I wanted to add just a bit to this...I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I point out that criminals will do whatever it takes depending on the thing to be gained.
For instance, drivers licenses weren't protected by social security numbers, photographs and fingerprints, and yet, they were almost never used in fraudulent situations. Why? Because the license was a piece of paper that could only allow you to drive. Once a photo was added, then it became an age verification document, and then making a forgery was justified for some purposes. So they increased the security of the document...which also led to the increase of the usefullness of the document. Now, despite all the security measures, there are significantly more fake licenses out, because now you can get credit and open bank accounts with a good fake license. So now people are willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for a fake license...a bribe at your local DMV can go quite a long way....
This idea can be extended to biometrics...nothing is 100% secure. And if your fingerprint or your retina can only turn on your computer, no criminal may find it worth their while to fool the system. But if your fingerprint turns on your computer, allows entry into your home and office, gets access to your bank account and investments and starts your car, well, maybe the cost of faking the systems will be high, but the payout will be high.
The point is, biometrics is doomed, and the only people who can make money off them are people who sell biometrics crap, who make a more secure system every year to unwise institutions.
is still fairly rare on domestic flights. Fact is, the general belief is that a terrorest attack on a domestic flight is unlikely, and decades of terrorist free service more or less proves that. Screening of luggage is unusual because it wasn't felt necessary and the machines which do it are costly and are needed in large numbers for big airports. The matching of luggage to a passenger is the single most effective way of making sure that bombs don't get on aircraft (of course, kamikaze terrorists I guess are possible.) Everything else from checking ID card's at checking, to metal detectors is pretty much worthless and is simply a ruse to alleviate the concerns of the travelling public.
Large international airports, like London Heathrow have the machines to do screening, and I believe that more often than not, if you are on an international flight from a big airport it is likely that your bags will be screened.
There's a very good reason why states and businesses shy away from adding the tax and the product price together. That's because it hides the real cost of the sales tax. Even if current history belies it, Americans are by our history anti-tax people (or at least we try to be.) By not marking the tax, you always know how much of your money is going to the government when you actually pay for the product you buy. You can only have 22% sales tax if you hide the actual amount. I say that because, in comparison to products, the tax levied on gasoline is fairly high, for instance, here in Ohio its 40.6 cents (22 for the state, 18.6 for the Federal government.) If the price on pumps were marked without the sales tax, then everyone would know exactly how much was going for it, and people would be and should be spending more attention to where that money is going.
The same thing can be said of income tax...what's the best way to lower it...eliminate withholding. Withholding was devised during World War 2, prior to that time, only the rich paid income taxes, and when they did, they had to send it all in at one time. After withholding, you could raise taxes quite a lot and no one would really know except on paper. Let's say someone makes $60,000 per year and they get assessed for federal taxes at about $10,000. Well,now, they only see the money on paper, and it really never touches them. But if you ended withholding, every April they would make a check out to the IRS for $10,000...that would make a huge difference in how people look at taxes and think about the government.
Furthermore, I am against income taxes because it's a subtle form of stealing. If you buy a product or own property, that is putting a strain on public resources...so a tax may be appropriate. But just making money isn't putting a strain on public resources, and there is nothing stopping the state or the feds from increasing your tax rate to 90% and letting you have 10% to live, instead of letting you have 70% of your income to live. Property taxes and sales taxes are most definitely the way to go.
I would best describe Costa Rica's economic/social system as something like the Netherlands. It has pockets of absolute freedom and pockets where the government controls everything. The country does have national health care and social security and a pretty good educational system. It has a tiny coast guard and essentially no militiary which is why it has been able to spend money on human services...bringing a fairly good standard of living for central america. The biggest industry is tourism (a new phenomena, about ten years old) then agriculture.
It's socialism is however at times rampant. Costa Ricans are for instance paid in 13th month cycles (meaning they get one month's worth of pay free yearly.) I have heard anecdotally that this has led to the ruining of the exchange rate of the Colon versus the dollar. (Since no one is actually working for the money.) Strangely enough, the National Assembly has an elected Libertarian...so go figure. As someone pointed out, Costa Rica regularly gets hundreds of millions of dollars from the US government, but my understanding is that this is used mostly to cover interest on debt payments. The national debt as a percentage of GDP is huge, a result of deficit spending to cover the country's social security system.
With respect to technology, Costa Rica is ahead of most 3rd world nations (and some say that Costa Rica is no longer a 3rd world nation, but something higher.) Intel makes the Celeron processor in a fabrication plant in Costa Rica, and that has brought in other high-tech industries, of which I can't name a single damn one, but anyway. I have no idea how high computer ownership is, but it is not uncommon for someone to own a computer in the capital city.
Costa Rica's main problem though won't be helped by this idea, in fact it will be hurt even more. The telephone and electric system is completely government run. The president has tried to privatize it, but labor unions and students went crazy preventing it. This is a shame because the telephone system is severely inadequate in many ways. There are stories of two year delays in getting telephone wiring to new homes...(although I have heard that this is now down to about six weeks on average.) Cellular phone companies , which saved some countries from their government run telephone systems, are also government run. This was not the case, until several years ago, when the government went on a socialist rampage and closed down the private cell phone companies. Not only was this enormously stupid, but it put a lot of people in danger, since there were many people in rural areas who only had cell phones because it was so difficult to get land lines installed.
There are *no* private ISP's in Costa Rica. If you want service, you get it from RACSA. And really, RACSA is just a division of ICE, the phenomenally backwards electric and telephone company. Funny enough, there are a bunch of cable companies in the main city hooking up coaxial everywhere...I hope some of it is in the form of fiber optic line. Looking at the RACSA homepage (racsa.co.cr) it seems that the cost right now of internet service is about $1/hr. Since RACSA is government owned anyway, the difference between making it free and charging may not be all that much as things go budget wise.
However, it does mean that the government is still going to be running their internet system, which is based on their lame telephone system. And on top of that, they will be drawing into the national treasury in order to do it. That means that the vast majority of Costa Ricans will be paying so that the minority can have internet service, who were able to afford it anyway.(No matter what anyone says, computer literacy may be high, but it's not that high.)
This is socialism at its worst. RACSA and ICE need to be privatized so that telecommunication costs can take a huge drop and internet service can become significantly more affordable and universal. That will have more of an effect than this plan.
One of the problems I have with this is that transportation laws are actually much more flawed than one thinks.
The first thing is, driver's licensing is a process that has been applied to an concept which has been considered a privilege and not a right. As far as I am concerned, this is a completely absurd idea. It's this silly concept that has allowed all sorts of privacy invading regulations be promulgated with respect to licensing, like fingerprinting for licenses. (Which has nothing to do with being able to drive at all.)
Now its not that I don't believe in the usefullness in knowing who can drive and who can't. Although driver's licensing is actually not necessarily made to check that, it is made to act as something like a credit report...so you know who is collecting the accidents and tickets and who isn't. ("One driver, one license") The testing thing is not only new, but not necessarily a great indicator as to how the person is going to drive all the time when there isn't a paatrolman in the car.
What's funny in my mind is that a driver's license does not authorize a person to drive a car in many states. It's a license *and* having insurance that allows you to drive. You can get a license without insurance, but you can't get insurance without a license. And having a license doesn't guarantee that you can find someone to insure you. So is the license a necessary document? Why don't we just have insurance companies give out the licenses?
Essentially, the result is that the license is no longer permission to drive as much as it is certification that the state thinks that you can handle an automobile.
With regards to the internet, who would do the certifying? Maybe the ISP. And they can handle the insurance too. Hey...and if you screw up...the ISP kicks you off. Wait...isn't that what we do now?
I should add to this quickly that most state constitutions are more explicit about the freedom to bear arms than the National Constitution. For instance, my home state of Ohio has in it's Constitution Article 1 sec 8:
"The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security; but standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be kept up; and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power"
That I think makes the situation much clearer. Here are a few more:
Texas, Article 1, Sec 23 Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms in the lawful defense of himself or the State; but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.
Oregon, Article 1 Sec 27 The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power
Pennsylvania, Art 1, Sec 21
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.
Massachusetts, Article 18 The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.
I think you get the general idea...although lots of states make no mention of arms..Kentucky and Maryland for instance. And I think it is also interesting that the standing army thing is also including in the same section for many states.
I know that Mountain Dew may be the drink of choice for many of you out there...but I find it a bit lackluster myself. I prefer the cool, sharp effervescence of Vernor's brand Ginger Ale. Vernor's is as close an approximation to piss yellow Listerine as humanly possible, but with the wonderful addition of bubbles.
Admittedly, it has no caffeine. Certainly you can't hold that against it.
Now at some level, I consider myself a "save the almost extinct animals" naturalist, and it is outstanding to see that perhaps science has come up with an innovative way of helping animals nearing extinction.
But I really have to wonder about the Panda. They may be cute and all, but if mother nature really wanted (a lot of) them around, why did she give them such a mindlessly defective reproductive system? (Males produce sperm only part of the year, some males are infertile, and many times they don't know how to mate even when they are producing sperm.) It makes the typical/.'ers sex life look positively productive in comparison.
Each question is scored in the exact same way, which is fairly absurd because test writers don't necessarily seem to take that into account.
I have taken a bunch of purity tests that score, equally, "have you ever kissed a person of the opposite sex" and "have you ever had oral sex with a mammal of the same gender in a vehicle weighing over 5000 lbs." Surely the latter is more should be weighed more severely.
Indeed, why are questions like "Do you have access to Slashdot's ``high-priority'' submission queue" (156) and "Do you know Slashdot's URL?"(1) weighed equally?
Last year, at Ohio State, was the first year that every single dorm room had Resnet access. I believe it's a little under 10,000 ports, spread over 27 buildings, which are all connected to switches, which are connected by full duplex ethernet wiring to its own backbone...completely separate from the rest of the university backbone.
First, in comparison to previous years, a firewall had been established preventing server services on dormitory computers. Before this occured, at one time, one dormitory with 500 people was consuming more bandwith than the entire Computer and Information Science department.
While that made a few people unhappy, most non-tech people were ok with that.
This year, however, so many people came with computers, plus napster, that a lot of bandwith resources were devoted to Resnet. At it's height, 27MB/sec were being consumed. What has now been done is to limit day time usage to 16MB/sec and night time to 22MB/sec (which, without napster, is not being reached.)
I find myself ambivalent, but generally supportive of the university situation, since Ohio State students do not directly pay a Resnet fee, most of the money for the infrastructure and bandwith is paid by the good people of the State of Ohio. Should that change, then I think students have a greater voice in helping decide how resources are consumed.
As a person who often deals with privacy issues, I am not exactly sure how to take this.
In my mind, this is akin to a company getting a court order to examine the calling records of employees home telephone lines. I can't say that I have heard of that happening, and perhaps it isn't all that unusual.
However, Northwest may be setting precedent only in the fact that we can point out and say "this is what badly run companies do."
It is unusual to hear of an airline so disliked as Northwest is, and the reason many point out is Northwest's management, which has been extremely effective at demoralizing its employees. A demoralized work force is not a good work force, and I hope that any idiot manager knows this. It's why many people refuse to fly the airline, and the biggest loser is the state of Minnesota, which is beholden to Northwest's high fares and bad service.
The reason for examing the computers had to do with illegal union action. While I am not necessarily the biggest fan of unions, illegal union action in the airline industry isn't all that unusual. The reason it occurs is usually because airline management is doing something stupid or not answering employee demands (which admittedly may be unreasonable.)
Illegal union action has generally been viewed as not as severe as, say, stealing something from the airline. Most airlines get the picture, or they just continue to let the situation worsen (a la Frank Lorenzo and Eastern airlines...a good example of bad management turning a good airline into crap and then destroying it.)
It surprises me that the union isn't as concerned about this, but perhaps they are trying to take the high road, letting the airline discover nothing, and then mocking it's attempts later.
Oh, and perhaps this is a good test of whether the 1st amendment covers corporate speech. If not, I'll wake up tomorrow morning with a warrant on my doorstep for my comments here.
As a person who often deals with privacy issues, I am not exactly sure how to take this.
In my mind, this is akin to a company getting a court order to examine the calling records of employees home telephone lines. I can't say that I have heard of that happening, and perhaps it isn't all that unusual.
However, Northwest may be setting precedent only in the fact that we can point out and say "this is what badly run companies do."
It is unusual to hear of an airline so disliked as Northwest is, and the reason many point out is Northwest's management, which has been extremely effective at demoralizing its employees. A demoralized work force is not a good work force, and I hope that any idiot manager knows this. It's why many people refuse to fly the airline, and the biggest loser is the state of Minnesota, which is beholden to Northwest's high fares and bad service.
The reason for examing the computers had to do with illegal union action. While I am not necessarily the biggest fan of unions, illegal union action in the airline industry isn't all that unusual. The reason it occurs is usually because airline management is doing something stupid or not answering employee demands (which admittedly may be unreasonable.)
Illegal union action has generally been viewed as not as severe as, say, stealing something from the airline. Most airlines get the picture, or they just continue to let the situation worsen (a la Frank Lorenzo and Eastern airlines...a good example of bad management turning a good airline into crap and then destroying it.)
It surprises me that the union isn't as concerned about this, but perhaps they are trying to take the high road, letting the airline discover nothing, and then mocking it's attempts later.
I think it's fairly obvious that the author threw it in as filler, for whatever reason, but it brings up the topic for conversation.
As previous posts have noted, the hand dryer is fairly loud, frighteningly ineffective and inefficient in comparison to paper towels, and spreads bacteria more readily than previously thought--contrary to the sanitary claims that we all have read on the devices.
So why do we have them? Do we save that much time and money in comparison to all the resources needed refilling the paper towel dispenser and emptying out the trash (picking up the few stray towels that are on the floor?)
And strangely, if I walk into a nice restaurant, or any other establishment, and they have an elegant bathroom *without* an electric hand dryer, I find myself wondering what's wrong with them. Were they too cheap to buy one? I dare say that if I walk into somoene's home and I see an electric hand dryer on the wall in their private bathroom, I would come to the conclusion that they were worthy of my respect and awe, no matter how annoyed I would be using the damn device.
While I am on this rant, I have only seen once in my life a soap dispenser that was automatic, only requiring you to pass your hand under to dispense liquid soap. If a bathroom has an automatic faucet, and an automatic hand dryer, why don't they have have an automatic soap dispenser? No longer would we have to touch the lever with crusty liquid soap.
And finally, do those hand sanitizer things work? I don't know of any product that I use on my hands that creates the urge to wash my hands more than Purell Hand sanitizer. There's something about drying out my hands with grain alcohol and then feeling off-sticky-almost-vaguely-oily that makes me get up and wash my hands with soap and water...which is exactly what I should have done in the first place.
Well I'm here to defend women in Cleveland, although, admittedly, I'm a native Clevelander. I believe they are prettier than the east coast, but anything is better than the east coast (except new england, which I don't get.)
Obviously, while the candidates do drift center-ward when national elections come 'round, they're still on opposite sides of center. The difference may not be extreme, but it's there. Otherwise, there'd be no difference between the candidates' platforms, and we all know that isn't true.
Just read Harry Browne's platform as reported on selectsmart.com. Now that's scary...
This certainly is a perspective sort of argument. I guess that a centrist would see differences in the platforms, but I'm a Libertarian, and to me the differences are simply not there or are inconsequential. So my perspective is that there sincerely isn't a difference between the candidate platforms. When I was much more centrist, the differences were bigger to me then.
but moderates don't win elections. You have to have some issue on which you take a stand.
Au contraire, moderates always win the elections in a two party system, in particular federal level politics.
There is an economic concept that involves a street and two kiosks selling apples. The theory states that eventually the two kiosks will be right next to each other in the middle of the street. That way, they can get as many people as possible.
So if you have an important race (in a complex district) both candidates become centrist. The one that wins either had better name recognition to begin with, and/or annoyed the fewest amount of people.
Clinton won because he is highly centrist. George W. will probably win because he is highly centrist; the difference between "3rd way" liberalism and "compasionate conservativism" is abortion, and even then, George W. seems ready to bargain with that. With all the name recognition in the world, George W. won't say anything because he is the candidate who has the most to lose, so he makes nice speeches that don't offend anyone, and in the process says nothing of consequence.
One common response that I have been reading a lot has to do with the stupid consumer scenario.
I don't remember anyone mentioning the common Libertarian response of the regulation encouraging the stupid consumer. By having the regulations, consumers become accustomed to being less vigilant over the purchases they make.
On the other hand, if it's something important, we do indeed pay a certain amount of vigilance in how we buy things. Between a website selling prescription medications whose page layout dates from the Mosaic days, and one that is sophisticated and complex, chances are people would take the nicer looking one. The nicer looking one implies that money and time was put into site creation, and therefore that use of resources further implies that the company intends to be around for some time.
That is of course an irrational way of doing things, the nastier looking site may be just as legitimate, and they may proudly note that the savings in site creation were passed on to you. On the other hand, out of desperation for viagara, people may be willing to buy from any site.
I am not debating the point that prescription medications are unsafe (heck, nearly 110,000 people die yearly from prescription medications, whereas less than 5,000 die from illegal drugs. Admittedly, it doesn't take long to see what's up with that statistic.) I am willing to say that some form of *certification* is necessary.
But there are some important footnotes here:
*Certain types of widely used prescriptions have been thoroughly tested, and need to be. Antibiotics for example, will be more or less taken by everyone, and many times the ailments for which they are being taken aren't life threatening. On the other hand, the FDA runs all medications through the same testing process, which is rather absurd. Hodgekin's disease and AIDS sufferers have much less to lose, and in cases where they need the drugs more desperately, the testing processes should not be as drawn out.
*Related to the complex testing processes, those medications are terribly expensive because of the testing used. For people who are near death or suffering severely anyway, the testing is difficult to justify.
*The FDA has police powers. Not only can they stop you from buying something, they can raid drugstores and warehouses. In fact, other than ATF, the FDA is one of the better armed federal regulatory bodies.
*Testing, as it has been pointed out, doesn't guarantee much at all. It used to be that the companies, by undergoing the testing, didn't have so much liability, but changes in federal law have guaranteed liability no matter the testing. This is one area, like aviation regulations, where the companies have little reason to cheat and sell a dangerous product. The punitive damages are pretty severe. Thalidomide has not occurred again not so much because of regulations, but because liability damages are uncapped. (Toxic Shock causing Rely Tampons were approved, but removed by Procter and Gamble for fear of killing the clients.) There are of course fly by night companies which would be difficult to sue, but a consumer needs to weigh the consequences of flying JimBobJoe airlines, or taking a drug from JimBobJoe pharmaceuticals, as opposed to United Airlines and Ciby-Geigy.
*Is it proper for a government to interfer with a contract between two people? Regulation is there indeed to "protect" you but when that regulation actually threatens your life, or severely restrains your liberty, like in this egregious example then the presence of the regulation is questionable.
Libertarians often cite underwriter laboratories as an good example of private regulation (although perhaps it's disingenous to compare drugs which work biochemically on the body to lamps, which cause understood effects.)
Certifications can be granted by such trusted groups to phamaraceuticals, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors. You can of course go to an uncertified doctor or pharmaceutical reseller, but that is the case today, otherwise you wouldn't be able to explain the huge marijuana market. It is simply irrational to expect that the presence of the regulation means that people won't have access to the drug. If that's the case, who is the regulation helping anyway?
First posts have of course overstayed their welcome, but I would be far more impressed by the more disreputable slashdotters if they went through all the archives and added last posts to already closed discussion threads. That would at least take some energy.
The taco bell incidentally is located right on the edge of the campus of Ohio State, here in Columbus, in fact, you can see one of the dorms in the background. While I have seen this pic quite a lot on the net, I have seen an attribute for the picture only once (and naturally, now I can't find it.)
Actually, I put my money on either Columbia or East Ohio. First, I think East Ohio has the larger consumer base, but second, most of the lines, to my understanding, go through urban northern Ohio, and not through Central or Southern Ohio (of course there are some pop's here in Columbus as a result of Compuserve and Oarnet, perhaps I am wrong about this.) Second, consumer choice doesn't change the company who owns the lines going to your house, but the company who supplied the gas itself. Finally, if you've got a map of the lines through Ohio...I'd love to see it...I bet very little of the lines go through rural areas.
They are trying to raise some money, and put together a lawsuit.
According to what I know, while Texas had the fingerprinting statute on the books for some time(which only allowed but did not not compell DPS to collect the prints) it was only recently that DPS had the technology to do it all over the state efficiently, as opposed to the larger DPS offices.
While Texas and a few other states do fingerprint, thankfully those states are in the minority, and hopefully it will stay that way.
Returning schools to the community will only ensure that poor communities have poor education and rich communities will have variable education.
In most of the nation this is true anyway, even in the states that have large amounts of state control and little community control. If one day we all woke up with schools completely being run by Washington, I would suspect that the same problem would exist.
Out of all the school districts in this country, probably only about 10% will fall into the "good" category. The rest fall into the categories of "well-funded" or "crappy."
The 10% number is likely correct. Although funding is much more equal than one would think. For instance, here in Ohio, a state with a very severe school inquality problem, the schools which spend the most per pupil are not necessarily the best performing. (The top two districts for funding per pupil in Ohio are Cleveland and Dayton, certainly far from being the best performers. Actually, both of them are atrociously inefficient in what they do with money.) The schools that spend the least on students actually fall right into the middle of the pack perfomance wise.
The federal government must set proper standards that are followed by all schools, regardless of where those schools are located. Schools that do not meet the standards must be improved and adequate funding must be provided.
Schools that do not meet standards are rarely given more money, strangely, they are usually denied new grants. That is how the system works here in Ohio.
For instance, schools will be given new grants if they meet proficiency test minimums, and a few other criteria. Richer schools hate the system, because then they have to waste time doing things they can't care less about. Poorer schools have a difficult time meeting the criteria, through no fault of their own, and forgo the grants. Schools in the middle are usually torn between the two areas. The only winners are schools who figure out the system. For instance, there is a school system that has mostly abandoned its own curriculum to teach to the proficiency tests, and make sure that they meet the state mandated criteria. They are very successful in getting the money, but they aren't really all that good.
I would be highly surprised if the federal government could be that successful in establishing school guidelines. Ohio's constitution, written to keep as many things as possible at the local level, has turned into a complex barrier for school funding issues. The federal constitution will do the same. I can't see it succeeding, as is the case with most federal intervention.
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I wanted to add just a bit to this...I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I point out that criminals will do whatever it takes depending on the thing to be gained.
For instance, drivers licenses weren't protected by social security numbers, photographs and fingerprints, and yet, they were almost never used in fraudulent situations. Why? Because the license was a piece of paper that could only allow you to drive. Once a photo was added, then it became an age verification document, and then making a forgery was justified for some purposes. So they increased the security of the document...which also led to the increase of the usefullness of the document. Now, despite all the security measures, there are significantly more fake licenses out, because now you can get credit and open bank accounts with a good fake license. So now people are willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for a fake license...a bribe at your local DMV can go quite a long way....
This idea can be extended to biometrics...nothing is 100% secure. And if your fingerprint or your retina can only turn on your computer, no criminal may find it worth their while to fool the system. But if your fingerprint turns on your computer, allows entry into your home and office, gets access to your bank account and investments and starts your car, well, maybe the cost of faking the systems will be high, but the payout will be high.
The point is, biometrics is doomed, and the only people who can make money off them are people who sell biometrics crap, who make a more secure system every year to unwise institutions.
is still fairly rare on domestic flights. Fact is, the general belief is that a terrorest attack on a domestic flight is unlikely, and decades of terrorist free service more or less proves that. Screening of luggage is unusual because it wasn't felt necessary and the machines which do it are costly and are needed in large numbers for big airports. The matching of luggage to a passenger is the single most effective way of making sure that bombs don't get on aircraft (of course, kamikaze terrorists I guess are possible.) Everything else from checking ID card's at checking, to metal detectors is pretty much worthless and is simply a ruse to alleviate the concerns of the travelling public.
Large international airports, like London Heathrow have the machines to do screening, and I believe that more often than not, if you are on an international flight from a big airport it is likely that your bags will be screened.
There's a very good reason why states and businesses shy away from adding the tax and the product price together. That's because it hides the real cost of the sales tax. Even if current history belies it, Americans are by our history anti-tax people (or at least we try to be.) By not marking the tax, you always know how much of your money is going to the government when you actually pay for the product you buy. You can only have 22% sales tax if you hide the actual amount. I say that because, in comparison to products, the tax levied on gasoline is fairly high, for instance, here in Ohio its 40.6 cents (22 for the state, 18.6 for the Federal government.) If the price on pumps were marked without the sales tax, then everyone would know exactly how much was going for it, and people would be and should be spending more attention to where that money is going.
The same thing can be said of income tax...what's the best way to lower it...eliminate withholding. Withholding was devised during World War 2, prior to that time, only the rich paid income taxes, and when they did, they had to send it all in at one time. After withholding, you could raise taxes quite a lot and no one would really know except on paper. Let's say someone makes $60,000 per year and they get assessed for federal taxes at about $10,000. Well,now, they only see the money on paper, and it really never touches them. But if you ended withholding, every April they would make a check out to the IRS for $10,000...that would make a huge difference in how people look at taxes and think about the government.
Furthermore, I am against income taxes because it's a subtle form of stealing. If you buy a product or own property, that is putting a strain on public resources...so a tax may be appropriate. But just making money isn't putting a strain on public resources, and there is nothing stopping the state or the feds from increasing your tax rate to 90% and letting you have 10% to live, instead of letting you have 70% of your income to live. Property taxes and sales taxes are most definitely the way to go.
I find this deeply disappointing.
I would best describe Costa Rica's economic/social system as something like the Netherlands. It has pockets of absolute freedom and pockets where the government controls everything. The country does have national health care and social security and a pretty good educational system. It has a tiny coast guard and essentially no militiary which is why it has been able to spend money on human services...bringing a fairly good standard of living for central america. The biggest industry is tourism (a new phenomena, about ten years old) then agriculture.
It's socialism is however at times rampant. Costa Ricans are for instance paid in 13th month cycles (meaning they get one month's worth of pay free yearly.) I have heard anecdotally that this has led to the ruining of the exchange rate of the Colon versus the dollar. (Since no one is actually working for the money.) Strangely enough, the National Assembly has an elected Libertarian...so go figure. As someone pointed out, Costa Rica regularly gets hundreds of millions of dollars from the US government, but my understanding is that this is used mostly to cover interest on debt payments. The national debt as a percentage of GDP is huge, a result of deficit spending to cover the country's social security system.
With respect to technology, Costa Rica is ahead of most 3rd world nations (and some say that Costa Rica is no longer a 3rd world nation, but something higher.) Intel makes the Celeron processor in a fabrication plant in Costa Rica, and that has brought in other high-tech industries, of which I can't name a single damn one, but anyway. I have no idea how high computer ownership is, but it is not uncommon for someone to own a computer in the capital city.
Costa Rica's main problem though won't be helped by this idea, in fact it will be hurt even more. The telephone and electric system is completely government run. The president has tried to privatize it, but labor unions and students went crazy preventing it. This is a shame because the telephone system is severely inadequate in many ways. There are stories of two year delays in getting telephone wiring to new homes...(although I have heard that this is now down to about six weeks on average.) Cellular phone companies , which saved some countries from their government run telephone systems, are also government run. This was not the case, until several years ago, when the government went on a socialist rampage and closed down the private cell phone companies. Not only was this enormously stupid, but it put a lot of people in danger, since there were many people in rural areas who only had cell phones because it was so difficult to get land lines installed.
There are *no* private ISP's in Costa Rica. If you want service, you get it from RACSA. And really, RACSA is just a division of ICE, the phenomenally backwards electric and telephone company. Funny enough, there are a bunch of cable companies in the main city hooking up coaxial everywhere...I hope some of it is in the form of fiber optic line. Looking at the RACSA homepage (racsa.co.cr) it seems that the cost right now of internet service is about $1/hr. Since RACSA is government owned anyway, the difference between making it free and charging may not be all that much as things go budget wise.
However, it does mean that the government is still going to be running their internet system, which is based on their lame telephone system. And on top of that, they will be drawing into the national treasury in order to do it. That means that the vast majority of Costa Ricans will be paying so that the minority can have internet service, who were able to afford it anyway.(No matter what anyone says, computer literacy may be high, but it's not that high.)
This is socialism at its worst. RACSA and ICE need to be privatized so that telecommunication costs can take a huge drop and internet service can become significantly more affordable and universal. That will have more of an effect than this plan.
One of the problems I have with this is that transportation laws are actually much more flawed than one thinks.
The first thing is, driver's licensing is a process that has been applied to an concept which has been considered a privilege and not a right. As far as I am concerned, this is a completely absurd idea. It's this silly concept that has allowed all sorts of privacy invading regulations be promulgated with respect to licensing, like fingerprinting for licenses. (Which has nothing to do with being able to drive at all.)
Now its not that I don't believe in the usefullness in knowing who can drive and who can't. Although driver's licensing is actually not necessarily made to check that, it is made to act as something like a credit report...so you know who is collecting the accidents and tickets and who isn't. ("One driver, one license") The testing thing is not only new, but not necessarily a great indicator as to how the person is going to drive all the time when there isn't a paatrolman in the car.
What's funny in my mind is that a driver's license does not authorize a person to drive a car in many states. It's a license *and* having insurance that allows you to drive. You can get a license without insurance, but you can't get insurance without a license. And having a license doesn't guarantee that you can find someone to insure you. So is the license a necessary document? Why don't we just have insurance companies give out the licenses?
Essentially, the result is that the license is no longer permission to drive as much as it is certification that the state thinks that you can handle an automobile.
With regards to the internet, who would do the certifying? Maybe the ISP. And they can handle the insurance too. Hey...and if you screw up...the ISP kicks you off. Wait...isn't that what we do now?
I should add to this quickly that most state constitutions are more explicit about the freedom to bear arms than the National Constitution. For instance, my home state of Ohio has in it's Constitution Article 1 sec 8:
"The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security; but standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be kept up; and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power"
That I think makes the situation much clearer. Here are a few more:
Texas, Article 1, Sec 23
Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms in the lawful defense of himself or the State; but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.
Oregon, Article 1 Sec 27
The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power
Pennsylvania, Art 1, Sec 21
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.
Massachusetts, Article 18
The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.
I think you get the general idea...although lots of states make no mention of arms..Kentucky and Maryland for instance. And I think it is also interesting that the standing army thing is also including in the same section for many states.
I know that Mountain Dew may be the drink of choice for many of you out there...but I find it a bit lackluster myself. I prefer the cool, sharp effervescence of Vernor's brand Ginger Ale. Vernor's is as close an approximation to piss yellow Listerine as humanly possible, but with the wonderful addition of bubbles.
Admittedly, it has no caffeine. Certainly you can't hold that against it.
Now at some level, I consider myself a "save the almost extinct animals" naturalist, and it is outstanding to see that perhaps science has come up with an innovative way of helping animals nearing extinction.
/.'ers sex life look positively productive in comparison.
But I really have to wonder about the Panda. They may be cute and all, but if mother nature really wanted (a lot of) them around, why did she give them such a mindlessly defective reproductive system? (Males produce sperm only part of the year, some males are infertile, and many times they don't know how to mate even when they are producing sperm.) It makes the typical
Each question is scored in the exact same way, which is fairly absurd because test writers don't necessarily seem to take that into account.
I have taken a bunch of purity tests that score, equally, "have you ever kissed a person of the opposite sex" and "have you ever had oral sex with a mammal of the same gender in a vehicle weighing over 5000 lbs." Surely the latter is more should be weighed more severely.
Indeed, why are questions like "Do you have access to Slashdot's ``high-priority'' submission queue" (156) and "Do you know Slashdot's URL?"(1) weighed equally?
Last year, at Ohio State, was the first year that every single dorm room had Resnet access. I believe it's a little under 10,000 ports, spread over 27 buildings, which are all connected to switches, which are connected by full duplex ethernet wiring to its own backbone...completely separate from the rest of the university backbone.
First, in comparison to previous years, a firewall had been established preventing server services on dormitory computers. Before this occured, at one time, one dormitory with 500 people was consuming more bandwith than the entire Computer and Information Science department.
While that made a few people unhappy, most non-tech people were ok with that.
This year, however, so many people came with computers, plus napster, that a lot of bandwith resources were devoted to Resnet. At it's height, 27MB/sec were being consumed. What has now been done is to limit day time usage to 16MB/sec and night time to 22MB/sec (which, without napster, is not being reached.)
I find myself ambivalent, but generally supportive of the university situation, since Ohio State students do not directly pay a Resnet fee, most of the money for the infrastructure and bandwith is paid by the good people of the State of Ohio. Should that change, then I think students have a greater voice in helping decide how resources are consumed.
As a person who often deals with privacy issues, I am not exactly sure how to take this.
In my mind, this is akin to a company getting a court order to examine the calling records of employees home telephone lines. I can't say that I have heard of that happening, and perhaps it isn't all that unusual.
However, Northwest may be setting precedent only in the fact that we can point out and say "this is what badly run companies do."
It is unusual to hear of an airline so disliked as Northwest is, and the reason many point out is Northwest's management, which has been extremely effective at demoralizing its employees. A demoralized work force is not a good work force, and I hope that any idiot manager knows this. It's why many people refuse to fly the airline, and the biggest loser is the state of Minnesota, which is beholden to Northwest's high fares and bad service.
The reason for examing the computers had to do with illegal union action. While I am not necessarily the biggest fan of unions, illegal union action in the airline industry isn't all that unusual. The reason it occurs is usually because airline management is doing something stupid or not answering employee demands (which admittedly may be unreasonable.)
Illegal union action has generally been viewed as not as severe as, say, stealing something from the airline. Most airlines get the picture, or they just continue to let the situation worsen (a la Frank Lorenzo and Eastern airlines...a good example of bad management turning a good airline into crap and then destroying it.)
It surprises me that the union isn't as concerned about this, but perhaps they are trying to take the high road, letting the airline discover nothing, and then mocking it's attempts later.
Oh, and perhaps this is a good test of whether the 1st amendment covers corporate speech. If not, I'll wake up tomorrow morning with a warrant on my doorstep for my comments here.
As a person who often deals with privacy issues, I am not exactly sure how to take this.
In my mind, this is akin to a company getting a court order to examine the calling records of employees home telephone lines. I can't say that I have heard of that happening, and perhaps it isn't all that unusual.
However, Northwest may be setting precedent only in the fact that we can point out and say "this is what badly run companies do."
It is unusual to hear of an airline so disliked as Northwest is, and the reason many point out is Northwest's management, which has been extremely effective at demoralizing its employees. A demoralized work force is not a good work force, and I hope that any idiot manager knows this. It's why many people refuse to fly the airline, and the biggest loser is the state of Minnesota, which is beholden to Northwest's high fares and bad service.
The reason for examing the computers had to do with illegal union action. While I am not necessarily the biggest fan of unions, illegal union action in the airline industry isn't all that unusual. The reason it occurs is usually because airline management is doing something stupid or not answering employee demands (which admittedly may be unreasonable.)
Illegal union action has generally been viewed as not as severe as, say, stealing something from the airline. Most airlines get the picture, or they just continue to let the situation worsen (a la Frank Lorenzo and Eastern airlines...a good example of bad management turning a good airline into crap and then destroying it.)
It surprises me that the union isn't as concerned about this, but perhaps they are trying to take the high road, letting the airline discover nothing, and then mocking it's attempts later.
I think it's fairly obvious that the author threw it in as filler, for whatever reason, but it brings up the topic for conversation.
As previous posts have noted, the hand dryer is fairly loud, frighteningly ineffective and inefficient in comparison to paper towels, and spreads bacteria more readily than previously thought--contrary to the sanitary claims that we all have read on the devices.
So why do we have them? Do we save that much time and money in comparison to all the resources needed refilling the paper towel dispenser and emptying out the trash (picking up the few stray towels that are on the floor?)
And strangely, if I walk into a nice restaurant, or any other establishment, and they have an elegant bathroom *without* an electric hand dryer, I find myself wondering what's wrong with them. Were they too cheap to buy one? I dare say that if I walk into somoene's home and I see an electric hand dryer on the wall in their private bathroom, I would come to the conclusion that they were worthy of my respect and awe, no matter how annoyed I would be using the damn device.
While I am on this rant, I have only seen once in my life a soap dispenser that was automatic, only requiring you to pass your hand under to dispense liquid soap. If a bathroom has an automatic faucet, and an automatic hand dryer, why don't they have have an automatic soap dispenser? No longer would we have to touch the lever with crusty liquid soap.
And finally, do those hand sanitizer things work? I don't know of any product that I use on my hands that creates the urge to wash my hands more than Purell Hand sanitizer. There's something about drying out my hands with grain alcohol and then feeling off-sticky-almost-vaguely-oily that makes me get up and wash my hands with soap and water...which is exactly what I should have done in the first place.
Well I'm here to defend women in Cleveland, although, admittedly, I'm a native Clevelander. I believe they are prettier than the east coast, but anything is better than the east coast (except new england, which I don't get.)
Obviously, while the candidates do drift center-ward when national elections come 'round, they're still on opposite sides of center. The difference may not be extreme, but it's there. Otherwise, there'd be no difference between the candidates' platforms, and we all know that isn't true.
Just read Harry Browne's platform as reported on selectsmart.com. Now that's scary...
This certainly is a perspective sort of argument. I guess that a centrist would see differences in the platforms, but I'm a Libertarian, and to me the differences are simply not there or are inconsequential. So my perspective is that there sincerely isn't a difference between the candidate platforms. When I was much more centrist, the differences were bigger to me then.
but moderates don't win elections. You have to have some issue on which you take a stand.
Au contraire, moderates always win the elections in a two party system, in particular federal level politics.
There is an economic concept that involves a street and two kiosks selling apples. The theory states that eventually the two kiosks will be right next to each other in the middle of the street. That way, they can get as many people as possible.
So if you have an important race (in a complex district) both candidates become centrist. The one that wins either had better name recognition to begin with, and/or annoyed the fewest amount of people.
Clinton won because he is highly centrist. George W. will probably win because he is highly centrist; the difference between "3rd way" liberalism and "compasionate conservativism" is abortion, and even then, George W. seems ready to bargain with that. With all the name recognition in the world, George W. won't say anything because he is the candidate who has the most to lose, so he makes nice speeches that don't offend anyone, and in the process says nothing of consequence.
Coincidentally , the penguin has already been adopted as the unofficial mascot of the Libertarian party.
http://www.libertypenguin.com
Coincidentally , the penguin has already been adopted as the unofficial mascot of the Libertarian party.
One common response that I have been reading a lot has to do with the stupid consumer scenario.
I don't remember anyone mentioning the common Libertarian response of the regulation encouraging the stupid consumer. By having the regulations, consumers become accustomed to being less vigilant over the purchases they make.
On the other hand, if it's something important, we do indeed pay a certain amount of vigilance in how we buy things. Between a website selling prescription medications whose page layout dates from the Mosaic days, and one that is sophisticated and complex, chances are people would take the nicer looking one. The nicer looking one implies that money and time was put into site creation, and therefore that use of resources further implies that the company intends to be around for some time.
That is of course an irrational way of doing things, the nastier looking site may be just as legitimate, and they may proudly note that the savings in site creation were passed on to you. On the other hand, out of desperation for viagara, people may be willing to buy from any site.
I am not debating the point that prescription medications are unsafe (heck, nearly 110,000 people die yearly from prescription medications, whereas less than 5,000 die from illegal drugs. Admittedly, it doesn't take long to see what's up with that statistic.) I am willing to say that some form of *certification* is necessary.
But there are some important footnotes here:
*Certain types of widely used prescriptions have been thoroughly tested, and need to be. Antibiotics for example, will be more or less taken by everyone, and many times the ailments for which they are being taken aren't life threatening. On the other hand, the FDA runs all medications through the same testing process, which is rather absurd. Hodgekin's disease and AIDS sufferers have much less to lose, and in cases where they need the drugs more desperately, the testing processes should not be as drawn out.
*Related to the complex testing processes, those medications are terribly expensive because of the testing used. For people who are near death or suffering severely anyway, the testing is difficult to justify.
*The FDA has police powers. Not only can they stop you from buying something, they can raid drugstores and warehouses. In fact, other than ATF, the FDA is one of the better armed federal regulatory bodies.
*Testing, as it has been pointed out, doesn't guarantee much at all. It used to be that the companies, by undergoing the testing, didn't have so much liability, but changes in federal law have guaranteed liability no matter the testing. This is one area, like aviation regulations, where the companies have little reason to cheat and sell a dangerous product. The punitive damages are pretty severe. Thalidomide has not occurred again not so much because of regulations, but because liability damages are uncapped. (Toxic Shock causing Rely Tampons were approved, but removed by Procter and Gamble for fear of killing the clients.) There are of course fly by night companies which would be difficult to sue, but a consumer needs to weigh the consequences of flying JimBobJoe airlines, or taking a drug from JimBobJoe pharmaceuticals, as opposed to United Airlines and Ciby-Geigy.
*Is it proper for a government to interfer with a contract between two people? Regulation is there indeed to "protect" you but when that regulation actually threatens your life, or severely restrains your liberty, like in this egregious example then the presence of the regulation is questionable.
Libertarians often cite underwriter laboratories as an good example of private regulation (although perhaps it's disingenous to compare drugs which work biochemically on the body to lamps, which cause understood effects.)
Certifications can be granted by such trusted groups to phamaraceuticals, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors. You can of course go to an uncertified doctor or pharmaceutical reseller, but that is the case today, otherwise you wouldn't be able to explain the huge marijuana market. It is simply irrational to expect that the presence of the regulation means that people won't have access to the drug. If that's the case, who is the regulation helping anyway?
First posts have of course overstayed their welcome, but I would be far more impressed by the more disreputable slashdotters if they went through all the archives and added last posts to already closed discussion threads. That would at least take some energy.
The taco bell incidentally is located right on the edge of the campus of Ohio State, here in Columbus, in fact, you can see one of the dorms in the background. While I have seen this pic quite a lot on the net, I have seen an attribute for the picture only once (and naturally, now I can't find it.)
Actually, I put my money on either Columbia or East Ohio. First, I think East Ohio has the larger consumer base, but second, most of the lines, to my understanding, go through urban northern Ohio, and not through Central or Southern Ohio (of course there are some pop's here in Columbus as a result of Compuserve and Oarnet, perhaps I am wrong about this.) Second, consumer choice doesn't change the company who owns the lines going to your house, but the company who supplied the gas itself. Finally, if you've got a map of the lines through Ohio...I'd love to see it...I bet very little of the lines go through rural areas.
You can see their web page at http://www.taig.org
They are trying to raise some money, and put together a lawsuit.
According to what I know, while Texas had the fingerprinting statute on the books for some time(which only allowed but did not not compell DPS to collect the prints) it was only recently that DPS had the technology to do it all over the state efficiently, as opposed to the larger DPS offices.
While Texas and a few other states do fingerprint, thankfully those states are in the minority, and hopefully it will stay that way.
Returning schools to the community will only ensure that poor communities have poor education and rich communities will have variable education.
In most of the nation this is true anyway, even in the states that have large amounts of state control and little community control. If one day we all woke up with schools completely being run by Washington, I would suspect that the same problem would exist.
Out of all the school districts in this country, probably only about 10% will fall into the "good" category. The rest fall into the categories of "well-funded" or "crappy."
The 10% number is likely correct. Although funding is much more equal than one would think. For instance, here in Ohio, a state with a very severe school inquality problem, the schools which spend the most per pupil are not necessarily the best performing. (The top two districts for funding per pupil in Ohio are Cleveland and Dayton, certainly far from being the best performers. Actually, both of them are atrociously inefficient in what they do with money.) The schools that spend the least on students actually fall right into the middle of the pack perfomance wise.
The federal government must set proper standards that are followed by all schools, regardless of where those schools are located. Schools that do not meet the standards must be improved and adequate funding must be provided.
Schools that do not meet standards are rarely given more money, strangely, they are usually denied new grants. That is how the system works here in Ohio.
For instance, schools will be given new grants if they meet proficiency test minimums, and a few other criteria. Richer schools hate the system, because then they have to waste time doing things they can't care less about. Poorer schools have a difficult time meeting the criteria, through no fault of their own, and forgo the grants. Schools in the middle are usually torn between the two areas. The only winners are schools who figure out the system. For instance, there is a school system that has mostly abandoned its own curriculum to teach to the proficiency tests, and make sure that they meet the state mandated criteria. They are very successful in getting the money, but they aren't really all that good.
I would be highly surprised if the federal government could be that successful in establishing school guidelines. Ohio's constitution, written to keep as many things as possible at the local level, has turned into a complex barrier for school funding issues. The federal constitution will do the same. I can't see it succeeding, as is the case with most federal intervention.
http://www.acses.com/