Uh...yeah, it is. It's a major part of the sciences of biology and public health, backed by experiments. That's why we know what percentage of a population has to be vaccinated for herd immunity to be effective.
All illegal drugs come thru legal ports of entry. Right, the cartels think it's easiest to send containers of drugs into the hands of customs and border patrol agents than to, say, loadvit on a boat and have cigarette boats go off-shore and get the drugs to bring it in.
That isn't according to me. That's according to the Trump administration. The vast majority of illegal drugs are smuggled within legitimate shipments. The second most common method was via tunnel.
You'll note that neither of these are affected by a wall.
You'll also note that your fantasy of using "cigarette boats" would not be affected by a wall either. It also can't deliver the required volume of drugs, which is why they smuggle through ports-of-entry.
(Btw, they weren't named cigarette boats because of smuggling. They were named that because the long, thin shape resembled a cigarette, compared to the wider, shorter 'cigar' of typical boats. Cigarette boats as smuggling tools is a media invention. Their cargo capacity is incredibly tiny, and the Coast Guard has aircraft, so they are not suitable for large-scale smuggling.)
If we had a consistent presence along the border and tracked every capture, then we could say how the drugs are coming across
Good news! We already have a consistent presence along the border and track every capture. That's why Trump's DHS is reporting most drugs arrive via smuggling through ports of entry.
It turns out you don't actually need a wall in order to patrol a border. Heck, there's these nifty inventions called "cameras" too!!
Everyone that crosses the border is a refugee
Nope, just the vast majority. It turns out people don't abandon their homes and most of their possessions to walk 3000 miles for fun.
Walls work
I eagerly await your description of how a wall will stop your seaborne drug delivery scheme.
I understand it can be difficult when you discover you believe two contradictory positions. But the fact that your arguments are contradictory does not mean I'm "putting words in your mouth". That's just your attempt to avoid the conflict.
They can only get each vaccine when they are old enough, and many vaccines require multiple doses spread out over years. Eventually they'll be fully vaccinated, but eventually isn't today.
Also, vaccines are about 95% effective. We rely on herd immunity to protect the roughly 5% where the vaccine does not "take". My kids may be the unlucky 5% for some particular disease that an anti-vaxxer's snowflake gives them.
However, to suggest vaccines are 100% safe isn't honest
Good thing no one is trying to do that. In fact, governments require publishing the actual "adverse reaction" rate for each vaccine.
It's almost like you aren't being 100% honest in your argument.....
It's not totally clear-cut at all.
Actually, it is totally clear-cut.
Risk of dying from measles: 1 in 1000. Risk of severe adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine: about 1 in 2,000,000 (varies slightly depending on which study). Risk of dying to the MMR vaccine: well, the CDC site lists 2 cases. Total. One had advanced HIV when he got the vaccine.
If you consider 1 in 1000 vs 2 in hundreds of millions to be "not totally clear-cut", you need to have your ability to make any decisions taken away.
When you start putting words in my mouth, I stop talking to you.
You do realize that the text indented with the little vertical line is a quote, right?
You decried rules being made by non-experts, in secret. There's an alternative where a technically-savvy entity could make those rules, and they are required to do so in public. Which would fix exactly what you described as bad. But they're bad because......well, you didn't really bother to say. (The FTC does not have the FCC's required level of public rule-making, btw. Which would make them seem a bad alternative if public rule-making is important).
A government granted monopoly doesn't just expire if the result is that the recipient of it retains a natural monopoly as a result.
Um....you described it perfectly. The government monopoly expired. Thus there is no more government monopoly.
Yes, there's a natural monopoly now. But that monopoly is not enforced by the government, and the fact that I went from one to three high-speed ISPs is a good thing. They just had to be corporate behemoths that could fund the rollout, which is a bad thing.
Having a duopoly between a cable provider and a phone based ISP is not much better than having a monopoly.
Nope it isn't. It also isn't a government-granted monopoly.
Look, when you say things like there is a government-granted monopoly, you convince people to demand the government stop granting a monopoly...and that's it.
That's not legislating a company into existence.
There is literally a law, passed by Congress and signed by FDR, that created the TVA. What, exactly, about that is not legislating a company into existence?
Not to mention the very concept of "company" is a legislative creation.
That's the government using tax dollars to get into business.
Nope. The TVA is not run by the government. That's the big difference. The decisions are made by the company and it's board. Yes, those people are appointed by the shareholder (the government) but they can say "screw you shareholders!!" as much as any other corporation.
Look, the TVA is a fantastic model for solving the last-mile problem in Internet service. It literally is what you proposed in your post, without the privatization end-state you fear.
It's very likely that you'll find that the law that Pelosi doesn't want you reading to see what it contains will contain things like California's NN law that defines broadband Internet to be anything except dialup. Is that the kind of technical law you like?
Hmmm...it sounds like you think it would be better Net Neutrality regulations were made by a technically-savvy body with open rule-making policies.
I have an idea: Stop pushing legislation that is DOA and find some common ground and do some work.
What, exactly, is the common ground between putting an immigrant child in a cage and not putting a child in a cage?
What, exactly, is the common ground between government control of every woman's uterus and believing women are adults with the ability to make decisions?
What, exactly, is the common ground between going to war and not going to war?
There are very large differences in the beliefs of our two parties. Common ground is not possible on many of those differences. The "middle" of the policy differences is the equivalent of Solomon splitting the baby - it is not stable.
The parties were relatively close to each other during the Southern realignment and that was an extremely unusual situation. Before that, the real split in the country was between East and West, with members of both parties on both sides of that split. After 1964, the Southern states started realigning themselves to the Republican party, and Northeastern Republicans converted to Democrats. That slowly returned us to our normal state of affairs, with a strong ideological split between our two main parties.
You have to remember there have been multiple duels fought between members of Congress. A Senator was literally beaten by a group of Representatives on the Senate floor. Strong division between the parties is normal. Demanding "common ground" is to not understand what the positions of the parties actually are.
Cable TV monopolies were granted by many municipalities in the 1970s and 1980s. Almost all of those monopolies had expiration dates that passed by 2000.
Also, a cable TV monopoly is not an Internet Service monopoly. You can tell this because both the cable company and the phone company are offering to sell you Internet service.
You can't legislate a company into existence
Sure you can. The TVA is a corporation created by the government. The government owns the company via being the primary (only?) shareholder.
Local governments granted cable TV monopolies in the 1970s and 1980s to spur the rollout of cable TV. Almost all of those monopolies had expiration dates, and those dates have passed.
Also, a monopoly for cable TV does not grant a monopoly for Internet service. You can tell this by the fact that both the cable TV company and the phone company are offering you Internet service. If the old cable TV monopolies applied, the phone company couldn't offer you service.
The "last mile" is the expensive part of any ISP. The cable and phone companies already have that "last mile" connection, which gives them a natural monopoly. They've already paid for that rollout, and thus they can afford to drive any competitor out of business. That's one of the big reasons Google Fiber "paused" their rollout - Google came to my city and Spectrum and AT&T slashed their prices to try to make Google unprofitable enough to give up.
Note that if Spectrum and AT&T were actually cutting prices due to competition, they would have already done so since they compete with each other. They didn't until Google showed up, because they're trying to drive Google out.
Require at least two cable and two phone companies in every local jurisdiction
How, exactly, are you going to do this without the government rolling out the wires themselves? There is nothing legally stopping a second cable TV provider from servicing your house right now. No one does it because the incumbent's natural monopoly will make it a money-losing proposition.
Then if one of them tries something stupid like throttle Netflix as a ploy to extort Netflix into paying them, their customers will simply cancel and switch service to the competitor ISP.
Or the other one will also throttle Netflix, because making your customers pay to un-throttle Netflix makes a lot of money. There's no particular reason to believe ISPs will not behave like a cartel.....especially since they already do.
"Both parties are the same" is required to maintain the status quo. It also makes being a pundit way easier since it sounds intelligent and informed. You don't have to actually understand any issue, you can just type up a "both sides!!" op-ed and move on to the next cocktail party.
You don't want those poor pundits to miss their cocktail parties by actually understanding the issues they cover, do you?
Actually, the un-title-II'ing went into effect far after the official FCC vote. So your day count is off.
Also, the ISPs are aware of the public relations disaster that awaits them if they exploit the new rules at this moment. So they're not dumb enough to do much yet.
Any bills that were not passed by both houses become void at the end of each Congress (The current one ends in January 2021 after the 2020 elections). So if this passes the House and the Senate does nothing with it, it can't be passed without a new vote in the House.
Slashdot Mirror
Herd immunity isnt âoescienceâ
Uh...yeah, it is. It's a major part of the sciences of biology and public health, backed by experiments. That's why we know what percentage of a population has to be vaccinated for herd immunity to be effective.
Vaccines are about 95% effective (varies by vaccine). We rely on herd immunity to protect the roughly 5% where the vaccine does not take.
That's not the reason socialism fails. Socialism fails because it rewards non-achievers the same as the achievers.
Please point to an actual "socialist" country that actually rewards everyone the same.
That's not a "no true Scottsman" about socialism. It's demonstrating that your theory lacks evidence.
All illegal drugs come thru legal ports of entry. Right, the cartels think it's easiest to send containers of drugs into the hands of customs and border patrol agents than to, say, loadvit on a boat and have cigarette boats go off-shore and get the drugs to bring it in.
That isn't according to me. That's according to the Trump administration. The vast majority of illegal drugs are smuggled within legitimate shipments. The second most common method was via tunnel.
You'll note that neither of these are affected by a wall.
You'll also note that your fantasy of using "cigarette boats" would not be affected by a wall either. It also can't deliver the required volume of drugs, which is why they smuggle through ports-of-entry.
(Btw, they weren't named cigarette boats because of smuggling. They were named that because the long, thin shape resembled a cigarette, compared to the wider, shorter 'cigar' of typical boats. Cigarette boats as smuggling tools is a media invention. Their cargo capacity is incredibly tiny, and the Coast Guard has aircraft, so they are not suitable for large-scale smuggling.)
If we had a consistent presence along the border and tracked every capture, then we could say how the drugs are coming across
Good news! We already have a consistent presence along the border and track every capture. That's why Trump's DHS is reporting most drugs arrive via smuggling through ports of entry.
It turns out you don't actually need a wall in order to patrol a border. Heck, there's these nifty inventions called "cameras" too!!
Everyone that crosses the border is a refugee
Nope, just the vast majority. It turns out people don't abandon their homes and most of their possessions to walk 3000 miles for fun.
Walls work
I eagerly await your description of how a wall will stop your seaborne drug delivery scheme.
I understand it can be difficult when you discover you believe two contradictory positions. But the fact that your arguments are contradictory does not mean I'm "putting words in your mouth". That's just your attempt to avoid the conflict.
They can only get each vaccine when they are old enough, and many vaccines require multiple doses spread out over years. Eventually they'll be fully vaccinated, but eventually isn't today.
Also, vaccines are about 95% effective. We rely on herd immunity to protect the roughly 5% where the vaccine does not "take". My kids may be the unlucky 5% for some particular disease that an anti-vaxxer's snowflake gives them.
However, to suggest vaccines are 100% safe isn't honest
Good thing no one is trying to do that. In fact, governments require publishing the actual "adverse reaction" rate for each vaccine.
It's almost like you aren't being 100% honest in your argument.....
It's not totally clear-cut at all.
Actually, it is totally clear-cut.
Risk of dying from measles: 1 in 1000. Risk of severe adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine: about 1 in 2,000,000 (varies slightly depending on which study). Risk of dying to the MMR vaccine: well, the CDC site lists 2 cases. Total. One had advanced HIV when he got the vaccine.
If you consider 1 in 1000 vs 2 in hundreds of millions to be "not totally clear-cut", you need to have your ability to make any decisions taken away.
It might help a very small number of anti-vaxxers realize they were wrong.
The vast majority of anti-vaxxers are so wedded to being 'special' that no evidence will change their mind.
But you're not really trying to convince anti-vaxxers with this study. You're trying to prevent more people from becoming anti-vaxxers.
Not when these idiots are putting my children at risk via their decisions.
When you start putting words in my mouth, I stop talking to you.
You do realize that the text indented with the little vertical line is a quote, right?
You decried rules being made by non-experts, in secret. There's an alternative where a technically-savvy entity could make those rules, and they are required to do so in public. Which would fix exactly what you described as bad. But they're bad because......well, you didn't really bother to say. (The FTC does not have the FCC's required level of public rule-making, btw. Which would make them seem a bad alternative if public rule-making is important).
A government granted monopoly doesn't just expire if the result is that the recipient of it retains a natural monopoly as a result.
Um....you described it perfectly. The government monopoly expired. Thus there is no more government monopoly.
Yes, there's a natural monopoly now. But that monopoly is not enforced by the government, and the fact that I went from one to three high-speed ISPs is a good thing. They just had to be corporate behemoths that could fund the rollout, which is a bad thing.
Having a duopoly between a cable provider and a phone based ISP is not much better than having a monopoly.
Nope it isn't. It also isn't a government-granted monopoly.
Look, when you say things like there is a government-granted monopoly, you convince people to demand the government stop granting a monopoly...and that's it.
That's not legislating a company into existence.
There is literally a law, passed by Congress and signed by FDR, that created the TVA. What, exactly, about that is not legislating a company into existence?
Not to mention the very concept of "company" is a legislative creation.
That's the government using tax dollars to get into business.
Nope. The TVA is not run by the government. That's the big difference. The decisions are made by the company and it's board. Yes, those people are appointed by the shareholder (the government) but they can say "screw you shareholders!!" as much as any other corporation.
Look, the TVA is a fantastic model for solving the last-mile problem in Internet service. It literally is what you proposed in your post, without the privatization end-state you fear.
It's very likely that you'll find that the law that Pelosi doesn't want you reading to see what it contains will contain things like California's NN law that defines broadband Internet to be anything except dialup. Is that the kind of technical law you like?
Hmmm...it sounds like you think it would be better Net Neutrality regulations were made by a technically-savvy body with open rule-making policies.
Like the FCC.
Ya know, I think you can survive with the timestamp on your CCTV feed having the wrong year.
Net neutrality isn't just about speed. Zero-rating is also a violation of net neutrality.
The packets must be handled the same. If you're charging for packets from one source but not another, you are not treating the packets the same.
There's no need for the NSA to have a flaw such as this when you have an entire "Management Engine" on the chip.
I have an idea: Stop pushing legislation that is DOA and find some common ground and do some work.
What, exactly, is the common ground between putting an immigrant child in a cage and not putting a child in a cage?
What, exactly, is the common ground between government control of every woman's uterus and believing women are adults with the ability to make decisions?
What, exactly, is the common ground between going to war and not going to war?
There are very large differences in the beliefs of our two parties. Common ground is not possible on many of those differences. The "middle" of the policy differences is the equivalent of Solomon splitting the baby - it is not stable.
The parties were relatively close to each other during the Southern realignment and that was an extremely unusual situation. Before that, the real split in the country was between East and West, with members of both parties on both sides of that split. After 1964, the Southern states started realigning themselves to the Republican party, and Northeastern Republicans converted to Democrats. That slowly returned us to our normal state of affairs, with a strong ideological split between our two main parties.
You have to remember there have been multiple duels fought between members of Congress. A Senator was literally beaten by a group of Representatives on the Senate floor. Strong division between the parties is normal. Demanding "common ground" is to not understand what the positions of the parties actually are.
Yes the ISP's monopoly is government granted
No, it isn't.
Cable TV monopolies were granted by many municipalities in the 1970s and 1980s. Almost all of those monopolies had expiration dates that passed by 2000.
Also, a cable TV monopoly is not an Internet Service monopoly. You can tell this because both the cable company and the phone company are offering to sell you Internet service.
You can't legislate a company into existence
Sure you can. The TVA is a corporation created by the government. The government owns the company via being the primary (only?) shareholder.
They have government-granted monopolies.
No, they don't.
Local governments granted cable TV monopolies in the 1970s and 1980s to spur the rollout of cable TV. Almost all of those monopolies had expiration dates, and those dates have passed.
Also, a monopoly for cable TV does not grant a monopoly for Internet service. You can tell this by the fact that both the cable TV company and the phone company are offering you Internet service. If the old cable TV monopolies applied, the phone company couldn't offer you service.
The "last mile" is the expensive part of any ISP. The cable and phone companies already have that "last mile" connection, which gives them a natural monopoly. They've already paid for that rollout, and thus they can afford to drive any competitor out of business. That's one of the big reasons Google Fiber "paused" their rollout - Google came to my city and Spectrum and AT&T slashed their prices to try to make Google unprofitable enough to give up.
Note that if Spectrum and AT&T were actually cutting prices due to competition, they would have already done so since they compete with each other. They didn't until Google showed up, because they're trying to drive Google out.
Require at least two cable and two phone companies in every local jurisdiction
How, exactly, are you going to do this without the government rolling out the wires themselves? There is nothing legally stopping a second cable TV provider from servicing your house right now. No one does it because the incumbent's natural monopoly will make it a money-losing proposition.
Then if one of them tries something stupid like throttle Netflix as a ploy to extort Netflix into paying them, their customers will simply cancel and switch service to the competitor ISP.
Or the other one will also throttle Netflix, because making your customers pay to un-throttle Netflix makes a lot of money. There's no particular reason to believe ISPs will not behave like a cartel.....especially since they already do.
"Both parties are the same" is required to maintain the status quo. It also makes being a pundit way easier since it sounds intelligent and informed. You don't have to actually understand any issue, you can just type up a "both sides!!" op-ed and move on to the next cocktail party.
You don't want those poor pundits to miss their cocktail parties by actually understanding the issues they cover, do you?
Actually, the un-title-II'ing went into effect far after the official FCC vote. So your day count is off.
Also, the ISPs are aware of the public relations disaster that awaits them if they exploit the new rules at this moment. So they're not dumb enough to do much yet.
Congress gave the FCC power to make rules. Including rules on net neutrality.
If you want to strip the FCC of that power, what's the point of having an FCC?
No, Obama put Pai into one of the Republican FCC seats in 2012.
Trump appointed Pai as Chairman.
Pai was around for the previous FCC ruling, demonstrating he wasn't exactly "in power".
No, Congress passed a law giving Pai the power. That's why the FCC gets to make rules at all.
What, specifically, did not fit?
And "POTS is old!" is not specific.
Any bills that were not passed by both houses become void at the end of each Congress (The current one ends in January 2021 after the 2020 elections). So if this passes the House and the Senate does nothing with it, it can't be passed without a new vote in the House.