Prohibition of computer safety tools opens door and gate for Federal trojans*.
May 25, 2007 (46halbe) The Bundestag has today waved through, unchanged, a ban again computer safety tools (Bill for the change of Criminal law in order to fight computer criminality, new 202 StGB). Chiefly targeted is the manufacturing, programming, leaving (for someone), distribution, or procurement of software, which is urgently necessary for the daily work of network administrators and safety experts.
With this decision the delegates acted against the express advice given by experts from research and business to the committees consulting on the proposal. The law was also sharply criticised by the Internet economy sector and the Upper House of Parliament. With exception of the Party of Democratic Socialism and a lonely SPD delegate, the complete Great Coalition of the Clueless now voted to make Germany a professional disqualification zone for computer safety experts.
Through the markedly broad scope of the law, the possession, production and distribution of preventive tools with which to examine computer security will become punishable in Germany. These tools are, however, essential in order to ensure the security of computer systems. Banning this software is about as helpful as banning the production and the sales of hammers because sometimes these are also used to cause damages.
Andy Mueller-Maguhn, speaker of the Chaos Computer Club, commented: "banning the possession of computer safety tools leaves the door wide open for the use of Federal Trojans. Industry and citizens are systematically being robbed of the possibility of examining their systems adequately for security. This prohibition endangers the security of the German IT sector."
As the automobile industry makes its vehicles safer with crash tests, so does the computer industry test its system security through the controlled employment of attack programs. It will in future no longer be possible be to test sensitive computer systems for security in ways that are without a doubt legal.
At the yearly congress of the Federal Office for Security in the Information Technology (BSI), Minister of the Interior Schaeuble announced plans to certify "trustworthy" security providers. With this step, the abilities and knowledge necessary for effective safety examinations of computer systems shall apparently be monopolised by handpicked government suppliers, while the independent computer safety research can be selectively criminalised as desired.
CCC speaker Mueller-Maguhn added: "the explanations of the Minister of the Interior for computer security are pure lip-service. A legal and organizational framework is being systematically created here in order to make citizens and enterprises defenseless against computer attacks, industrial espionage and also Federal trojans. Safety research can take place only in an unacceptable legal gray area."
*N.B. "Bundestrojaner", which I've translated as Federal Trojans, are the programs the police/gov't use to search through people's computers remotely (newly legalised, or given greater scope, I believe)
Unfortunately the lack of information about the participants in the 'experiment' (i.e. the drivers), specifically, not knowing what information each subje^H^H^H^Hdriver has, means there won't be much anyone can do with the data.
Unless everyone has one of these systems, you can't assume Common Knowledge (which you do in the Prisoner's Dilemma), nor will there ever be a strictly dominant strategy (again, unlike the Prisoner's Dilemma).
If few people have a traffic monitoring system, then the dominant strategy would be to follow its advice. If many people have this system, and there is no time lag in the information being displayed, then you could probably follow its advice: eventually traffic would be spread evenly across all routes. If the system has a lag, then you could 'game' it by, as you suggested, adopting a mixed strategy of sometimes following its advice and sometimes not.
I fully agree with you, though, that the whole thing would make a wonderful case study in Game Theory -- which is what I assume you were getting at with the PD reference, since there are only casual similarities IMO.
That's nonsensical: industry has to move their production, precisely because labour is (predominantly) immobile. If labour was fully mobile, workers from cheap-labour countries would flood to expensive-labour countries to get the better wages, leading (eventually) to equalised wages in both countries. Basic international labour economic theory - and removed from reality, of course.
However, you seem to be suggesting that the relocation of production from a high- to a low-wage country (the "America to India" example seems to leap out) would cause people -- if they were mobile -- to follow the production i.e. move from America to India... so they can work their old job, at the new, lower market wage.
Woah, Insightful? Did you go for "Funny" and trip? Feel bad that jokes don't boost karma? Or do we really have mods that reckon pikeys are all crooks... based on the movie "Snatch".
... and I honestly can't see why they're not. I have one, and it's awesome: I use it for work, study, everything.
On the phone, need to write something down? Scribble it on the Tablet. Taking notes in class? On the Tablet. Drawing graphs, equations, or annotating lectures slides? On the tablet. For a student, it's a dream: I have the material from every class (and classes from previous semesters) with me at all time, searchable in seconds - and that includes my handwriting.
Absolutely the only thing I can see that's keeping Tablets from replacing laptops is the higher cost: once that comes down - and it will, with time - I can't imagine why people would choose a regular computer over one with touch input.
We were discussing what features in Vista a normal user would understand and appreciate.
That wasn't clear, but fair enough.
The indexer supports all file types, as far as I'm aware, plus Boolean search operators and the like. The pages linked to in my previous posts should have more detail (in particular the second), or - if you're feeling adventurous - you can try the Indexing help file. The info is all there... just poorly structured.
Windows XP has had Indexed Searching for years as part of the Search Companion - it's poorly documented, and not nearly as flashy as Windows Desktop Search (or whatever it is that Vista uses), but it does the whole indexing thing just fine. After it's finished searching the index, it'll do its regular old-fashioned search, too, so you're getting the best of both words.
Here are some more advanced intructions. Searching for particular properties, boolean operators asf; stuff that's in the Help File but, like I said, poorly documented.(You don't need to use that program)
If you've installed WDS, but would like to go back to using Search Companion by default, John tells you how.
Sure, but Fruit of the Loom will have to compete with the dirt-cheap Gnome Underpants flooding the market. If you search long enough, you'll find an exact replacement for the ones you lost!
I'm interested in making the economy work the way Adam Smith intended by removing externalities. Woah there, sailor - remove externalities? Could you point to the chapter/paper/napkin where Smith suggested that? I'm not sure any economist, ever, has suggested that externalities can be removed. Per definition, I'm not sure its possible.
Maybe you meant to suggest removing controls in response to externalities, in order to make the market more "free"? If so, that's simply wrong: while Smith was a "free market economist", that whole 'invisible hand' regulating the markets thing is usually way out of context. He wasn't nearly as against a bit of regulation as most suppose. Friedman would be a more likely to bet to support scrapping regulating externalities (though not in all cases).
You don't have to track consumption and pay the bill later, you would pay consumption tax at the point of sale and that (along with a standard rebate) could be your whole relationship to a taxing authority.
Interesting... so, like of paying income tax throughout the year and then claiming back expenses to get a tax return, you would pay consumption tax on everything througout the year, but then - rather than proving your consumption level - you are simply given a rebate equal to what has been decided is the level of income that is tax free.
Problems: unless all items of consumption are taxed at the same rate, the rebate will favour households that consume lower-taxed goods (get same rebate, but have paid less tax). What about households that consume less than this rebate amount? That's essentially untargeted welfare, isn't it? And business? Do they still get to claim employee pay as an expense? Factor inputs are, after all, that which a company is 'consuming'? I think the model needs to be complex, to be fair/just/equitable.
I reckon there's probably just as many problems with the 'consumption tax' model as there are with the 'income tax' model - the international aspects, my god! Everyone'll be earning in the US and consuming in Canada - and the effort required to implement it would be better spent fixing the model we (a global 'we') have.
the model will predict that six individuals will exhibit the behaviour. It will be correct on the three, and incorrect on three more.
The other way around: for every 6 occurances of the behaviour, the model will predict 3 (and will incorrectly predict 30 other cases, based on the CDC's view that a false negative is 10 times as bad as a false positive). 3 of the cases will be from a group of 123 people the model said would not display the behaviour: an accuracy rate of 97.6%
See Table 3 Random forest confusion table with 10 to 1 costs
Forecast no misconduct misconduct Model error Observed no misconduct __ 753 __________ 208 _________ 0.216 Observed misconduct _____ 19 ___________ 20 _________ 0.487 Use error ______________ 0.024 _______ 0.912 _ Overall error = 0.227
The model being studied has only a 50% false positive rate
Sadly, not: it has a 91.2% false positive rate. However, this CDC regards this as acceptable, as it views the costs of a false positive as 1/10th those of a false negative.
Lameness filter, lalalala... *hummedy hum* Forecasting Dangerous Inmate Misconduct: An Application of Ensemble Statistical Procedures Richard A. Berk Æ Brian Kriegler Æ Jong-Ho Baek Published online: 12 May 2006
Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006 J Quant Criminol (2006) 22:131-145 DOI 10.1007/s10940-006-9005-z
Sorry, just read your post again: you ARE implying that aggreagte consumption (i.e. what a household spends in a year) be taxed.
That's just totally impractical. How are you going to track that? Businesses have an incentive to report their employees pay, b/c that's an expense for them. Households aren't going to tell you how much they spend, because by understating the amount they get taxed less. Shops can't report it, unless you require ID for every - EVERY - purchase. You can forget about trackable electronic payments: cash will be king, again, for the same reasons that, if you want avoid income nowadays, you do everything with cash.
Mmmm, I think I see where you're coming from. Instead of saying "the first $x of an income are tax free, amounts beyond that attract tax", you say "the first $x of a good are tax free, amounts beyond that attract tax" - where $x is set so that basic G&S attract minimal tax.
I'm confused by your plasma screen example, though. I assume you want to place the tax on the goods themselves, because tracking 'consumption' as an aggregate for a household is unfeasible (households don't have any motive to do it - less recorded consumption, less tax - , and the Gov't can't keep track of every time I buy a litre of milk), but in that case I can't see a plasma screen falling into "Basic Goods & Services".
Furthermore, because even the richest people have largely overlapping consumption habits with the masses as far as basic G&S are concerned (their bread, butter and milk doesn't cost 3x as much, for example), and the tax base for 'expensive' consumption is therefore quite narrow, the tax rate required to finance.. well, anything, would have to incredibly high.
To draw an example from the income side, simply because I know the figures: it's possible to have a tax system where the first $20-30'000 a person earns - enough for a comfortable lifestyle - is tax free, with tax on amounts above that financing the Gov't. The necessary tax rate, however, was something in the order of 60-70% on amounts above $20/30'000. That's a tough sell.
Your system may elegant, it may be desireable, it may even be practical. But if it's not politically attractive, it's dust.
There are a million ways to make consumption taxes progressive, just like income taxes, but without the problems associated with taxing production.
Really? My taxation professor would be very interested to know about them, I'm sure. Could you provide some sources (preferably academic)?
How, for example, could one overcome the problem that, as the income/consumption ratio is not constant (i.e. the more people earn, the lower the proportion of their earnings they spend on consumption - an empircally proven statement), broadly taxing consumption is necessarily regressive?
High-income earners don't have a consumption basket so vastly different from low-income earners that it is possible to target them on the consumption side to any significant degree; while one can certainly tax luxury goods, the very nature of those goods means their demand elasticity is high enough that the tax burden falls not on the consumer, but the producer.
Aside from your last paragraph, I agree with your post. Donating to a wasteful charity can be worse than spending the same money locally, or putting it aside for the capital market to use. However, most large charities have recognised this and publish breakdowns of their spending (both by project goal and administrative expenses), so it's relatively easy to make an informed choice.
Friedman agrees with you to the extent that CEO's cannot hide soley behind the "it was legal" excuse. However, he has also written about the unsuitability of unrepresentative, unelected people (i.e. CEO's) taking it upon themselves to define what is "morally reprehensible" or not.
CEO's have a duty to their employers (shareholders), to society, and to themselves. How is CEO to know what society wants? Well, how about looking at what the representatives of a society (politicians) say they want. How are the values of society codified? Through law.
What shareholders want of CEO's is simple: they want profit. If they want anything, they'll write it into the company's charter, which is, guess what - also law.
Now, obviously there are situations where there is no clear legal "right" or "wrong", and it precisely in these situations that Friedman argues a CEO should sublimate his own moral conscience - which might compell him to a course of action his employers entirely disagree with - in favour of doing that which he knows definitely is right: doing what the shareholders want and not breaking any laws. CEO's don't get to decide what's morally reprehensible or not in line-ball cases.
If you're not attempting to reduce Friedman to single sentence, you are at the very least stripping all complexity out of his arguments and then selectively quoting them. You obviously haven't read the article, otherwhise I wouldn't have to spend my time contextualing the excerpts I've used.
The quote itself doesn't specifically mention lawmakers, no. However, earlier in the same article from which the quote stems, Friedman writes:
He (a corporate executive) has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.
Anything else?
Reducing Friedman's position to the contents of a single sentence is almost as bad as reducing Adam Smith to "that guy who talked about the invisible hand". Which, by the way, is also used by almost everyone completely incorrectly.
there is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
From "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits", The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970 copies here or here (annotated)
[blockquote]quote which is attributed to Friedman goes: "The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders..."[/blockquote]... within the constraints provided by law.
Those mightn't be the exact words (it's been a while since I read the original text, and I don't have the paper I wrote on CSR on hand), but, taken, to the limit, this means that a company will take any legal action neccessary to secure and guard profits.
So if a (legal) action of the company is morally reprehensible or otherwhise 'wrong', then it is the fault of the lawmakers for allowing it, not the executives of the company for playing within the rules. That's what Friedmann was saying.
The text is a good read, btw. If I remember the title, I'll post it for you.
But it's not rational for the country's non-voters to expect that voters' engagement in the political process will necessarily bring about a better outcome for them.
No, it's not. But it's also not rational to expect that going to the polls and voting with little to no idea about the issues will bring about a better outcome for you.
To use Klein's example of a minimum wage increase for low-paid workers: One candidate supports it, and the other doesn't. How will the lowly paid workers (who are assumed to be less educated, and therefore uninformed about the issues) know which one to pick? They don't, and end up with a 50/50 chance of voting against their own interests*. Mankiw's (or rather, Feddersen and Pesendorfer's) point is that the uninformed should choose not to vote because "the outcome will be more reliable without their participation. By not voting, they are doing themselves and everyone else a favor. If the ill-informed were all induced to vote, they would merely add random noise to the outcome." (From Mankiw's blog).
The nub of the difference between the two articles seems to be that Klein doesn't trust the educated to make decisions on behalf of the less educated, because she assumes they will have conflicting interests and that self-interest will prevail^, whereas Mankiw/Feddersen/Pesendorfer.. . don't address the issue (at least not in the blog).
It could be argued that with higher education comes a more developed sense of moral responsiblity, and that thus the higher educated (informed) voters will try and do what's best for the nation, not simply for them.^^ Or maybe the point of the study/blog was to push education, with bettering democracy as a goal.
The orginal question asked by the submitter can be simplistically answered by asking: Do you trust your fellow citizens to decide your future (on a political scale)? If yes, then you don't need to vote. If no, then you should inform yourself and go vote.
If you don't trust your fellow citizens, but haven't informed yourself, then (personally) I reckon you should stay at home. I consider it a civic duty to be involved in the democratic process, but not if you're going to screw it up because you're choosing the most photogenic candidate.
*One could argue that, since the educated (and in this simplified example, rich/store owners) are likely to vote against the workers interests, a 50/50 split of votes from the latter would lead to a better ratio of support for their issues, but anyone who thinks in terms of statistics like that isn't in the uneducated category
^Which is entirely consistent within the economic framework of the orgininal article/study ^^Which would break the economic assumption of self-interest
The alternative question is: Would they (The Living End) prefer that you not unlawfully download their music and then not go to their concerts (that you went to based on that act), or do they prefer people to download and come to their concerts because they're artists and really want to just be heard
(original post edited for clarity)
As someone who has spoken with "them" (The Living End) several times about this issue, let me give what I remember* as being their views.
The Living End are, as a rule, against piracy (aren't all bands?). However, they accept that it happens, and if it wins them a fan they're not really fussed. Personal anecdote: I burned some mates in Germany a few early TLE CDs, and at an instore signing pinched some more than I gave to friends. After both occasions I offered to reimburse the boys for their lost revenue, but they wouldn't let me do so much as buy them a beer. What the guys are against is the folks who just pirate their stuff and leave it at that. If you pirate their albums, but come to the shows and buy the merch, they probably wouldn't mind. When I moderated an ftp server to share rare live and other unreleased TLE material, the rules were: nothing that's commercially available, and no bootleg versions of new songs until a few weeks after those songs have been released commerically. These were worked out with the band (through their management; they don't post much themselves), who gave us their implicit consent.
Look, your mileage will vary from band to band; The Living End just happen to be a terrific bunch of guys with the utmost respect for their fans, who may be able to shrug off a little piracy on account of their relative success (at least in Australia). I haven't raised that last point with Chris & Co, though, and I won't - I doubt they know enough details about revenues lost & such that they'd be able to give a proper answer.
*I unfortunatley cannot provide evidence because my information is a result of personal conversations or from posts on the band's forum, which was unfortunately haked a few months ago.
(Disclaimer: I use the same method to "trial before I buy" music that the GP does - download a CD, listen once or twice, and if I like enough (3 or more songs that grab me is my rule of thumb) stuff from them I'll buy the CD. Either way, I delete the CD after I listen: means I have to buy it to get the music I like, and gets rid of the crap that I'm not willing to pay for. Also, I happen to love the band the GP is talking about, so I'm a little biased 'cause he likes them *grins*)
Not that I support the study, but wtf? Pirates don't "produce" anything, otherwise they'd be called "artists". Pirates merely copy.
I agree that piracy can benefit the economy (since consumers get the benefit of the copied products for free [or close enough] and can spend the money meant for the copied products on other things), but only in a situation where their piracy doesn't negatively impact on the original producers of material (the artists) to the extent that these choose to stop producing new material. At that point, there is nothing left to pirate, so benefits from piracy = 0.
what is saved on music and videos can be spent on more important items. (Emphasis added)
If a consumer would have spent money on music or videos, those items were obviously more 'important' to them than whatever it is they spent the money on after getting the music/videos for free - otherwhise they would have bought Item B before buying the music/vids, no?
In short: piracy is good for consumers, but bad for producers. If it's bad enough for producers that they stop producing, it's bad for consumers, too./Sapphon
P.S. Somehow I doubt any of your members of parliament, senators, or congressmen and -women studied the finer points of economics to extent that simply refreshing their memories would do any good.
How do power considerations affect the size of your paging file? When using a laptop, for example, you'd typically want your energy consumption to be as low as possible: are you therefore better off turning your paging file off and forcing the OS to use your RAM, or letting it swap out?
Slashdot Mirror
Prohibition of computer safety tools opens door and gate for Federal trojans*.
May 25, 2007 (46halbe)
The Bundestag has today waved through, unchanged, a ban again computer safety tools (Bill for the change of Criminal law in order to fight computer criminality, new 202 StGB). Chiefly targeted is the manufacturing, programming, leaving (for someone), distribution, or procurement of software, which is urgently necessary for the daily work of network administrators and safety experts.
With this decision the delegates acted against the express advice given by experts from research and business to the committees consulting on the proposal. The law was also sharply criticised by the Internet economy sector and the Upper House of Parliament. With exception of the Party of Democratic Socialism and a lonely SPD delegate, the complete Great Coalition of the Clueless now voted to make Germany a professional disqualification zone for computer safety experts.
Through the markedly broad scope of the law, the possession, production and distribution of preventive tools with which to examine computer security will become punishable in Germany. These tools are, however, essential in order to ensure the security of computer systems. Banning this software is about as helpful as banning the production and the sales of hammers because sometimes these are also used to cause damages.
Andy Mueller-Maguhn, speaker of the Chaos Computer Club, commented: "banning the possession of computer safety tools leaves the door wide open for the use of Federal Trojans. Industry and citizens are systematically being robbed of the possibility of examining their systems adequately for security. This prohibition endangers the security of the German IT sector."
As the automobile industry makes its vehicles safer with crash tests, so does the computer industry test its system security through the controlled employment of attack programs. It will in future no longer be possible be to test sensitive computer systems for security in ways that are without a doubt legal.
At the yearly congress of the Federal Office for Security in the Information Technology (BSI), Minister of the Interior Schaeuble announced plans to certify "trustworthy" security providers. With this step, the abilities and knowledge necessary for effective safety examinations of computer systems shall apparently be monopolised by handpicked government suppliers, while the independent computer safety research can be selectively criminalised as desired.
CCC speaker Mueller-Maguhn added: "the explanations of the Minister of the Interior for computer security are pure lip-service. A legal and organizational framework is being systematically created here in order to make citizens and enterprises defenseless against computer attacks, industrial espionage and also Federal trojans. Safety research can take place only in an unacceptable legal gray area."
*N.B. "Bundestrojaner", which I've translated as Federal Trojans, are the programs the police/gov't use to search through people's computers remotely (newly legalised, or given greater scope, I believe)
Unfortunately the lack of information about the participants in the 'experiment' (i.e. the drivers), specifically, not knowing what information each subje^H^H^H^Hdriver has, means there won't be much anyone can do with the data.
Unless everyone has one of these systems, you can't assume Common Knowledge (which you do in the Prisoner's Dilemma), nor will there ever be a strictly dominant strategy (again, unlike the Prisoner's Dilemma).
If few people have a traffic monitoring system, then the dominant strategy would be to follow its advice. If many people have this system, and there is no time lag in the information being displayed, then you could probably follow its advice: eventually traffic would be spread evenly across all routes. If the system has a lag, then you could 'game' it by, as you suggested, adopting a mixed strategy of sometimes following its advice and sometimes not.
I fully agree with you, though, that the whole thing would make a wonderful case study in Game Theory -- which is what I assume you were getting at with the PD reference, since there are only casual similarities IMO.
That's nonsensical: industry has to move their production, precisely because labour is (predominantly) immobile. If labour was fully mobile, workers from cheap-labour countries would flood to expensive-labour countries to get the better wages, leading (eventually) to equalised wages in both countries. Basic international labour economic theory - and removed from reality, of course.
However, you seem to be suggesting that the relocation of production from a high- to a low-wage country (the "America to India" example seems to leap out) would cause people -- if they were mobile -- to follow the production i.e. move from America to India... so they can work their old job, at the new, lower market wage.
Poppycock!
Woah, Insightful? Did you go for "Funny" and trip? Feel bad that jokes don't boost karma? Or do we really have mods that reckon pikeys are all crooks... based on the movie "Snatch".
... and I honestly can't see why they're not. I have one, and it's awesome: I use it for work, study, everything.
On the phone, need to write something down? Scribble it on the Tablet. Taking notes in class? On the Tablet. Drawing graphs, equations, or annotating lectures slides? On the tablet. For a student, it's a dream: I have the material from every class (and classes from previous semesters) with me at all time, searchable in seconds - and that includes my handwriting.
Absolutely the only thing I can see that's keeping Tablets from replacing laptops is the higher cost: once that comes down - and it will, with time - I can't imagine why people would choose a regular computer over one with touch input.
That wasn't clear, but fair enough.
The indexer supports all file types, as far as I'm aware, plus Boolean search operators and the like. The pages linked to in my previous posts should have more detail (in particular the second), or - if you're feeling adventurous - you can try the Indexing help file. The info is all there... just poorly structured.
Windows XP has had Indexed Searching for years as part of the Search Companion - it's poorly documented, and not nearly as flashy as Windows Desktop Search (or whatever it is that Vista uses), but it does the whole indexing thing just fine. After it's finished searching the index, it'll do its regular old-fashioned search, too, so you're getting the best of both words.
Here's how to get started.
Here are some more advanced intructions. Searching for particular properties, boolean operators asf; stuff that's in the Help File but, like I said, poorly documented.(You don't need to use that program)
If you've installed WDS, but would like to go back to using Search Companion by default, John tells you how.
Cheers!
Sure, but Fruit of the Loom will have to compete with the dirt-cheap Gnome Underpants flooding the market. If you search long enough, you'll find an exact replacement for the ones you lost!
Maybe you meant to suggest removing controls in response to externalities, in order to make the market more "free"? If so, that's simply wrong: while Smith was a "free market economist", that whole 'invisible hand' regulating the markets thing is usually way out of context. He wasn't nearly as against a bit of regulation as most suppose. Friedman would be a more likely to bet to support scrapping regulating externalities (though not in all cases).
Interesting... so, like of paying income tax throughout the year and then claiming back expenses to get a tax return, you would pay consumption tax on everything througout the year, but then - rather than proving your consumption level - you are simply given a rebate equal to what has been decided is the level of income that is tax free.
Problems: unless all items of consumption are taxed at the same rate, the rebate will favour households that consume lower-taxed goods (get same rebate, but have paid less tax).
What about households that consume less than this rebate amount? That's essentially untargeted welfare, isn't it?
And business? Do they still get to claim employee pay as an expense? Factor inputs are, after all, that which a company is 'consuming'?
I think the model needs to be complex, to be fair/just/equitable.
I reckon there's probably just as many problems with the 'consumption tax' model as there are with the 'income tax' model - the international aspects, my god! Everyone'll be earning in the US and consuming in Canada - and the effort required to implement it would be better spent fixing the model we (a global 'we') have.
The other way around: for every 6 occurances of the behaviour, the model will predict 3 (and will incorrectly predict 30 other cases, based on the CDC's view that a false negative is 10 times as bad as a false positive). 3 of the cases will be from a group of 123 people the model said would not display the behaviour: an accuracy rate of 97.6%
See Table 3 Random forest confusion table with 10 to 1 costs
Forecast no misconduct misconduct Model error
Observed no misconduct __ 753 __________ 208 _________ 0.216
Observed misconduct _____ 19 ___________ 20 _________ 0.487
Use error ______________ 0.024 _______ 0.912 _ Overall error = 0.227
Sadly, not: it has a 91.2% false positive rate. However, this CDC regards this as acceptable, as it views the costs of a false positive as 1/10th those of a false negative.
All from the report
Lameness filter, lalalala... *hummedy hum*
Forecasting Dangerous Inmate Misconduct:
An Application of Ensemble Statistical Procedures
Richard A. Berk Æ Brian Kriegler Æ Jong-Ho Baek
Published online: 12 May 2006
Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006
J Quant Criminol (2006) 22:131-145
DOI 10.1007/s10940-006-9005-z
Agreed - there's a very simple theoretical way of doing it. However, it's phenomenally impractical.
See my reply to the other guy.
Sorry, just read your post again: you ARE implying that aggreagte consumption (i.e. what a household spends in a year) be taxed.
That's just totally impractical. How are you going to track that? Businesses have an incentive to report their employees pay, b/c that's an expense for them. Households aren't going to tell you how much they spend, because by understating the amount they get taxed less. Shops can't report it, unless you require ID for every - EVERY - purchase. You can forget about trackable electronic payments: cash will be king, again, for the same reasons that, if you want avoid income nowadays, you do everything with cash.
Pie in the sky idea mate, sorry.
Mmmm, I think I see where you're coming from. Instead of saying "the first $x of an income are tax free, amounts beyond that attract tax", you say "the first $x of a good are tax free, amounts beyond that attract tax" - where $x is set so that basic G&S attract minimal tax.
I'm confused by your plasma screen example, though. I assume you want to place the tax on the goods themselves, because tracking 'consumption' as an aggregate for a household is unfeasible (households don't have any motive to do it - less recorded consumption, less tax - , and the Gov't can't keep track of every time I buy a litre of milk), but in that case I can't see a plasma screen falling into "Basic Goods & Services".
Furthermore, because even the richest people have largely overlapping consumption habits with the masses as far as basic G&S are concerned (their bread, butter and milk doesn't cost 3x as much, for example), and the tax base for 'expensive' consumption is therefore quite narrow, the tax rate required to finance.. well, anything, would have to incredibly high.
To draw an example from the income side, simply because I know the figures: it's possible to have a tax system where the first $20-30'000 a person earns - enough for a comfortable lifestyle - is tax free, with tax on amounts above that financing the Gov't. The necessary tax rate, however, was something in the order of 60-70% on amounts above $20/30'000. That's a tough sell.
Your system may elegant, it may be desireable, it may even be practical. But if it's not politically attractive, it's dust.
Really? My taxation professor would be very interested to know about them, I'm sure. Could you provide some sources (preferably academic)?
How, for example, could one overcome the problem that, as the income/consumption ratio is not constant (i.e. the more people earn, the lower the proportion of their earnings they spend on consumption - an empircally proven statement), broadly taxing consumption is necessarily regressive?
High-income earners don't have a consumption basket so vastly different from low-income earners that it is possible to target them on the consumption side to any significant degree; while one can certainly tax luxury goods, the very nature of those goods means their demand elasticity is high enough that the tax burden falls not on the consumer, but the producer.
Aside from your last paragraph, I agree with your post. Donating to a wasteful charity can be worse than spending the same money locally, or putting it aside for the capital market to use. However, most large charities have recognised this and publish breakdowns of their spending (both by project goal and administrative expenses), so it's relatively easy to make an informed choice.
CowboyNeal, is that you?
Friedman agrees with you to the extent that CEO's cannot hide soley behind the "it was legal" excuse. However, he has also written about the unsuitability of unrepresentative, unelected people (i.e. CEO's) taking it upon themselves to define what is "morally reprehensible" or not.
CEO's have a duty to their employers (shareholders), to society, and to themselves. How is CEO to know what society wants? Well, how about looking at what the representatives of a society (politicians) say they want. How are the values of society codified? Through law.
What shareholders want of CEO's is simple: they want profit. If they want anything, they'll write it into the company's charter, which is, guess what - also law.
Now, obviously there are situations where there is no clear legal "right" or "wrong", and it precisely in these situations that Friedman argues a CEO should sublimate his own moral conscience - which might compell him to a course of action his employers entirely disagree with - in favour of doing that which he knows definitely is right: doing what the shareholders want and not breaking any laws. CEO's don't get to decide what's morally reprehensible or not in line-ball cases.
If you're not attempting to reduce Friedman to single sentence, you are at the very least stripping all complexity out of his arguments and then selectively quoting them. You obviously haven't read the article, otherwhise I wouldn't have to spend my time contextualing the excerpts I've used.
The quote itself doesn't specifically mention lawmakers, no. However, earlier in the same article from which the quote stems, Friedman writes:
He (a corporate executive) has direct responsibility to his employers. That
responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which
generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic
rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.
Anything else?
Reducing Friedman's position to the contents of a single sentence is almost as bad as reducing Adam Smith to "that guy who talked about the invisible hand". Which, by the way, is also used by almost everyone completely incorrectly.
there is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
From "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits", The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970
copies here or here (annotated)
[blockquote]quote which is attributed to Friedman goes: "The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders..."[/blockquote] ... within the constraints provided by law.
Those mightn't be the exact words (it's been a while since I read the original text, and I don't have the paper I wrote on CSR on hand), but, taken, to the limit, this means that a company will take any legal action neccessary to secure and guard profits.
So if a (legal) action of the company is morally reprehensible or otherwhise 'wrong', then it is the fault of the lawmakers for allowing it, not the executives of the company for playing within the rules. That's what Friedmann was saying.
The text is a good read, btw. If I remember the title, I'll post it for you.
No, it's not. But it's also not rational to expect that going to the polls and voting with little to no idea about the issues will bring about a better outcome for you.
To use Klein's example of a minimum wage increase for low-paid workers: One candidate supports it, and the other doesn't. How will the lowly paid workers (who are assumed to be less educated, and therefore uninformed about the issues) know which one to pick? They don't, and end up with a 50/50 chance of voting against their own interests*. Mankiw's (or rather, Feddersen and Pesendorfer's) point is that the uninformed should choose not to vote because "the outcome will be more reliable without their participation. By not voting, they are doing themselves and everyone else a favor. If the ill-informed were all induced to vote, they would merely add random noise to the outcome." (From Mankiw's blog).
The nub of the difference between the two articles seems to be that Klein doesn't trust the educated to make decisions on behalf of the less educated, because she assumes they will have conflicting interests and that self-interest will prevail^, whereas Mankiw/Feddersen/Pesendorfer.. . don't address the issue (at least not in the blog).
It could be argued that with higher education comes a more developed sense of moral responsiblity, and that thus the higher educated (informed) voters will try and do what's best for the nation, not simply for them.^^ Or maybe the point of the study/blog was to push education, with bettering democracy as a goal.
The orginal question asked by the submitter can be simplistically answered by asking: Do you trust your fellow citizens to decide your future (on a political scale)? If yes, then you don't need to vote. If no, then you should inform yourself and go vote.
If you don't trust your fellow citizens, but haven't informed yourself, then (personally) I reckon you should stay at home. I consider it a civic duty to be involved in the democratic process, but not if you're going to screw it up because you're choosing the most photogenic candidate.
*One could argue that, since the educated (and in this simplified example, rich/store owners) are likely to vote against the workers interests, a 50/50 split of votes from the latter would lead to a better ratio of support for their issues, but anyone who thinks in terms of statistics like that isn't in the uneducated category
^Which is entirely consistent within the economic framework of the orgininal article/study
^^Which would break the economic assumption of self-interest
(original post edited for clarity)
As someone who has spoken with "them" (The Living End) several times about this issue, let me give what I remember* as being their views.
The Living End are, as a rule, against piracy (aren't all bands?). However, they accept that it happens, and if it wins them a fan they're not really fussed. Personal anecdote: I burned some mates in Germany a few early TLE CDs, and at an instore signing pinched some more than I gave to friends. After both occasions I offered to reimburse the boys for their lost revenue, but they wouldn't let me do so much as buy them a beer.
What the guys are against is the folks who just pirate their stuff and leave it at that. If you pirate their albums, but come to the shows and buy the merch, they probably wouldn't mind. When I moderated an ftp server to share rare live and other unreleased TLE material, the rules were: nothing that's commercially available, and no bootleg versions of new songs until a few weeks after those songs have been released commerically. These were worked out with the band (through their management; they don't post much themselves), who gave us their implicit consent.
Look, your mileage will vary from band to band; The Living End just happen to be a terrific bunch of guys with the utmost respect for their fans, who may be able to shrug off a little piracy on account of their relative success (at least in Australia). I haven't raised that last point with Chris & Co, though, and I won't - I doubt they know enough details about revenues lost & such that they'd be able to give a proper answer.
*I unfortunatley cannot provide evidence because my information is a result of personal conversations or from posts on the band's forum, which was unfortunately haked a few months ago.
(Disclaimer: I use the same method to "trial before I buy" music that the GP does - download a CD, listen once or twice, and if I like enough (3 or more songs that grab me is my rule of thumb) stuff from them I'll buy the CD. Either way, I delete the CD after I listen: means I have to buy it to get the music I like, and gets rid of the crap that I'm not willing to pay for. Also, I happen to love the band the GP is talking about, so I'm a little biased 'cause he likes them *grins*)
I agree that piracy can benefit the economy (since consumers get the benefit of the copied products for free [or close enough] and can spend the money meant for the copied products on other things), but only in a situation where their piracy doesn't negatively impact on the original producers of material (the artists) to the extent that these choose to stop producing new material. At that point, there is nothing left to pirate, so benefits from piracy = 0.
If a consumer would have spent money on music or videos, those items were obviously more 'important' to them than whatever it is they spent the money on after getting the music/videos for free - otherwhise they would have bought Item B before buying the music/vids, no?
In short: piracy is good for consumers, but bad for producers. If it's bad enough for producers that they stop producing, it's bad for consumers, too.
P.S. Somehow I doubt any of your members of parliament, senators, or congressmen and -women studied the finer points of economics to extent that simply refreshing their memories would do any good.
How do power considerations affect the size of your paging file? When using a laptop, for example, you'd typically want your energy consumption to be as low as possible: are you therefore better off turning your paging file off and forcing the OS to use your RAM, or letting it swap out?
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