One more comment with no understanding of what is being said?
By the way, I use Buffalo medical group (it's expensive but immediate and offers procedures not provided in Canada).
But that's not the point, the point you have missed - I am proposing that US should not forbid private insurance companies like Canada does, I am proposing that US should have some government ran insurance companies to create competition and then you will get somewhere in the US that would be at least acceptable if not great in this field.
Please learn to read and understand the point of a comment and stop wasting time, thank you.
I don't believe we have met, but I am sure it would not give me any pleasure. GTA - here people do not have access to specialist in timely fashion and emergency rooms are filled with people waiting for 8-16 hours at a time. People die from cancer because their testing is scheduled too late and even when it is not too late for testing, their appointments for treatment may take many months.
Women cannot get to a gynecologist sometimes within 9 month, that's enough to give birth!
I have not lied about a single bit here, you are an imbecile ignoramus though.
roman mir, you do not understand how the system in Canada works. Doctors in Canada function as self employed businessmen. They are running a business.
- just roman is sufficient. I understand how doctors in Canada work and this has nothing to do with the fact that health insurance in Canada is completely government ran. You can by some supplementary insurance for critical illness, disability and life, but you cannot go to a private insurer. All claims are through medicare, which is governed by the Canada health act. You don't understand that how doctors work has no consequences on the quality of care here because we simply do not have enough of them specifically because their practices/wages are so regulated by this act.
In Canada the only game in town for insurance is the government and this is killing the system here. I am not suggesting that US has it better, they just have the exact opposite problem: oligarchy of the insurance cartel as far as I am concerned. They need competition from government ran programs just like Canadians need private insurance companies to be allowed to do business here. Simply look at Germany for a working model.
You simply misunderstood me, I am proposing that there should be competition between private and government ran insurers. This has nothing to do with your private experiences.
"The reason that there is so little competition in the telco space is that it has a prohibitively expensive startup cost. You can't run your own lines and maintain your own switching systems, cell towers, etc. before you even get a single customer... no VC would fund that."
- your argument makes no sense, there are already plenty of private insurance companies, I am proposing that there also should be one or more government ran insurance companies whose reason to exist would not be to gauge its customers but to provide insurance (and possibly health-care) at cost. People who opt into it should not be turned down, they should pay premiums that must not grow to pay larger and larger bonuses to the directors, this should be a competition provided by and for the people.
This would force the private insurance companies to rethink their existing policies and they would have to compete on prices and quality, I don't see why you believe this is a flawed assumption.
I think all of the people who replied to my comments have completely missed my point: do not remove competition by introducing a single player and getting rid of the rest.
I suggest that introducing a government system to compete with the proprietary systems would provide a better result in the long term. In Canada we do not have a good system either way, people still go untreated and die. I am suggesting that similarly to municipally ran ISP, a government (doesn't have to be federal) ran insurance company that wouldn't turn people down if they have a problem and wouldn't bankrupt them in case of an emergency would provide exactly what is needed in the US: competition to the fat insurance companies that are running (and ruining) your health-care system now.
I am not saying your system is better than ours or another way around, I am saying that German style system is superior to either.
I'm in favor of the government doing whatever it can do better then big business, e.g. replace the joke of a medical insurance system with a single payer government run system.
- that would be a mistake, I live in Canada, it's no joke. Our cancer patients have to wait for over 70 days now to start getting critical treatment, our emergency rooms are filled with people who are waiting for 8-16 hours to get service and half of our people do not have a physician, forget about getting an appointment with a specialist in less than 3-4 months (sometimes 6-9 months).
You do not want to remove competition, what you do want is to add competition.
Have the government run a competing system, then you'll get somewhere.
What is 'the market' though? Isn't it the people who are paying for the service? Or do you think 'the market' is the list of current firms providing a service?
I argue that in 'the market' the buyers are at least as important as the providers if not much more important. If the providers do everything in their power to limit the choices to the people (to 'the market') then shouldn't the people attempt and get their choice of service somewhere else? If that means that the people have to get together and start their own provider, so be it.
He would probably wouldn't call himself a lifesaver, but a filesaver;)
Anyway, dawg, I heard you'd like to run your own instance of/. on your localhost, so we put localhost into your localhost so you can slashdog while you slashdot.
Hogwash. We let that sort of thing happen every time we concede more and more to the corporations in terms of regulation and oversight.
Hogwash. We let that sort of thing happen every time we do not punish the government officials when they collude with the corporations against the citizens.
Every time an elected politician takes a bribe to do something that is more profitable for a private as opposed to a public interest, this politician must be dismissed and criminal charges must be filed against the politician and the private interest.
Then the society will get somewhere, everything else is just a result of this general problem.
I know specifically how much society is taking away from me and I know that I am not getting much for this contribution back at all. I know that the way the current system is set up it is not possible to measure the output per dollar spent because there is so much corruption and overhead and I am proposing methodology, which if implemented would allow such measurements to be made.
It all depends on how you live and travel. Even after USSR collapsed, Russia still remained almost twice as large in land area as the USA but the per person consumption of oil is no more than a third of a person living in the states.
It's not about the total land area, it's about the way people live and in US people live in a way that unnecessarily maximizes their oil usage rather than minimizing it.
It's clear that building more infrastructure - light trains, subways, providing wider boulevard for walking shaded by trees, building more tall buildings (don't even have to be skyscrapers, five story buildings seem to do wonders in most of Europe for population density and thus for driving infrastructure costs down per person.)
Things like that would work in the states just as well as they work in other smaller (and larger) countries. US chooses to live by car, it's corporations push this propaganda, it's government subsidizes highways instead of smarter commuter infrastructure, so of-course they consume crazy amounts of oil per person. It's a conscious choice.
It's the same thing, and this sort of argument just displays ignorance of the topic. Canada currently has a tax on blank media: this is a directed tax which is then forwarded on to copyright conglomerates who them redistribute the monies to artists. Taxes don't have to be universal..
- I know about this, I live in Toronto most of the time, I disagree with it too.
If I understand correctly, you are proposing to tax everybody and pass on the money to the artists
You sound as if you think that's a bad idea.
I don't care about the rest of the discussion in this thread, but this particular idea is terrible from my perspective. I don't listen to music (really, even when I listen to AM radio it's for talk shows, but never music), the only movies I watch are those I buy on DVDs.
From my POV any tax on me is a terrible idea because I never ever use these stupid products. It's bad enough there are income and property taxes, where I already have to pay for services I never ever use, what the hell is this shit?
so what we have here is a possibility that in the future a 'pirate' party controls the government maybe? Would Obama with his RIAA lawyer friends declare Sweden to be part of axis of evil and will actually bomb them to bring in the democracy US style (where only 2 parties are really allowed to hold the government in practice).
That bunker, that one of their ISP has may just come in handy.
Which is great until you realize that life isn't actually fair and we're not all born equal.
- what do you mean 'until'? It is great that we are all born unequal, I don't see a problem with it at all. We are all completely unequal. How does this go against libertarian principles exactly?
It doesn't in my book. I taught myself, worked while teaching myself, supported my parents while working and teaching myself, still support my parents but I am a libertarian where it concerns the government and I know that we are all born unequal. There is no contradiction.
Of course, if you would also sign a document stating that we could let you starve in the street (with no complaint from you), should you run out of private funds after your retirement, we'd be OK with that, too.
Drive to train station, park, check-in, security : 45 minutes Wait for boarding: 30 minutes Trip at 300mph: 60 minutes Unload, get to rental car: 15 minutes
- consider that yesterday I went to Zurich from Baden-Baden in 3 hours total and the train was going much slower (just under 200km/hr in Germany and about 120km/hr in Switzerland.)
Here is how it went: 15 minutes to the train station, wait for the train for 10 minutes, board and ride for 2 hours to Basel, cross platform in 2 minutes, wait for 6 minutes for the train there and ride for under an hour. These trains were much slower than your 300miles/hour example.
The price was as follows: I bought an 8 day first class 3 country pass for 400 Euros. It works like so: you pay 400 to have a ticket that allows you to use any 8 days of your choice to travel on any train within 3 countries of choice in first class. So if I wake up today and decide to go to Paris, I will mark on the ticket this day and during this day I can board any train in Germany/France/Switzerland (the countries I bought the pass for).
There are different kinds of passes for different numbers of days and for different countries and they don't have to be first class either.
-- By the way, we arrived to Baden-Baden on the 3rd of April, this was the day when Obama arrived here as well (I don't care it was either G20 or NATO meeting or something.) They had over 14 thousand cops in crazy green riot Robocop gear. Helicopters were flying over the city for about three days, cops were everywhere, it was nuts. They expected something like 25 thousand protesters. When we stepped of ICE onto the platform there were cops everywhere and outside of the station there was a bunch of them facing news crews.
There were NO protesters, I didn't see anyone and apparently nobody came here in these 3 days that Obama and the Co were here. Obama probably looked at the train system here and decided it's a good idea for the USA, what does he know, he is a lawyer, not an engineer. I wouldn't let him design a transportation system. But I wouldn't let him meddle with economics either, he is just a lawyer, not an economist.
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Well, if I am cherry-picking then Germany is cherry-picking and it's cherries are mighty tasty.
What's with the sour grapes? Isn't it time to give up already?
Really? Your comment score does not seem to indicate this.
You do not want to remove competition, what you do want is to add competition.
Have the government run a competing system, then you'll get somewhere.
- if you can't get a point from these simple statements, then maybe it is time to reevaluate your abilities.
One more comment with no understanding of what is being said?
By the way, I use Buffalo medical group (it's expensive but immediate and offers procedures not provided in Canada).
But that's not the point, the point you have missed - I am proposing that US should not forbid private insurance companies like Canada does, I am proposing that US should have some government ran insurance companies to create competition and then you will get somewhere in the US that would be at least acceptable if not great in this field.
Please learn to read and understand the point of a comment and stop wasting time, thank you.
I don't believe we have met, but I am sure it would not give me any pleasure. GTA - here people do not have access to specialist in timely fashion and emergency rooms are filled with people waiting for 8-16 hours at a time. People die from cancer because their testing is scheduled too late and even when it is not too late for testing, their appointments for treatment may take many months.
Women cannot get to a gynecologist sometimes within 9 month, that's enough to give birth!
I have not lied about a single bit here, you are an imbecile ignoramus though.
roman mir, you do not understand how the system in Canada works. Doctors in Canada function as self employed businessmen. They are running a business.
- just roman is sufficient. I understand how doctors in Canada work and this has nothing to do with the fact that health insurance in Canada is completely government ran. You can by some supplementary insurance for critical illness, disability and life, but you cannot go to a private insurer. All claims are through medicare, which is governed by the Canada health act. You don't understand that how doctors work has no consequences on the quality of care here because we simply do not have enough of them specifically because their practices/wages are so regulated by this act.
In Canada the only game in town for insurance is the government and this is killing the system here. I am not suggesting that US has it better, they just have the exact opposite problem: oligarchy of the insurance cartel as far as I am concerned. They need competition from government ran programs just like Canadians need private insurance companies to be allowed to do business here. Simply look at Germany for a working model.
You simply misunderstood me, I am proposing that there should be competition between private and government ran insurers. This has nothing to do with your private experiences.
"The reason that there is so little competition in the telco space is that it has a prohibitively expensive startup cost. You can't run your own lines and maintain your own switching systems, cell towers, etc. before you even get a single customer... no VC would fund that."
- your argument makes no sense, there are already plenty of private insurance companies, I am proposing that there also should be one or more government ran insurance companies whose reason to exist would not be to gauge its customers but to provide insurance (and possibly health-care) at cost. People who opt into it should not be turned down, they should pay premiums that must not grow to pay larger and larger bonuses to the directors, this should be a competition provided by and for the people.
This would force the private insurance companies to rethink their existing policies and they would have to compete on prices and quality, I don't see why you believe this is a flawed assumption.
I think all of the people who replied to my comments have completely missed my point: do not remove competition by introducing a single player and getting rid of the rest.
I suggest that introducing a government system to compete with the proprietary systems would provide a better result in the long term. In Canada we do not have a good system either way, people still go untreated and die. I am suggesting that similarly to municipally ran ISP, a government (doesn't have to be federal) ran insurance company that wouldn't turn people down if they have a problem and wouldn't bankrupt them in case of an emergency would provide exactly what is needed in the US: competition to the fat insurance companies that are running (and ruining) your health-care system now.
I am not saying your system is better than ours or another way around, I am saying that German style system is superior to either.
I'm in favor of the government doing whatever it can do better then big business, e.g. replace the joke of a medical insurance system with a single payer government run system.
- that would be a mistake, I live in Canada, it's no joke. Our cancer patients have to wait for over 70 days now to start getting critical treatment, our emergency rooms are filled with people who are waiting for 8-16 hours to get service and half of our people do not have a physician, forget about getting an appointment with a specialist in less than 3-4 months (sometimes 6-9 months).
You do not want to remove competition, what you do want is to add competition.
Have the government run a competing system, then you'll get somewhere.
What is 'the market' though? Isn't it the people who are paying for the service? Or do you think 'the market' is the list of current firms providing a service?
I argue that in 'the market' the buyers are at least as important as the providers if not much more important. If the providers do everything in their power to limit the choices to the people (to 'the market') then shouldn't the people attempt and get their choice of service somewhere else? If that means that the people have to get together and start their own provider, so be it.
He would probably wouldn't call himself a lifesaver, but a filesaver ;)
Anyway, dawg, I heard you'd like to run your own instance of /. on your localhost, so we put localhost into your localhost so you can slashdog while you slashdot.
Because if you do, I'd like to here it.
- I'm with you, but I would go one further than that, I'd like to there it!
Hogwash. We let that sort of thing happen every time we concede more and more to the corporations in terms of regulation and oversight.
Hogwash. We let that sort of thing happen every time we do not punish the government officials when they collude with the corporations against the citizens.
Every time an elected politician takes a bribe to do something that is more profitable for a private as opposed to a public interest, this politician must be dismissed and criminal charges must be filed against the politician and the private interest.
Then the society will get somewhere, everything else is just a result of this general problem.
It's quite possible that what we are seeing is the death of the GPL/commercial dual license business model.
- not until Netcraft confirms it we won't.
I know specifically how much society is taking away from me and I know that I am not getting much for this contribution back at all. I know that the way the current system is set up it is not possible to measure the output per dollar spent because there is so much corruption and overhead and I am proposing methodology, which if implemented would allow such measurements to be made.
It all depends on how you live and travel. Even after USSR collapsed, Russia still remained almost twice as large in land area as the USA but the per person consumption of oil is no more than a third of a person living in the states.
It's not about the total land area, it's about the way people live and in US people live in a way that unnecessarily maximizes their oil usage rather than minimizing it.
It's clear that building more infrastructure - light trains, subways, providing wider boulevard for walking shaded by trees, building more tall buildings (don't even have to be skyscrapers, five story buildings seem to do wonders in most of Europe for population density and thus for driving infrastructure costs down per person.)
Things like that would work in the states just as well as they work in other smaller (and larger) countries. US chooses to live by car, it's corporations push this propaganda, it's government subsidizes highways instead of smarter commuter infrastructure, so of-course they consume crazy amounts of oil per person. It's a conscious choice.
Right. And what about the cyclists who don't use highways and thus don't want to pay taxes to support them?
- I am against all taxes at all times.
Or, a closer analogy might be childless couples: why should they have to pay taxes to fund schools?
- I disagree with it and talked about it earlier.
It's the same thing, and this sort of argument just displays ignorance of the topic. Canada currently has a tax on blank media: this is a directed tax which is then forwarded on to copyright conglomerates who them redistribute the monies to artists. Taxes don't have to be universal..
- I know about this, I live in Toronto most of the time, I disagree with it too.
If I understand correctly, you are proposing to tax everybody and pass on the money to the artists
You sound as if you think that's a bad idea.
I don't care about the rest of the discussion in this thread, but this particular idea is terrible from my perspective. I don't listen to music (really, even when I listen to AM radio it's for talk shows, but never music), the only movies I watch are those I buy on DVDs.
From my POV any tax on me is a terrible idea because I never ever use these stupid products. It's bad enough there are income and property taxes, where I already have to pay for services I never ever use, what the hell is this shit?
you know what 'bunkers' are in military speak, don't you?
Just like tanks they are 'targets'.
so what we have here is a possibility that in the future a 'pirate' party controls the government maybe? Would Obama with his RIAA lawyer friends declare Sweden to be part of axis of evil and will actually bomb them to bring in the democracy US style (where only 2 parties are really allowed to hold the government in practice).
That bunker, that one of their ISP has may just come in handy.
Which is great until you realize that life isn't actually fair and we're not all born equal.
- what do you mean 'until'? It is great that we are all born unequal, I don't see a problem with it at all. We are all completely unequal. How does this go against libertarian principles exactly?
It doesn't in my book. I taught myself, worked while teaching myself, supported my parents while working and teaching myself, still support my parents but I am a libertarian where it concerns the government and I know that we are all born unequal. There is no contradiction.
Of course, if you would also sign a document stating that we could let you starve in the street (with no complaint from you), should you run out of private funds after your retirement, we'd be OK with that, too.
- where the hell do I sign?
(I am almost with the GP, except that I disagree on the government 'providing' any public services.)
Drive to train station, park, check-in, security : 45 minutes
Wait for boarding: 30 minutes
Trip at 300mph: 60 minutes
Unload, get to rental car: 15 minutes
- consider that yesterday I went to Zurich from Baden-Baden in 3 hours total and the train was going much slower (just under 200km/hr in Germany and about 120km/hr in Switzerland.)
Here is how it went: 15 minutes to the train station, wait for the train for 10 minutes, board and ride for 2 hours to Basel, cross platform in 2 minutes, wait for 6 minutes for the train there and ride for under an hour. These trains were much slower than your 300miles/hour example.
The price was as follows: I bought an 8 day first class 3 country pass for 400 Euros. It works like so: you pay 400 to have a ticket that allows you to use any 8 days of your choice to travel on any train within 3 countries of choice in first class. So if I wake up today and decide to go to Paris, I will mark on the ticket this day and during this day I can board any train in Germany/France/Switzerland (the countries I bought the pass for).
There are different kinds of passes for different numbers of days and for different countries and they don't have to be first class either.
--
By the way, we arrived to Baden-Baden on the 3rd of April, this was the day when Obama arrived here as well (I don't care it was either G20 or NATO meeting or something.) They had over 14 thousand cops in crazy green riot Robocop gear. Helicopters were flying over the city for about three days, cops were everywhere, it was nuts. They expected something like 25 thousand protesters. When we stepped of ICE onto the platform there were cops everywhere and outside of the station there was a bunch of them facing news crews.
There were NO protesters, I didn't see anyone and apparently nobody came here in these 3 days that Obama and the Co were here. Obama probably looked at the train system here and decided it's a good idea for the USA, what does he know, he is a lawyer, not an engineer. I wouldn't let him design a transportation system. But I wouldn't let him meddle with economics either, he is just a lawyer, not an economist.
And I prefer to take high speed train at night, sleep in the train, get off and do what you need during the day. Freight must be on a separate track.