If you want rugged, look at a toughbook. Those ARE rugged.
Oh yes, they are rugged. My biggest problem is that the things last forever, thus tend to be extremely obsolete and we're still using them. And while I haven't opened one up, I think one of the things they did is that the MB/components 'float' somehow inside the case. They have some flex.
You're not using it when you have a production run of 10k+. You're using it when you're developing the product, such as doing a limited run of like 100 for more widespread tests.
The custom car industry uses 3d printing to a huge extent. A large chunk of the body of concept cars is generally produced that way. They love it, because even though it's more expensive than injection molding, stamped sheet metal and such, it's still something like 10x cheaper and 10x faster than the old way, and not much more expensive(design costs aside) when producing 1 vs 100.
You use this not when you need high speed injection molding, you use this rather than using some sort of crazy six axis CNC machine starting from a solid block.
I mean, sure, this is a lot more expensive than a cast block, but when you need ONE* it's actually cheaper than casting or the other alternatives.
*And can't repurpose a cast block of whatever type to suit your purpose.
This post reminded me of the auto industry. Which has, for generations, produced lots and lots of 'single off' prototype cars, and even used to do things like mold a car body out of clay in order to get it right. Some of these processes were subtractive and incredibly expensive. Today, it's gotten quite a bit cheaper with modern rapid prototyping tools that allow even complex parts to be produced quickly and automatically. In many cases the parts aren't of the same quality(for better or worse), but are of the correct shape and such.
Designing a car or cell phone is an incredibly complex process, and the cell phone one is only getting more complex. He's not talking about 'custom batches of 100 laptops', he's talking about running a hundred or so copies of your 'newest product' as essentially a quality control check in your prototyping process.
Heck, remember Apple and it's lost prototype phones? Apple must have been doing limited production runs of it's latest 'I' whatever.
One can argue that if Blackberry had produced 100 storms and, even at 10x the cost per, had actually done a customer response survey, they'd have saved millions not producing the dud, perhaps being about to kick it back up to the design team with notes to come out with a better, more successful product. You have to produce prototypes anyways just to verify functionality, this is just producing a lot more.
As Calydor mentioned, at some point you have to chose between freedom and life. My 'off the cuff' standard was a stopped attack every day, which would translate to us being effectively under wartime conditions where even the constitution has provisions to restrict freedoms.
Exactly. Indeed, at this point passengers and crew have found more bombs than the TSA - the terrorists(rather pathetic ones, but still attempted terror attacks) have been successful at bypassing the TSA.
If they stopped a bomb/terrorist attack every day, I might be willing to put up with the erosion. As the actual rate is, at this point, somewhere below a thousandth of that, we could suffer a 9/11 attack something like once every 3 years and STILL be better off without the TSA.
Some practical changes like the reinforced doors make sense. Combined with the attitude changes of the passangers and that threat has already been pretty well remediated.
Making us take off our shoes and go though the x-ray scanners as opposed to a simple metal detector is overkill.
The TSA is practicing risk avoidance, not risk management. The military learned that lesson over 30 years ago. It simply costs too much to avoid ALL risk; you end up not being able to do anything. Thus, you manage the risk - don't take stupid chances, but don't fret over extremely unlikely events, out of proportion of the damage it could cause. The underwear and shoe bombs were too small to have any realistic chances of taking the plane down. Ergo, they could have done as much or more damage in the waiting line at the TSA. More, if they turned it into a proper suicide vest with fragmentation additives. Or at a mall or some such.
Risk management is simple in theory. You look at the risk - the chance that it will happen as a percentage, and the average damage it would cost. If mitigating the risk would cost more than the damage multiplied by the chance it'll happen, then you don't perform that mitigation.
That's the simple type, of course. Some mitigations fix multiple risks, for example. Armored windows that will stop a gunshot also tend to be rather overkill for hurricane/tornado, after all. Vehicle barriers not only stop vehicle bombs, they stop drunk drivers. Etc...
The reasonings I've heard include: 1. Women tend to select jobs heavier in benefits than men. 2. Women tend to cost more in benefits than men. Healthcare, maternity leave, etc.. One nasty: Sexual Harassment lawsuits
This is despite controlling for things like women tending to work fewer hours - less overtime, more leave, etc... That generally leaves them more junior in the workforce.
Of course, there are selected exemptions - try being a male elementary school teacher or dental tech. Male dentists earn more money than female ones, but female dental techs(The ones that do x-rays and teeth cleanings and such) are considerably more employable and earn more money than males in the same field.
I'd argue that group work, as a therapy/corrective measure, is probably a good thing for your son. Properly done, of course. I'm another one who finds working in a group exhausting. Probably the only reason I wasn't diagnosed with 'mild autism' is that they didn't diagnose that when I was a child for anybody. If it wasn't so severe that you couldn't make it through normal school, it didn't exist. At one point a teacher wanted me on Ritalin, but my parents correctly figured out that I had the opposite problem - I had no problems concentrating, I just didn't want to concentrate on her/her teaching. I'd read a standard paperback book front to back in an average of an hour. The whole textbook, which I'd read within the first week for 'interesting' ones like science and history, generally took about 4.
But yes, more physical activities, especially for boys, wouldn't be a bad thing. Exercise helps calm down hyper kids as well or better than drugs, and reduces obesity problems at the same time.
My explanation: Women tend to be more even. You get fewer geniuses, but fewer total morons as well. Look at lions - male lions are pretty much 'all or nothing'. They have to risk it all in order to mate and have offsprings. Females just need to gather enough food to feed themselves and their kits. Male lions, when presented with evidence of MULTIPLE male lions in their territory, will still jump in to attack. Female lions, presented with evidence of multiple female lions in the same territory, will go get her sisters.
Now, the customer of that game is forced to buy, at full price and royalties to author, another full licensed version, instead of buying the recycled one, from which only the reseller, not the author, profits.
How much are they giving per game? Because if it works like some gun-buybacks, you'll get people bringing in old copies of Daikatana and using the resulting certificates to buy the latest call of duty...
I've seen it multiple times - a gunnie will collect 'scrap metal' guns worth maybe $20 for the metal in them, then go to Chicago for a gun buyback and get $100 gift certificates for them. Most of the guns don't even work, or would be unsafe to fire if they did. They then proceed to buy a nice NEW gun for their collection.
As the AC mentioned, Starcraft isn't a first/third person shooter - it's not a 'trainer' for shooting people like you could say for games like counterstrike.
On the topic of violent video games in general, I remember the graph of youth violence up against major console releases - youth violence has experienced a drop after each release. As far as I know, the 'ample research' on violent media and it's effects on kids consists of some poorly constructed double blind studies involving pre-teen children and did things like conclude 'cartoons increase violent behavior' where they included live action shows like power rangers in the cartoon category. The increased violence was for a short period while the kids were allowed to run rampant without adult supervision, where they demonstrated imitative behavior for the *live action* shows.
Teenagers who play video games are actually less likely to be violent - maybe they're venting their anger/violence in a safe manner? Maybe they're just too unfit as a result to get into much trouble?
I've mowed down tens of thousands in just first person shooters alone. I haven't been tempted to shoot anybody in real life, and we had plenty of people commit horrible shoots before TV even existed, much less video games.
This actually reminds me of a decade old piece of military equipment- think of a ruggedized, 2" thick tablet with a 3" screen. The 'neat' thing with the stylus for this device is that it doesn't actually have to touch the screen to work. Note: It's completely insensitive to fingers and such, you have to use the stylus, but that might be some sort of sensitivity setting.
I think it's closer to 50%, and that's just for the current year's deficit, with no repayment of the accumulated debt principal.
We're in a recession at the moment; some deficit spending is to be expected.
It'd have to pay below-minimum-wage to meet your criteria of not competing with the private sector.
That's more what jobs it does than how much it pays, and it'd only pay 'below minimum' for *very* unskilled work. IE if you're a electrician you'd get lousy pay for an electrician, but still above minimum wage. It can be a bit of a moot point - I'd be getting rid of the minimum wage; the trick being that if you don't pay more than the FJP, you're not going to get a lot of workers unless you're concentrating solely on the high school student crowd.
The ultimate idea is to keep employment up - the more people working, the fewer that need welfare support. Even if it costs more initially, if you can do that it's better for everyone.
As you and the AC mention; the addict has to WANT them to work.
Addiction is a complex social and medical issue. We've made very few concessions on the social side, but we've almost got the medical side completely cleared up.
This can occasionally happen, but there's lots of very helpful programs and people out there. Heck, I'm in the military and know people can self report at any time. Well, up to the point they're ordered to a mandated drug test. Once you self-report, you could pop for the drug test and they can't do jack. Of course, continuation of service depends upon successful completion of the program. Lots of companies have such programs.
The problem is, as you say, dealing with them until they WANT to break the habit. Until then they can be quite the drain, depending on circumstances. That's where jail comes in - drug addicts are actually generally not incarcerated for drug use. They're incarcerated for the associated crimes - theft, burglary, public intoxication(assault and such), etc... At this point possession alone is generally fines and parole.
to see what kind of actual tax rates this would require. I would not be shocked if it resulted in mathematically impossible, let alone economically intolerable ones.
We need about 30% more revenue to balance the budget now, if I remember right. That's painful, but doable. During a boom wages tend to shoot up, and thus revenues. Meanwhile the FJP would be shedding workers and thus expenses.
Under current tax code they can already do that, as the jets, yachts, and such are 'business expenses' and therefore deductible. Though more recent rules require them to account for 'payments in kind', IE if you get a company car for private driving, you have to put in the value of the car* as earned income for the employee.
*At least the portions used for private use. Which includes driving to/from work in most cases. It gets complicated.
Heh, careful, you might get wireheads from Niven's "Known Space". Highest high possible, wireheads will do anything to get voltage to run the system, and since electricity is generally very cheap most quickly starve to death from running the system to the point that they neglect bodily functions. The high is so high they don't notice starvation/dehydration symptoms.
The rest of your questions are good, if unknowable without experimentation. But your first paragraph reminded me so much of Known Space I had to mention it.
This is something that was dropped during the editing - whether it'd be possible to electrochemically stimulate/shut down the center on a temporary basis, a sort of reversable surgery, as an alternative?
This is like treating your kid who bites their nails by having their nails surgically removed.
What if your kid's nail biting habit is so bad that they're biting their fingers off, not just the nails? I state in the post that the results aren't good enough for the side effects, it's just that I'm more one to worry about the effects than the procedure itself. If we had some magic brain bit that we could use to cure addiction without side effects, why not push it?
Given that the butten isn't particulary effective at the 'cure' part, but is highly effective at the 'serious side effect' part, I'm firmly on the 'don't do it' side.
Are you aware of any CBO or whatnot war-gaming of this?
Haven't seen any simulation work.
Would only that, plus tolerable tax increases, conceivably be sufficient to put the feds into a budget surplus
Well, the general idea is that you keep the tax rates the same no matter what; tax increases over current are going to be necessary, but tolerable - look at Europe! After that you try to keep them very stable(inflation adjusted).
The basic idea is that you set pay scales for the 'federal job program'(FJP) at sufficiently below market that they want private work. You'll always have a few(I'd kill the welfare programs in the process of setting up the FJP) working there, but the idea is that when the economy is shedding jobs in a recession the FJP payroll explodes and they start doing all the projects they can manage. When a boom hits and the hiring boom happens, people leave the FJP to work in the private sector and construction slows.
What chokes an economic boom isn't generally 'lack of money'. It's lack of resources - Once you've hired 95% of workers, wages start shooting up like crazy because you have to hire people away from other businesses to get them, and pay them more to keep them from being poached in turn. Great for the worker except when businesses overheat/go crazy and turn said pay increase into an unsustainable situation.
Another example would be the home building glut - so many homes being built that they overstressed the home building supply manufacturing industry and as a result the cost started shooting up. Basically when you start looking at price/supply/demand graphs, there are cliffs in there, and you hit them during booms.
Thus the idea of 'sucking money' out of booms - slow them down, keep them from overheating; that way you can actually increase the duration of the boom, and lessen the bust afterwards.
but in this case it's a patently unfounded, and probably bigoted, opinion.
I've read in multiple places that AA, at least, sucks and has a lower success rate than people trying to quit on their own, much less less professinal help.
But further research shows that while it's not as good as professional help, those who enter the program voluntarily find it to be a good resource.
Yes, let's lobotomize people who are addicted to drugs like this commonly used stimulant:
Yes, I forgot to put 'serious' in there. I'm well aware that most of us are addicted to something. I'm talking more about the people who are so desperate they're willing to suck dicks to get their next fix.
As for the 12 step program, I agree, but the reported success of the Chinese for treating addiction makes me think that if it's included, it can't be the only treatment tried before it's judged as a failure - the overall success rate of non-surgical intervention is too high.
It probably isn't appropriate to bring circumcision into this thread, because brain surgeries like this are a whole world more revolting and horrific.
I think I agree. Circumcision surgery is both less talked about and not nearly invasive enough for a comparison in my head. At least a stomach stapling requires cutting you open, and deals a bit with 'addiction'(to food in this case) and behavior modification(you can no longer eat the same as you did before with a stapled stomach). But I also look at it in the case of other brain surgeries - stopping seizures, for example. So I look at an example of brain surgeries, and and example of behavior modification surgery. It's not perfect, but I spent less than 5 minutes on it.
In many cases stapling involves removing a portion of the stomach - the only way to undo it is to stretch the stomach to allow it to grow back to it's former size.
Or is suicide the option left for whoever you may wish this upon?
The only reason I'd consider having this surgery as 'routine' is if it worked on a high percentage basis, with low side effects that were generally outweighed tremendously by the benefits, and even then I'd restrict it to cases where the addict is basically committing slowish suicide by their continued behavior.
Perhaps the true horror here is the complete lack of empathy I find in comments like yours.
I don't have much empathy at all. Come to me with a problem and I'll try to find a solution, not 'feel for you' about it. It's a family trait.
I am empathic enough that I seriously considered their probable quality of life before/after the surgery, the alternatives, etc... It's just that in my way of thought I have to express it logically.
Because off the extreme nature of the surgery, the only way I'd approve of it is if it's the only effective method found to enable extremely dysfunctional people to live (mostly) functional lives.
Like I said - it would have to have a high success rate, low rate of serious side effects, and at least have 'most' of the people who have it go latter in life 'It might of sucked in many ways; but I'm glad I had it done, because otherwise I'd have been dead by now'.
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If you want rugged, look at a toughbook. Those ARE rugged.
Oh yes, they are rugged. My biggest problem is that the things last forever, thus tend to be extremely obsolete and we're still using them. And while I haven't opened one up, I think one of the things they did is that the MB/components 'float' somehow inside the case. They have some flex.
You're not using it when you have a production run of 10k+. You're using it when you're developing the product, such as doing a limited run of like 100 for more widespread tests.
The custom car industry uses 3d printing to a huge extent. A large chunk of the body of concept cars is generally produced that way. They love it, because even though it's more expensive than injection molding, stamped sheet metal and such, it's still something like 10x cheaper and 10x faster than the old way, and not much more expensive(design costs aside) when producing 1 vs 100.
You use this not when you need high speed injection molding, you use this rather than using some sort of crazy six axis CNC machine starting from a solid block.
I mean, sure, this is a lot more expensive than a cast block, but when you need ONE* it's actually cheaper than casting or the other alternatives.
*And can't repurpose a cast block of whatever type to suit your purpose.
This post reminded me of the auto industry. Which has, for generations, produced lots and lots of 'single off' prototype cars, and even used to do things like mold a car body out of clay in order to get it right. Some of these processes were subtractive and incredibly expensive. Today, it's gotten quite a bit cheaper with modern rapid prototyping tools that allow even complex parts to be produced quickly and automatically. In many cases the parts aren't of the same quality(for better or worse), but are of the correct shape and such.
Designing a car or cell phone is an incredibly complex process, and the cell phone one is only getting more complex. He's not talking about 'custom batches of 100 laptops', he's talking about running a hundred or so copies of your 'newest product' as essentially a quality control check in your prototyping process.
Heck, remember Apple and it's lost prototype phones? Apple must have been doing limited production runs of it's latest 'I' whatever.
One can argue that if Blackberry had produced 100 storms and, even at 10x the cost per, had actually done a customer response survey, they'd have saved millions not producing the dud, perhaps being about to kick it back up to the design team with notes to come out with a better, more successful product. You have to produce prototypes anyways just to verify functionality, this is just producing a lot more.
As Calydor mentioned, at some point you have to chose between freedom and life. My 'off the cuff' standard was a stopped attack every day, which would translate to us being effectively under wartime conditions where even the constitution has provisions to restrict freedoms.
Exactly. Indeed, at this point passengers and crew have found more bombs than the TSA - the terrorists(rather pathetic ones, but still attempted terror attacks) have been successful at bypassing the TSA.
If they stopped a bomb/terrorist attack every day, I might be willing to put up with the erosion. As the actual rate is, at this point, somewhere below a thousandth of that, we could suffer a 9/11 attack something like once every 3 years and STILL be better off without the TSA.
Some practical changes like the reinforced doors make sense. Combined with the attitude changes of the passangers and that threat has already been pretty well remediated.
Making us take off our shoes and go though the x-ray scanners as opposed to a simple metal detector is overkill.
The TSA is practicing risk avoidance, not risk management. The military learned that lesson over 30 years ago. It simply costs too much to avoid ALL risk; you end up not being able to do anything. Thus, you manage the risk - don't take stupid chances, but don't fret over extremely unlikely events, out of proportion of the damage it could cause. The underwear and shoe bombs were too small to have any realistic chances of taking the plane down. Ergo, they could have done as much or more damage in the waiting line at the TSA. More, if they turned it into a proper suicide vest with fragmentation additives. Or at a mall or some such.
Risk management is simple in theory. You look at the risk - the chance that it will happen as a percentage, and the average damage it would cost. If mitigating the risk would cost more than the damage multiplied by the chance it'll happen, then you don't perform that mitigation.
That's the simple type, of course. Some mitigations fix multiple risks, for example. Armored windows that will stop a gunshot also tend to be rather overkill for hurricane/tornado, after all. Vehicle barriers not only stop vehicle bombs, they stop drunk drivers. Etc...
The reasonings I've heard include:
1. Women tend to select jobs heavier in benefits than men.
2. Women tend to cost more in benefits than men. Healthcare, maternity leave, etc.. One nasty: Sexual Harassment lawsuits
This is despite controlling for things like women tending to work fewer hours - less overtime, more leave, etc... That generally leaves them more junior in the workforce.
Of course, there are selected exemptions - try being a male elementary school teacher or dental tech. Male dentists earn more money than female ones, but female dental techs(The ones that do x-rays and teeth cleanings and such) are considerably more employable and earn more money than males in the same field.
I'd argue that group work, as a therapy/corrective measure, is probably a good thing for your son. Properly done, of course. I'm another one who finds working in a group exhausting. Probably the only reason I wasn't diagnosed with 'mild autism' is that they didn't diagnose that when I was a child for anybody. If it wasn't so severe that you couldn't make it through normal school, it didn't exist. At one point a teacher wanted me on Ritalin, but my parents correctly figured out that I had the opposite problem - I had no problems concentrating, I just didn't want to concentrate on her/her teaching. I'd read a standard paperback book front to back in an average of an hour. The whole textbook, which I'd read within the first week for 'interesting' ones like science and history, generally took about 4.
But yes, more physical activities, especially for boys, wouldn't be a bad thing. Exercise helps calm down hyper kids as well or better than drugs, and reduces obesity problems at the same time.
It's one explanation, but it's only one.
My explanation: Women tend to be more even. You get fewer geniuses, but fewer total morons as well. Look at lions - male lions are pretty much 'all or nothing'. They have to risk it all in order to mate and have offsprings. Females just need to gather enough food to feed themselves and their kits. Male lions, when presented with evidence of MULTIPLE male lions in their territory, will still jump in to attack. Female lions, presented with evidence of multiple female lions in the same territory, will go get her sisters.
Now, the customer of that game is forced to buy, at full price and royalties to author, another full licensed version, instead of buying the recycled one, from which only the reseller, not the author, profits.
How much are they giving per game? Because if it works like some gun-buybacks, you'll get people bringing in old copies of Daikatana and using the resulting certificates to buy the latest call of duty...
I've seen it multiple times - a gunnie will collect 'scrap metal' guns worth maybe $20 for the metal in them, then go to Chicago for a gun buyback and get $100 gift certificates for them. Most of the guns don't even work, or would be unsafe to fire if they did. They then proceed to buy a nice NEW gun for their collection.
As the AC mentioned, Starcraft isn't a first/third person shooter - it's not a 'trainer' for shooting people like you could say for games like counterstrike.
On the topic of violent video games in general, I remember the graph of youth violence up against major console releases - youth violence has experienced a drop after each release. As far as I know, the 'ample research' on violent media and it's effects on kids consists of some poorly constructed double blind studies involving pre-teen children and did things like conclude 'cartoons increase violent behavior' where they included live action shows like power rangers in the cartoon category. The increased violence was for a short period while the kids were allowed to run rampant without adult supervision, where they demonstrated imitative behavior for the *live action* shows.
Teenagers who play video games are actually less likely to be violent - maybe they're venting their anger/violence in a safe manner? Maybe they're just too unfit as a result to get into much trouble?
I've mowed down tens of thousands in just first person shooters alone. I haven't been tempted to shoot anybody in real life, and we had plenty of people commit horrible shoots before TV even existed, much less video games.
The styluses I've seen don't have any battery in them, so however they work they aren't active in that sense.
This actually reminds me of a decade old piece of military equipment- think of a ruggedized, 2" thick tablet with a 3" screen. The 'neat' thing with the stylus for this device is that it doesn't actually have to touch the screen to work. Note: It's completely insensitive to fingers and such, you have to use the stylus, but that might be some sort of sensitivity setting.
Plenty of prior art, I think.
I think it's closer to 50%, and that's just for the current year's deficit, with no repayment of the accumulated debt principal.
We're in a recession at the moment; some deficit spending is to be expected.
It'd have to pay below-minimum-wage to meet your criteria of not competing with the private sector.
That's more what jobs it does than how much it pays, and it'd only pay 'below minimum' for *very* unskilled work. IE if you're a electrician you'd get lousy pay for an electrician, but still above minimum wage. It can be a bit of a moot point - I'd be getting rid of the minimum wage; the trick being that if you don't pay more than the FJP, you're not going to get a lot of workers unless you're concentrating solely on the high school student crowd.
The ultimate idea is to keep employment up - the more people working, the fewer that need welfare support. Even if it costs more initially, if you can do that it's better for everyone.
We CAN cure addiction.
As you and the AC mention; the addict has to WANT them to work.
Addiction is a complex social and medical issue. We've made very few concessions on the social side, but we've almost got the medical side completely cleared up.
This can occasionally happen, but there's lots of very helpful programs and people out there. Heck, I'm in the military and know people can self report at any time. Well, up to the point they're ordered to a mandated drug test. Once you self-report, you could pop for the drug test and they can't do jack. Of course, continuation of service depends upon successful completion of the program. Lots of companies have such programs.
The problem is, as you say, dealing with them until they WANT to break the habit. Until then they can be quite the drain, depending on circumstances. That's where jail comes in - drug addicts are actually generally not incarcerated for drug use. They're incarcerated for the associated crimes - theft, burglary, public intoxication(assault and such), etc... At this point possession alone is generally fines and parole.
to see what kind of actual tax rates this would require. I would not be shocked if it resulted in mathematically impossible, let alone economically intolerable ones.
We need about 30% more revenue to balance the budget now, if I remember right. That's painful, but doable. During a boom wages tend to shoot up, and thus revenues. Meanwhile the FJP would be shedding workers and thus expenses.
That sounds like work-for-welfare.
Anything wrong with that?
Under current tax code they can already do that, as the jets, yachts, and such are 'business expenses' and therefore deductible. Though more recent rules require them to account for 'payments in kind', IE if you get a company car for private driving, you have to put in the value of the car* as earned income for the employee.
*At least the portions used for private use. Which includes driving to/from work in most cases. It gets complicated.
what would happen if instead they stimulated it?
Heh, careful, you might get wireheads from Niven's "Known Space". Highest high possible, wireheads will do anything to get voltage to run the system, and since electricity is generally very cheap most quickly starve to death from running the system to the point that they neglect bodily functions. The high is so high they don't notice starvation/dehydration symptoms.
The rest of your questions are good, if unknowable without experimentation. But your first paragraph reminded me so much of Known Space I had to mention it.
because deep brain stimulation has gotten better
This is something that was dropped during the editing - whether it'd be possible to electrochemically stimulate/shut down the center on a temporary basis, a sort of reversable surgery, as an alternative?
This is like treating your kid who bites their nails by having their nails surgically removed.
What if your kid's nail biting habit is so bad that they're biting their fingers off, not just the nails? I state in the post that the results aren't good enough for the side effects, it's just that I'm more one to worry about the effects than the procedure itself. If we had some magic brain bit that we could use to cure addiction without side effects, why not push it?
Given that the butten isn't particulary effective at the 'cure' part, but is highly effective at the 'serious side effect' part, I'm firmly on the 'don't do it' side.
Are you aware of any CBO or whatnot war-gaming of this?
Haven't seen any simulation work.
Would only that, plus tolerable tax increases, conceivably be sufficient to put the feds into a budget surplus
Well, the general idea is that you keep the tax rates the same no matter what; tax increases over current are going to be necessary, but tolerable - look at Europe! After that you try to keep them very stable(inflation adjusted).
The basic idea is that you set pay scales for the 'federal job program'(FJP) at sufficiently below market that they want private work. You'll always have a few(I'd kill the welfare programs in the process of setting up the FJP) working there, but the idea is that when the economy is shedding jobs in a recession the FJP payroll explodes and they start doing all the projects they can manage. When a boom hits and the hiring boom happens, people leave the FJP to work in the private sector and construction slows.
What chokes an economic boom isn't generally 'lack of money'. It's lack of resources - Once you've hired 95% of workers, wages start shooting up like crazy because you have to hire people away from other businesses to get them, and pay them more to keep them from being poached in turn. Great for the worker except when businesses overheat/go crazy and turn said pay increase into an unsustainable situation.
Another example would be the home building glut - so many homes being built that they overstressed the home building supply manufacturing industry and as a result the cost started shooting up. Basically when you start looking at price/supply/demand graphs, there are cliffs in there, and you hit them during booms.
Thus the idea of 'sucking money' out of booms - slow them down, keep them from overheating; that way you can actually increase the duration of the boom, and lessen the bust afterwards.
but in this case it's a patently unfounded, and probably bigoted, opinion.
I've read in multiple places that AA, at least, sucks and has a lower success rate than people trying to quit on their own, much less less professinal help.
But further research shows that while it's not as good as professional help, those who enter the program voluntarily find it to be a good resource.
Yes, let's lobotomize people who are addicted to drugs like this commonly used stimulant:
Yes, I forgot to put 'serious' in there. I'm well aware that most of us are addicted to something. I'm talking more about the people who are so desperate they're willing to suck dicks to get their next fix.
As for the 12 step program, I agree, but the reported success of the Chinese for treating addiction makes me think that if it's included, it can't be the only treatment tried before it's judged as a failure - the overall success rate of non-surgical intervention is too high.
It probably isn't appropriate to bring circumcision into this thread, because brain surgeries like this are a whole world more revolting and horrific.
I think I agree. Circumcision surgery is both less talked about and not nearly invasive enough for a comparison in my head. At least a stomach stapling requires cutting you open, and deals a bit with 'addiction'(to food in this case) and behavior modification(you can no longer eat the same as you did before with a stapled stomach). But I also look at it in the case of other brain surgeries - stopping seizures, for example. So I look at an example of brain surgeries, and and example of behavior modification surgery. It's not perfect, but I spent less than 5 minutes on it.
In many cases stapling involves removing a portion of the stomach - the only way to undo it is to stretch the stomach to allow it to grow back to it's former size.
Or is suicide the option left for whoever you may wish this upon?
The only reason I'd consider having this surgery as 'routine' is if it worked on a high percentage basis, with low side effects that were generally outweighed tremendously by the benefits, and even then I'd restrict it to cases where the addict is basically committing slowish suicide by their continued behavior.
Perhaps the true horror here is the complete lack of empathy I find in comments like yours.
I don't have much empathy at all. Come to me with a problem and I'll try to find a solution, not 'feel for you' about it. It's a family trait.
I am empathic enough that I seriously considered their probable quality of life before/after the surgery, the alternatives, etc... It's just that in my way of thought I have to express it logically.
Because off the extreme nature of the surgery, the only way I'd approve of it is if it's the only effective method found to enable extremely dysfunctional people to live (mostly) functional lives.
Like I said - it would have to have a high success rate, low rate of serious side effects, and at least have 'most' of the people who have it go latter in life 'It might of sucked in many ways; but I'm glad I had it done, because otherwise I'd have been dead by now'.
Given that it's going on in a military hospital with the approval of the state for a limited research run, I'm for attributing it to China.