Of course as soon as this was discovered the Justice Department sprang into action and initiated a RICO takedown of the entire institution and all its executives (in an alternate universe). What they actually did was politely request that the company pay a fine equal to 2% of their profits which was then refunded to them by the Treasury Department via a $54 billion bailout.
It makes sense because laws don't apply to the aristocracy like they apply to us peasants - they're doing God's work after all.
You and I don't mess with the SEC. Large financial institutions and significant corporate donors to political campaigns do whatever the fuck they want.
But you see project Orion dates back to the 1960s and was never implemented so it doesn't count as "current technology". Space travel is only practical with past technology.
Why does this situation remind me of the decline of the empire in the Foundation series?
Good regulation leads to better capitalism by promoting the conditions for perfect competition
That's a great theory and I'm sure it makes perfect sense right up until you look at the real world and see that regulation actually means sending swat teams to arrest small farmers who dare to compete with large corporations by selling raw milk to people who want to buy it and bailing out banksters instead of arresting them for racketeering.
There is not one single regulation enforced by the federal bureaucracy that doesn't create barriers to entry and tilt the playing field in favor of large corporations and other special interest groups.
If your ability to reason is so broken that you believe that the government is the only thing keeping people from dying from salmonella poisoning you're probably working for one.
Somalia is no longer stateless so your example isn't valid. However life in Somalia was steadily improving after the government collapsed until foreign governments came along and propped up a new one.
I wish more people understood this. So many otherwise bright individuals end up tilting at the fiat vs metallic windmill instead of realizing that "value" isn't subject to storage in the first place. The value of currency comes from the ability and willingness of other people to produce goods and services.
What point? The fact that there's probably going to be riots when the US Government loses the ability to hand out free shit? That's a given.
Mobs don't really loot services though. When civil order breaks down people will break into the liquor stores and run off with as much booze as they can carry but they can't really do that with an appendectomy.
I was refuting the inane logic that market forces would somehow magically lower insurance premiums so that everyone can afford it. In fact, I believe I stated that insurance companies play the odds and don't make stupid bets
Market forces will lower the cost of medical procedures, not insurance premiums. But this will only happen with medical procedures that are paid for out of pocket. The problem is excessive "insurance", not insufficient insurance.
How many years in a row do you think the US government can get away with borrowing nearly 50% of the budget? They're going to try to borrow another $2 trillion in calender year 2011, up from $1.7 trillion last year. What would it do to your finances if you charged a sum equal to your income on credit cards for four years in a row?
One of the most stupidly cruel and inhuman sentences I've ever read.
It doesn't matter. No matter what your or I or anyone else thinks there aren't enough resources in the world to give everybody the care that they want therefore not everybody will get it. It's not a matter of cruelty or humanity; it's an issue of mathematics.
If it's that important to you that you live an extra half of a year then save up the resources now while you're young to pay for a team of doctors to hold back the inevitable for a few months. Otherwise don't plan on forcing other people to pay for it.
Now how the hell is that going to work with insurance?
It doesn't.
End of life care is not something that should be covered by health insurance. There's a reason that collision insurance for your car doesn't cover replacing engine components when they start to wear out due to age.
If I was in the market for health insurance I would have no problem disclosing any of those factors and paying a premium appropriate to the risk. It's no different that a person who lives next to a river paying more for flood insurance than someone who lives on the top of a hill.
That still doesn't change the fact that 90% of most people's health care expenses are incurred in the last 5 months of their lives, but cutting off funding for that would amount to a real version of the "death panels" the Republicans have falsely associated with the new Health Care act.
This problem will be solved shortly when Medicare melts down. Then people will get exactly as much end of life care as they can afford and no more.
Which, in the end, is how it should have been done from the beginning. When there aren't enough resources to give everybody what they want then some kind of rationing will occur no matter how much people complain and protest about it. The only decision to make is whether to have rationing by price or rationing by fiat. Rationing by price is the superior solution because then market forces will provide incentives to bring the costs down to increase the number of potential customers. Rationing by fiat puts everybody at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats.
To see how this works compare the prices of procedures that people normally pay out of pocket vs procedures that people normally pay for with OPM. Laser eye surgery has been getting cheaper over the years. Anything covered by Medicare or private health insurance has been getting more expensive.
The purpose of insurance is cover random catastrophic expenses, not to let a person cost-shift known expenses to his or her neighbors. If your body is breaking down because you spend decades being fat and never did anything about it then foot the bill yourself. If you can't afford the cost of fixing a problem caused by your own lifestyle decisions then tough shit.
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This was all made possible because Wachovia laundered a sum of money equal to 1/3 of Mexico's GDP for the drug cartels.
Of course as soon as this was discovered the Justice Department sprang into action and initiated a RICO takedown of the entire institution and all its executives (in an alternate universe). What they actually did was politely request that the company pay a fine equal to 2% of their profits which was then refunded to them by the Treasury Department via a $54 billion bailout.
It makes sense because laws don't apply to the aristocracy like they apply to us peasants - they're doing God's work after all.
You and I don't mess with the SEC. Large financial institutions and significant corporate donors to political campaigns do whatever the fuck they want.
But you see project Orion dates back to the 1960s and was never implemented so it doesn't count as "current technology". Space travel is only practical with past technology. Why does this situation remind me of the decline of the empire in the Foundation series?
What are you talking about? Do you think that the government exists apart from the people that work for it?
That's a great theory and I'm sure it makes perfect sense right up until you look at the real world and see that regulation actually means sending swat teams to arrest small farmers who dare to compete with large corporations by selling raw milk to people who want to buy it and bailing out banksters instead of arresting them for racketeering. There is not one single regulation enforced by the federal bureaucracy that doesn't create barriers to entry and tilt the playing field in favor of large corporations and other special interest groups.
If your ability to reason is so broken that you believe that the government is the only thing keeping people from dying from salmonella poisoning you're probably working for one.
No, it has a filing cabinet with 2.6 trillion dollars of IOUs that can't be sold on the open market. It's also cash-flow negative as of last year.
Somalia is no longer stateless so your example isn't valid. However life in Somalia was steadily improving after the government collapsed until foreign governments came along and propped up a new one.
I wish more people understood this. So many otherwise bright individuals end up tilting at the fiat vs metallic windmill instead of realizing that "value" isn't subject to storage in the first place. The value of currency comes from the ability and willingness of other people to produce goods and services.
If only we had one it might.
The only reason I chose T-Mobile was because it wasn't AT&T.
What point? The fact that there's probably going to be riots when the US Government loses the ability to hand out free shit? That's a given.
Mobs don't really loot services though. When civil order breaks down people will break into the liquor stores and run off with as much booze as they can carry but they can't really do that with an appendectomy.
Market forces will lower the cost of medical procedures, not insurance premiums. But this will only happen with medical procedures that are paid for out of pocket. The problem is excessive "insurance", not insufficient insurance.
How many years in a row do you think the US government can get away with borrowing nearly 50% of the budget? They're going to try to borrow another $2 trillion in calender year 2011, up from $1.7 trillion last year. What would it do to your finances if you charged a sum equal to your income on credit cards for four years in a row?
They can try but certain classes of expenses by their nature aren't insurable. A contract to do an impossible thing is no contract at all.
It doesn't matter. No matter what your or I or anyone else thinks there aren't enough resources in the world to give everybody the care that they want therefore not everybody will get it. It's not a matter of cruelty or humanity; it's an issue of mathematics.
If it's that important to you that you live an extra half of a year then save up the resources now while you're young to pay for a team of doctors to hold back the inevitable for a few months. Otherwise don't plan on forcing other people to pay for it.
It doesn't.
End of life care is not something that should be covered by health insurance. There's a reason that collision insurance for your car doesn't cover replacing engine components when they start to wear out due to age.
If I was in the market for health insurance I would have no problem disclosing any of those factors and paying a premium appropriate to the risk. It's no different that a person who lives next to a river paying more for flood insurance than someone who lives on the top of a hill.
This problem will be solved shortly when Medicare melts down. Then people will get exactly as much end of life care as they can afford and no more.
Which, in the end, is how it should have been done from the beginning. When there aren't enough resources to give everybody what they want then some kind of rationing will occur no matter how much people complain and protest about it. The only decision to make is whether to have rationing by price or rationing by fiat. Rationing by price is the superior solution because then market forces will provide incentives to bring the costs down to increase the number of potential customers. Rationing by fiat puts everybody at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats.
To see how this works compare the prices of procedures that people normally pay out of pocket vs procedures that people normally pay for with OPM. Laser eye surgery has been getting cheaper over the years. Anything covered by Medicare or private health insurance has been getting more expensive.
The purpose of insurance is cover random catastrophic expenses, not to let a person cost-shift known expenses to his or her neighbors. If your body is breaking down because you spend decades being fat and never did anything about it then foot the bill yourself. If you can't afford the cost of fixing a problem caused by your own lifestyle decisions then tough shit.
Why lolcats added to headline proofreading department?
Buh, hah, right, if they're so damn smart, how come they get caught in those fishing nets all the time?
Does the bug affect the Google Voice client as well or only the native SMS client?
How much do you enjoy having enough food to eat?