I would not place the fault for high health care costs in the free market, but in the fact that consumers lack price signals. With price information, consumers are more likely to use urgent care or drop-in non-emergency care for non-emergency issues (e.g. my kid is throwing up and has a fever, I broke my arm, I think I have the flu) and make choices that have a relationship to the actual costs. Our current system is structured in such a way that the most expensive to provide care (ER) is the least expensive to the recipients (mandatory to be provided by law, regardless of ability to pay). Combine that with the fact that, just like environmental issues, the costs are often nearly invisible to the recipients of the benefits, and you are left with the reality that right now health care overall is so darn expensive because the costs are allocated to those who are able to bear them, not those who cost the most. This results in a total lack of price-sensitivity, which drives up costs for all consumers who pay. What our system needs is a greater return to free-market ideals, in such places as HSAs coupled with HDHP's(i.e. insurance that protects against unplanned medical needs, instead of routine ones), not greater socialization and removal of what few price signals we have left. Just like with gas, the demand is inelastic, but unlike gas, the cost to fill that demand is within our reach to minimize.
I would not call the sub-prime crisis a failure, except to the extent that it is negatively affecting those who neither made loans that are not profitable nor purchased and accepted the risk/returns of those loans. The sub-prime bailout through government guarantees is a horrible misstep, that could have been avoided by sending strong signals from the start that Uncle Sam would not ride in with a bailout plan. This is the signal we have sent to US auto manufacturers, and they are failing just fine on their own.
The fact of home prices going down is not a bad thing. Mortgage lenders going out of business is not a bad thing. People paying higher interest rates because the average mortgage taker is actually riskier than idealized model predicted is not a bad thing (outside of the inaccuracy of the models in the first place). Loans being harder to get is not a bad thing. It is a natural consequence of people ending up on the wrong side of the risk/reward ratio.
I am not an unreserved supporter of the free market. Regulation is required where society bears costs but does not gain benefits. The incentives for non-pollution must be implemented; on this we fully agree. Incentives for rationing of a limited public resource must be made (or the resource must be privatized, which isn't an option for essential public resources, such as air and water, but is fully feasible for non-essential resources such as education and health care and, yes, oil). Without a rationing mechanism such as cost, there is no incentive to reduce waste. The free market provides a dynamic, effective, cost rationing mechanism the likes of which central planning has been able to approximate but never surpass.
People will seek the lowest cost way to accomplish their goals, and the government should usually stay out of the way. Money works. It isn't perfect, and it doesn't always work like it is perfect, but it's really the best we've found. I say we use it.
Timothy McVeigh is what you'd call a right wing terrorist. He believed America was great and the federal government's expanding power was ruining America. He viewed the federal government, but not state and local governments, as evil. He has not ever claimed to be Christian or anarchist. He was a terrorist in that he targeted federal government buildings as a symbolic gesture.
Eric Rudolph is the abortion clinic bomber, and most certainly describes himself as Christian. His actions, of course, have been widely and loudly denounced by the Christian community worldwide. He is accurately described as a Christian extremist. He was also responsible for the pipe-bombing at the Atlanta games. He was a terrorist in that he intentionally bombed populated areas, in order to make a psychological spectacle of the carnage.
If someone were to kill another person because of the second person's job, they would be an assassin, and probably a murderer, but not necessarily a terrorist. Terrorists target a population wider than those they attack. They attempt to accomplish their goals by the intimidation of a group of people. Not every assassin or even murderer is automatically a terrorist.
The deliberate killing of a head of state, an abortionist, the president of a multi-national corporation, or even the guy down the street isn't terrorism unless the true target of your attack is someone other than your victim.
I'd say there's a good chance Mr. Ivins could fall into the murderer/assassin but not terrorist category.
There's a very good reason to use non-renewables. They cost less because they are less expensive to produce. When they (non-renewables) become more scarce, fewer people will use them.
We have a system that will allow anyone to use whatever fuel they want, and allows the user to bear the price of their choice. People will choose hydroelectric over wind power because hydro is so cheap. People would choose nuclear over hydro (if they had that option) because nuclear is so cheap, when you discount the false perception that nuclear poses a hazard to the world's safety. People choose gas over ethanol because gas is so cheap. People will choose what provides equal benefit at a lower cost every time.
If you think renewables are the way to go, no one is stopping you from investing is solar farms. If you think solar farms are too inefficient, no one is stopping you from investing in better solar technology. Heck, society will even provide you with a 14 year monopoly on the production and use of any technological improvement you come up with.
The truth is that markets work, and removing government restrictions to almost any free choice will increase efficiency. This means that when gas gets expensive enough, people are going to start getting their fuel from biodeisel, or from ethanol, or from hydrogen fuel cells, or from solar cells on the top of their cars. Believe it or not, even the most hardcore Republicans support renewables. We're just opposed to forcing renewables, and believe the market can do a better, more efficient, and more practical job than we can of making the choice about when, where, and how much to transition.
Hype down the rhetoric, there man. Half a century of progress? I'm a conservative and I'd much rather live in 2008 than 1958. I have a feeling you would, too.
Or go to the gym where the young 20's males beat the crap out of each other. I do, and it's great. Just make sure it's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Judo, or losing frequently means injury.
While I am a fan of neither the Wayans brothers nor Rob Schneider, they clearly fill a niche in the movie-going public market. If enough people are buying what they're selling to keep it worth making, they'll keep making it. It's true for everything, and that means movies, too.
Creative or not, you can't change the foundations of capitalism to make only good movies happen. To make only good movies happen, you need to remove the market for bad movies. Critics do their job by reducing the market, but there will always be someone willing to see Little Man 3 or Hot Chick 2: Girls with Junk.
What you really want is either the end of capitalism as an influence in film making, or a homogeneous movie-going public. I think both of these outcomes should be viewed as undesirable. Unfortunately, that leaves me in the position of arguing that in the grand scheme of things, making Big Momma's House was a good idea.
You say you don't have a right to hire or to not hire based on genetic dispositions towards negative attributes, or on a failure to disclose them. This may be the case, but the result of having that right certainly would not be bad for future employment.
The result would be a more efficient hiring process as more relevant information could be gathered and applied toward the selection of a candidate for a position to be filled. The hiring company has in interest in disclosure and the individual has a competing interest in their privacy. In situations where an individual values his privacy more than the damage (or gain) he will take from refusing disclosure, he refuses disclosure. This happens all the time in salary negotiation. Genetic information may have a comparable value to employers, with a greater competing privacy interest for the applicant.
These are decisions that an individual should be able to weigh for themselves, but the applicants who value their privacy more than the gain they get from disclosure have it in their best interests to prevent any consideration of disclosure/non-disclosure of genetic information in hiring processes. Those who value their privacy less than the value they would get from disclosure (e.g. perfect health, low personal privacy value) have an interest in allowing the consideration of the level of disclosure. This is an instance where the market will either sort things out, or the majority will refuse to allow the market to sort things out. I personally vote for the former, because it is the most efficient, and efficiency gains help all but the least able, who are only hurt in relation to the amount of value they provide.
LHC: "I'm so cool I've gotta be measured in Kelvin, so hip your grandpa broke me, so sweet that Slugworth stole me, so boss I'm at the end of world 8-4, and so deck my dad should hire me in the summer of 1993 for five dollars an hour to build myself."
I'd have to learn a lot of chess to be competitive here, but the guys who compete in this are no where near world class fighters. Get one of the more intelligent LHW boxers to pick up chess, (1800 ELO isn't completely unattainable, but is out of my immediate reach) play very conservatively, and as slowly as possible, and you'll definitely have a new world champion.
I have 2 years of training at a Rickson Gracie academy, and I guarantee you punching is something you do in a fight. I'm also an amateur cage fighter, where they let you do so many things that they explain the rules entirely in the things you are not allowed to do. Punching works. It's part of a toolset. A great Jitz guy without any wrestling is gonna get destroyed by a man who can sprawl and box.
Think Rani Yahya vs. Kid Yamamoto, or for more proof go back and watch Jeremy Horn's second fight with Chuck Liddell.
You need the whole game against good fighters, and punching power and size will win the fight just about every time against someone with poor wrestling.
Lots of people on minimum wage also support themselves by cohabitating and reducing per person fixed costs by dividing them and taking advantage of the economies of scale.
Slashdot Mirror
I would not place the fault for high health care costs in the free market, but in the fact that consumers lack price signals. With price information, consumers are more likely to use urgent care or drop-in non-emergency care for non-emergency issues (e.g. my kid is throwing up and has a fever, I broke my arm, I think I have the flu) and make choices that have a relationship to the actual costs. Our current system is structured in such a way that the most expensive to provide care (ER) is the least expensive to the recipients (mandatory to be provided by law, regardless of ability to pay). Combine that with the fact that, just like environmental issues, the costs are often nearly invisible to the recipients of the benefits, and you are left with the reality that right now health care overall is so darn expensive because the costs are allocated to those who are able to bear them, not those who cost the most. This results in a total lack of price-sensitivity, which drives up costs for all consumers who pay. What our system needs is a greater return to free-market ideals, in such places as HSAs coupled with HDHP's(i.e. insurance that protects against unplanned medical needs, instead of routine ones), not greater socialization and removal of what few price signals we have left. Just like with gas, the demand is inelastic, but unlike gas, the cost to fill that demand is within our reach to minimize.
I would not call the sub-prime crisis a failure, except to the extent that it is negatively affecting those who neither made loans that are not profitable nor purchased and accepted the risk/returns of those loans. The sub-prime bailout through government guarantees is a horrible misstep, that could have been avoided by sending strong signals from the start that Uncle Sam would not ride in with a bailout plan. This is the signal we have sent to US auto manufacturers, and they are failing just fine on their own.
The fact of home prices going down is not a bad thing. Mortgage lenders going out of business is not a bad thing. People paying higher interest rates because the average mortgage taker is actually riskier than idealized model predicted is not a bad thing (outside of the inaccuracy of the models in the first place). Loans being harder to get is not a bad thing. It is a natural consequence of people ending up on the wrong side of the risk/reward ratio.
I am not an unreserved supporter of the free market. Regulation is required where society bears costs but does not gain benefits. The incentives for non-pollution must be implemented; on this we fully agree. Incentives for rationing of a limited public resource must be made (or the resource must be privatized, which isn't an option for essential public resources, such as air and water, but is fully feasible for non-essential resources such as education and health care and, yes, oil). Without a rationing mechanism such as cost, there is no incentive to reduce waste. The free market provides a dynamic, effective, cost rationing mechanism the likes of which central planning has been able to approximate but never surpass.
People will seek the lowest cost way to accomplish their goals, and the government should usually stay out of the way. Money works. It isn't perfect, and it doesn't always work like it is perfect, but it's really the best we've found. I say we use it.
Timothy McVeigh is what you'd call a right wing terrorist. He believed America was great and the federal government's expanding power was ruining America. He viewed the federal government, but not state and local governments, as evil. He has not ever claimed to be Christian or anarchist. He was a terrorist in that he targeted federal government buildings as a symbolic gesture.
Eric Rudolph is the abortion clinic bomber, and most certainly describes himself as Christian. His actions, of course, have been widely and loudly denounced by the Christian community worldwide. He is accurately described as a Christian extremist. He was also responsible for the pipe-bombing at the Atlanta games. He was a terrorist in that he intentionally bombed populated areas, in order to make a psychological spectacle of the carnage.
If someone were to kill another person because of the second person's job, they would be an assassin, and probably a murderer, but not necessarily a terrorist. Terrorists target a population wider than those they attack. They attempt to accomplish their goals by the intimidation of a group of people. Not every assassin or even murderer is automatically a terrorist.
The deliberate killing of a head of state, an abortionist, the president of a multi-national corporation, or even the guy down the street isn't terrorism unless the true target of your attack is someone other than your victim.
I'd say there's a good chance Mr. Ivins could fall into the murderer/assassin but not terrorist category.
There's a very good reason to use non-renewables. They cost less because they are less expensive to produce. When they (non-renewables) become more scarce, fewer people will use them.
We have a system that will allow anyone to use whatever fuel they want, and allows the user to bear the price of their choice. People will choose hydroelectric over wind power because hydro is so cheap. People would choose nuclear over hydro (if they had that option) because nuclear is so cheap, when you discount the false perception that nuclear poses a hazard to the world's safety. People choose gas over ethanol because gas is so cheap. People will choose what provides equal benefit at a lower cost every time.
If you think renewables are the way to go, no one is stopping you from investing is solar farms. If you think solar farms are too inefficient, no one is stopping you from investing in better solar technology. Heck, society will even provide you with a 14 year monopoly on the production and use of any technological improvement you come up with.
The truth is that markets work, and removing government restrictions to almost any free choice will increase efficiency. This means that when gas gets expensive enough, people are going to start getting their fuel from biodeisel, or from ethanol, or from hydrogen fuel cells, or from solar cells on the top of their cars. Believe it or not, even the most hardcore Republicans support renewables. We're just opposed to forcing renewables, and believe the market can do a better, more efficient, and more practical job than we can of making the choice about when, where, and how much to transition.
Hype down the rhetoric, there man. Half a century of progress? I'm a conservative and I'd much rather live in 2008 than 1958. I have a feeling you would, too.
Or go to the gym where the young 20's males beat the crap out of each other. I do, and it's great. Just make sure it's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or Judo, or losing frequently means injury.
I know of one geek who exercises well(I know it's MySpace, but he's not a computer geek).
The answer to Hollywooded movies is to create more Sweded ones, and let the public decide.
While I am a fan of neither the Wayans brothers nor Rob Schneider, they clearly fill a niche in the movie-going public market. If enough people are buying what they're selling to keep it worth making, they'll keep making it. It's true for everything, and that means movies, too.
Creative or not, you can't change the foundations of capitalism to make only good movies happen. To make only good movies happen, you need to remove the market for bad movies. Critics do their job by reducing the market, but there will always be someone willing to see Little Man 3 or Hot Chick 2: Girls with Junk.
What you really want is either the end of capitalism as an influence in film making, or a homogeneous movie-going public. I think both of these outcomes should be viewed as undesirable. Unfortunately, that leaves me in the position of arguing that in the grand scheme of things, making Big Momma's House was a good idea.
You say you don't have a right to hire or to not hire based on genetic dispositions towards negative attributes, or on a failure to disclose them. This may be the case, but the result of having that right certainly would not be bad for future employment.
The result would be a more efficient hiring process as more relevant information could be gathered and applied toward the selection of a candidate for a position to be filled. The hiring company has in interest in disclosure and the individual has a competing interest in their privacy. In situations where an individual values his privacy more than the damage (or gain) he will take from refusing disclosure, he refuses disclosure. This happens all the time in salary negotiation. Genetic information may have a comparable value to employers, with a greater competing privacy interest for the applicant.
These are decisions that an individual should be able to weigh for themselves, but the applicants who value their privacy more than the gain they get from disclosure have it in their best interests to prevent any consideration of disclosure/non-disclosure of genetic information in hiring processes. Those who value their privacy less than the value they would get from disclosure (e.g. perfect health, low personal privacy value) have an interest in allowing the consideration of the level of disclosure. This is an instance where the market will either sort things out, or the majority will refuse to allow the market to sort things out. I personally vote for the former, because it is the most efficient, and efficiency gains help all but the least able, who are only hurt in relation to the amount of value they provide.
LHC: "I'm so cool I've gotta be measured in Kelvin, so hip your grandpa broke me, so sweet that Slugworth stole me, so boss I'm at the end of world 8-4, and so deck my dad should hire me in the summer of 1993 for five dollars an hour to build myself."
Props to Barats and Bereta for all those lines.
I know. Freakin' government expansionists of any political party. Let's also not leave out the farm bill to get us cheaper domestic corn.
Probably, but in just the same way we'd all get free health care under a democrat.
I'd have to learn a lot of chess to be competitive here, but the guys who compete in this are no where near world class fighters. Get one of the more intelligent LHW boxers to pick up chess, (1800 ELO isn't completely unattainable, but is out of my immediate reach) play very conservatively, and as slowly as possible, and you'll definitely have a new world champion.
I have 2 years of training at a Rickson Gracie academy, and I guarantee you punching is something you do in a fight. I'm also an amateur cage fighter, where they let you do so many things that they explain the rules entirely in the things you are not allowed to do. Punching works. It's part of a toolset. A great Jitz guy without any wrestling is gonna get destroyed by a man who can sprawl and box.
Think Rani Yahya vs. Kid Yamamoto, or for more proof go back and watch Jeremy Horn's second fight with Chuck Liddell. You need the whole game against good fighters, and punching power and size will win the fight just about every time against someone with poor wrestling.
Whoosh.
And me without mod points :(
$1.80!? That would be too much, except for Verizon's superior customer care.
Yes, sir. That is correct. $.002 cents.
The RIAA/MPAA will be satisfied when, as Jack Valenti said, the term of copyright is forever minus 1 day.
I love when the "translator" articles get hopelessly screwed up. "AFK = A Free Kill" "POS = Parents Over Shoulder"
Speak for yourself. I appear on a particular xkcd-guitar related website :P
Wetriffs NSFW.
Lots of people on minimum wage also support themselves by cohabitating and reducing per person fixed costs by dividing them and taking advantage of the economies of scale.
I got this.
He who dies with the most toys still dies.
But in DC, it is now illegal to own or carry one within the city limits.