The problem is that everyone's been convinced that they want stupid vehicles. [...]
I'm about as pro-free market as you can get, but I don't really have a better solution for getting Detroit to make sane vehicles. As a country, we have to get over this (provably incorrect) notion that "big" automatically implies "good".
I believe that what I proposed is a better, free market, way to make people pay for driving stupid vehicles.
Sorry, but if every economist knows this, then they've put their collective heads where the sun doesn't shine (actually, this seems generally true of economists) (and free-market believers as well). There are a couple of reasons increasing fuel tax will make little or no difference (and check out the UK and Europe which have steadily raised taxes.... no effect).
First, the biggest vehicle usage is commuting. People will not immediately go out and get a new car, [...]
For someone who dislikes free-market economists you present an argument that is completely within that framework. To use the jargon of the people you dismiss, demand for gasoline is inelastic. (actually that isn't exactly what you are saying, but it's close enough.)
But we know from what we saw in the US even during a temporary rise in gasoline prices last year that consumption patterns do change. And as with milage standards we are not talking about people going out and getting new cars today, we are talking about what kind of choice they make the next time they buy a car. Likewise, the next time they move or switch jobs, commuting costs will play a larger role. This is why the tax needs to be long term and seen that way. Maybe phased in over 15 years at 10 cents per year.
Also, people are vary bad at estimating future costs, so when replacing an existing car, immediate concerns like size, features, cost, etc. will dominate the buying decisions.
Second, there is the psychology of buying fuel. People will grumble when they fill up (they may even put less fuel in, but then they just have to fill up again sooner). Once the fuel is in the tank, then they will just nip out to the shops, just nip round to see friends, just this, just that: the money has already been spent.
Again, the experience of what happened last year says otherwise.
If you want taxation to work, then it has to have an effect at the point of sale. Dunno the exact situation elsewhere but in the UK there is a yearly "road fund license". Make this swingeing on fuel-innefficient vehicles so it becomes noticable on the purchase price, and you might make a difference
This varies from state to state in the US. My vehicle license fee is California was three times what it is in Texas for the same vehicle. But the problem is that this kind of fee has exactly the opposite of the psychology you want. The fee doesn't vary depending on how many miles you drive. So once you've paid it, you've got a license to burn petrol. Taxing the fuel (as you do in the UK at about three times the rate in the US) does tax exactly the behavior we wish to reduce.
Milage standards haven't worked before and they will continue to fail.
This one will fail. On purpose. [...]
Thank you for that extremely informative post (that's a hint to moderators)
What you detail is exactly what I had in mind when I said that milage standards don't work. The light truck exemption is merely one particularly egregious example of the kind of thing that goes on and will continue to go on. Thank you.
Forcing car companies to make vehicles that people don't want to buy isn't going to do anybody any good.
Please explain why there's steadily rising sales on the Prius and steadily falling sales on Hummers and other large vehicles.
Because gasoline prices shot up to 4USD/US gallon last year. If prices as stayed there (and were believed to be staying around) there would be no need for milage standards, which can't be credited for the pattern you describe.
Every economist? You can take your social metaphysics and control by fear and shove it wherever you like, but lets just be clear you are talking about ideal high school Keynesian Economics and not real world, grown up Austrian Economics.
Please tell me how what I propose is in any way Keynesian?Seriously, there is nothing Keynesian about this proposal
Gasoline usage has substantial externalities, roads, noise, pollution, congestion and diplomatic (including wars to in regions we would otherwise ignore). Internalizing those externalities places this proposal well within a neo-liberal framework.
Or are you just one of those people who shout "socialist" every time you hear the word "taxes"? These sorts of people hide behind economic rationality when it suits them (for lower taxes) and ignore economic rationality when it doesn't suit them (higher taxes).
And I still dare you to explain how this proposal is Keynesian. Or do you not know what Keynesianism really was?
If you accept that the economically sound decision isn't socially feasible then what's the point of using it as a comparison?
Because I like tilting at windmills. Or the same reason that people here continue to dream of Linux on the desktop for non-hobbyist home users. It's that glimmer of hope that remains despite experience and reason. Also, other rich democracies have managed to have high gas taxes, (although the history behind those is very different than in the US.)
Being poor come with implicit understanding that your screwed unless your willing to be creative.
This is the key point. Poor people don't have as many choices as rich people. That's pretty much what it means to be poor.
As I've said in other response to this "it hurts the poor" argument, if that is our concern, then give the poor cash so that they can spend it on alternative housing, alternative transport, cheaper running vehicle, or what ever best meets their needs. But using the "it hurts the poor" argument because we, middle-class people, don't want to face the kinds of difficult choices that the poor regularly face seems oddly ironic and a tad hypocritical.
You could make this revenue neutral if you wish through cash redistribution, but keep in mind that we've got an unimaginable national debt and that gasoline consumption costs the US government in terms of limiting diplomatic flexibility with Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia which impose real costs.
But I agree that if we wanted to make this revenue neutral, cash distributions would be the right way to do it.
Yeah, and all those people who can't afford to buy new cars or who don't have access to alternate transportation will just have to suck it up and choose between gas and food or rent/mortgage payments.
The middle class self-serving "it will hurt the poor" argument against any kind of economic restructuring is thrown about too easily. If this really is your concern, then redistribute some of the taxes to to poor as cash. Note that the redistribution should be cash (not gas coupons or tax exemptions) and it should be distributed only on the basis of wealth/income. That is a poor person who currently bicycles to work shouldn't be left out. Nor should we subsidize driving for anybody. So cash can be spent on housing, food or whatever.
The fact of the matter is that a change of this sort will make certain kinds of life styles more expensive. Rural and ex-urb dwellers will get hit worse than others. But again, the whole point is to have an incentive system that makes certain kinds of energy usage more expensive.
[...] is in fact a recipe for significant economic disruption in the real world.
I never suggested otherwise. If you want real change (say substantially reducing dependence on foreign oil) then it requires real change with all that implies.
That God-damned representative government! People doing what they want, instead of what's best for them! I tell you, if I was in charge, we wouldn't have any of this inefficient "voting" or "town hall meetings" or any of that crap.
I'm not proposing an alternative to democracy. There really isn't anything better. I'm merely pointing out that there are cases (and this is one of them) where democracies fail. Another failing that we are seeing is that representative democracies prefer public debt above either increased taxes or cuts in subsidies.
The fact that substantially higher gas taxes isn't a politicly viable solution in American democracy doesn't take away from my claim that it is the most economically rational one.
And just because something is economically rational, doesn't mean that the restructuring it entails wouldn't be extremely painful. People in distant suburbs would be doubly hurt. Their commuting costs would go up painfully and their house prices would drop exactly because commutes from those locations are expensive. I don't see a fix for that which wouldn't undermine the point of such a gas tax.
But once we are fully out of the recession, gas prices will rise on their own, and they will stay high next time. Still, I would prefer for some of the money to be going into the US treasury than into the hands of the big oil producing countries.
Milage standards haven't worked before and they will continue to fail. Forcing car companies to make vehicles that people don't want to buy isn't going to do anybody any good.
Pretty much every economist knows that the way to achieve the stated goals is to dramatically increase gasoline taxes. After that, the market will work its magic. People will buy more efficient cars, or seek alternative transportation. When looking at where to live, the cost of commuting will play a bigger role in families' decisions. And we get to make a little dent in the whopping federal deficit.
Of course no politician will even hint at endorsing what is clearly the economically rational thing to do. So instead, we'll spend money on subsidizing bio-fuels and other not-all-that-bright ideas.
As an Apple fan-boy, I am chagrined to have to point out that there is an analogue of this problem on OS X. Meta information about a file will contain information about its "Creator" (which is often used to determine what application it should be opened with) and also the file Icon.
This allows for a file to have, say a plain text icon but open as something else altogether. Apple has taken some mitigating steps (warnings before executing downloaded files for the first time), but has not changed the underlying problem which stems from concealing information from the user.
Tony Sale's Wikipedia page seems to omit the work that he did most of his life. But some aspect of his work during that time is briefly mentioned in the banned-in-Britain book Spycatcher.
I won't respond to all of your points, and I am certainly glad that you posted them so that others know the background. I lived in Hungary from 1988 through 1994, and I speak the language reasonably well. I've been a supporter of the SzDSz, but was never happy about how quickly they went to bed with the Socialists.
I will say that in the run up to the last elections both sides were lying through their teeth about what kind of spending they could promise. The difference is that some on the left actually knew they were lying. When parties or candidates promise identical impossible things, I think it is better to support the liars than the delusional.
I fully agree that as much as I dislike Fidesz, they are clearly the only party with substantial support. And so, there should be a snap election even though I won't be happy with the outcome. Protectionism and economic populism (and nationalism) is probably the worst possible response to the current situation, but Hungary also needs a government with real legitimacy and so I do grudgingly support elections at this time.
As for nationalism and ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states, I'm very much aware of the situation. Every Hungarian I talked to, even the ultra-liberals, worked to communicate to me what it is like to lose 2/3 of your territory through through being totally elbaszott by the great powers at Trianon. Among my closest friends were Hungarians from Romania and Yugoslavia. I also travelled with and among Hungarians in Romania. But you know that current Hungarian nationalism isn't just about that. It's an anti-foreign/jewish sentiment, which is profoundly unhelpful.
One thing that you might appreciate (or might not) is that during the early 1990s when I would encounter someone from either the Munkaspart (Stalinist) or MIEP (Fascist) parties campaigning, I would pretend to confuse the two. If you interchanged the phrases "Hungarian Proletariat and Peasants" with "True Hungarian Folk" from their pamphlets they're economic programs were identical. Even though I was obviously a foreigner (at least they didn't know I was a Jew) they loved trying to explain things to me. And got very frustrated when I couldn't see the difference between them and their arch rivals.
What I saw for the elections where I was there was consistency of illiberality. Sometimes it was for the Right (1990) and sometimes for the Left (1993?). Things may have changed, but if you look at the voting patterns, it is not the the whole country moved left. The people who voted for the SzDSz during first elections didn't start voting for the MSzP, but continued to support the SzDSz. What happened was that people who had voted for the MDF switched to voting for the MSzP. I haven't been able to follow in such detail, but I suspect that they same is true today.
Can I have whatever it is that you're taking that's making the sky such a pretty rosy color? Check their tiering structure, they didn't drop prices when they put caps on it. They won't in the future either.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I needed to spell out that what I meant by "lower prices" was "prices in the long run that will be lower than what they otherwise would be without the tiered system."
If this were truly a competitive market, then you might actually see that. The problem is you're looking at a monopoly marketplace for the last mile.
Neither tiered pricing nor your pipe dream of truly unlimited bandwidth for a flat rate speak to the problem of the monopoly. Sure monopolies will treat the customers like shit, but that doesn't make the flat rate "unlimited" plan sensible. Let's look at the example of trash pick-up. In the past, cities would pretty much pick up whatever you asked them to. But over time, they've correctly limited the amount that they will pick up for the flat fee, and require special arrangements for a larger pick-up. When some service goes from "to cheap to meter" to "we are running up against significant costs due to heavy use by some users" then we move to something with tiered pricing and explicit excess charges.
expect them to make low end tiers out of their normal price & rape you for using enough bandwidth to actually use anyones VOIP or Video service but theirs.
That is a good point. And as long as they hold their monopolies, then this particular aspect needs to be regulated. That is, with respect to services that they offer over their lines, they have to behave like common carriers.
Thank you for this. The reality of the situation with bandwidth is that a very small percentage of the users consume most of the bandwidth. And anyone who offers an unlimited service is either deluded or a liar.
A properly priced system will be better for everyone. For the heavy users, they will know that they won't be kicked off or silently capped since they will be explicitly paying for their heavy usage. For everyone else, it should mean lower prices and more stable service.
Thank you for your extremely informative post. (This is a hint to moderators).
I'm not optimistic either about the sincerity of this attempt.
Surely you are not suggesting that the Hungarian government would ever lie to voters. Such a thing would be unheard of. Though actually on that issue, when parties make promises to voters that they can't keep, I prefer the party that knows it's lying to the one that deludes itself into thinking it's telling the truth.
The guy who made this statement might not be a minister from next Tuesday, when there'll be a new PM, who will reshuffle the government.
Yes, the instability isn't just financial. I'm curious to see who the hell will actually be willing to take the job.
I also hope that Hungary might have a snap election too.
At the risk of getting further off-topic, I have mixed feelings about this. Hungary certainly needs a government with some degree of public support, and an election would elect people with that kind of legitimacy. But on the otherhand, from the populist and nationalist statements coming from those who are likely to win such an election, I think that they are the worst possible people to handle the crisis. As I said above, I prefer the liars who know a bit about economics to those who make the same promises and actually think that they can keep them.
In any case, the language the minister used is a bit deceptive. Unfortunately after taking a close look at what he said, it seems the money can only be spent on licences. Training costs, etc. are explicitly excluded from funding (have to be covered by the given organizations themselves).
Again, thanks for that. The whole thing just seemed so incoherent to me that I thought that I was misreading it. Now I understand that it is genuinely incoherent. I don't think that most slashdotters realize the extent to which Hungary is in deep shit. But let this be a small illustration of incompetence and murkiness (looks like someone is paying off someone else). And to make matters worse, in my opinion the current government is still better than the opposition.
After some searching, I haven't actually found much more in the Hungarian news than was reported in TFA. So, I can't add many details.
I've now found more on this (in Hungarian). My ability to read Hungarian is limited, but I do see that according to Gábor Bódi (whose government job title, I can't even begin to translate, but it is pretty high up) "this will be a trial year, with many possible outcomes of this initiative."
If I am reading that article correctly (and it is very possible that I am not), while the proposal clearly talks about open source software (nyílt forráskód), much of the justification appears to be in protectionist language about supporting domestic markets and innovation.
Less plausibly, it seems that it is talking about a plan to spend 12 thousand million Hungarian forints (54 million USD) on this. I cannot believe that I am reading that correctly. The current government is exceedingly unpopular because it has been trying and failing to push through austerity measures. I can't see that a country with a population of 10 million could be talking about spending that kind of money now. So let's just assume that I'm misreading that and hope someone who actually reads Hungarian comments on this.
PS: I just discovered when typing in the above that slashdot doesn't do UTF-8. That sucks, but it's a good thing I only had to do acute accents instead of some real Hungarian specialties.
After some searching, I haven't actually found much more in the Hungarian news than was reported in TFA. So, I can't add many details.
What I can say is that there is a fair chance that the coalition that rules Hungary today will not be in place six months from now. Secondly, Hungary needs immediate cost savings. It is not in any position to spend money now to save money later.
This might be part of the motivation. Hungary's currency is in collapse, so it is much cheaper for the government to pay local developers in forints for software and systems than it is to pay Microsoft and Novell in dollars or euros.
I'd love to know the internal machinations that went on here, but I suspect that someone took the opportunity of the fall of the forint and the foreign currency debt problem (an enormous problem) to push an open source agenda. Whether this will hold up, or whether MS will make a counter offer allowing the Hungarian government to pay cheaply in forints remains to be seen.
This is exactly what I was thinking. A $200 savings on sperm is negligible compared to the annualized TCO of a baby.
I'm not saying that one shouldn't try to save money at every opportunity, but if hard times is reducing demand at sperm banks, it's not the cost of the sperm that's the issue.
I don't know about other people, but I really don't care if someone hacks or guesses my forum password [...] Trivial web sites are going to beget trivial passwords.
I suspect that many people don't distinguish between high security passwords and low security ones, but as you say, it would be very interesting to see results from a high value site.
But even if people are using better passwords on more important sites, they are still constrained by memory and psychology if they are not using a password management system. So even if they are using better passwords for those sites, they are probably using the same, or variants of the same, passwords on multiple sites. If one of those sites is compromised, then that user's password on other sites becomes very guessable.
What data like these, even on trivial sites, show is that far too few people are using proper password management systems.
I would be interested in distributions. Do these follow Zipf's law or a more general power law?
Although the analysis was fairly superficial, the better we understand human password choice, the better we can work on systems to alleviate the problem. Anyway, I am a big fan of proper password managers. If people are expected to remember more than a small handful of passwords, bad things will happen.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that everyone's been convinced that they want stupid vehicles. [...]
I'm about as pro-free market as you can get, but I don't really have a better solution for getting Detroit to make sane vehicles. As a country, we have to get over this (provably incorrect) notion that "big" automatically implies "good".
I believe that what I proposed is a better, free market, way to make people pay for driving stupid vehicles.
Sorry, but if every economist knows this, then they've put their collective heads where the sun doesn't shine (actually, this seems generally true of economists) (and free-market believers as well). There are a couple of reasons increasing fuel tax will make little or no difference (and check out the UK and Europe which have steadily raised taxes .... no effect).
First, the biggest vehicle usage is commuting. People will not immediately go out and get a new car, [...]
For someone who dislikes free-market economists you present an argument that is completely within that framework. To use the jargon of the people you dismiss, demand for gasoline is inelastic. (actually that isn't exactly what you are saying, but it's close enough.)
But we know from what we saw in the US even during a temporary rise in gasoline prices last year that consumption patterns do change. And as with milage standards we are not talking about people going out and getting new cars today, we are talking about what kind of choice they make the next time they buy a car. Likewise, the next time they move or switch jobs, commuting costs will play a larger role. This is why the tax needs to be long term and seen that way. Maybe phased in over 15 years at 10 cents per year.
Also, people are vary bad at estimating future costs, so when replacing an existing car, immediate concerns like size, features, cost, etc. will dominate the buying decisions.
Second, there is the psychology of buying fuel. People will grumble when they fill up (they may even put less fuel in, but then they just have to fill up again sooner). Once the fuel is in the tank, then they will just nip out to the shops, just nip round to see friends, just this, just that: the money has already been spent.
Again, the experience of what happened last year says otherwise.
If you want taxation to work, then it has to have an effect at the point of sale. Dunno the exact situation elsewhere but in the UK there is a yearly "road fund license". Make this swingeing on fuel-innefficient vehicles so it becomes noticable on the purchase price, and you might make a difference
This varies from state to state in the US. My vehicle license fee is California was three times what it is in Texas for the same vehicle. But the problem is that this kind of fee has exactly the opposite of the psychology you want. The fee doesn't vary depending on how many miles you drive. So once you've paid it, you've got a license to burn petrol. Taxing the fuel (as you do in the UK at about three times the rate in the US) does tax exactly the behavior we wish to reduce.
This one will fail. On purpose. [...]
Thank you for that extremely informative post (that's a hint to moderators)
What you detail is exactly what I had in mind when I said that milage standards don't work. The light truck exemption is merely one particularly egregious example of the kind of thing that goes on and will continue to go on. Thank you.
Forcing car companies to make vehicles that people don't want to buy isn't going to do anybody any good.
Please explain why there's steadily rising sales on the Prius and steadily falling sales on Hummers and other large vehicles.
Because gasoline prices shot up to 4USD/US gallon last year. If prices as stayed there (and were believed to be staying around) there would be no need for milage standards, which can't be credited for the pattern you describe.
Every economist? You can take your social metaphysics and control by fear and shove it wherever you like, but lets just be clear you are talking about ideal high school Keynesian Economics and not real world, grown up Austrian Economics.
Please tell me how what I propose is in any way Keynesian?Seriously, there is nothing Keynesian about this proposal
Gasoline usage has substantial externalities, roads, noise, pollution, congestion and diplomatic (including wars to in regions we would otherwise ignore). Internalizing those externalities places this proposal well within a neo-liberal framework.
Or are you just one of those people who shout "socialist" every time you hear the word "taxes"? These sorts of people hide behind economic rationality when it suits them (for lower taxes) and ignore economic rationality when it doesn't suit them (higher taxes).
And I still dare you to explain how this proposal is Keynesian. Or do you not know what Keynesianism really was?
If you accept that the economically sound decision isn't socially feasible then what's the point of using it as a comparison?
Because I like tilting at windmills. Or the same reason that people here continue to dream of Linux on the desktop for non-hobbyist home users. It's that glimmer of hope that remains despite experience and reason. Also, other rich democracies have managed to have high gas taxes, (although the history behind those is very different than in the US.)
Being poor come with implicit understanding that your screwed unless your willing to be creative.
This is the key point. Poor people don't have as many choices as rich people. That's pretty much what it means to be poor.
As I've said in other response to this "it hurts the poor" argument, if that is our concern, then give the poor cash so that they can spend it on alternative housing, alternative transport, cheaper running vehicle, or what ever best meets their needs. But using the "it hurts the poor" argument because we, middle-class people, don't want to face the kinds of difficult choices that the poor regularly face seems oddly ironic and a tad hypocritical.
You could make this revenue neutral if you wish through cash redistribution, but keep in mind that we've got an unimaginable national debt and that gasoline consumption costs the US government in terms of limiting diplomatic flexibility with Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia which impose real costs.
But I agree that if we wanted to make this revenue neutral, cash distributions would be the right way to do it.
Yeah, and all those people who can't afford to buy new cars or who don't have access to alternate transportation will just have to suck it up and choose between gas and food or rent/mortgage payments.
The middle class self-serving "it will hurt the poor" argument against any kind of economic restructuring is thrown about too easily. If this really is your concern, then redistribute some of the taxes to to poor as cash. Note that the redistribution should be cash (not gas coupons or tax exemptions) and it should be distributed only on the basis of wealth/income. That is a poor person who currently bicycles to work shouldn't be left out. Nor should we subsidize driving for anybody. So cash can be spent on housing, food or whatever.
The fact of the matter is that a change of this sort will make certain kinds of life styles more expensive. Rural and ex-urb dwellers will get hit worse than others. But again, the whole point is to have an incentive system that makes certain kinds of energy usage more expensive.
[...] is in fact a recipe for significant economic disruption in the real world.
I never suggested otherwise. If you want real change (say substantially reducing dependence on foreign oil) then it requires real change with all that implies.
That God-damned representative government! People doing what they want, instead of what's best for them! I tell you, if I was in charge, we wouldn't have any of this inefficient "voting" or "town hall meetings" or any of that crap.
I'm not proposing an alternative to democracy. There really isn't anything better. I'm merely pointing out that there are cases (and this is one of them) where democracies fail. Another failing that we are seeing is that representative democracies prefer public debt above either increased taxes or cuts in subsidies.
The fact that substantially higher gas taxes isn't a politicly viable solution in American democracy doesn't take away from my claim that it is the most economically rational one.
And just because something is economically rational, doesn't mean that the restructuring it entails wouldn't be extremely painful. People in distant suburbs would be doubly hurt. Their commuting costs would go up painfully and their house prices would drop exactly because commutes from those locations are expensive. I don't see a fix for that which wouldn't undermine the point of such a gas tax.
But once we are fully out of the recession, gas prices will rise on their own, and they will stay high next time. Still, I would prefer for some of the money to be going into the US treasury than into the hands of the big oil producing countries.
Milage standards haven't worked before and they will continue to fail. Forcing car companies to make vehicles that people don't want to buy isn't going to do anybody any good.
Pretty much every economist knows that the way to achieve the stated goals is to dramatically increase gasoline taxes. After that, the market will work its magic. People will buy more efficient cars, or seek alternative transportation. When looking at where to live, the cost of commuting will play a bigger role in families' decisions. And we get to make a little dent in the whopping federal deficit.
Of course no politician will even hint at endorsing what is clearly the economically rational thing to do. So instead, we'll spend money on subsidizing bio-fuels and other not-all-that-bright ideas.
As an Apple fan-boy, I am chagrined to have to point out that there is an analogue of this problem on OS X. Meta information about a file will contain information about its "Creator" (which is often used to determine what application it should be opened with) and also the file Icon.
This allows for a file to have, say a plain text icon but open as something else altogether. Apple has taken some mitigating steps (warnings before executing downloaded files for the first time), but has not changed the underlying problem which stems from concealing information from the user.
In most languages copulation isn't an expletive.
Where did you come up with that factoid?
A native German speaker told me that the worst he could think of was "Go to the Devil", in Deutch.
Surely you must know that the strongest taboo word in German is Belgien.
Agreed. $500 isn't too much to pay for an ethernet cable when your audio depends on it. I keep mine next to my DVD Rewinder.
Tony Sale's Wikipedia page seems to omit the work that he did most of his life. But some aspect of his work during that time is briefly mentioned in the banned-in-Britain book Spycatcher.
I won't respond to all of your points, and I am certainly glad that you posted them so that others know the background. I lived in Hungary from 1988 through 1994, and I speak the language reasonably well. I've been a supporter of the SzDSz, but was never happy about how quickly they went to bed with the Socialists.
I will say that in the run up to the last elections both sides were lying through their teeth about what kind of spending they could promise. The difference is that some on the left actually knew they were lying. When parties or candidates promise identical impossible things, I think it is better to support the liars than the delusional.
I fully agree that as much as I dislike Fidesz, they are clearly the only party with substantial support. And so, there should be a snap election even though I won't be happy with the outcome. Protectionism and economic populism (and nationalism) is probably the worst possible response to the current situation, but Hungary also needs a government with real legitimacy and so I do grudgingly support elections at this time.
As for nationalism and ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states, I'm very much aware of the situation. Every Hungarian I talked to, even the ultra-liberals, worked to communicate to me what it is like to lose 2/3 of your territory through through being totally elbaszott by the great powers at Trianon. Among my closest friends were Hungarians from Romania and Yugoslavia. I also travelled with and among Hungarians in Romania. But you know that current Hungarian nationalism isn't just about that. It's an anti-foreign/jewish sentiment, which is profoundly unhelpful.
One thing that you might appreciate (or might not) is that during the early 1990s when I would encounter someone from either the Munkaspart (Stalinist) or MIEP (Fascist) parties campaigning, I would pretend to confuse the two. If you interchanged the phrases "Hungarian Proletariat and Peasants" with "True Hungarian Folk" from their pamphlets they're economic programs were identical. Even though I was obviously a foreigner (at least they didn't know I was a Jew) they loved trying to explain things to me. And got very frustrated when I couldn't see the difference between them and their arch rivals.
What I saw for the elections where I was there was consistency of illiberality. Sometimes it was for the Right (1990) and sometimes for the Left (1993?). Things may have changed, but if you look at the voting patterns, it is not the the whole country moved left. The people who voted for the SzDSz during first elections didn't start voting for the MSzP, but continued to support the SzDSz. What happened was that people who had voted for the MDF switched to voting for the MSzP. I haven't been able to follow in such detail, but I suspect that they same is true today.
Can I have whatever it is that you're taking that's making the sky such a pretty rosy color? Check their tiering structure, they didn't drop prices when they put caps on it. They won't in the future either.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I needed to spell out that what I meant by "lower prices" was "prices in the long run that will be lower than what they otherwise would be without the tiered system."
If this were truly a competitive market, then you might actually see that. The problem is you're looking at a monopoly marketplace for the last mile.
Neither tiered pricing nor your pipe dream of truly unlimited bandwidth for a flat rate speak to the problem of the monopoly. Sure monopolies will treat the customers like shit, but that doesn't make the flat rate "unlimited" plan sensible. Let's look at the example of trash pick-up. In the past, cities would pretty much pick up whatever you asked them to. But over time, they've correctly limited the amount that they will pick up for the flat fee, and require special arrangements for a larger pick-up. When some service goes from "to cheap to meter" to "we are running up against significant costs due to heavy use by some users" then we move to something with tiered pricing and explicit excess charges.
expect them to make low end tiers out of their normal price & rape you for using enough bandwidth to actually use anyones VOIP or Video service but theirs.
That is a good point. And as long as they hold their monopolies, then this particular aspect needs to be regulated. That is, with respect to services that they offer over their lines, they have to behave like common carriers.
Thank you for this. The reality of the situation with bandwidth is that a very small percentage of the users consume most of the bandwidth. And anyone who offers an unlimited service is either deluded or a liar.
A properly priced system will be better for everyone. For the heavy users, they will know that they won't be kicked off or silently capped since they will be explicitly paying for their heavy usage. For everyone else, it should mean lower prices and more stable service.
Thank you for your extremely informative post. (This is a hint to moderators).
I'm not optimistic either about the sincerity of this attempt.
Surely you are not suggesting that the Hungarian government would ever lie to voters. Such a thing would be unheard of. Though actually on that issue, when parties make promises to voters that they can't keep, I prefer the party that knows it's lying to the one that deludes itself into thinking it's telling the truth.
The guy who made this statement might not be a minister from next Tuesday, when there'll be a new PM, who will reshuffle the government.
Yes, the instability isn't just financial. I'm curious to see who the hell will actually be willing to take the job.
I also hope that Hungary might have a snap election too.
At the risk of getting further off-topic, I have mixed feelings about this. Hungary certainly needs a government with some degree of public support, and an election would elect people with that kind of legitimacy. But on the otherhand, from the populist and nationalist statements coming from those who are likely to win such an election, I think that they are the worst possible people to handle the crisis. As I said above, I prefer the liars who know a bit about economics to those who make the same promises and actually think that they can keep them.
In any case, the language the minister used is a bit deceptive. Unfortunately after taking a close look at what he said, it seems the money can only be spent on licences. Training costs, etc. are explicitly excluded from funding (have to be covered by the given organizations themselves).
Again, thanks for that. The whole thing just seemed so incoherent to me that I thought that I was misreading it. Now I understand that it is genuinely incoherent. I don't think that most slashdotters realize the extent to which Hungary is in deep shit. But let this be a small illustration of incompetence and murkiness (looks like someone is paying off someone else). And to make matters worse, in my opinion the current government is still better than the opposition.
After some searching, I haven't actually found much more in the Hungarian news than was reported in TFA. So, I can't add many details.
I've now found more on this (in Hungarian). My ability to read Hungarian is limited, but I do see that according to Gábor Bódi (whose government job title, I can't even begin to translate, but it is pretty high up) "this will be a trial year, with many possible outcomes of this initiative."
If I am reading that article correctly (and it is very possible that I am not), while the proposal clearly talks about open source software (nyílt forráskód), much of the justification appears to be in protectionist language about supporting domestic markets and innovation.
Less plausibly, it seems that it is talking about a plan to spend 12 thousand million Hungarian forints (54 million USD) on this. I cannot believe that I am reading that correctly. The current government is exceedingly unpopular because it has been trying and failing to push through austerity measures. I can't see that a country with a population of 10 million could be talking about spending that kind of money now. So let's just assume that I'm misreading that and hope someone who actually reads Hungarian comments on this.
PS: I just discovered when typing in the above that slashdot doesn't do UTF-8. That sucks, but it's a good thing I only had to do acute accents instead of some real Hungarian specialties.
After some searching, I haven't actually found much more in the Hungarian news than was reported in TFA. So, I can't add many details.
What I can say is that there is a fair chance that the coalition that rules Hungary today will not be in place six months from now. Secondly, Hungary needs immediate cost savings. It is not in any position to spend money now to save money later.
This might be part of the motivation. Hungary's currency is in collapse, so it is much cheaper for the government to pay local developers in forints for software and systems than it is to pay Microsoft and Novell in dollars or euros.
I'd love to know the internal machinations that went on here, but I suspect that someone took the opportunity of the fall of the forint and the foreign currency debt problem (an enormous problem) to push an open source agenda. Whether this will hold up, or whether MS will make a counter offer allowing the Hungarian government to pay cheaply in forints remains to be seen.
My workplace blocks all URLs with "sex" as a label of the domain name, you insensitive clod! So I can't access TFA.
I think that the University of Essex is hosting a mirror.
This is exactly what I was thinking. A $200 savings on sperm is negligible compared to the annualized TCO of a baby. I'm not saying that one shouldn't try to save money at every opportunity, but if hard times is reducing demand at sperm banks, it's not the cost of the sperm that's the issue.
I don't know about other people, but I really don't care if someone hacks or guesses my forum password [...] Trivial web sites are going to beget trivial passwords.
I suspect that many people don't distinguish between high security passwords and low security ones, but as you say, it would be very interesting to see results from a high value site.
But even if people are using better passwords on more important sites, they are still constrained by memory and psychology if they are not using a password management system. So even if they are using better passwords for those sites, they are probably using the same, or variants of the same, passwords on multiple sites. If one of those sites is compromised, then that user's password on other sites becomes very guessable.
What data like these, even on trivial sites, show is that far too few people are using proper password management systems.
I would be interested in distributions. Do these follow Zipf's law or a more general power law?
Although the analysis was fairly superficial, the better we understand human password choice, the better we can work on systems to alleviate the problem. Anyway, I am a big fan of proper password managers. If people are expected to remember more than a small handful of passwords, bad things will happen.