Or in "free" countries where a few companies would marginalize the others, if only by economic starvation. You know, "cutting off their air supply."
My continuing problem with the "keep government's hands off!" crowd. They seem to imbue the market with some sort of wisdom that is corrupted only by government stupidity. At the same time, they fail to realize that businesses themselves are capable of government-scale stupidity - without getting punished by the free market in the short or medium terms. Finally, they fail to realize that the aim of EVERY business is to subvert the free market itself. After all, what business doesn't strive for 100% market share? (and destroy the free market - in their marketplace)
Come on, folks. It's a compromise. The free market can't sustain without some nurturing and limitation of its often-belligerent participants. It can't run well if micromanaged. It's a balance. (I would argue that the biggest upset of that balance is the influence of corporations on the government.)
You're trying to make sense. I was trying to portraying my perception of ordinary American thinking.
One thing that stuns me is this statistic that the *average* credit card debt is something like $7500, or more. (I've heard MUCH higher numbers.) The hard part is that a bunch of us are 'transactors' instead of 'revolvers,' and carry over zero credit card debt. So when you take the transactors out, the real average debt must be higher, yet.
[dpilot@slashdot dpilot]$ whois whitehouse.gov [Querying whois.nic.gov] [whois.nic.gov] % DOTGOV WHOIS Server ready Domain Name: whitehouse.gov Status: Active
Please be advised that this whois server only contains information pertaining to the.GOV domain. For information for other domains please use the whois server at RS.INTERNIC.NET. [dpilot@slashdot dpilot]$
Plenty of information there. At least the IP (reported by someone else) reverse-resolves, too.
"You know what they call the guy who graduated last in his class at medical school? Doctor."
Maybe instead of "Doctor," it really turns out to be "Defendent."
My protest thoughout this thread is the lack of transparency in the whole process. My health plan for next year no longer requires a PCP, (Primary Care Provider) but last time I was looking for one, there was no "merit information" available. I ended up trying to infer merit from the other information they did have available.
Unfortunately your understanding of the term LIMITED has no correlation with that of our corporation and lawmakers, and equally unfortunately the framers of the Constitution inserted no guidance.
Perhaps LIMITED means... From the creation of a work, for the rest of eternity. Your are free to make use of that work, prior to its creation. From the creation of a work to the end of the Human Race.
Either case means copyright is LIMITED in a way that suits corporations just fine, but does nothing meaningful for society. IMHO both cases are in direct contradiction with the Constitution, as well. Obviously what we think doesn't matter... for the moment. In the long run, the only thing US tightening/extending of copyright will do is push innovation overseas. Given that the EU is following in the US footsteps in this regard, that means that the Next Wave will probably come from the Far East for technology and South America for music. (If I were guessing, right now)
Your.sig says all that is necessary, in this case.
"Freedom: I won't!" buy or read Brian Herbert's books. Incidentally, have you ever read the science fiction story that introduced "Freedom: I won't!" or did you pick the phrase up somewhere else?
This also presumes that they judge has been appointed with the best interests of Justice in mind, and not some political agenda, either liberal or conservative. (or neo-conservative)
This works in with Senate confirmation of Presidential appointments.
Unfortunately, the House has become a Republican Marching Body, and the Senate is tending that way, rather than both being varying degrees of Deliberative Bodies.
That is reason enough to vote for Kerry. I don't have to consider any of *his* plans, because he can't do much of anything without Congress. But I want to STOP our current one-party rule.
Elsewhere I referred to airline pilots. There seems to be a reasonably well established minimum competence level, in that profession. When I get into an airplane, I don't worry, "Is this guy in the bottom half (or even bottom 6%) of his class?"
I'm not picking on the bottom 6% in particular, I'm picking on some number that appear to not be adequately competent. It's just that 6% is the anecdotal number I've heard.
Would you rather have some number of doctors blacklisted or de-doctored or sent back to school? or Would you rather know that just about no matter how poor a doctor was, he got to keep his job, and his mistakes kept secret?
I'd argue that the latter is where we appear to be today, and the former would be better for the good doctors.
My case may not have been as disastrous as your friend's, but I personally had some not-so-competent work done by one dentist.
Years later, I had to have a "crown lengthening" and the crown redone. Fortunately at the time, my dental coverage was better than it is, today. The periodontist who did the lengthening looked at the work and asked who did it. I pointed, since the office was nearby. He told me that I was now with "a much better clinician."
My wife went to the same dentist for years - longer even than me. When she finally switched, my dental office discovered serious gum problems, and are still taking remedial action.
(No, the current office isn't milking it. Problems prompted both office changes.)
"Last I heard" is merely unsubstantiated, not necessarily disreputable. Just like someone else saying that caps will solve the problem.
I've no problem with your friend, and can agree with you that she's being singled out as a high-risk (and high-victim-sympathy, don't forget) profession. I have a problem in that there does appear to be anecdotal evidence of doctors (not your friend) being moved away from their mistakes, and the evidence hidden.
BTW, I likened lawsuits to the lottery in another response to the grandparent...
Elsewhere in the thread, I brought up airline pilots. Somehow their bottom 6% seems to be well above some necessary floor level. Otherwise, we'd be having more accidents.
It's not just that it's the bottom 6%. It's that the anecdotal evidence I've seen in several places (though I cannot verify that they don't all have the same original source) indicate that the floor level on doctors isn't high enough.
The hard part is telling the difference between the two groups. I'll certainly agree with that.
But it seems to me that it stands to reason that within ANY profession there is something of a bell curve. There have got to be some bottom-of-the-barrel doctors out there. The real question becomes, how bad is that. I would argue that bottom-of-the-barrel airline pilots are really pretty good, or there would be more crashes under less extenuating circumstances. I just don't know if a "sufficiently safe line of margin" is drawn for doctors, as it seems to be for airline pilots. I've heard anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
IMHO another part of the problem is the Legal profession trying to impose something like mathematical precision on *every* aspect of the real world. The real world just isn't that way.
I agree, but I'm saying that the bar has also been moved upward. More people are in wage-slave desperation than were a decade back, and looking for the easy way out. BTW, I suspect insurance (and other forms of) fraud to be another 'escape strategy.'
I guess I always considered lotteries to be voluntary taxation of the math-challenged. Same thing, though I do feel a little guilty about their children losing out even a little to subsidize my taxes. (little/no sympathy for the ticket buyers)
Last I heard, something like 6% of doctors were causing 66% of the malpractice payouts. Yet what ends up happening is that a hospital hides the records, in order to move the doctor elsewhere. The doctor has no visible blackmark, and is free to continue practicing (Perhaps the ordinary meaning of 'practice' is appropriate, here.) medicine.
If I mess up at my profession and am 'encouraged' to leave, the black mark would follow me. Doctors should be the same, if there's some clear indication of incompetence or negligence. I'll presume that that 6% of doctors isn't a matter of 'bad luck,' it's the bottom of the bell curve, and those people shouldn't be doctors.
Has the lawsuit taken on some of the roll of a lottery in the US? Winning a lawsuit becomes like winning the Jackpot.
In the old days, you worked hard, and you got ahead. IMHO, that's no longer true, for the most part. You usually can't get ahead without working hard, but 'merely' hard work is no longer sufficient. More and more, it also takes connections an luck - being in the right place at the right time with the right idea. Furthermore, simply knowing how to build the better mousetrap isn't enough either, you have to also know how to market that mousetrap, or at least license its IP.
All in all, I suspect the American Dream is getting farther and farther away, for most Americans. Is the increasing number of state-run lotteries because of legal relaxations, or is it because more people are giving up on earning their way up, and figure their odds are about as good gambling their way up? Consider lawsuits in that light...
Interesting charts. Read all the way to the bottom of the page, and it's clear that by *every* source, more people think the nation is on the wrong path than think it's on the right path. In fact, in only one poll is it less than a 54% majority that think we're on the wrong path.
Yet only a few polls show Kerry winning, and most show Bush winning decisively.
This is unsettling, largely because of how WRONG our current path is, IMHO, and that as a nation we're apparently choosing to keep going that way, anyway.
I'm unhappy with the direction the USA is progressing. I'm not sure I'd be happy with Kerry's plans, either.
But in reality, I'm voting to STOP the current direction, fully realizing that with a staunchly Republican House Kerry will have a difficult time getting ANYTHING done. The worst problems on BOTH sides of the fence will not come to pass, in this circumstance. For anything that REALLY needs to be done, pressure typically goes directly on the President, so that's visible and gets reacted to. If Kerry is trying to do what NEEDS to be done, the nation knows it, and the House is blocking him, then the 2006 elections will reflect that, just like 1994 did.
As for your third-party vote being worthless, it depends on if you more highly value stopping the current direction, or going in your candidate's direction. Keep in mind that with the House composed as it is, your candidate's direction problably doesn't matter, even if he were elected.
You need more even brain coverage by the current. Perhaps by using a tinfoil hat as one of the electrodes. Other posts have mentioned where to stick the other electrode, so I won't go into that.
My wife and children are Catholic. Though I am not, I attend with them.
It's one thing to become a Catholic as a child, and then develop divergent opinions as you become an adult that differ with the Church. IMHO it's another thing entirely to have adult opinions that differ with the Church, and *then* join. Seems to me like it would be joining in bad faith, when the Church values conformity of opinion.
BTW, I'm not kidding. There is some form of anti-abortion wording *every* Sunday.
See Elwood P Dowd's response to KUHurdler. He says it better than I might have.
In church, week in, week out, EVERY week, there is some form of diatribe against abortion. About 1/4 to 1/2 the time, there is some form of diatribe against doctor-assisted suicide. In the past year, I think I *might* have heard *once* something about the death penalty. But maybe not, maybe it's been ignored. In that same time, I've heard *nothing* about how families need the ability to earn a livable wage, wrt politics. The other statements are obviously politically charged, this is a political issue, too.
Jesus ate with sinners, talked with sinners, healed sinners, helped them turn their lives around... He reserved most of his wrath for the Pharisees - highly-stationed wealthy people who looked down on sinners and thought they themselves were doing good.
Civil Unions are a mechanism for the state to grant gays rights of inheritance, medical determination, etc, without tampering in the religious institution of marriage. Part of the problem here is that marriage is a blur between religious and civil institutions. Perhaps what the Justice of the Peace does, as opposed to a member of the clergy, should have been called a Civil Union all along.
I came out and said expressly that I hated having to decide between his IP stance and more far-right Supremes. (At this point I should disclaim myself... I've been informed that NPR and BBC are both left-wing arms of the State, that Fox News is a more centrist and balanced source. No doubt further information will be coming that Clarence Thomas is a centrist.)
I was unaware that anyone had forced you into a gay marriage. Good thing, or they might have forced you to have an abortion too, if you were in a traditional marriage.
I don't particularly like gay marriage or abortion either. But I think that there are far worse things in the world, and in these particulars, I'm not going to force my beliefs on others, and I ask them not to force theirs on me. Gay marriage is, in particular, a victimless 'crime,' and perhaps it is more a statement of property rights. In that light, perhaps Vermont's Civil Unions were a good idea, because marriage *is* a religious institution, and the state shouldn't be messing there. (Current ammendment proposals tend to outlaw Civil Union rights, too.) As for abortion, it leaves me queasy, the later the queasier, but there are *worse* things. If the "religious" forces expressed half the love for babies that they do for foetuses, maybe I'd feel differently about this.
Slashdot Mirror
Or in "free" countries where a few companies would marginalize the others, if only by economic starvation. You know, "cutting off their air supply."
My continuing problem with the "keep government's hands off!" crowd. They seem to imbue the market with some sort of wisdom that is corrupted only by government stupidity. At the same time, they fail to realize that businesses themselves are capable of government-scale stupidity - without getting punished by the free market in the short or medium terms. Finally, they fail to realize that the aim of EVERY business is to subvert the free market itself. After all, what business doesn't strive for 100% market share? (and destroy the free market - in their marketplace)
Come on, folks. It's a compromise. The free market can't sustain without some nurturing and limitation of its often-belligerent participants. It can't run well if micromanaged. It's a balance. (I would argue that the biggest upset of that balance is the influence of corporations on the government.)
You're trying to make sense. I was trying to portraying my perception of ordinary American thinking.
One thing that stuns me is this statistic that the *average* credit card debt is something like $7500, or more. (I've heard MUCH higher numbers.) The hard part is that a bunch of us are 'transactors' instead of 'revolvers,' and carry over zero credit card debt. So when you take the transactors out, the real average debt must be higher, yet.
[dpilot@slashdot dpilot]$ whois whitehouse.gov
.GOV domain. For information for other domains please use the whois server at RS.INTERNIC.NET.
[Querying whois.nic.gov]
[whois.nic.gov]
% DOTGOV WHOIS Server ready
Domain Name: whitehouse.gov
Status: Active
Please be advised that this whois server only contains information pertaining to the
[dpilot@slashdot dpilot]$
Plenty of information there. At least the IP (reported by someone else) reverse-resolves, too.
AHA! Here's the secret plan to reduce the budget deficit.
"You know what they call the guy who graduated last in his class at medical school? Doctor."
Maybe instead of "Doctor," it really turns out to be "Defendent."
My protest thoughout this thread is the lack of transparency in the whole process. My health plan for next year no longer requires a PCP, (Primary Care Provider) but last time I was looking for one, there was no "merit information" available. I ended up trying to infer merit from the other information they did have available.
Unfortunately your understanding of the term LIMITED has no correlation with that of our corporation and lawmakers, and equally unfortunately the framers of the Constitution inserted no guidance.
Perhaps LIMITED means...
From the creation of a work, for the rest of eternity. Your are free to make use of that work, prior to its creation.
From the creation of a work to the end of the Human Race.
Either case means copyright is LIMITED in a way that suits corporations just fine, but does nothing meaningful for society. IMHO both cases are in direct contradiction with the Constitution, as well. Obviously what we think doesn't matter... for the moment. In the long run, the only thing US tightening/extending of copyright will do is push innovation overseas. Given that the EU is following in the US footsteps in this regard, that means that the Next Wave will probably come from the Far East for technology and South America for music. (If I were guessing, right now)
Your .sig says all that is necessary, in this case.
"Freedom: I won't!" buy or read Brian Herbert's books. Incidentally, have you ever read the science fiction story that introduced "Freedom: I won't!" or did you pick the phrase up somewhere else?
This also presumes that they judge has been appointed with the best interests of Justice in mind, and not some political agenda, either liberal or conservative. (or neo-conservative)
This works in with Senate confirmation of Presidential appointments.
Unfortunately, the House has become a Republican Marching Body, and the Senate is tending that way, rather than both being varying degrees of Deliberative Bodies.
That is reason enough to vote for Kerry. I don't have to consider any of *his* plans, because he can't do much of anything without Congress. But I want to STOP our current one-party rule.
Elsewhere I referred to airline pilots. There seems to be a reasonably well established minimum competence level, in that profession. When I get into an airplane, I don't worry, "Is this guy in the bottom half (or even bottom 6%) of his class?"
I'm not picking on the bottom 6% in particular, I'm picking on some number that appear to not be adequately competent. It's just that 6% is the anecdotal number I've heard.
Would you rather have some number of doctors blacklisted or de-doctored or sent back to school?
or
Would you rather know that just about no matter how poor a doctor was, he got to keep his job, and his mistakes kept secret?
I'd argue that the latter is where we appear to be today, and the former would be better for the good doctors.
My case may not have been as disastrous as your friend's, but I personally had some not-so-competent work done by one dentist.
Years later, I had to have a "crown lengthening" and the crown redone. Fortunately at the time, my dental coverage was better than it is, today. The periodontist who did the lengthening looked at the work and asked who did it. I pointed, since the office was nearby. He told me that I was now with "a much better clinician."
My wife went to the same dentist for years - longer even than me. When she finally switched, my dental office discovered serious gum problems, and are still taking remedial action.
(No, the current office isn't milking it. Problems prompted both office changes.)
"Last I heard" is merely unsubstantiated, not necessarily disreputable. Just like someone else saying that caps will solve the problem.
I've no problem with your friend, and can agree with you that she's being singled out as a high-risk (and high-victim-sympathy, don't forget) profession. I have a problem in that there does appear to be anecdotal evidence of doctors (not your friend) being moved away from their mistakes, and the evidence hidden.
BTW, I likened lawsuits to the lottery in another response to the grandparent...
Elsewhere in the thread, I brought up airline pilots. Somehow their bottom 6% seems to be well above some necessary floor level. Otherwise, we'd be having more accidents.
It's not just that it's the bottom 6%. It's that the anecdotal evidence I've seen in several places (though I cannot verify that they don't all have the same original source) indicate that the floor level on doctors isn't high enough.
The hard part is telling the difference between the two groups. I'll certainly agree with that.
But it seems to me that it stands to reason that within ANY profession there is something of a bell curve. There have got to be some bottom-of-the-barrel doctors out there. The real question becomes, how bad is that. I would argue that bottom-of-the-barrel airline pilots are really pretty good, or there would be more crashes under less extenuating circumstances. I just don't know if a "sufficiently safe line of margin" is drawn for doctors, as it seems to be for airline pilots. I've heard anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
IMHO another part of the problem is the Legal profession trying to impose something like mathematical precision on *every* aspect of the real world. The real world just isn't that way.
I agree, but I'm saying that the bar has also been moved upward. More people are in wage-slave desperation than were a decade back, and looking for the easy way out. BTW, I suspect insurance (and other forms of) fraud to be another 'escape strategy.'
I guess I always considered lotteries to be voluntary taxation of the math-challenged. Same thing, though I do feel a little guilty about their children losing out even a little to subsidize my taxes. (little/no sympathy for the ticket buyers)
I like your suggestions, and I have one more...
Last I heard, something like 6% of doctors were causing 66% of the malpractice payouts. Yet what ends up happening is that a hospital hides the records, in order to move the doctor elsewhere. The doctor has no visible blackmark, and is free to continue practicing (Perhaps the ordinary meaning of 'practice' is appropriate, here.) medicine.
If I mess up at my profession and am 'encouraged' to leave, the black mark would follow me. Doctors should be the same, if there's some clear indication of incompetence or negligence. I'll presume that that 6% of doctors isn't a matter of 'bad luck,' it's the bottom of the bell curve, and those people shouldn't be doctors.
Has the lawsuit taken on some of the roll of a lottery in the US? Winning a lawsuit becomes like winning the Jackpot.
In the old days, you worked hard, and you got ahead. IMHO, that's no longer true, for the most part. You usually can't get ahead without working hard, but 'merely' hard work is no longer sufficient. More and more, it also takes connections an luck - being in the right place at the right time with the right idea. Furthermore, simply knowing how to build the better mousetrap isn't enough either, you have to also know how to market that mousetrap, or at least license its IP.
All in all, I suspect the American Dream is getting farther and farther away, for most Americans. Is the increasing number of state-run lotteries because of legal relaxations, or is it because more people are giving up on earning their way up, and figure their odds are about as good gambling their way up? Consider lawsuits in that light...
Interesting charts. Read all the way to the bottom of the page, and it's clear that by *every* source, more people think the nation is on the wrong path than think it's on the right path. In fact, in only one poll is it less than a 54% majority that think we're on the wrong path.
Yet only a few polls show Kerry winning, and most show Bush winning decisively.
This is unsettling, largely because of how WRONG our current path is, IMHO, and that as a nation we're apparently choosing to keep going that way, anyway.
I'm unhappy with the direction the USA is progressing. I'm not sure I'd be happy with Kerry's plans, either.
But in reality, I'm voting to STOP the current direction, fully realizing that with a staunchly Republican House Kerry will have a difficult time getting ANYTHING done. The worst problems on BOTH sides of the fence will not come to pass, in this circumstance. For anything that REALLY needs to be done, pressure typically goes directly on the President, so that's visible and gets reacted to. If Kerry is trying to do what NEEDS to be done, the nation knows it, and the House is blocking him, then the 2006 elections will reflect that, just like 1994 did.
As for your third-party vote being worthless, it depends on if you more highly value stopping the current direction, or going in your candidate's direction. Keep in mind that with the House composed as it is, your candidate's direction problably doesn't matter, even if he were elected.
You need more even brain coverage by the current. Perhaps by using a tinfoil hat as one of the electrodes. Other posts have mentioned where to stick the other electrode, so I won't go into that.
My wife and children are Catholic. Though I am not, I attend with them.
It's one thing to become a Catholic as a child, and then develop divergent opinions as you become an adult that differ with the Church. IMHO it's another thing entirely to have adult opinions that differ with the Church, and *then* join. Seems to me like it would be joining in bad faith, when the Church values conformity of opinion.
BTW, I'm not kidding. There is some form of anti-abortion wording *every* Sunday.
See Elwood P Dowd's response to KUHurdler. He says it better than I might have.
In church, week in, week out, EVERY week, there is some form of diatribe against abortion.
About 1/4 to 1/2 the time, there is some form of diatribe against doctor-assisted suicide.
In the past year, I think I *might* have heard *once* something about the death penalty. But maybe not, maybe it's been ignored.
In that same time, I've heard *nothing* about how families need the ability to earn a livable wage, wrt politics. The other statements are obviously politically charged, this is a political issue, too.
Jesus ate with sinners, talked with sinners, healed sinners, helped them turn their lives around... He reserved most of his wrath for the Pharisees - highly-stationed wealthy people who looked down on sinners and thought they themselves were doing good.
Civil Unions are a mechanism for the state to grant gays rights of inheritance, medical determination, etc, without tampering in the religious institution of marriage. Part of the problem here is that marriage is a blur between religious and civil institutions. Perhaps what the Justice of the Peace does, as opposed to a member of the clergy, should have been called a Civil Union all along.
Same here, and I've written him, too.
I came out and said expressly that I hated having to decide between his IP stance and more far-right Supremes. (At this point I should disclaim myself... I've been informed that NPR and BBC are both left-wing arms of the State, that Fox News is a more centrist and balanced source. No doubt further information will be coming that Clarence Thomas is a centrist.)
I was unaware that anyone had forced you into a gay marriage. Good thing, or they might have forced you to have an abortion too, if you were in a traditional marriage.
I don't particularly like gay marriage or abortion either. But I think that there are far worse things in the world, and in these particulars, I'm not going to force my beliefs on others, and I ask them not to force theirs on me. Gay marriage is, in particular, a victimless 'crime,' and perhaps it is more a statement of property rights. In that light, perhaps Vermont's Civil Unions were a good idea, because marriage *is* a religious institution, and the state shouldn't be messing there. (Current ammendment proposals tend to outlaw Civil Union rights, too.) As for abortion, it leaves me queasy, the later the queasier, but there are *worse* things. If the "religious" forces expressed half the love for babies that they do for foetuses, maybe I'd feel differently about this.