Profiteering, actually, is defined as:make an unreasonable profit, as on the sale of difficult to obtain goods
So, selling copies of the statues — at the normal price for such trinkets — would not be profiteering by definition. This is why I put the word in quotes... No doubt, people, who think "profit" is a dirty word, failed to notice...
Convince a cosmonaut to take an item to the Moon and leave it there.
Ride the post-landing enthusiasm by selling millions of copies of the item.
PROFIT
Whether this was, indeed, the intention or not, it could've been suspected. Indeed, TFA says, Van Hoeydonck was "accused of profiteering from the public space program". I personally see nothing particularly wrong with such "profiteering", but I would not work for the government either...
If you go to any major medical conference, and go to the sessions on important diseases, you'll usually hear them talking about the "VA study."
Given the amounts of money the government spends on this sort of research, it is not at all surprising, that few others do. Competing with government — like fighting the city hall — is usually fruitless and often dangerous. And not because the government does such a good work, but because their pockets are much deeper and, when that does not help, they can outlaw you.
VA may have terrific research, but we will never know, if anyone would've done better — given the same sort of money. As for their actual treatment of patients — rather than fundamental research — the cheating of veterans is as widespread as is often attributed to the insurance companies.
Scientists cooperate. There are no Randian geniuses.
And, again, I posit that this could well be due to the government doing, what it should not be. Whether it is doing it poorly (as I suspect) or not, competing with the government is rarely practical and those geniuses choose to apply themselves elsewhere. Why are there geniuses — of Randian proportions — in the field of computers and other electronics, for example, but not in medicine?
They got a huge amount of new drugs from government research, and it would be a disaster for them and everyone else to shut it down.
No surprise there — large corporations (merk and krupps of the world) would usually rather cooperate with the government. For the rest of us the arrangement may be suboptimal.
Unfortunately in real life they haven't worked that well for big, expensive projects with no likelihood of immediate return.
Is not obvious by now, that the "big expensive" project of traveling to the Moon not only did not have an immediate return — it had no return at all? Are you still sure, you want to insist on it as evidence of the government doing useful things better than private entities?
And when the Soviet Union converted to a free market system, it did not, as the WSJ editorial page predicted, turn into a free-market paradise.
The Soviet Union's ongoing failure (and I grew up there myself) is not due to any flaws in the free market system. It was due to their trying to use it as a tool only. You can't simply institute a free market — it has to grow out of personal freedoms (and respect for them), as in the US. That said, the freer parts of the former USSR (such as the Baltic republics) and the members of "Warsaw Block" are doing fairly well — because they spent 1-2 generations less under the Communist rule. Those dark decades will take a long time to undo...
But if we must refer to examples of other countries, I encourage to compare North and South Koreas, Soviet Estonia vs. Finland, East and West Germany. Identical people and culture. Government vs. free enterprise. See, who wins...
Amtrak is the result of rail companies no longer wanting to deal with the passenger business they had left after the rise of the automobile. So they got together and convinced the government to take over that side of things
Cool story, bro. I could've asked for some references, but it does not change a thing. The point was — and remains — that Amtrak sucks. The link I gave earlier discusses — as an example — the cost of a can of soda... Despite selling it to passengers for $2, Amtrak loses money, because their own cost is $3.40 per can... Nobody can explain this — not only can you buy the cans in the supermarket for $.30-.50, even privately-run vending machines on each station sell the same cans for less than $2. Their proprietors would've been ecstatic to supply the passing trains with as much as they could take... But no, for some reason, Amtrak's costs are $3.40 — would not you love to be their supplier? Somebody is...
And you know what's a common part of the vernacular? The false notion that the well-meaning idealist and self-serving demagogues...
Darling, whatever you are trying to say here is decidedly not part of vernacular...
You — and others — seem to have misconstrued my argument to mean, the government simply can not do anything. That's not, what I said. They can do it — just poorly.
it's rare for conservatives to change their minds based on the facts
Is not it a little early in the conversation for ad hominems?
The military and Veterans Affairs medical centers give some of the best care in the world
Ronald Reagan got his colon and prostate surgery at Walter Reed. Watch what they do, not what they say.
A person of Ronald Reagan's station will get the very best care available in any country and under any regime.
They've done more important research, and won more Nobel prizes, than the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry put together.
Several considerations destroy this argument too:
Who knows, how much more the same people would have achieved — having spent the same amounts of money — if they worked for competing corporations?
Could the pharmaceutical industry be more interested in actual cures, than in abstract research?
Could the UN committees be a tad biased towards non-profit researchers?
Everybody, who works for government grants hates the process with passion. Various writers (including stars like Asimov) mocked the it viciously.
U.S. government created the Internet.
Are you honestly not aware of the numerous problems with this wonder — where everything is spoofable and nothing is encrypted? Where all sorts of data travels in clear text and security considerations are still — decades later — being bolted on?
NASA put the first man on the moon.
Yes, they did. Poorly... Billions of dollars to take 3 men there and back — with a handful of rocks... Where are the lunar settlements? Where are the retirement homes for the elderly to enjoy the improved quality of life in lower gravity? The shuttle-program — after consuming the untold more billions of dollars — is scuttled, we are using Russian vehicles to bring stuff up. And the Russian are government made too — just cheaper, because everything is cheaper in a poor country.
Heinlein argued before a congressional committee in favor of funding space-travel and related research. But in his books it was the entrepreneurs — motivated by both profit and passion — who did the exploration. If those billions were allowed to stay in the private hands — rather than be taxed away — could there have been a Luna Hilton up there by now?
Does the invasion of Normandy count?
Military organizations, by the very nature of the domain, are not easily subject to competitive markets — government's monopoly must exist there. And yet... The security organizations like Black Water (currently known as Academi) have shown, how much better a privately organized force can be — for far less money — than an official military.
Government sucks at everything — an efficient government is a dictatorship said John Kennedy. Some things can not be done outside of government. But whatever can, should...
Yes, yes, because every bridge the government builds falls down three or four times a day in the first couple of weeks after it's opened.
I did not say, it does not get done at all — I said, it is done poorly. The government-managed highways and bridges suck — next time you are stuck in traffic, you'll be forced to agree with me....
The problem underlying the entire fiasco — and the less-impacting others like it (Amtrak, anyone?) — is that whatever the government does, is done poorly.
"Not bad for a government job," — is part of vernacular, yet, a curious mix of well-meaning idealists and self-serving demagogues manage to convince the public to try again every once in a while...
The lesson Quantitive Easing is that stimulus works
Does it? How do you figure?
We should have more fiscal stimulus in the form of direct payments to individuals.
I don't think, the Treasury has the money for such payments, do you? Or do you propose to print more? You do realize, this will lead to inflation — which is the tax on savings?
I'd say, the record of the regulated currencies is much murkier... From various regimes debasing their "official" currencies since the ancient times, through middle ages, and to these days of "Quantitative Easing".
On balance, BitCoin has a lot to say in its defense — it certainly is not any worse, than the "regulated" currencies.
The Chinese never met a game they didn't cheat at.
That's what decades under a totalitarian rule do to people... They see nothing wrong in cheating the government because, as they were growing up, there was nothing but the government doing things — doing poorly and dishonestly. Myself having grown up in the USSR I sympathize...
And now that the cheating is deep in most people's minds, it is very hard to stop applying it even to non-governmental parties. A generation or two of honest rule must pass — and China has not even started yet. Meanwhile the US — formerly known as the shining house atop the hill — is marching into the wrong direction with an increasing cadence...
Public schools generally don't try to cover things up by moving the offender to a new school.
Really? And how do you know that?
Regardless... Only about 4% of molesters in public schools get caught. Whether this pathetic number is due to an active cover-up by the school management, or passive incompetence of same, is, really, of little importance.
The bottom line is, a child molester can have a far "happier" and "fulfilled" life as a public school teacher than as a priest.
Oh, yes, there is. Posting illiterate insults as "Anonymous Coward" — to avoid the beating to what little karma there is — is an example.
complaining about THEIR inconvenience when someone attempts to protect users from malware put onto users machines by that site.
Except our site didn't do it. The ad-broker did not do it either. The broker was blacklisted by Google, because at some point earlier they were fooled by a malicious ad. Google blacklisted them, and everybody using them...
Here's a message for you, you CRETIN 'mi'.
Wow, what passion. I can't imagine, what you'd say, if were an accessory to murder or rape — rather than a mere computer "infection". Take a chill pill or something...
Our hobby site got blocked by Googe/SafeBrowsing twice this months. No, we weren't hacked. No, we weren't hosting malware. We just happened to use the same advertising broker, that was fooled into showing malware ads earlier.
If one wanted to make a good case, they could point out, how you can disappear from the Internet for mere association with someone else — and how suspicious it is, that that "something else" just happens to be a direct (if small-scale) competitor to Google...
No, I don't like governmental censorware — as Heinlein put it in several of his books, the real danger comes not from content, but from the government's attempt to tell their citizens, that they can not be trusted to view it. That UK is doing just that is an outrage. But the fact, that the automated censor happens to be mis-categorize some content has nothing to do with it — the censorship is scandalously wrong whether or not it functions as designed.
Well, yes, my phone dying is kinda scary... I rely on it quite a bit. Is it that scary — whatever that means? Probably, not. What I wrote was not, that the phone dying is "scary", but rather that it is scarier — to me — that the government will officially disable it, than a hacker manages to do it illegally.
the government could simply order your service revoked already
Can they? I was not aware of that... If true, most likely, it requires days (and some paperwork) for the government to accomplish this today. With a kill switch in every phone, the same will be doable within minutes...
and you should've had the sense to buy an unlocked phone.
Exactly. But with such a kill switch mandated, it would be possible to disable any phones — unlocked and otherwise.
This would be a good way to kill any phone — not just a stolen one. The phone company could do this upon contract expiration, for example. Government will be able to do it to criminals on the run (or even to mere suspects)...
Are these outdated specs worth your privacy and freedom?
Nope, they are not. If only because the hope for "privacy" is still based on the claims of the makers and sellers. Just like it is for all other computer systems: no manufacturer would admit to be spying on their users. Certainly not in hardware.
There always are patients, who could be kept alive at high costs but without much, if any, prospect of recovering.
True... though I'm lost as to how you think that is somehow ethical.
Huh?
Then explain to me how it is that everyone over the age of 65 isn't immediately put to death the first time they catch a cold by the government since people on medicare (everyone over 65 in the US) ARE on a single payer system.
First of all, I did not say, the government will condemn everyone to death — whether or not they have a prospect of recovering. What I said was, the decision — whatever it is — will be the government's.
Second, I don't doubt, that people with a good chance of recovering will be paid for (except, perhaps, in certain very special circumstance). A cold — or even an influenza — are quite recoverable and the sole payer will pay for it.
Lastly, the Medicare today is sustained not by the beneficiaries, but by the younger people, who pay into it, but aren't yet eligible to use it. Once we have, what Illiberals affectionately call "Medicare for All", belts will have to be tightened — severely...
Apparently you've forgotten that people vote
I'd much rather be able to switch a doctor/insurer/hospital as easily as I can already switch a mechanic, car insurance, or an ISP — from one competitor to another without waiting for the majority of the voters to agree with me. It is just (much) better that way as it is quicker and allows people that wonderful thing called choice.
When and whether to "pull the plug" on them is currently up to the insurance companies.
Sure. Thanks for confirming, that death panels do, in fact, exist. However, the worst the insurance company can do today is notify the hospital, they'll stop paying — and they don't want to do that for fear of very bad publicity. The hospital — being a separate entity currently — will not pull the plug on their own.
Once we arrive at the "single payer" nirvana, hospitals will, effectively, be run by the same people, who pay the bills. And, unlike with today's competing insurance companies, the sole payer will have no fear of competition... Double whammy — and the death panels...
Slashdot Mirror
It is not like you can't access the works, unless they are in public domain — you just have to pay for it.
Profiteering, actually, is defined as:make an unreasonable profit, as on the sale of difficult to obtain goods
So, selling copies of the statues — at the normal price for such trinkets — would not be profiteering by definition. This is why I put the word in quotes... No doubt, people, who think "profit" is a dirty word, failed to notice...
Whether this was, indeed, the intention or not, it could've been suspected. Indeed, TFA says, Van Hoeydonck was "accused of profiteering from the public space program". I personally see nothing particularly wrong with such "profiteering", but I would not work for the government either...
Given the amounts of money the government spends on this sort of research, it is not at all surprising, that few others do. Competing with government — like fighting the city hall — is usually fruitless and often dangerous. And not because the government does such a good work, but because their pockets are much deeper and, when that does not help, they can outlaw you.
VA may have terrific research, but we will never know, if anyone would've done better — given the same sort of money. As for their actual treatment of patients — rather than fundamental research — the cheating of veterans is as widespread as is often attributed to the insurance companies.
And, again, I posit that this could well be due to the government doing, what it should not be. Whether it is doing it poorly (as I suspect) or not, competing with the government is rarely practical and those geniuses choose to apply themselves elsewhere. Why are there geniuses — of Randian proportions — in the field of computers and other electronics, for example, but not in medicine?
No surprise there — large corporations (merk and krupps of the world) would usually rather cooperate with the government. For the rest of us the arrangement may be suboptimal.
Is not obvious by now, that the "big expensive" project of traveling to the Moon not only did not have an immediate return — it had no return at all? Are you still sure, you want to insist on it as evidence of the government doing useful things better than private entities?
The Soviet Union's ongoing failure (and I grew up there myself) is not due to any flaws in the free market system. It was due to their trying to use it as a tool only. You can't simply institute a free market — it has to grow out of personal freedoms (and respect for them), as in the US. That said, the freer parts of the former USSR (such as the Baltic republics) and the members of "Warsaw Block" are doing fairly well — because they spent 1-2 generations less under the Communist rule. Those dark decades will take a long time to undo...
But if we must refer to examples of other countries, I encourage to compare North and South Koreas, Soviet Estonia vs. Finland, East and West Germany. Identical people and culture. Government vs. free enterprise. See, who wins...
Cool story, bro. I could've asked for some references, but it does not change a thing. The point was — and remains — that Amtrak sucks. The link I gave earlier discusses — as an example — the cost of a can of soda... Despite selling it to passengers for $2, Amtrak loses money, because their own cost is $3.40 per can... Nobody can explain this — not only can you buy the cans in the supermarket for $.30-.50, even privately-run vending machines on each station sell the same cans for less than $2. Their proprietors would've been ecstatic to supply the passing trains with as much as they could take... But no, for some reason, Amtrak's costs are $3.40 — would not you love to be their supplier? Somebody is...
Darling, whatever you are trying to say here is decidedly not part of vernacular...
Is not it a little early in the conversation for ad hominems?
Citation needed?
A person of Ronald Reagan's station will get the very best care available in any country and under any regime.
Several considerations destroy this argument too:
Everybody, who works for government grants hates the process with passion. Various writers (including stars like Asimov) mocked the it viciously.
Are you honestly not aware of the numerous problems with this wonder — where everything is spoofable and nothing is encrypted? Where all sorts of data travels in clear text and security considerations are still — decades later — being bolted on?
Yes, they did. Poorly... Billions of dollars to take 3 men there and back — with a handful of rocks... Where are the lunar settlements? Where are the retirement homes for the elderly to enjoy the improved quality of life in lower gravity? The shuttle-program — after consuming the untold more billions of dollars — is scuttled, we are using Russian vehicles to bring stuff up. And the Russian are government made too — just cheaper, because everything is cheaper in a poor country.
Heinlein argued before a congressional committee in favor of funding space-travel and related research. But in his books it was the entrepreneurs — motivated by both profit and passion — who did the exploration. If those billions were allowed to stay in the private hands — rather than be taxed away — could there have been a Luna Hilton up there by now?
Military organizations, by the very nature of the domain, are not easily subject to competitive markets — government's monopoly must exist there. And yet... The security organizations like Black Water (currently known as Academi) have shown, how much better a privately organized force can be — for far less money — than an official military.
Government sucks at everything — an efficient government is a dictatorship said John Kennedy. Some things can not be done outside of government. But whatever can, should...
I did not say, it does not get done at all — I said, it is done poorly. The government-managed highways and bridges suck — next time you are stuck in traffic, you'll be forced to agree with me....
The problem underlying the entire fiasco — and the less-impacting others like it (Amtrak, anyone?) — is that whatever the government does, is done poorly .
"Not bad for a government job," — is part of vernacular, yet, a curious mix of well-meaning idealists and self-serving demagogues manage to convince the public to try again every once in a while...
My comment was a sarcastic response to a suggestion, our site "should make effort" to this and that... Ha-ha...
Does it? How do you figure?
I don't think, the Treasury has the money for such payments, do you? Or do you propose to print more? You do realize, this will lead to inflation — which is the tax on savings?
On balance, BitCoin has a lot to say in its defense — it certainly is not any worse, than the "regulated" currencies.
That's what decades under a totalitarian rule do to people... They see nothing wrong in cheating the government because, as they were growing up, there was nothing but the government doing things — doing poorly and dishonestly. Myself having grown up in the USSR I sympathize...
And now that the cheating is deep in most people's minds, it is very hard to stop applying it even to non-governmental parties. A generation or two of honest rule must pass — and China has not even started yet. Meanwhile the US — formerly known as the shining house atop the hill — is marching into the wrong direction with an increasing cadence...
Really? And how do you know that?
Regardless... Only about 4% of molesters in public schools get caught. Whether this pathetic number is due to an active cover-up by the school management, or passive incompetence of same, is, really, of little importance.
The bottom line is, a child molester can have a far "happier" and "fulfilled" life as a public school teacher than as a priest.
Everybody is unique. Just like everybody else...
Oh, yes, there is. Posting illiterate insults as "Anonymous Coward" — to avoid the beating to what little karma there is — is an example.
Except our site didn't do it. The ad-broker did not do it either. The broker was blacklisted by Google, because at some point earlier they were fooled by a malicious ad. Google blacklisted them, and everybody using them...
Wow, what passion. I can't imagine, what you'd say, if were an accessory to murder or rape — rather than a mere computer "infection". Take a chill pill or something...
A child is in far graver danger (nearly 100 times higher) of becoming a victim of sexual assault in a public school, than in any church. Perhaps, I should consider becoming teacher, huh?
Maybe. And, maybe, sex-education sites should make more effort to not appear like porn...
Our hobby site got blocked by Googe/SafeBrowsing twice this months. No, we weren't hacked. No, we weren't hosting malware. We just happened to use the same advertising broker, that was fooled into showing malware ads earlier.
If one wanted to make a good case, they could point out, how you can disappear from the Internet for mere association with someone else — and how suspicious it is, that that "something else" just happens to be a direct (if small-scale) competitor to Google...
No, I don't like governmental censorware — as Heinlein put it in several of his books, the real danger comes not from content, but from the government's attempt to tell their citizens, that they can not be trusted to view it. That UK is doing just that is an outrage. But the fact, that the automated censor happens to be mis-categorize some content has nothing to do with it — the censorship is scandalously wrong whether or not it functions as designed.
Well, yes, my phone dying is kinda scary... I rely on it quite a bit. Is it that scary — whatever that means? Probably, not. What I wrote was not, that the phone dying is "scary", but rather that it is scarier — to me — that the government will officially disable it, than a hacker manages to do it illegally.
Can they? I was not aware of that... If true, most likely, it requires days (and some paperwork) for the government to accomplish this today. With a kill switch in every phone, the same will be doable within minutes...
Exactly. But with such a kill switch mandated, it would be possible to disable any phones — unlocked and otherwise.
This would be a good way to kill any phone — not just a stolen one. The phone company could do this upon contract expiration, for example. Government will be able to do it to criminals on the run (or even to mere suspects)...
Nope, they are not. If only because the hope for "privacy" is still based on the claims of the makers and sellers. Just like it is for all other computer systems: no manufacturer would admit to be spying on their users. Certainly not in hardware.
Huh?
First of all, I did not say, the government will condemn everyone to death — whether or not they have a prospect of recovering. What I said was, the decision — whatever it is — will be the government's.
Second, I don't doubt, that people with a good chance of recovering will be paid for (except, perhaps, in certain very special circumstance). A cold — or even an influenza — are quite recoverable and the sole payer will pay for it.
Lastly, the Medicare today is sustained not by the beneficiaries, but by the younger people, who pay into it, but aren't yet eligible to use it. Once we have, what Illiberals affectionately call "Medicare for All", belts will have to be tightened — severely...
I'd much rather be able to switch a doctor/insurer/hospital as easily as I can already switch a mechanic, car insurance, or an ISP — from one competitor to another without waiting for the majority of the voters to agree with me. It is just (much) better that way as it is quicker and allows people that wonderful thing called choice.
I wouldn't say "just like", but there is certainly something similar...
Sure. Thanks for confirming, that death panels do, in fact, exist. However, the worst the insurance company can do today is notify the hospital, they'll stop paying — and they don't want to do that for fear of very bad publicity. The hospital — being a separate entity currently — will not pull the plug on their own.
Once we arrive at the "single payer" nirvana, hospitals will, effectively, be run by the same people, who pay the bills. And, unlike with today's competing insurance companies, the sole payer will have no fear of competition... Double whammy — and the death panels...
Though I've suspected the "multi-vitamins" myself for a while, I'm wary of any claims about "case closed" or "the science is settled"...