"Don't fight city hall," — goes the ancient wisdom. It is pretty bad already — with local governments protecting the huge incumbents in exchange for perks and kickbacks.
Once the towns have their own direct financial interest in the game, dislodging that monopoly will be even harder. Plain and simple, the government can only be allowed to do, what nobody else can. For local governments that translates to policing and dispensing justice. Nothing else.
Hardly. The cost of living in 1960 was $29.60, or, in today's dollars $236.74. The cost of living in 2014 is quoted as 236.736.
No surprise — the table I linked to was already inflation-adjusted. And, although "cost of living" and "inflation" are different things, they are tightly correlated.
cannot, in any way, be used as a measure of students intelligence or desire, capacity to learn
It surely can not — nor has there been any attempt made to use it as such. The point is, the price of a service quadrupled while the quality remained (or even degraded).
"Drivers shouldn't have to deal with aggressive, violent, or disrespectful riders. If a rider exhibits disrespectful, threatening, or unsafe behavior, they, too, may no longer be able to use the service."
Just you wait, Uber, until a year later it turns out, your drivers have blacklisted a "disproportionally" large share of some minority — sexual, racial, or religious. Let's see, if having Obama's top political adviser in employ will help you then...
Why should not a business-owner — whatever their business may be — be free to refuse to do business with anyone they find disagreeable, and for whatever reason?
At the very least he history books are 50 years thicker.
50 years out of about 5000 years of humanity's known history? Or, ok, 2500 years of humanity's well recorded history? Please... In "exchange" neither Latin nor Greek are studied at all — do you think, that's a "fair" trade for the slight increase in the length of history to learn?
I'd even bet a HS sport team in your area has been to a university for such things as gait analysis and body-fat percentage testing.
And that improved the quality of education how?
They give out a range of electrolytes instead of just NaCl... I could go on.
Yes, any minute you come up with something to justify the four-fold cost increase, please, do go on. Thank you!
Really? There is no choice? No private schools, no charter schools, no home schooling?
Nope. If you have to pay for the public schools anyway — without even the option of taking any of that money to pay for the alternative, then public schools are a monopoly.
Public schools have increased the array of services provided -- free and reduced-price meals, special education, vocational education, and services for disabled or ESL students -- in that time.
Those additional services are counted in the "Total" column in the table I linked to. Their costs are relatively minor and can not account for quadrupling anyway.
Overall, public schools have equivalent or better outcomes than private schools
Yeah, because some Illiberal blogger said so, sure. But the point was not about costs so much as about the absence of choice.
And Texas's public school spending is near the bottom compared to other states
Yes, Conservative-governed states tend to waste less money. But Texas public schools are just as monopolistic as those of Massachusetts. Even worse than monopoly, actually: everybody is forced by the government to pay for them, even if you don't use them (either because you have no children or educate them elsewhere).
Well, colleges and the healthcare industry, since you're asking.:)
Good examples both! Although their hold on the respective markets aren't quite as monopolistic, their pay-structures is just as divorced from the immediate consumers of their services as that of public schools.
If today we upped school-loans to $1 million per year, the colleges would've upped their fees up to $1 million by September. And they would've found reasons...
Likewise, if insurers today agreed to pay twice more for a particular procedure, the price of it would've doubled overnight.
At least the schools don't cause too many deaths
Not sure, what you mean by "causing deaths", but schools definitely are places, where children are in high danger of sexual predators (far more so than churches, for example).
and the first 12 years are free
If it were free, I would've not have been talking about quadrupling of the costs, would we have?
To put us back on topic, at least, you can switch your doctor or transfer to a different college. Public school? You are stuck with it...
If a moron at a local pizzeria causes you grief, you'll simply order from a different restaurant next time. But there is no such choice in the single most important sphere of all: the children education. And TFA is just one little example of it.
President Obama Announces Major Initiative to Spur Biofuels Industry and Enhance America's Energy Security
That's Big Government for you. Instead of various people acting as they see fit — some making mistakes and some not — we have a government, that's big enough to make a mistake for all of us at once...
Competing ideas? To each his own? Personal responsibility? No way, no how — citizen, the Science is Settled[TM] and you are blocking our progress towards the Common Good[TM].
Biofuels is about to become the latest example of this. As our benevolent and omniscient overlords in Washington jump from one trend to another, the whole country is supposed to rejig, retool, and reorient itself each time: from "low-fat" to "low-sugar", from growing biofuels to drilling oil. Because they "know" better — and they are 100% confident in that settled "knowledge" of theirs. Until it changes to the exact opposite like some kind of quantum particle — and only the confidence remains.
How about we — the subjects — make our own choices, huh? Leaving only the courts, police and military to you, our beloved government class? Yes, we — some of us — will be making the same mistakes. But, at least, they will be neither coercing nor outright forcing the others to repeat them.
Our conclusion is that having N(N + 1)/2 spare disks is more than enough to achieve a 99.999 percent probability of not losing data over four years.
Instead of keeping the spares inside as just that — spares — can it not start using all of them (in a sufficiently redundant configuration) and gradually lose capacity as physical disks fail?
Yes, it would require coordination with the driver and filesystem, but there is nothing insurmountable in that...
Sure. It is also "quiet" and "stealthy" — and a bunch of other things. Which is the best term to use in this context? That depends on the subtle connotations of each one, does not it? I am willing to believe, TFA's use was an honest mistake — the article makes no (other) suggestions, bank-robbing (violent or otherwise) may be a just thing. But...
Are the Somali pirates just that — pirates — or are they hard-working folks laboring in a harsh environment, risking their lives directing foreign aid to their impoverished country and the people, who need it most?
stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM.
Wow, that makes it sound like the card-thieves are nice folks — see, they are "nonviolent". Almost like the "unarmed" we read so much about recently.
What a way to turn a phrase and alter connotations — pick a nice-sounding synonym of many. Khmm, "quiet"? Neah... "Stealthy"? No... "Nonviolent" — yeah, that's it!!
Yes, indeed, they are free to quit their jobs — without having to give up on their house, country, and friends — if their assessment of the risk of coming to work is so drastically at odds with that of their employer.
you are "free" to move to Somalia if you're unhappy with having a functioning government.
Oh, no you don't. That cliche is too worn-out and too oft-refuted to still be usable. Libertarians have no problem with a functioning government. We just want to (drastically) cut its functions, thank you very much.
The families and friends of those fatalities would likely invite you to shove your entire Ayn Rand library up your arse.
Had you actually read the link on how the Statistical Value of Life is calculated, you would not have had all that angry adrenalin in your blood. For it is computed based on our own willingness to pay for extra safety.
For example, if having some hypothetical contraption in your car is convincingly known to lower your risk of death by 5% and the implement costs $10K, then the people, who are unwilling to pay extra, value their lives at below $200K.
Or they consider themselves exceptionally less prone to accidents — which is why actuaries use multiple such datapoints to arrive at the number.
Is it not "heartless" to even attempt to attach a $-figure to a human life? Hardly... Because the lost monies could've helped save lives too. Ever heard of charitable donations? A wounded fighter having one package of Celox available, for example, increases his chances of survival by 60% — according to Ukrainian volunteers trying to procure as much of the wonderful stuff as they can get donations for. $20 is what one package costs...
Sounds more like authoritarian dictatorships fail while a robust democratic government that responds to its citizens succeeds.
An authoritarian dictatorship is certainly worse, than a robust democratic government.
However, between authoritarian dictatorships, a "Radical Left" one — like that of Chavez or Castro — will bring certain misery and economic collapse, whereas a Right-wing one may set the country in the right direction.
No, it is not. An American's life is — objectively — worth somewhere between 8 and 9 million dollars, depending on which method you use to calculate it.
So people don't go to the grocery store today
Well, maybe your work is insignificant, Wally, and you may as well stop doing it. But that $4bln per day does come from somewhere — from people doing something, other people are willing to pay for...
Maybe we should cancel all holidays
Or, maybe, we should make every day a holiday instead? See, how far you can get with that kind of argument?
I guess you must have missed the dissolution of the USSR.
I lived in the USSR at the time of its dissolution, you anonymous moron. It was an economic collapse, not a step-down by anyone disappointed in lack of popular mandate and support from immediate circle. Not one of the Communist rulers has stepped down on their own.
if the people want a radical left government then your vote against is not going to prevent that.
My point is, those "people" are making a mistake.
Uh-huh, yeah, persecution of the majority by a minority has a solid track record through history.
Not the majority voting, but the tiny minority asking for votes. All Collectivists — whether they have a red-star beret or a tiny mustache on their clothing — lead to disastrous policies. Either immediately (from inherent evil) or soon after their good intentions fail and they must find excuses.
BTW is thepeoplescube.com the persecuted, or the persecution?
The particular link does a hilarious job comparing the various Collectivists... Woosh much?
Then why is this organge line [wikipedia.org] indicating the average of Latin America above the blue line indicating Chile between 1970 and 1991?
Because life sucked in the country, and the Marxist Allende (elected in 1970) proceeded to further destroy the economy until stopped by Pinochet in 1973. A series of reforms — commonly known today as "Miracle of Chile" — were necessary. The upswing in the blue line, that outperforms the orange line so convincingly today started in 1984 — with a minor hiccup in 1988, when Pinochet stepped down after losing a referendum.
Pinochet rules, Chavez drools.
There is also a different story to tell.
Yea, yea. In the face of Chile prospering doing, what they hate, while Cuba and Venezuela are faltering doing what they love, the Collectivists are anxious to find excuses...
Decades-long economic experiments — when similar (or identical) peoples lived under different economic regime: Estonia (within USSR) vs. Finland, East vs. West Germany, North vs. South Korea, Mainland China vs. Taiwan, Cuba (or Venezuela) vs. Chile — how many more examples does one need before admitting, allowing the Left to rule in earnest is an error (when it is not a crime)?
They aren't there (as far as I know) — which ought to have told you something. Had there been anything, you would've seen it Guardian and NY Times 20 times already...
Citing precedence [theguardian.com] is more than sufficient
No, it is not sufficient.
you will simply spend your time poking holes
By announcing your own not believing in facts, you really left me nothing to poke holes in... How disappointing.
It was all downhill since we decided (contrary to the Founding Father's advice and implorations) to make it the government's responsibility to take care of "the most vulnerable". The list of "vulnerable" has been increasing since and the number of the benevolent and caring government officials needed to take care of them has been increasing along with it. As has been the "caring" class' voting power — while you were kept focused on the "military industrial complex"...
The lost"War on Poverty", for example, has cost $22 trillion — three times more than all of America's military wars combined (inflation-adjusted). If the overhead costs (pay and other expenses of the government officials doing the wealth-redistribution) was at the idealistic 23% of that, we paid them about $5 trillion dollars over the 50 years.
If it is acceptable for 15% to remain on the dole, is it really that much of a stretch, that the 100% need to be told, when to stay home a few days (weeks, months) per year?
At worst, people lose a day's worth of work, some businesses are affected.
The annual economic output of New York metro area alone (leaving Philadelphia aside for a minute) is about $1.4 trillion dollars — or about $4billion per day (weekdays such as today produce more than weekends). If even a mere 10% of that figure was lost today because of our rulers' failures, the cost is $400 million (for New York alone).
Possible severe damage to infrastructure
Little of such damage can be meaningfully prevented by shutting the infrastructure down. But even if it could be — and even the entire $60 million cost of the "Christmas Blizzard of 2010" could've been prevented by shutting the city down, it would've still been a pretty stupid thing to do — even if the storm actually lived up to the hype.
The best course of action by far is to shut the city down.
Hundreds vs. tens of millions of dollars lead to the exact opposite conclusion.
But there is more — individuals and businesses, made aware of the risks, can (and are supposed to!) make their own decisions. Governor declaring driving on a public road a crime is something else — they violate our freedom.
and who really expects a cabaret singer to have any knowledge of risk assessment
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't fight city hall," — goes the ancient wisdom. It is pretty bad already — with local governments protecting the huge incumbents in exchange for perks and kickbacks.
Once the towns have their own direct financial interest in the game, dislodging that monopoly will be even harder. Plain and simple, the government can only be allowed to do, what nobody else can. For local governments that translates to policing and dispensing justice. Nothing else.
Hardly. The cost of living in 1960 was $29.60, or, in today's dollars $236.74. The cost of living in 2014 is quoted as 236.736.
No surprise — the table I linked to was already inflation-adjusted. And, although "cost of living" and "inflation" are different things, they are tightly correlated.
It surely can not — nor has there been any attempt made to use it as such. The point is, the price of a service quadrupled while the quality remained (or even degraded).
Just you wait, Uber, until a year later it turns out, your drivers have blacklisted a "disproportionally" large share of some minority — sexual, racial, or religious. Let's see, if having Obama's top political adviser in employ will help you then...
Why should not a business-owner — whatever their business may be — be free to refuse to do business with anyone they find disagreeable, and for whatever reason?
50 years out of about 5000 years of humanity's known history? Or, ok, 2500 years of humanity's well recorded history? Please... In "exchange" neither Latin nor Greek are studied at all — do you think, that's a "fair" trade for the slight increase in the length of history to learn?
And that improved the quality of education how?
Yes, any minute you come up with something to justify the four-fold cost increase, please, do go on. Thank you!
Nope. If you have to pay for the public schools anyway — without even the option of taking any of that money to pay for the alternative, then public schools are a monopoly.
Those additional services are counted in the "Total" column in the table I linked to. Their costs are relatively minor and can not account for quadrupling anyway.
Yeah, because some Illiberal blogger said so, sure. But the point was not about costs so much as about the absence of choice.
Yes, Conservative-governed states tend to waste less money. But Texas public schools are just as monopolistic as those of Massachusetts. Even worse than monopoly, actually: everybody is forced by the government to pay for them, even if you don't use them (either because you have no children or educate them elsewhere).
I see you mocking the argument, but I don't see you refuting it... Would you care to try again, or is this all you've got?
Good examples both! Although their hold on the respective markets aren't quite as monopolistic, their pay-structures is just as divorced from the immediate consumers of their services as that of public schools.
If today we upped school-loans to $1 million per year, the colleges would've upped their fees up to $1 million by September. And they would've found reasons...
Likewise, if insurers today agreed to pay twice more for a particular procedure, the price of it would've doubled overnight.
Not sure, what you mean by "causing deaths", but schools definitely are places, where children are in high danger of sexual predators (far more so than churches, for example).
If it were free, I would've not have been talking about quadrupling of the costs, would we have?
To put us back on topic, at least, you can switch your doctor or transfer to a different college. Public school? You are stuck with it...
If a moron at a local pizzeria causes you grief, you'll simply order from a different restaurant next time. But there is no such choice in the single most important sphere of all: the children education. And TFA is just one little example of it.
Since 1960-ies the per-pupil annual cost of public schools quadrupled (inflation-adjusted), while the quality of education remains the same (if it has not gotten worse). What other industry could get away with such a thing?
That's Big Government for you. Instead of various people acting as they see fit — some making mistakes and some not — we have a government, that's big enough to make a mistake for all of us at once...
Competing ideas? To each his own? Personal responsibility? No way, no how — citizen, the Science is Settled[TM] and you are blocking our progress towards the Common Good[TM].
Fat is bad for you — all of you! Until it is not. Except it still is...
Biofuels is about to become the latest example of this. As our benevolent and omniscient overlords in Washington jump from one trend to another, the whole country is supposed to rejig, retool, and reorient itself each time: from "low-fat" to "low-sugar", from growing biofuels to drilling oil. Because they "know" better — and they are 100% confident in that settled "knowledge" of theirs. Until it changes to the exact opposite like some kind of quantum particle — and only the confidence remains.
How about we — the subjects — make our own choices, huh? Leaving only the courts, police and military to you, our beloved government class? Yes, we — some of us — will be making the same mistakes. But, at least, they will be neither coercing nor outright forcing the others to repeat them.
Instead of keeping the spares inside as just that — spares — can it not start using all of them (in a sufficiently redundant configuration) and gradually lose capacity as physical disks fail?
Yes, it would require coordination with the driver and filesystem, but there is nothing insurmountable in that...
Sure. It is also "quiet" and "stealthy" — and a bunch of other things. Which is the best term to use in this context? That depends on the subtle connotations of each one, does not it? I am willing to believe, TFA's use was an honest mistake — the article makes no (other) suggestions, bank-robbing (violent or otherwise) may be a just thing. But...
Are the Somali pirates just that — pirates — or are they hard-working folks laboring in a harsh environment, risking their lives directing foreign aid to their impoverished country and the people, who need it most?
See also "Hezbollization".
Wow, that makes it sound like the card-thieves are nice folks — see, they are "nonviolent". Almost like the "unarmed" we read so much about recently.
What a way to turn a phrase and alter connotations — pick a nice-sounding synonym of many. Khmm, "quiet"? Neah... "Stealthy"? No... "Nonviolent" — yeah, that's it!!
Your victory is not complete, until you've peed on the opponent's unmoving body...
Yes, indeed, they are free to quit their jobs — without having to give up on their house, country, and friends — if their assessment of the risk of coming to work is so drastically at odds with that of their employer.
Oh, no you don't. That cliche is too worn-out and too oft-refuted to still be usable. Libertarians have no problem with a functioning government. We just want to (drastically) cut its functions, thank you very much.
Had you actually read the link on how the Statistical Value of Life is calculated, you would not have had all that angry adrenalin in your blood. For it is computed based on our own willingness to pay for extra safety.
For example, if having some hypothetical contraption in your car is convincingly known to lower your risk of death by 5% and the implement costs $10K, then the people, who are unwilling to pay extra, value their lives at below $200K.
Or they consider themselves exceptionally less prone to accidents — which is why actuaries use multiple such datapoints to arrive at the number.
Is it not "heartless" to even attempt to attach a $-figure to a human life? Hardly... Because the lost monies could've helped save lives too. Ever heard of charitable donations? A wounded fighter having one package of Celox available, for example, increases his chances of survival by 60% — according to Ukrainian volunteers trying to procure as much of the wonderful stuff as they can get donations for. $20 is what one package costs...
An authoritarian dictatorship is certainly worse, than a robust democratic government.
However, between authoritarian dictatorships, a "Radical Left" one — like that of Chavez or Castro — will bring certain misery and economic collapse, whereas a Right-wing one may set the country in the right direction.
Irrelevant — whether the company is publicly owned or not, the income it produces still counts towards the GDP.
Their economy economy started going up in 1984 at the rate largely unchanged since — despite all of the fluctuations in the copper price.
Yes, sure. We should put statistics aside and make decisions based on individual anecdotes...
Ask your colleagues, if they'd rather work in Venezuelan IT...
When was that?
Would you rather have some sort of Department of Truth to determine, what can and what can not be said?
I did account for lives — you must've missed this part:
No, it is not. An American's life is — objectively — worth somewhere between 8 and 9 million dollars, depending on which method you use to calculate it.
Well, maybe your work is insignificant, Wally, and you may as well stop doing it. But that $4bln per day does come from somewhere — from people doing something, other people are willing to pay for...
Or, maybe, we should make every day a holiday instead? See, how far you can get with that kind of argument?
I lived in the USSR at the time of its dissolution, you anonymous moron. It was an economic collapse, not a step-down by anyone disappointed in lack of popular mandate and support from immediate circle. Not one of the Communist rulers has stepped down on their own.
My point is, those "people" are making a mistake.
Not the majority voting, but the tiny minority asking for votes. All Collectivists — whether they have a red-star beret or a tiny mustache on their clothing — lead to disastrous policies. Either immediately (from inherent evil) or soon after their good intentions fail and they must find excuses.
The particular link does a hilarious job comparing the various Collectivists... Woosh much?
Because life sucked in the country, and the Marxist Allende (elected in 1970) proceeded to further destroy the economy until stopped by Pinochet in 1973. A series of reforms — commonly known today as "Miracle of Chile" — were necessary. The upswing in the blue line, that outperforms the orange line so convincingly today started in 1984 — with a minor hiccup in 1988, when Pinochet stepped down after losing a referendum.
Pinochet rules, Chavez drools.
Yea, yea. In the face of Chile prospering doing, what they hate, while Cuba and Venezuela are faltering doing what they love, the Collectivists are anxious to find excuses...
Decades-long economic experiments — when similar (or identical) peoples lived under different economic regime: Estonia (within USSR) vs. Finland, East vs. West Germany, North vs. South Korea, Mainland China vs. Taiwan, Cuba (or Venezuela) vs. Chile — how many more examples does one need before admitting, allowing the Left to rule in earnest is an error (when it is not a crime)?
Thank you for admitting, you don't have any.
They aren't there (as far as I know) — which ought to have told you something. Had there been anything, you would've seen it Guardian and NY Times 20 times already...
No, it is not sufficient.
By announcing your own not believing in facts, you really left me nothing to poke holes in... How disappointing.
Go ahead. Be sure to cite facts, though. With Wikileaks and Snowden out there, you ought to have plenty to work with. Take your time.
Begs the question, does not it?..
It was all downhill since we decided (contrary to the Founding Father's advice and implorations) to make it the government's responsibility to take care of "the most vulnerable". The list of "vulnerable" has been increasing since and the number of the benevolent and caring government officials needed to take care of them has been increasing along with it. As has been the "caring" class' voting power — while you were kept focused on the "military industrial complex"...
The lost "War on Poverty", for example, has cost $22 trillion — three times more than all of America's military wars combined (inflation-adjusted). If the overhead costs (pay and other expenses of the government officials doing the wealth-redistribution) was at the idealistic 23% of that, we paid them about $5 trillion dollars over the 50 years.
If it is acceptable for 15% to remain on the dole, is it really that much of a stretch, that the 100% need to be told, when to stay home a few days (weeks, months) per year?
The annual economic output of New York metro area alone (leaving Philadelphia aside for a minute) is about $1.4 trillion dollars — or about $4billion per day (weekdays such as today produce more than weekends). If even a mere 10% of that figure was lost today because of our rulers' failures, the cost is $400 million (for New York alone).
Little of such damage can be meaningfully prevented by shutting the infrastructure down. But even if it could be — and even the entire $60 million cost of the "Christmas Blizzard of 2010" could've been prevented by shutting the city down, it would've still been a pretty stupid thing to do — even if the storm actually lived up to the hype.
The "Christmas Blizzard of 2010" is imputed with 7 fatalities — or, in dollar terms, $63 million dollar, tops.
Hundreds vs. tens of millions of dollars lead to the exact opposite conclusion.
But there is more — individuals and businesses, made aware of the risks, can (and are supposed to!) make their own decisions. Governor declaring driving on a public road a crime is something else — they violate our freedom.
So, where do you sing?