Since you brought up Friedman, I think his take on the health care system in the US and how to fix it is pertinent:
Conclusion: Medical Savings Accounts and Beyond
The high cost and inequitable character of our medical care system are the direct result of our steady movement toward reliance on third-party payment. A cure requires reversing course, reprivatizing medical care by eliminating most third-party payment, and restoring the role of insurance to providing protection against major medical catastrophes.
When all medical care is control and rationed by government, it may just stagnate. Then again, there will probably plenty of billionaires walking around wanting to spend money on medical advances for themselves and their families. We may even still call them Senators, Congressmen, CEOs, board members, cabinet members, and bankers.
The more I think about it, the more that seems to be a likely outcome. People think there's a gap right now between the insured and uninsured, just wait. I could very easily see the very wealthy going completely "off the grid" and hiring their own personal doctor. If I'm a doc, if things get bad with the government running the show I'd be very tempted to shop my wares to the folks at a country club. Charge a retainer plus expenses, COD.
I remember seeing Flash on a smart phone/Palm device like...I just realized no shit it was 10 years ago at a Macromedia User Conference. Either the company doesn't really want it as bad as you're suggesting or they just aren't capable of getting it done. Maybe the problems are technical - maybe they lack the business acumen, I don't know. Personally, as a general rule, I think Adobe seems to love cool new stuff, but generally has poor follow-through & implementation.
Note, I don't really care much on this one as it doesn't really impact my workflow, but I'm generally against changes that remove user choice altogether. Flexibility is good.
But it's not really that clear. It's reasonable to argue that this way gives the user more choice, not less. It will no longer allow application developers to be able to override the user's settings. While your idea of giving the option to honor or not honor the applications claims is a middle ground and allows both, I would think it would add another layer of complexity without getting much in return. If you say, "should OS X allow the App to ignore my settings" you're sort of giving them the choice to give up their right to choose.
All I know is, I wouldn't want to be a college student or poor person (is that redundant?) trying to buy a $1500 beater right now:(
I dunno. While it's going to take a nice chunk of beaters out of the market, an artificial increase in new cars will probably mean quality used cars will drop in price. Which should slide all prices down. Well except for new cars. Dealers not being stupid, they will raise - or more accurately not discount as much - their prices on new cars because the people buying them are working on a timeframe and are getting $3500-$4500 from the feds.
Sure. But do the math. We manufacture less cars. And it's a safe bet each year we put off buying a new car, manufacturing will require less energy & raw materials.
Yay! Thank you for making this point. Though when you say, even the more for-out wacky environmental groups get this, there needs to be some clarification. Ones that are really serious & able to look at the big picture of consumption do. But a huge chunk of the middle, & those extreme ones who put it on like a coat, don't/aren't able to do anything close to look at it this way. "Oil...Bad." "Hybrid...Good."
Why have almost all the conservationists been replaced by environmentalists? Impending ice age...global warming...global climate change. I don't give a rats ass. Don't use more than you need and don't dump shit into the air, sea or land.
Which ironically enough, seems to be bailing out foreign car companies at a higher clip than the US ones.
Of course I have no data to support this - only the same rough estimates at best or anecdotal stories. This of course brings up yet another huge problem with this crappy program - no accountability. They get to say, "wow, look what a great success it is, it's out of money already!" But they have absolutely no idea about the people taking advantage of the program. Are they mostly rich/upper middle who would have bought a vehicle anyway? Was their clunker actually being used much? Some of the people I've heard, it's a kid's car & we're talking about the family's 3rd or 4th vehicle. Mom or pop get a new luxury car and $4500 off and junior now gets a '97 Buick instead of a '94. Again, I have no idea how many of the buyers fit this model - but neither does the government.
The USPTO has already stated that they won't be doing real prior art checks themselves. And why would they? They're self-funded, and each patent they grant is more money for them.
Why not just charge the fee for application only? Whether the patent is granted or rejected, the USPTO gets the same money. Or hell, tack on a rejection fee on top of it. Hell, let's just give the patent inspector a bonus for rejecting a patent when he/she can find clear prior art.
But if he's actually hidden the money and is lying/has lied to the courts, then why wouldn't he just claim insolvency and not declare the assets there either?
I'll admit to playing a little devil's advocate here. My preferred solution (which I've posted a little futher down) is to place no limits on contributions, but to limit spending of said contributions severely.
That said, limiting campaign contributions to candidates who actually represent you - who serve your district and whom you can vote for - just strikes me as entirely logical. You think you should be able to contribute to a candidate from a far away district. We limit a person's ability to vote for someone out of district. Why shouldn't you be able to vote for him/her as well? In what way is a right to contribute to a candidate different than a right to vote for said candidate? Again, I would concede an exception for Senators, but for state and local offices it makes a great deal of sense. And considering House districts are smaller and the House of Representatives almost by definition, are there to represent the views of their district, why should they listen to or be influenced at all by anyone outside their district?
Did it not occur to you that the lion's share of the budget is most likely for *collecting and assembling the information*? There are a huge number of entities involved here, including all 50 states and thousands of individual counties, each with their own data handing mechanisms.
All of which are bound by open records laws, no? And most certainly, reporting back to daddy on the actual expenditures of his money damn well better be part of the deal, right? If they ain't saying, "accepting this money means you report back to us every X days/months with info on X, Y, and Z. If reporting requirements aren't a condition of the funding in the first place, then the whole premise of transparency is worthless from the very start.
Only persons who can vote should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Can corporations vote? Nope - so no donations from them.
If you can't vote for a particular candidate, then you can't give them money. Seems awfully reasonable to me. Where this would have the most dramatic effect would be on state and local elections. I can see an argument, that while Congress critters are elected to represent a district, the clearly make laws that apply nationally. However, tell me why an individual, corporation or organization from say Georgia, should be able to contribute to the campaign of the governor of Minnesota. Or those from another county or even city.
Donating, even if it is labor or vocalized support should not be removed from anyone who is subject to the political processes, laws, and environment under each, even if they aren't allowed to vote themselves.
The I take it you're against taking away the voting rights from felons and non-citizens (both illegal and those legally here on visas, etc)? I ask this question because I don't see how your argument applies to one but not the other. If the determining factor is that you're subject to the laws & processes, then whether it's the influence from contributions or a vote you should have a voice. Of course we can take it to the next level - and at some point, be silly about it. You used the word environment - Canadians and Mexicans near the border very much are impacted by us environmental laws. To wit, Iraqi and Afghanistani people may well have their lives influenced more by US laws and politics than a guy living in a cabin in the woods somewhere.
1) Corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation is a person entitled to the same rights as a natural person, or some subset of those rights (e.g. due process, free speech, etc.)
Agreed, that's led to awful things. Until people can get all the rights of corporations - namely live forever - corporations shouldn't get the rights of people
2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech
Much as we hate the results, money IS speech in this context. The idea of giving money to support a candidate whose positions you agree with is absolutely in line with an individual's right express himself. In fact, I think any limitation on an individual's right to contribute is against the intent. BUT...there is a logical and reasonable solution to this. There is no absolute and limitless right of a candidate to spend said contributions. In this way, we can severely limit the spending of the contributions and effectively reduce the influence of money without the need to take away free speech rights of the individuals. I'm just not sure why this problem is so difficult.
Because the power companies introduce an externality when they emit pollutants. Cap and trade is intended to monetize this externality in order to bring it under market control.
Except that if 85% of the credits are given away to friends, and only 15% actually auctioned, you haven't really monetized anything, now have you?
hy not just continue to raise the fuel taxes to generate revenue? That would serve to continue to reduce fuel consumption which would be a good thing.
Well the funny thing is that this isn't about being green and reducing fossil fuel consumption. For that, a gas tax does work much better. No, this is about ensuring revenue for the federal highway fund and for the states' road funds continues to come in even as fuel economies go up and alternative fuel vehicles become more popular.
It's about not losing the revenue. But it's also about not putting their necks on the line to vote for raising the gas taxes. By and large voters, though uninformed or outright stupid on many fronts, can see pretty clearly when a guy running for re-election voted to raise their gas taxes.
Right now we don't need anything to discourage moving toward electric / hybrid / high mileage vehicles. The environmental benefits and economic benefits of removing the need for foreign oil would far outweigh whatever revenue the government would receive.
I can't say that I disagree with your sentiment in the first part. But let me assure you, the government is extremely concerned with the revenue they receive from the gas tax. Any reduction in revenues means they have less money to spend. Oh wait, never mind. The deficit spending of the current and previous President and Congresses shows spending is not limited in any way what-so-ever to revenues.
Raising the gas tax is far cheaper, impossible to turn into Big Brother, and localizes the the state and community pretty well, on average.
Yes, but...Raising the gas tax is far cheaper, impossible to turn into Big Brother, and localizes the the state and community pretty well, on average.
If the federal government really cared about doing this the cheapest/most efficient way...well that world would look nothing like this one. They like the idea of having more big brother power - that's not a bug, that's a feature.
But most of all, there's the transparency/responsibility. They don't want to actually go on record as voting for a raise in the gas taxes - that's one thing voters can consider very easily. Of course in my state, our legislature figured out a workaround for this as well. They passed a law indexing the state gas tax so it goes up automatically so they wouldn't have to go on record voting for it except just the once.
I had a car (an old sunbird circa 1986) that had a funny odometer. Sometimes the odometer would roll backwards. And when it would, it would go about 5 times as fast as it would go forward. It would probably happen once every month or two & usually do it for about a day.
You're most certainly right. But in one case, after a semester and $100k you're left without a solution. In the other, after a few years and $50 million (when all is really said & done) you're left without a solution. We already paid $28 million to the first failed attempt at this project. You'll have to forgive me, but as a Federal and Wisconsin state taxpayer, former UW student and current UW donor, I think I'll rather let the prof & kids take a whack at it.
Sure. But it's also very obvious which of those two groups the decision makers of the project were. This is the second go-round. The first resulted in $28 million to Lawson Software and a complete, from scratch do-over. Originally they said planning for this second try would cost $1.6 million. Later that became $8 million and now planning alone is going to cost over $12 million. I have no problem with a bunch of Slashdot posters not having respect for the difficulty of the task. I do have a major problem with elected and appointed officials, and people who are getting paid to manage this (whose salary comes from my taxes) not having the first clue about what the hell they're doing.
Well the first company working on the project, Lawson Software, was fired. Of course in this case, I wish I could be fired like they were. They got $28 million and obviously didn't actually deliver much of anything - which is why this second go-round (also late and grossly over budget) is a completely from scratch do-over.
Get some perspective man! You seem to think that just because it is a small portion of the University's funding it is insignificant. It's nearly HALF A BILLION DOLLARS of that comes from me and my fellow Wisconsin taxpayers' money.
Just blame it on some reporter, huh? It was an embarrassment because tens of millions of tax dollars were spent with absolutely nothing productive to show for it. Bringing this sort of waste to light is exactly what real journalists should be doing. This ain't hounding some C-list celebrity every hour of the day, this is bringing to light horrible management. It's too much to ask for accountability - for those responsible to booted - because not enough people/voters actually care. But at least those of use who do, have been infromed.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3459466.html
The more I think about it, the more that seems to be a likely outcome. People think there's a gap right now between the insured and uninsured, just wait. I could very easily see the very wealthy going completely "off the grid" and hiring their own personal doctor. If I'm a doc, if things get bad with the government running the show I'd be very tempted to shop my wares to the folks at a country club. Charge a retainer plus expenses, COD.
I remember seeing Flash on a smart phone/Palm device like...I just realized no shit it was 10 years ago at a Macromedia User Conference. Either the company doesn't really want it as bad as you're suggesting or they just aren't capable of getting it done. Maybe the problems are technical - maybe they lack the business acumen, I don't know. Personally, as a general rule, I think Adobe seems to love cool new stuff, but generally has poor follow-through & implementation.
Note, I don't really care much on this one as it doesn't really impact my workflow, but I'm generally against changes that remove user choice altogether. Flexibility is good.
But it's not really that clear. It's reasonable to argue that this way gives the user more choice, not less. It will no longer allow application developers to be able to override the user's settings. While your idea of giving the option to honor or not honor the applications claims is a middle ground and allows both, I would think it would add another layer of complexity without getting much in return. If you say, "should OS X allow the App to ignore my settings" you're sort of giving them the choice to give up their right to choose.
All I know is, I wouldn't want to be a college student or poor person (is that redundant?) trying to buy a $1500 beater right now :(
I dunno. While it's going to take a nice chunk of beaters out of the market, an artificial increase in new cars will probably mean quality used cars will drop in price. Which should slide all prices down. Well except for new cars. Dealers not being stupid, they will raise - or more accurately not discount as much - their prices on new cars because the people buying them are working on a timeframe and are getting $3500-$4500 from the feds.
Sure. But do the math. We manufacture less cars. And it's a safe bet each year we put off buying a new car, manufacturing will require less energy & raw materials.
Yay! Thank you for making this point. Though when you say, even the more for-out wacky environmental groups get this, there needs to be some clarification. Ones that are really serious & able to look at the big picture of consumption do. But a huge chunk of the middle, & those extreme ones who put it on like a coat, don't/aren't able to do anything close to look at it this way. "Oil...Bad." "Hybrid...Good."
Why have almost all the conservationists been replaced by environmentalists? Impending ice age...global warming...global climate change. I don't give a rats ass. Don't use more than you need and don't dump shit into the air, sea or land.
Which ironically enough, seems to be bailing out foreign car companies at a higher clip than the US ones.
Of course I have no data to support this - only the same rough estimates at best or anecdotal stories. This of course brings up yet another huge problem with this crappy program - no accountability. They get to say, "wow, look what a great success it is, it's out of money already!" But they have absolutely no idea about the people taking advantage of the program. Are they mostly rich/upper middle who would have bought a vehicle anyway? Was their clunker actually being used much? Some of the people I've heard, it's a kid's car & we're talking about the family's 3rd or 4th vehicle. Mom or pop get a new luxury car and $4500 off and junior now gets a '97 Buick instead of a '94. Again, I have no idea how many of the buyers fit this model - but neither does the government.
The USPTO has already stated that they won't be doing real prior art checks themselves. And why would they? They're self-funded, and each patent they grant is more money for them.
Why not just charge the fee for application only? Whether the patent is granted or rejected, the USPTO gets the same money. Or hell, tack on a rejection fee on top of it. Hell, let's just give the patent inspector a bonus for rejecting a patent when he/she can find clear prior art.
But if he's actually hidden the money and is lying/has lied to the courts, then why wouldn't he just claim insolvency and not declare the assets there either?
I'll admit to playing a little devil's advocate here. My preferred solution (which I've posted a little futher down) is to place no limits on contributions, but to limit spending of said contributions severely.
That said, limiting campaign contributions to candidates who actually represent you - who serve your district and whom you can vote for - just strikes me as entirely logical. You think you should be able to contribute to a candidate from a far away district. We limit a person's ability to vote for someone out of district. Why shouldn't you be able to vote for him/her as well? In what way is a right to contribute to a candidate different than a right to vote for said candidate? Again, I would concede an exception for Senators, but for state and local offices it makes a great deal of sense. And considering House districts are smaller and the House of Representatives almost by definition, are there to represent the views of their district, why should they listen to or be influenced at all by anyone outside their district?
Did it not occur to you that the lion's share of the budget is most likely for *collecting and assembling the information*? There are a huge number of entities involved here, including all 50 states and thousands of individual counties, each with their own data handing mechanisms.
All of which are bound by open records laws, no? And most certainly, reporting back to daddy on the actual expenditures of his money damn well better be part of the deal, right? If they ain't saying, "accepting this money means you report back to us every X days/months with info on X, Y, and Z. If reporting requirements aren't a condition of the funding in the first place, then the whole premise of transparency is worthless from the very start.
Only persons who can vote should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Can corporations vote? Nope - so no donations from them.
If you can't vote for a particular candidate, then you can't give them money. Seems awfully reasonable to me. Where this would have the most dramatic effect would be on state and local elections. I can see an argument, that while Congress critters are elected to represent a district, the clearly make laws that apply nationally. However, tell me why an individual, corporation or organization from say Georgia, should be able to contribute to the campaign of the governor of Minnesota. Or those from another county or even city.
Donating, even if it is labor or vocalized support should not be removed from anyone who is subject to the political processes, laws, and environment under each, even if they aren't allowed to vote themselves.
The I take it you're against taking away the voting rights from felons and non-citizens (both illegal and those legally here on visas, etc)? I ask this question because I don't see how your argument applies to one but not the other. If the determining factor is that you're subject to the laws & processes, then whether it's the influence from contributions or a vote you should have a voice. Of course we can take it to the next level - and at some point, be silly about it. You used the word environment - Canadians and Mexicans near the border very much are impacted by us environmental laws. To wit, Iraqi and Afghanistani people may well have their lives influenced more by US laws and politics than a guy living in a cabin in the woods somewhere.
Two things:
1) Corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation is a person entitled to the same rights as a natural person, or some subset of those rights (e.g. due process, free speech, etc.)
Agreed, that's led to awful things. Until people can get all the rights of corporations - namely live forever - corporations shouldn't get the rights of people
2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech
Much as we hate the results, money IS speech in this context. The idea of giving money to support a candidate whose positions you agree with is absolutely in line with an individual's right express himself. In fact, I think any limitation on an individual's right to contribute is against the intent. BUT...there is a logical and reasonable solution to this. There is no absolute and limitless right of a candidate to spend said contributions. In this way, we can severely limit the spending of the contributions and effectively reduce the influence of money without the need to take away free speech rights of the individuals. I'm just not sure why this problem is so difficult.
Because the power companies introduce an externality when they emit pollutants. Cap and trade is intended to monetize this externality in order to bring it under market control.
Except that if 85% of the credits are given away to friends, and only 15% actually auctioned, you haven't really monetized anything, now have you?
hy not just continue to raise the fuel taxes to generate revenue? That would serve to continue to reduce fuel consumption which would be a good thing.
Well the funny thing is that this isn't about being green and reducing fossil fuel consumption. For that, a gas tax does work much better. No, this is about ensuring revenue for the federal highway fund and for the states' road funds continues to come in even as fuel economies go up and alternative fuel vehicles become more popular.
It's about not losing the revenue. But it's also about not putting their necks on the line to vote for raising the gas taxes. By and large voters, though uninformed or outright stupid on many fronts, can see pretty clearly when a guy running for re-election voted to raise their gas taxes.
Right now we don't need anything to discourage moving toward electric / hybrid / high mileage vehicles. The environmental benefits and economic benefits of removing the need for foreign oil would far outweigh whatever revenue the government would receive.
I can't say that I disagree with your sentiment in the first part. But let me assure you, the government is extremely concerned with the revenue they receive from the gas tax. Any reduction in revenues means they have less money to spend. Oh wait, never mind. The deficit spending of the current and previous President and Congresses shows spending is not limited in any way what-so-ever to revenues.
Raising the gas tax is far cheaper, impossible to turn into Big Brother, and localizes the the state and community pretty well, on average.
Yes, but...Raising the gas tax is far cheaper, impossible to turn into Big Brother, and localizes the the state and community pretty well, on average.
If the federal government really cared about doing this the cheapest/most efficient way...well that world would look nothing like this one. They like the idea of having more big brother power - that's not a bug, that's a feature.
But most of all, there's the transparency/responsibility. They don't want to actually go on record as voting for a raise in the gas taxes - that's one thing voters can consider very easily. Of course in my state, our legislature figured out a workaround for this as well. They passed a law indexing the state gas tax so it goes up automatically so they wouldn't have to go on record voting for it except just the once.
I had a car (an old sunbird circa 1986) that had a funny odometer. Sometimes the odometer would roll backwards. And when it would, it would go about 5 times as fast as it would go forward. It would probably happen once every month or two & usually do it for about a day.
You're most certainly right. But in one case, after a semester and $100k you're left without a solution. In the other, after a few years and $50 million (when all is really said & done) you're left without a solution. We already paid $28 million to the first failed attempt at this project. You'll have to forgive me, but as a Federal and Wisconsin state taxpayer, former UW student and current UW donor, I think I'll rather let the prof & kids take a whack at it.
Sure. But it's also very obvious which of those two groups the decision makers of the project were. This is the second go-round. The first resulted in $28 million to Lawson Software and a complete, from scratch do-over. Originally they said planning for this second try would cost $1.6 million. Later that became $8 million and now planning alone is going to cost over $12 million. I have no problem with a bunch of Slashdot posters not having respect for the difficulty of the task. I do have a major problem with elected and appointed officials, and people who are getting paid to manage this (whose salary comes from my taxes) not having the first clue about what the hell they're doing.
Well the first company working on the project, Lawson Software, was fired. Of course in this case, I wish I could be fired like they were. They got $28 million and obviously didn't actually deliver much of anything - which is why this second go-round (also late and grossly over budget) is a completely from scratch do-over.
Get some perspective man! You seem to think that just because it is a small portion of the University's funding it is insignificant. It's nearly HALF A BILLION DOLLARS of that comes from me and my fellow Wisconsin taxpayers' money.
Just blame it on some reporter, huh? It was an embarrassment because tens of millions of tax dollars were spent with absolutely nothing productive to show for it. Bringing this sort of waste to light is exactly what real journalists should be doing. This ain't hounding some C-list celebrity every hour of the day, this is bringing to light horrible management. It's too much to ask for accountability - for those responsible to booted - because not enough people/voters actually care. But at least those of use who do, have been infromed.