Azimov's robots are sentient creatures — we are rather far from them, for better or worse. Today's "digital assistants" are too dumb to second-guess owners, and should not be made to try.
If someone other than the government is doing it, it's not a tax.
The legal lotteries being discussed are government-owned, even if the actual operation is farmed out to private companies. No, if you really want to go Kefedokhles, it is not a tax because it is not mandatory...
but I would also prefer that the stupid tax actually benefit people here.
Apparently, it does not do that either... Or not enough, or something...
the constant checking of facts has brought it to a level that no religion can ever reach
Religion is quite explicitly not a science and deals not in facts, but in beliefs.
No, Science — and Scientists — ought to be judged on their own merits and record. If you must compare scientific disciplines with something, it can only be other scientific disciplines. For example, we know, that Psychology is less reliable than Physics, for example. And that Climate Science is yet to make a prediction, that is both meaningful and correct — indeed, it is already treated as religion by some of the more fervent adherents.
help Quebec's lottery service fight against illegal gaming sites
I do not mind the lottery's continuing existence as a tax on people bad in Math. But I do resent the government monopoly on this particular business. Those "gaming sites" are not inherently evil — they are only illegal, because they compete with the state's offering...
no one in a bigger company (and nobody at all on a publicly traded one) is spending their own funds either.
Though you are right about some level of inefficiency creeping in due simply to the size of the enterprise, there is still a big disadvantage to government-run ones. Private corporations have a "chain of command" with owners/share-holders at the top. They wield control in proportion to their stake and are empowered to hold people responsible.
Government officials reports to the head of the Executive (Mayor, Governor, President), who is elected based largely on the on popular vote with the size of the voters' "stake" having no relation to their vote. Even legally a duly-elected Executive can not usually be sacked for mere inefficiency — normally some sort of "crimes and misdemeanors" is required.
Do you suppose, anybody will be fired in LA government over this scandal?
And then, given that neither corps nor government can work
Corporations can — and demonstrably do — work quite well. Name me one success of the Federal or State government, that would compare to, say, the spectacular success of Apple with an iPhone or even, to put us back to topic, the more modest (but still impressive) success of Comcast with Xfinity WiFi.
I still prefer government to be the one managing funds for all the basic things
Then you aren't only a Statist, but a fool! Because competition is a much more effective tool than a vote. If I don't like Coke, I do not need to "raise awareness" nor picket city hall — I can just switch to Pepsi. If I don't like Verizon, I can switch to AT&T. But — thanks to sentiments like yours — I can not switch my commuter-rail company and all of the highways in my State are equally ill-maintained. Likewise the poor in LA can not, probably, get a decent WiFi now, because the government already picked the "winner" for them...
at least there I have ballot power.
You can buy stock too, you know — and gain ballot power over a corporation that way. But, if you put all your trust in the citizen's right to vote, wouldn't you prefer the government to take care of everything — not just "the basics" — for you? And, if not, why not?
cope with corporate greed or created by corporate greed
Corporate greed is normally best satisfied by delivering the goods and services consumers want. The main diversion of that greed into other, less useful, channels is government officials spending monies confiscated from captive taxpayers on something, consumers do not care for (or even actively oppose).
Except in a very few cases (such as military), the matters — including charity — are best left to citizenry, rather than entrusted to government.
If you choose to reply, please, be sure to state unambiguously, whether you agree, that
It is not used by ordinary people deciding whether to chance taking some poison just because they have a tummy ache.
My opponent spoke of fraud, which is a crime — in the very legal sense of the word.
People deciding, whether or not to take a particular medicine would have a large number of options — being legally barred by the government from exercising some of those options is a sign of tyranny, not a free country.
you are a naive idiot or a shill
Darling, behave yourself and don't use name-calling in an argument. Otherwise you come off as a moron and will only have like people for company...
If no one can prove it, then it is not fraud, is it? Presumption of innocence, right? Right?!
Oh. Trials. Run by whom? Companies won't - why bother if they can sell the drugs without them?
Presumably, the consumers want to see these trials and would not buy the medicines (in sufficient quantities) without them — so, yes, companies would do it. But if that assumption is not valid, then FDA's continuing existence is tyranny — it protects us from things, we do not want to be protected from.
It's not an issue of morality; it's an issue of legality. Prostitution is illegal in most states.
No that simple. Various laws against certain sexual practices were abolished on the argument, that enforcing them requires police to violate people's privacy. For example, in the Bowers vs. Hardwick — last heard in 2003 — a Supreme Justice accused his fellow justices (back in 1986) of (emphasis mine):
almost obsessive focus on homosexual activity and an “overall refusal to consider the broad principles that have informed our treatment of privacy in specific cases.
See? The States could choose to outlaw certain kinds of sex — the only obstacle for them to overcome is the citizens' privacy, that's protected from police. With drones and private vigilantes operating them, that hurdle is gone and those laws could come back...
(Yes, I know, that this particular "crime" took place on public street, but everything would've been the same, had the accused man brought the accused woman into his private bedroom.)
That doesn't mean you get to disobey it.
So, no oral sex with your spouse, until your state abolishes "anti-sodomy" law?
Whoever the crap you call yourself, "calling BS" is not enough. You have to provide arguments. And you have not. You stated, io333's earlier claim of there being freebies like cellular phones for the "poor" was incorrect. I gave you a link. Instead of admitting mistake, you "call it BS". Fail.
Bernie Sanders uses the socialist label
If you wish to discuss Bernie Sanders, please, follow-up under my earlier post on the subject with answers to the three questions at the end of it.
Why did this service need to be provided by the government?
Because there was no sufficient demand for it in the first place. Economics 101.
Because corporations don't want to serve the public good, they only want to make as much profit as possible
Of course, they want to make profit, what's wrong with that?
They kill competition
The government does that — when it picks the "winner" based on the sympathies and biases of the bureaucrat(s), who do not spend his own money and is not even planning to use the purchased service himself (and sometimes even take bribes). This — government picking the winner — is what kills the competition and allows the thus-picked winners to do all those nasty things you claim to be unhappy about.
Then how about we 'execute' a couple, just to remind the rest that they're not above the law.
There is no law in the US, that provides for capital punishment over ethics violations. You would have to become above the law yourself to start killing people over it...
So you're ok with folks making and selling fraudulent and ineffective drugs?
Any and all false advertisement must be prosecuted. But only after they are made — not per-emptively.
How exactly would you suggest preventing the practice under your model?
The same way it is prevented now in most other markets except, for some reason, healthcare.
If it's "let the market decide", how does the market decide when no one (not the pharmas, not the docs, not the patients, not the lawyers for the class action and malpractice suits: no one) has the information necessary to determine which drugs are worthwhile?
How does the FDA know today? Oh, they don't! So they ask for evidence and trials and whatnot, right? Well, some consumers may choose to wait for such trials to conclude and for such evidence to emerge. But no one would be legally obligated to.
And why is the government the sole arbiter? I find "Consumer Reports" to be more trust-worthy, for example. You may find the endorsement of "Good Housekeeping" to be more comforting. Others may find Amazon's ratings to be the most reliable. The private — non- and for-profit alike — certification bodies can themselves compete for both reputation among consumers and manufacturers' willingness to put up with their requirements. But none of it ought to be mandatory — unless, of course, you are the kind who believes, as I suspected before, that "too much freedom is dangerous".
The same program that President Ronald Reagan started to help people afford a phone line?
Whoever first introduced it, the link validates io333's downmodded accusation, while defeating your "insightful" attempt at rebuttal. Remember to logout.
Real socialists don't exist in the United States.
One is running for President right now. And he is not merely a Socialist, he is a Communist. But, whether these people are "real" Socialists — and whatever "real" even means in this context — is not relevant. The point is, it is the Socialist inclinations, that drive politicians (in the United States and elsewhere) into declaring things unknown even a generation ago to be "human rights", while casting the very Capitalism that made them affordable as "evil".
but not the corporate side that takes the money, pockets it and ignores the reason they were given the money in the first place.
Whether it is "corporate" is irrelevant here — the defining characteristics is that the service was paid for by the government. The official approving the check did not spend his own funds.
So keep in mind when voting, we need more regulation and oversight of corporations that take government money folks.
The regulations are already insanely complicated — I just had to study them (at the most basic level) as part of starting a new job. They are bona-fide crazy as they are, and it does not help.
No. The solution is reduce — drastically — the amounts of money at the government's disposal.
You can start here... And some people have claimed to support the sitting President for the sole reason of having received such a phone. Racist but true.
Now, you are offering me a choice. FDA does not. And I don't need to "look into it" — I have a very close friend waiting for FDA's approval of "experimental" treatment for him. He's been waiting for over 18 months now.
I'm more worried about what happens to our medical system when doctors and companies have the freedom to put random chemicals into people's bodies.
Doctors would not have that freedom my way either. But people would.
Neither your way nor mine is bullet-proof — indeed, nothing would be. But my way preserves people's freedom, whereas yours takes the freedom away. This alone ought to be enough for my way to be accepted as better, but that's not all.
Your way is not remarkably safer either! The FDA was created after some spectacular abuses of patients' trust by "doctors" and "chemists", FDA has since had scandalous failures of its own, when the approved medicines and advice had to be withdrawn and reversed. As forewarned, we surrendered an essential liberty in exchange for temporary safety — and lost both...
It quickly becomes a situation where some data is much worse than no data at all.
Yes, yes, and too much freedom is too dangerous. Yours is a Statist argument — the State government knows best, citizens ought to defer to their benevolent and omniscient betters. And until those betters have enough data, the citizens should keep dying — because taking care of oneself causes chaos.
I think Slashdot needs some tuning on how to respond to a depressed person.
After a similar sort of public pressure as was exerted on Apple et al is applied to Slashdot, the "tuning" you talk about may take place. And you may not like it. I'm pretty sure, I will not...
In other words, too much freedom is bad for you, citizen. The omniscient and benevolent government officials will protect you. Even if you already have a terminal disease, that will kill you in 6 months, you can not be allowed to take a drug, until we've evaluated its safety for 5 years.
Just like drugs and chemicals made here, they can be absolute shit if no one is doing due diligence.
You, sir, can be a homicidal maniac and must not be allowed on the street until a diligent government official has determined, you are not a threat to others. Presumption of Innocence is outdated...
It could be argued that word on a screen is considered printed. And Muskets are far less deadly than assault rifles and pistols...
Muskets are much closer to today's rifles, than a web-server is to a printing press.
The "deadliness" is irrelevant — the Second Amendment makes no mention of the scale of a weapon. Swords, muskets, and cannon are equally protected by it. But if you insist on using "deadliness" as the criteria for applicability of the Bill of Rights, consider the following:
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
— Joseph Stalin
He is right, you know. Should we ban certain ideas, dispensing with the First Amendment the way you just dispensed with Second?
The scandal is 5 years old now. If they haven't updated the article, it can only be because they can not help Obama and Democrats any further.
Solyndra's request predated his administration, and career Energy Department officials handled the deal.
Sure, sure. And the career government officials know, what their bosses want — or else the said careers end abruptly... Know without being told — but they may have been.
VCs invest their own money — and they can not lose more than earn for very long. Government invests — and loses — ours and can keep on losing forever, because it can compel us to keep giving it more.
Capitalism works, Socialism does not — if you accept the 100 years of failure, from Lenin's USSR to Chavez's Venezuela, as any guide.
Anywhere money changes hands is fertile grounds for corruption, the larger the sums - the more fertile the ground. Government is not immune to this
Government is especially prone to it, because the bureaucrats never spend their own money. The second point is, I don't particularly care about somebody else's money being misspent — but the taxes are my money. Confiscated from me at the implicit gunpoint.
Larger governments have enough people that simple statistics ensure some of them will be in the right place to stop the most egregious abuses in time.
So, should we expand the government further, in your opinion?
The more competing interests you have in one government, the less likely and less egregious corruption becomes
This is a very peculiar kind of nonsense, most original, I'll grant you that. So, you think it is good that government departments compete with each other? How about military branches?
there is always somebody with a lot to gain by exposing your bad behavior.
Nonsense! You can always buy a whistle-blower off — he'll never be paid more, than he can make by joining your racket. Conscience is still required — but people with conscience able to resist even several millions are rare...
And then there is a whole different class of people — honest fools. A VC making several investments as bad as Solyndra has no funds left to make another folly — but no one in the Department of Energy has lost their job over the fiasco. They weren't corrupt in the usual meaning of the term.
No, a far safer way of keeping the government clean is by reducing the amounts of money at their disposal. Instead of the captive taxpayers debating the merits of a particular investment, how about it is left to willing investors? The way Capitalism is supposed to work?
Slashdot Mirror
Azimov's robots are sentient creatures — we are rather far from them, for better or worse. Today's "digital assistants" are too dumb to second-guess owners, and should not be made to try.
The legal lotteries being discussed are government-owned, even if the actual operation is farmed out to private companies. No, if you really want to go Kefedokhles, it is not a tax because it is not mandatory...
Apparently, it does not do that either... Or not enough, or something...
Religion is quite explicitly not a science and deals not in facts, but in beliefs.
No, Science — and Scientists — ought to be judged on their own merits and record. If you must compare scientific disciplines with something, it can only be other scientific disciplines. For example, we know, that Psychology is less reliable than Physics, for example. And that Climate Science is yet to make a prediction, that is both meaningful and correct — indeed, it is already treated as religion by some of the more fervent adherents.
I do not mind the lottery's continuing existence as a tax on people bad in Math. But I do resent the government monopoly on this particular business. Those "gaming sites" are not inherently evil — they are only illegal, because they compete with the state's offering...
And while the private casino slot machines pay back between 82% and 98% of the money wagered by players, the state lotteries pay back from 49.5% to 73.6% (sorry, can't find a similar table for Canada)... If I ran such a racket, I'd try to smother the competition too, I suppose...
Though you are right about some level of inefficiency creeping in due simply to the size of the enterprise, there is still a big disadvantage to government-run ones. Private corporations have a "chain of command" with owners/share-holders at the top. They wield control in proportion to their stake and are empowered to hold people responsible.
Government officials reports to the head of the Executive (Mayor, Governor, President), who is elected based largely on the on popular vote with the size of the voters' "stake" having no relation to their vote. Even legally a duly-elected Executive can not usually be sacked for mere inefficiency — normally some sort of "crimes and misdemeanors" is required.
Do you suppose, anybody will be fired in LA government over this scandal?
Corporations can — and demonstrably do — work quite well. Name me one success of the Federal or State government, that would compare to, say, the spectacular success of Apple with an iPhone or even, to put us back to topic, the more modest (but still impressive) success of Comcast with Xfinity WiFi.
Then you aren't only a Statist, but a fool! Because competition is a much more effective tool than a vote. If I don't like Coke, I do not need to "raise awareness" nor picket city hall — I can just switch to Pepsi. If I don't like Verizon, I can switch to AT&T. But — thanks to sentiments like yours — I can not switch my commuter-rail company and all of the highways in my State are equally ill-maintained. Likewise the poor in LA can not, probably, get a decent WiFi now, because the government already picked the "winner" for them...
You can buy stock too, you know — and gain ballot power over a corporation that way. But, if you put all your trust in the citizen's right to vote, wouldn't you prefer the government to take care of everything — not just "the basics" — for you? And, if not, why not?
Corporate greed is normally best satisfied by delivering the goods and services consumers want . The main diversion of that greed into other, less useful, channels is government officials spending monies confiscated from captive taxpayers on something, consumers do not care for (or even actively oppose).
Except in a very few cases (such as military), the matters — including charity — are best left to citizenry, rather than entrusted to government.
If you choose to reply, please, be sure to state unambiguously, whether you agree, that
Replies without clear answers to the above two questions will be returned unopened. Thank you.
My opponent spoke of fraud, which is a crime — in the very legal sense of the word.
People deciding, whether or not to take a particular medicine would have a large number of options — being legally barred by the government from exercising some of those options is a sign of tyranny, not a free country.
Darling, behave yourself and don't use name-calling in an argument. Otherwise you come off as a moron and will only have like people for company...
If no one can prove it, then it is not fraud, is it? Presumption of innocence, right? Right?!
Presumably, the consumers want to see these trials and would not buy the medicines (in sufficient quantities) without them — so, yes, companies would do it. But if that assumption is not valid, then FDA's continuing existence is tyranny — it protects us from things, we do not want to be protected from.
Either way the agency ought to be abolished.
No that simple. Various laws against certain sexual practices were abolished on the argument, that enforcing them requires police to violate people's privacy. For example, in the Bowers vs. Hardwick — last heard in 2003 — a Supreme Justice accused his fellow justices (back in 1986) of (emphasis mine):
See? The States could choose to outlaw certain kinds of sex — the only obstacle for them to overcome is the citizens' privacy, that's protected from police. With drones and private vigilantes operating them, that hurdle is gone and those laws could come back...
(Yes, I know, that this particular "crime" took place on public street, but everything would've been the same, had the accused man brought the accused woman into his private bedroom.)
So, no oral sex with your spouse, until your state abolishes "anti-sodomy" law?
Whoever the crap you call yourself, "calling BS" is not enough. You have to provide arguments. And you have not. You stated, io333's earlier claim of there being freebies like cellular phones for the "poor" was incorrect. I gave you a link. Instead of admitting mistake, you "call it BS". Fail.
If you wish to discuss Bernie Sanders, please, follow-up under my earlier post on the subject with answers to the three questions at the end of it.
Because there was no sufficient demand for it in the first place. Economics 101.
Of course, they want to make profit, what's wrong with that?
The government does that — when it picks the "winner" based on the sympathies and biases of the bureaucrat(s), who do not spend his own money and is not even planning to use the purchased service himself (and sometimes even take bribes). This — government picking the winner — is what kills the competition and allows the thus-picked winners to do all those nasty things you claim to be unhappy about.
There is no law in the US, that provides for capital punishment over ethics violations. You would have to become above the law yourself to start killing people over it...
Any and all false advertisement must be prosecuted. But only after they are made — not per-emptively.
The same way it is prevented now in most other markets except, for some reason, healthcare.
How does the FDA know today? Oh, they don't! So they ask for evidence and trials and whatnot, right? Well, some consumers may choose to wait for such trials to conclude and for such evidence to emerge. But no one would be legally obligated to.
And why is the government the sole arbiter? I find "Consumer Reports" to be more trust-worthy, for example. You may find the endorsement of "Good Housekeeping" to be more comforting. Others may find Amazon's ratings to be the most reliable. The private — non- and for-profit alike — certification bodies can themselves compete for both reputation among consumers and manufacturers' willingness to put up with their requirements. But none of it ought to be mandatory — unless, of course, you are the kind who believes, as I suspected before, that "too much freedom is dangerous".
Whoever first introduced it, the link validates io333's downmodded accusation, while defeating your "insightful" attempt at rebuttal. Remember to logout.
One is running for President right now. And he is not merely a Socialist, he is a Communist. But, whether these people are "real" Socialists — and whatever "real" even means in this context — is not relevant. The point is, it is the Socialist inclinations, that drive politicians (in the United States and elsewhere) into declaring things unknown even a generation ago to be "human rights", while casting the very Capitalism that made them affordable as "evil".
Whether it is "corporate" is irrelevant here — the defining characteristics is that the service was paid for by the government. The official approving the check did not spend his own funds.
The regulations are already insanely complicated — I just had to study them (at the most basic level) as part of starting a new job. They are bona-fide crazy as they are, and it does not help.
No. The solution is reduce — drastically — the amounts of money at the government's disposal.
You can start here... And some people have claimed to support the sitting President for the sole reason of having received such a phone. Racist but true.
Capitalists made the cell phones (and WiFi) possible, Socialists are making it a civil right .
Now, you are offering me a choice. FDA does not. And I don't need to "look into it" — I have a very close friend waiting for FDA's approval of "experimental" treatment for him. He's been waiting for over 18 months now.
Doctors would not have that freedom my way either. But people would.
Neither your way nor mine is bullet-proof — indeed, nothing would be. But my way preserves people's freedom, whereas yours takes the freedom away. This alone ought to be enough for my way to be accepted as better, but that's not all.
Your way is not remarkably safer either! The FDA was created after some spectacular abuses of patients' trust by "doctors" and "chemists", FDA has since had scandalous failures of its own, when the approved medicines and advice had to be withdrawn and reversed. As forewarned, we surrendered an essential liberty in exchange for temporary safety — and lost both...
Yes, yes, and too much freedom is too dangerous. Yours is a Statist argument — the State government knows best, citizens ought to defer to their benevolent and omniscient betters. And until those betters have enough data, the citizens should keep dying — because taking care of oneself causes chaos.
Which is exactly, what a robot should be doing... Robots are to obey — not second-guess the owners' actions.
After a similar sort of public pressure as was exerted on Apple et al is applied to Slashdot, the "tuning" you talk about may take place. And you may not like it. I'm pretty sure, I will not...
3D printers aren't especially high-yield either...
In other words, too much freedom is bad for you, citizen. The omniscient and benevolent government officials will protect you. Even if you already have a terminal disease, that will kill you in 6 months, you can not be allowed to take a drug, until we've evaluated its safety for 5 years.
You, sir, can be a homicidal maniac and must not be allowed on the street until a diligent government official has determined, you are not a threat to others. Presumption of Innocence is outdated...
They may be perceived as "disagreeable assholes" by the illiterate, but they are still right.
And no, I don't think, a study mixing typos (like "mkae" instead of "make") with illiteracy ("your" instead of "you're") is actually valid.
Muskets are much closer to today's rifles, than a web-server is to a printing press.
The "deadliness" is irrelevant — the Second Amendment makes no mention of the scale of a weapon. Swords, muskets, and cannon are equally protected by it. But if you insist on using "deadliness" as the criteria for applicability of the Bill of Rights, consider the following:
He is right, you know. Should we ban certain ideas, dispensing with the First Amendment the way you just dispensed with Second?
Trump will :-) Some people disagree with him (and you), but he'll tell them nonetheless.
The scandal is 5 years old now. If they haven't updated the article, it can only be because they can not help Obama and Democrats any further.
Sure, sure. And the career government officials know, what their bosses want — or else the said careers end abruptly... Know without being told — but they may have been.
"Predates" my muscular tail — the company spent over half a million dollars on lobbying alone in 2010. You (and Politifact) would've screamed bloody murder if such appearance of impropriety happened between 2001 and 2008...
Our — the taxpayers' — investment in Tesla was even worse than the Solyndra fiasco.
VCs invest their own money — and they can not lose more than earn for very long. Government invests — and loses — ours and can keep on losing forever, because it can compel us to keep giving it more.
Capitalism works, Socialism does not — if you accept the 100 years of failure, from Lenin's USSR to Chavez's Venezuela, as any guide.
Government is especially prone to it, because the bureaucrats never spend their own money. The second point is, I don't particularly care about somebody else's money being misspent — but the taxes are my money. Confiscated from me at the implicit gunpoint.
So, should we expand the government further, in your opinion?
This is a very peculiar kind of nonsense, most original, I'll grant you that. So, you think it is good that government departments compete with each other? How about military branches?
Nonsense! You can always buy a whistle-blower off — he'll never be paid more, than he can make by joining your racket. Conscience is still required — but people with conscience able to resist even several millions are rare...
And then there is a whole different class of people — honest fools. A VC making several investments as bad as Solyndra has no funds left to make another folly — but no one in the Department of Energy has lost their job over the fiasco. They weren't corrupt in the usual meaning of the term.
No, a far safer way of keeping the government clean is by reducing the amounts of money at their disposal . Instead of the captive taxpayers debating the merits of a particular investment, how about it is left to willing investors? The way Capitalism is supposed to work?