I used to live in a paper bag in a septic tank! And when I would get home, our mother would kill us, and dance about on our grave, singing hallelujah.
Kidding aside, you are free to choose to live in a society where people do not give a shit about their society, or where people do. To quote Adam Smith:
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Despite your pretend hardships, if you grew up in a western country, you are living above and beyond the lifestyle of the vast majority of the world, due to the infrastructure provided to you by your society. Roads were once considered luxury, as were telephones, banking systems, running water, sewage systems, public transport, education, public firestations, etc. If you really seek to reject their help, do as I have suggested, and leave. I'll even chip in for a one way ticket.
Once you arrive by yourself, and like the singular Swiss Person Robinson, construct your own environment, unencumbered by the burden of your fellow man, let me know how things go, alright?
I've had a job since I was 13. Lived on my own since I was 18, and I had very little help from my parents, since most of their lives, they have been drug addicts. But I appreciate your heart felt concern.
If you can't see the difference between the infrastructure of communication and a Ferrari, then I'm afraid you don't understand the difference between necessity and a luxury. Ask any young child if they think learning computer skills will be and important part of their future, and see what kind of response you get.
More communication promotes openness and knowledge. Openness and knowledge promote education and progress. But it seems like you would prefer living in countries that discourage investment in such things. So, where are you thinking? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Remember to set your clocks back 500 years when you get there.
Any American who complains that they can't change things ought to be totally ashamed of themselves. Despite all of my criticisms of this country, I do keep in mind that it is one of the freest and most open societies that has ever existed. The biggest problem is overcoming propaganda that tells you that you can't do anything.
And no, voting for someone doesn't count. It's just the least you can do. A real democracy is when a bunch of people from a community get together, decide what they would like done, and then elect someone from their group to go do it.
To all the centers of power, this is known as the "crisis of democracy" - when people actually start running their own country. It's their nightmare scenario, and a goal we should all be dedicated to achieving.
Any country that wants to inhibit their own growth by sticking to some ridiculous definition of modern life is a welcome development. It means all the little kids who grow up in the UK countryside will be no competition for my kids twenty years down the road.
You are the poster child for cognitave dissonance.
You recognize that the US cares very little for democracy, and then state that we would love democracy. And the US "honestly" exploits subjugated nations who don't give a damn about freedom like we do? Thank god for that.
When we flooded Nicaragua with contras, the American equivalent death toll would be 2 million lives. Several million Vietnemese died by our hands. Our client states Iraq and Indonesia killed a few hundred thousand with our weapons. We've invaded more countries and destroyed more democracies than any other nation in the last hundred years, but we don't use military force? We have hundreds of military bases around the world and outspend the rest of the world combined in warfare, but we never threaten anyone?
You're so right. Look at all the democracies we promote. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Syria, Egypt... USA! USA!
No one believes that load of crap you just spewed, at least no one who's taken a cursory look at the list of countries we've overthrown and vandalized. Especially Iran, where we not only overthrew their democratically elected government in 1953, but may have even fomented the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.
I'm sorry, comrade! I did not mean to be unpatriotic and dare criticize our motherland, which is the true force of Good in this Evil world.
What? The US wants to make it easier for the protesters to organize. How is that interfering with Iranian politics? Was the rest of the world interfering in US elections by allowing ex-patriots to communicate with other Us citizens stateside ?
People are sensitive to the United States sticking their nose in Iranian affairs, since we overthrew their democratic government in 1953 in Operation AJAX. The issue boiled down to money -- the Iranian government didn't want the US and Britain taking an unfair share of oil profits and tried to nationalize their own natural resource. That's why they scoffed collectively when we invaded Iraq -- they had experience with what America really thinks about liberty and democracy.
One of the primary reasons Iran has such conservative leadership is because of the constant threat presented by the United States. It works the same way here - when people are scared, they vote right wing. If we really wanted to help their democracy out, we'd stop threatening to invade. They dislike their mullahs, but dislike American occupation even more. This is surprising to no one but us.
First example, regulations on banking. Canada has a highly centralized, highly regulated, thoroughly vetted system that was ridiculed for not jumping on the credit default swap band wagon. It's also the only solvent western bank in the world right now.
Both the US and Canada allow subprime mortgages. The difference is that in Canada banks are required to get insurance for those types of loans, and they are not allowed to resell the mortgages into secondary securities markets. In the US, where the secondary securities market is unregulated, speculation heated up the entire economic system, which as always, led to the bust after the boom.
The white collar criminals come into play as the people who closed the mortgages without documentation, in exchange for commissions. Then their bosses knowingly packaged and sold these poorly documented loans to other people, got their friends to stamp a AAA insurance rating on the package as long as a few loans were well qualified, also to make a commission. All of these shenanigans occurred precisely because there was no transparency required, since the transactions were unregulated. I have shown proof that government regulation works in the paragraph above this one, but you can read more about it here: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/0423_canada_nivola.aspx
Now, as for corporate secrets, it's a shame that you even have to ask for evidence. Just off the top of my head:
Asbestos, cigarette, lead paint, and countless other companies knowingly sold their products after they knew of the serious health problems their products caused. Corporations reserve the right to lie about their products, defeating the purpose of the free market entirely. Regulations work - once the public pressure became too great, all of these items were regulated and outright banned in some cases. Car companies knowingly made unsafe vehicles and were forced by the public through government legislation to improve the quality of their safety devices, due to the work of people like Ralph Nader.
As a consumer, you may be dying or have children who are seriously ill, and these issues can be resolved with sensible regulations and enforcement of law.
They're a great organization. But they have no power to put any white collar criminals in jail or compel a corporation to reveal anything that the corporation doesn't want to reveal.
Most municipalities are required by law to post their scores where the public can see them. And again, if big government doesn't work, why does every economic leader in the world have one?
Let me list your extraordinary claims, and then you can provide the citations:
1) Safety devices have doubled the price of cars 2) Driver education is more effective at saving lives than seatbelts and airbags 3) The government never does it's job 4) Government is less transparent than a corporation 5) Government is somehow not accountable
For instance, the FDA issues rules on food safety for restaurants, available here. You know when you to go a restaurant, and they have those little papers that allow you to see how the restaurant is rated for food safety? Do you think any restaurant would ever post that information on it's own?
The real fact is that protecting profits are far more important than protecting consumers for any business. The only agency that can compel a powerful organization to be honest is a policing authority, which is typically provided by the government. If you have a better idea that isn't based entirely on your own hallucinations and imaginary data, please let me know.
You are right that most people don't care about their privacy, but then again, if you ask people if they want to pay 20% less for a car if it had no airbags or seatbelts or anti-lock brakes, they may have no problem with it. However, the cost to society in the form of radically more serious injuries makes sense for the market to have these rules in the long run.
The costs and benefits of privacy regulation can certainly be debated. But without regulations, markets don't function well, since they are not self-aware or interested in self-preservation. For reference, move to Somalia.
You can make the argument whether regulations should extend beyond standardization, but it's a relatively simple choice as far as I'm concerned. The market solution for salmonella poisoning would be that a bunch of people would die, and people would avoid buying products from the same company, until the next round of deaths occur. The scary communist solution is to demand outside inspections from a third party - the best option being the government.
Now, why is the government a good idea? Because people without money can compel it to be transparent. If you had a private party doing the inspections, you could not review their actions. All of the criticism of the FDA is possibly only because as a state entity, it must be transparent.
Seems that you would pick a stack of paper - word processing, spreadsheet, graphing, etc. - and it would "tear off" a new page for a new document that you could put elsewhere.
It may be worth creating a newbie shell that hides many options with an option to go into "advanced" mode. The real endgame will be context sensitive interfaces that allow the computer to guess what you want to do, with an override for people who prefer to keep menus in the same place.
I think a good design is to have all features across the top via pulldowns, and contextual options at the bottom that you can just turn off if you like.
They are squarely against the principles of American Business. You are asking rich investors to divest themselves of the current situation which is enormously profitable, and venture into new technology where they may see less dazzling profits. In short, your ideas are politically impossible, because they have no traction in the business community.
Just as a tire company only recalls their product when the lawsuits from dead consumers become more expensive than the recall itself, new energy will only come online when all existing options have been exhausted. Hopefully it won't be too late when they do come around.
Ok, "single payer" might have the clout to control prices, but you necessarily end up rationing because nobody who is making the decision really knows what things are worth.
But they know what they cost. That's how your local water and sewer bills are estimated. Usage is metered, the costs are divided, and you pay what the costs are, not what the "market" would decide.
In the US, we can choose whether Blue Cross rations our care, or if it's the government. The government option is about half the price of the private option.
Lasik is probably the cannonical example of free-market medicine driving prices down.
It's totally optional surgery usually not covered by insurance. That's hardly an example of how the American health care system works, if only to illustrate that insurance companies are broken.
Or look at another area of necessity: food. Government has it's meaty fingers all over that, too, but everybody pays for what they get. Even people who don't pay with their own money see the cost of everything and have choices to make. And there is very little that is cheaper than food now. Some people might never get to experience the sublime taste of lobster, but almost no one in this country can't afford basic nutrition.
More US children per capita live in poverty than any other nation in Western Europe. My guess is that you haven't spent a day in a poor neighborhood, or tried to support even one person on minimum wage.
That Canadian banks are more closely, or carefully, regulated is fairly well-known. The specifics, however, deserve more attention.
The Canadian regulatory edifice is more centralized. There is no provincial equivalent to America's state-chartered banks. All of Canada's banks are federally chartered and overseen by federal agencies. One government-owned entity -- the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) -- plays a dominant role in shaping mortgage default-insurance policy. It and five other government bureaus in Ottawa -- the Department of Finance, the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Bank of Canada, the Financial Consumer Agency, and importantly, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institution -- set standards, coordinate the overall regulatory structure, and enforce it with sanctions. The Superintendent, for instance, has the power to remove miscreant bank directors and senior officers.
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999 basically overturned Glass Steagall. Take a look at any housing bubble chart you'd like. When did the spike start? About the same time the deregulation fantasy took effect, and corporations knowingly created bad mortgages and passed off the bad debt as good debt because no one had their eye on them. In summary, they knowingly created huge leveraged risks in order to pocket huge comissions and leave someone else holding the assets. If you can come up with a more plausible explanation, please go ahead.
UAVs are an excellent recruitment tool
on
Wired for War
·
· Score: 1
For Al Qaeda, I mean. They can point out what a bunch of cowards Americans are, and how they are too scared even to touch the ground where Al Qaeda operates. They can point out how immoral the country is, since their dead relatives aren't even considered human, only "collateral damage."
Let me put it another way. The way America conducts warfare make it obvious to any outsider the that it's motivation cannot possibly be moral. No one is willing to die in order to protect local civilian populations. No leader is signing up their close relatives. A good portion of the fighting force is made up of mercenaries charging hundreds of thousand of dollars per soldier. There's very little difference to local tribes between Soviets cruising around in their helicopters and the Americans remotely controlling their UAVs.
Things like unmanned aircraft and the development of robotic weaponry are just helping to prove that point.
I wonder if the future is full of "semi" airships. With a small onboard fuel supply and a generator, and a load of solar panels on top with electric engines powering some props, couldn't they get something to move at highway speeds, but in a straight line?
No runway, low altitude, and very green if you can come up with a lifecycle for all of the parts.
Why is it that corporations who want to keep the money they earned by selling products and services are evil and greedy, but the government wanting to take more and more of that money is perfectly fine?
The government is supposed to represent the will of the people. If the people are tired of seeing wealth disparity increase, tired of getting ripped off because there are no rules enforced, tired of bailing these companies out every time the free market fails - which is often, when there aren't any rules - then companies have a choice: pitch in or leave. I personally have no problem seeing any company leave - as long as their US operations are formally closed, the remnants put under federal control and auctioned off to real entrepreneurs who want to give Americans jobs instead of giving themselves raises. The government is not threatening corporations with anything but actual work, and less dazzling profits. And true to form, they threaten to leave. I say fuck'em. I believe in a free market and competition. They are afraid of both.
What makes government more entitled to that money than the person or entity that earned it? You can hate and bash MS or any company for thinking of offshoring jobs to save money, but what about rethinking our punitive tax policy?
If you really want an interesting point of view, look at what corporations say about the Fair Tax. I'm not personally sure it would work, but the reason there is no "political" support for it is because they would be forced to pay more taxes than they are now. Look at what Warren Buffet says about US tax policy, and how he personally pays a lower tax rate than his administrative assistant.
We are the market. This is our society. Personally, I consider the well-being of my fellow man far more important than having some pouty billionaires tell me they want to take their ball and go home.
...Bajillionaire Warren Buffett has argued that he isn't being asked to pay his share. He went around his office, asking people what share of their income they pay in income taxes. Buffett's 17.7 percent tax rate compared a bit too favorably with the 30 percent tax rate paid by his secretary.
So it appears that the tax system favors the super-rich over working stiffs.
And Buffett went a step further, putting his money where his mouth is. Last November he issued a challenge to his fellow billionaires:
"I'll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges me that the average (federal tax rate including income and payroll taxes) for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists."
Perhaps there is some altitude where the meteors are still hot and relatively large, but by the time they reach the surface, they are broken apart and much cooler? A 2cm rock hitting the top of a flat-roofed building or dinging a car in the parking lot wouldn't be that dangerous or publicized, but if it was still thousands of degrees and in a bigger piece, that would be catastrophic for the little pressurized soda cans we call airplanes.
70% of the earth is water. I would guess 98% of the land is not covered by buildings or roads. So, a lot of things can hit the ground without us noticing.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to live in a paper bag in a septic tank! And when I would get home, our mother would kill us, and dance about on our grave, singing hallelujah.
Kidding aside, you are free to choose to live in a society where people do not give a shit about their society, or where people do. To quote Adam Smith:
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Despite your pretend hardships, if you grew up in a western country, you are living above and beyond the lifestyle of the vast majority of the world, due to the infrastructure provided to you by your society. Roads were once considered luxury, as were telephones, banking systems, running water, sewage systems, public transport, education, public firestations, etc. If you really seek to reject their help, do as I have suggested, and leave. I'll even chip in for a one way ticket.
Once you arrive by yourself, and like the singular Swiss Person Robinson, construct your own environment, unencumbered by the burden of your fellow man, let me know how things go, alright?
Thanks, Toten... you're a diamond.
I've had a job since I was 13. Lived on my own since I was 18, and I had very little help from my parents, since most of their lives, they have been drug addicts. But I appreciate your heart felt concern.
If you can't see the difference between the infrastructure of communication and a Ferrari, then I'm afraid you don't understand the difference between necessity and a luxury. Ask any young child if they think learning computer skills will be and important part of their future, and see what kind of response you get.
More communication promotes openness and knowledge. Openness and knowledge promote education and progress. But it seems like you would prefer living in countries that discourage investment in such things. So, where are you thinking? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Remember to set your clocks back 500 years when you get there.
Any American who complains that they can't change things ought to be totally ashamed of themselves. Despite all of my criticisms of this country, I do keep in mind that it is one of the freest and most open societies that has ever existed. The biggest problem is overcoming propaganda that tells you that you can't do anything.
And no, voting for someone doesn't count. It's just the least you can do. A real democracy is when a bunch of people from a community get together, decide what they would like done, and then elect someone from their group to go do it.
To all the centers of power, this is known as the "crisis of democracy" - when people actually start running their own country. It's their nightmare scenario, and a goal we should all be dedicated to achieving.
Any country that wants to inhibit their own growth by sticking to some ridiculous definition of modern life is a welcome development. It means all the little kids who grow up in the UK countryside will be no competition for my kids twenty years down the road.
Cheers, mate! Your stupidity is appreciated.
You are the poster child for cognitave dissonance.
You recognize that the US cares very little for democracy, and then state that we would love democracy. And the US "honestly" exploits subjugated nations who don't give a damn about freedom like we do? Thank god for that.
When we flooded Nicaragua with contras, the American equivalent death toll would be 2 million lives. Several million Vietnemese died by our hands. Our client states Iraq and Indonesia killed a few hundred thousand with our weapons. We've invaded more countries and destroyed more democracies than any other nation in the last hundred years, but we don't use military force? We have hundreds of military bases around the world and outspend the rest of the world combined in warfare, but we never threaten anyone?
What the fuck are you smoking?
You're so right. Look at all the democracies we promote. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Syria, Egypt... USA! USA!
No one believes that load of crap you just spewed, at least no one who's taken a cursory look at the list of countries we've overthrown and vandalized. Especially Iran, where we not only overthrew their democratically elected government in 1953, but may have even fomented the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.
I'm sorry, comrade! I did not mean to be unpatriotic and dare criticize our motherland, which is the true force of Good in this Evil world.
What? The US wants to make it easier for the protesters to organize. How is that interfering with Iranian politics? Was the rest of the world interfering in US elections by allowing ex-patriots to communicate with other Us citizens stateside ?
People are sensitive to the United States sticking their nose in Iranian affairs, since we overthrew their democratic government in 1953 in Operation AJAX. The issue boiled down to money -- the Iranian government didn't want the US and Britain taking an unfair share of oil profits and tried to nationalize their own natural resource. That's why they scoffed collectively when we invaded Iraq -- they had experience with what America really thinks about liberty and democracy.
One of the primary reasons Iran has such conservative leadership is because of the constant threat presented by the United States. It works the same way here - when people are scared, they vote right wing. If we really wanted to help their democracy out, we'd stop threatening to invade. They dislike their mullahs, but dislike American occupation even more. This is surprising to no one but us.
Sure.
First example, regulations on banking. Canada has a highly centralized, highly regulated, thoroughly vetted system that was ridiculed for not jumping on the credit default swap band wagon. It's also the only solvent western bank in the world right now.
Both the US and Canada allow subprime mortgages. The difference is that in Canada banks are required to get insurance for those types of loans, and they are not allowed to resell the mortgages into secondary securities markets. In the US, where the secondary securities market is unregulated, speculation heated up the entire economic system, which as always, led to the bust after the boom.
The white collar criminals come into play as the people who closed the mortgages without documentation, in exchange for commissions. Then their bosses knowingly packaged and sold these poorly documented loans to other people, got their friends to stamp a AAA insurance rating on the package as long as a few loans were well qualified, also to make a commission. All of these shenanigans occurred precisely because there was no transparency required, since the transactions were unregulated. I have shown proof that government regulation works in the paragraph above this one, but you can read more about it here: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/0423_canada_nivola.aspx
Now, as for corporate secrets, it's a shame that you even have to ask for evidence. Just off the top of my head:
Asbestos, cigarette, lead paint, and countless other companies knowingly sold their products after they knew of the serious health problems their products caused. Corporations reserve the right to lie about their products, defeating the purpose of the free market entirely. Regulations work - once the public pressure became too great, all of these items were regulated and outright banned in some cases. Car companies knowingly made unsafe vehicles and were forced by the public through government legislation to improve the quality of their safety devices, due to the work of people like Ralph Nader.
As a consumer, you may be dying or have children who are seriously ill, and these issues can be resolved with sensible regulations and enforcement of law.
They're a great organization. But they have no power to put any white collar criminals in jail or compel a corporation to reveal anything that the corporation doesn't want to reveal.
Sorry, I meant to say that most municipalities require restaurants by law to post their scores where the public can see them..
Most municipalities are required by law to post their scores where the public can see them. And again, if big government doesn't work, why does every economic leader in the world have one?
Let me list your extraordinary claims, and then you can provide the citations:
1) Safety devices have doubled the price of cars
2) Driver education is more effective at saving lives than seatbelts and airbags
3) The government never does it's job
4) Government is less transparent than a corporation
5) Government is somehow not accountable
For instance, the FDA issues rules on food safety for restaurants, available here. You know when you to go a restaurant, and they have those little papers that allow you to see how the restaurant is rated for food safety? Do you think any restaurant would ever post that information on it's own?
The real fact is that protecting profits are far more important than protecting consumers for any business. The only agency that can compel a powerful organization to be honest is a policing authority, which is typically provided by the government. If you have a better idea that isn't based entirely on your own hallucinations and imaginary data, please let me know.
You are right that most people don't care about their privacy, but then again, if you ask people if they want to pay 20% less for a car if it had no airbags or seatbelts or anti-lock brakes, they may have no problem with it. However, the cost to society in the form of radically more serious injuries makes sense for the market to have these rules in the long run.
The costs and benefits of privacy regulation can certainly be debated. But without regulations, markets don't function well, since they are not self-aware or interested in self-preservation. For reference, move to Somalia.
You can make the argument whether regulations should extend beyond standardization, but it's a relatively simple choice as far as I'm concerned. The market solution for salmonella poisoning would be that a bunch of people would die, and people would avoid buying products from the same company, until the next round of deaths occur. The scary communist solution is to demand outside inspections from a third party - the best option being the government.
Now, why is the government a good idea? Because people without money can compel it to be transparent. If you had a private party doing the inspections, you could not review their actions. All of the criticism of the FDA is possibly only because as a state entity, it must be transparent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4BlmsN4q2I
Start at minute 6:45.
Seems that you would pick a stack of paper - word processing, spreadsheet, graphing, etc. - and it would "tear off" a new page for a new document that you could put elsewhere.
It may be worth creating a newbie shell that hides many options with an option to go into "advanced" mode. The real endgame will be context sensitive interfaces that allow the computer to guess what you want to do, with an override for people who prefer to keep menus in the same place.
I think a good design is to have all features across the top via pulldowns, and contextual options at the bottom that you can just turn off if you like.
Keeping my 3G for app testing. Switching to Boost Mobile to save $900 per year with tethering.
If any of their lawyers are listening, I have a very novel way of plugging their "analog" holes. Contact me for details and to set up a consultation.
They are squarely against the principles of American Business. You are asking rich investors to divest themselves of the current situation which is enormously profitable, and venture into new technology where they may see less dazzling profits. In short, your ideas are politically impossible, because they have no traction in the business community.
Just as a tire company only recalls their product when the lawsuits from dead consumers become more expensive than the recall itself, new energy will only come online when all existing options have been exhausted. Hopefully it won't be too late when they do come around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States
The highest tax bracket was 80% in 1939. Today it's 35%.
I pray to God that you get what you just wished for.
Ok, "single payer" might have the clout to control prices, but you necessarily end up rationing because nobody who is making the decision really knows what things are worth.
But they know what they cost. That's how your local water and sewer bills are estimated. Usage is metered, the costs are divided, and you pay what the costs are, not what the "market" would decide.
In the US, we can choose whether Blue Cross rations our care, or if it's the government. The government option is about half the price of the private option.
Lasik is probably the cannonical example of free-market medicine driving prices down.
It's totally optional surgery usually not covered by insurance. That's hardly an example of how the American health care system works, if only to illustrate that insurance companies are broken.
Or look at another area of necessity: food. Government has it's meaty fingers all over that, too, but everybody pays for what they get. Even people who don't pay with their own money see the cost of everything and have choices to make. And there is very little that is cheaper than food now. Some people might never get to experience the sublime taste of lobster, but almost no one in this country can't afford basic nutrition.
More US children per capita live in poverty than any other nation in Western Europe. My guess is that you haven't spent a day in a poor neighborhood, or tried to support even one person on minimum wage.
From the Brookings Institution.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/0423_canada_nivola.aspx
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999 basically overturned Glass Steagall. Take a look at any housing bubble chart you'd like. When did the spike start? About the same time the deregulation fantasy took effect, and corporations knowingly created bad mortgages and passed off the bad debt as good debt because no one had their eye on them. In summary, they knowingly created huge leveraged risks in order to pocket huge comissions and leave someone else holding the assets. If you can come up with a more plausible explanation, please go ahead.
For Al Qaeda, I mean. They can point out what a bunch of cowards Americans are, and how they are too scared even to touch the ground where Al Qaeda operates. They can point out how immoral the country is, since their dead relatives aren't even considered human, only "collateral damage."
Let me put it another way. The way America conducts warfare make it obvious to any outsider the that it's motivation cannot possibly be moral. No one is willing to die in order to protect local civilian populations. No leader is signing up their close relatives. A good portion of the fighting force is made up of mercenaries charging hundreds of thousand of dollars per soldier. There's very little difference to local tribes between Soviets cruising around in their helicopters and the Americans remotely controlling their UAVs.
Things like unmanned aircraft and the development of robotic weaponry are just helping to prove that point.
I wonder if the future is full of "semi" airships. With a small onboard fuel supply and a generator, and a load of solar panels on top with electric engines powering some props, couldn't they get something to move at highway speeds, but in a straight line?
No runway, low altitude, and very green if you can come up with a lifecycle for all of the parts.
Why is it that corporations who want to keep the money they earned by selling products and services are evil and greedy, but the government wanting to take more and more of that money is perfectly fine?
The government is supposed to represent the will of the people. If the people are tired of seeing wealth disparity increase, tired of getting ripped off because there are no rules enforced, tired of bailing these companies out every time the free market fails - which is often, when there aren't any rules - then companies have a choice: pitch in or leave. I personally have no problem seeing any company leave - as long as their US operations are formally closed, the remnants put under federal control and auctioned off to real entrepreneurs who want to give Americans jobs instead of giving themselves raises. The government is not threatening corporations with anything but actual work, and less dazzling profits. And true to form, they threaten to leave. I say fuck'em. I believe in a free market and competition. They are afraid of both.
What makes government more entitled to that money than the person or entity that earned it? You can hate and bash MS or any company for thinking of offshoring jobs to save money, but what about rethinking our punitive tax policy?
If you really want an interesting point of view, look at what corporations say about the Fair Tax. I'm not personally sure it would work, but the reason there is no "political" support for it is because they would be forced to pay more taxes than they are now. Look at what Warren Buffet says about US tax policy, and how he personally pays a lower tax rate than his administrative assistant.
We are the market. This is our society. Personally, I consider the well-being of my fellow man far more important than having some pouty billionaires tell me they want to take their ball and go home.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/taxes-warren-buffett-and-paying-my-fair-share/
You're right.
Perhaps there is some altitude where the meteors are still hot and relatively large, but by the time they reach the surface, they are broken apart and much cooler? A 2cm rock hitting the top of a flat-roofed building or dinging a car in the parking lot wouldn't be that dangerous or publicized, but if it was still thousands of degrees and in a bigger piece, that would be catastrophic for the little pressurized soda cans we call airplanes.
70% of the earth is water. I would guess 98% of the land is not covered by buildings or roads. So, a lot of things can hit the ground without us noticing.