I haven't made a detailed study of the topic, if you really want to know you should research it.
However, my understanding is that prior to the creation of Social Security, the aged and infirm were often living in horrible conditions because they were no longer able to make income to take care of themselves and hadn't saved sufficiently to support themselves in old age.
Hence the establishment of Social Security, to alleviate this suffering. Most Americans, even today, save only a small fraction (if any) of their income for a "rainy day". When the paychecks stop coming, without Social Security, their situation gets quite dire.
However, with Social Security and better health care, fewer kids, and other Government mandated savings programs, the "old" demographic has become the richest, by and large, in the USA.
Personally I think it is time to stem the tide of wealth transfer from the now-poorer, younger demographics to the richest demographic (robbing from the poor to give to the rich) by raising the retirement age, ending the wage cap on social security tax, making the benefits taxable above a certain income threshold, and lowering the social security tax on the folks who are still working.
I don't think it makes much sense to have a Government program to make the most rich even richer at the expense of the poorer.
As for the social security recipients who will cry about this, well, take some responsbility. YOU voted in the Governments who spent the social security surplus into broader Government debt, now YOU can live with reduced benefits.
We have ever increasing armies of people who should not drive any longer, namely, the partly-disabled elderly.
Do they want to be dependent upon deliveries of food and drivers to go anywhere? Self-driving cars give this demographic independence, and it is a demographic that is growing. And it is a demographic that has THE MOST MONEY. (Yes, old people are the richest demographic in the USA now.)
Would YOU rather get a $60k car and be independent or not be able to go anywhere without a benefactor?
The rest of the world could do that too, but shouldn't do it the way Japan has done. They planted a monoculture of cedar trees, which produce lots of pollen and do little for biodiversity, and water retention. But they do a lot to promote allergies in the Japanese, 10% of whom now suffer from pollen allergies.
Instead of only planting economically useful trees, a good ecological mix should be planted....
You are mostly water, 70%. Most of water by weight is oxygen by far. (16 parts in 18). So your heavy people plan would mostly sequester oxygen, temporarily.
But I don't think it's a practical solution to apply on a large scale in cities.
On my own property, if I'm going to water it, I'm going to eat it. But I take care of my trees and manage pests and clean up after them. I pick up every last fruit that drops. I put nets on the trees to keep the birds away so they don't damage 20x the fruit they eat.
I don't think we'd like what would happen to rodent and pest populations in cities if we didn't manage the fruit trees actively. Plus, with such widespread planting and without adequate systematic disease control, fruit tree diseases would become rampant and reduce your production greatly and perhaps even damage commercial production by supplying a large pest and disease reservoir.
I think it makes sense to plant fruit trees where you can convince locals to take over maintenance and management such that these are up to adequate levels. It'd be a good addition to the standard landscaping tree mix.
But the indiscriminate use of fruit trees that you're advocating would probably generate a counter-reaction as the nuisance consequences of unmanaged fruit trees builds up.
For credit cards anyway. Put a bunch of "fake" credit cards out there. Some of them "work" but are actually traces. Users of these CC numbers get investigated and arrested immediately, because there are NO authorized users.
If I can be forced into military service and be made to go fight and die, why can't I be forced, for the greater good, to get a jab in the arm that protects me (and everyone else) from getting some REALLY nasty diseases?
Or would you argue that compulsory military service is unconscionable too?
If I can be made to join the military, be ordered to go fight and die, (for the greater good) by the Government, then I do NOT see why I can't be made to take a shot!
I welcome it if you cite sources to refute the credibility of either of the links I gave. At least you're thinking about the subject then. Myself, I'm actually not sure that cough medicines DON'T work and I'm not sure that chocolate does. But I sure like chocolate.
In military service. I figure if I can be drafted, and be made to fight and quite possibly die to protect this country, I can be forced to get stuck with a needle to protect this country too!
Military service is FAR more invasive and dangerous, by many orders of magnitude, than a vaccination.
By that standard, forcing EVERYONE in this country to GET VACCINATED for the COMMON GOOD is about the most resounding slam dunk I've ever considered.
And certainly not to kill rats! Any level of arsenic in the water supply that would kill rats would kill every PERSON who drinks it in short order!
In fact, the standard for "potable" water, at least in the USA, says that effort should be made to drive the concentration of arsenic in tap water to ZERO.
Laser laboratories take rather elaborate precautions to avoid having a laser beam go into someone's eye. If there's much power in the laser, having it hit someone's eye is VERY bad--blindness can result. (And post signs that say 'do not look into laser with remaining eye'.)
Do we really want high power laser beams possibly bouncing off shiny rails going who knows where, where some poor bastard might be looking the wrong way?
I mean, even if these lasers aren't in the visible range, I still don't want a beam in my eye.
I think the CDC has a LOT more grounds to ring the "danger bell" than the people supporting Department of Defense spending. How many US people did terrorists kill in the last 10 years? Probably flu deaths are in the 100,000's? We also lose about 30k people/year to antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, however, do we even have $10B/year going into new antibiotic research?
By *that* measure, which is pretty rational, the CDC and NIH ought to be funded at a higher level than the DoD.
I mean, does USA *really* need to be spending more next 10 nations combined on its national defense, as opposed to spending more to control diseases which could quite conceivably mutate and become major killers, or combat already existing credible threats like ebola? How about spending more to assure the food supply is continuous? There are diseases wiping out food crops like bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee, and there are credible disease threats against wheat. Yet USA is spending a pittiance to combat *that* risk, which, rationally, is a bigger risk than the risks mitigated by USA's DoD spending.
People drive technology and the number of people has been going up exponentially, so techincal prograss is NOT linear.
And the whole point of "singularity" is that once we create an intelligence smarter than us, it will (in theory) in turn create an intelligence smarter and faster than it, and so on. That's not linear progress.
>I am pretty sure this is how we will (if ever) get a good government, too. The government has to be "us" not "them" yet almost none of us are willing to let it be "me."
How about representation by lottery? Every eligible adult (I guess I mean everyone except those currently serving a prison sentence) is entered into a lottery. The winners go serve in state or federal legislatures as representatives.
They are beholden to NO ONE to get "elected", so don't show up corrupted. And they're far more representative a sample of the population. You'd get homeless people, teachers, blue collar workers, not just the rich privileged bastards we have now. Decriminalizing marijuana would already be accomplished nationwide under this scheme.
My one fear is that the state/federal bureaucracy would end up all-powerful, because the legislators would be unskilled enough to push back vs. the bureaucracy.
Have a culture of rotating people in and out of management to "lower" positions. Like department heads at universities, the job lasts a year or two then you're back as a normal faculty.
I rotated in and out of a money management job, now I'm back doing technical stuff. As a result I have a very good understanding of that end of the business as well as the techical end.
Many people don't want to manage other people. It's a tough job, often thankless, and in the words of a co-worker who quit being a boss and went back to technical work, it's like managing a bunch of four-year-olds who can't get along.
If you want good bosses, step up to the plate and make the sacrifice and do the job. Also, be a good employee, good employees can attract good bosses.
Also, in a random digression, I don't think a good technical boss necessarily HAS to be good technically. S/he just has to be able to listen effectively to the people who ARE good technically--which is something s/he should be doing even if s/he IS good technically. A boss who doesn't listen is in my opinion worse than a boss who is ignorant, knows it, and respects the experts s/he supervises.
You point to that figure and say that solar panels are terrible for the environment. Yes, apparently solar panels need more silver (and other metals) than other generation techniques, however, that doesn't mean that an ABSOLUTELY LARGE amount of silver is going to have to be provided.
Most power generation techniques don't need silver barely at all, so "relative to the current mix",yes, solar is going to need lots. That DOES NOT necessarily mean that supplying that amount of silver is going to cause widespread environmental degradation in the same way that coal DOES.
Also, solar power, once in place, doesn't require megatonnes of fuel like coal, oil, and gas do. (In that order, I guess.)
That figure doesn't DIRECTLY give insight into what energy mix is best for the environment, you can't have any hope of that unless you also compare fuel inputs per kwh generated as well, and other factors.
You're often sick for a week, pretty commonly you get a secondary bacterial infection (like pneumonia or a sinus infection), and then you're sick for more than a week, and you might well be left with a lingering cough.
And BTW, "throw up a couple times" is NOT that common a flu symptom, though it CAN happen with flu. Typical symptoms are: body aches fever/chills coughing runny nose, sore throat, headach, pain around eyes
Vomiting/diarrhea is more common amongst children.
Which is why i think GMO's ought to be done by universities and governments for the public benefit, not by corporations for profit, and one of the goals should be genetic diversity for exactly the reason you state.
Also, I'm uncomfortable with a corporation having so much influence over the world's food supply.
Last, the profit motive would compel a company to attempt to sweep problems under the rug more than publicly funded development would.
So, I'm pro-GMO, but I think it should be done by the public for the public.
I think the proposition that NOT using GMOs risks global catastrophe might have more odds in its favor than using GMOs.
Consider: Bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee are all threatened by pathogens or climate change. There are some credible pathogen threats to wheat as well.
In the case of citrus, the ONLY (**ONLY**) resistant variety to citrus greening disease, out of ALL the citrus varieties on the plant, is a GMO variety that has genes from spinach spliced in.
So we have a case of, worldwide collapse of citrus production, OR GMO citrus.
I think I'll take the GMO citrus, thank you very much. If I were a Florida planter, and I weren't worried about anti-GMO hysteria, I'd be replacing my citrus orchards (as they die) with GMO plants.
As I referred to above, similar threats are either now or are poised to decimate bananas, coffee, chocolate, and wheat, though I'm not so sure that the naturally resistant variety situation is so dire in those cases.
Why said anything about lawlessness? What *law* would stop a bunch of CDC experts from showing up at the hospital and saying to the admins, "Here we are, this is a very serious situation, and we've brought X and Y and Z resources to help. Let us help you please."
I *know* that if I'm a hospital admin, and there are these guys in my office offering that class of help, I'm not going to be saying "no".
So what laws would be broken, exactly? If the CDC offered that level of help (quite legally) and the hospital (also legally) told them to go take a hike, we'd know EXACTLY who to blame. Furthermore, the CDC would be on the spot in force able to cope with the screw up.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't made a detailed study of the topic, if you really want to know you should research it.
However, my understanding is that prior to the creation of Social Security, the aged and infirm were often living in horrible conditions because they were no longer able to make income to take care of themselves and hadn't saved sufficiently to support themselves in old age.
Hence the establishment of Social Security, to alleviate this suffering. Most Americans, even today, save only a small fraction (if any) of their income for a "rainy day". When the paychecks stop coming, without Social Security, their situation gets quite dire.
However, with Social Security and better health care, fewer kids, and other Government mandated savings programs, the "old" demographic has become the richest, by and large, in the USA.
Personally I think it is time to stem the tide of wealth transfer from the now-poorer, younger demographics to the richest demographic (robbing from the poor to give to the rich) by raising the retirement age, ending the wage cap on social security tax, making the benefits taxable above a certain income threshold, and lowering the social security tax on the folks who are still working.
I don't think it makes much sense to have a Government program to make the most rich even richer at the expense of the poorer.
As for the social security recipients who will cry about this, well, take some responsbility. YOU voted in the Governments who spent the social security surplus into broader Government debt, now YOU can live with reduced benefits.
--PeterM
We have ever increasing armies of people who should not drive any longer, namely, the partly-disabled elderly.
Do they want to be dependent upon deliveries of food and drivers to go anywhere? Self-driving cars give this demographic independence, and it is a demographic that is growing. And it is a demographic that has THE MOST MONEY. (Yes, old people are the richest demographic in the USA now.)
Would YOU rather get a $60k car and be independent or not be able to go anywhere without a benefactor?
--PeterM
The rest of the world could do that too, but shouldn't do it the way Japan has done. They planted a monoculture of cedar trees, which produce lots of pollen and do little for biodiversity, and water retention. But they do a lot to promote allergies in the Japanese, 10% of whom now suffer from pollen allergies.
Instead of only planting economically useful trees, a good ecological mix should be planted....
--PM
But a major constraint to planting trees, at least in my area, is water. It's not like I can just stick them anywhere and they'll grow.
The arid conditions here pretty much preclude widespread reforestation.
As it is, the only trees I plant are trees that I will water, take care of, and eat the fruit from.
--PM
You are mostly water, 70%. Most of water by weight is oxygen by far. (16 parts in 18). So your heavy people plan would mostly sequester oxygen, temporarily.
--PeterM
But I don't think it's a practical solution to apply on a large scale in cities.
On my own property, if I'm going to water it, I'm going to eat it. But I take care of my trees and manage pests and clean up after them. I pick up every last fruit that drops. I put nets on the trees to keep the birds away so they don't damage 20x the fruit they eat.
I don't think we'd like what would happen to rodent and pest populations in cities if we didn't manage the fruit trees actively. Plus, with such widespread planting and without adequate systematic disease control, fruit tree diseases would become rampant and reduce your production greatly and perhaps even damage commercial production by supplying a large pest and disease reservoir.
I think it makes sense to plant fruit trees where you can convince locals to take over maintenance and management such that these are up to adequate levels. It'd be a good addition to the standard landscaping tree mix.
But the indiscriminate use of fruit trees that you're advocating would probably generate a counter-reaction as the nuisance consequences of unmanaged fruit trees builds up.
--PM
For credit cards anyway. Put a bunch of "fake" credit cards out there. Some of them "work" but are actually traces. Users of these CC numbers get investigated and arrested immediately, because there are NO authorized users.
--PM
I didn't say it wasn't IN the water, I said it wasn't ADDED to city water supplies in order to kill rats.
If I can be forced into military service and be made to go fight and die, why can't I be forced, for the greater good, to get a jab in the arm that protects me (and everyone else) from getting some REALLY nasty diseases?
Or would you argue that compulsory military service is unconscionable too?
--PeterM
Sir,
If I can be made to join the military, be ordered to go fight and die, (for the greater good) by the Government, then I do NOT see why I can't be made to take a shot!
--PeterM
Hate to tell you, but most OTC cough medicines don't really work very well at all, according to some studies that have come out recently.
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-...
There *is* a study that says that dark chocolate, of all things, is pretty good at suppressing coughs.
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-...
I welcome it if you cite sources to refute the credibility of either of the links I gave. At least you're thinking about the subject then. Myself, I'm actually not sure that cough medicines DON'T work and I'm not sure that chocolate does. But I sure like chocolate.
--PM
In military service. I figure if I can be drafted, and be made to fight and quite possibly die to protect this country, I can be forced to get stuck with a needle to protect this country too!
Military service is FAR more invasive and dangerous, by many orders of magnitude, than a vaccination.
By that standard, forcing EVERYONE in this country to GET VACCINATED for the COMMON GOOD is about the most resounding slam dunk I've ever considered.
--PeterM
And certainly not to kill rats! Any level of arsenic in the water supply that would kill rats would kill every PERSON who drinks it in short order!
In fact, the standard for "potable" water, at least in the USA, says that effort should be made to drive the concentration of arsenic in tap water to ZERO.
--PM
Laser laboratories take rather elaborate precautions to avoid having a laser beam go into someone's eye. If there's much power in the laser, having it hit someone's eye is VERY bad--blindness can result. (And post signs that say 'do not look into laser with remaining eye'.)
Do we really want high power laser beams possibly bouncing off shiny rails going who knows where, where some poor bastard might be looking the wrong way?
I mean, even if these lasers aren't in the visible range, I still don't want a beam in my eye.
Hello,
I think the CDC has a LOT more grounds to ring the "danger bell" than the people supporting Department of Defense spending. How many US people did terrorists kill in the last 10 years? Probably flu deaths are in the 100,000's? We also lose about 30k people/year to antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, however, do we even have $10B/year going into new antibiotic research?
By *that* measure, which is pretty rational, the CDC and NIH ought to be funded at a higher level than the DoD.
I mean, does USA *really* need to be spending more next 10 nations combined on its national defense, as opposed to spending more to control diseases which could quite conceivably mutate and become major killers, or combat already existing credible threats like ebola? How about spending more to assure the food supply is continuous? There are diseases wiping out food crops like bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee, and there are credible disease threats against wheat. Yet USA is spending a pittiance to combat *that* risk, which, rationally, is a bigger risk than the risks mitigated by USA's DoD spending.
--PeterM
People drive technology and the number of people has been going up exponentially, so techincal prograss is NOT linear.
And the whole point of "singularity" is that once we create an intelligence smarter than us, it will (in theory) in turn create an intelligence smarter and faster than it, and so on. That's not linear progress.
--PM
>I am pretty sure this is how we will (if ever) get a good government, too. The government has to be "us" not "them" yet almost none of us are willing to let it be "me."
How about representation by lottery? Every eligible adult (I guess I mean everyone except those currently serving a prison sentence) is entered into a lottery. The winners go serve in state or federal legislatures as representatives.
They are beholden to NO ONE to get "elected", so don't show up corrupted. And they're far more representative a sample of the population. You'd get homeless people, teachers, blue collar workers, not just the rich privileged bastards we have now. Decriminalizing marijuana would already be accomplished nationwide under this scheme.
My one fear is that the state/federal bureaucracy would end up all-powerful, because the legislators would be unskilled enough to push back vs. the bureaucracy.
--PM
Have a culture of rotating people in and out of management to "lower" positions. Like department heads at universities, the job lasts a year or two then you're back as a normal faculty.
I rotated in and out of a money management job, now I'm back doing technical stuff. As a result I have a very good understanding of that end of the business as well as the techical end.
--PM
Many people don't want to manage other people. It's a tough job, often thankless, and in the words of a co-worker who quit being a boss and went back to technical work, it's like managing a bunch of four-year-olds who can't get along.
If you want good bosses, step up to the plate and make the sacrifice and do the job. Also, be a good employee, good employees can attract good bosses.
Also, in a random digression, I don't think a good technical boss necessarily HAS to be good technically. S/he just has to be able to listen effectively to the people who ARE good technically--which is something s/he should be doing even if s/he IS good technically. A boss who doesn't listen is in my opinion worse than a boss who is ignorant, knows it, and respects the experts s/he supervises.
--PeterM
You point to that figure and say that solar panels are terrible for the environment. Yes, apparently solar panels need more silver (and other metals) than other generation techniques, however, that doesn't mean that an ABSOLUTELY LARGE amount of silver is going to have to be provided.
Most power generation techniques don't need silver barely at all, so "relative to the current mix",yes, solar is going to need lots. That DOES NOT necessarily mean that supplying that amount of silver is going to cause widespread environmental degradation in the same way that coal DOES.
Also, solar power, once in place, doesn't require megatonnes of fuel like coal, oil, and gas do. (In that order, I guess.)
That figure doesn't DIRECTLY give insight into what energy mix is best for the environment, you can't have any hope of that unless you also compare fuel inputs per kwh generated as well, and other factors.
You're often sick for a week, pretty commonly you get a secondary bacterial infection (like pneumonia or a sinus infection), and then you're sick for more than a week, and you might well be left with a lingering cough.
And BTW, "throw up a couple times" is NOT that common a flu symptom, though it CAN happen with flu. Typical symptoms are:
body aches
fever/chills
coughing
runny nose, sore throat, headach, pain around eyes
Vomiting/diarrhea is more common amongst children.
--PM
Which is why i think GMO's ought to be done by universities and governments for the public benefit, not by corporations for profit, and one of the goals should be genetic diversity for exactly the reason you state.
Also, I'm uncomfortable with a corporation having so much influence over the world's food supply.
Last, the profit motive would compel a company to attempt to sweep problems under the rug more than publicly funded development would.
So, I'm pro-GMO, but I think it should be done by the public for the public.
--PM
I think the proposition that NOT using GMOs risks global catastrophe might have more odds in its favor than using GMOs.
Consider:
Bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee are all threatened by pathogens or climate change. There are some credible pathogen threats to wheat as well.
In the case of citrus, the ONLY (**ONLY**) resistant variety to citrus greening disease, out of ALL the citrus varieties on the plant, is a GMO variety that has genes from spinach spliced in.
So we have a case of, worldwide collapse of citrus production, OR GMO citrus.
I think I'll take the GMO citrus, thank you very much. If I were a Florida planter, and I weren't worried about anti-GMO hysteria, I'd be replacing my citrus orchards (as they die) with GMO plants.
As I referred to above, similar threats are either now or are poised to decimate bananas, coffee, chocolate, and wheat, though I'm not so sure that the naturally resistant variety situation is so dire in those cases.
Best,
-PeterM
Why said anything about lawlessness? What *law* would stop a bunch of CDC experts from showing up at the hospital and saying to the admins, "Here we are, this is a very serious situation, and we've brought X and Y and Z resources to help. Let us help you please."
I *know* that if I'm a hospital admin, and there are these guys in my office offering that class of help, I'm not going to be saying "no".
So what laws would be broken, exactly? If the CDC offered that level of help (quite legally) and the hospital (also legally) told them to go take a hike, we'd know EXACTLY who to blame. Furthermore, the CDC would be on the spot in force able to cope with the screw up.
--PM
But by next year Ebola,if not brought under control, will be one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide.
--PM