That was EA's claim, at least initially. They appear to have been lying, or at least overstating the case substantially. The only things that seem to absolutely require an active connection are resource trading (which a lot of players never do, anyway) and the cloud-based save system.
As I understand it, the game has already been cracked to work offline. The only reason it hasn't gotten more attention is because the inability to save makes it less than perfect for regular play.
Isn't that what KOTOR was? Although I wouldn't mind a Rockstar reboot.
Well, Knights of the Old Republic was a RPG using a modified version of the D&D 2nd edition rule set, not an action-adventure game. And since Rockstar is known for their sandbox games, and KOTOR wasn't even slightly sandbox in style, with planets roughly the size of a high school gymnasium, I'd say the similarities between KOTOR and the GTA games are pretty much limited to the fact that they're both third-person 3D.
Also, since Rockstar doesn't generally produce RPGs, they wouldn't be my first choice to reboot the series.
For that matter, neither Epic (developers of the Unreal titles) or id Software, both of which you mention, publish their own work, either.
id dabbled in self-distribution in the days of the original Doom days (which was mail-order only), but for most of their history they relied on third-party publishers. Mainly Activision (who handled all their releases from Quake 2 through Doom 3), until they were finally acquired by ZeniMax and became a second-party studio there.
I'm not as familiar with Epic, but I don't believe they do much of their own publishing, either. I know most of the Unreal games were published by GT Interactive/Infogrames/Atari.
Just see what happened to Bioware when it stopped being a publisher and had to dance to EA's tune instead of listening to customers.
BioWare was never a publisher. The two Baldur's Gate games, Shattered Steel, and MDK were published by Interplay, Neverwinter Nights was published by Atari, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was published by LucasArts, and Jade Empire was published by Microsoft Game Studios (for the Xbox) and 2K Games (PC version).
It's not digital books that are hurting Barnes and Noble (and previously killed competitor Borders). E-books are a successful sidebar, and will very likely continue to grow. But the biggest threat to brick and mortar stores like B&N are online retailers like Amazon, and not even their Kindle offerings.
That bothers me more than anything else, really. I'm fine with digital books, movies, whatever. I've spent too many hours packing and sorting my dead tree book collection, not to mention finding places to put it all, to mythologize the format itself. But the best books I've ever read, I've found as a result of browsing the aisles at places like Barnes and Noble, and, before them, local retailers. That's an experience Amazon hasn't managed to duplicate, and they're considerably better at trying to do so that 90% of their online peers.
The NES was a pioneer of console DRM, actually. It was the first such machine to feature a lockout chip which prevented both unlicensed games and copier devices. And Nintendo was extremely proactive in terms of enforcement: they took a number of companies who produced bootleg cartridges, unlicensed peripherals, and their like to court.
Convenience was definitely a factor (especially since relatively few late 1980s computers were especially well-suited for the kinds of games that a dedicated console like the NES could produce, with poorer sound and graphics capabilities), but part of the reason why Nintendo proved so successful following the market shake-out that had eventually doomed earlier console manufacturers like Atari, Mattel, and Coleco was because they offered a closed ecosystem where it was feasible for a publisher to control exactly when and how their work was used. That's how Nintendo attracted the third-party developers that were instrumental in their success. Compared to the always-online, dial-home DRM schemes of today, sure, the NES was primitive, but it was a major trendsetter nonetheless.
I'm still amazed at how many games my circa 2008 PC can run at or near highest settings. There are exceptions, of course, but the fact that most modern games are written for consoles first and only then ported to PC means that there hasn't been a great deal of requirements creep since the start of the current console generation.
The wired Xbox 360 gamepad can be hooked up directly to most any modern PC. Most console-to-Windows ports even support this right out of the box. The PlayStation 3 pad is only marginally more difficult to set up. Even the Wii remote can be made to work with a Bluetooth connection and only a minimal bit of jiggery-pokery. If the directional pads are subpar, it's a problem that afflicts consoles in exactly the same way.
I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I'm pretty sure I upgraded directly from Windows XP (x86) to Windows 7 (x64) on my desktop workstation. Also, given how Microsoft basically treated Windows 7 as a "do-over" given the poor uptake rates of Vista, I'd be surprised if they limited upgrade potential like that.
The recent Star Trek movie was weird in that it was both a sequel, a prequel, and a reboot of the franchise.
Re:I'm sticking with VGA
on
Goodbye, VGA
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· Score: 1
My first HDTV had that option. By default (and oddly) it would overscan but not rescale, which lead to a frankly worthless black box around the whole screen. It was easily turned off in the menu, though.
My current TV does not. It does the whole rescaling/overscanning thing, and it makes using a DVI/HDMI hookup for my computer worthless. Luckily, it has a VGA port, even though it doesn't maintain the aspect ratio when scaling non-16:9 resolutions (another downgrade from the earlier set).
It's possible, with some caveats. On the original model PS2, at least (I don't know about the newer revisions) it breaks PS1 compatibility. The games will run, but the display is scrambled. And the component cables are (or were, at least) expensive and difficult to come by.
Still, it is a marked improvement in picture quality, especially on HDTVs.
The EFF has withdrawn their recommendation because the developers of Haystack have basically asked people to stop using it pending their security review.
There's nothing dirty or questionable going on here. CRC has been criticized for certain things, they've taken those criticisms to heart and are attempting to deal with the problems, and in the meantime are warning people that their tool shouldn't be used until those problems are resolved. The EFF's actions reflect this, and nothing else.
They did look at it critically. Research 2000 was fired by Daily Kos before anyone noted any impropriety in the figures, simply because the numbers weren't matching up with reality. Shortly after this happened, Grebner, Weissman, and Weissman approached Markos with evidence of deliberate impropriety.
Does Daily Kos have a responsibility to not promote questionable information as truth? Of course, and they've apologized for the situation. But keep in mind that this information is only coming to light because someone with sufficient statistical background took the time to pore over the data. That sort of expertise is hard to come by, which is the reason why smaller media/news outlets contract out to firms like Research 2000 in the first place!
It's only relatively recently that there's been much interest in the science of polling. Before the emergence of aggregation sites like FiveThirtyEight or Pollster.com, it was extremely rare that you'd ever see this kind of statistical analysis of polling data. The traditional method of testing a pollster's reliability was simple trial and error over a period of several elections. Really, that's *still* the primary method. If anything, Research 2000 only got scrutinized in this case because of the issues with their accuracy that led to them being dropped in the first place.
For me, it's not really a partisan issue, despite the highly politicized nature of Daily Kos. It has more to do with the size of the media outlet. I would expect a major news organization with dozens or hundreds of employees, like Fox News or MSNBC, to be able to detect problems like these very quickly. A relatively small blog with maybe a dozen part-time employees like Daily Kos, or Red State, or whatever, I'm more willing to give a pass. At least at first: I'd expect Markos to learn his lesson from this and be more proactive in ensuring that it doesn't happen again.
"Kleenex" I'll grant you, but I've never heard "Hoover" used as a verb in an American context. It's always just been "vacuum." The only people I've ever heard use it as such have been British.
Although, come to think of it, I haven't actually seen a Hoover-brand vacuum cleaner in ages. But I've yet to hear anyone talk about "Kenmoring" or "Dysoning" their carpet, either.
I'm wary of treating the concept of "lost sales" too seriously for precisely the reasons you state. It's too nebulous an area to make a straightforward connection between a pirate and a legitimate customer. Of course, let's not fool ourselves: I'm sure that there are plenty of people who would have ultimately paid for the movie who didn't because they downloaded it illegally. But I don't trust rights holders when they make the argument that because n number of people downloaded their work without permission, they lost n number of sales.
Ultimately, it should be a moot point. Copyright infringement is a crime, and it should be punishable to same level as any commensurate crime. I don't doubt that financial damage is done to the rights holders by piracy, or even that it's significant, but I still think there's a definite tendency to exaggerate the impact. And I think that's dangerous, because it leads to over-the-top legal responses like the DMCA, which punish the innocent just as badly as the guilty.
Trespassing is a crime. Trespassing on somebody's rights is also still a crime. Just because nothing was physically taken or destroyed doesn't mean that the producers aren't completely within their rights.
Sure. I'm not certain where you got the idea that I "don't give a shit." But not all crime is theft, and piracy is not theft in the same way that trespassing is not theft, or murder is not theft.
It's quite possible to condemn an action while recognizing that it's being misrepresented. And I think most people would agree that theft is the worse crime, from a moral standpoint, than piracy: it has all the same negative repercussions to the rights holder and additionally deprives him or her of a copy. There are degrees of both immorality and illegality.
If it makes you feel any better, I didn't like The Hurt Locker when I saw it in theaters. So I wouldn't have pirated it in the first place.
You're undoubtedly right that there's a good amount of rationalization at work here. If nothing else, there are probably a good number of people who probably wouldn't have thought about the movie at all who are now predisposed against it. But I think it's easy to make the mistake of assuming that the same people who were praising the movie a year ago are the same people critiquing it now. It's just as possible that we're talking about two entirely different demographics with two entirely different takes on the same movie.
That said, I can't help but feel a little sorry for all the folks who are now being sued for pirating a movie that they didn't like.:-)
If it were theft, every pirated copy of the movie would have to come at the expense of a copy that could otherwise have been legitimately purchased. If I break into a store and steal a DVD, that's theft. If I break into a store and meticulously copy the DVD, it's not. File sharing is closer to the latter case than the former (although without the whole trespassing/breaking and entering aspect).
That's not to excuse piracy, mind you: copyright infringement is still illegal and (depending on your ethics) possibly immoral as well. But there's been a long-standing and deliberate effort among content producers to confuse copyright infringement with theft and it's not really hard to see why. Even if you feel that both crimes are inexcusable, theft is clearly the worse of the two. Plus, there are plenty of people out there who aren't familiar with the particulars of intellectual property laws who know about theft.
In short, it's a PR move. And while I certainly don't begrudge producers the right to protect their property to the fullest extent of the law, I personally prefer to call a spade a spade.
That's not technically true. In practice, there's little motivation for rights holders to go after downloaders/leechers and they generally don't do so. But they would be legally justified in doing so if they so chose.
But we're talking about BitTorrent, anyway, so it's probably reasonable to assume that there are no leechers, given the way the protocol works.
BitTorrent is peer-to-peer. Unless you've run through some unusual hoops, by downloading something over BitTorrent, you're uploading it at the same time.
If the suit was being filed against Usenet or IRC downloaders, then this would be a valid argument. As it is, the plaintiff is right about this.
Technically speaking, downloading a copy of a movie you already own may be illegal, but it's extremely unlikely that anyone will sue you for it. If they could even track you down in the first place.
But the issue here is that BitTorrent isn't a download tool: it's a peer-to-peer protocol. By default, while you're downloading any given file, you're also uploading it to others. And even if you have a legal copy of the work in question, you don't have the legal right to make it available to those who don't.
I haven't read the latest bill or watched the news about it recently, but my personal feelings on it are mixed.
I've never tried green eggs and ham, but I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.
If there is a centralized healthcare system, then it will be their job to regulate the substances we can take into our bodies as part of the health care coverage they provide.
Well, then I suppose it's a very good thing that "a centralized healthcare system" was never under debate. The current deliberations started with a government-administered insurance plan that would compete with the private industry in order to exert pressure through competition. And even that's been off-the-table for months now.
Other people say "This works in my country" but have you seen our population or our budget? We're broke and to offer coverage to millions of people is just ridiculous.
American exceptionalism rears its head again. Our economic situation isn't great, but we're by no means the worst off in the world, nor do we labor under the greatest deficit. That other nations can manage it doesn't necessarily mean that we can manage it, but it suggests that a close evaluation may be in order.
Besides which, the cost question is a bit misleading. Our current health care industry is eating a huge chunk of our economy, and growing larger all of the time. Part of the point of reform is to stem that growth in order to save the country money: the long-term savings offset the upfront costs. Or so the argument goes, and so the CBO has found each time a new revision of the bill gets punted off to them.
There has been no credible mechanism for reforming the system without government involvement. Every one of the "alternatives" put forward has been, frankly, a joke. Tort reform? A handout to wealthy interests that would slice down only about 2% of the cost problem. Health savings accounts? Works very poorly for chronic conditions. Interstate competition? Fine, so where's the framework to prevent abuse when insurance providers flock to the state with the least regulation? The federal government would need to regulate as a matter of interstate commerce, but if the stated goal is to prevent "bigger government," then they're hardly going to be able to do a decent job of it.
The question of whether or not you should "trust" the government is a red herring. The issue at stake is that private insurance has proven that they cannot be relied upon to police themselves (nor, honestly, should they be expected to), and that the normal rules of supply and demand that might keep problems in check are too easily abused when dealing with something as essential as health care. Under the circumstances, the government is both more accountable and more responsive to the public, and increased government oversight is preferable to the status quo.
Is it a perfect solution? Maybe not. But this has been a public policy issue, on and off, for fifty years, and has dominated all other domestic policy items for almost a year now. It's not been rushed, and the parameters of the debate have been readily available to anyone who cares to look for them. And the "no bigger government" argument continues to spout the same old dubious talking points and non-sequiturs. It's not an argument being made honestly or in good faith.
Re:Put it on the shelf until November
on
Health Care Reform
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· Score: 1
Why stop there? I hear there are elections in 2012, as well. It's only fair to the American people to wait until after all the elections are over before the government tries to accomplish anything.
Seriously, though, you really want to make this argument? The current Democratic majority campaigned heavily on the issue of health care reform in 2008. The details have been debated for longer than the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and the Bush tax cuts ever were. I can understand the position of folks who disagree with the proposed legislation, even if I don't agree with them, but the suggestion that this hasn't been given greater diligence and attention than almost any other piece of legislation in recent memory is ludicrous. And the suggestion that we should postpone controversial legislation simply because it's controversial kind of ignores the purpose of representative democracy in the first place....
Slashdot Mirror
That was EA's claim, at least initially. They appear to have been lying, or at least overstating the case substantially. The only things that seem to absolutely require an active connection are resource trading (which a lot of players never do, anyway) and the cloud-based save system.
As I understand it, the game has already been cracked to work offline. The only reason it hasn't gotten more attention is because the inability to save makes it less than perfect for regular play.
Well, Knights of the Old Republic was a RPG using a modified version of the D&D 2nd edition rule set, not an action-adventure game. And since Rockstar is known for their sandbox games, and KOTOR wasn't even slightly sandbox in style, with planets roughly the size of a high school gymnasium, I'd say the similarities between KOTOR and the GTA games are pretty much limited to the fact that they're both third-person 3D.
Also, since Rockstar doesn't generally produce RPGs, they wouldn't be my first choice to reboot the series.
For that matter, neither Epic (developers of the Unreal titles) or id Software, both of which you mention, publish their own work, either.
id dabbled in self-distribution in the days of the original Doom days (which was mail-order only), but for most of their history they relied on third-party publishers. Mainly Activision (who handled all their releases from Quake 2 through Doom 3), until they were finally acquired by ZeniMax and became a second-party studio there.
I'm not as familiar with Epic, but I don't believe they do much of their own publishing, either. I know most of the Unreal games were published by GT Interactive/Infogrames/Atari.
BioWare was never a publisher. The two Baldur's Gate games, Shattered Steel, and MDK were published by Interplay, Neverwinter Nights was published by Atari, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was published by LucasArts, and Jade Empire was published by Microsoft Game Studios (for the Xbox) and 2K Games (PC version).
I don't disagree with your larger point, though.
It's not digital books that are hurting Barnes and Noble (and previously killed competitor Borders). E-books are a successful sidebar, and will very likely continue to grow. But the biggest threat to brick and mortar stores like B&N are online retailers like Amazon, and not even their Kindle offerings.
That bothers me more than anything else, really. I'm fine with digital books, movies, whatever. I've spent too many hours packing and sorting my dead tree book collection, not to mention finding places to put it all, to mythologize the format itself. But the best books I've ever read, I've found as a result of browsing the aisles at places like Barnes and Noble, and, before them, local retailers. That's an experience Amazon hasn't managed to duplicate, and they're considerably better at trying to do so that 90% of their online peers.
The NES was a pioneer of console DRM, actually. It was the first such machine to feature a lockout chip which prevented both unlicensed games and copier devices. And Nintendo was extremely proactive in terms of enforcement: they took a number of companies who produced bootleg cartridges, unlicensed peripherals, and their like to court.
Convenience was definitely a factor (especially since relatively few late 1980s computers were especially well-suited for the kinds of games that a dedicated console like the NES could produce, with poorer sound and graphics capabilities), but part of the reason why Nintendo proved so successful following the market shake-out that had eventually doomed earlier console manufacturers like Atari, Mattel, and Coleco was because they offered a closed ecosystem where it was feasible for a publisher to control exactly when and how their work was used. That's how Nintendo attracted the third-party developers that were instrumental in their success. Compared to the always-online, dial-home DRM schemes of today, sure, the NES was primitive, but it was a major trendsetter nonetheless.
I'm still amazed at how many games my circa 2008 PC can run at or near highest settings. There are exceptions, of course, but the fact that most modern games are written for consoles first and only then ported to PC means that there hasn't been a great deal of requirements creep since the start of the current console generation.
The wired Xbox 360 gamepad can be hooked up directly to most any modern PC. Most console-to-Windows ports even support this right out of the box. The PlayStation 3 pad is only marginally more difficult to set up. Even the Wii remote can be made to work with a Bluetooth connection and only a minimal bit of jiggery-pokery. If the directional pads are subpar, it's a problem that afflicts consoles in exactly the same way.
I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I'm pretty sure I upgraded directly from Windows XP (x86) to Windows 7 (x64) on my desktop workstation. Also, given how Microsoft basically treated Windows 7 as a "do-over" given the poor uptake rates of Vista, I'd be surprised if they limited upgrade potential like that.
The recent Star Trek movie was weird in that it was both a sequel, a prequel, and a reboot of the franchise.
My first HDTV had that option. By default (and oddly) it would overscan but not rescale, which lead to a frankly worthless black box around the whole screen. It was easily turned off in the menu, though.
My current TV does not. It does the whole rescaling/overscanning thing, and it makes using a DVI/HDMI hookup for my computer worthless. Luckily, it has a VGA port, even though it doesn't maintain the aspect ratio when scaling non-16:9 resolutions (another downgrade from the earlier set).
I miss my old TV so much, dammit....
It's possible, with some caveats. On the original model PS2, at least (I don't know about the newer revisions) it breaks PS1 compatibility. The games will run, but the display is scrambled. And the component cables are (or were, at least) expensive and difficult to come by.
Still, it is a marked improvement in picture quality, especially on HDTVs.
The EFF has withdrawn their recommendation because the developers of Haystack have basically asked people to stop using it pending their security review.
There's nothing dirty or questionable going on here. CRC has been criticized for certain things, they've taken those criticisms to heart and are attempting to deal with the problems, and in the meantime are warning people that their tool shouldn't be used until those problems are resolved. The EFF's actions reflect this, and nothing else.
They did look at it critically. Research 2000 was fired by Daily Kos before anyone noted any impropriety in the figures, simply because the numbers weren't matching up with reality. Shortly after this happened, Grebner, Weissman, and Weissman approached Markos with evidence of deliberate impropriety.
Does Daily Kos have a responsibility to not promote questionable information as truth? Of course, and they've apologized for the situation. But keep in mind that this information is only coming to light because someone with sufficient statistical background took the time to pore over the data. That sort of expertise is hard to come by, which is the reason why smaller media/news outlets contract out to firms like Research 2000 in the first place!
It's only relatively recently that there's been much interest in the science of polling. Before the emergence of aggregation sites like FiveThirtyEight or Pollster.com, it was extremely rare that you'd ever see this kind of statistical analysis of polling data. The traditional method of testing a pollster's reliability was simple trial and error over a period of several elections. Really, that's *still* the primary method. If anything, Research 2000 only got scrutinized in this case because of the issues with their accuracy that led to them being dropped in the first place.
For me, it's not really a partisan issue, despite the highly politicized nature of Daily Kos. It has more to do with the size of the media outlet. I would expect a major news organization with dozens or hundreds of employees, like Fox News or MSNBC, to be able to detect problems like these very quickly. A relatively small blog with maybe a dozen part-time employees like Daily Kos, or Red State, or whatever, I'm more willing to give a pass. At least at first: I'd expect Markos to learn his lesson from this and be more proactive in ensuring that it doesn't happen again.
"Kleenex" I'll grant you, but I've never heard "Hoover" used as a verb in an American context. It's always just been "vacuum." The only people I've ever heard use it as such have been British.
Although, come to think of it, I haven't actually seen a Hoover-brand vacuum cleaner in ages. But I've yet to hear anyone talk about "Kenmoring" or "Dysoning" their carpet, either.
I'm wary of treating the concept of "lost sales" too seriously for precisely the reasons you state. It's too nebulous an area to make a straightforward connection between a pirate and a legitimate customer. Of course, let's not fool ourselves: I'm sure that there are plenty of people who would have ultimately paid for the movie who didn't because they downloaded it illegally. But I don't trust rights holders when they make the argument that because n number of people downloaded their work without permission, they lost n number of sales.
Ultimately, it should be a moot point. Copyright infringement is a crime, and it should be punishable to same level as any commensurate crime. I don't doubt that financial damage is done to the rights holders by piracy, or even that it's significant, but I still think there's a definite tendency to exaggerate the impact. And I think that's dangerous, because it leads to over-the-top legal responses like the DMCA, which punish the innocent just as badly as the guilty.
Trespassing is a crime. Trespassing on somebody's rights is also still a crime. Just because nothing was physically taken or destroyed doesn't mean that the producers aren't completely within their rights.
Sure. I'm not certain where you got the idea that I "don't give a shit." But not all crime is theft, and piracy is not theft in the same way that trespassing is not theft, or murder is not theft.
It's quite possible to condemn an action while recognizing that it's being misrepresented. And I think most people would agree that theft is the worse crime, from a moral standpoint, than piracy: it has all the same negative repercussions to the rights holder and additionally deprives him or her of a copy. There are degrees of both immorality and illegality.
If it makes you feel any better, I didn't like The Hurt Locker when I saw it in theaters. So I wouldn't have pirated it in the first place.
You're undoubtedly right that there's a good amount of rationalization at work here. If nothing else, there are probably a good number of people who probably wouldn't have thought about the movie at all who are now predisposed against it. But I think it's easy to make the mistake of assuming that the same people who were praising the movie a year ago are the same people critiquing it now. It's just as possible that we're talking about two entirely different demographics with two entirely different takes on the same movie.
That said, I can't help but feel a little sorry for all the folks who are now being sued for pirating a movie that they didn't like. :-)
If it were theft, every pirated copy of the movie would have to come at the expense of a copy that could otherwise have been legitimately purchased. If I break into a store and steal a DVD, that's theft. If I break into a store and meticulously copy the DVD, it's not. File sharing is closer to the latter case than the former (although without the whole trespassing/breaking and entering aspect).
That's not to excuse piracy, mind you: copyright infringement is still illegal and (depending on your ethics) possibly immoral as well. But there's been a long-standing and deliberate effort among content producers to confuse copyright infringement with theft and it's not really hard to see why. Even if you feel that both crimes are inexcusable, theft is clearly the worse of the two. Plus, there are plenty of people out there who aren't familiar with the particulars of intellectual property laws who know about theft.
In short, it's a PR move. And while I certainly don't begrudge producers the right to protect their property to the fullest extent of the law, I personally prefer to call a spade a spade.
That's not technically true. In practice, there's little motivation for rights holders to go after downloaders/leechers and they generally don't do so. But they would be legally justified in doing so if they so chose.
But we're talking about BitTorrent, anyway, so it's probably reasonable to assume that there are no leechers, given the way the protocol works.
BitTorrent is peer-to-peer. Unless you've run through some unusual hoops, by downloading something over BitTorrent, you're uploading it at the same time.
If the suit was being filed against Usenet or IRC downloaders, then this would be a valid argument. As it is, the plaintiff is right about this.
Technically speaking, downloading a copy of a movie you already own may be illegal, but it's extremely unlikely that anyone will sue you for it. If they could even track you down in the first place.
But the issue here is that BitTorrent isn't a download tool: it's a peer-to-peer protocol. By default, while you're downloading any given file, you're also uploading it to others. And even if you have a legal copy of the work in question, you don't have the legal right to make it available to those who don't.
I haven't read the latest bill or watched the news about it recently, but my personal feelings on it are mixed.
I've never tried green eggs and ham, but I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.
If there is a centralized healthcare system, then it will be their job to regulate the substances we can take into our bodies as part of the health care coverage they provide.
Well, then I suppose it's a very good thing that "a centralized healthcare system" was never under debate. The current deliberations started with a government-administered insurance plan that would compete with the private industry in order to exert pressure through competition. And even that's been off-the-table for months now.
Other people say "This works in my country" but have you seen our population or our budget? We're broke and to offer coverage to millions of people is just ridiculous.
American exceptionalism rears its head again. Our economic situation isn't great, but we're by no means the worst off in the world, nor do we labor under the greatest deficit. That other nations can manage it doesn't necessarily mean that we can manage it, but it suggests that a close evaluation may be in order.
Besides which, the cost question is a bit misleading. Our current health care industry is eating a huge chunk of our economy, and growing larger all of the time. Part of the point of reform is to stem that growth in order to save the country money: the long-term savings offset the upfront costs. Or so the argument goes, and so the CBO has found each time a new revision of the bill gets punted off to them.
There has been no credible mechanism for reforming the system without government involvement. Every one of the "alternatives" put forward has been, frankly, a joke. Tort reform? A handout to wealthy interests that would slice down only about 2% of the cost problem. Health savings accounts? Works very poorly for chronic conditions. Interstate competition? Fine, so where's the framework to prevent abuse when insurance providers flock to the state with the least regulation? The federal government would need to regulate as a matter of interstate commerce, but if the stated goal is to prevent "bigger government," then they're hardly going to be able to do a decent job of it.
The question of whether or not you should "trust" the government is a red herring. The issue at stake is that private insurance has proven that they cannot be relied upon to police themselves (nor, honestly, should they be expected to), and that the normal rules of supply and demand that might keep problems in check are too easily abused when dealing with something as essential as health care. Under the circumstances, the government is both more accountable and more responsive to the public, and increased government oversight is preferable to the status quo.
Is it a perfect solution? Maybe not. But this has been a public policy issue, on and off, for fifty years, and has dominated all other domestic policy items for almost a year now. It's not been rushed, and the parameters of the debate have been readily available to anyone who cares to look for them. And the "no bigger government" argument continues to spout the same old dubious talking points and non-sequiturs. It's not an argument being made honestly or in good faith.
Why stop there? I hear there are elections in 2012, as well. It's only fair to the American people to wait until after all the elections are over before the government tries to accomplish anything.
Seriously, though, you really want to make this argument? The current Democratic majority campaigned heavily on the issue of health care reform in 2008. The details have been debated for longer than the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and the Bush tax cuts ever were. I can understand the position of folks who disagree with the proposed legislation, even if I don't agree with them, but the suggestion that this hasn't been given greater diligence and attention than almost any other piece of legislation in recent memory is ludicrous. And the suggestion that we should postpone controversial legislation simply because it's controversial kind of ignores the purpose of representative democracy in the first place....