the tools we use were either made by other humans or by machines (tools) made by other humans. If they are claiming that another blackspot tuskfish had modified this stone to make it better for cracking open a clam, their argument might have some merit.
Actually, the Constitution says that Congress must authorize all debt that the U.S. government takes on. Before the first debt limit law was passed, whenever the Treasury Department needed to borrow more money, Congress had to pass a law authorizing the specific instrument of debt that Treasury was going to issue. In the 1917, Congress decided that Treasury needed to be able to adjust the type of instrument being used to finance government debt according to market factors and that this required being able to change things more rapidly than a bill could be passed in Congress, so they authorized Treasury to borrow up to a particular amount. This means that Treasury does not have Constitutional authority to borrow beyond that amount. Only Congress has Constitutional authority to borrow money for the Federal government.
Actually, someone did calculate the optimal tax rate. If I recall correctly, it is to decrease income tax significantly from where it is right now and increase capital gains slightly (although it may be the other way around). It wasn't as completely proven as the falsity of Keynesian economics, but the numbers looked about right because they disagreed with the doctrinaire positions of both sides of the tax debate.
What I love about the current debate is that the Democrats are arguing, based on Keynesian economic theory, that you can't cut government spending during an economic downturn without making things worse. Yet they want to raise taxes during that same economic downturn, which Keynesian economic theory says will make things worse, as well.
The IMF will bail you out, and they will have their list of conditions as to how the US should be run.
With what money? The reason the IMF insists that the U.S. must raise its debt limit is because the money it uses to bail out other countries mostly comes from the U.S. government. If the U.S. does not raise its debt limit it will not be able to borow the money to fund the IMF.
The problem is that is not really true. He arrived at that conclusion by calculating taxes she pays that his payment of is capped (FICA) and by not calculating in taxes he pays that she doesn't (certain parts of his capital gains taxes). Warren Buffet says, "I should pay more tax," then he takes advantage of every tax loophole available to him and doesn't take advantage of the fact that he is free to pay more to the federal government if he feels that he is undertaxed. All of which means that when Warren Buffet says, "I should pay more tax," what he really means is that other "rich" people should pay more tax.
That would be an interesting point, except for the fact that the countries they took that land from don't want it back (well ok, Syria wants the Golan Heights back, but that's just so they can use it to launch rockets against Israel from it).
He asked permission to take pictures, not to install software on the computers. The only person who might have had the authority to allow him to install software on the computers in the store is the store manager. While the involvement of the Secret Service may be overkill, he is clearly in the wrong. I may be wrong about the law he is being tried under, but if it is the one I am thinking of, it was definitely intended for cases like this one.
The problem with smart phones is that while the price of the phones is coming down, as far as I can tell, the cost of the data plans isn't. It isn't the price of the phones that causes people not to have a smart phone, it is the cost of the data plans.
(cf the flooded central US).
The flooding in the central US is a result of the Army Corps of Engineers failing to release sufficient water before the snow melt. The last time there was a winter with a similar amount of snow, they released enough water from the dams in the early spring before the snow melt started and then held most of the snow melt in the reservoirs.
What do you mean "all your cards will be digital"? I'm going to guess you are saying that they will be on my phone, but I am going to tell you that I think it improbable that my driver's license will be on my phone in my lifetime. Especially considering how small a percentage of the total population actually owns a phone capable of having those cards on it.
If a relationship is to the point of a person needing to track their significant other's movements with a GPS device, why do people even bother continuing the relationship? Seems to me that suspicion of that magnitude is pretty much in itself a sign of a failed relationship. I mean, if there's no trust, what's the point of the relationship at all? Why not just end the relationship and go your own way? People get divorced or break up every single day...it's not the end of the world.
So that they don't get stuck on the short end of the divorce settlement. Or, so that they can use the evidence to get a divorce settlement that will punish the other party for cheating on them.
Absolutely correct, and they have been doing it for decades. Back in the late 60s one of the biggest bands was Credence Clearwater Revival. They sold a lot of albums and made a lot of money for the record company. Then Fogerty asked why they weren't making any money and the record company explained it was all in the contract he (and the band) had signed. Their manager basically owned all the rights to everything they had recorded and they were only entitled to a pittance of the money being made. He demanded to renegotiate the contract. They told him that he was locked in for a certain number of years, he could either live with the deal or give up music. So he gave up music. About 20 years later, when that contract had finally expired he came back and started making music again, successfully. Think about how much money the record company gave up because they didn't want to give him a fair shake.
Shutting down a botnet can be rather straightforward, although not necessarily easy. As far as I know, all current botnets are designed to make money for their controllers. This means that shutting them down can be done in the same manner that most organized crime organizations get shutdown, by following the money. What makes this difficult is that many botnets will cross jurisdictional boundaries, at least some of which will not be inclined to be cooperative.
There are two problems with your scenario. One is that the Chinese have a surplus of men (or a deficiency of women..either way of looking at it works). Historically, every society that has had a surplus of men has descended into one of two destructive patterns. The first is internal chaos as riots break out all over the place. The second is aggressive wars of conquest.
The other is that China has an even more serious age bubble than either the U.S. or Europe This age bubble lags that of the Western countries by 10-15 years and so is often overlooked by many. The result of this is that a significant portion of their economy will be dedicated to caring for their aging population in a few years. The ratio of the bubble to the rest of the population is, also, larger in China than in Western countries.
From the point of view that people are generally good...
Well, there is your first mistake. People are not generally good. If properly trained (which includes a significant fear of sure punishment early on), people can learn that being good has more positive results than not being good. However, people naturally tend to be not good.