yeah... and you're an export oriented economy. But I hope that great German education would enlighten you to the reality that not everyone can be a net exporter.
Germany is as much a model to follow as Saudi Arabia or Norway. You can spend lots of money when you're exporting.
He wanted a strong federal government no doubt. No one doubts that. I believe I said that in my original post. This is especially... I would say mainly true of economic matters and trade. But he also recognized the needs for local and state government.
Certain things about bound to cross state lines and end up with the federal government. Common currency... probably needs a central bank. Rivers and pollution in general need some kind of regulator to handle externalities. Whereas a central government micro-managing healthcare or education or urban planning other such policies does.
I suppose in your world, you know Hamilton's heart and what he wrote was just to placate the others. I on the other hand, go by what they put on pen and paper as that is all we have to go by.
I also note... you mention nothing of limits on communication as the reason for states rights at the time of the constitution. That of course is entirely in your imagination of the founders. But of course... you know what was in their heads instead of what they actually wrote and said.
It would help if you actually read the founders. They explicitly wanted most things to be state and local. Even the people we think of as wanting 'big central' government like Hamilton recognized the the need for state and local government.
"The States can never lose their powers till the whole people of America are robbed of their liberties" - Alexander Hamilton
States rights and local rights are explicitly tied to liberty as even the most central government type like Hamilton acknowledged. Let's not get into what Jefferson would say about the role of the federal government.
To suggest anything that limiting the federal government had to do with practical communication and travel problems is well.. plain silly and not supported by a single quote from any of the founders.
"Actually spending went down during the Clinton years as percentage of GDP, which is the metric that matters."
So you counteract his point... by basically admitting spending never actually goes down. Clinton was blessed by a strong economy by the whole internet/.com boom, something you can't attribute to him.. which of course meant he didn't need to actually cut spending as the economy grew.
Both democrats and republicans basically have this undying belief of infinite economic growth... and depend on it for the very survival of the country. That's a lot of risk in a system.
There is nothing 'natural' about economic growth. By most accounts, the kind of economic growth we're used to is pretty much tied directly to the industrial revolution. Now that we in the post industrial era, we won't be getting those growth rates involving most of the economy. We can and have been trying to prop it up with financial capitalism, the housing market, government spending... but it's all been fighting an up hill battle. The industrial revolution is over. I could go more into this more if you want, but essentially, the industrial revolution was unique 1. It provided huge improvement in your quality of life that people were willing to work for those goods/services. This is why people in China today leave the country side to work in sweat shops. 2. The goods/services of the industrial revolution required lots of labor. Invent a telephone...you need mass switch operators. Invent a car, you need auto workers. Automation and globalization today reduces the labor needed to roll out a new product or service.
You can no longer count on economic growth to fix all spending problems. You might even consider you country going in negative growth and shrinking as is happening in some European countries. Real cuts... are needed. Growth should always be taken as a bonus. That's the biggest problem with thinking "percentage of GDP" is all that matters. It's all that matters IF you wish to depend on infinite economic growth.
I personally don't think it will get as bad as Zimbabwe. But I'm always open to surprises:P
One thing about Africa is your perception can change in a minute. I recall a few of the riots, where people I'd talk to everyday, suddenly turned on their neighbor and burned homes down... so take the following with a grain of salt.
I think the problem in South Africa is less about 'hate' for white people, and more about general corruption and poverty. This is what I think saves South Africa from Zimbabwe. There is even a small effort to help the poor whites... and there are a lot of them. Despite the flight, there is still a fair number of institutional builders. The old European style institutions are still there. China is heavily involved.
If anything, I think South Africa will just descend into crime, poverty, corruption... not unlike many of the Latin American countries have done in the past. I don't see a Zimbabwe style melt down.
For the record.. I am of Indian descent, and while never had it as bad as the blacks, we certainly detested apartheid.
SA is basically a country run by ideological corruption right now. While blacks make up 80% of the population and almost everyone agrees a certain amount of transition in terms of 'affirmative' action is a good thing given history it is being done in such an impractical way.
People are literally being handed positions of power with absolutely no qualifications. And of course this is coming down to massive corruption. It rarely goes to help the poor needy black family. The benefits tend to go to well connected black families who don't really need the help.
Then you have the massive entitlement mentality. The biggest problem here is that 80% of the population is black. And unfortunately, a large percentage expect all the services for free. A simple example is electricity. They don't want to pay for electricity. They expect it to be subsidized by the other 20% of society. You can't run an electrical system that way. It's not like all the Indians or whites are rolling in money to subsidize it that way.
So it's no surprise the government tries to crack down on whistle blowing. The whole country and government is based on corruption.
It's a country doomed to run into the ground left to its own merits. There is hope though. China is heavily involved and at least keeps goods flowing... and they're relatively untainted by a colonial past in Africa.
It's easy to rant and just say raise taxes and cut spending as if this is some small administrative matter.
It's like Greece is right now. There is just no way it can remain anywhere close to the same society it is now. Oh sure, the bureaucrats and politicians and bankers would like to just keep the game going. They were doing it for the past year... but hey... Greece is right back where it started before all the bailouts... The choices to be made in Greece affect the very structure and nature of government in Greece and the EU in general. It's not just a matter of raise some taxes here and then cutting some spending there.
You're not getting anywhere close to reducing the deficit by even 50% by repealing the Bush tax cuts and even adding some more taxes. By the Obama administrations own numbers, repealing the Bush tax cuts would bring in about 30-100 billion/year. Remember, we're dealing with a budget deficit in the trillions. My guess even this is an optimistic number (it might be lower is rich people might lose revenue as well due to the down turn, people leave the country, hide their wealth, retire...)
And of course people like to say the US should just cut military spending. Not only is military spending heavily domestic, thus employing huge number of Americans... it has a larger problem. Most of the world has gotten used to American power. For all it's problems and controversies, most of the Western world sleeps well at night knowing that if another nutjub like Sadaam or Hitler starts acting up... the US will be there to wipe em out.
Pardon my simplicity here, but every other country/group only misbehaves to the extent the United decides not to smack em down. This has allowed most other countries to not spend much as they need to on their own military/security. With the global economic downturn, and every country facing economic problems... it's actually a great structural change in the world order. It probably needs to happen, but again... it's a huge structural change on America's role.
And unfortunately, these kinds of real structural changes tend to be solved by elections or revolutions... not by committee.
When you have two fundamentally different visions of something, a compromise is often not just meeting half way.
Time for a classic flawed car metaphor:P
If John wants a hummer for its utility and ruggedness and Alice wants a civic due to its fuel efficiency and handling, it's not a compromise to have the body of a hummer with an engine and suspension of a civic. That results in a vehicle that doesn't run at all.
By in large the 'mixed market' economy as preached as the middle line between communism and the free market; has been based on putting off problems that require real choices.
Do you trust individuals to make their choices (good or bad), or do you want the administrative state? Do you believe in the family as the basic social unit of society or do you believe in the state....
And what stops you from gathering with your fellow non-believers?
I'll just toss this out there as a thought. People naturally form groups... and groups are naturally exclusive. Not everyone can belong to the same group or you can't form those close group bonds with anyone.
So with a private community center (religion, cultural), they exclude others. Not by law or force:P, just by the reality that a Japanese person is probably not interested in joining the Latin association.
The problem you face with public institution as community centers; whether libraries or for that matter public schools, is that they try and pretend we can all belong to the same group. In reality, these places become either non-denominational enough to basically be valueless bureaucracies unable to get any of the benefit of a community center. Or they start to become exclusionary and take on something very much like a religious or cultural institution... while getting public funding.
Nothing of course stops you form forming a non-profit community center where tech geeks can gather. You just have to do the same kind of work every other cultural and religious group does... get people to donate money.
There are generally a few ways to reasonably implement something. The better your patent filer, the more claims they can put in the patent and the broader those claims can be.
Truth be told, from a 'moral' stand point, I would often want the product/service/idea patent independent of the method. Like the person who invented the cardboard sleeve for hot coffee. Coffee cups have been around for decades. No one else thought of this apparently. It's a simple invention, and I wouldn't have wanted someone to just come in and steal his idea by just changing the sleeve material.
In other cases of course, the true innovation is in fact the method... some cool optimization or cool way to solve the problem only people in the field can grasp.
Except the government already regulates most of the examples you post as hypothetical scenarios...
"people should not talk with loud voices in public spaces" Go ahead... tonight at 2am... go out in the public street and start preaching with a 200 dB megaphone. See if your right to free speech in inalienable. Or speak in groups of a few people about how best to blow the whitehouse... see what happens to your right to free speech.
You see no 'right' is ever inalienable, as all rights conflict with each other to some degree. Your right to free speech versus my right to security. Your right to free speech versus my right to a sleep peacefully in my own home without a 200 dB megaphone blasting:P
In the case of the internet: Your right to the internet versus someone else's right to be compensated for their labor (copyright issues) Your right to the internet versus some child's right to security... free from being used in child porn. Your right to the internet versus other peoples right to the internet (DOS attacks, hacking, even congestion issues)
I'm sorry... I really don't get your point. I'm honestly unsure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me.
If what you're saying is there are rational reasonable ways to solve a problem, then I'm afraid, I just have to repeat my line:
"If things are not politically possible, they're not possible. Not recognizing that... is even dumber."
Not taking into account human variables is simply ignorance. One, I'd argue the vast majority of academics are guilty of. It's like trying to solve a math equation while purposefully ignoring one of the biggest and most important variables.
The academics can sit around and design the perfect and fair pension system, most optimal transit system, most useful healthcare system, but if it doesn't gain the general support of the people and they're not willing to pay the costs... it will fail. And it is simply ignorance on the part of experts not to take into account the most important variable... humans.
That never works because by in large people are not willing to pay for the costs of all the programs they like.
Bill Clinton tried to do that with Medicare. Payouts were tied to funding... automatic cuts were supposed to be made. And of course the medical associations and lobbyists made a fuss.. the cuts are postponed...
It would be the same with social security. If the plans calls for automatic increases in contributions, people will make a fuss. If it calls for cuts in benefits.. people will make a fuss... and the government will cave.
You can see this in action. Sweden for example is known to have one of the best 'formula' based pension systems...taking into account the economy, age, expected life span... All was wonderful of course when nothing bad was demanded by the formula. When the economic downturn occurred and it demanded pension cuts for the elderly... the government caved. it compensated for the loss of pension income with tax cuts for the elderly to make up the difference. So basically, even the swedes were unable to follow the formula when it came to take the bad side of the formula.
If things are not politically possible, they're not possible. Not recognizing that... is even dumber.
That just adds another layer of complication to the equation. It might reduce the number of batteries needed on hand. However, you also have to remember that most businesses do not get equal demand throughout the day.
I used to work in a fast food restaurant and it was extremely streaky. On weekdays, you'd get the lunch rush. you'd get the after work dinner rush.
What does this mean, it was always complex planning for how much we expect and managing demand.
Let us assume for a second most people fill up their cars on their way to work or on their way back. This means you'd be getting a huge number of battery exchanges at once.
Meaning, you really couldn't exchange the battery for person A, charge it, then use A's battery to swap in B. It wouldn't be charged in time.
I don't know what the ratio would be, but I would highly suspect you would need a fairly large number of reserve batteries... perhaps 500 or something. Perhaps you get 500 in the morning rush, 500 in the after work rush. That leaves enough time to charge the morning batteries for the after work rush.
yes, $50/ fillup. I'm Canadian and drive a small 4 cylinder. That's what it costs me to fill up.
Try running a business... any business.
But if it helps. Let's work through this example. Let's suppose you run the gas station and want to keep enough reserves to service 1000 fill-ups.
Using gasoline (assuming $50/fill up), you need inventory worth 1000*50 = $50,000. Need more gas, you just have it delivered on demand. It's easy to manage supply and demand here given the low cost per fillup.
Using battery exchange, you would need 1000 battery packs. That's an inventory of 1000 * $5000/battery pack... that's $5,000,000. Not to mention the huge space this would take to store the batteries. Not to mention the complexity of the batteries (failure rates...).
Again, I'm not saying it's impossible. But it is significantly more difficult and requires significantly higher capital costs to have a battery exchange style system.
It's not something I'd put my money into. I'd put my money on new innovation on battery technology, hybrids, rapid charging...
Petrol and 'batteries' are in no way comparable. You have to look at the 'cost' per 'fill-up'
With gasoline, you're looking at managing something that costs $50 / fill-up. If you have excess gasoline... who cares. It stays in the tank and it's all good.
With batteries, you're looking at managing something that costs $5000 / fill up (remember, you're renting the entire battery pack, not just the charge). If you have excess batteries, it's a huge overhead burden.
Managing that battery inventory is going to be a huge problem. How are you going to make sure each 'gas station' has enough batteries on hand. Since they're not cheap, it's a huge cost. This might not be a huge problem in the city, but that's not where people have a fear of running out of battery. Heck, a simple EV you charge at home would suffice if you simply traveled in the city.
It's the spaces in the cities or commuters. The roll out and management of this is a huge problem.
But even assuming you could manage that well enough, there is another minor problem.
Maybe I'm just paranoid coming from Africa where people will steal anything making infrastructure hard to build out... but you're talking about an expensive batter than can be 'easily swapped out'. Something tells me that makes it 'easy to steal'.
Most sensible people acknowledge. There is no 'free lunch'. There are real costs to providing internet connections (infrastructure, support, transit charges...) The only question is how do you break down the usage.
Most physical models we could come up with are problematic. Many might try a metaphor like our roads. We have similar issues of infrastructure costs, too much traffic, congestion, peak periods... So road tolls seem sensible to some people. This is some form of usage based billing.
Yet let's remember, usage based billing is not some kind of natural way to charge things. When you go to an amusement park, they typically charge you an entry fee no matter how many rides you go on. Subscription models are out there a plenty. The big advantage of subscription based models is predictability in pricing and ease of use.
But we have something in the 'internet' that we don't have on our physical roads. On the internet, we can control the usage of our users. We can't control car drivers (when they drive, how fast, what path they take, how they merge....)
The technology exists and has existed for a long time to manage networks. This is more true with DSL and fibre, but you can also do it with cable.
Now for a piece of wisdom I've learned in my many years. Bureaucracy should always paint with a very broad brush. This is true for both companies and governments. You cannot 'micro-manage complexity'.
Considering telcos are in general natural monopolies and we have to regulate them to some extent, we must make sure to regulate them with a broad brush to REDUCE complexity in regulation.
1. Ban usage based billing. 2. ISPs can charge different rates for different connection speeds, priorities. 3. ISPs can only throttle per user. Not per protocol.
3 rules. Easy to regulate. Keeps pricing predictable. Prevents conflict of interest (throttle netflix...) Allows the ISPs to control their network traffic.
And as always... this kind of regulation should only be applied to a natural monopoly/cartel situation. This is not a restaurant when you have lots of choices, can start up your own restaurant if you're not happy, and can choose to just make your food at home if none of the options are there.
I was offered a job at MS after their full 8 hour long interview process. Maybe it was the group I applied to, but I didn't see any 'trick' questions.
There was one really good question that did ask me to write full code. I can honestly say it was one of the best interview questions I had as it walked you through the problem step by step ratcheting up the difficulty at each iteration. Albeit it was on a whiteboard.
Some of the questions I didn't like were those that pretty much depended on you having memorized your algorithms and data structures book. I can't remember the exact question, but it was some weird permutation of binary search. I got eventually, but definitely not a regular problem, and if I ever ran into it, I'd be able to look up the algorithm.
Now one really impressive, if not devious thing they did was they had a 'spy' in the waiting area. Apparently it was this person's job to observe my social skills or something. At least that is what I suspect as that person only later joined the interview process as the HR associate or something.
Similarly at Cisco, I didn't see anything I would consider a trick or brain teasing question. About the only trick they did which I now actually do myself is ask a question the person is not likely to know and see how much they bullshit before they say I don't know. I actually find this one of the best ways to weed out people. In my case, it was a software engineering position and they kept pressing me on the details of flip flops and some of the digital hardware. Not just general digital design. I'm talking in depth details.
Maybe I've just never had the opportunity to see these brain teasers. I've only experienced what I would say are pretty reasonable technical questions and some pretty interesting HR and human behavior tricks.
And if they do ask brain teasers, it's more just to see your thought process and make sure you're a reasonably person.
But of course, maybe I just haven't been exposed to these nuttier interview people talk about.
The op really doesn't provide must details on his company.
Assuming they have some kind of IT staff in house, there isn't really much need for a regular support contract. Chances are the in-house support will end up doing most of what RedHat support will do. They will install, patch, lookout for security... From what I've seen, no company *trusts* a vendor. Just because RedHat says a new distribution is ready, doesn't mean your company will trust it. It still has to go through your internal company *certification*. So regular support is worthless for most companies with in-house support.
Now, if you are running something mission critical where you guarantee your customers 99.9999% uptime. You might want that enterprise level support... and it will cost you. This is the kind of support you go on the phone and they send their best people to you no matter what time of day to fix the problem.
My hunch is the CIO doesnt judge this to be the case, so made the right choice by opting for cent-os.
What did you do back in your grade 6 science class? You ran experiments and you learned these two important lessons:
1, you ran the experiment multiple times (repeatability) 2. you try and very only 1 variable at a time
Neither of these is prevalent in any human system. Whether that is economics, politics, or even sociology. This makes predicting anything very hard. You can have 10 PHDs, and you really have as much insight into the economic system as someone with reason.
The great depression happened once. It happened under certain condition. A certain set of policies were tried. We know that those policies under those condition did not solve the problem.
But we have no way of knowing how another set of policies would have reacted. We have no way of knowing how some policies that applied under the situation of the great depression applies to the situation today. It's a human system, ever variable matters. Technology, family size, urban divide, globalization, the media... It's a billion variable equation.
In something that is more of a science, you can at least attempt answers by running experiments over and over and changing variables... you can test out any answers.
You can't do that in economics, because... we are running live.
This is not to say you shouldn't study economics. You should. But it doesn't provide anywhere near the reliability of science and really shouldn't be used heavily by politicians.
There are all kinds of groups in society who have gotten used to position of privilege.
The finance sector expect infinite growth, which demands the creation of new industries and new loans to finance their lifestyle.
The public sector and unions in general expect to be above the regular worker. They only feel 'richer' because they can go and take advantage of the low wages paid to restaurants, 3rd world vacation spots...
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're going to get there no matter which we take. We're going to a state of greater egalitarianism among most of the working people. There might still be a wealthy class.
If you're a 'free-market' libertarian type, we get to this state of equilibrium as the cost of living plunged, property taxes collapses, prices collapsed, and people decided to work less... or they work hard for a few years, then take time off.
If you're more of a big government type, we get here by government programs cutting back hours, work sharing arrangements...
So far, governments have been oblivious to this. They're tried random schemes to keep us working hard. Fake jobs in the legal, finance, bureaucracy. Trying to get incentives so people take out loans... Massive spending on the public sector...
Slashdot Mirror
yeah... and you're an export oriented economy.
But I hope that great German education would enlighten you to the reality that not everyone can be a net exporter.
Germany is as much a model to follow as Saudi Arabia or Norway. You can spend lots of money when you're exporting.
Yeah, try reading Hamilton once in a while.
He wanted a strong federal government no doubt. No one doubts that. I believe I said that in my original post. This is especially... I would say mainly true of economic matters and trade. But he also recognized the needs for local and state government.
Certain things about bound to cross state lines and end up with the federal government. Common currency... probably needs a central bank. Rivers and pollution in general need some kind of regulator to handle externalities. Whereas a central government micro-managing healthcare or education or urban planning other such policies does.
I suppose in your world, you know Hamilton's heart and what he wrote was just to placate the others. I on the other hand, go by what they put on pen and paper as that is all we have to go by.
I also note... you mention nothing of limits on communication as the reason for states rights at the time of the constitution. That of course is entirely in your imagination of the founders. But of course... you know what was in their heads instead of what they actually wrote and said.
It would help if you actually read the founders. They explicitly wanted most things to be state and local. Even the people we think of as wanting 'big central' government like Hamilton recognized the the need for state and local government.
"The States can never lose their powers till the whole
people of America are robbed of their liberties"
- Alexander Hamilton
States rights and local rights are explicitly tied to liberty as even the most central government type like Hamilton acknowledged. Let's not get into what Jefferson would say about the role of the federal government.
To suggest anything that limiting the federal government had to do with practical communication and travel problems is well.. plain silly and not supported by a single quote from any of the founders.
"Actually spending went down during the Clinton years as percentage of GDP, which is the metric that matters."
So you counteract his point... by basically admitting spending never actually goes down. Clinton was blessed by a strong economy by the whole internet/.com boom, something you can't attribute to him.. which of course meant he didn't need to actually cut spending as the economy grew.
Both democrats and republicans basically have this undying belief of infinite economic growth... and depend on it for the very survival of the country. That's a lot of risk in a system.
There is nothing 'natural' about economic growth. By most accounts, the kind of economic growth we're used to is pretty much tied directly to the industrial revolution. Now that we in the post industrial era, we won't be getting those growth rates involving most of the economy. We can and have been trying to prop it up with financial capitalism, the housing market, government spending... but it's all been fighting an up hill battle. The industrial revolution is over. .you need mass switch operators. Invent a car, you need auto workers. Automation and globalization today reduces the labor needed to roll out a new product or service.
I could go more into this more if you want, but essentially, the industrial revolution was unique
1. It provided huge improvement in your quality of life that people were willing to work for those goods/services. This is why people in China today leave the country side to work in sweat shops.
2. The goods/services of the industrial revolution required lots of labor. Invent a telephone..
You can no longer count on economic growth to fix all spending problems. You might even consider you country going in negative growth and shrinking as is happening in some European countries. Real cuts... are needed. Growth should always be taken as a bonus. That's the biggest problem with thinking "percentage of GDP" is all that matters. It's all that matters IF you wish to depend on infinite economic growth.
I personally don't think it will get as bad as Zimbabwe. But I'm always open to surprises :P
One thing about Africa is your perception can change in a minute. I recall a few of the riots, where people I'd talk to everyday, suddenly turned on their neighbor and burned homes down... so take the following with a grain of salt.
I think the problem in South Africa is less about 'hate' for white people, and more about general corruption and poverty. This is what I think saves South Africa from Zimbabwe. There is even a small effort to help the poor whites... and there are a lot of them. Despite the flight, there is still a fair number of institutional builders. The old European style institutions are still there. China is heavily involved.
If anything, I think South Africa will just descend into crime, poverty, corruption... not unlike many of the Latin American countries have done in the past. I don't see a Zimbabwe style melt down.
Another expat... absolutely agree.
For the record.. I am of Indian descent, and while never had it as bad as the blacks, we certainly detested apartheid.
SA is basically a country run by ideological corruption right now. While blacks make up 80% of the population and almost everyone agrees a certain amount of transition in terms of 'affirmative' action is a good thing given history it is being done in such an impractical way.
People are literally being handed positions of power with absolutely no qualifications. And of course this is coming down to massive corruption. It rarely goes to help the poor needy black family. The benefits tend to go to well connected black families who don't really need the help.
Then you have the massive entitlement mentality. The biggest problem here is that 80% of the population is black. And unfortunately, a large percentage expect all the services for free. A simple example is electricity. They don't want to pay for electricity. They expect it to be subsidized by the other 20% of society. You can't run an electrical system that way. It's not like all the Indians or whites are rolling in money to subsidize it that way.
So it's no surprise the government tries to crack down on whistle blowing. The whole country and government is based on corruption.
It's a country doomed to run into the ground left to its own merits. There is hope though. China is heavily involved and at least keeps goods flowing... and they're relatively untainted by a colonial past in Africa.
It's easy to rant and just say raise taxes and cut spending as if this is some small administrative matter.
It's like Greece is right now. There is just no way it can remain anywhere close to the same society it is now. Oh sure, the bureaucrats and politicians and bankers would like to just keep the game going. They were doing it for the past year... but hey... Greece is right back where it started before all the bailouts... The choices to be made in Greece affect the very structure and nature of government in Greece and the EU in general. It's not just a matter of raise some taxes here and then cutting some spending there.
You're not getting anywhere close to reducing the deficit by even 50% by repealing the Bush tax cuts and even adding some more taxes. By the Obama administrations own numbers, repealing the Bush tax cuts would bring in about 30-100 billion/year. Remember, we're dealing with a budget deficit in the trillions. My guess even this is an optimistic number (it might be lower is rich people might lose revenue as well due to the down turn, people leave the country, hide their wealth, retire...)
And of course people like to say the US should just cut military spending. Not only is military spending heavily domestic, thus employing huge number of Americans... it has a larger problem. Most of the world has gotten used to American power. For all it's problems and controversies, most of the Western world sleeps well at night knowing that if another nutjub like Sadaam or Hitler starts acting up... the US will be there to wipe em out.
Pardon my simplicity here, but every other country/group only misbehaves to the extent the United decides not to smack em down. This has allowed most other countries to not spend much as they need to on their own military/security. With the global economic downturn, and every country facing economic problems... it's actually a great structural change in the world order. It probably needs to happen, but again... it's a huge structural change on America's role.
And unfortunately, these kinds of real structural changes tend to be solved by elections or revolutions... not by committee.
When you have two fundamentally different visions of something, a compromise is often not just meeting half way.
Time for a classic flawed car metaphor :P
If John wants a hummer for its utility and ruggedness and Alice wants a civic due to its fuel efficiency and handling, it's not a compromise to have the body of a hummer with an engine and suspension of a civic. That results in a vehicle that doesn't run at all.
By in large the 'mixed market' economy as preached as the middle line between communism and the free market; has been based on putting off problems that require real choices.
Do you trust individuals to make their choices (good or bad), or do you want the administrative state? ...
Do you believe in the family as the basic social unit of society or do you believe in the state.
And what stops you from gathering with your fellow non-believers?
I'll just toss this out there as a thought. People naturally form groups... and groups are naturally exclusive. Not everyone can belong to the same group or you can't form those close group bonds with anyone.
So with a private community center (religion, cultural), they exclude others. Not by law or force :P, just by the reality that a Japanese person is probably not interested in joining the Latin association.
The problem you face with public institution as community centers; whether libraries or for that matter public schools, is that they try and pretend we can all belong to the same group. In reality, these places become either non-denominational enough to basically be valueless bureaucracies unable to get any of the benefit of a community center. Or they start to become exclusionary and take on something very much like a religious or cultural institution... while getting public funding.
Nothing of course stops you form forming a non-profit community center where tech geeks can gather. You just have to do the same kind of work every other cultural and religious group does... get people to donate money.
and?
That's why the government licenses drivers and can revoke it if they don't like the way you are behaving on the roads.
That's why many government impose tolls roads.
That's why random DUI checks are in place. ...
That's true up to a certain point.
There are generally a few ways to reasonably implement something. The better your patent filer, the more claims they can put in the patent and the broader those claims can be.
Truth be told, from a 'moral' stand point, I would often want the product/service/idea patent independent of the method. Like the person who invented the cardboard sleeve for hot coffee. Coffee cups have been around for decades. No one else thought of this apparently. It's a simple invention, and I wouldn't have wanted someone to just come in and steal his idea by just changing the sleeve material.
In other cases of course, the true innovation is in fact the method... some cool optimization or cool way to solve the problem only people in the field can grasp.
Except the government already regulates most of the examples you post as hypothetical scenarios...
"people should not talk with loud voices in public spaces" Go ahead... tonight at 2am... go out in the public street and start preaching with a 200 dB megaphone. See if your right to free speech in inalienable. Or speak in groups of a few people about how best to blow the whitehouse... see what happens to your right to free speech.
You see no 'right' is ever inalienable, as all rights conflict with each other to some degree. Your right to free speech versus my right to security. Your right to free speech versus my right to a sleep peacefully in my own home without a 200 dB megaphone blasting :P
In the case of the internet:
Your right to the internet versus someone else's right to be compensated for their labor (copyright issues)
Your right to the internet versus some child's right to security... free from being used in child porn.
Your right to the internet versus other peoples right to the internet (DOS attacks, hacking, even congestion issues)
I'm sorry... I really don't get your point. I'm honestly unsure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me.
If what you're saying is there are rational reasonable ways to solve a problem, then I'm afraid, I just have to repeat my line:
"If things are not politically possible, they're not possible. Not recognizing that... is even dumber."
Not taking into account human variables is simply ignorance. One, I'd argue the vast majority of academics are guilty of. It's like trying to solve a math equation while purposefully ignoring one of the biggest and most important variables.
The academics can sit around and design the perfect and fair pension system, most optimal transit system, most useful healthcare system, but if it doesn't gain the general support of the people and they're not willing to pay the costs... it will fail. And it is simply ignorance on the part of experts not to take into account the most important variable... humans.
That never works because by in large people are not willing to pay for the costs of all the programs they like.
Bill Clinton tried to do that with Medicare. Payouts were tied to funding... automatic cuts were supposed to be made. And of course the medical associations and lobbyists made a fuss.. the cuts are postponed...
It would be the same with social security. If the plans calls for automatic increases in contributions, people will make a fuss. If it calls for cuts in benefits.. people will make a fuss... and the government will cave.
You can see this in action. Sweden for example is known to have one of the best 'formula' based pension systems...taking into account the economy, age, expected life span... All was wonderful of course when nothing bad was demanded by the formula. When the economic downturn occurred and it demanded pension cuts for the elderly... the government caved. it compensated for the loss of pension income with tax cuts for the elderly to make up the difference. So basically, even the swedes were unable to follow the formula when it came to take the bad side of the formula.
If things are not politically possible, they're not possible. Not recognizing that... is even dumber.
That just adds another layer of complication to the equation. It might reduce the number of batteries needed on hand. However, you also have to remember that most businesses do not get equal demand throughout the day.
I used to work in a fast food restaurant and it was extremely streaky. On weekdays, you'd get the lunch rush. you'd get the after work dinner rush.
What does this mean, it was always complex planning for how much we expect and managing demand.
Let us assume for a second most people fill up their cars on their way to work or on their way back. This means you'd be getting a huge number of battery exchanges at once.
Meaning, you really couldn't exchange the battery for person A, charge it, then use A's battery to swap in B. It wouldn't be charged in time.
I don't know what the ratio would be, but I would highly suspect you would need a fairly large number of reserve batteries... perhaps 500 or something. Perhaps you get 500 in the morning rush, 500 in the after work rush. That leaves enough time to charge the morning batteries for the after work rush.
yes, $50/ fillup. I'm Canadian and drive a small 4 cylinder. That's what it costs me to fill up.
Try running a business... any business.
But if it helps. Let's work through this example.
Let's suppose you run the gas station and want to keep enough reserves to service 1000 fill-ups.
Using gasoline (assuming $50/fill up), you need inventory worth 1000*50 = $50,000. Need more gas, you just have it delivered on demand. It's easy to manage supply and demand here given the low cost per fillup.
Using battery exchange, you would need 1000 battery packs. That's an inventory of 1000 * $5000/battery pack... that's $5,000,000. Not to mention the huge space this would take to store the batteries. Not to mention the complexity of the batteries (failure rates...).
Again, I'm not saying it's impossible. But it is significantly more difficult and requires significantly higher capital costs to have a battery exchange style system.
It's not something I'd put my money into. I'd put my money on new innovation on battery technology, hybrids, rapid charging...
Petrol and 'batteries' are in no way comparable. You have to look at the 'cost' per 'fill-up'
With gasoline, you're looking at managing something that costs $50 / fill-up. If you have excess gasoline... who cares. It stays in the tank and it's all good.
With batteries, you're looking at managing something that costs $5000 / fill up (remember, you're renting the entire battery pack, not just the charge). If you have excess batteries, it's a huge overhead burden.
You have to look at the value of something being stolen.
Sure, someone can easily siphon gas out of your tank. Maybe that is worth $50.
If someone were to steal your EV battery pack, it is worth $5000.
Managing that battery inventory is going to be a huge problem. How are you going to make sure each 'gas station' has enough batteries on hand. Since they're not cheap, it's a huge cost. This might not be a huge problem in the city, but that's not where people have a fear of running out of battery. Heck, a simple EV you charge at home would suffice if you simply traveled in the city.
It's the spaces in the cities or commuters.
The roll out and management of this is a huge problem.
But even assuming you could manage that well enough, there is another minor problem.
Maybe I'm just paranoid coming from Africa where people will steal anything making infrastructure hard to build out... but you're talking about an expensive batter than can be 'easily swapped out'. Something tells me that makes it 'easy to steal'.
Most sensible people acknowledge. There is no 'free lunch'. There are real costs to providing internet connections (infrastructure, support, transit charges...) The only question is how do you break down the usage.
Most physical models we could come up with are problematic. Many might try a metaphor like our roads. We have similar issues of infrastructure costs, too much traffic, congestion, peak periods... So road tolls seem sensible to some people. This is some form of usage based billing.
Yet let's remember, usage based billing is not some kind of natural way to charge things. When you go to an amusement park, they typically charge you an entry fee no matter how many rides you go on. Subscription models are out there a plenty. The big advantage of subscription based models is predictability in pricing and ease of use.
But we have something in the 'internet' that we don't have on our physical roads. On the internet, we can control the usage of our users. We can't control car drivers (when they drive, how fast, what path they take, how they merge....)
The technology exists and has existed for a long time to manage networks. This is more true with DSL and fibre, but you can also do it with cable.
Now for a piece of wisdom I've learned in my many years. Bureaucracy should always paint with a very broad brush. This is true for both companies and governments. You cannot 'micro-manage complexity'.
Considering telcos are in general natural monopolies and we have to regulate them to some extent, we must make sure to regulate them with a broad brush to REDUCE complexity in regulation.
1. Ban usage based billing.
2. ISPs can charge different rates for different connection speeds, priorities.
3. ISPs can only throttle per user. Not per protocol.
3 rules.
Easy to regulate.
Keeps pricing predictable.
Prevents conflict of interest (throttle netflix...)
Allows the ISPs to control their network traffic.
And as always... this kind of regulation should only be applied to a natural monopoly/cartel situation. This is not a restaurant when you have lots of choices, can start up your own restaurant if you're not happy, and can choose to just make your food at home if none of the options are there.
yeah, tell that to the thousands of Indians and East Asians in tech. Many of whom come from more poverty than you could imagine.
Its not a rich and poor thing, it's a cultural thing.
I was offered a job at MS after their full 8 hour long interview process. Maybe it was the group I applied to, but I didn't see any 'trick' questions.
There was one really good question that did ask me to write full code. I can honestly say it was one of the best interview questions I had as it walked you through the problem step by step ratcheting up the difficulty at each iteration. Albeit it was on a whiteboard.
Some of the questions I didn't like were those that pretty much depended on you having memorized your algorithms and data structures book. I can't remember the exact question, but it was some weird permutation of binary search. I got eventually, but definitely not a regular problem, and if I ever ran into it, I'd be able to look up the algorithm.
Now one really impressive, if not devious thing they did was they had a 'spy' in the waiting area. Apparently it was this person's job to observe my social skills or something. At least that is what I suspect as that person only later joined the interview process as the HR associate or something.
Similarly at Cisco, I didn't see anything I would consider a trick or brain teasing question. About the only trick they did which I now actually do myself is ask a question the person is not likely to know and see how much they bullshit before they say I don't know. I actually find this one of the best ways to weed out people. In my case, it was a software engineering position and they kept pressing me on the details of flip flops and some of the digital hardware. Not just general digital design. I'm talking in depth details.
Maybe I've just never had the opportunity to see these brain teasers. I've only experienced what I would say are pretty reasonable technical questions and some pretty interesting HR and human behavior tricks.
And if they do ask brain teasers, it's more just to see your thought process and make sure you're a reasonably person.
But of course, maybe I just haven't been exposed to these nuttier interview people talk about.
The op really doesn't provide must details on his company.
Assuming they have some kind of IT staff in house, there isn't really much need for a regular support contract. Chances are the in-house support will end up doing most of what RedHat support will do. They will install, patch, lookout for security... From what I've seen, no company *trusts* a vendor. Just because RedHat says a new distribution is ready, doesn't mean your company will trust it. It still has to go through your internal company *certification*. So regular support is worthless for most companies with in-house support.
Now, if you are running something mission critical where you guarantee your customers 99.9999% uptime. You might want that enterprise level support... and it will cost you. This is the kind of support you go on the phone and they send their best people to you no matter what time of day to fix the problem.
My hunch is the CIO doesnt judge this to be the case, so made the right choice by opting for cent-os.
What did you do back in your grade 6 science class?
You ran experiments and you learned these two important lessons:
1, you ran the experiment multiple times (repeatability)
2. you try and very only 1 variable at a time
Neither of these is prevalent in any human system. Whether that is economics, politics, or even sociology. This makes predicting anything very hard. You can have 10 PHDs, and you really have as much insight into the economic system as someone with reason.
The great depression happened once. It happened under certain condition. A certain set of policies were tried. We know that those policies under those condition did not solve the problem.
But we have no way of knowing how another set of policies would have reacted. We have no way of knowing how some policies that applied under the situation of the great depression applies to the situation today. It's a human system, ever variable matters. Technology, family size, urban divide, globalization, the media... It's a billion variable equation.
In something that is more of a science, you can at least attempt answers by running experiments over and over and changing variables... you can test out any answers.
You can't do that in economics, because... we are running live.
This is not to say you shouldn't study economics. You should. But it doesn't provide anywhere near the reliability of science and really shouldn't be used heavily by politicians.
That's exactly it.
There are all kinds of groups in society who have gotten used to position of privilege.
The finance sector expect infinite growth, which demands the creation of new industries and new loans to finance their lifestyle.
The public sector and unions in general expect to be above the regular worker. They only feel 'richer' because they can go and take advantage of the low wages paid to restaurants, 3rd world vacation spots...
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're going to get there no matter which we take. We're going to a state of greater egalitarianism among most of the working people. There might still be a wealthy class.
If you're a 'free-market' libertarian type, we get to this state of equilibrium as the cost of living plunged, property taxes collapses, prices collapsed, and people decided to work less... or they work hard for a few years, then take time off.
If you're more of a big government type, we get here by government programs cutting back hours, work sharing arrangements...
So far, governments have been oblivious to this.
They're tried random schemes to keep us working hard.
Fake jobs in the legal, finance, bureaucracy.
Trying to get incentives so people take out loans...
Massive spending on the public sector...
you're welcome.
Hey, I used to be a socialist. Everyone changes their mind :)