But problems like that can be specifically addressed by the courts. It also really helps is the non-drivers IDs have a very long renewal time (12+ years), so that having gotten past any shenanigans once is good for many elections.
Well, I happen to think a strong military presence helps us all, but I've already lost that fight, and military budgets are shrinking every year. We've already stopped being a superpower, it's just that no one else has stepped up to dominate their region yet (other than Russia, who we're used to being assholes). With defense at only 20%, future reductions give diminishing returns. Don't count on that to fix the huge problem with government overspending.
Federal revenue has come back up as a % of GDP with the recovering economy. It won't be quite so dark once we're back to 19% or GDP, but there's no tax system that has ever sustained more revenue than that, and it's simply impossible to meet our commitments even with no spending at all on defense, infrastructure, or anything but mailing checks to people. It will not end well, and if you're not saving money to help any family who depend on government assistance, you probably should be.
Sure, current electronic voting is an outright scam. We should fix both problems. The answer for the machines is so obvious the current design flaws can only be intentional: computer-assisted voting is the one true way. Have all the touch screens and so on you want, but the machine prints a clear, human-readable ballot that the voter can validate before dropping in the box. Counting and recounts are normal.
Anyone who doesn't want to fix either of these problems is trying to fix the vote. There are of course other methods for fraud as well, but that's no excuse not to fix these 2.
Having to stand in line to get photographed sometime in the 5 years before you want to vote disenfranchises who again? Or do you have a mental model of some minorities as helpless, unable to accomplish simple tasks?
You see this confusion with Voter ID laws too. Every state these days has an official non-driver's photo ID, sometimes called a "drinker's license". They're usually less than $10 - the real cost is showing up to be photographed and present whatever records are required.
You can also use a passport card as an ID when flying - I've done that before. I always carry my passport card separate from my wallet when I travel, just in case.
We spend ~$800B on Medicare/caid we spend ~$600B on defense and "war-specific spending" (aka, defense), and about $300B on welfare of various kinds. Defense spending is less than 20% of our $3.5T budget. (Social Security is the largest outlay).
Of course, you're right that we're not adequately funding Medi*, as the unfunded liability there is about $800,000 per taxpayer. Not sure what we can do about that. The total US unfunded liabilities (dominated by medicare) exceeds that value of all US assets. Confiscate all wealth in the US and it still won't cover it. Clearly, promises won't be met.
I rely on CC fraud protection for online shopping. Yes, it's important not to use your "stupid forum password" for shopping, or any game-related password for anything else, but none of those really need to be strong passwords. (I actually have one strong password - for my email, because I don't like their two-factor auth, but they do have one.)
Also, it's always worth poking around in an online merchant to see what someone can do with your account, and not use sites that suck. Amazon e.g. is great in when it asks you for your for the number from the back of the card, in that it won't ever show your full CC#, etc. Even big sites vary on this stuff - you'd think they'd all get it right, but some will let you add a new shipping address without proving you have the credit card. Just don't use such sites.
If the merchant does his job, you won't care much that someone got your password, as he can't use that to order stuff (though he could grief you in other ways, that's usually someone you know).
If you need a string password, you've failed to provide two-factor auth.
If it's some stupid forum, I don't need a strong password anyhow. If it's something important, like my banking or brokerage, I have two-factor auth. Nowhere do I need a strong password.
Fast response teams will swarm in and kill every bystander to spare them the HORROR of being killed by eeeeevul te-erroreezeests and then shoot themselves.
The part where only a large corporation should be allowed to profit from it? Where does the "must be part of a small wealth clique" come in to public safety again?
Product quality regulations good. Regulations establishing monopolies bad. It's not a difficult concept.
Randi's goal is to demonstrate that the fraudsters are fraudsters. Much as he'd no doubt like to see them in prison, there's not much he can do about that part. Not sure why you're attacking him so strongly - did he shut down your 1-900 psychic hotline or something?
Yes, yes, but you can do that in an open an objective way that anyone with a car can qualify for, if the goal isn't monopoly-granting. If someone who's currently working as a taxi driver can't trivially become a legal Uber driver (assuming his insurance carries over), or just start his own service or whatever -- that is, it's the driver, not the business, who qualifies -- then it's all a sham to stuff corporate pockets.
only the inputs and outputs must be competently measured and compared
Too bad they didn't do that, then. They believed power input numbers as displayed by equipment the "inventor" had hooked up. The "inventor" had opportunity to swap the "fuel" mid-test, to replace it with a different isotope mix.
Stage magicians have been tricking scientists for decades, and this wasn't even that impressive a trick.
She's damn good (why don't we see more women as magicians?). Magic is all about the entertainment value of the presentation, and that was very well thought out for a small set of actual tricks, keeping it fresh as it went.
You don't think a clever enough stage magician could find a way to send power into the device over time? Heck, simply having one of the researchers in on the scam would make it trivial.
You should seriously look into Randi's history of debunking frauds who fooled actual scientists. Actual science is based around telling people how it works, so that the skeptic can reproduce the experiment. This isn't that.
So price doesn't come into it then? Freedom to start your own small business (assuming you have a CDL) doesn't come into it then? What you really want is a government-appointed driver for a government-appointed car to take you to your government-approved destination at the government-approved time? Isn't that what busses are for?
Wow, you're really scared of cars. You must be terrified to sacrifice liberty for security so readily.
This has nothing to do with product quality regulation. Product quality regulation is great and all, and a simple commercial drivers license would cover that. This is artificial scarcity. This is fucking the passengers and small businesses so that the large corporations make money. Why would you support that?
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But problems like that can be specifically addressed by the courts. It also really helps is the non-drivers IDs have a very long renewal time (12+ years), so that having gotten past any shenanigans once is good for many elections.
Well, I happen to think a strong military presence helps us all, but I've already lost that fight, and military budgets are shrinking every year. We've already stopped being a superpower, it's just that no one else has stepped up to dominate their region yet (other than Russia, who we're used to being assholes). With defense at only 20%, future reductions give diminishing returns. Don't count on that to fix the huge problem with government overspending.
Federal revenue has come back up as a % of GDP with the recovering economy. It won't be quite so dark once we're back to 19% or GDP, but there's no tax system that has ever sustained more revenue than that, and it's simply impossible to meet our commitments even with no spending at all on defense, infrastructure, or anything but mailing checks to people. It will not end well, and if you're not saving money to help any family who depend on government assistance, you probably should be.
Sure, current electronic voting is an outright scam. We should fix both problems. The answer for the machines is so obvious the current design flaws can only be intentional: computer-assisted voting is the one true way. Have all the touch screens and so on you want, but the machine prints a clear, human-readable ballot that the voter can validate before dropping in the box. Counting and recounts are normal.
Anyone who doesn't want to fix either of these problems is trying to fix the vote. There are of course other methods for fraud as well, but that's no excuse not to fix these 2.
Having to stand in line to get photographed sometime in the 5 years before you want to vote disenfranchises who again? Or do you have a mental model of some minorities as helpless, unable to accomplish simple tasks?
If you can stand in line to vote, you can stand in line to get photographed. Voter fraud is a worse problem.
Is "horse" the master race or not? I'm still trying to sort this one out ...
You see this confusion with Voter ID laws too. Every state these days has an official non-driver's photo ID, sometimes called a "drinker's license". They're usually less than $10 - the real cost is showing up to be photographed and present whatever records are required.
You can also use a passport card as an ID when flying - I've done that before. I always carry my passport card separate from my wallet when I travel, just in case.
We spend ~$800B on Medicare/caid we spend ~$600B on defense and "war-specific spending" (aka, defense), and about $300B on welfare of various kinds. Defense spending is less than 20% of our $3.5T budget. (Social Security is the largest outlay).
Of course, you're right that we're not adequately funding Medi*, as the unfunded liability there is about $800,000 per taxpayer. Not sure what we can do about that. The total US unfunded liabilities (dominated by medicare) exceeds that value of all US assets. Confiscate all wealth in the US and it still won't cover it. Clearly, promises won't be met.
www.usdebtclock.org
I rely on CC fraud protection for online shopping. Yes, it's important not to use your "stupid forum password" for shopping, or any game-related password for anything else, but none of those really need to be strong passwords. (I actually have one strong password - for my email, because I don't like their two-factor auth, but they do have one.)
Also, it's always worth poking around in an online merchant to see what someone can do with your account, and not use sites that suck. Amazon e.g. is great in when it asks you for your for the number from the back of the card, in that it won't ever show your full CC#, etc. Even big sites vary on this stuff - you'd think they'd all get it right, but some will let you add a new shipping address without proving you have the credit card. Just don't use such sites.
If the merchant does his job, you won't care much that someone got your password, as he can't use that to order stuff (though he could grief you in other ways, that's usually someone you know).
If you need a string password, you've failed to provide two-factor auth.
If it's some stupid forum, I don't need a strong password anyhow. If it's something important, like my banking or brokerage, I have two-factor auth. Nowhere do I need a strong password.
Fast response teams will swarm in and kill every bystander to spare them the HORROR of being killed by eeeeevul te-erroreezeests and then shoot themselves.
"Suicide squad ... ATTACK!"
Trying the "master race" shit without even a horse in the race
Wait, what? I don't even?
The part where only a large corporation should be allowed to profit from it? Where does the "must be part of a small wealth clique" come in to public safety again?
Product quality regulations good. Regulations establishing monopolies bad. It's not a difficult concept.
Randi's goal is to demonstrate that the fraudsters are fraudsters. Much as he'd no doubt like to see them in prison, there's not much he can do about that part. Not sure why you're attacking him so strongly - did he shut down your 1-900 psychic hotline or something?
Well, hopefully he'll also collect his $1M from Randi for his magic power source then. Or he's feeding it added power on the sly, one of those.
Yes, yes, but you can do that in an open an objective way that anyone with a car can qualify for, if the goal isn't monopoly-granting. If someone who's currently working as a taxi driver can't trivially become a legal Uber driver (assuming his insurance carries over), or just start his own service or whatever -- that is, it's the driver, not the business, who qualifies -- then it's all a sham to stuff corporate pockets.
Regulating product quality is fine. Regulating who's allowed to buy and sell (government-granted monopolies) is inherently bad.
But the "inventor" hooked up the meter, no? And it was it checking for DC power?
Is all "naturally" occurring copper a result of fusion?
Well, yeah, all naturally occurring non-hydrogen is a result of fusion. Or did you just make a typo for "isn't", and this was your point?
only the inputs and outputs must be competently measured and compared
Too bad they didn't do that, then. They believed power input numbers as displayed by equipment the "inventor" had hooked up. The "inventor" had opportunity to swap the "fuel" mid-test, to replace it with a different isotope mix.
Stage magicians have been tricking scientists for decades, and this wasn't even that impressive a trick.
She's damn good (why don't we see more women as magicians?). Magic is all about the entertainment value of the presentation, and that was very well thought out for a small set of actual tricks, keeping it fresh as it went.
You don't think a clever enough stage magician could find a way to send power into the device over time? Heck, simply having one of the researchers in on the scam would make it trivial.
You should seriously look into Randi's history of debunking frauds who fooled actual scientists. Actual science is based around telling people how it works, so that the skeptic can reproduce the experiment. This isn't that.
So price doesn't come into it then? Freedom to start your own small business (assuming you have a CDL) doesn't come into it then? What you really want is a government-appointed driver for a government-appointed car to take you to your government-approved destination at the government-approved time? Isn't that what busses are for?
Wow, you're really scared of cars. You must be terrified to sacrifice liberty for security so readily.
This has nothing to do with product quality regulation. Product quality regulation is great and all, and a simple commercial drivers license would cover that. This is artificial scarcity. This is fucking the passengers and small businesses so that the large corporations make money. Why would you support that?