What should the citizens be more worried about, a private company violating their privacy by hacking their phones or their government violating their privacy by doing the same?
I know what I am more worried about, and it's not a private business (though, of-course, a private business that works with the government is another thing altogether.)
The culprit is the fact that government provides loans to anybody who wants them, the education system is aimed at eating up those loans and spitting the students out with huge debt and nothing to show for it, as the students are convinced by the system that they need a degree to get ANY job, never mind a job in their profession, because everybody is getting a degree. The money is being transfered from the tax payers/inflation via printing to the colleges, be they public or private, and the results of-course are rising prices for education and worsening of standards, as nobody is allowed to fail, people are graded on a curve, because a failing student only means that the college will make less money but the result of either passing or failing is pretty much the same, nothing of value is really taught anyway.
Who cares what you actually learn there if all you are concerned with is getting any degree just to get any job, so people go for the easiest subjects and in the process they accrue somewhat of mortgage size debts, while not learning anything useful there either. So this is inflation of the education process and it's happening because there are moral hazards created by the government with the loans and because there are no jobs anyway, the government is pushing all the manufacturing out of the West by causing capital flight by regulations/taxes, etc. The students stay in school much longer, accruing much more debt because they are scared of coming out into the real world, because obviously there are no jobs.
At some point some of them have to come out, but with the education they have many find that their next option is to go through another school, to take up law and to become a lawyer, so this is another problem created by the system - too many lawyers, because so many students are switching to that, thinking that this is the next possible step for them from their sociology major. Of-course they won't go into hard stuff, sciences, engineering, who blames them, there is no demand!
having a stable and friendly government is the only way to partially insure that.
- you have to specify what it is that you mean by 'friendly' and 'stable', because whatever those 2 terms mean, they cannot mean 'democratic' and 'elected'.
In USA in 19 century most of the industries had no regulations, the government was very tiny, involved only with the largest tycoons, that's why in 19 century USA switched from being an agriculture based society, that owed huge debts to the largest manufacturer of cheap, high quality consumer goods, while driving innovation by allowing the people to come over from around the world and start their own businesses in the freest (at the time), society in the world.
So it's impossible because it hasn't happened yet? What?
- I gave an example of how it is theoretically possible, but it's very unlikely, given that it never happened, so it's improbable, as good as physically impossible.
Someone could already have lots of money (enough to start it). Or drive out small businesses. Once they are established, competition may become difficult.
- so what? So what that it is difficult? You are ignoring the examples I gave earlier of very difficult things that private businesses are doing - launching rockets to space with useful cargo.
(so people would be able to better understand its advantages and disadvantages far more easily and believably). I think it should be tested.
- USA 19 century was such a market, it's in the past for USA, but in Asia that's sort of what some countries have there. Even China has a freer market than any Western economy, and its wealth is increasing as its production capacity is growing.
Not everything that humans believe is logical, either.
- no no, it's very logical that the prices are going up instead of falling when there is government interfering with the market, it's logical and it is happening.
From FDIC and IRS and Fed to labor regulations, all of the social obligations and mandates, starting with public works of the Great Depression, that the government created by inflating the USD to prop up UK debt and to all other regulations, all of the government departments, FDA, FAA, EPA, CIA, etc.etc., all of them.
Once you get government into business, you get that specific business to be your government, and that's the end of the economy and the republic.
If this is the goal, education is starting at ground zero.
- yeah. The entire US economy will have to restart from ground zero, unfortunately. It blew away the wealth accumulated prior to creation of the Fed/IRS and the culture of dependency (bread and circuses voter).
fundamental tenants of the public education in the U.S. is that it is provided free of charge
- yeah, it's wrong. It just seems to be free of charge, but the payment is the economy ruined by the political system that provides this so called 'free or charge education', as if education is somehow not covered by the fundamental laws of economics, the same way anybody is covered by fundamental laws of nature, such as gravity.
parents pay for their children's education
- they are paying for their children's education with the economic future of those children being destroyed.
The parents, grand parents and great grandparents of those very children didn't have a problem voting for politicians who promoted the agenda of social obligations, which transfer wealth from the old generations to the new ones, as for example SS taxes do, with 17 trillion being already transfered and gone from the future generations to the past ones.
who are themselves much less likely to be any kind of asset to the country
- no, with government out of the picture those very kids would actually have a better economic future with a working economy, where they could be trained at work without having to get into an impossible debt to get a worthless degree, with it's value inflated away by pointless government mandates.
unless you think we're heading for a Soylent Green future?
- figuratively speaking that's what the future holds for those kids, as their future has already been eaten by their great grandparents and grandparents and parents, who voted themselves a system, that promoted bread and circuses, income transfer from the young and unborn to the old and the dead.
Charities do not create working systems and they cannot create working markets, where is the question?
Charities can dole out money, like the way bail out and stimulus money is doled out, but they cannot at all fix the underlying economic problems, and the underlying problems are always economic ones.
The only way to fix the education system is exactly the same that is needed to fix the health insurance/care systems, the same that's needed to fix the economy, the manufacturing, financial sectors, telecommunications, energy, food, mining, every single thing, there is a need for more freedoms in the economy, freedoms from government intervention, government subsidies, taxes, regulations. That's the only real way to have real fixes to these problems.
I am actually amazed at Gates, which part of this is not clear to him?
His energy would have been much better spent (if he wanted to fix the system) by setting up investment funds but they would have to be outside of USA, USA is not a market system anymore until it gets rid of most of its government that it acquired over the last 100 years.
If there was actual demand for actual real education in USA, it would have been covered by the market, but there is no demand, it's because of business regulations and taxes that push businesses outside of USA, but if businesses leave, then who needs the educated workforce? The government system is set up in such a way, as to promote monopolies and destroy competition, to print money and drive savings capital away, forcing businesses to leave, forcing capital flight. In such an environment who needs your educated work force? What would be be educated for? For what purpose? Instead of market demand, the education system is also bogged down with government regulations. That's what Gates really needs to stop if he wants people to be more educated - stop government regulations that destroy business, drive it out of the country and thus destroy the demand for more educated people.
It's either impossible or it isn't. I see no reason why it would be logically impossible (as unlikely as it may be).
- it's physically impossible, because it never happened. There is no monopoly and there was no monopoly that had its status in a free market, all monopolies are creations of government.
Is it logically possible? As in, is it theoretically possible to have a monopoly? Yes. If the combination of factors is such, that one company satisfies all customers at all times with the price/value combination for the product that there is just no way for a competitor to form because there is no space for more sales and there is no way to lower prices anymore (that's an impossibility right in itself with new tech and new requirements coming on line), but let's pretend.
But then you are looking at a monopoly that formed there purely by market forces, then it's a monopoly because there is truly no way to provide the product cheaper and better. Let's say it's a free product. So the only way to provide the product 'cheaper', is to give something away with it, like money.
Let's say you are in business and you have a monopoly that got its status because it's giving the product away for free and even is paying something to the 'customers' to take the product off the hands of the company. Then what is the problem with that monopoly?
Do you want somebody to come and provide the same product for half the price? But it's already free. So you want somebody to give you a better product and give you more money to take it off their hands? I guess that's the only way, and if somebody finds a reason to do it, they will.
So a monopoly that is there because nobody can do the work any better is the best outcome for the market and then what is the problem with it? The problem with it is that if it's doing this and bleeding red ink, it's not going to last, it will die away, like many Internet based dot.com companies during the late nineties.
They WERE giving their stuff away for free, they were bleeding red ink and eventually they all went bust. But some of them were monopolies in their own right, because they were giving something away for free or better - paying you to take off them. That actually happened, it's not a fairy tale, we have seen this.
I'm talking about businesses that are incredibly hard to start up (unless you have a lot of money). Competing with an established business is quite difficult (and the chances of someone trying to do so when it is incredibly risky lessen even more).
- when one person cannot start a business without lots of money, he needs to convince investors that he can make money starting that business, and if he convinces them, they'll provide the capital, this is not necessarily rocket science, it's called a business plan.
Only if the ones you were previously cooperating with have no sense of business and don't follow your moves. The thing is, they probably know that that will happen, so they don't even bother. What's the point if it won't even help maximize their profits?
- anything that gives you more market penetration helps you to maximize your profits, that's an axiom, because while you are in business A right now, if you have a bigger customer base you can also enter business B and be more efficient because you already have the customer base. All businesses want more market penetration and the way to do it is not not collude on prices in a cartel (you can pretend you collude on prices, but if you do that and there is space for some profit there, somebody else will come in and break your monopoly via competition, so you are always better off to make your offering really competitive.)
Not sure (I was just listing possibilities). I'd like to know the name of a country with an absolutely free market (no regulations for businesses whatsoever) that does well. That would help me far more.
Whatever you want to call it, get rid of government monopolies on drugs and there will be more drugs. Many of them will not help you, many of them will help you, and the market will sort it out. The way it's done now is ridiculous, apparently you are not your own person, you are property of your government, which decides for you what is it that you need and are allowed or not.
Murdoch is part of the system, he is a problem of-course. So is the system, and the system is built by the conglomerate of certain businesses and government, and this is only possible because government is part of business and so business became part of government.
Think about this: governments around the world do this, what the paper did, on daily basis. They do all sorts of illegal activities to advance various agendas of various participants (politicians/businessmen/voters) but they have the power, which prevents them from being actually investigated and found guilty of various crimes they commit.
Is Murdoch an 'average businessman'? No, he is part of government system. An 'average' businessman is not part of the government system.
- it's physically impossible, as there are always new people being born, new people come to the market with new ideas, new stuff gets invented, old stuff becomes old, ideas and fashions change, technologies change, there is always movement. You are thinking about the world in weird way, the way I thought of it when i was 4, and I thought that everything around me was stable and was that way forever and will stay that way forever.
Even governments fall and countries fall, I was born in USSR, that country does not exist anymore. There is competition for power between countries and within them, everything is in constant competition and markets provide dynamic equilibrium, not static, they you see it.
Businesses far more risky than others could easily end up as monopolies.
- they do not end up as monopolies, they cannot maintain static equilibrium between themselves and the market, which is constantly looking for new ideas, for ways to do the same thing cheaper or differently or stop doing it and do something else instead, like in the case with the music industry. They are dead, they just don't fully recognize it yet, riding on the inertia of past success, which was, by the way, guaranteed to them by government laws.
It's easily possible if it would help maximize their profits.
- of-course, if there are 2 large businesses, both are already subsidized and protected by the government (like with Bell Canada and Rogers for example and also Telus), they are already government protected monopolies (oligopolies), they can collude on prices and services and products. But this does not apply in free market, because it makes no sense, like in the case with oil cartel, which does not work.
It doesn't work, because participation means you sell at a preset price, which you negotiate not with the market, but with others in the cartel. But then you go to the market and you see all the extra sales you can have if you only don't bother with your cartel buddies, you lower the price a little here and there, you have more customers, same with every other participant, so what starts as a cartel preset price, ends up being the price set by the market and your ability to deliver.
This is why I don't believe for a second that oil cartel has any real extra capacity on stand by, otherwise they would have been selling. For probably a decade from 95 to 2005, they've been able to keep a number of competitors out of business, because they said they had all this extra capacity they could put on line, but now everybody knows it's BS, and the prices are high enough that there is plenty of room for making the previously unprofitable reserves profitable (because it's more expensive to develop them). That's why Canada does the oil shale now and the cartel couldn't do anything about it. They didn't deliver on the promise to put more production on line, it was a clear lie that they had it. They don't have it, whatever they can produce they already do, and with all this gov't created inflation, the prices are going up, more and more competitors are entering the market.
I doubt that. Otherwise, why would there ever have been companies that cooperated with one another? They don't even have to explicitly agree to do it. They just keep what they have in place and continue "harming" consumers.
- these companies have government protections. Name me one cartel that actually 'works' and that has no government protection besides DeBeers?
DeBeers is the only successful cartel in history and it's because it's a non-essential luxury item that has little market demand in itself.
It's possible for monopolies to exist without government intervention.
- without gov't intervention no monopoly can exist, and if there is some dominant business, it's domination is totally temporary.
. Perhaps the business in question is a risky endeavor that no one but a select few wish to take up.
- what does that even mean? Every business is a risky endeavor that only very few are willing to take up. Case in point is private space launches, what can be more risky and time/resource consuming that that? Well, there are things, but this is definitely one of them:
Perhaps very few people have the money to provide competition towards an already established business
- this wasn't a problem in the beginning of 20th century, before the Fed started printing all that money and IRS started taking people's incomes away, so there were hundreds, even thousands of competitors in phone business, dozens in electrical power generation AND transmission. Of-course this happened before some businesses in those industries started colluding with the government to get monopoly statuses. Same with pharma and medical profession, which always were private enterprises but eventually became monopolies due to government involvement.
Perhaps the majority help create a monopoly themselves by not shopping elsewhere enough
- that's called demand, if one company provides a solution that is so cost effective and provides so much value, that most people do not bother looking for alternatives, then for a while this business will dominate, but the competition arises anyway, just like with the phone and electrical companies that I mentioned. Those are tough businesses, especially due to name recognition, and still the monopolies there only formed after government intervention.
And without regulation, how would anyone stop companies that cooperate with one another (which could happen if they would receive more money by doing so)?
- nobody wants to share their pie with somebody else, who may or may not succeed being a competitor.
If you have a business and I come over and tell you: I am going to take over your market share because I am going to build a business better than yours. So you think you'd just start paying me money only so that I wouldn't do it? How many people would you be willing to support this way, because that's what this amounts to. No no, what you do is you laugh me out of your office and tell me to go do it if I can, and then you concentrate more on your market share because I promised to take it away.
Cartels do not work, it's clear with oil cartels - they don't work. It's because there is no upside for you to keep your promise to only meet your quota at some preset price and not to sell more and not to sell more at lower price, because clearly, if you have to collude with others in your cartel, then the prices are artificially set, and in reality (IRL) you make more money by having more customers who buy more of your product, not by setting artificial barriers to your customers by raising prices too high.
Businesses know that it's better to have as much market penetration as possible, you do this by providing product as cheaply and at highest quality that can, that way you get the most market penetration. The only time cartels work is when government is standing there with a gun - just like in case of big pharma and FDA.
Actual competition is a constant dynamic process, which is only stopped by government intervention. Monopoly forms when some business gets preferential treatment from government (patents, franchises, subsidies, special tax provisions, etc.)
- obviously, there should be no government regulations at all in any business and there should be no subsidies or any bail outs to any business or person, and there must be no income taxes, corporate taxes or payroll taxes, no taxes on work.
And I'm sure many people don't like monopolies or businesses cooperating with one another in order to gain more profit.
if people don't like it, they should stop their governments from creating them, which is what government's real role in economy is - creating and maintaining monopolies, because that's where the real money for governments are.
I said earlier that to me it does not matter whether this guy is a fraud or not. If his treatment is harmless, then there the rest of it, the efficacy of it should be left up to the market to decide, not to a fraudulent government monopoly.
What really infuriates patients and doctors is that the same compound has been available for years at a fraction of the cost â" about $10 or $20 a shot.
Despite these discoveries, FDA managers presented study 3014 to the advisory committee in January 2003 without mentioning the issues of data integrity.1 The managers have stated that they were legally barred from disclosing the problems to the committee because there was an open criminal investigation, but they have not explained why the data were presented at all, in view of the evidence of the study's lack of integrity. Unaware of the integrity problems, the committee voted 11 to 1 to recommend approval of Ketek.
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etc.etc.
You can't dismiss facts, but you sure can call them conspiracies if you wish.
There is plenty of evidence in my comments showing that FDA is not only ineffective at figuring out efficacy, but it is criminally effective at pushing for the dangerous drugs to be sold, when there is evidence that those drugs are in fact dangerous, and FDA does not regulate chemicals that are not immediately acutely dangerous, like fructose.
However in that very comment there is also evidence of how FDA 'approval' provides a company with a monopoly to sell a drug, which pushes the prices up by many orders of magnitude and there is evidence of drugs that are not allowed by FDA while they are used across the world, thus FDA is causing deaths in USA with these actions.
Should FDA be allowed to prevent any treatment, if it is already used around the world to be available in USA?
I do like how your "evidence" prominently includes a Dr Oz endorsement though.
- no, that's not evidence.
My othercomments have various degrees of evidence. The first one was about a point, which is that government wants to run your lives, and it looks like most of you are more than happy to have them do it too.
- those who 'protect the stupid', are using this argument in exactly the same way as the 'think of the children' and 'terrorist' and 'pedophiles' so called arguments are used. What do you think, government is better at handling your money than you are yourself? Really? Seriously? Is that why SS is such a disaster? If government was better than you are at handling your money, the SS program would have been an actual fund, rather than being an income transfer program, with the fund being managed as an investment - an asset. Instead the money SS taxes always go up, never come down, those who got in early got an excellent return on that investment, while those who got in later, got a worse return and those who are in now, will get nothing but are paying the most of all other people, who came before them.
Here is an interview with -Charles Blahous (One of two public trustees for Social Security & Medicare) -Andrew Biggs (Former principal deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration )
both were asked a question: what is the difference between the way SS is funded and a ponzi scheme is funded. Both couldn't answer the question better than saying that the difference is 'intent' and that a private ponzi scheme does not require participation.
Of-course Roosevelt pushed for SS creation at first only for people who were employees, not business owners, and those who were self employed didn't have to participate. This changed over years as well, not because people, like Bill Gates need SS, no, it's because SS is a ponzi scheme and it needs more and more money to operate while paying less and less return
YEAR RATE SELF.EMPLOYED.RATE 1940 2% Not applicable 1950 3% Not applicable 1960 6% 4.5% 1970 8.4% 6.3% 1980 10.16% 7.05% 1990 12.4% 2.4% 2000 12.4% 12.4% 2010 12.4% 12.4%
Obviously SS and Medicare taxes will go up now, that the programs are insolvent (paying out more than they are taking in). The taxes will go up likely by a factor of 2.
So when you tell me that government is there to protect the stupid... I think that government is there because of the stupid alright, but it's not there to protect them, it's there to abuse them.
back in 19 century economy moved from agricultural to urban/manufacturing, and mid-19 century was the time when first health insurance (critical illness insurance actually) was created at costs that were extremely competitive. Up to 1965 in US the cost of private health insurance and medical treatments were actually extremely affordable, people were paying for most of it out of pocket.
Here is a good primer on this, the article comes to erroneous conclusions about the reasons for low medical and insurance costs (they see the reasons being that state of medical technology was rudimentary, which is nonsense, as it was state of the art for the time and prices were falling, just like prices on all and any electronics constantly drop in current market), but regardless, they can't do anything about the facts, they are as always stubborn.
A 1918 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of 211 families living in Columbus, Ohio found that only 7.6 of their average annual medical expenditures paid for hospital care (Ohio Report, p. 116). In fact, the chief cost associated with illness was not the cost of medical care, but rather the fact that sick people couldn't work and didn't get paid. A 1919 State of Illinois study reported that lost wages due to sickness were four times larger than the medical expenditures associated with treating the illness (State of Illinois, pp. 15-17). As a result, most people felt they didn't need health insurance. Instead, households purchased "sickness" insurance -- similar to today's "disability" insurance -- to provide income replacement in the event of illness.
... then they had more erroneous conclustions that it was insurance companies unwilling to provide health insurance. This is an erroneous conclusion because they contradict it immediately with this:
popular support for the legislation was low because of the low demand for health insurance in general
- well OBVIOUSLY if there is no demand, nobody would be providing the product. It makes perfect sense, but the authors miss it due to their preconcieved notions and ideology. But they have good data.
According to one CCMC study, the average American family had medical expenses totaling $108 in 1929, with hospital expenditures comprising 14 percent of the total bill (Falk, Rorem, and Ring 1933, p. 89). In 1929, medical charges for urban families with incomes between $2,000 and $3,000 per year averaged $67 if there were no hospitalizations, but averaged $261 if there were any illnesses that required hospitalization (see Falk, Rorem, and Ring). By 1934, Michael M. Davis, a leading advocate of reform, noted that hospital costs had risen to nearly 40 percent of a family's medical bill (Davis 1934, p. 211). By the end of the 1920s, families began to demand greater amounts of medical care, and the costs of medical care began to increase.
So they understand that costs increase due to more demand, as health care is a normal good, it's not magical in any way. As the incomes of people grew, so did demand for health care. Of-course they fail to understand that incomes grew due to government inflation, more than anything else.
As the demand for hospital care increased in the 1920s, a new payment innovation developed at the end of the decade that would revolutionize the market for health insurance. The precursor to Blue Cross was founded in 1929 by a group of Dallas teachers who contracted with Baylor University Hospital to provide 21 days of hospitalization for a fixed $6.00 payment. The Baylor plan developed as a way to ensure that people paid their bills.
- $6/year insurance for 21 days in hospital. Done privately.
Slashdot Mirror
What should the citizens be more worried about, a private company violating their privacy by hacking their phones or their government violating their privacy by doing the same?
I know what I am more worried about, and it's not a private business (though, of-course, a private business that works with the government is another thing altogether.)
that's why US was established as a republic and not a democracy, because an average person should not be voting for anything.
Yes it is, likely it's worse, because even Masters is not what it used to be when education counted.
We had these talks already here, haven't we?
The culprit is the fact that government provides loans to anybody who wants them, the education system is aimed at eating up those loans and spitting the students out with huge debt and nothing to show for it, as the students are convinced by the system that they need a degree to get ANY job, never mind a job in their profession, because everybody is getting a degree. The money is being transfered from the tax payers/inflation via printing to the colleges, be they public or private, and the results of-course are rising prices for education and worsening of standards, as nobody is allowed to fail, people are graded on a curve, because a failing student only means that the college will make less money but the result of either passing or failing is pretty much the same, nothing of value is really taught anyway.
The problem is that nobody actually cares about the education itself, because it doesn't matter if you know anything or not, we have just discussed the reasons for that here as well, haven't we?
Who cares what you actually learn there if all you are concerned with is getting any degree just to get any job, so people go for the easiest subjects and in the process they accrue somewhat of mortgage size debts, while not learning anything useful there either. So this is inflation of the education process and it's happening because there are moral hazards created by the government with the loans and because there are no jobs anyway, the government is pushing all the manufacturing out of the West by causing capital flight by regulations/taxes, etc. The students stay in school much longer, accruing much more debt because they are scared of coming out into the real world, because obviously there are no jobs.
At some point some of them have to come out, but with the education they have many find that their next option is to go through another school, to take up law and to become a lawyer, so this is another problem created by the system - too many lawyers, because so many students are switching to that, thinking that this is the next possible step for them from their sociology major. Of-course they won't go into hard stuff, sciences, engineering, who blames them, there is no demand!
having a stable and friendly government is the only way to partially insure that.
- you have to specify what it is that you mean by 'friendly' and 'stable', because whatever those 2 terms mean, they cannot mean 'democratic' and 'elected'.
I'd hire you, you see the forest between all those trees.
In USA in 19 century most of the industries had no regulations, the government was very tiny, involved only with the largest tycoons, that's why in 19 century USA switched from being an agriculture based society, that owed huge debts to the largest manufacturer of cheap, high quality consumer goods, while driving innovation by allowing the people to come over from around the world and start their own businesses in the freest (at the time), society in the world.
David Cameron insists conversations were 'appropriate' and comes close to apologising over decision to hire Andy Coulson
I wonder, what is up with so many fairy tales being told about super heroes on TV these days?
It's probably because in most of our lives there aren't real heroes around and there isn't a happy ending.
So it's impossible because it hasn't happened yet? What?
- I gave an example of how it is theoretically possible, but it's very unlikely, given that it never happened, so it's improbable, as good as physically impossible.
Someone could already have lots of money (enough to start it). Or drive out small businesses. Once they are established, competition may become difficult.
- so what? So what that it is difficult? You are ignoring the examples I gave earlier of very difficult things that private businesses are doing - launching rockets to space with useful cargo.
(so people would be able to better understand its advantages and disadvantages far more easily and believably). I think it should be tested.
- USA 19 century was such a market, it's in the past for USA, but in Asia that's sort of what some countries have there. Even China has a freer market than any Western economy, and its wealth is increasing as its production capacity is growing.
Not everything that humans believe is logical, either.
- no no, it's very logical that the prices are going up instead of falling when there is government interfering with the market, it's logical and it is happening.
Of-course, absolutely, 100% government fault.
From FDIC and IRS and Fed to labor regulations, all of the social obligations and mandates, starting with public works of the Great Depression, that the government created by inflating the USD to prop up UK debt and to all other regulations, all of the government departments, FDA, FAA, EPA, CIA, etc.etc., all of them.
Once you get government into business, you get that specific business to be your government, and that's the end of the economy and the republic.
there will be a vast class of uneducated children
- and it's different from now.... how?
If this is the goal, education is starting at ground zero.
- yeah. The entire US economy will have to restart from ground zero, unfortunately. It blew away the wealth accumulated prior to creation of the Fed/IRS and the culture of dependency (bread and circuses voter).
fundamental tenants of the public education in the U.S. is that it is provided free of charge
- yeah, it's wrong. It just seems to be free of charge, but the payment is the economy ruined by the political system that provides this so called 'free or charge education', as if education is somehow not covered by the fundamental laws of economics, the same way anybody is covered by fundamental laws of nature, such as gravity.
parents pay for their children's education
- they are paying for their children's education with the economic future of those children being destroyed.
The parents, grand parents and great grandparents of those very children didn't have a problem voting for politicians who promoted the agenda of social obligations, which transfer wealth from the old generations to the new ones, as for example SS taxes do, with 17 trillion being already transfered and gone from the future generations to the past ones.
who are themselves much less likely to be any kind of asset to the country
- no, with government out of the picture those very kids would actually have a better economic future with a working economy, where they could be trained at work without having to get into an impossible debt to get a worthless degree, with it's value inflated away by pointless government mandates.
unless you think we're heading for a Soylent Green future?
- figuratively speaking that's what the future holds for those kids, as their future has already been eaten by their great grandparents and grandparents and parents, who voted themselves a system, that promoted bread and circuses, income transfer from the young and unborn to the old and the dead.
Charities do not create working systems and they cannot create working markets, where is the question?
Charities can dole out money, like the way bail out and stimulus money is doled out, but they cannot at all fix the underlying economic problems, and the underlying problems are always economic ones.
The only way to fix the education system is exactly the same that is needed to fix the health insurance/care systems, the same that's needed to fix the economy, the manufacturing, financial sectors, telecommunications, energy, food, mining, every single thing, there is a need for more freedoms in the economy, freedoms from government intervention, government subsidies, taxes, regulations. That's the only real way to have real fixes to these problems.
I am actually amazed at Gates, which part of this is not clear to him?
His energy would have been much better spent (if he wanted to fix the system) by setting up investment funds but they would have to be outside of USA, USA is not a market system anymore until it gets rid of most of its government that it acquired over the last 100 years.
If there was actual demand for actual real education in USA, it would have been covered by the market, but there is no demand, it's because of business regulations and taxes that push businesses outside of USA, but if businesses leave, then who needs the educated workforce? The government system is set up in such a way, as to promote monopolies and destroy competition, to print money and drive savings capital away, forcing businesses to leave, forcing capital flight. In such an environment who needs your educated work force? What would be be educated for? For what purpose? Instead of market demand, the education system is also bogged down with government regulations. That's what Gates really needs to stop if he wants people to be more educated - stop government regulations that destroy business, drive it out of the country and thus destroy the demand for more educated people.
It's either impossible or it isn't. I see no reason why it would be logically impossible (as unlikely as it may be).
- it's physically impossible, because it never happened. There is no monopoly and there was no monopoly that had its status in a free market, all monopolies are creations of government.
Is it logically possible? As in, is it theoretically possible to have a monopoly? Yes. If the combination of factors is such, that one company satisfies all customers at all times with the price/value combination for the product that there is just no way for a competitor to form because there is no space for more sales and there is no way to lower prices anymore (that's an impossibility right in itself with new tech and new requirements coming on line), but let's pretend.
But then you are looking at a monopoly that formed there purely by market forces, then it's a monopoly because there is truly no way to provide the product cheaper and better. Let's say it's a free product. So the only way to provide the product 'cheaper', is to give something away with it, like money.
Let's say you are in business and you have a monopoly that got its status because it's giving the product away for free and even is paying something to the 'customers' to take the product off the hands of the company. Then what is the problem with that monopoly?
Do you want somebody to come and provide the same product for half the price? But it's already free. So you want somebody to give you a better product and give you more money to take it off their hands? I guess that's the only way, and if somebody finds a reason to do it, they will.
So a monopoly that is there because nobody can do the work any better is the best outcome for the market and then what is the problem with it? The problem with it is that if it's doing this and bleeding red ink, it's not going to last, it will die away, like many Internet based dot.com companies during the late nineties.
They WERE giving their stuff away for free, they were bleeding red ink and eventually they all went bust. But some of them were monopolies in their own right, because they were giving something away for free or better - paying you to take off them. That actually happened, it's not a fairy tale, we have seen this.
I'm talking about businesses that are incredibly hard to start up (unless you have a lot of money). Competing with an established business is quite difficult (and the chances of someone trying to do so when it is incredibly risky lessen even more).
- when one person cannot start a business without lots of money, he needs to convince investors that he can make money starting that business, and if he convinces them, they'll provide the capital, this is not necessarily rocket science, it's called a business plan.
Only if the ones you were previously cooperating with have no sense of business and don't follow your moves. The thing is, they probably know that that will happen, so they don't even bother. What's the point if it won't even help maximize their profits?
- anything that gives you more market penetration helps you to maximize your profits, that's an axiom, because while you are in business A right now, if you have a bigger customer base you can also enter business B and be more efficient because you already have the customer base. All businesses want more market penetration and the way to do it is not not collude on prices in a cartel (you can pretend you collude on prices, but if you do that and there is space for some profit there, somebody else will come in and break your monopoly via competition, so you are always better off to make your offering really competitive.)
Not sure (I was just listing possibilities). I'd like to know the name of a country with an absolutely free market (no regulations for businesses whatsoever) that does well. That would help me far more.
- there are no absolutes,
Whatever you want to call it, get rid of government monopolies on drugs and there will be more drugs. Many of them will not help you, many of them will help you, and the market will sort it out. The way it's done now is ridiculous, apparently you are not your own person, you are property of your government, which decides for you what is it that you need and are allowed or not.
Murdoch is part of the system, he is a problem of-course. So is the system, and the system is built by the conglomerate of certain businesses and government, and this is only possible because government is part of business and so business became part of government.
Think about this: governments around the world do this, what the paper did, on daily basis. They do all sorts of illegal activities to advance various agendas of various participants (politicians/businessmen/voters) but they have the power, which prevents them from being actually investigated and found guilty of various crimes they commit.
Is Murdoch an 'average businessman'? No, he is part of government system. An 'average' businessman is not part of the government system.
How so? It's logically impossible?
- it's physically impossible, as there are always new people being born, new people come to the market with new ideas, new stuff gets invented, old stuff becomes old, ideas and fashions change, technologies change, there is always movement. You are thinking about the world in weird way, the way I thought of it when i was 4, and I thought that everything around me was stable and was that way forever and will stay that way forever.
Even governments fall and countries fall, I was born in USSR, that country does not exist anymore. There is competition for power between countries and within them, everything is in constant competition and markets provide dynamic equilibrium, not static, they you see it.
Businesses far more risky than others could easily end up as monopolies.
- they do not end up as monopolies, they cannot maintain static equilibrium between themselves and the market, which is constantly looking for new ideas, for ways to do the same thing cheaper or differently or stop doing it and do something else instead, like in the case with the music industry. They are dead, they just don't fully recognize it yet, riding on the inertia of past success, which was, by the way, guaranteed to them by government laws.
It's easily possible if it would help maximize their profits.
- of-course, if there are 2 large businesses, both are already subsidized and protected by the government (like with Bell Canada and Rogers for example and also Telus), they are already government protected monopolies (oligopolies), they can collude on prices and services and products. But this does not apply in free market, because it makes no sense, like in the case with oil cartel, which does not work.
It doesn't work, because participation means you sell at a preset price, which you negotiate not with the market, but with others in the cartel. But then you go to the market and you see all the extra sales you can have if you only don't bother with your cartel buddies, you lower the price a little here and there, you have more customers, same with every other participant, so what starts as a cartel preset price, ends up being the price set by the market and your ability to deliver.
This is why I don't believe for a second that oil cartel has any real extra capacity on stand by, otherwise they would have been selling. For probably a decade from 95 to 2005, they've been able to keep a number of competitors out of business, because they said they had all this extra capacity they could put on line, but now everybody knows it's BS, and the prices are high enough that there is plenty of room for making the previously unprofitable reserves profitable (because it's more expensive to develop them). That's why Canada does the oil shale now and the cartel couldn't do anything about it. They didn't deliver on the promise to put more production on line, it was a clear lie that they had it. They don't have it, whatever they can produce they already do, and with all this gov't created inflation, the prices are going up, more and more competitors are entering the market.
I doubt that. Otherwise, why would there ever have been companies that cooperated with one another? They don't even have to explicitly agree to do it. They just keep what they have in place and continue "harming" consumers.
- these companies have government protections. Name me one cartel that actually 'works' and that has no government protection besides DeBeers?
DeBeers is the only successful cartel in history and it's because it's a non-essential luxury item that has little market demand in itself.
It's possible for monopolies to exist without government intervention.
- without gov't intervention no monopoly can exist, and if there is some dominant business, it's domination is totally temporary.
. Perhaps the business in question is a risky endeavor that no one but a select few wish to take up.
- what does that even mean? Every business is a risky endeavor that only very few are willing to take up. Case in point is private space launches, what can be more risky and time/resource consuming that that? Well, there are things, but this is definitely one of them:
http://www.space.com/11298-spacex-rocket-private-spaceflight-falcon9.html
http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home
Perhaps very few people have the money to provide competition towards an already established business
- this wasn't a problem in the beginning of 20th century, before the Fed started printing all that money and IRS started taking people's incomes away, so there were hundreds, even thousands of competitors in phone business, dozens in electrical power generation AND transmission. Of-course this happened before some businesses in those industries started colluding with the government to get monopoly statuses. Same with pharma and medical profession, which always were private enterprises but eventually became monopolies due to government involvement.
Perhaps the majority help create a monopoly themselves by not shopping elsewhere enough
- that's called demand, if one company provides a solution that is so cost effective and provides so much value, that most people do not bother looking for alternatives, then for a while this business will dominate, but the competition arises anyway, just like with the phone and electrical companies that I mentioned. Those are tough businesses, especially due to name recognition, and still the monopolies there only formed after government intervention.
And without regulation, how would anyone stop companies that cooperate with one another (which could happen if they would receive more money by doing so)?
- nobody wants to share their pie with somebody else, who may or may not succeed being a competitor.
If you have a business and I come over and tell you: I am going to take over your market share because I am going to build a business better than yours. So you think you'd just start paying me money only so that I wouldn't do it? How many people would you be willing to support this way, because that's what this amounts to. No no, what you do is you laugh me out of your office and tell me to go do it if I can, and then you concentrate more on your market share because I promised to take it away.
Cartels do not work, it's clear with oil cartels - they don't work. It's because there is no upside for you to keep your promise to only meet your quota at some preset price and not to sell more and not to sell more at lower price, because clearly, if you have to collude with others in your cartel, then the prices are artificially set, and in reality (IRL) you make more money by having more customers who buy more of your product, not by setting artificial barriers to your customers by raising prices too high.
Businesses know that it's better to have as much market penetration as possible, you do this by providing product as cheaply and at highest quality that can, that way you get the most market penetration. The only time cartels work is when government is standing there with a gun - just like in case of big pharma and FDA.
Actual competition is a constant dynamic process, which is only stopped by government intervention. Monopoly forms when some business gets preferential treatment from government (patents, franchises, subsidies, special tax provisions, etc.)
No regulation at all, then?
- obviously, there should be no government regulations at all in any business and there should be no subsidies or any bail outs to any business or person, and there must be no income taxes, corporate taxes or payroll taxes, no taxes on work.
And I'm sure many people don't like monopolies or businesses cooperating with one another in order to gain more profit.
if people don't like it, they should stop their governments from creating them, which is what government's real role in economy is - creating and maintaining monopolies, because that's where the real money for governments are.
Maybe you should have read the thread.
I said earlier that to me it does not matter whether this guy is a fraud or not. If his treatment is harmless, then there the rest of it, the efficacy of it should be left up to the market to decide, not to a fraudulent government monopoly.
Conspiracy?
The list price for the drug, Makena, turned out to be a stunning $1,500 per dose. Thatâ(TM)s for a drug that must be injected every week for about 20 weeks, meaning it will cost about $30,000 per at-risk pregnancy. If every eligible American woman were to get Makena, the nationâ(TM)s bloated annual health-care tab would swell by more than $4 billion.
What really infuriates patients and doctors is that the same compound has been available for years at a fraction of the cost â" about $10 or $20 a shot.
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Here come the unintended consequences. While the FDA says it hoped there wouldnâ(TM)t be a significant run-up in the price of colchicine â" sold as Colcrys by URL â" the retail cost has soared to more than $5 a bill from the previous pennies a tablet. URL Pharma also sued five makers of manufacturers of colchicine, saying they have been illegally marketing their colchicine products since Colcrysâ(TM)s approval. One of those makers has settled the matter and stopped production. The other four companies are fighting the lawsuit.
--- ...
Three years ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug Ketek (telithromycin), lauding it as the first of a new class of antimicrobial agents that circumvent antibiotic resistance. Since then, Ketek has been linked to dozens of cases of severe liver injury, been the subject of a series of increasingly urgent safety warnings, and sparked two Congressional investigations of the FDA's acceptance of fraudulent safety data and inappropriate trial methods when it reviewed the drug for approval.
Despite these discoveries, FDA managers presented study 3014 to the advisory committee in January 2003 without mentioning the issues of data integrity.1 The managers have stated that they were legally barred from disclosing the problems to the committee because there was an open criminal investigation, but they have not explained why the data were presented at all, in view of the evidence of the study's lack of integrity. Unaware of the integrity problems, the committee voted 11 to 1 to recommend approval of Ketek.
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etc.etc.
You can't dismiss facts, but you sure can call them conspiracies if you wish.
There is plenty of evidence in my comments showing that FDA is not only ineffective at figuring out efficacy, but it is criminally effective at pushing for the dangerous drugs to be sold, when there is evidence that those drugs are in fact dangerous, and FDA does not regulate chemicals that are not immediately acutely dangerous, like fructose.
However in that very comment there is also evidence of how FDA 'approval' provides a company with a monopoly to sell a drug, which pushes the prices up by many orders of magnitude and there is evidence of drugs that are not allowed by FDA while they are used across the world, thus FDA is causing deaths in USA with these actions.
Should FDA be allowed to prevent any treatment, if it is already used around the world to be available in USA?
It's your country, you decide.
I do like how your "evidence" prominently includes a Dr Oz endorsement though.
- no, that's not evidence.
My other comments have various degrees of evidence. The first one was about a point, which is that government wants to run your lives, and it looks like most of you are more than happy to have them do it too.
We protect the stupid
- those who 'protect the stupid', are using this argument in exactly the same way as the 'think of the children' and 'terrorist' and 'pedophiles' so called arguments are used. What do you think, government is better at handling your money than you are yourself? Really? Seriously? Is that why SS is such a disaster? If government was better than you are at handling your money, the SS program would have been an actual fund, rather than being an income transfer program, with the fund being managed as an investment - an asset. Instead the money SS taxes always go up, never come down, those who got in early got an excellent return on that investment, while those who got in later, got a worse return and those who are in now, will get nothing but are paying the most of all other people, who came before them.
Here is an interview with
-Charles Blahous (One of two public trustees for Social Security & Medicare)
-Andrew Biggs (Former principal deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration )
both were asked a question: what is the difference between the way SS is funded and a ponzi scheme is funded. Both couldn't answer the question better than saying that the difference is 'intent' and that a private ponzi scheme does not require participation.
Of-course Roosevelt pushed for SS creation at first only for people who were employees, not business owners, and those who were self employed didn't have to participate. This changed over years as well, not because people, like Bill Gates need SS, no, it's because SS is a ponzi scheme and it needs more and more money to operate while paying less and less return
Obviously SS and Medicare taxes will go up now, that the programs are insolvent (paying out more than they are taking in). The taxes will go up likely by a factor of 2.
So when you tell me that government is there to protect the stupid... I think that government is there because of the stupid alright, but it's not there to protect them, it's there to abuse them.
back in 19 century economy moved from agricultural to urban/manufacturing, and mid-19 century was the time when first health insurance (critical illness insurance actually) was created at costs that were extremely competitive. Up to 1965 in US the cost of private health insurance and medical treatments were actually extremely affordable, people were paying for most of it out of pocket.
I left a comment with data long ago on this. To reiterate:
Here is a good primer on this, the article comes to erroneous conclusions about the reasons for low medical and insurance costs (they see the reasons being that state of medical technology was rudimentary, which is nonsense, as it was state of the art for the time and prices were falling, just like prices on all and any electronics constantly drop in current market), but regardless, they can't do anything about the facts, they are as always stubborn.
A 1918 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of 211 families living in Columbus, Ohio found that only 7.6 of their average annual medical expenditures paid for hospital care (Ohio Report, p. 116). In fact, the chief cost associated with illness was not the cost of medical care, but rather the fact that sick people couldn't work and didn't get paid. A 1919 State of Illinois study reported that lost wages due to sickness were four times larger than the medical expenditures associated with treating the illness (State of Illinois, pp. 15-17). As a result, most people felt they didn't need health insurance. Instead, households purchased "sickness" insurance -- similar to today's "disability" insurance -- to provide income replacement in the event of illness.
... then they had more erroneous conclustions that it was insurance companies unwilling to provide health insurance. This is an erroneous conclusion because they contradict it immediately with this:
popular support for the legislation was low because of the low demand for health insurance in general
- well OBVIOUSLY if there is no demand, nobody would be providing the product. It makes perfect sense, but the authors miss it due to their preconcieved notions and ideology. But they have good data.
According to one CCMC study, the average American family had medical expenses totaling $108 in 1929, with hospital expenditures comprising 14 percent of the total bill (Falk, Rorem, and Ring 1933, p. 89). In 1929, medical charges for urban families with incomes between $2,000 and $3,000 per year averaged $67 if there were no hospitalizations, but averaged $261 if there were any illnesses that required hospitalization (see Falk, Rorem, and Ring). By 1934, Michael M. Davis, a leading advocate of reform, noted that hospital costs had risen to nearly 40 percent of a family's medical bill (Davis 1934, p. 211). By the end of the 1920s, families began to demand greater amounts of medical care, and the costs of medical care began to increase.
So they understand that costs increase due to more demand, as health care is a normal good, it's not magical in any way. As the incomes of people grew, so did demand for health care. Of-course they fail to understand that incomes grew due to government inflation, more than anything else.
As the demand for hospital care increased in the 1920s, a new payment innovation developed at the end of the decade that would revolutionize the market for health insurance. The precursor to Blue Cross was founded in 1929 by a group of Dallas teachers who contracted with Baylor University Hospital to provide 21 days of hospitalization for a fixed $6.00 payment. The Baylor plan developed as a way to ensure that people paid their bills.
- $6/year insurance for 21 days in hospital. Done privately.
THEN the DISASTER struck:
The AHA