Of course, you're right -- I'm not really suggesting there is a direct, linear relationship between taxes and costs and salaries, that everyone will always make the exact same amount under any tax system. Im just trying to point out that taxes are (in general) accounted for in the equations of living.
In your example of HR calculating how much they will pay a person -- the simple truth is that no company is going to pay the janitor enough to buy a mansion. If taxes go down so that everyone's disposable income goes up, it very well may happen (as you state) that the cost of goods will rise as supply cannot meet demand (if everyone has an extra $10,000, there aren't enough new cars for them all to buy). So lowering taxes will give us all more money, but inflation will rob it of some value.
Which means, at the end of the day, everyone still has the same buying power. The janitor still cannot buy that new car because the guys making more than him are willing to pay more for it than he has to spend (they got $15,000 back in taxes, compared to his mere 10,000).
"If you reduce taxes, you'll reduce prices, but you'll also reduce wages."
Why? This doesn't follow.
I misspoke -- if you reduce taxes, you'll reduce the cost, though the price may well stay the same (or go up, as you point out). But, according to Libertarian frictionless economics, if the cost goes down so should the price, because everyone knows that only the government keeps the market from being perfect.
A very significant portion of our current GDP is being used by government, which is decidedly more inefficent than the free market. Transferring a significant chunk of change back to the more efficent system will generate a significant economic improvement all around.
But that's not necessarily true -- the government has an economy of scale that an individual doesn't. As much as medicare gets criticized, the truth is that it is more economically efficient (it spends less on overhead and more on patients) than any private insurance group.
There is no law of nature that says government==less efficient than private. If there are cases where it is true, then by all means we should take advantage of them, but stating flatly (as most people do) that with less taxes we'd all have more money assumes, essentially, that the government offers no value. And value is a matter that has to be taken on a case-by-case basis...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Um...no. The point of the fallacy of the broken window is that society has lost the value of the broken window. It is gone, an amount of money that is essentially disappeared forever, because the labor and materials for the window that is broken no longer benefit anyone.
When you pay taxes, you don't "lose the window". The taxes go to pay for things that have naterial value that society benefits from (the degree and type of benefit is usually what people argue about).
It's the same as people who claim that space research is a waste of money because we don't see the benefits on earth. The money we spend on space exploration isn't sent to the sun to be burned up, it's spent right here on salaries for researchers and materials to build equipment. No money is "lost" into space, and no window is broken. Society is no poorer for having spent the money on space (though you can certainly argue the opportunity cost of not spending it elsewhere).
And, to counter your "extension" of Bastiat's argument (which really wasn't Bastiat's argument at all, he was talking about the lost value of the window and the fallacy that replacing it was good for the economy): If an entire city were constantly breaking windows, YES, IT WOULD be accounted for in the price of goods and labor. It would be a predictable cost that people and businesses would have to account for. In modern America, insurance is certainly a cost of living that poeple pay attention to, and it varies from place to place for exactly the reasn you state -- if you live in a place with high vandalism rates, your cost of insurance will go up. If your salary cannot pay the insurance rate, you may well move to somewhere else or find a different job. Many people avoid buying sports cars because the insurance is too high. It's a cost that is taken into account by most people when they buy cars -- how expensive are the repairs, the insurance?
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Most of the points made in his favor in this topic are that he was actively evangelizing the USE of the internet by government agencies, and trying to get people in government excited about how to use personal computer network access in the 80s, which is a little more active than just voting for spending bills...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
With the taxes you save from the rest of the LP platform...you can watch your salary go down to make up for it.
After all, I thought Libertarians were experts in economics? And taxes are a cost of living (or a cost of doing business), and thus automagically accounted for in salaries and pricing. If you reduce taxes, you'll reduce prices, but you'll also reduce wages. Ultimately everyone's buying power will be the same.
You don't make a salary -- you make a standard of living. The specific amount of money will go up and down, but if you're an executive it will always be enough to buy a big house and a nice car...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
In order to complete a callback call, the person would have to get offline, thereby removing himself from "gambling mode" and entering "not gambling-profit generating mode"
But as it is, they have to dial-up using a special connection with the floppy provided (at least as I understood the story). So it's not like you can spontaniously decide to start gambling while you're connected to AOL, you still have to disconnect. And a callback doesn't require the special software in the first place.
As complicated as callback might be to explain to folks, I can't imagine the technical problems they'll have with users having multiple dial-up accounts (especially with software changing the one that dials by default -- imagine kids not being able to get to AOL because daddy's computer only calls the gambling site when they double-click Internet explorer!)...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
It seems to me that an obvious way to verify that bets are made by the proper person at a proper residence would be to have a call-back system rather than a complicated closed application.
I mean, call-back has been used for years to make sure only authorized folks get remote access, even if you know passwords, etc. Then you'd have to be able to screw with the phone system to be able to "spoof" someone else so that the call went to you instead of them, which presumably is a very illegal thing to do.
The advantage of that could be that it would be easier to sign-up for the service, too -- while you'd have to prove age, the "proof of residence" would be unneccisary because the phone company would be doing that for you, and you wouldn't have to get one of their special floppy disks...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
they could transform the climate of Mars into something resembling Canada's climate (this would be enough to sustain lichens and algae). This process would take only 100 years, but they estimate it would take nearly 100,000 years for the oxygen levels to increase to a suitable level to sustain human life.
Wow -- I wonder how many Canadians the canadians have managed to survive so long in an environment suitable only for lichens and algae?
Good god, if they have a hundred years before human habitation, they'd better start working fast because they're not gonna be able to hold their breath that long!
But seriously, didn't Slashdot hire RobLimo to be a professional editor? I mean, is it possible, however unlikely, that they would actually read some of the sentences they write to make sure they contain some semblance of logic and meaning?
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
You're right -- the popular trekking spots are fairly dirty, but the EBC is much cleaner than most anywhere else, in part because it's such a "special" place, and fairly remote compared to the standard trekking routes. The through-traffic isn't that bad, it's mostly the climbing teams who are there 24/7 for months on end that will generate trash, and they have a big financial incentive to not leave too much behind...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Well, the people who took the gun away from the "criminals" have all the guns, for one. That sounds like a pretty formidable group of people -- what assurances do we have that they can be trusted with unilateral power?
Remember, one of the precepts our (US) government has is that every power should be balanced with another so that (in the interest of aggregating power selfishly) no group will allow another to grab power for themselves.
So, if your goal is to reduce gun crime, your plan may well (in fact, likely will) have an effect. Of course, enforcing the CURRENTLY EXISTING laws would have the same effect of getting guns away from criminals who are currently let off because we don't have the time or money for prosecutors to do their jobs in all these cases.
But much of this discussion was about the fact that, seeing as how the second amendment was so important to the founding of this country (a nation of people paranoid about the overreaching arm of government, especially federal or remote authority) it would not be comforting to know that we have unilaterally disarmed ourselves.
And bulletproof armour, despite what you see on the TV, isn't remotely as effective as you'd believe (of course, neither are guns, but most people aren't familiar with either). It doesn't make someone invincible, and guns don't kill people with a single shot. If you want to kill someone, give 'em a nice stab wound -- it'll be much harder to repair. And the knife will go through a bulletproof vest, too!
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Uh, you just detailed how to get guns away from ONE side.
The point is, and always has been -- if you can't get the guns from EVERYONE at the same time all you're doing is ensuring that the person left with them will win.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
A tyrannistic government with B2 bombers, Apache helicopters and the most advanced army in the world? I think you are kidding yourselfs when it comes to the martial prowess of even millions of civilians in the face of coordinated oppression
Yeah, because they're gonna bomb individual people with a B2? Break into apartments to root people out with Apaches?
Gimme a break, if we learned anything from every war of the past few hundred years it's that having the "superior" army and equipment doesn't guarantee success, and usually leads to overconfidence when faced with a determined opposition capable of hiding in your own midst.
Our fancy bombers didn't do shit against the Vietnamese BECAUSE they didn't depend on infrastructure. We're prepared for a battle against another industrial state, where bombers do a great job of destroying manufacturing capability.
If your enemy is the guy down the street who runs the deli, but also happens to be an agent of the underground, fancy weapons aren't worth jack -- he's gonna jump your ass at the most inopportune moment. see: Vietnam; French Resistance in WW2, et al.
The palestinians don't have bombers, the israelis do: why are they still fighting? According to your logic, the israelis should have won this battle years ago because they have far superior training and equipment. They just happen to be fighting fanatics who are willing to wage a war of attrition with human bodies, if need be: the same thing that happens most any time a population is on the defense...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Which slashdot have you been readong? The one I've been going to for a few years has never made any pretense of being unbiased or pro-corporate. You'll have to find a better criticism than "this is a staple of communism" if you expect people to take you seriously...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Shouldn't everybody know by know that Everest is a mere hill, the only *mountain* is K2
it would be a hell of a lot harder to ski down for sure!
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Re:The tough part was probably the climb, though
on
Skiing Down Everest
·
· Score: 3
Why then did he not simply jump from a helicopter near the summit?
'cause a helicopter can't fly that high (atmosphere too thin) and he'd die in about 5 minutes because he's not adapted to the altitude. Even flying to base camp would kill you.
That's part of the appeal of Everest: nothing short of putting in the hard work makes it possible. No technology (currently) can make up for simply spending the time and energy and suffering to make it. There is no shortcut but to just do it.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
The base camps are filthy: litter and human feces. It's freaking disgusting.
Really? Which team were you on when you went to Everest? While there was the occassional humorous bit of trash (frozen japanese candy from 1973) I didn't see any significant rubbish. And human feces is a strict no-no; every team has been responsible for carting it off the mountain for many years now.
I've got pictures of the sherpas carrying barrels of feces down from base camp -- not the guy you want to trip and spill his load!
Every team leaves a significant deposit as part of the climbing permit -- if they don't bring back their own trash and waste they lose the deposit. And you have to pay for a government official to accompany you for the entire time (not cheap) to verify compliance.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
If you can get down to base camp, you'll have to pay the costs of your helecopter rescue to the Nepalese government (not cheap), but it costs $75k just to climb, so you probably have the cash. And there's usually decent medical support from one of the teams (though not always).
If you can't get down to camp, if you get lost or something, you may have folks come and look for you. But they probably won't find you. No one risks anything they're not willing to lose there...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
The "trash" isn't as bad as you make it sound. It's oxygen bottles left from a few decades of climbing. No one wants to carry extra weight, so they'd just drop them when they were empty.
The Nepalese government with private sponsors (like Nike) now pay cash money to anyone who brings a bottle off the mountain, so the sherpas are carrying down well more than are being left. Most of the huge caches of spent bottles have already been taken down by sherpas who want to get extra money...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
There have already been sat phone calls fromm everest, so it wouldn't be much of a big deal if someone did it again. Not to say sat phone companies don't sponsor climbing teams with equipment...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
You would be stupid to base your businees practises more on your idealistic beliefs when they are in opposition to the legal practises of the time.
No, you'd have to be libertarian to believe that maximizing profit at the expense of morals is an absolute necessity of life. If it's legal , do it?
Great, my project next year is to fuck over 20,000 employees who've given their lives to making money for my company, They'll get no retirement package, and I'll get a $12 million bonus for saving the company so much money. They should have demanded a contract with retirement benefits, the fucking morons. They deserve their fate...
note: this message has been brought to you by SARCASM; if you don't like it, make a company to compete with it
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
How could you think the CDA wouldn't pass -- it's a law designed to protect innocent children from the horrors of online debauchery! There's nothing more pro-family that you could imagine.
But the original poster is right, that there's little downside to saying obvious things shouldn't be patented. No one can hold that against you during a campaign, whereas it's quite valuable to say "he voted AGAINST the communications DECENCY act!"...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there. Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Slashdot Mirror
Economics isn't a zero-sum game.
Of course, you're right -- I'm not really suggesting there is a direct, linear relationship between taxes and costs and salaries, that everyone will always make the exact same amount under any tax system. Im just trying to point out that taxes are (in general) accounted for in the equations of living.
In your example of HR calculating how much they will pay a person -- the simple truth is that no company is going to pay the janitor enough to buy a mansion. If taxes go down so that everyone's disposable income goes up, it very well may happen (as you state) that the cost of goods will rise as supply cannot meet demand (if everyone has an extra $10,000, there aren't enough new cars for them all to buy). So lowering taxes will give us all more money, but inflation will rob it of some value.
Which means, at the end of the day, everyone still has the same buying power. The janitor still cannot buy that new car because the guys making more than him are willing to pay more for it than he has to spend (they got $15,000 back in taxes, compared to his mere 10,000).
"If you reduce taxes, you'll reduce prices, but you'll also reduce wages."
Why? This doesn't follow.
I misspoke -- if you reduce taxes, you'll reduce the cost, though the price may well stay the same (or go up, as you point out). But, according to Libertarian frictionless economics, if the cost goes down so should the price, because everyone knows that only the government keeps the market from being perfect.
A very significant portion of our current GDP is being used by government, which is decidedly more inefficent than the free market. Transferring a significant chunk of change back to the more efficent system will generate a significant economic improvement all around.
But that's not necessarily true -- the government has an economy of scale that an individual doesn't. As much as medicare gets criticized, the truth is that it is more economically efficient (it spends less on overhead and more on patients) than any private insurance group.
There is no law of nature that says government==less efficient than private. If there are cases where it is true, then by all means we should take advantage of them, but stating flatly (as most people do) that with less taxes we'd all have more money assumes, essentially, that the government offers no value. And value is a matter that has to be taken on a case-by-case basis...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Um...no. The point of the fallacy of the broken window is that society has lost the value of the broken window. It is gone, an amount of money that is essentially disappeared forever, because the labor and materials for the window that is broken no longer benefit anyone.
When you pay taxes, you don't "lose the window". The taxes go to pay for things that have naterial value that society benefits from (the degree and type of benefit is usually what people argue about).
It's the same as people who claim that space research is a waste of money because we don't see the benefits on earth. The money we spend on space exploration isn't sent to the sun to be burned up, it's spent right here on salaries for researchers and materials to build equipment. No money is "lost" into space, and no window is broken. Society is no poorer for having spent the money on space (though you can certainly argue the opportunity cost of not spending it elsewhere).
And, to counter your "extension" of Bastiat's argument (which really wasn't Bastiat's argument at all, he was talking about the lost value of the window and the fallacy that replacing it was good for the economy): If an entire city were constantly breaking windows, YES, IT WOULD be accounted for in the price of goods and labor. It would be a predictable cost that people and businesses would have to account for. In modern America, insurance is certainly a cost of living that poeple pay attention to, and it varies from place to place for exactly the reasn you state -- if you live in a place with high vandalism rates, your cost of insurance will go up. If your salary cannot pay the insurance rate, you may well move to somewhere else or find a different job. Many people avoid buying sports cars because the insurance is too high. It's a cost that is taken into account by most people when they buy cars -- how expensive are the repairs, the insurance?
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Most of the points made in his favor in this topic are that he was actively evangelizing the USE of the internet by government agencies, and trying to get people in government excited about how to use personal computer network access in the 80s, which is a little more active than just voting for spending bills...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Get it through your thick skull, you can only create something once
Really, so when was the internet created? It should be a simple question, since it can only be created once.
Was it the first connection between DARPA systems, the invention of TCP/IP, the opening to the public?
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
With the taxes you save from the rest of the LP platform...you can watch your salary go down to make up for it.
After all, I thought Libertarians were experts in economics? And taxes are a cost of living (or a cost of doing business), and thus automagically accounted for in salaries and pricing. If you reduce taxes, you'll reduce prices, but you'll also reduce wages. Ultimately everyone's buying power will be the same.
You don't make a salary -- you make a standard of living. The specific amount of money will go up and down, but if you're an executive it will always be enough to buy a big house and a nice car...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
In order to complete a callback call, the person would have to get offline, thereby removing himself from "gambling mode" and entering "not gambling-profit generating mode"
But as it is, they have to dial-up using a special connection with the floppy provided (at least as I understood the story). So it's not like you can spontaniously decide to start gambling while you're connected to AOL, you still have to disconnect. And a callback doesn't require the special software in the first place.
As complicated as callback might be to explain to folks, I can't imagine the technical problems they'll have with users having multiple dial-up accounts (especially with software changing the one that dials by default -- imagine kids not being able to get to AOL because daddy's computer only calls the gambling site when they double-click Internet explorer!)...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
It seems to me that an obvious way to verify that bets are made by the proper person at a proper residence would be to have a call-back system rather than a complicated closed application.
I mean, call-back has been used for years to make sure only authorized folks get remote access, even if you know passwords, etc. Then you'd have to be able to screw with the phone system to be able to "spoof" someone else so that the call went to you instead of them, which presumably is a very illegal thing to do.
The advantage of that could be that it would be easier to sign-up for the service, too -- while you'd have to prove age, the "proof of residence" would be unneccisary because the phone company would be doing that for you, and you wouldn't have to get one of their special floppy disks...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
...I wonder how many Canadians the canadians have managed to survive...
How ironic -- in failing to completely edit a change in wording, my own first sentence makes as little sense as this article!
Of course, I'm not paying anyone to be an editor, so...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
they could transform the climate of Mars into something resembling Canada's climate (this would be enough to sustain lichens and algae). This process would take only 100 years, but they estimate it would take nearly 100,000 years for the oxygen levels to increase to a suitable level to sustain human life.
Wow -- I wonder how many Canadians the canadians have managed to survive so long in an environment suitable only for lichens and algae?
Good god, if they have a hundred years before human habitation, they'd better start working fast because they're not gonna be able to hold their breath that long!
But seriously, didn't Slashdot hire RobLimo to be a professional editor? I mean, is it possible, however unlikely, that they would actually read some of the sentences they write to make sure they contain some semblance of logic and meaning?
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
You're right -- the popular trekking spots are fairly dirty, but the EBC is much cleaner than most anywhere else, in part because it's such a "special" place, and fairly remote compared to the standard trekking routes. The through-traffic isn't that bad, it's mostly the climbing teams who are there 24/7 for months on end that will generate trash, and they have a big financial incentive to not leave too much behind...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Well, the people who took the gun away from the "criminals" have all the guns, for one. That sounds like a pretty formidable group of people -- what assurances do we have that they can be trusted with unilateral power?
Remember, one of the precepts our (US) government has is that every power should be balanced with another so that (in the interest of aggregating power selfishly) no group will allow another to grab power for themselves.
So, if your goal is to reduce gun crime, your plan may well (in fact, likely will) have an effect. Of course, enforcing the CURRENTLY EXISTING laws would have the same effect of getting guns away from criminals who are currently let off because we don't have the time or money for prosecutors to do their jobs in all these cases.
But much of this discussion was about the fact that, seeing as how the second amendment was so important to the founding of this country (a nation of people paranoid about the overreaching arm of government, especially federal or remote authority) it would not be comforting to know that we have unilaterally disarmed ourselves.
And bulletproof armour, despite what you see on the TV, isn't remotely as effective as you'd believe (of course, neither are guns, but most people aren't familiar with either). It doesn't make someone invincible, and guns don't kill people with a single shot. If you want to kill someone, give 'em a nice stab wound -- it'll be much harder to repair. And the knife will go through a bulletproof vest, too!
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Uh, you just detailed how to get guns away from ONE side.
The point is, and always has been -- if you can't get the guns from EVERYONE at the same time all you're doing is ensuring that the person left with them will win.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
A tyrannistic government with B2 bombers, Apache helicopters and the most advanced army in the world? I think you are kidding yourselfs when it comes to the martial prowess of even millions of civilians in the face of coordinated oppression
Yeah, because they're gonna bomb individual people with a B2? Break into apartments to root people out with Apaches?
Gimme a break, if we learned anything from every war of the past few hundred years it's that having the "superior" army and equipment doesn't guarantee success, and usually leads to overconfidence when faced with a determined opposition capable of hiding in your own midst.
Our fancy bombers didn't do shit against the Vietnamese BECAUSE they didn't depend on infrastructure. We're prepared for a battle against another industrial state, where bombers do a great job of destroying manufacturing capability.
If your enemy is the guy down the street who runs the deli, but also happens to be an agent of the underground, fancy weapons aren't worth jack -- he's gonna jump your ass at the most inopportune moment. see: Vietnam; French Resistance in WW2, et al.
The palestinians don't have bombers, the israelis do: why are they still fighting? According to your logic, the israelis should have won this battle years ago because they have far superior training and equipment. They just happen to be fighting fanatics who are willing to wage a war of attrition with human bodies, if need be: the same thing that happens most any time a population is on the defense...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
No offense, but this sounds like the old joke Jay Leno (back when he did real stand up) used to tell about his mom:
"Well, if they'd just take then guns away from BOTH sides, then no one could fight."
Brilliant idea. Now how do we do it?
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Which slashdot have you been readong? The one I've been going to for a few years has never made any pretense of being unbiased or pro-corporate. You'll have to find a better criticism than "this is a staple of communism" if you expect people to take you seriously...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
US Dollars work damn near anywhere on earth. The US $100 is just about all that anyone will accept as a truly reliable currency in many places...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Shouldn't everybody know by know that Everest is a mere hill, the only *mountain* is K2
it would be a hell of a lot harder to ski down for sure!
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Why then did he not simply jump from a helicopter near the summit?
'cause a helicopter can't fly that high (atmosphere too thin) and he'd die in about 5 minutes because he's not adapted to the altitude. Even flying to base camp would kill you.
That's part of the appeal of Everest: nothing short of putting in the hard work makes it possible. No technology (currently) can make up for simply spending the time and energy and suffering to make it. There is no shortcut but to just do it.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
No, the trash is as bad as he makes it sound.
The base camps are filthy: litter and human feces. It's freaking disgusting.
Really? Which team were you on when you went to Everest? While there was the occassional humorous bit of trash (frozen japanese candy from 1973) I didn't see any significant rubbish. And human feces is a strict no-no; every team has been responsible for carting it off the mountain for many years now.
I've got pictures of the sherpas carrying barrels of feces down from base camp -- not the guy you want to trip and spill his load!
Every team leaves a significant deposit as part of the climbing permit -- if they don't bring back their own trash and waste they lose the deposit. And you have to pay for a government official to accompany you for the entire time (not cheap) to verify compliance.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
If you can get down to base camp, you'll have to pay the costs of your helecopter rescue to the Nepalese government (not cheap), but it costs $75k just to climb, so you probably have the cash. And there's usually decent medical support from one of the teams (though not always).
If you can't get down to camp, if you get lost or something, you may have folks come and look for you. But they probably won't find you. No one risks anything they're not willing to lose there...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
The "trash" isn't as bad as you make it sound. It's oxygen bottles left from a few decades of climbing. No one wants to carry extra weight, so they'd just drop them when they were empty.
The Nepalese government with private sponsors (like Nike) now pay cash money to anyone who brings a bottle off the mountain, so the sherpas are carrying down well more than are being left. Most of the huge caches of spent bottles have already been taken down by sherpas who want to get extra money...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
There have already been sat phone calls fromm everest, so it wouldn't be much of a big deal if someone did it again. Not to say sat phone companies don't sponsor climbing teams with equipment...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
You would be stupid to base your businees practises more on your idealistic beliefs when they are in opposition to the legal practises of the time.
No, you'd have to be libertarian to believe that maximizing profit at the expense of morals is an absolute necessity of life. If it's legal , do it?
Great, my project next year is to fuck over 20,000 employees who've given their lives to making money for my company, They'll get no retirement package, and I'll get a $12 million bonus for saving the company so much money. They should have demanded a contract with retirement benefits, the fucking morons. They deserve their fate...
note: this message has been brought to you by SARCASM; if you don't like it, make a company to compete with it
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
How could you think the CDA wouldn't pass -- it's a law designed to protect innocent children from the horrors of online debauchery! There's nothing more pro-family that you could imagine.
But the original poster is right, that there's little downside to saying obvious things shouldn't be patented. No one can hold that against you during a campaign, whereas it's quite valuable to say "he voted AGAINST the communications DECENCY act!"...
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.
Just in case you missed it the first two times:
Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.
Neal Stephenson beware: Pesci may be eating your lunch soon, if not your Captain Crunch.
I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.