No. The meaningful metric is GDP per capita (PPP), and by that measure Qatar, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Singapore, Norway, Switzerland and Brunei all rank higher than the US. If you want to consider them as separate (as in many ways they are) then Hong Kong, Macau, Jersey, the Falkland Islands, the Isle of Man and Bermuda also beat us. Obviously not all of those places are great bastions of freedom.
The USA has for the last 100 years been the most free, most wealthy country in the world
Rationalizing freedom as being of economic benefit is a dangerous path. Freedom exists for the sake of freedom. It needn't exist for any other reason. And by freedom I mean of the sort that is clearly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and various amendments, particularly 13, 14, 15, 19 and 24.
Libertarians believe that social and economic liberty are the cause of this pleasant outcome.
But which liberties do they emphasize more? In practice people who call themselves libertarians may believe in "social liberty" (not quite the right term, but I know what you mean), but spend an awful lot more time talking about what they consider "economic liberty", of which surprisingly little is mentioned in the Constitution.
No, it isn't. You're hung up on the idea that you "have to get approval from the government", but there are, and pretty much always have been, certain things for which you have to get approval from the government. I have to get approval from the government to walk back into my own friggin' country, of which I am a citizen by virtue of the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Should they stop asking for passports at the border and just take my word that I'm a citizen? Seems to me like that's "guilty until proven innocent", at least by your standards.
I also need the approval of the government to buy a piece of real estate, because if they find a conflicting claim to it they won't let me register to deed. Without that I have no legal claim to ownership. I also need the approval of the government to send my kids to the public schools, even though I pay dearly for them through my taxes and the law requires that they be allowed to attend. Without proof of residence in my school district the government won't approve of my doing that. The list goes on.
If you're walking down the street and they say "papers please", then you're living in a police state. Since I don't live in NYC and my skin is light, that's not an issue. However, that hardly means the government should just take my word for it every time I claim something,
If you think "having a photo ID" is "tyranny" then you need to get some perspective.
Nobody here is saying that. I have a driver's license in my wallet and a passport at home (here in NYS you can also get a non-driver's ID issued by the DMV if you choose). But there is no reason to tie this into a national biometric database. If you don't understand the difference then you need to get some perspective.
No it hasn't. Being a citizen and being required to prove your citizenship are two entirely different things.
If that's what you're upset about then you're 27 years too late, because the Immigration Reform Act of 1986 requires you to prove that you can legally work in the US (Form I-9, which just about anyone who has had a job has filled out). E-verify is just a way to make it harder to cheat on that system. It's not like people are being randomly stopped on the street and asked for their papers (at least not because of I-9, NYC Mayor-for-Life Bloomberg's stop-and-harass program is another story).
An appropriate system would have narrowly defined reasons for requiring proof
It does - you only have to do it when you get a job.
Even an error rate of 0.1% means hundreds of thousands of people get screwed by the system.
I'm 100% for reasonable changes, such as saying that you can't be denied a job because E-verify failed or something, until you've had at least X weeks to challenge the problem (during which time you could be employed and the employer would have safe haven). In practice illegal aliens aren't going to stick around and wait for it to be shown that they're working here illegally.
Did you just equate "having an ID" with "a police state"
No. I said it was a step towards a police state. Nor was I referring to just "having an ID". If you look at the links the OP provided, it was about having a national ID card that was linked to a central biometric database, and for which there was no practical justification (particularly as existing forms of ID without centralized biometric databases work just fine).
I guess I already live in a police state then, since I often encounter "ARMED POLICE literally watching you as you go about your business". Around here they usually drive around in cars, although there are good arguments for having them walk around the streets.
boil down to having to get permission from the federal government in order to work
That requirement has existed for a very long time. You have to be a citizen or have the proper visa in order to legally work in the US. That hardly seems draconian. E-verify helps solve a real problem, but the big biometric database is a wet dream of KGB wannabees.
Fingerprinting for a DoD security clearance seems reasonable. It's a special category and is hardly required of everyone.
However the credit check thing that has become so popular for employment is ridiculous. No one has ever shown a correlation between credit rating and risk of employee theft or other dishonesty. Hell, credit ratings aren't even a very good measure of how much of a credit risk you are! Using it for employment is just a way for HR and the credit ratings agencies to make a buck and pretend they're doing something useful. It can also create a vicious cycle. Maybe your credit rating is bad because you've been out of a work for a long time, but that bad rating may prevent you from getting a job.
It is generally acknowledged that this scheme would not have delivered any increased security, as applications would be verified against passport and driving license databases that were already known to be inaccurate.
So? What makes you think that the point of taking yet another step towards a police state is to provide any benefit for citizens?
There's a part of "1984" that makes this point very well. O'Brien is interrogating Winston, and asks him why the Party does what it does. Winston comes up with the standard lines about it being necessary for Oceania, or for the benefit of the people, etc. Finally O'Brien stops him and essentially says: "No Winston. We do it for power. It is solely power for the sake of power."
A lousy $45M and a bunch of them were caught and will be prosecuted. Amateurs. The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. If these petty crooks had any brains, they'd at least have read the book.
Update: the book is a little dated because it's about the S&L crisis. Back then people were prosecuted for control fraud. Nowadays doing it on a big enough scale means you get to play golf with the president. $45M is skimming the petty cash.
I'm sure places in the world where they don't have electricity or indoor plumbing are just teeming with gunsmiths and people that can afford hand made firearms.
In some countries, prices for AKs are very low; in Somalia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Congo and Tanzania prices are between $30 and $125 per weapon, and prices have fallen in the last few decades due to mass counterfeiting. Moisés Naím observed that in a small town in Kenya in 1986, an AK-47 cost fifteen cows but that in 2005, the price was down to four cows indicating that supply was "immense".
Which suggests that the price of cows is really low in Kenya. $125 cash or 4 cows suggests a cow only costs $31.25. Maybe there's a good market there for importing beef (gotta be safer than that British stuff).
Ok, I'll bite. What act of treason was committed in 1962?
Re:Sound of dogs baying, getting closer
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DoD Descends On DEFCAD
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's treason to plot the violent overthow of your own government.
Trash talk is hardly a plot. Absent specific and concrete plans to do what you say, there can't be any charges for what he says. Otherwise we'll have abandoned Freedom of Speech, at which point the overthrow would be a good idea.
There are plenty of parts of the world where they don't have electricity or indoor plumbing, but you can get a local gunsmith to bang out a good copy of an AK-47 (the skills of these guys w/ simple hand tools amazes me, even if I'm not always thrilled w/ their customers). But design files for a plastic zip gun threaten national security?
Everyone I know has Netflix. It has become like having a Facebook account and a Gmail address.
Apparently that you are very lonely.
Note to inveterate Slashdotters: there is a form of inter-human communication that involves no electronics. It's an arcane technique sometimes called "in person" or "face to face". It does require you to be in actually proximity to the other person but has certain advantages. For instance, audio and video quality are exceptional. It can also allow for "tactile communication". This is particularly desirable when meeting a member of... never mind, in Slashdot that would get me rated "-1: Absurd Fantasy".
"Dumping" means selling below cost to drive competition out of the marketplace. Selling below cost for other reasons is not dumping and is not illegal.
No, dumping is defined as either selling below the price in the manufacturer's home market or selling below average production cost. Japan was fond of citing marginal production cost, which in something as capital intensive as semis is a lot lower and essentially meaningless. If Japan was not dumping in the first place, then why did they agree to stop doing it?
Dumping accusations occur all the time, very, very few of these result in government action.
Banks commit fraud all the time and it rarely results in government action. What's your point?
The only thing that comes close is rare earths, and the Chinese companies did not raise the price, they just restricted exports. That is certainly anti-competitive, but not quite the same.
"Not quite the same". Gotta love it - congratulations on them finding a tactic that's even more anti-competitive and an even more blatant violation of trade agreements. But yes, let's ignore one of the biggest and most obvious examples.
ShanghaiBill: If the dumping was a real concern, it would be consumers that complain, rather than competitors.
So if Allwinner was really dumping, the ultimate victims would be their customers (the tablet and smartphone makers) because they would pay higher prices in the future.
So your contention is that the average consumer buying a tablet would know the pricing of the components, and of the competing components, be familiar with the long term strategies and raise an objection based on the fact that it might raise their cost in the future? You must know better informed consumers than I do.
No, that describes "the job you like". You can find a way to work different hours. It just won't be a job you like. That is very.. inconvenient.
Of course, jobs are so abundant these days that you can just pick one that has the hours most convenient for your child. Certainly there's gotta be a burger flipping job like that. With food stamps you can probably feed the kid, and housing w/ roaches builds character. Forget about medical care though.
P.S. I assume you speak from experience, and had to change jobs so that you could put your kid(s) to bed by 7PM.
Some people get home from their jobs at 7:30pm you insensitive clod!
The true insensitive clod is someone who values their own convenience more than what is good for their children.
The selfishness of some parents, who insist on keeping these "job" things for their own amusement. Of course they make excuses about needing the money to feed, clothe and house their children, and will complain that they don't have infinite flexibility in their work schedules, but I never believe them.
Would love to see the sleep deprivation stats on college students...
And medical students and residents.
No, medical residents are super-human creatures. As such it's perfectly reasonable to have them perform surgery after not having slept for two days, while mere humans should get at least 8 hours of sleep before attending math class.
Slashdot Mirror
every country is poorer than the USA
No. The meaningful metric is GDP per capita (PPP), and by that measure Qatar, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Singapore, Norway, Switzerland and Brunei all rank higher than the US. If you want to consider them as separate (as in many ways they are) then Hong Kong, Macau, Jersey, the Falkland Islands, the Isle of Man and Bermuda also beat us. Obviously not all of those places are great bastions of freedom.
The USA has for the last 100 years been the most free, most wealthy country in the world
Rationalizing freedom as being of economic benefit is a dangerous path. Freedom exists for the sake of freedom. It needn't exist for any other reason. And by freedom I mean of the sort that is clearly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and various amendments, particularly 13, 14, 15, 19 and 24.
Libertarians believe that social and economic liberty are the cause of this pleasant outcome.
But which liberties do they emphasize more? In practice people who call themselves libertarians may believe in "social liberty" (not quite the right term, but I know what you mean), but spend an awful lot more time talking about what they consider "economic liberty", of which surprisingly little is mentioned in the Constitution.
That's not intellectually dishonest at all.
No, it isn't. You're hung up on the idea that you "have to get approval from the government", but there are, and pretty much always have been, certain things for which you have to get approval from the government. I have to get approval from the government to walk back into my own friggin' country, of which I am a citizen by virtue of the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Should they stop asking for passports at the border and just take my word that I'm a citizen? Seems to me like that's "guilty until proven innocent", at least by your standards.
I also need the approval of the government to buy a piece of real estate, because if they find a conflicting claim to it they won't let me register to deed. Without that I have no legal claim to ownership. I also need the approval of the government to send my kids to the public schools, even though I pay dearly for them through my taxes and the law requires that they be allowed to attend. Without proof of residence in my school district the government won't approve of my doing that. The list goes on.
If you're walking down the street and they say "papers please", then you're living in a police state. Since I don't live in NYC and my skin is light, that's not an issue. However, that hardly means the government should just take my word for it every time I claim something,
The vast majority of people who go to the bank to withdraw money do it legally, yet they still ask me for ID.
If you think "having a photo ID" is "tyranny" then you need to get some perspective.
Nobody here is saying that. I have a driver's license in my wallet and a passport at home (here in NYS you can also get a non-driver's ID issued by the DMV if you choose). But there is no reason to tie this into a national biometric database. If you don't understand the difference then you need to get some perspective.
No it hasn't. Being a citizen and being required to prove your citizenship are two entirely different things.
If that's what you're upset about then you're 27 years too late, because the Immigration Reform Act of 1986 requires you to prove that you can legally work in the US (Form I-9, which just about anyone who has had a job has filled out). E-verify is just a way to make it harder to cheat on that system. It's not like people are being randomly stopped on the street and asked for their papers (at least not because of I-9, NYC Mayor-for-Life Bloomberg's stop-and-harass program is another story).
An appropriate system would have narrowly defined reasons for requiring proof
It does - you only have to do it when you get a job.
Even an error rate of 0.1% means hundreds of thousands of people get screwed by the system.
I'm 100% for reasonable changes, such as saying that you can't be denied a job because E-verify failed or something, until you've had at least X weeks to challenge the problem (during which time you could be employed and the employer would have safe haven). In practice illegal aliens aren't going to stick around and wait for it to be shown that they're working here illegally.
Did you just equate "having an ID" with "a police state"
No. I said it was a step towards a police state. Nor was I referring to just "having an ID". If you look at the links the OP provided, it was about having a national ID card that was linked to a central biometric database, and for which there was no practical justification (particularly as existing forms of ID without centralized biometric databases work just fine).
You want to know what a police state looks like? This. It looks like this. You know, with ARMED POLICE literally watching you as you go about your business. That's a police state.
I guess I already live in a police state then, since I often encounter "ARMED POLICE literally watching you as you go about your business". Around here they usually drive around in cars, although there are good arguments for having them walk around the streets.
boil down to having to get permission from the federal government in order to work
That requirement has existed for a very long time. You have to be a citizen or have the proper visa in order to legally work in the US. That hardly seems draconian. E-verify helps solve a real problem, but the big biometric database is a wet dream of KGB wannabees.
Fingerprinting for a DoD security clearance seems reasonable. It's a special category and is hardly required of everyone.
However the credit check thing that has become so popular for employment is ridiculous. No one has ever shown a correlation between credit rating and risk of employee theft or other dishonesty. Hell, credit ratings aren't even a very good measure of how much of a credit risk you are! Using it for employment is just a way for HR and the credit ratings agencies to make a buck and pretend they're doing something useful. It can also create a vicious cycle. Maybe your credit rating is bad because you've been out of a work for a long time, but that bad rating may prevent you from getting a job.
It is generally acknowledged that this scheme would not have delivered any increased security, as applications would be verified against passport and driving license databases that were already known to be inaccurate.
So? What makes you think that the point of taking yet another step towards a police state is to provide any benefit for citizens?
There's a part of "1984" that makes this point very well. O'Brien is interrogating Winston, and asks him why the Party does what it does. Winston comes up with the standard lines about it being necessary for Oceania, or for the benefit of the people, etc. Finally O'Brien stops him and essentially says: "No Winston. We do it for power. It is solely power for the sake of power."
Exactly. My county has required photo ID for voting since at least the early 1970s.
What country is that?
Now all the bank has to do is ask the Fed for a zero interest $50 million loan and it's all good, like nothing happened.
I don't think they bother with a mere $50M loan. They probably write it off as a petty cash loss.
I only wish these hoods got away with about $4.5B instead of a paltry $45M.
In that case they'd be playing golf with the president instead of being prosecuted. Their problem was thinking small.
A lousy $45M and a bunch of them were caught and will be prosecuted. Amateurs. The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. If these petty crooks had any brains, they'd at least have read the book.
Update: the book is a little dated because it's about the S&L crisis. Back then people were prosecuted for control fraud. Nowadays doing it on a big enough scale means you get to play golf with the president. $45M is skimming the petty cash.
AC suspects you have a conspiracy theorist referring to the CIA/mafia hit on JFK...
I thought that at first, but JFK was assassinated in 1963. Either his history or his arithmetic is off.
Huh, someone should have told those folks back in 1775 about that.
I believe they knew it. After signing the Declaration of Independence, a fellow name B. Franklin said:
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Old Ben sure could turn a clever phrase.
I'm sure places in the world where they don't have electricity or indoor plumbing are just teeming with gunsmiths and people that can afford hand made firearms.
From AK-47:
In some countries, prices for AKs are very low; in Somalia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Congo and Tanzania prices are between $30 and $125 per weapon, and prices have fallen in the last few decades due to mass counterfeiting. Moisés Naím observed that in a small town in Kenya in 1986, an AK-47 cost fifteen cows but that in 2005, the price was down to four cows indicating that supply was "immense".
Which suggests that the price of cows is really low in Kenya. $125 cash or 4 cows suggests a cow only costs $31.25. Maybe there's a good market there for importing beef (gotta be safer than that British stuff).
Ok, I'll bite. What act of treason was committed in 1962?
It's treason to plot the violent overthow of your own government.
Trash talk is hardly a plot. Absent specific and concrete plans to do what you say, there can't be any charges for what he says. Otherwise we'll have abandoned Freedom of Speech, at which point the overthrow would be a good idea.
There are plenty of parts of the world where they don't have electricity or indoor plumbing, but you can get a local gunsmith to bang out a good copy of an AK-47 (the skills of these guys w/ simple hand tools amazes me, even if I'm not always thrilled w/ their customers). But design files for a plastic zip gun threaten national security?
Everyone I know has Netflix. It has become like having a Facebook account and a Gmail address.
Apparently that you are very lonely.
Note to inveterate Slashdotters: there is a form of inter-human communication that involves no electronics. It's an arcane technique sometimes called "in person" or "face to face". It does require you to be in actually proximity to the other person but has certain advantages. For instance, audio and video quality are exceptional. It can also allow for "tactile communication". This is particularly desirable when meeting a member of ... never mind, in Slashdot that would get me rated "-1: Absurd Fantasy".
Did I mention that I'm also an American, or do I have to put it in all caps?
"Dumping" means selling below cost to drive competition out of the marketplace. Selling below cost for other reasons is not dumping and is not illegal.
No, dumping is defined as either selling below the price in the manufacturer's home market or selling below average production cost. Japan was fond of citing marginal production cost, which in something as capital intensive as semis is a lot lower and essentially meaningless. If Japan was not dumping in the first place, then why did they agree to stop doing it?
Dumping accusations occur all the time, very, very few of these result in government action.
Banks commit fraud all the time and it rarely results in government action. What's your point?
The only thing that comes close is rare earths, and the Chinese companies did not raise the price, they just restricted exports. That is certainly anti-competitive, but not quite the same.
"Not quite the same". Gotta love it - congratulations on them finding a tactic that's even more anti-competitive and an even more blatant violation of trade agreements. But yes, let's ignore one of the biggest and most obvious examples.
ShanghaiBill: If the dumping was a real concern, it would be consumers that complain, rather than competitors.
So if Allwinner was really dumping, the ultimate victims would be their customers (the tablet and smartphone makers) because they would pay higher prices in the future.
So your contention is that the average consumer buying a tablet would know the pricing of the components, and of the competing components, be familiar with the long term strategies and raise an objection based on the fact that it might raise their cost in the future? You must know better informed consumers than I do.
No, that describes "the job you like". You can find a way to work different hours. It just won't be a job you like. That is very .. inconvenient.
Of course, jobs are so abundant these days that you can just pick one that has the hours most convenient for your child. Certainly there's gotta be a burger flipping job like that. With food stamps you can probably feed the kid, and housing w/ roaches builds character. Forget about medical care though.
P.S. I assume you speak from experience, and had to change jobs so that you could put your kid(s) to bed by 7PM.
Some people get home from their jobs at 7:30pm you insensitive clod!
The true insensitive clod is someone who values their own convenience more than what is good for their children.
The selfishness of some parents, who insist on keeping these "job" things for their own amusement. Of course they make excuses about needing the money to feed, clothe and house their children, and will complain that they don't have infinite flexibility in their work schedules, but I never believe them.
Would love to see the sleep deprivation stats on college students...
And medical students and residents.
No, medical residents are super-human creatures. As such it's perfectly reasonable to have them perform surgery after not having slept for two days, while mere humans should get at least 8 hours of sleep before attending math class.