Utter Bullshit. In you initial post you did not give any evidence and you jumped from a conclusion that was completely unsupported.
In this argument you cite articles that talk of parental abuse â" which is completely different from corporal punishment. I can only assume that you did not read the cited article (that was written in 1969!). It is clear that this article references domestic violence (such as unwarranted assault, cigarette burning, etc...).
You do not make the distinction between well adjusted corporal punishment and abuse and try to use weasel words at every opportunity. You are not interested in discussion or evidence but the promotion of your own viewpoint.
So I assume you beat your child when he or she does poorly at school?
Here you use the word beat to try and suggest that he abuses his children. This is both incredibly dishonest and mischievous. The correct word is spank.
This should work exactly as well as physically abusing your child when he or she does something wrong. That way when they are faced with conflict later in life, they follow in your steps and resort to violence.
The old âoecorporal punishment is abuseâ spiel. You said initially that the negative association (chain&ball) with studying is going to condition the children to dislike studying later on their own. This is known as negative reinforcement and it is true phenomenon.
Then you jumped to the conclusion that negative reinforcement will not work if you teach your child not to do a certain action which is deemed as undesirable.
This is an illogical jump to a conclusion that has nothing to do with the previous discussion. Negative reinforcement will work in this case too. As an example: if a child hurts animals (which most children do at one stage or another) and you apply a slap, the child will be less likely to do that action in the future.
As opposed to a question that can be interpreted in the wrong way (i.e. condescendingly).
Since they are actually paying the lecturers, we still have some decent ones. The brilliant are long gone I'm afraid.
You should check if you can't move to a South African university. Maybe you can try to apply for bursaries at South African companies?
IMHO, the problems in Zimbabwe are far from over (Mugabe is not going to become less senile as he gets older). I have yet to find a decent circuit simulator for linux, but everything else is there.
It is difficult to find a descent circuit simulator under windows too:( The best circuit simulators are unfortunately commercial â" there aren't any good open source ones. The gEda project provides some (editor + SPICE) â" but to be honest I have not used it. I used a copy of Orcad Pspice 9 (old one) to do some circuit stuff last year (it is freely available for Windows).
I doubt anyone will boot windows though. It is literally unusable - an hour to log in, then it tries to load explorer and crashes.
That is a sign of bad lab management. What they usually do at my university is to create one master image and then just copy the image to a PC (with all the updates& software installed). The PC also runs Deep Freeze that prevents anyone else from installing any other software on the PCs.
I have GPRS, but that is a personal connection
I used a GPRS connection two years ago. It was horrible (unreliable & low latency) but it is at least better than nothing! I currently have 3G which is a little bit better.
A lot of people here in Zimbabwe are sick of windows.
Honest question: do the universities still function in Zimbabwe? I see a lot of economic refugees from Zimbabwe (some even with British teaching degrees).
Oh, and no student I know has ever seen a microsoft giveaway.
Your university does not manage it right. It is the university's responsibility to distribute the free Microsoft software. Some universities do not tell their students about it or manage it badly.
We don't have bandwidth for updates and antivirus programs.
One of my problems is downloading a linux distro - since it is usually more than 3 cds. Windows is fairly small and available as a pirated version.
But the sysadmin wants to switch now.
It is quite problematic for a university lab to âoeswitchâ to linux since a lot of software used in other courses (electronic engineering, mechanical engineering) are Windows only. A better solution is to have a dual boot system so that the user's can choose.
Ubuntu may sounds less forigen than Windows or Macintosh.
I am sure that a bit of stereotyping never hurt anybody;)
If you use Open Office, Office is not given away anywhere.
As far as I know (this may have changed) Office is given away to secondary schools (I don't know if this is in all African countries however). All university students get their software under Microsoft Academic Alliance â" this includes all software (except games and Office). Office was available until recently under MAA. Now it is generally available under a âoePirate licenceâ.
This is more about a self sufficient Africa.
It is about Africa using the best software that is available. Why should Africa (or the 3rd world in general) be the guinea pig for open source software? Maybe we would like to use the same software that other countries use (whether open source or not)? Most 1st world countries are not âoeself-sufficientâ in its software (since the most popular software is manufactured in the USA, etc...). Yet it does not seem to hold those countries back.
African countries with a technology company can help support an economy,
There are already quite a few âoetechnology companiesâ. The question is: will they be better served by recreating software that is either given away free, pirated or already open source or will it be better for them to build technological products for the export market?
Africa already has quite a few well developed technology companies and is not as backward as many people like to think.
a school can teach students without having to be an accredited University.
Schools pretty much get all the software they need for (to use a less foreign sounding word) mahala (free).
While they teach students about computers, they can see how the parts fit together, software and Hardware.
The biggest problem (in my country at least) is the shortage of competent teachers, of hardware, people managing computer labs and wholesale theft of computer labs.
In Africa, Microsoft faces strong competition from open-source software in particular the Linux operating system. Many use that and run run free counterparts to the Microsoft Office suite.
This is completely deceptive. The only people I know who runs Linux are students, programmers or web hosts. Run of the mill people do not use Linux at all. OpenOffice on Windows is used a little bit more often â" usually by people who cannot get a pirated version of MS Office.
There really is not incentive to use non-MS products. MS gives away all its software to university students and windows for the classrooms.
Microsoft's biggest competitor is pirated Microsoft software.
Here is some [stats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Critical_interpretations_of_New_Deal_economic_policies).
Of course then the war came, and what helps you fight a war? Deficit spending! No recession after that, everyone was busy cranking out weapons.
Don't you think the fact that Europe's industrial base was basically destroyed might have been a contributing factor? The USA was the only major power with no damage to its industrial base â" for most other countries it was back to square 1.
The other issue is the most of the current deficit is from the loss of revenue due to the global financial crisis. In order to maintain a surplus, the government would have to massively slash spending and cut jobs.
One of the major problems was that government spending increased significantly during the boom phase. Most governments now have âoestimulus spendingâ which creates increases the deficit. Don't you think that if labour laws were relaxed and more people were allowed to spend their time productively (instead of in Iraq) the economy would recover faster?
The problem with the current crisis is that no one is lending money to anyone for fear they may go Chapter 11 tomorrow. That's what's causing the problem. Governments the world over are stepping in to fill the gap and provide money to keep things going.
Don't you think a little consolidation is in order instead? Several companies (a good example is USA motor companies) should consolidate or fail because they are just not viable.
Leaving markets to do their own thing and not regulating them is what got us into this mess.
What got us into the mess was extremely low interest rates which created a massive boom (esp. in the real estate market). People got loans for cars and homes that they cannot afford. Laws in the USA such as the community reinvestment act (CRA) which forces banks to lend to low income people did not help matters along. Government sponsored entities such as freddic mac and fannie mae did not help things along.
The government is not blameless at all in this financial crises.
You still have not explained why massive deficit spending did not help to bring Japan out of its recession. That is the most perfect modern example of a recession after a housing boom.
Alan Greenspan himself admitted as much in front of a senate committee and expressed shock at having been proved wrong.
Alan Greenspan is one of the idiots that was responsible for too low interest rates that led to stupid lending (e.g. dot com crash).
That "fixed line" company actually operates infrastructure that those cellular companies
For a long time my country had a law that no private firm can create a telephone network. A "second" national operator (i.e. entity that has a licence to build a network) was only given in 2006. Later, in around 2007 the law was changed to allow other companies to also build their own networks.
All cellphone companies (except the smallest one) started building their own networks extremely fast. The second national operator also started building its own network at a fast pace. The cable that gives the SNO international connectivity will be opened in June 2009 which is a big factor â" the previous government owned company had a monopoly and raped everyone.
So, in short â" we did not benefit from that network but we were raped by it and the laws that protected it from competition.
and Internet service providers
The problem with Internet Service providers is this: Telkom ran its own service provider and they are forced to buy bandwidth from Telkom â" so they get raped. Telkom also ensured that no consumer gets mass access to bandwidth (by things such as 2GB caps on ADSL lines). I think that is to prevent VoIP eating away from its voice profits.
and being government-operated it wasn't inclined to sabotage them or buy them all out like a privatized phone network would.
The minister of public enterprises looked good when the company raked in massive profits â" therefore it was protected by the government. It is the same shit as with government airlines: they are expensive, run like shit and protected by tax payer bailouts (the only difference is that private airlines aren't declared illegal).
however as long as they can't put profit into their own pocket,
I don't know if you have ever heard of something called âoecadre deploymentâ. The person that is the CEO of a public enterprise is a person that is in favour with the government. It even went as far as a state oil company directly giving money to the ruling party before an election.
they are not interested in destroying everyone who has a misfortune of being their competitor while depending on their services.
The independent internet service providers example that I gave is an example of a state company destroying their customers who are also competition.
The accepted method of getting through a financial crisis is to spend big to replace the demand that has dried up,
Why? One of the biggest causes of the recession is that sub-prime lending bust: people loaned money to buy homes they cannot afford. Now credit has dried up: the reason for that is that too many people borrowed and too little people saved money up. So, the solution to this is that the government lend more money? Can too much borrowing by the public be fixed by the government borrowing in the public's name?
Failing to do so results in a bigger recession (or even depression) and bigger problems.
More than 50% of economists believe that FDR lengthened the depression because of the elaborate government intervention and spending.
Deficit spending is a tried and true way to get your country out of recession,
This all has happened somewhere before. In 1989 Japan (the second largest economy in the world) had a huge crash in the real estate market, after that the stock market got punished. Interest rates was set extremely low. The government reduced taxes and increased spending. During 1992 to 1995 the Japanese government had six huge spending plans (mostly on infrastructure). These continued for a long time after that. Look at this graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PublicDebtTriade.PNG) â" you can see that Japan's public debt is the top one at 180% of GDP!
Yet they have nothing to show for it â" these spending programs did not magically fix the economy. And Japanese citizens now sit with the debt of the lost decade.
So, tell me again how does this fix the economy?
If we are not sure if something will fix the economy but we know its side effects (massive debt), is it still wise to try that thing?
I referred to AT&T as a sponsored telcom company (I did not claim that it was government owned. AT&T may have been a private company - but it got help from the government.) Here are a few excerpts from WP:
As a result of a combination of regulatory actions by government and actions by AT&T, the firm eventually gained what most regard as monopoly status.
Well, in my country with a fixed line state owned (until recently majority owned) company and private cellular companies, I would prefer private companies. The fixed line operator has 3 million people with phones.
Yet even the poorest person have access to cell phones (30 million+). It is not just the nature of the business - it is the competition. Private cell phone companies are a lot more competitive (and thus lower prices).
Nowhere did I intend to troll. I thought I made a valid point - in no country was telecom privatisation handled correctly. My country is only now recovering from a disastrous privatisation of the national telecom company. In many ways this is more a problem of the privatisation than of how it was done â" for a long time there will not be sufficient competition.
But I guess the mindless bashing of the former Australian president is more warranted? WTF? The current government is creating humongous deficits until 2016. Every time I see such a deficit I almost get a heart attack â" but I guess privatising a public company is much worse than creating shitloads of debt in the public's name.
You know that the Labour party creates massive deficits? The current labour government plans a deficit until 2016! You currently have the biggest budget deficit in your history.
I would rather prefer a slightly bungled privatisation than that. Privatisation of state owned/sponsored telecom companies have been through history a major problem (e.g. South Africa's Telkom, split up of AT&T, etc...)
In the olden days in my country, there were things such as school inspectors. A school inspector is usually an old teacher with extra training (or someone from a university).
A school inspector can walk in on any class unannounced, and sit at a desk and evaluate a teacher. This forces teachers to prepare for classes all the time and be in their class.
Unfortunately teacher unions forced the government to do away with that idea (because teaching is a âoeprofessionalâ occupation). They also forced the government to do away with any type of incentive system for good teachers. Our school system went from a fairly good (under the circumstances) system into one of the worst in the world.
Well... They can maybe start by firing the fuckers that do not pitch up for class!
And the idea in most countries with unions that teachers should get the same wage is idiotic - the more talented you are, the higher your wage should be!
However, by any measure you care to name--longer lives, lower infant mortality, lower morbidity...--we have considerably better health care outcomes in Canada than Americans have, and we pay less for them.
You also have a much lower rate of obesity. Obesity is one of the factors that generally lower the life expectancy (since heart disease is the major cause). If you take out obesity, adjust for lower homicide rate, smoking rate, etc... I bet that the average life expectancy of the USA would be higher.
Just for reference, the US is the only western country to tie health care to one's employer.
Not completely. My country (albeit 50% western) many companies offer medical aid schemes to their employees (they are popular). This is one of the reasons you chose a specific work.
On the note of medical aid schemes - a lot of money is wasted with that. For even something as simple as glasses, medical aid schemes pay 3 times the free market price.
The macro effect is that we spend more of our GDP on health care than any other country in the world, yet our population dies sooner (about 3 years' shorter life span).)
This is a dishonest argument. With what country are you comparing the life expectancy. The USA has a longer life expectancy than Ireland, Portugal and Denmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy). This fact is amazing - because the obesity rate in the USA is extremely high and heart disease is a major killer world wide.
Adjusted for obesity (a lifestyle choice), the USA would probably blow other countries out of the water.
Nowhere did I compare leeching with acid rain (which is caused by coal power stations).
Your flippant attitude towards the nuclear industry slowly and permanently poisoning an entire continents water table simply
You make claims without any citations or reasons to back it up. Name one continent whose entire water table was poisoned?
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions."
So you cite the non-existence of a study as the cause of massive deaths. Chernobyl was by all accounts much worse than TMI (by orders of magnitude). The biggest estimate was 4000 indirect deaths - which in later studies was shown to be way overblown.
For comparison, the main alternative (coal power stations) 5000+ people die each year in China in coal mining accidents. That is not even indirect deaths caused by sulphur dioxide and particulate matter (which is probably closer to a million).
The difference is those workers chose to accept those were the risks of working in a coal mine and worked there. People affected by radioactive isotopes release by the nuclear industry are given no such choice.
People breathing the air full of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, suplhur dioxide and particulate matter did not get a choice. Coal power stations also release more nuclear material than nuclear power stations - the only difference is that it is dissipated in the air.
. DU is a by-product of the nuclear industry, and the UK and France also use DU rounds.
This is a moronic argument - no one said you should use depleted uranium in weapons. It is like blaming electricity producers for people who died in the electric chair.
Are you saying the coal industry releases more radioactive particles than Chernobyl?
Again - this is a moronic comment. Chernobyl was an unfortunate accident based on a set of unfortunate circumstances. It is equivalent to saying: Are you saying the nuclear industry release more CO2 than a Coal Seam Fire?
So let's start funding Solar, wind, wave, micro generation, geo-thermal and energy efficiency initiatives and get rid of both of them.
Why don't you use your own money for that? Most alternative energy schemes is simply not workable. Read "Global Warming: Without the hot air" by McKay. He shows fairly clearly that solar and wind is infeasible under current circumstances.
Most of these things only exists because there are a few pet projects which are heavily subsidised by the tax payer. It is unfortunate that China leads the way in expanding its power infrastructure.
The only good idea is energy efficiency initiatives. This work in a lot of cases, but unfortunately there is no way around the large amount of energy needed by industry (e.g. aluminium smelters).
even doubling alternative energy research budgets would take 1/7th of the nuclear research budget,
Yet, there is not one renewable energy source that was not built with huge subsidies. Did you include the huge subsidies in your calculation? Do you know what percentage of the USA will have to be covered with solar generators?
Nuclear power plants do not need subsidies. Modern nuclear plants are safe. They do not release carbon dioxide into the air and they generate real electricity now at the right price and in large quantities.
If my engineering degree thought me something, it is this: do not be picky about girls. Take what you get. The longer you study, the lower your standards will get.
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Utter Bullshit. In you initial post you did not give any evidence and you jumped from a conclusion that was completely unsupported.
In this argument you cite articles that talk of parental abuse â" which is completely different from corporal punishment. I can only assume that you did not read the cited article (that was written in 1969!). It is clear that this article references domestic violence (such as unwarranted assault, cigarette burning, etc...).
You do not make the distinction between well adjusted corporal punishment and abuse and try to use weasel words at every opportunity. You are not interested in discussion or evidence but the promotion of your own viewpoint.
So I assume you beat your child when he or she does poorly at school?
Here you use the word beat to try and suggest that he abuses his children. This is both incredibly dishonest and mischievous. The correct word is spank.
This should work exactly as well as physically abusing your child when he or she does something wrong. That way when they are faced with conflict later in life, they follow in your steps and resort to violence.
The old âoecorporal punishment is abuseâ spiel. You said initially that the negative association (chain&ball) with studying is going to condition the children to dislike studying later on their own. This is known as negative reinforcement and it is true phenomenon.
Then you jumped to the conclusion that negative reinforcement will not work if you teach your child not to do a certain action which is deemed as undesirable.
This is an illogical jump to a conclusion that has nothing to do with the previous discussion. Negative reinforcement will work in this case too. As an example: if a child hurts animals (which most children do at one stage or another) and you apply a slap, the child will be less likely to do that action in the future.
As opposed to a dishonest question?
:( The best circuit simulators are unfortunately commercial â" there aren't any good open source ones. The gEda project provides some (editor + SPICE) â" but to be honest I have not used it. I used a copy of Orcad Pspice 9 (old one) to do some circuit stuff last year (it is freely available for Windows).
As opposed to a question that can be interpreted in the wrong way (i.e. condescendingly).
Since they are actually paying the lecturers, we still have some decent ones. The brilliant are long gone I'm afraid.
You should check if you can't move to a South African university. Maybe you can try to apply for bursaries at South African companies?
IMHO, the problems in Zimbabwe are far from over (Mugabe is not going to become less senile as he gets older).
I have yet to find a decent circuit simulator for linux, but everything else is there.
It is difficult to find a descent circuit simulator under windows too
I doubt anyone will boot windows though. It is literally unusable - an hour to log in, then it tries to load explorer and crashes.
That is a sign of bad lab management. What they usually do at my university is to create one master image and then just copy the image to a PC (with all the updates& software installed). The PC also runs Deep Freeze that prevents anyone else from installing any other software on the PCs.
I have GPRS, but that is a personal connection
I used a GPRS connection two years ago. It was horrible (unreliable & low latency) but it is at least better than nothing! I currently have 3G which is a little bit better.
A lot of people here in Zimbabwe are sick of windows.
Honest question: do the universities still function in Zimbabwe? I see a lot of economic refugees from Zimbabwe (some even with British teaching degrees).
Oh, and no student I know has ever seen a microsoft giveaway.
Your university does not manage it right. It is the university's responsibility to distribute the free Microsoft software. Some universities do not tell their students about it or manage it badly.
We don't have bandwidth for updates and antivirus programs.
One of my problems is downloading a linux distro - since it is usually more than 3 cds. Windows is fairly small and available as a pirated version.
But the sysadmin wants to switch now.
It is quite problematic for a university lab to âoeswitchâ to linux since a lot of software used in other courses (electronic engineering, mechanical engineering) are Windows only. A better solution is to have a dual boot system so that the user's can choose.
Ubuntu may sounds less forigen than Windows or Macintosh.
;)
I am sure that a bit of stereotyping never hurt anybody
If you use Open Office, Office is not given away anywhere.
As far as I know (this may have changed) Office is given away to secondary schools (I don't know if this is in all African countries however). All university students get their software under Microsoft Academic Alliance â" this includes all software (except games and Office). Office was available until recently under MAA. Now it is generally available under a âoePirate licenceâ.
This is more about a self sufficient Africa.
It is about Africa using the best software that is available. Why should Africa (or the 3rd world in general) be the guinea pig for open source software? Maybe we would like to use the same software that other countries use (whether open source or not)? Most 1st world countries are not âoeself-sufficientâ in its software (since the most popular software is manufactured in the USA, etc...). Yet it does not seem to hold those countries back.
African countries with a technology company can help support an economy,
There are already quite a few âoetechnology companiesâ. The question is: will they be better served by recreating software that is either given away free, pirated or already open source or will it be better for them to build technological products for the export market?
Africa already has quite a few well developed technology companies and is not as backward as many people like to think.
a school can teach students without having to be an accredited University.
Schools pretty much get all the software they need for (to use a less foreign sounding word) mahala (free).
While they teach students about computers, they can see how the parts fit together, software and Hardware.
The biggest problem (in my country at least) is the shortage of competent teachers, of hardware, people managing computer labs and wholesale theft of computer labs.
Hmmm... The article is a bit misleading.
In Africa, Microsoft faces strong competition from open-source software in particular the Linux operating system. Many use that and run run free counterparts to the Microsoft Office suite.
This is completely deceptive. The only people I know who runs Linux are students, programmers or web hosts. Run of the mill people do not use Linux at all. OpenOffice on Windows is used a little bit more often â" usually by people who cannot get a pirated version of MS Office.
There really is not incentive to use non-MS products. MS gives away all its software to university students and windows for the classrooms.
Microsoft's biggest competitor is pirated Microsoft software.
Here is some [stats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Critical_interpretations_of_New_Deal_economic_policies).
Of course then the war came, and what helps you fight a war? Deficit spending! No recession after that, everyone was busy cranking out weapons.
Don't you think the fact that Europe's industrial base was basically destroyed might have been a contributing factor? The USA was the only major power with no damage to its industrial base â" for most other countries it was back to square 1.
The other issue is the most of the current deficit is from the loss of revenue due to the global financial crisis. In order to maintain a surplus, the government would have to massively slash spending and cut jobs.
One of the major problems was that government spending increased significantly during the boom phase. Most governments now have âoestimulus spendingâ which creates increases the deficit. Don't you think that if labour laws were relaxed and more people were allowed to spend their time productively (instead of in Iraq) the economy would recover faster?
The problem with the current crisis is that no one is lending money to anyone for fear they may go Chapter 11 tomorrow. That's what's causing the problem. Governments the world over are stepping in to fill the gap and provide money to keep things going.
Don't you think a little consolidation is in order instead? Several companies (a good example is USA motor companies) should consolidate or fail because they are just not viable.
Leaving markets to do their own thing and not regulating them is what got us into this mess.
What got us into the mess was extremely low interest rates which created a massive boom (esp. in the real estate market). People got loans for cars and homes that they cannot afford. Laws in the USA such as the community reinvestment act (CRA) which forces banks to lend to low income people did not help matters along. Government sponsored entities such as freddic mac and fannie mae did not help things along.
The government is not blameless at all in this financial crises.
You still have not explained why massive deficit spending did not help to bring Japan out of its recession. That is the most perfect modern example of a recession after a housing boom.
Alan Greenspan himself admitted as much in front of a senate committee and expressed shock at having been proved wrong.
Alan Greenspan is one of the idiots that was responsible for too low interest rates that led to stupid lending (e.g. dot com crash).
That "fixed line" company actually operates infrastructure that those cellular companies
For a long time my country had a law that no private firm can create a telephone network. A "second" national operator (i.e. entity that has a licence to build a network) was only given in 2006. Later, in around 2007 the law was changed to allow other companies to also build their own networks.
All cellphone companies (except the smallest one) started building their own networks extremely fast. The second national operator also started building its own network at a fast pace. The cable that gives the SNO international connectivity will be opened in June 2009 which is a big factor â" the previous government owned company had a monopoly and raped everyone.
So, in short â" we did not benefit from that network but we were raped by it and the laws that protected it from competition.
and Internet service providers
The problem with Internet Service providers is this: Telkom ran its own service provider and they are forced to buy bandwidth from Telkom â" so they get raped. Telkom also ensured that no consumer gets mass access to bandwidth (by things such as 2GB caps on ADSL lines). I think that is to prevent VoIP eating away from its voice profits.
and being government-operated it wasn't inclined to sabotage them or buy them all out like a privatized phone network would.
The minister of public enterprises looked good when the company raked in massive profits â" therefore it was protected by the government. It is the same shit as with government airlines: they are expensive, run like shit and protected by tax payer bailouts (the only difference is that private airlines aren't declared illegal).
however as long as they can't put profit into their own pocket,
I don't know if you have ever heard of something called âoecadre deploymentâ. The person that is the CEO of a public enterprise is a person that is in favour with the government. It even went as far as a state oil company directly giving money to the ruling party before an election.
they are not interested in destroying everyone who has a misfortune of being their competitor while depending on their services.
The independent internet service providers example that I gave is an example of a state company destroying their customers who are also competition.
The accepted method of getting through a financial crisis is to spend big to replace the demand that has dried up,
Why? One of the biggest causes of the recession is that sub-prime lending bust: people loaned money to buy homes they cannot afford. Now credit has dried up: the reason for that is that too many people borrowed and too little people saved money up. So, the solution to this is that the government lend more money? Can too much borrowing by the public be fixed by the government borrowing in the public's name? Failing to do so results in a bigger recession (or even depression) and bigger problems.
More than 50% of economists believe that FDR lengthened the depression because of the elaborate government intervention and spending.
Deficit spending is a tried and true way to get your country out of recession,
This all has happened somewhere before. In 1989 Japan (the second largest economy in the world) had a huge crash in the real estate market, after that the stock market got punished. Interest rates was set extremely low. The government reduced taxes and increased spending. During 1992 to 1995 the Japanese government had six huge spending plans (mostly on infrastructure). These continued for a long time after that. Look at this graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PublicDebtTriade.PNG) â" you can see that Japan's public debt is the top one at 180% of GDP!
Yet they have nothing to show for it â" these spending programs did not magically fix the economy. And Japanese citizens now sit with the debt of the lost decade. So, tell me again how does this fix the economy?
If we are not sure if something will fix the economy but we know its side effects (massive debt), is it still wise to try that thing?
I referred to AT&T as a sponsored telcom company (I did not claim that it was government owned. AT&T may have been a private company - but it got help from the government.) Here are a few excerpts from WP:
As a result of a combination of regulatory actions by government and actions by AT&T, the firm eventually gained what most regard as monopoly status.
The breakup of AT&T was a screw-up.
Well, in my country with a fixed line state owned (until recently majority owned) company and private cellular companies, I would prefer private companies. The fixed line operator has 3 million people with phones.
Yet even the poorest person have access to cell phones (30 million+). It is not just the nature of the business - it is the competition. Private cell phone companies are a lot more competitive (and thus lower prices).
Nowhere did I intend to troll. I thought I made a valid point - in no country was telecom privatisation handled correctly. My country is only now recovering from a disastrous privatisation of the national telecom company. In many ways this is more a problem of the privatisation than of how it was done â" for a long time there will not be sufficient competition.
But I guess the mindless bashing of the former Australian president is more warranted? WTF? The current government is creating humongous deficits until 2016. Every time I see such a deficit I almost get a heart attack â" but I guess privatising a public company is much worse than creating shitloads of debt in the public's name.
introducing of African dung beetles to curb an explosion in flies due to agriculture,
:(
There are several types of dung beetles that are endangered in South Africa
The use of pesticides has been shown to have very negative long term effects;
Most modern pesticides break up in a couple of weeks. Fertilizer has arguably a much higher ecological impact than pesticides.
Uhm...
You know that the Labour party creates massive deficits? The current labour government plans a deficit until 2016! You currently have the biggest budget deficit in your history.
I would rather prefer a slightly bungled privatisation than that. Privatisation of state owned/sponsored telecom companies have been through history a major problem (e.g. South Africa's Telkom, split up of AT&T, etc...)
I did not suggest that.
In the olden days in my country, there were things such as school inspectors. A school inspector is usually an old teacher with extra training (or someone from a university).
A school inspector can walk in on any class unannounced, and sit at a desk and evaluate a teacher. This forces teachers to prepare for classes all the time and be in their class.
Unfortunately teacher unions forced the government to do away with that idea (because teaching is a âoeprofessionalâ occupation). They also forced the government to do away with any type of incentive system for good teachers. Our school system went from a fairly good (under the circumstances) system into one of the worst in the world.
Well... They can maybe start by firing the fuckers that do not pitch up for class!
And the idea in most countries with unions that teachers should get the same wage is idiotic - the more talented you are, the higher your wage should be!
I agree. I had a colouring book of American boats in a habour.
And oddly enough, everyone who is against universal health care has an anecdote just like yours
Everyone for universal health care also have anecdotal evidence. Most people make decisions based on personal problems they experience.
Do you reject his story but accept your own?
However, by any measure you care to name--longer lives, lower infant mortality, lower morbidity...--we have considerably better health care outcomes in Canada than Americans have, and we pay less for them.
You also have a much lower rate of obesity. Obesity is one of the factors that generally lower the life expectancy (since heart disease is the major cause). If you take out obesity, adjust for lower homicide rate, smoking rate, etc... I bet that the average life expectancy of the USA would be higher.
Just for reference, the US is the only western country to tie health care to one's employer.
Not completely. My country (albeit 50% western) many companies offer medical aid schemes to their employees (they are popular). This is one of the reasons you chose a specific work.
On the note of medical aid schemes - a lot of money is wasted with that. For even something as simple as glasses, medical aid schemes pay 3 times the free market price.
The macro effect is that we spend more of our GDP on health care than any other country in the world, yet our population dies sooner (about 3 years' shorter life span).)
This is a dishonest argument. With what country are you comparing the life expectancy. The USA has a longer life expectancy than Ireland, Portugal and Denmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy). This fact is amazing - because the obesity rate in the USA is extremely high and heart disease is a major killer world wide.
Adjusted for obesity (a lifestyle choice), the USA would probably blow other countries out of the water.
Ahhh.... I see the error in my ways.
Falcon's don't pollinate anything.
how can you seriously compare that to acid rain?
Nowhere did I compare leeching with acid rain (which is caused by coal power stations).
Your flippant attitude towards the nuclear industry slowly and permanently poisoning an entire continents water table simply
You make claims without any citations or reasons to back it up. Name one continent whose entire water table was poisoned?
Because of the weather conditions it was known that emissions from TMI travelled a long way and were measured in Albany, NY. Joeseph Hendrie (former chairman of the NRC) was quoted (at the time) "We are operating almost totally in the in the blind, [Governor Thornburgh's] information is ambiguous, mine is non-existent and - I don't know - it's like a couple of blind me staggering around making decisions."
So you cite the non-existence of a study as the cause of massive deaths. Chernobyl was by all accounts much worse than TMI (by orders of magnitude). The biggest estimate was 4000 indirect deaths - which in later studies was shown to be way overblown.
For comparison, the main alternative (coal power stations) 5000+ people die each year in China in coal mining accidents. That is not even indirect deaths caused by sulphur dioxide and particulate matter (which is probably closer to a million).
The difference is those workers chose to accept those were the risks of working in a coal mine and worked there. People affected by radioactive isotopes release by the nuclear industry are given no such choice.
People breathing the air full of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, suplhur dioxide and particulate matter did not get a choice. Coal power stations also release more nuclear material than nuclear power stations - the only difference is that it is dissipated in the air.
. DU is a by-product of the nuclear industry, and the UK and France also use DU rounds.
This is a moronic argument - no one said you should use depleted uranium in weapons. It is like blaming electricity producers for people who died in the electric chair.
Are you saying the coal industry releases more radioactive particles than Chernobyl?
Again - this is a moronic comment. Chernobyl was an unfortunate accident based on a set of unfortunate circumstances. It is equivalent to saying: Are you saying the nuclear industry release more CO2 than a Coal Seam Fire?
So let's start funding Solar, wind, wave, micro generation, geo-thermal and energy efficiency initiatives and get rid of both of them.
Why don't you use your own money for that? Most alternative energy schemes is simply not workable. Read "Global Warming: Without the hot air" by McKay. He shows fairly clearly that solar and wind is infeasible under current circumstances. Most of these things only exists because there are a few pet projects which are heavily subsidised by the tax payer. It is unfortunate that China leads the way in expanding its power infrastructure.
The only good idea is energy efficiency initiatives. This work in a lot of cases, but unfortunately there is no way around the large amount of energy needed by industry (e.g. aluminium smelters).
even doubling alternative energy research budgets would take 1/7th of the nuclear research budget,
Yet, there is not one renewable energy source that was not built with huge subsidies. Did you include the huge subsidies in your calculation? Do you know what percentage of the USA will have to be covered with solar generators?
Nuclear power plants do not need subsidies. Modern nuclear plants are safe. They do not release carbon dioxide into the air and they generate real electricity now at the right price and in large quantities.
If my engineering degree thought me something, it is this: do not be picky about girls. Take what you get. The longer you study, the lower your standards will get.
Remember, beauty is just a light switch away.