Well capitalism doesn't work in practice either. If your definition of "in practice" is complete and total adherence to a particular ideology. If you mean are their modified versions of ideological capitalism, socialism, and communism working in the world, I'd have to say yes. And all are working quite well. The top ten economies actually only include one capitalist state. So if anything it's capitalism that doesn't work.
"I've generally tried to keep a low profile online"
Step up your online presence. Be helpful on message boards. Have a twitter and facebook account. Generally have an online persona so that the only thing people find in a search isn't a reference to you and crime. If your only online presence is negative that's bad. If there's lots of positive and noise it's probably not that bad.
Yes, but obviously they are stupid because they haven't learned from all competitors to iTunes thus far. The only real competitor to iTunes in music is Amazon. Why? Because Amazon's music store is completely open.
These publishers could take out iTunes tomorrow. Become a central repository where anyone can publish works for free in a format that works on all platforms. No reason for consumers to use iTunes or Amazon. One of the main weaknesses in Amazon's store is that you can't give away works for free. Add that. Make it a central hub for all content and it will succeed. Make it a closed system full of arbitrary content like Hulu, and it will never amount to much.
Our new device is really cool! You can watch video, listen to mp3s, and surf the web. But please don't do any of those things. Our network isn't designed for it. If our device changes your life like we advertise we'll need to charge you a lot of money to keep using our network. Because people who use our network as advertised our bandwidth hogs. Ok? Sound good? Great!
I live in Texas. So we've already tried pretty much all of this:
Dropping the progressive taxation system completely and abandoning using it as a social engineering tool in favor of a simple flat tax with a reasonable exclusion for income under a certain amount and the elimination of the IRS as we know it I would call major. Texas gets all revenue through sales and property taxes (no state income tax). Property taxes essentially become the "reasonable exclusion" since obviously people below a certain income level don't own property. It has extreme problems during recessions when government revenue is needed most (since even though people might be earning money they tend not to spend it), and property values go down during a recession. This is extremely hard on state governments. They compensate with a rainy day fund, but it's certainly imperfect. It would not be a panacea. And it certainly would not bring in the revenue we need without extreme increases in the tax rate. Just to keep the Texas government going (which provides almost no services) requires a 6% base tax rate. And that's just to keep a state consistently in the bottom 3 in rankings of any given metric.
No, it would kill businesses, especially small businesses, and jobs. You seem to think somehow they wouldn't pay for the "healthcare" plans now in Congress. I hear people say this, but I don't really understand how it's true. Companies like Microsoft and Dell pay no federal taxes at all, but they pay large sums in health care premiums. It seems like business would benefit immensely. How exactly do you see companies paying for the health plans in Congress? I see a government health plan (which we're not getting) helping startups immensely since they'll be able to pull great employees away from big corporations without having to offer great (and expensive) health benefits. It's the main reason I and many people I know don't start startups. My company currently pays 100% of my health benefit and 50% of my dependants. I can't compete with that.
Tort reform and allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines would greatly reduce costs of the care itself We have tort reform in Texas. And some of the most expensive insurance premiums. That's a red herring. I agree with you on buying health insurance across state lines. And that's why I support a government health plan that competes with private insurers. I feel that larger insured groups and more competition is definitely the second best solution. If we're going to let the free market solve this, we've got to make it as free as possible. Alternatively trust busting and a decrease in insurance regulation might be another good free market solution. There are two few insurers in each market and the barrier to entry is to high.
Let me give you an example of why I don't think a "reset" will work. In Texas the one thing that pretty much every Republican likes are roads. But currently the state can't figure out how to pay for their roads anymore because they're at a deadlock. Politicians are tarred and feathered if they even suggest raising taxes (even raising the gas tax to match inflation is political dynamite). The problem is a lack of reality. Their constituents have been sold on the idea that you can keep lowering taxes, you can perhaps even eliminate taxes entirely, and somehow get all the things you want. That there's some magical amount of money that if it were just freed to go to the right places it could fix the system. But Texas puts pretty much no money into social programs that doesn't come from the federal government. The state is run by a tea party supporter, and up until recently was completely controlled by a political machine that subscribed to this libertarian small government, no new spending, belief. It's just led to underfunded schools, a department of transportation that is horribly behind on funding the projects that it has promised, and a government that is so idealogical it prevents cities from raising and spending money even if th
I really can't speak to the tea party rhetoric. I think it's the outcome of a Republican party that for years has focused on social issues without bothering to talk about financial ones.
There have been a few piddling and mostly temporary tax cuts but nothing I'd call major. Nixon started with a top marginal rate of 77%. Obama started with a top marginal rate of 35%. I find that major.
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be seeing a new party unless it's simply the Republican party organized under some other title. I'd personally prefer something Pro-business and pro-social programs (which actually can be the same thing, the number of companies that would become more competitive if they didn't have their health obligations is huge), plus responsible enough to raise taxes to take in the income we need.
Why not lower tax rates so there is more actual revenue to the treasury instead of raising them and killing jobs and business? Because that's all we've been doing. We've had major tax decreases for years. If you were correct, the economy would be roaring right now. It's a great short-term trick to jump start the economy, but at some point you have to take in what you need to function. Republicans have been "removing inefficiency" and cutting taxes for decades now. At what point do we say - "Fantastic, we've probably got 95% of what we're going to get in cuts, and it's time to just make column A match column B?" We can't cut entitlement programs, because Americans won't save. And we don't want them to, because if Americans saved enough to cover their entitlements privately it would take so much money out of the economy that it would crash, requiring the recreation of entitlement programs.
As to cutting the military, it only constitutes roughly 16% of the budget. That's because the majority of the military's budget comes outside the budget so people don't balk at the cost. A nice accounting trick. But overall military spending is far more than 16% of the budget. If you look at the budget there are only 3 things we really spend money on Health and Human Services, Treasury Dept, and Department of Defense. All 3 of those are pretty close to the same as each other and dwarf everything else. For FY09 I'm seeing about $700B for DoD and Treasury and $800B for HHS.
Perhaps what we really need are targeted tax hikes. If you make over $200k per year, you get a 50% tax rate. You can lower that by actually investing in business. You can lower that by proving you're using it to actually hire people. You can lower if by buying 10 economy cars rather than 1 ferrari. If you're just squireling it away, we'll go ahead and take it. That way we could actual prove that trickle-down was working rather than just taking it as an article of faith.
People keep saying that. And yet when we taxed the super rich at 60-70% we had investment. And the economy worked fine. During this experiment in trickle down we've seen massive exportation of jobs and hording of money instead of investment. You're taking it on faith that if we raise taxes it will make things worse. There isn't any proof to back that up.
In any case. The one thing we agree on is that we need responsible leaders, and we're going to have to raise taxes across the board to pay for what we spend. Either that or just completely get rid of the military to service the debt.
That's just because we don't tax properly. You're going to go into debt if you don't take in enough money. Reinstate the capital gains and something more sensible on the super-rich, like 60-70% and we'll be back down to a managable number in no time.
What are you talking about? What violent crimes have a more lenient sentence? I'm not aware of any violent crimes that have a maximum sentences of less than 3 years.
People have been spouting that line to the point that we lock people up for life for being in the car when a violent crime occurs. That's a bit more than 3 years for not actually actively doing anything violent.
Seriously, get a laser and a wireless printserver. Everyone in your house can print using the same printer.
Then use your local drug store's online tools for printing pictures, and your local office supply store's online tools to print color documents. The only way to be economical with an inkjet is to buy a new one anytime the cartridge runs out of ink, and the only way to be environmental is to pay a couple of bucks a page.
One could make the same argument against layoffs unless absolutely necessary. In a down market while you might increase your stock price, you're essentially shrinking your market by laying off employees. If you take a winner take all approach you might lose in the long run. Walmart might have won the retail war, but now their rich top level employees have to buy cheap chinese crap too because there are very few companies left that build anything well.
There are many things about business that are seen as the best way, but that are completely counter-productive. Unfortunately university business departments don't seem to draw a lot of thinkers.
"If money/funding is the most influential thing for a good education, America would have the best grade school system in the world."
We're not the top spenders and there's a problem with looking at averages. The most money per student is spent at those top notch suburban schools. School Districts have also figured out ways to get money from parents for capital improvements, arts education, supplies, etc. without them getting notched into the "per student" average. The suburb next to me spends below average on students according to state and national funding. They have a parent funded foundation, however, that pays for an extra teacher's salary per grade level that keeps class sizes lower than they would be with only state funding. That foundation has also built a planetarium, aquarium, etc. etc. And they're one of the best school districts in the nation.
So you can say that we would have the best education system, and I agree. Let's fund all schools at the same level that top notch suburban schools are ACTUALLY funded and see what happens.
We already have a very politically segmented web. What happens once Bing becomes the search engine for Fox News watchers and Google for everything else? Are we going to end up with Bing creating a conservative, closed loop view of the world?
Those are high profile, but use kind of drops off after that. Sharply.
It's great if you want to stream DRM content and don't want to use flash. Otherwise the java and flash plugins are more widely installed for the stuff that silverlight's trying to do. They're late to the party and except for DRM they don't really have a compelling story for why someone would want to use their technology.
It's not quite that simple. In developed societies sure. But if the kids are not going to do 15 years of schooling and are going to enter the workforce earlier then they can become active earners for the family and thus make the cost of having more children less expensive.
Oh yes. You're right. President Obama's concern would be the spotted owl. Just like Nixon didn't launch them because he was worried about their effect on magnetic media.
I'd like to agree, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Large families are almost always a safety net. The initial ramp up is expensive, but once you have many children they can help contribute to the household income and they can take care of you in your old age.
The 1950s which is when the United States started seeing this trend still had little in the way of equality for women or reproductive choice. It did, however, have a "keeping up with the jones" mentality and part of that was having fewer kids as a way to maximize income. Once women were no longer pregnant for 20 years straight they started having time to ask questions about their reproductive choices.
I do think having reproductive choice and economic prosperity is the key to quick generational changes. You see this in immigrants to the United States. You often see immigrants who succeed financially going from large to small families in a single generation.
I don't think if you gave every Indian woman complete control over her body and easy access to free birth control that we'd see a massive population shift, due to the lack of economic choice.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was responding to how to solve the problem of overpopulation. Which is in no way the same problem as global climate change.
Although it might be. As the rest of the world becomes more prosperous there should become more demand for resources, and we might not be able to continue our buy-and-chuck lifestyle simply because our world doesn't have the resources to support it.
The best way to fix overpopulation is what we're doing. Encourage economic prosperity which in turn reduces the number of new children born. This method is already working in Europe and has always worked well in the United States.
The fewer people living in poverty, the less of an economic engine having lots of kids will provide and the problem will become underpopulation.
Um... posting things on slashdot about exploits? The many eyes doesn't mean all security bugs will be fixed before software ships. It means that over time the open nature will mean that the bugs can be found and closed easier.
Slashdot Mirror
Well capitalism doesn't work in practice either. If your definition of "in practice" is complete and total adherence to a particular ideology. If you mean are their modified versions of ideological capitalism, socialism, and communism working in the world, I'd have to say yes. And all are working quite well. The top ten economies actually only include one capitalist state. So if anything it's capitalism that doesn't work.
No and again it's not about the fact that amazon is bad. It's how to be better than amazon so you're the place people go to get their ebooks.
This might be your problem:
"I've generally tried to keep a low profile online"
Step up your online presence. Be helpful on message boards. Have a twitter and facebook account. Generally have an online persona so that the only thing people find in a search isn't a reference to you and crime. If your only online presence is negative that's bad. If there's lots of positive and noise it's probably not that bad.
Yes, but Amazon dictates free. The cheapest you or I could sell a book for is $0.99.
Yes, but obviously they are stupid because they haven't learned from all competitors to iTunes thus far. The only real competitor to iTunes in music is Amazon. Why? Because Amazon's music store is completely open.
These publishers could take out iTunes tomorrow. Become a central repository where anyone can publish works for free in a format that works on all platforms. No reason for consumers to use iTunes or Amazon. One of the main weaknesses in Amazon's store is that you can't give away works for free. Add that. Make it a central hub for all content and it will succeed. Make it a closed system full of arbitrary content like Hulu, and it will never amount to much.
Our new device is really cool! You can watch video, listen to mp3s, and surf the web. But please don't do any of those things. Our network isn't designed for it. If our device changes your life like we advertise we'll need to charge you a lot of money to keep using our network. Because people who use our network as advertised our bandwidth hogs. Ok? Sound good? Great!
I live in Texas. So we've already tried pretty much all of this:
Dropping the progressive taxation system completely and abandoning using it as a social engineering tool in favor of a simple flat tax with a reasonable exclusion for income under a certain amount and the elimination of the IRS as we know it I would call major.
Texas gets all revenue through sales and property taxes (no state income tax). Property taxes essentially become the "reasonable exclusion" since obviously people below a certain income level don't own property. It has extreme problems during recessions when government revenue is needed most (since even though people might be earning money they tend not to spend it), and property values go down during a recession. This is extremely hard on state governments. They compensate with a rainy day fund, but it's certainly imperfect. It would not be a panacea. And it certainly would not bring in the revenue we need without extreme increases in the tax rate. Just to keep the Texas government going (which provides almost no services) requires a 6% base tax rate. And that's just to keep a state consistently in the bottom 3 in rankings of any given metric.
No, it would kill businesses, especially small businesses, and jobs. You seem to think somehow they wouldn't pay for the "healthcare" plans now in Congress.
I hear people say this, but I don't really understand how it's true. Companies like Microsoft and Dell pay no federal taxes at all, but they pay large sums in health care premiums. It seems like business would benefit immensely. How exactly do you see companies paying for the health plans in Congress? I see a government health plan (which we're not getting) helping startups immensely since they'll be able to pull great employees away from big corporations without having to offer great (and expensive) health benefits. It's the main reason I and many people I know don't start startups. My company currently pays 100% of my health benefit and 50% of my dependants. I can't compete with that.
Tort reform and allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines would greatly reduce costs of the care itself
We have tort reform in Texas. And some of the most expensive insurance premiums. That's a red herring. I agree with you on buying health insurance across state lines. And that's why I support a government health plan that competes with private insurers. I feel that larger insured groups and more competition is definitely the second best solution. If we're going to let the free market solve this, we've got to make it as free as possible. Alternatively trust busting and a decrease in insurance regulation might be another good free market solution. There are two few insurers in each market and the barrier to entry is to high.
Let me give you an example of why I don't think a "reset" will work. In Texas the one thing that pretty much every Republican likes are roads. But currently the state can't figure out how to pay for their roads anymore because they're at a deadlock. Politicians are tarred and feathered if they even suggest raising taxes (even raising the gas tax to match inflation is political dynamite). The problem is a lack of reality. Their constituents have been sold on the idea that you can keep lowering taxes, you can perhaps even eliminate taxes entirely, and somehow get all the things you want. That there's some magical amount of money that if it were just freed to go to the right places it could fix the system. But Texas puts pretty much no money into social programs that doesn't come from the federal government. The state is run by a tea party supporter, and up until recently was completely controlled by a political machine that subscribed to this libertarian small government, no new spending, belief. It's just led to underfunded schools, a department of transportation that is horribly behind on funding the projects that it has promised, and a government that is so idealogical it prevents cities from raising and spending money even if th
I really can't speak to the tea party rhetoric. I think it's the outcome of a Republican party that for years has focused on social issues without bothering to talk about financial ones.
There have been a few piddling and mostly temporary tax cuts but nothing I'd call major.
Nixon started with a top marginal rate of 77%. Obama started with a top marginal rate of 35%. I find that major.
Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be seeing a new party unless it's simply the Republican party organized under some other title. I'd personally prefer something Pro-business and pro-social programs (which actually can be the same thing, the number of companies that would become more competitive if they didn't have their health obligations is huge), plus responsible enough to raise taxes to take in the income we need.
Why not lower tax rates so there is more actual revenue to the treasury instead of raising them and killing jobs and business?
Because that's all we've been doing. We've had major tax decreases for years. If you were correct, the economy would be roaring right now. It's a great short-term trick to jump start the economy, but at some point you have to take in what you need to function. Republicans have been "removing inefficiency" and cutting taxes for decades now. At what point do we say - "Fantastic, we've probably got 95% of what we're going to get in cuts, and it's time to just make column A match column B?" We can't cut entitlement programs, because Americans won't save. And we don't want them to, because if Americans saved enough to cover their entitlements privately it would take so much money out of the economy that it would crash, requiring the recreation of entitlement programs.
As to cutting the military, it only constitutes roughly 16% of the budget.
That's because the majority of the military's budget comes outside the budget so people don't balk at the cost. A nice accounting trick. But overall military spending is far more than 16% of the budget. If you look at the budget there are only 3 things we really spend money on Health and Human Services, Treasury Dept, and Department of Defense. All 3 of those are pretty close to the same as each other and dwarf everything else. For FY09 I'm seeing about $700B for DoD and Treasury and $800B for HHS.
Perhaps what we really need are targeted tax hikes. If you make over $200k per year, you get a 50% tax rate. You can lower that by actually investing in business. You can lower that by proving you're using it to actually hire people. You can lower if by buying 10 economy cars rather than 1 ferrari. If you're just squireling it away, we'll go ahead and take it. That way we could actual prove that trickle-down was working rather than just taking it as an article of faith.
People keep saying that. And yet when we taxed the super rich at 60-70% we had investment. And the economy worked fine. During this experiment in trickle down we've seen massive exportation of jobs and hording of money instead of investment. You're taking it on faith that if we raise taxes it will make things worse. There isn't any proof to back that up.
In any case. The one thing we agree on is that we need responsible leaders, and we're going to have to raise taxes across the board to pay for what we spend. Either that or just completely get rid of the military to service the debt.
That's just because we don't tax properly. You're going to go into debt if you don't take in enough money. Reinstate the capital gains and something more sensible on the super-rich, like 60-70% and we'll be back down to a managable number in no time.
What are you talking about? What violent crimes have a more lenient sentence? I'm not aware of any violent crimes that have a maximum sentences of less than 3 years.
People have been spouting that line to the point that we lock people up for life for being in the car when a violent crime occurs. That's a bit more than 3 years for not actually actively doing anything violent.
Seriously, get a laser and a wireless printserver. Everyone in your house can print using the same printer.
Then use your local drug store's online tools for printing pictures, and your local office supply store's online tools to print color documents. The only way to be economical with an inkjet is to buy a new one anytime the cartridge runs out of ink, and the only way to be environmental is to pay a couple of bucks a page.
One could make the same argument against layoffs unless absolutely necessary. In a down market while you might increase your stock price, you're essentially shrinking your market by laying off employees. If you take a winner take all approach you might lose in the long run. Walmart might have won the retail war, but now their rich top level employees have to buy cheap chinese crap too because there are very few companies left that build anything well.
There are many things about business that are seen as the best way, but that are completely counter-productive. Unfortunately university business departments don't seem to draw a lot of thinkers.
"If money/funding is the most influential thing for a good education, America would have the best grade school system in the world."
We're not the top spenders and there's a problem with looking at averages. The most money per student is spent at those top notch suburban schools. School Districts have also figured out ways to get money from parents for capital improvements, arts education, supplies, etc. without them getting notched into the "per student" average. The suburb next to me spends below average on students according to state and national funding. They have a parent funded foundation, however, that pays for an extra teacher's salary per grade level that keeps class sizes lower than they would be with only state funding. That foundation has also built a planetarium, aquarium, etc. etc. And they're one of the best school districts in the nation.
So you can say that we would have the best education system, and I agree. Let's fund all schools at the same level that top notch suburban schools are ACTUALLY funded and see what happens.
We compete... see there's a 5 cent difference between their plan and ours...
We already have a very politically segmented web. What happens once Bing becomes the search engine for Fox News watchers and Google for everything else? Are we going to end up with Bing creating a conservative, closed loop view of the world?
Those are high profile, but use kind of drops off after that. Sharply.
It's great if you want to stream DRM content and don't want to use flash. Otherwise the java and flash plugins are more widely installed for the stuff that silverlight's trying to do. They're late to the party and except for DRM they don't really have a compelling story for why someone would want to use their technology.
It's not quite that simple. In developed societies sure. But if the kids are not going to do 15 years of schooling and are going to enter the workforce earlier then they can become active earners for the family and thus make the cost of having more children less expensive.
I'm sorry. I can no longer read articles that have 'gate' in the title unless they're referring to actual gates attached with hinges to a fence.
Oh yes. You're right. President Obama's concern would be the spotted owl. Just like Nixon didn't launch them because he was worried about their effect on magnetic media.
You sir, are an ass.
I'd like to agree, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Large families are almost always a safety net. The initial ramp up is expensive, but once you have many children they can help contribute to the household income and they can take care of you in your old age.
The 1950s which is when the United States started seeing this trend still had little in the way of equality for women or reproductive choice. It did, however, have a "keeping up with the jones" mentality and part of that was having fewer kids as a way to maximize income. Once women were no longer pregnant for 20 years straight they started having time to ask questions about their reproductive choices.
I do think having reproductive choice and economic prosperity is the key to quick generational changes. You see this in immigrants to the United States. You often see immigrants who succeed financially going from large to small families in a single generation.
I don't think if you gave every Indian woman complete control over her body and easy access to free birth control that we'd see a massive population shift, due to the lack of economic choice.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was responding to how to solve the problem of overpopulation. Which is in no way the same problem as global climate change.
Although it might be. As the rest of the world becomes more prosperous there should become more demand for resources, and we might not be able to continue our buy-and-chuck lifestyle simply because our world doesn't have the resources to support it.
The best way to fix overpopulation is what we're doing. Encourage economic prosperity which in turn reduces the number of new children born. This method is already working in Europe and has always worked well in the United States.
The fewer people living in poverty, the less of an economic engine having lots of kids will provide and the problem will become underpopulation.
Um... posting things on slashdot about exploits? The many eyes doesn't mean all security bugs will be fixed before software ships. It means that over time the open nature will mean that the bugs can be found and closed easier.