That being said, most 'flat tax' proposals 'fix' that by having a relatively huge standard deduction - oftentimes 'refundable', IE if you don't make more than that money you're effectively paying 0%.
Make double the deduction, and your effective tax rate is still half that of the actual rate, making a flat tax+standard deduction actually very progressive, especially once you've eliminated all the special deductions, incentives, and such that let the 0.01%'ers pay less than the 1%ers.
I think the problem here is that people don't have a good picture of what that 1% really are - they're generally picturing the 1%'ers of the 1%'ers.
The 1% includes athletes, doctors, professors, engineers, people at the top of their field who are very much still working for it.
You knock that down to the 0.01%, and now you're looking at the CEOs with golden parachutes, the winners in the speculation fund manager market, the inherited wealth crowd, etc...
Warning: I'm a 'moderate' libertarian. I'm probably voting for Johnson this year, because, as somebody else put it, I'd rather vote for the tic-tac than chose between a giant douche and a shit sandwich. And as a comedian put it, I don't really care which is which.
Consumption taxes are probably the worst type of tax if you're trying to be progressive, even if you include some kind of "necessity" exemption
Who says he's trying to be progressive? Hell, who says that our current tax system is actually progressive? You do realize that due to the way it's structured it's frequently outright regressive, right?
Who defines "basic necessity"? Is the amount based on prices in rural AR or San Francisco?
Keep in mind that when it comes to something like this, we're talking proposals that can get changed, so figure that everything is 'probably', 'generally', and all that. You'd have a committee of some sort defining basic necessity. Generally I'd look into the work done by the census bureau, military(basic allowances for Subsistence and Housing), HUD, etc...
The amount would probably be based on a national average or median cost of living. Yes, if you're that poor and unemployed, it's time to consider moving out of San Francisco and letting somebody who can afford it move it. Hell, I have theories about the way current welfare is structured being a cliff preventing people from moving to where the jobs are.
"Prebates" are a terrible idea, just as are any fixed nominal money amount for, say, standard deductions or personal exemptions or UBI or "Fair Tax" style necessity exemptions.
You're going to have to explain this more, as I quite like the idea. I mean, sure, you mention that it'd be fiat, but so isn't the current tax system. What you are and are not allowed to deduct is based on a phone book of rules, some credits are refundable, most are not, etc...
The idea behind a UBI is that by keeping things simple, we actually make people, at least on overwhelming average, better off than under the over-complicated but theoretically 'fairer' system because the costs of the current system are so much higher that the average payment could be increased under a UBI due to lower transaction costs, and that it would actually be more 'fair' on average because the current system is so complicated that it frequently screws people because they can't work the system to get the maximum benefits they're entitled to, but those that can are seen as 'welfare queens', living middle class and better lives without working(officially).
Anyways, it's been shown that money, IE cash, is generally the most effective form of aid to able people. Unless they have a mental problem, while they're not perfect at it they're still better at allocating money to meet their needs than the government or even private charities.
but is instead simply fiat and so will never be without adverse wealth shifting effects.
do you want the book on why the current situation is worse?
In both cases shooters were stopped or shot (second one committed suicide after being stopped) within minutes - by police officers.
As the saying goes - when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Nor did the security of the location, which is NOT a gun-free zone, as gun-free zones don't come with armed guards around them and at various locations across the "zone" - deter either of the shooters.
Common parlance for 'gun-free' zones are that civilians aren't allowed to carry there, but police are. For example, the zone past the security checkpoints in airports are enforced gun free zones, but there's still plenty of armed police officers patrolling there.
Given that you're not allowed to carry on the fort unless you're assigned to a security detail and are actually on duty, it's a gun free zone.
I've worked on a number of USAF bases with multiple security squadrons. Roughly 9 units. There were still lots of places where it'd take a while for them to get to, though if the incident was serious enough the eventual response would be 'overwhelming' to say the least.
The point is - neither do civilians with guns stop mass shooters, nor does increased security deter them.
The problem is that even on a military base, armed security isn't 'everywhere', and lacking metal detectors and such, getting a gun onto base is easy - if a felony. After all, they're intent on committing murder, insane, and thus not worried about felony concealed carry and the 0.01% chance of getting caught doing it once.
In fact, there are more cases of unarmed civilians (21, out of 160 incidents, 2000-2013) stopping mass shooters, than there are cases of armed civilians doing that (5 - one of them a security guard at that church).
You say it doesn't happen, then post numbers where it does. Which is it? The reason most are stopped by unarmed people is that most don't actually carry, and like I said way back - a large proportion of spree killers target 'gun free zones' where those that do carry aren't.
Uh, the FBI release is a regular thing, they're just generally a year or so behind on the data because it takes so long to collect, verify, collate, and summarize.
And yes, you're more likely to be beaten to death than to be killed in a spree killing OR with a rifle.
Most spree killings are in gun free zones. Most gun killings/murders aren't. Like I said before, it depends on your definition of a spree killer. By some definitions, a dude going in to kill his boss and as many co-workers(possibly ex as he just got fired) as possible isn't actually a spree killer because his killings are actually targeted - if numerous.
Is the man who kills his wife and a half a dozen of his wife's family at the family business actually a spree killer? He's got the numbers, but the motivation is different.
As such, spree killers have shown a marked preference for gun free zones.
Also, the worst mass killing in a nightclub simply used gasoline to kill 87.
I'd argue that there's a fair number of cases where the usage of firearms probably saved lives - because when terrorists go for arson or explosives they frequently kill more people.
Worst school attack, fatality wise? Explosives Worst night club attack? Arson etc...
On average, approximately zero are saved by good guys who aren't cops.
Well, yeah, that's because of a number of factors: 1. Most gun deaths involve people who know each other, with drug and domestic violence being the top two. 2. The most visible case where a CCW would be handy is a spree killing, yet spree killings are actually really rare. Seriously, you're more likely to be punched or kicked to death than killed in a spree killing. 3. Something around 80-90% of spree killings(depending on your definition) happen in 'gun free' zones where you can't legally CCW anyways.
So, get rid of or at least seriously reform the war on drugs and get rid of gun free zones and you might see shooters stopping more spree killings. That being said, spree killings stopped by a civilian or police shooter early don't make the news anywhere near as hard.
You hear about the Uber driver who went on a spree killing rampage. You don't hear about the one who stopped one(and ended up fired).
First, you have to be careful to keep enough backups to avoid the backups getting encrypted and still have an unencrypted copy close enough to the event.
Second, I support not paying for the same reason I don't want to pay kidnappers - it just encourages them to keep doing it.
Third, I hope they make it a student project to track down those that received the ransom..
Getting back on topic. It's very cheap today on a per gigabyte basis. However, most universities will have so much that the raw bill ends up pretty expensive.
Microsoft traded that for a single button with the instruction "Enable Content". There is no more "disable macros" option anymore. Anyone who isn't sure what they should do will often click the one and only option Microsoft provides: run the macros. There should be a button to dismiss the message without running macros.
I agree, but as a security guy in a government position, one thing I learned is that if you disable *everything* by default and require them to manually click to enable, such that they end up doing so every day for legitimate work tasks, they get used to do so and will click even when they shouldn't. Same deal with barraging them with warning popups full of legalese. They stop reading pop-ups.
As such, and while I understand it might be more complicated to implement, my suggest would be to sandbox everything. We're dealing with legacy code here, so here's what I'd do: 1. Identify problematic commands and structure. Anything that modifies files other than itself, anything that modifies the macro itself, system or application settings, etc... Anything that activates the email or print functionality.
So an application that only changes itself, like 99% of the stuff my users use, no warning, it's not a problem. For the rest, well, code signature. It pops up who made the code, that they have a valid code signing certificate signed by X organization, and they get to decide.
So, to use an example I saw, an application that analyzes how changing gasoline prices will affect your budget that pops up a warning that it want to modify system files(danger danger!) might actually trip the security minded part of their brain, because it shouldn't need to.
I don't know how shit cars are made in the USA but over here in the UK they're expected to do at least 100,000 miles without any major faults, every manufacturer has a body corrosion warranty of at least a decade and even Kia offer a 100,000 mile warranty.
1. Vehicles in the USA today are regularly expected to last 100k unless abused. 2. Corrosion wise, how fond of salt are your road departments? Some states in the USA don't use salt, and cars last a lot longer in them than those that use the stuff heavily.
I was kind of shocked at how short the Tesla warranty is, my only supposition is that as a new car company they couldn't afford to offer a longer one without the data to support it. The other companies have decades of experience that they can use to estimate the costs of longer warranty periods. Tesla just doesn't have that yet. Give them another ~10 years, and they'll have it. I say 10 years because while 15k miles is the annual average for cars, so they should have most of the first year's models hitting 100k at around 7 years, the extra 3 provides additional data - the first few years of fixed production, a good selection of heavily driven cars, as well as 'babied' cars. Then they can consider extending it to a 8-10 year, 100k mile warranty.
Compared to the age of the Universe, that window was a very tiny blip.
And even then, I remember reading a report that if you combined our most sensitive radio with our loudest transmitter in history - the detection distance wouldn't even reach Alpha Centauri.
That means that an alien race would probably have to be both much more interested in listening than we are, and probably more advanced. Certainly willing to put resources into something like a solar system sized interferometer radio array.
If they wanted to transmit loudly enough for us to hear them via the SETI project, dedicating a gigawatt level power plant to the transmitter is a good start, and that assumes that they have some idea that our star, specifically, is ready to listen now.
It's a bit like 3rd party debt collectors - they go for the 'easy money'. The point isn't to be correct, the point is to go after those who can be intimidated to give them a few thousand dollars.
The problem with conventional foam style earplugs is that they muffle hearing when loud stuff isn't happening. So you have to remove them, and hopefully stick them in when a firefight starts.
The idea with actives like this would be that you could stick them in when you're getting ready to leave the FOB, and remove them when you return.
The expense might be providing more DBs of protection, last an extended period on a battery, or even that they're rated to not emit radiation that would allow others to track you if they know what to look for.
It's probably also 'program cost', which includes testing, selection, customization, training, batteries, etc...
Interesting strawman you setup here. Hint: I wasn't saying that the stuff I mentioned was good, merely human nature. Here's the deal: I do think long term. However, as a result I see all the short term decisions made by nearly everybody, and have become cynical.
Hell, just today I was proposing a plan that would take approximately 2000 years to reach fruition.
If you own the *whole* market, 1B phones to 7B people would be a median replacement rate of about 7 years.
Which seems very possible, especially if you actually have a replacement schedule of 3-5 years to cover small kids and people who still don't get them.
But yeah, go from replacing your phone every other year to 3-5, as well as having market saturation among people who can afford them, and you're going to see slow sales growth.
Relevant to portable devices? Yes. How vulnerable? Complicated.
You see, with an EMP it's typically a single pulse. You don't actually need a loop. The emp will 'shove' electrons one way or another, creating a voltage spike over [i]any[/i] wire of sufficient length along the wave of travel of the event. IE a line running perpendicular to the event would end up being a circle but not experience any significant voltage(0 for a theoretical superconductor of zero width), but one running from the epicenter out would experience maximum voltage.
What happens is that once the event passes the electrons reverse, and create a rush of current the opposite way. So if your diodes happened to be facing the 'right' way to simply pass the current, they might smoke on the 'backstroke' as the voltage overwhelms them.
Anyways, back to portable devices - while long runs like power lines are indeed a major concern, part of the 'problem' is that devices hooked up to the grid are designed for fairly dirty power(which an EMP spike is a form of), and hundreds of volts. Parts in many small portable devices are designed for 1-3 Volts. The problem is that even as our devices shrink, shrinking the runs that create the voltage, so hasn't their tolerance for said spikes - so the vulnerability remains, because today a run of mere centimeters can be enough to create a damaging amount of voltage/current on the board, or even in a chip itself.
For something like a cellphone, the antenna is also a concern.
. So bankrupting the losing side won't help the party at all regarding legal fees. Everything one spends on lawyers above the official fees can not be reclaimed afaik.
Reasonable, and if 'loser pays' is implemented in the USA it should be based on 'reasonable fees' as well, IE average lawyer pay and time. So you can't just hire the most expensive law firm or have them work 5x the expected hours on a case in order to win it, then expect to recover every cent.
I actually don't see why you couldn't have a system where both parties present their cases with non-lawyers and a judge decides the legal implications or informs a jury of the legal issues. I understand this is the case for small claims, but why not for larger cases too?
As you mention, we have that for small claims. The argument is that large cases are where it does end up being complicated enough and high enough value to have the higher monetary cost of legal representation being standard.
Another problem is that when you sue a business, it only makes sense for the business to employ a lawyer to represent them - best return on the dollar, even though lawyers are expensive. So you need a lawyer to oppose their lawyer.
One could make the argument that the level of money small claims court can hear should be increased, but I think that we can both agree that two companies fighting it out in court over a multi-million claim is going to involved lawyers.
Perhaps we could work something like: loser pays the min of the plaintiff or defendant legal fees to the winner. So in the worst case, you double your legal fees. I think that would also stop crooks like Zavodnik without bankrupting guys like Costello.
As the AC noted, You'd need to have a system that handles people who are representing themselves, because they're often the worst about vexatious litigation.
As such, I'd say that in the case of self-representation, you have two figures: First: The person representing themselves have to track their hours, or at least estimate it. This is multiplied by a standard multiplier - maybe $20/hour for non-lawyers, $100/hour for lawyers. Second: The judge estimates how much lawyer time the person representing themselves would need if they had gotten a lawyer, and multiplies that by a standard lawyer hourly fee schedule.
The self-represented is liable for the higher of the two, and can only recover the lower.
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Flat taxes are extremely regressive
Weakness is power! Misery is happiness! etc...
That being said, most 'flat tax' proposals 'fix' that by having a relatively huge standard deduction - oftentimes 'refundable', IE if you don't make more than that money you're effectively paying 0%.
Make double the deduction, and your effective tax rate is still half that of the actual rate, making a flat tax+standard deduction actually very progressive, especially once you've eliminated all the special deductions, incentives, and such that let the 0.01%'ers pay less than the 1%ers.
I think the problem here is that people don't have a good picture of what that 1% really are - they're generally picturing the 1%'ers of the 1%'ers.
The 1% includes athletes, doctors, professors, engineers, people at the top of their field who are very much still working for it.
You knock that down to the 0.01%, and now you're looking at the CEOs with golden parachutes, the winners in the speculation fund manager market, the inherited wealth crowd, etc...
There's no "Fair Tax" style exemptions - that's why I support it.
Are you talking about the fairtax.org proposal? Because I don't remember them having any exemptions short of the prebate.
Warning: I'm a 'moderate' libertarian. I'm probably voting for Johnson this year, because, as somebody else put it, I'd rather vote for the tic-tac than chose between a giant douche and a shit sandwich. And as a comedian put it, I don't really care which is which.
Consumption taxes are probably the worst type of tax if you're trying to be progressive, even if you include some kind of "necessity" exemption
Who says he's trying to be progressive? Hell, who says that our current tax system is actually progressive? You do realize that due to the way it's structured it's frequently outright regressive, right?
Who defines "basic necessity"? Is the amount based on prices in rural AR or San Francisco?
Keep in mind that when it comes to something like this, we're talking proposals that can get changed, so figure that everything is 'probably', 'generally', and all that. You'd have a committee of some sort defining basic necessity. Generally I'd look into the work done by the census bureau, military(basic allowances for Subsistence and Housing), HUD, etc...
The amount would probably be based on a national average or median cost of living. Yes, if you're that poor and unemployed, it's time to consider moving out of San Francisco and letting somebody who can afford it move it. Hell, I have theories about the way current welfare is structured being a cliff preventing people from moving to where the jobs are.
"Prebates" are a terrible idea, just as are any fixed nominal money amount for, say, standard deductions or personal exemptions or UBI or "Fair Tax" style necessity exemptions.
You're going to have to explain this more, as I quite like the idea. I mean, sure, you mention that it'd be fiat, but so isn't the current tax system. What you are and are not allowed to deduct is based on a phone book of rules, some credits are refundable, most are not, etc...
The idea behind a UBI is that by keeping things simple, we actually make people, at least on overwhelming average, better off than under the over-complicated but theoretically 'fairer' system because the costs of the current system are so much higher that the average payment could be increased under a UBI due to lower transaction costs, and that it would actually be more 'fair' on average because the current system is so complicated that it frequently screws people because they can't work the system to get the maximum benefits they're entitled to, but those that can are seen as 'welfare queens', living middle class and better lives without working(officially).
Anyways, it's been shown that money, IE cash, is generally the most effective form of aid to able people. Unless they have a mental problem, while they're not perfect at it they're still better at allocating money to meet their needs than the government or even private charities.
but is instead simply fiat and so will never be without adverse wealth shifting effects.
do you want the book on why the current situation is worse?
In both cases shooters were stopped or shot (second one committed suicide after being stopped) within minutes - by police officers.
As the saying goes - when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Nor did the security of the location, which is NOT a gun-free zone, as gun-free zones don't come with armed guards around them and at various locations across the "zone" - deter either of the shooters.
Common parlance for 'gun-free' zones are that civilians aren't allowed to carry there, but police are. For example, the zone past the security checkpoints in airports are enforced gun free zones, but there's still plenty of armed police officers patrolling there.
Given that you're not allowed to carry on the fort unless you're assigned to a security detail and are actually on duty, it's a gun free zone.
I've worked on a number of USAF bases with multiple security squadrons. Roughly 9 units. There were still lots of places where it'd take a while for them to get to, though if the incident was serious enough the eventual response would be 'overwhelming' to say the least.
The point is - neither do civilians with guns stop mass shooters, nor does increased security deter them.
The problem is that even on a military base, armed security isn't 'everywhere', and lacking metal detectors and such, getting a gun onto base is easy - if a felony. After all, they're intent on committing murder, insane, and thus not worried about felony concealed carry and the 0.01% chance of getting caught doing it once.
In fact, there are more cases of unarmed civilians (21, out of 160 incidents, 2000-2013) stopping mass shooters, than there are cases of armed civilians doing that (5 - one of them a security guard at that church).
You say it doesn't happen, then post numbers where it does. Which is it? The reason most are stopped by unarmed people is that most don't actually carry, and like I said way back - a large proportion of spree killers target 'gun free zones' where those that do carry aren't.
Uh, the FBI release is a regular thing, they're just generally a year or so behind on the data because it takes so long to collect, verify, collate, and summarize.
And yes, you're more likely to be beaten to death than to be killed in a spree killing OR with a rifle.
Most spree killings are in gun free zones. Most gun killings/murders aren't. Like I said before, it depends on your definition of a spree killer. By some definitions, a dude going in to kill his boss and as many co-workers(possibly ex as he just got fired) as possible isn't actually a spree killer because his killings are actually targeted - if numerous.
Is the man who kills his wife and a half a dozen of his wife's family at the family business actually a spree killer? He's got the numbers, but the motivation is different.
As such, spree killers have shown a marked preference for gun free zones.
Also, the worst mass killing in a nightclub simply used gasoline to kill 87.
I'd argue that there's a fair number of cases where the usage of firearms probably saved lives - because when terrorists go for arson or explosives they frequently kill more people.
Worst school attack, fatality wise? Explosives
Worst night club attack? Arson
etc...
On average, approximately zero are saved by good guys who aren't cops.
Well, yeah, that's because of a number of factors:
1. Most gun deaths involve people who know each other, with drug and domestic violence being the top two.
2. The most visible case where a CCW would be handy is a spree killing, yet spree killings are actually really rare. Seriously, you're more likely to be punched or kicked to death than killed in a spree killing.
3. Something around 80-90% of spree killings(depending on your definition) happen in 'gun free' zones where you can't legally CCW anyways.
So, get rid of or at least seriously reform the war on drugs and get rid of gun free zones and you might see shooters stopping more spree killings. That being said, spree killings stopped by a civilian or police shooter early don't make the news anywhere near as hard.
You hear about the Uber driver who went on a spree killing rampage. You don't hear about the one who stopped one(and ended up fired).
First, you have to be careful to keep enough backups to avoid the backups getting encrypted and still have an unencrypted copy close enough to the event.
Second, I support not paying for the same reason I don't want to pay kidnappers - it just encourages them to keep doing it.
Third, I hope they make it a student project to track down those that received the ransom..
Getting back on topic. It's very cheap today on a per gigabyte basis. However, most universities will have so much that the raw bill ends up pretty expensive.
Microsoft traded that for a single button with the instruction "Enable Content". There is no more "disable macros" option anymore. Anyone who isn't sure what they should do will often click the one and only option Microsoft provides: run the macros. There should be a button to dismiss the message without running macros.
I agree, but as a security guy in a government position, one thing I learned is that if you disable *everything* by default and require them to manually click to enable, such that they end up doing so every day for legitimate work tasks, they get used to do so and will click even when they shouldn't. Same deal with barraging them with warning popups full of legalese. They stop reading pop-ups.
As such, and while I understand it might be more complicated to implement, my suggest would be to sandbox everything. We're dealing with legacy code here, so here's what I'd do:
1. Identify problematic commands and structure. Anything that modifies files other than itself, anything that modifies the macro itself, system or application settings, etc... Anything that activates the email or print functionality.
So an application that only changes itself, like 99% of the stuff my users use, no warning, it's not a problem.
For the rest, well, code signature. It pops up who made the code, that they have a valid code signing certificate signed by X organization, and they get to decide.
So, to use an example I saw, an application that analyzes how changing gasoline prices will affect your budget that pops up a warning that it want to modify system files(danger danger!) might actually trip the security minded part of their brain, because it shouldn't need to.
Fewer warnings = less likely to ignore them.
I don't know how shit cars are made in the USA but over here in the UK they're expected to do at least 100,000 miles without any major faults, every manufacturer has a body corrosion warranty of at least a decade and even Kia offer a 100,000 mile warranty.
1. Vehicles in the USA today are regularly expected to last 100k unless abused.
2. Corrosion wise, how fond of salt are your road departments? Some states in the USA don't use salt, and cars last a lot longer in them than those that use the stuff heavily.
I was kind of shocked at how short the Tesla warranty is, my only supposition is that as a new car company they couldn't afford to offer a longer one without the data to support it. The other companies have decades of experience that they can use to estimate the costs of longer warranty periods. Tesla just doesn't have that yet. Give them another ~10 years, and they'll have it. I say 10 years because while 15k miles is the annual average for cars, so they should have most of the first year's models hitting 100k at around 7 years, the extra 3 provides additional data - the first few years of fixed production, a good selection of heavily driven cars, as well as 'babied' cars. Then they can consider extending it to a 8-10 year, 100k mile warranty.
Meh, I'm a 103 year old Afghani woman according to my facebook.
Compared to the age of the Universe, that window was a very tiny blip.
And even then, I remember reading a report that if you combined our most sensitive radio with our loudest transmitter in history - the detection distance wouldn't even reach Alpha Centauri.
That means that an alien race would probably have to be both much more interested in listening than we are, and probably more advanced. Certainly willing to put resources into something like a solar system sized interferometer radio array.
If they wanted to transmit loudly enough for us to hear them via the SETI project, dedicating a gigawatt level power plant to the transmitter is a good start, and that assumes that they have some idea that our star, specifically, is ready to listen now.
It's a bit like 3rd party debt collectors - they go for the 'easy money'. The point isn't to be correct, the point is to go after those who can be intimidated to give them a few thousand dollars.
The problem with conventional foam style earplugs is that they muffle hearing when loud stuff isn't happening. So you have to remove them, and hopefully stick them in when a firefight starts.
The idea with actives like this would be that you could stick them in when you're getting ready to leave the FOB, and remove them when you return.
The expense might be providing more DBs of protection, last an extended period on a battery, or even that they're rated to not emit radiation that would allow others to track you if they know what to look for.
It's probably also 'program cost', which includes testing, selection, customization, training, batteries, etc...
You may feel that way, but not everyone does.
Interesting strawman you setup here. Hint: I wasn't saying that the stuff I mentioned was good, merely human nature. Here's the deal: I do think long term. However, as a result I see all the short term decisions made by nearly everybody, and have become cynical.
Hell, just today I was proposing a plan that would take approximately 2000 years to reach fruition.
If you own the *whole* market, 1B phones to 7B people would be a median replacement rate of about 7 years.
Which seems very possible, especially if you actually have a replacement schedule of 3-5 years to cover small kids and people who still don't get them.
But yeah, go from replacing your phone every other year to 3-5, as well as having market saturation among people who can afford them, and you're going to see slow sales growth.
Relevant to portable devices? Yes. How vulnerable? Complicated.
You see, with an EMP it's typically a single pulse. You don't actually need a loop. The emp will 'shove' electrons one way or another, creating a voltage spike over [i]any[/i] wire of sufficient length along the wave of travel of the event. IE a line running perpendicular to the event would end up being a circle but not experience any significant voltage(0 for a theoretical superconductor of zero width), but one running from the epicenter out would experience maximum voltage.
What happens is that once the event passes the electrons reverse, and create a rush of current the opposite way. So if your diodes happened to be facing the 'right' way to simply pass the current, they might smoke on the 'backstroke' as the voltage overwhelms them.
Anyways, back to portable devices - while long runs like power lines are indeed a major concern, part of the 'problem' is that devices hooked up to the grid are designed for fairly dirty power(which an EMP spike is a form of), and hundreds of volts. Parts in many small portable devices are designed for 1-3 Volts. The problem is that even as our devices shrink, shrinking the runs that create the voltage, so hasn't their tolerance for said spikes - so the vulnerability remains, because today a run of mere centimeters can be enough to create a damaging amount of voltage/current on the board, or even in a chip itself.
For something like a cellphone, the antenna is also a concern.
. So bankrupting the losing side won't help the party at all regarding legal fees. Everything one spends on lawyers above the official fees can not be reclaimed afaik.
Reasonable, and if 'loser pays' is implemented in the USA it should be based on 'reasonable fees' as well, IE average lawyer pay and time. So you can't just hire the most expensive law firm or have them work 5x the expected hours on a case in order to win it, then expect to recover every cent.
What's preventing the rich dude from paying a lawyer $5k over that $500 case?
That being said, in the USA for $500 you wouldn't generally have lawyers at all, it'd all be small claims.
No, they wouldn't be as resistant on average, because yes, the biggest factor is size.
That being said, EMP resistance gets 'complicated', and it's easier to stick a small chip inside a faraday cage than a room sized monster.
I actually don't see why you couldn't have a system where both parties present their cases with non-lawyers and a judge decides the legal implications or informs a jury of the legal issues. I understand this is the case for small claims, but why not for larger cases too?
As you mention, we have that for small claims. The argument is that large cases are where it does end up being complicated enough and high enough value to have the higher monetary cost of legal representation being standard.
Another problem is that when you sue a business, it only makes sense for the business to employ a lawyer to represent them - best return on the dollar, even though lawyers are expensive. So you need a lawyer to oppose their lawyer.
One could make the argument that the level of money small claims court can hear should be increased, but I think that we can both agree that two companies fighting it out in court over a multi-million claim is going to involved lawyers.
Sending him a 1099 for stuff like that? I'd have to think about it, but it sounds evil. Especially if they still lose.
That being said, they can deduct legal expenses, so it ends up being a wash.
Perhaps we could work something like: loser pays the min of the plaintiff or defendant legal fees to the winner. So in the worst case, you double your legal fees. I think that would also stop crooks like Zavodnik without bankrupting guys like Costello.
As the AC noted, You'd need to have a system that handles people who are representing themselves, because they're often the worst about vexatious litigation.
As such, I'd say that in the case of self-representation, you have two figures:
First: The person representing themselves have to track their hours, or at least estimate it. This is multiplied by a standard multiplier - maybe $20/hour for non-lawyers, $100/hour for lawyers.
Second: The judge estimates how much lawyer time the person representing themselves would need if they had gotten a lawyer, and multiplies that by a standard lawyer hourly fee schedule.
The self-represented is liable for the higher of the two, and can only recover the lower.