To use your example, if everyone had to be taken to jail, how long would it take before cops stopped pulling people over for it? Tickets are to make cops lives easier as much as it is to make yours easier.
Another problem is that the U.S. Government often decides who can sue it and who can't. You just don't turn around and sue the NSA the same way you sue AT&T - even if you are AT&T.
There are many problems with your comments. For one, it is naive to think that the government simply has to revoke a company's charter to exercise control over them. I don't see this causing any problems and there are many options to avoiding the issues ranging from shell companies to Congressional lobbying.
You also aren't looking at the history of the development of these industries and companies. Take telephone service, the whole structure from 1934 to 1996 was to promote universal telephone service and the goal was to regulate the industry to contain costs so it could be affordable and available to everyone - giving essentially six decades to build a network that wouldn't have emerged in a purely competitive market. To focus on the 6th decade and say it didn't work is...a gross simplification.
In the case of telecommunications, the government acted as a hinderence in the sense that it created legislation that promoted a different goal (universal access) over profit. The current +94% penetration rate is a clear indication on how effective the policy was, yet you focus on the bad service of 1980's AT&T. You could argue that it matured to the point that it needed competition, but if you would have put 1996 style legislation on the table in the 1940's, you would not have universal access to the level that you do now.
With that said, I do agree that acceptance of government brings its own problems. For example, I'd rather we reduced our "Defense" budget 90% of its current size. So, I'm not arguing that more government is the answer to every question, but it does need to play a larger role in some areas - and of course less in others.
I don't write a newsletter, but it is easy to find examples where government, properly functioning, can address long term issues. One obvious example is the G.I. Bill.
I've read estimates that the return on investment for increasing access to education returned the amount of money spent 8 fold. Fast forward to today, the program is used as a free ride for banks because the government guarantees these loans (did I mention student loans are not covered by bankruptcy law?) and makes education no longer a social good the makes for a better society - but an individual investment in earning power. It is an example where a good government program gets subverted to line the pockets of private industry while at the same time creates a debt-laden workforce that can be more easily manipulated by industry. It's the modern day equivalent of indentured servitude.
Now, you can look at this and say: government is bad. There is something to that. However, if you are looking for solutions, the solution to greater access to affordable education is more government spending on it - and spending that favors students over banks because as Jefferson indicated, a liberally educated population is necessary for democracy to function. As soon as you make education a good to be bought and sold at the market price, you are no longer supporting an infrastructre necessary for democracy but are setting the stage for other forms of elite government.
I could think of many other examples where government has a real role to play in dealing with social problems that businesses won't touch - such as the fact that a significant percentage of the population does not have health care coverage. There is no money to be made here, so businesses won't address this problem. Global warming, space exploration, new technologies - you can hardly go a week without hearing of some venture DARPA is involved with on Slashdot.
Government running of the telephone industry, airlines, radio, telecommunications all were instrumental in establishing the infrastructure necessary for these industries then sold at a discount to private industry when the business model was established and most of the risks have been assumed by the state. All these are examples where government worked and then sold off the profit from the risks that society took at a discount.
One last point, we don't live in a world where limited government would work. There has to be some force that limits the power of billion dollar entities whose only concern is profit. I wish there was a better alternative to government, but unfortunately, it's all we have. My major concern is that government should be actively addressing issues that private industry doesn't while curtailing corporate practices that exacerbate societal problems. The reality is that government often works with corporations to fleece its citizen's pockets. However, smaller government would mean that there was nothing acting as a break on the Wal-Marts, Citibanks, ExxonMobil's and so forth of the world.
You've got that free market religion. There are many things that the government does that are both efficient and effective - until companies, their lobbies and their money get involved.
Example: The U.S. Army used to have competent logistics - but now that has been outsourced to contractors based on this rationale. Halliburton and other companies (who surprise, surprise were once headed by the so called leaders of our government) make a killing, do a worse job than government would have if the capability had been maintained within the Army and further, people like you then build on the whole flawed logic of it all and make the argument that the problem is that these companies haven't completely taken over the function because government is so darn inefficient.
There are things that the private sector does well. But, let's not make a logical fallacy of it and suggest they do everything well. They don't. There is plenty of evidence that government can do things that private companies can not - such as provide public services that need to be offered to the majority of citizens (education, health care, social services), pure research that leads to things like the Internet, etc. Basically, government is good at long range projects that go beyond the horizon of next quarter or next annual report, and the biggest break on their effectiveness is businesses trying to make a fast buck on public dime - the example above being one of the must eggregious to date.
Basically, you can either use standard technical or social means for screening out telemarketing calls or you may have to resort to a legal approach. For standard methods, consult Junkbusters as a start. In this case, you may have to resort to a legal approach. Private Citzen has one book you might find useful if you care enough about this to go that route.
It's scary to think about how much history is forgotten.
Like the British controlled state of Iraq in 1920s, the Baghdad Pact in 1956 and so forth. It is interesting that you use Japan as your example rather than the actual region under discussion. Why do you think that now our involvement in Iraq is more like 1940s Japan than it is like England's and the U.S.'s prior involvement with Iraq in the 1920s and 1950s?
I doubt it. The problems in L.A. can be traced to a number of issues such as the criminalization of the poor, unemployment, racism, etc. Short term, more police on the ground might make things safer. However, the long term solution is addressing the underlying problems.
Also, history bears that security is not made better because people are being watched. The phrase "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" (who watches the watchman) is a good example - something valuable cannot be trusted to be watched by other. To me, nothing is more valuable than liberty, and the first thing watchman do is take this from me.
Some tools are bad in any hands - because of the nature of the tool itself (so called "tactical" nuclear weapons), the environment in which the tool is used (assault weapons in the hands of traffic cops) or other reasons (one example among many: an organized government program where citizens are encouraged and compensated for reporting on fellow citizens).
Some tools are always tools of tyranny. 24 hour survellience of public spaces - despite the arguably utilitarian aspects - it antithetical to a free society. I believe the parent is simply pointing out this issue.
Every company that I have worked for keep data in a centralized database that people access through various applications that have security policies applied, logging and so forth. Having people have this information on their specific machines is bad data management policy for a number of reasons: hardware failure, security/accountability, and so forth.
It can be done. It is done - just take a look at any companies that have to deal with requirements such as HIPPA, SOX, SEC and so forth. If you don't do it, this will happen again, and eventually, you will be required to do it anyway. It's as simple as that.
Here's a counter-example. Pick any organization you think this principle applies to and then open up the books - particularly pay. Most people do care if the organization they work for is paying an excessive salary to someone that does not contribute to the organization enough to warrant that salary.
So, what is missing from Milton's examples? Oversight and the fact that decision making is singular. This issue is transparent in the first example because everyone that cares about the transaction (being the singular you) is involved. The minute you have to involve other people (buying something for someone else or using someone else's money) you also have to involve them in the decision making process - which is exactly what Milton's set-up does not do and which not surprisingly leads to the problems that are set-up in his framing of the discussion.
So, let's return to opening up the books. Let's assume we are dealing with a public company, if stockholders had access to every aspect of the books, they would have one perspective on how much is being spent. Other employees would have a sense for how well this money was spent. The central problem is that the decision-makers (management in this case) generally do not have incentives to make this efficient and frequently do not have accurate assessments of value, and inviting dialogue with shareholders and employees that could improve these efficiencies is viewed as having a net negative effect because it involves giving up some of their decision making authority.
It seems to me that the problem is concentrated authority with no oversight. Since Milton assumes this scenario (which I will grant freqently occurs in the world), he looks to be spot on - as you put it. However, if you look at some of the underlying issues in his argument, it starts looking real flimsy, real fast. The real issue is about creating mechanisms for distributing authority (such as the traditional checks and balances of our own government) and providing for oversight and accountability. Simply saying Government or big organizations, don't work - says more about his model than about government.
Hopefully, you've asked for what other people have pointed out - that personal information should not be on individual machines with access to the internet, the data should be encrypted, there should be logging of when the data is used, etc. The measures you talk about were obviously not enough, and the fact that it is better than other agencies just confirms that it is a systematic problem.
So, how are you going to deal with the issue before it happens again?
It's a trivial example. The point is that document modes are not in the application itself. Sure, you could put together a macro. You could do what I actually do and simply open up Notepad too - which is even easier than putting together a macro. You not really addressing the issue of application functionality. You are simply using surrogates to solve a particular problem to make up for the lack of functionality in the application.
For document modes, if you have to switch between two complex modes - say you copy edit science textbooks and write humanitiies articles on the history of science - then Word has no built in functionality for dealing with it. Yes, you could make an argument that you could set-up macros for default settings, but why bother given Word's other limitations?
Example: Add in anything even remotely graphically complex - such as a flowchart - and Word is useless. It's not particularly good with mathematical expressions. It is really limited in terms of the way it handles type-setting - which for documents you plan on professionally publishing is a problem. So forth and so on. No macro is going to solve these problems.
- especially if you do a wide variety of document types. We can make a macro to do a lot of things - but
I'm guessing you have never used LaTeX or TeX. I haven't used them extensively, but I have done a few simple things in LaTeX - because it wasn't possible to do what I wanted to do in a standard word processor. It is this exact reason why Knuth created TeX in the first place - to cover everything from proper rendering of math formulas to graphics to abstracted definitions for handling every aspect of the document.
One simple example is that LaTeX handles different types of documents differently. When's the last time your word processor asked you to specify whether you were writing an article or a book and behaved accordingly - based on the different needs of these document types? This is a useful feature.
For example, if you were writing a poem in Word using the default set-up, it will try to capitalize each new sentence. However, capitalization is a very useful feature when I'm writing articles - which is more frequent that poems. Where can you abstract out a content set in Word to change the settings for how the application behaves based on document type? You can do some of the work by creating different templates for formatting - but I am not aware of different modes within Word and it is a major hassle to change all the settings to what makes sense every time you choose to work on a different document type.
I can think of other examples. Anyone that has ever tried to do graphic layout in Word can point to many problems in the application for this kind of work. I've also found the Master Document functionality a bit sloppy too. Many of these issues can be addressed easily by someone competent in LaTeX. I've never used Lyx, but I can imagine a number of circumstances where an easy front-end to LaTeX would be useful.
You better be careful what you ask for...He could have said free software. Care to spend time thinking about RMS on this beach offering to rub in some free - as in beer - sun block on your back, tin foil id clipped to his chest hair and singing the free software song? Sure, OSS madness is bad, but it has nothing on free software madness.
You should try the book: Your Money or Your Life. They basically make the argument that you only need to reach the point where your monthly investment income is more than your monthly expenses. It is fairly easy to do if you are willing to do something like live in the basement of your house and rent out the rest of the house. It's not for everyone but that isn't saying it can't be done.
If you use your math, the two power sources are equivalent so long as whatever being powered lasts 2 1/2 years. It also fails to account for the fact that batteries come in many different stripes that match different needs - cell phones, watches, cars, etc. The world of batteries is not defined by AAA and surely there are applications where this new tech would be perfect.
There is no practical way within the Christian framework to challenge Jesus' flat-out prohibition on divorce. To do so you either have to avail yourself of Matthew's ambiguous loophole, or you have to deny the validity of Christ's words in this instance, possibly invoking the fact that we know prohibiting divorce can lead to various social ills, the exploitation and/or battering of spouses, etc, and Jesus was clearly against that kind of thing.
There is an easy way to get out of this dilemma. Quakers have a notion of "the God within" and that God's revelation continues within the context of historical time. If you use this framework, then Jesus was speaking to the historical moment - not for all time. It is up to us to listen to that of God within have this truth tested against the leadings of others in our Meeting and in the world at large. From a Qauker point of view, your dilemma is not a problem, and the point the parent made about always listening and asking questions is reenforced.
The problem with the data brokerage industry isn't that they collect data about me (and sometimes get it wrong).
No, I'd argue this is part of the problem. You can't control the misuse of data if you can't control the circumstances surrounding both its collection and use. HIPPA is one obvious example of how this works in the context of legislation.
You just can't stop data collection. It's going to happen, it's already happening, it's been happening.
If you can create laws to control misuse, surely you could create laws to prevent collection in the first place. In fact, it is necessary to define proper use before you can even talk of misuse.
Organizations and people need to collect and exchange information in order for the economy and society to function efficiently and smoothly. Law enforcement needs information to investigate and prosecute wrongdoers. These kinds of informational needs aren't going to magically disappear.
Organizations have gotten along without this information before now. The economy and law enforcement have demonstratedly operated without it. In terms of law enforcement, there are also very clear sociological implications for this kind of soft surveillance.
The first task of a society that would have liberty and privacy is to guard against the misuse of physical coercion by the state and private parties. The second task is to guard against the softer forms of secret and manipulative control. Because these are often subtle, indirect, invisible, diffuse, deceptive, and shrouded in benign justifications, this is clearly the more difficult task.
Data collection of this kind, despite your benign justifications, is primarily a form of manipulative control by the state and private parties. While there are good arguments based on utility that can be employed on behalf of these kinds of measures, most of these arguments fail to account for all the negative repercussions (indeed, this assumes we even understand them all) of the data collection and use, and they do not provide for built in safeguards to address them (which I believe is your point).
However, I think, from a policy point of view, it is best to make laws that criminalize the collection of this information by default. Then, we could have discussion about legalizing specific applications and specify the controls that must be in place that minimize the level of manipulation and protect the rights of individuals. However, if you don't control data collection, you don't control how it will be used. So, it goes back to my original comment that data collection is, in fact, part of the problem.
The comment shows a remarkable lack of foresight. Any issue revolving around establishing and documenting identity is a civil liberties issue.
Let assume we began a database for every documented worker in the U.S. How long do you think it would take before that database started containing other tables for work history, education, credit scores and so forth? You only have to look at how the social security number has evolved to be used to establish identity beyond Social Security purposes to understand how this will be co-opted.
Which then brings us to the question: What would be the proper domain of this database? Besides its original purpose of establishing whether you are a documented worker, will it be tied to other issues and also contain your educational history, work history, social security information (which would give a sense of your salary history), previous employer commentary? Would it also include information on your health, DNA profile, etc.?
All of these things would be admittedly useful to companies making hiring decisions. However, it also rubs up against a citizen's privacy and could be used for a wide variety of things that have nothing to do with its original purpose and are obvious civil liberties issues.
Not that the original purpose is not a civil liberties issue. It's the same as being asked for "your papers" in Eastern Bloc countries back a few decades ago. It also could easily be used as a blacklist tool itself. "Oops, it looks like you do not appear on the documented worker list,we cannot hire you"..."the person you say you are is indicated as dead in our documented worker database, the police outside want to take you to the station to establish your real identity" (then, you are disappeared to some Gitmo prison). All of this is extreme, but it is one direction that it could possibly go when pushed far enough where there are clear civil liberties issues.
I think government has no business tracking its citizens. Government is responsible to its citizenry, not the other way around. Databases like these are government power grabs designed to exert more control over the population - and it fundamentally undermines our liberties.
Actually, your comment: Now we have dueling anecdotes, which is one reason that anecdotal arguments prove nothing. I learned that in a public high school logic class...
supports his point.
Arguments are either logically valid or invalid. Truth is a quality of premises and the conclusion. Even if you have true premises and a valid argument, the conclusion may still be false. So, proof is not a term that should be applied here.
If you were to reconstruct the parent's argument with a rough but charitable reading, it might read something like this:
1. Good teachers outnumber bad teachers 20 to 1 in U.S. public schools. 2. Alternatives to public schools have a better ratio of good teachers. 3. Without good teachers in school, students are less likely to get a good education. = C. Students are less likely to get a good education in U.S. public schools than alternatives.
The argument could be fleshed out a bit. But, it is essentially logically valid and it seems reasonable that you could come up with a ratio of good to bad teachers - however good and bad is defined - that would make all the premises true.
In your arguments, you state that you managed to get a good education and could compete with people educated in private schools. However, this only negates the original's argument if you render the conclusion exactly as the parent post did: "Public schools in America = lowest quality education you can possibly get for your child". However, it is clear from the reminder that this was not meant as a categorical statement but as a probablistic one based on 20 to 1 and that there are unstated premise that indicate that the ratio is higher in alternatives.
If you render the argument as I have here, then your counter-examples based on your education and experience with retiring teachers do not demonstrate that the premises of the argument are false. In fact, the fact that you mention AP courses - where it seems reasonable to assume that there would be a higher concentration of good teachers - is a clear example that you were not in a typical public school environment and you are likely an outlier.
If you wanted to counter this argument, you should show how the ratio is false in some way - that there are actually more good teachers in public schools than elsewhere or that there is a higher ratio relative to alternatives than is submitted here. You might also show that the argument is not taking some crucial element into account. However, your comments don't do any of this.
In the interest of disclosure, I should say I went to public schools. I would probably make this same argument, but I would do it differently:
1. The primary purpose of U.S. public schools is to socialize young people into U.S. society. 2. A liberal education is frequently at odds with socialization into U.S. society. 3. There are educational alternatives where a liberal education is the primary purpose. = C. Students are less likely to get a good education in U.S. public schools than alternatives.
Same conclusion, different - possibly true - premises. But proof? No. It is also highly likely that my quick reading and analysis missed some important aspect - same as yours.
Let's use an analogy of the stock market. Classical economics talks about perfectly competitive markets where people have all the information they need, people make rational decisions, suppliers can freely enter and leave markets, etc. There are no perfectly competitive markets.
People do not have perfect information. They frequently do not make rational decisions. So, unless you change the meaning of the word "value" to basically mean that you deserve whatever the market decides to give you, you do not have much support for those notion that people are paid according to their contribution to society.
Thought experiment. Why don't companies publish the salaries of all their employees or for specific positions - for review by anyone in the company? If everyone is getting compensated relative to their true value, this would not present any problems - would it?
I work in a large American corporation. I actually check the H2 Visa forms that my company to get a sense of what different positions in my organization are paying - and I know as a fact that there is a huge disconnect between different positions relative to their value. I also know that this is not unique to my circumstance through people I know working in other corporations.
Secretaries make more than professionals because they work close to a C-level executive. Incompetent bosses carried by more junior people. People with seniority that actually take away more value than they bring paid more than stars. Anyone that has worked anywhere has seen these things.
My example was to compare the salary of CEO's who make millions to the average salary of an employee in their company. While there may be examples where a CEO might earn the millions that he makes in compensation, I would argue that it is the exception that proves the rule. To use your example, CEO's make more than social workers because the market pays them more. It would be trivial to point to incompetent CEO and people that are fantastic social workers - and by doing so you would be point out that an incompetent CEO is probably harming value but still gets compensated more than any social worker despite the relative quality of their work. Again, another disconnect.
Here's another social-economic data point Take a look at Table 680. Notice how since 1980 the top 5 percent have had a huge increase of their percentage of total aggregate income. How does your perspective square with systemic problems like that one?
All I can think of are continuously running Black & Decker drills. Assume you had energy as a non-scarce resource, I would think that would actually create a very unsustainable situation - in other resources such as water, air or whatever. Sustainability is going to be a difficult problem that will make fusion like easy.
I think you misread the parent. I think they were talking about a progressive tax rate that reached 90% for people at the highest income levels. The reason people think this is a bad idea because they think that it undermines successful people and promotes mediocrity.
However, this is a simplistic argument that has at least one false premise: people are paid according to their contribution to society. You only have to compare the salaries of c-level executives to the average salary of people that work in their companies, teachers and social workers to professional athletes and/or people that were born into money versus those that were born into a family making below the poverty line. People are frequently not making an income based on their competence, success, hard work or any other factor attributable to themselves.
More often than not, it's dumb luck. If you accept that as true, then you can give a little more credibility to arguments that there should be a more equitable distribution of income to counter the effects of luck while at the same time supporting those things that are valuable to society - such as hard work, competence and so forth.
As far as politics go, you should also take a look at the political compass diagram, and take the test. As a benchmark, try taking a look at the 2004 Presidential Election and then the other countries. Notice how most fall in the upper right quadrant? If you think in terms of Clinton or Kerry being "left", then yes, Slashdot might be left in that sense - but still firmly in the same authoritarian right quadrant.
If you think "left" in terms of Gandhi and Stalin, then Slashdot isn't left at all - either with an authoritarian or libertarian aspect. But, it is like you said: what's left is relative to where you stand. The thrust of Slashdot follows the larger pattern that you can see in most governments - which is a right, authoritarian bias. It can be hard to see - especially in cultures like the U.S. that have such a narrow range of political expression, but tools like the political compass can be useful to get your bearings.
Also, Linus is more suit and general public friendly than RMS will ever be.
Being popular doesn't make one a leader. Linus is the technical leader. RMS is the ideological leader. Ideological leaders aren't typically pretty either - Einstein, Marx, Banjamin Franklin, etc. It's almost to the point where you might think that ideas might make you ugly.
We wouldn't have children. All they are is a cost, right? Or have pets. Less cost than children, but why do it at all? Or volunteer. Why work for free?
I could go on. But the bottom line is that I happen to have $19 dollars for an expansion card for some medical students in Uganda, and I'd rather spend it in this way than going out to dinner or adding it to my retirement accounts.
I am sure that that $19 dollars could compound into something if you waited 40 years. Then again, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. Either way, the sums we are talking about here aren't going to make or break your retirement - and maybe they are a way to diversify your "portfolio".
Slashdot Mirror
To use your example, if everyone had to be taken to jail, how long would it take before cops stopped pulling people over for it? Tickets are to make cops lives easier as much as it is to make yours easier.
Another problem is that the U.S. Government often decides who can sue it and who can't. You just don't turn around and sue the NSA the same way you sue AT&T - even if you are AT&T.
There are many problems with your comments. For one, it is naive to think that the government simply has to revoke a company's charter to exercise control over them. I don't see this causing any problems and there are many options to avoiding the issues ranging from shell companies to Congressional lobbying.
You also aren't looking at the history of the development of these industries and companies. Take telephone service, the whole structure from 1934 to 1996 was to promote universal telephone service and the goal was to regulate the industry to contain costs so it could be affordable and available to everyone - giving essentially six decades to build a network that wouldn't have emerged in a purely competitive market. To focus on the 6th decade and say it didn't work is...a gross simplification.
In the case of telecommunications, the government acted as a hinderence in the sense that it created legislation that promoted a different goal (universal access) over profit. The current +94% penetration rate is a clear indication on how effective the policy was, yet you focus on the bad service of 1980's AT&T. You could argue that it matured to the point that it needed competition, but if you would have put 1996 style legislation on the table in the 1940's, you would not have universal access to the level that you do now.
With that said, I do agree that acceptance of government brings its own problems. For example, I'd rather we reduced our "Defense" budget 90% of its current size. So, I'm not arguing that more government is the answer to every question, but it does need to play a larger role in some areas - and of course less in others.
I don't write a newsletter, but it is easy to find examples where government, properly functioning, can address long term issues. One obvious example is the G.I. Bill.
I've read estimates that the return on investment for increasing access to education returned the amount of money spent 8 fold. Fast forward to today, the program is used as a free ride for banks because the government guarantees these loans (did I mention student loans are not covered by bankruptcy law?) and makes education no longer a social good the makes for a better society - but an individual investment in earning power. It is an example where a good government program gets subverted to line the pockets of private industry while at the same time creates a debt-laden workforce that can be more easily manipulated by industry. It's the modern day equivalent of indentured servitude.
Now, you can look at this and say: government is bad. There is something to that. However, if you are looking for solutions, the solution to greater access to affordable education is more government spending on it - and spending that favors students over banks because as Jefferson indicated, a liberally educated population is necessary for democracy to function. As soon as you make education a good to be bought and sold at the market price, you are no longer supporting an infrastructre necessary for democracy but are setting the stage for other forms of elite government.
I could think of many other examples where government has a real role to play in dealing with social problems that businesses won't touch - such as the fact that a significant percentage of the population does not have health care coverage. There is no money to be made here, so businesses won't address this problem. Global warming, space exploration, new technologies - you can hardly go a week without hearing of some venture DARPA is involved with on Slashdot.
Government running of the telephone industry, airlines, radio, telecommunications all were instrumental in establishing the infrastructure necessary for these industries then sold at a discount to private industry when the business model was established and most of the risks have been assumed by the state. All these are examples where government worked and then sold off the profit from the risks that society took at a discount.
One last point, we don't live in a world where limited government would work. There has to be some force that limits the power of billion dollar entities whose only concern is profit. I wish there was a better alternative to government, but unfortunately, it's all we have. My major concern is that government should be actively addressing issues that private industry doesn't while curtailing corporate practices that exacerbate societal problems. The reality is that government often works with corporations to fleece its citizen's pockets. However, smaller government would mean that there was nothing acting as a break on the Wal-Marts, Citibanks, ExxonMobil's and so forth of the world.
You've got that free market religion. There are many things that the government does that are both efficient and effective - until companies, their lobbies and their money get involved.
Example: The U.S. Army used to have competent logistics - but now that has been outsourced to contractors based on this rationale. Halliburton and other companies (who surprise, surprise were once headed by the so called leaders of our government) make a killing, do a worse job than government would have if the capability had been maintained within the Army and further, people like you then build on the whole flawed logic of it all and make the argument that the problem is that these companies haven't completely taken over the function because government is so darn inefficient.
There are things that the private sector does well. But, let's not make a logical fallacy of it and suggest they do everything well. They don't. There is plenty of evidence that government can do things that private companies can not - such as provide public services that need to be offered to the majority of citizens (education, health care, social services), pure research that leads to things like the Internet, etc. Basically, government is good at long range projects that go beyond the horizon of next quarter or next annual report, and the biggest break on their effectiveness is businesses trying to make a fast buck on public dime - the example above being one of the must eggregious to date.
Basically, you can either use standard technical or social means for screening out telemarketing calls or you may have to resort to a legal approach. For standard methods, consult Junkbusters as a start. In this case, you may have to resort to a legal approach. Private Citzen has one book you might find useful if you care enough about this to go that route.
I doubt it. The problems in L.A. can be traced to a number of issues such as the criminalization of the poor, unemployment, racism, etc. Short term, more police on the ground might make things safer. However, the long term solution is addressing the underlying problems.
Also, history bears that security is not made better because people are being watched. The phrase "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" (who watches the watchman) is a good example - something valuable cannot be trusted to be watched by other. To me, nothing is more valuable than liberty, and the first thing watchman do is take this from me.
Some tools are bad in any hands - because of the nature of the tool itself (so called "tactical" nuclear weapons), the environment in which the tool is used (assault weapons in the hands of traffic cops) or other reasons (one example among many: an organized government program where citizens are encouraged and compensated for reporting on fellow citizens).
Some tools are always tools of tyranny. 24 hour survellience of public spaces - despite the arguably utilitarian aspects - it antithetical to a free society. I believe the parent is simply pointing out this issue.
Every company that I have worked for keep data in a centralized database that people access through various applications that have security policies applied, logging and so forth. Having people have this information on their specific machines is bad data management policy for a number of reasons: hardware failure, security/accountability, and so forth.
It can be done. It is done - just take a look at any companies that have to deal with requirements such as HIPPA, SOX, SEC and so forth. If you don't do it, this will happen again, and eventually, you will be required to do it anyway. It's as simple as that.
Here's a counter-example. Pick any organization you think this principle applies to and then open up the books - particularly pay. Most people do care if the organization they work for is paying an excessive salary to someone that does not contribute to the organization enough to warrant that salary.
So, what is missing from Milton's examples? Oversight and the fact that decision making is singular. This issue is transparent in the first example because everyone that cares about the transaction (being the singular you) is involved. The minute you have to involve other people (buying something for someone else or using someone else's money) you also have to involve them in the decision making process - which is exactly what Milton's set-up does not do and which not surprisingly leads to the problems that are set-up in his framing of the discussion.
So, let's return to opening up the books. Let's assume we are dealing with a public company, if stockholders had access to every aspect of the books, they would have one perspective on how much is being spent. Other employees would have a sense for how well this money was spent. The central problem is that the decision-makers (management in this case) generally do not have incentives to make this efficient and frequently do not have accurate assessments of value, and inviting dialogue with shareholders and employees that could improve these efficiencies is viewed as having a net negative effect because it involves giving up some of their decision making authority.
It seems to me that the problem is concentrated authority with no oversight. Since Milton assumes this scenario (which I will grant freqently occurs in the world), he looks to be spot on - as you put it. However, if you look at some of the underlying issues in his argument, it starts looking real flimsy, real fast. The real issue is about creating mechanisms for distributing authority (such as the traditional checks and balances of our own government) and providing for oversight and accountability. Simply saying Government or big organizations, don't work - says more about his model than about government.
Hopefully, you've asked for what other people have pointed out - that personal information should not be on individual machines with access to the internet, the data should be encrypted, there should be logging of when the data is used, etc. The measures you talk about were obviously not enough, and the fact that it is better than other agencies just confirms that it is a systematic problem.
So, how are you going to deal with the issue before it happens again?
It's a trivial example. The point is that document modes are not in the application itself. Sure, you could put together a macro. You could do what I actually do and simply open up Notepad too - which is even easier than putting together a macro. You not really addressing the issue of application functionality. You are simply using surrogates to solve a particular problem to make up for the lack of functionality in the application.
For document modes, if you have to switch between two complex modes - say you copy edit science textbooks and write humanitiies articles on the history of science - then Word has no built in functionality for dealing with it. Yes, you could make an argument that you could set-up macros for default settings, but why bother given Word's other limitations?
Example: Add in anything even remotely graphically complex - such as a flowchart - and Word is useless. It's not particularly good with mathematical expressions. It is really limited in terms of the way it handles type-setting - which for documents you plan on professionally publishing is a problem. So forth and so on. No macro is going to solve these problems.
- especially if you do a wide variety of document types. We can make a macro to do a lot of things - but
I'm guessing you have never used LaTeX or TeX. I haven't used them extensively, but I have done a few simple things in LaTeX - because it wasn't possible to do what I wanted to do in a standard word processor. It is this exact reason why Knuth created TeX in the first place - to cover everything from proper rendering of math formulas to graphics to abstracted definitions for handling every aspect of the document.
One simple example is that LaTeX handles different types of documents differently. When's the last time your word processor asked you to specify whether you were writing an article or a book and behaved accordingly - based on the different needs of these document types? This is a useful feature.
For example, if you were writing a poem in Word using the default set-up, it will try to capitalize each new sentence. However, capitalization is a very useful feature when I'm writing articles - which is more frequent that poems. Where can you abstract out a content set in Word to change the settings for how the application behaves based on document type? You can do some of the work by creating different templates for formatting - but I am not aware of different modes within Word and it is a major hassle to change all the settings to what makes sense every time you choose to work on a different document type.
I can think of other examples. Anyone that has ever tried to do graphic layout in Word can point to many problems in the application for this kind of work. I've also found the Master Document functionality a bit sloppy too. Many of these issues can be addressed easily by someone competent in LaTeX. I've never used Lyx, but I can imagine a number of circumstances where an easy front-end to LaTeX would be useful.
You better be careful what you ask for...He could have said free software. Care to spend time thinking about RMS on this beach offering to rub in some free - as in beer - sun block on your back, tin foil id clipped to his chest hair and singing the free software song? Sure, OSS madness is bad, but it has nothing on free software madness.
You should try the book: Your Money or Your Life. They basically make the argument that you only need to reach the point where your monthly investment income is more than your monthly expenses. It is fairly easy to do if you are willing to do something like live in the basement of your house and rent out the rest of the house. It's not for everyone but that isn't saying it can't be done.
If you use your math, the two power sources are equivalent so long as whatever being powered lasts 2 1/2 years. It also fails to account for the fact that batteries come in many different stripes that match different needs - cell phones, watches, cars, etc. The world of batteries is not defined by AAA and surely there are applications where this new tech would be perfect.
There is an easy way to get out of this dilemma. Quakers have a notion of "the God within" and that God's revelation continues within the context of historical time. If you use this framework, then Jesus was speaking to the historical moment - not for all time. It is up to us to listen to that of God within have this truth tested against the leadings of others in our Meeting and in the world at large. From a Qauker point of view, your dilemma is not a problem, and the point the parent made about always listening and asking questions is reenforced.
No, I'd argue this is part of the problem. You can't control the misuse of data if you can't control the circumstances surrounding both its collection and use. HIPPA is one obvious example of how this works in the context of legislation.
If you can create laws to control misuse, surely you could create laws to prevent collection in the first place. In fact, it is necessary to define proper use before you can even talk of misuse.
Organizations have gotten along without this information before now. The economy and law enforcement have demonstratedly operated without it. In terms of law enforcement, there are also very clear sociological implications for this kind of soft surveillance.
I agree with Gary T. Marx when he says:
Data collection of this kind, despite your benign justifications, is primarily a form of manipulative control by the state and private parties. While there are good arguments based on utility that can be employed on behalf of these kinds of measures, most of these arguments fail to account for all the negative repercussions (indeed, this assumes we even understand them all) of the data collection and use, and they do not provide for built in safeguards to address them (which I believe is your point).
However, I think, from a policy point of view, it is best to make laws that criminalize the collection of this information by default. Then, we could have discussion about legalizing specific applications and specify the controls that must be in place that minimize the level of manipulation and protect the rights of individuals. However, if you don't control data collection, you don't control how it will be used. So, it goes back to my original comment that data collection is, in fact, part of the problem.
The comment shows a remarkable lack of foresight. Any issue revolving around establishing and documenting identity is a civil liberties issue.
Let assume we began a database for every documented worker in the U.S. How long do you think it would take before that database started containing other tables for work history, education, credit scores and so forth? You only have to look at how the social security number has evolved to be used to establish identity beyond Social Security purposes to understand how this will be co-opted.
Which then brings us to the question: What would be the proper domain of this database? Besides its original purpose of establishing whether you are a documented worker, will it be tied to other issues and also contain your educational history, work history, social security information (which would give a sense of your salary history), previous employer commentary? Would it also include information on your health, DNA profile, etc.?
All of these things would be admittedly useful to companies making hiring decisions. However, it also rubs up against a citizen's privacy and could be used for a wide variety of things that have nothing to do with its original purpose and are obvious civil liberties issues.
Not that the original purpose is not a civil liberties issue. It's the same as being asked for "your papers" in Eastern Bloc countries back a few decades ago. It also could easily be used as a blacklist tool itself. "Oops, it looks like you do not appear on the documented worker list,we cannot hire you"..."the person you say you are is indicated as dead in our documented worker database, the police outside want to take you to the station to establish your real identity" (then, you are disappeared to some Gitmo prison). All of this is extreme, but it is one direction that it could possibly go when pushed far enough where there are clear civil liberties issues.
I think government has no business tracking its citizens. Government is responsible to its citizenry, not the other way around. Databases like these are government power grabs designed to exert more control over the population - and it fundamentally undermines our liberties.
Actually, your comment: Now we have dueling anecdotes, which is one reason that anecdotal arguments prove nothing. I learned that in a public high school logic class...
supports his point.Arguments are either logically valid or invalid. Truth is a quality of premises and the conclusion. Even if you have true premises and a valid argument, the conclusion may still be false. So, proof is not a term that should be applied here.
If you were to reconstruct the parent's argument with a rough but charitable reading, it might read something like this:
The argument could be fleshed out a bit. But, it is essentially logically valid and it seems reasonable that you could come up with a ratio of good to bad teachers - however good and bad is defined - that would make all the premises true.
In your arguments, you state that you managed to get a good education and could compete with people educated in private schools. However, this only negates the original's argument if you render the conclusion exactly as the parent post did: "Public schools in America = lowest quality education you can possibly get for your child". However, it is clear from the reminder that this was not meant as a categorical statement but as a probablistic one based on 20 to 1 and that there are unstated premise that indicate that the ratio is higher in alternatives.
If you render the argument as I have here, then your counter-examples based on your education and experience with retiring teachers do not demonstrate that the premises of the argument are false. In fact, the fact that you mention AP courses - where it seems reasonable to assume that there would be a higher concentration of good teachers - is a clear example that you were not in a typical public school environment and you are likely an outlier.
If you wanted to counter this argument, you should show how the ratio is false in some way - that there are actually more good teachers in public schools than elsewhere or that there is a higher ratio relative to alternatives than is submitted here. You might also show that the argument is not taking some crucial element into account. However, your comments don't do any of this.
In the interest of disclosure, I should say I went to public schools. I would probably make this same argument, but I would do it differently:
Same conclusion, different - possibly true - premises. But proof? No. It is also highly likely that my quick reading and analysis missed some important aspect - same as yours.
Let's use an analogy of the stock market. Classical economics talks about perfectly competitive markets where people have all the information they need, people make rational decisions, suppliers can freely enter and leave markets, etc. There are no perfectly competitive markets.
People do not have perfect information. They frequently do not make rational decisions. So, unless you change the meaning of the word "value" to basically mean that you deserve whatever the market decides to give you, you do not have much support for those notion that people are paid according to their contribution to society.
Thought experiment. Why don't companies publish the salaries of all their employees or for specific positions - for review by anyone in the company? If everyone is getting compensated relative to their true value, this would not present any problems - would it?
I work in a large American corporation. I actually check the H2 Visa forms that my company to get a sense of what different positions in my organization are paying - and I know as a fact that there is a huge disconnect between different positions relative to their value. I also know that this is not unique to my circumstance through people I know working in other corporations.
Secretaries make more than professionals because they work close to a C-level executive. Incompetent bosses carried by more junior people. People with seniority that actually take away more value than they bring paid more than stars. Anyone that has worked anywhere has seen these things.
My example was to compare the salary of CEO's who make millions to the average salary of an employee in their company. While there may be examples where a CEO might earn the millions that he makes in compensation, I would argue that it is the exception that proves the rule. To use your example, CEO's make more than social workers because the market pays them more. It would be trivial to point to incompetent CEO and people that are fantastic social workers - and by doing so you would be point out that an incompetent CEO is probably harming value but still gets compensated more than any social worker despite the relative quality of their work. Again, another disconnect.
Here's another social-economic data point Take a look at Table 680. Notice how since 1980 the top 5 percent have had a huge increase of their percentage of total aggregate income. How does your perspective square with systemic problems like that one?All I can think of are continuously running Black & Decker drills. Assume you had energy as a non-scarce resource, I would think that would actually create a very unsustainable situation - in other resources such as water, air or whatever. Sustainability is going to be a difficult problem that will make fusion like easy.
I think you misread the parent. I think they were talking about a progressive tax rate that reached 90% for people at the highest income levels. The reason people think this is a bad idea because they think that it undermines successful people and promotes mediocrity.
However, this is a simplistic argument that has at least one false premise: people are paid according to their contribution to society. You only have to compare the salaries of c-level executives to the average salary of people that work in their companies, teachers and social workers to professional athletes and/or people that were born into money versus those that were born into a family making below the poverty line. People are frequently not making an income based on their competence, success, hard work or any other factor attributable to themselves.
More often than not, it's dumb luck. If you accept that as true, then you can give a little more credibility to arguments that there should be a more equitable distribution of income to counter the effects of luck while at the same time supporting those things that are valuable to society - such as hard work, competence and so forth.
As far as politics go, you should also take a look at the political compass diagram, and take the test. As a benchmark, try taking a look at the 2004 Presidential Election and then the other countries. Notice how most fall in the upper right quadrant? If you think in terms of Clinton or Kerry being "left", then yes, Slashdot might be left in that sense - but still firmly in the same authoritarian right quadrant.
If you think "left" in terms of Gandhi and Stalin, then Slashdot isn't left at all - either with an authoritarian or libertarian aspect. But, it is like you said: what's left is relative to where you stand. The thrust of Slashdot follows the larger pattern that you can see in most governments - which is a right, authoritarian bias. It can be hard to see - especially in cultures like the U.S. that have such a narrow range of political expression, but tools like the political compass can be useful to get your bearings.
Being popular doesn't make one a leader. Linus is the technical leader. RMS is the ideological leader. Ideological leaders aren't typically pretty either - Einstein, Marx, Banjamin Franklin, etc. It's almost to the point where you might think that ideas might make you ugly.
By this logic:
We wouldn't have children. All they are is a cost, right?
Or have pets. Less cost than children, but why do it at all?
Or volunteer. Why work for free?
I could go on. But the bottom line is that I happen to have $19 dollars for an expansion card for some medical students in Uganda, and I'd rather spend it in this way than going out to dinner or adding it to my retirement accounts.
I am sure that that $19 dollars could compound into something if you waited 40 years. Then again, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. Either way, the sums we are talking about here aren't going to make or break your retirement - and maybe they are a way to diversify your "portfolio".