It's not that people will go out of their way to record you secretly, it's that cameras are getting so small and integrated that such bans are pointless. In a few years, everybody will carry body-mounted cameras everywhere. You might as well get used to it now.
Nowhere have I disputed the legal right of restaurants to impose such rules. I have questioned the wisdom and effectiveness of such rules.
And I dispute that people who take a "don't photograph me" stance are crusaders against surveillance. While they are getting all upset about Google Glass, the restaurant's surveillance cameras continue to film them.
He's not banning cameras, he's banning an always-on head mounted camera that you cannot tell when it's recording.
Is he going to ban wrist watches? Pens? Jewelry? Phones? Belt buckles? Tablets? Eyeglasses? Because they all have the same property: they might contain a camera and might be recording.
It's absurd to say you should leave if asked to remove a camera from your head.
It is not absurd to leave if someone asks me to remove random bits of technology from my body because they don't understand the technology.
if I went out to dine with someone
The probability of you and me having dinner is zero, so don't worry about it. And have fun at "The bar run by alcoholics for alcoholics", because that's the motto of that fine establishing. Just your place, I'm sure.
Someone who takes pictures using a hidden camera knows that he's doing it in secret,
My point is that most cameras will become so small that they are hidden and most picture taking will be "secret"; trying to ban that is pointless.
and cannot delude himself into thinking that since people see him taking pictures and don't immediately run away, they must be okay with it.
Commercial photographers may ask for business reasons, and other people may ask out of politeness, but your permission is not usually required to take your picture. The limits that we have are on publishing pictures, in the sense that if you are unfairly harmed, you may be able to recover damages.
star-trek-visor-guys are not what we want. and we - the anti-surveillance crowd - are not shy about telling you that this is NOT ok in our society.
Don't delude yourself. Surveillance is what governments do. You're not "the anti-surveillance crowd", you're the "anti-photography crowd". And photography in public places is perfectly OK in our society, and that includes restaurants.
cameras are, like the article says, are easy to see if they are pointed at me.
How would you know? Google Glass is deliberately obvious, but you wouldn't recognize most cameras as cameras, let alone notice that they are pointed at you.
The owner is a fool if he thinks he can ban cameras, or that people are "in private" when they are out eating in a restaurant. Google glass is at least visible, many people in the future will simply put the camera in a piece of jewelry or a pen just because it looks less geeky.
Neither of which is there to serve the needed but to acquire profit.
Yes, that is correct, and that is why it works: by seeking profit in a free market, companies end up meeting the needs of the market and eliminating waste. If you replace it with a single payer system, you still have corporations providing the drugs and services and seeking profit; but now they seek profit by lobbying politicians to pay them more money and delivering services people don't need. In addition, powerful consumer special interests now also lobby for special treatment and subsidized services. That's what we see with Medicare/Medicaid: $10000/year wasted on people for useless drugs and useless end-of-life care, largely at the expense of young people and their health care.
And replace it with a better, less "piss-poor" single payer system
A working single payer system has to set sharp coverage limits, and spend very little money on people over 70. More authoritarian nations can impose such draconian rules, but there is no political will or ability in the US to set such limits. The US hasn't even managed to keep Medicare expenses even close to inflation.
There is simply no way the US can ever get a better single payer system. The only politically realistic option for cost control in the US is to leave cost control up to the market. It's not ideal, but it's better than any available alternative. Or we can use "single payer" in the same sense that Switzerland does, namely as very minimal coverage with a large private market selling people the insurance they actually want on top of that.
Added later not even as an afterthought and with much struggle against it. AND only for a small section of the population.
Well, I just pointed out that it exists and constitutes about 40% of US health care spending. So the idea that the US is this cut-throat private system that doesn't attempt to pay for the old and needy is fiction.
The real problem is that Medicare/Medicaid is a piss-poor system, like all single payer systems, and instead of extending it, we should get rid of it.
You missed the point: The goods in the bank were valuable primarily because they were currency. So in fact, the only value the bank-issued currency had was social value, rather than a real value.
That's absolutely false. Societies throughout history have used deposits of many other commodities as money. We happened to choose gold and silver. But all of those commodities, including gold, had "real value" long before they were adopted as currency. Their use as currency affected their value a bit, but gold and silver are still very valuable today that we stopped using them, as are diamonds, gemstones, and platinum.
These objections aren't purely theoretical: All of this happened as a result of the Panic of 1837.
Those objections are bogus. The risk from bank failure is manageable. Furthermore, almost none of our wealth exists as currency, it exists as other things that merely happen to be denoted in currency; Apple stock doesn't lose any value simply because the value of the US dollar goes down. And as Germany and many other nations have shown, government issued currency fails as well, and when it does, instead of merely inconveniencing a few foolish people, it throws entire nations into chaos. With government issued currency as a cure for private bank failures, the cure is worse than the disease.
Yes, it's possible to have a world where everything is privately owned and managed, including money. Here's why we don't do that:
"We" don't do that because it's illegal. And it's illegal because governments find it convenient to manipulate the means of exchange in various ways. Without an artificially created monopoly, government issued currency would likely be rarely used, in particular today, where technology can pretty much eliminate any remaining risks of a private banking system.
"You have been authenticated based on your palm print; last login 11/15/2013. Also, you will meet a beautiful but mysterious woman with long blond hair, and you will have a long and healthy life."
The red states don't want it, but vote in representatives who will fight for it
You better believe it. I'm certainly going to suck out the maximum amount of money that I can from social security and Medicare, even though I oppose those programs and want to see them abolished. I took mortgage interest deductions even though I think they are lousy policy and should be abolished. Etc.
It's perfectly logically and morally consistent to oppose a government program, and yet accept money from that program.
(Of course, the Tax Payer Foundation study is bogus and outdated anyway.)
No, not "same result". The level of incompetence and dysfunction brought to government by Obama is in a new category. Romney would likely have done things I would have disagreed with (I didn't vote for him), but nowhere near as much as Obama.
And Obama has used his presidency to become rich: he's worth around $10m and draws an annual salary of $400k. That places him firmly in "the 1%".
It could also be that everyone else (of note) has instituted single-payer health care, and the US hasn't, so the US has (comparatively) dropped
Many first world nations have mixed public/private systems, or regulated private systems. Switzerland has a regulated private system, and probably better healthcare and health than wherever you are living. Germany has a mixed public/private system, and has explicitly rejected a nationalized single payer system.
What if the answer were Singapore? You'd go off on caning for littering?
I'd point out that Singapore is a rich, small island nation with a political system is much less free than the US. That makes implementing single payer and/or nationalized health care and cost controls much easier. And nobody knows how long any of that is going to last either.
If my words and my meaning disagree, it's an issue with my expression of them
So you refuse to make concrete statements that could be attacked by argument. And when you say something wrong, I should assume that you merely misspoke instead of actually being wrong. And finally, you refuse to put facts on the table because you presume others will just make irrational attacks, and based on that presumption you then engage in some preemptive ad hominems and name calling.
You accused me of driving you away (odd since I was living abroad much of the time you were still in the US). But hearing you, if I can contribute to making the US just a little less pleasant for people like you, I consider that a good thing. Please do me a favor and stay away.
Stop pissing about, through out this "private" medical practice with insurers and so many middle-men, and put in place a national health service who offer any treatment that is effective and extends life / quality of life, which everyone contributes to from taxation, and everything else you pay for out of your own pocket.
The US actually has a huge single payer system, Medicare/Medicaid, and its costs are out of control. Single payer only controls costs when government makes tough cost control choices and limits coverage, but the political will for that is obviously missing.
Come join the rest of the fucking first- and third-world.
You really need to do your research before making such ludicrous statements. Almost no nation has the kind of system you propose, a tax-financed health care system that pays for "any treatment that is effective and extends life / quality of life". Most have mixed public/private systems or regulated private systems. The problem with ACA isn't that it's a mixed system, it's that it does nothing for cost control and represents a huge handout to insurance companies, drug companies, and medical providers.
US health system is built to accommodate most those who can afford it - clearly it works splendidly for that purpose. Keep your rich healthy and they'll live longer, work longer and grow richer.
That's a nice fiction, but the US has had Medicare/Medicaid for decades.
Single payer only works if the government is willing to make tough choices: cut doctors' salaries, cut services, etc. until expenses are under control.
Medicare is the US single payer system, and it pays around $10000 per person per year; not much cost control there.
Red states don't want this money: they don't want their citizens to be taxed for it, and they don't want it to be redistributed back to them. The fact that they don't want it even though many of them supposedly make a profit on it according to this analysis tells you one of two things: either the analysis is wrong, or it causes harm that the analysis doesn't account for.
Next you're going to tell us that the prisoners in Guantanamo should be grateful that fully 100% of their living expenses are paid for by the US federal government.
"Caring" doesn't fix the economy, it doesn't put food on the table. And Obama may "care", but he still engages in targeted killings, he still keeps people locked up in Guantanamo, he still persecutes Snowden, and his NSA still violates our privacy.
I'd rather have a competent "rich, old, self-entitled, uncaring Republican white guy" than an incompetent "poor, young, progressive Democratic guy of your preferred race".
Whatever it is you can nearly "free" get per month, it's more than you're paying in. So, if your doctor tells you you "need" something, you are not going to make a big fuss about it as long as it stays under the limit.
The kind of "healthcare" that matters in developing countries is something that costs a few hundred dollars a year; less than a month of an ACA bronze plan. The kind of "healthcare" that is under discussion in the US is mostly overpriced, unnecessary fixes for poor lifestyle choices, plus useless intensive care at the end of life.
Keeping people healthy so that they live longer is not something healthcare does, it's something that good nutrition and exercise do.
Most people in the US die after retirement, so keeping them alive longer actually is not good financially like you imply. But American are covered by Medicare after age 65 anyway, so even if what you wrote were true, the US already has single payer, socialized medicine for those people.
Finally, your thinking that government should keep people alive longer so that they pay more taxes is pretty telling, and rather scary.
I'm not referring to GRAS. GRAS is stuff that we believe is safe because it has been in common use for a long time without problems. Some GM foods are starting to fall in this category. But GRAS is not a scientific standard.
I'm saying that, from a biological point of view, there is no reason or evidence to believe that GM foods are intrinsically unsafe. The only way anybody knows to produce harmful GM organisms is to deliberately engineer them to be harmful. That means GMOs are generally presumed to be safe if they are constructed from safe components. (Of course, just to be sure, we still test them anyway, since nature does sometimes surprise us.)
And I didn't say it was best when (or because) the government was smaller and the market was more free.
No, you didn't, we already established that you believe that the US was better for some other reason.
What you did say is this:
I'd still live [in the US], if there weren't so many evil people like yourself polluting it until it's now one of the worst nations, down from one of the best. I'll go back, if the conditions improve, but with so many people like you, I don't hold high hopes.
So you accuse me of being "evil" for doing unnamed things that destroyed whatever unnamed attributes of the US you used to like. I'm trying to figure out what "evil people" like me supposedly have done.
So I asked:
Be specific: when was the US "one of the best" nations according to you? Then we can look at what conditions prevailed back then in the US.
You responded:
Rather than telling someone what they think (and proving youself to be a lying idiot at the time), you should listen, and ask
I did ask. You refuse to answer when you think the US was better, why it was better, how "evil people like [me]" destroyed it. You also refuse to answer which country you live in that you keep citing as being superior.
The problem isn't me failing to ask, it is you failing to answer and resorting to name calling instead.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not that people will go out of their way to record you secretly, it's that cameras are getting so small and integrated that such bans are pointless. In a few years, everybody will carry body-mounted cameras everywhere. You might as well get used to it now.
Nowhere have I disputed the legal right of restaurants to impose such rules. I have questioned the wisdom and effectiveness of such rules.
And I dispute that people who take a "don't photograph me" stance are crusaders against surveillance. While they are getting all upset about Google Glass, the restaurant's surveillance cameras continue to film them.
Is he going to ban wrist watches? Pens? Jewelry? Phones? Belt buckles? Tablets? Eyeglasses? Because they all have the same property: they might contain a camera and might be recording.
It is not absurd to leave if someone asks me to remove random bits of technology from my body because they don't understand the technology.
The probability of you and me having dinner is zero, so don't worry about it. And have fun at "The bar run by alcoholics for alcoholics", because that's the motto of that fine establishing. Just your place, I'm sure.
My point is that most cameras will become so small that they are hidden and most picture taking will be "secret"; trying to ban that is pointless.
Commercial photographers may ask for business reasons, and other people may ask out of politeness, but your permission is not usually required to take your picture. The limits that we have are on publishing pictures, in the sense that if you are unfairly harmed, you may be able to recover damages.
Don't delude yourself. Surveillance is what governments do. You're not "the anti-surveillance crowd", you're the "anti-photography crowd". And photography in public places is perfectly OK in our society, and that includes restaurants.
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/
How would you know? Google Glass is deliberately obvious, but you wouldn't recognize most cameras as cameras, let alone notice that they are pointed at you.
"Didn't like the ambience. Felt the staff was rude."
They can and they will. You (and the owner) are deluding themselves that they cannot.
The owner is a fool if he thinks he can ban cameras, or that people are "in private" when they are out eating in a restaurant. Google glass is at least visible, many people in the future will simply put the camera in a piece of jewelry or a pen just because it looks less geeky.
Just leave and give the place a bad review.
Yes, that is correct, and that is why it works: by seeking profit in a free market, companies end up meeting the needs of the market and eliminating waste. If you replace it with a single payer system, you still have corporations providing the drugs and services and seeking profit; but now they seek profit by lobbying politicians to pay them more money and delivering services people don't need. In addition, powerful consumer special interests now also lobby for special treatment and subsidized services. That's what we see with Medicare/Medicaid: $10000/year wasted on people for useless drugs and useless end-of-life care, largely at the expense of young people and their health care.
A working single payer system has to set sharp coverage limits, and spend very little money on people over 70. More authoritarian nations can impose such draconian rules, but there is no political will or ability in the US to set such limits. The US hasn't even managed to keep Medicare expenses even close to inflation.
There is simply no way the US can ever get a better single payer system. The only politically realistic option for cost control in the US is to leave cost control up to the market. It's not ideal, but it's better than any available alternative. Or we can use "single payer" in the same sense that Switzerland does, namely as very minimal coverage with a large private market selling people the insurance they actually want on top of that.
Well, I just pointed out that it exists and constitutes about 40% of US health care spending. So the idea that the US is this cut-throat private system that doesn't attempt to pay for the old and needy is fiction.
The real problem is that Medicare/Medicaid is a piss-poor system, like all single payer systems, and instead of extending it, we should get rid of it.
That's absolutely false. Societies throughout history have used deposits of many other commodities as money. We happened to choose gold and silver. But all of those commodities, including gold, had "real value" long before they were adopted as currency. Their use as currency affected their value a bit, but gold and silver are still very valuable today that we stopped using them, as are diamonds, gemstones, and platinum.
Those objections are bogus. The risk from bank failure is manageable. Furthermore, almost none of our wealth exists as currency, it exists as other things that merely happen to be denoted in currency; Apple stock doesn't lose any value simply because the value of the US dollar goes down. And as Germany and many other nations have shown, government issued currency fails as well, and when it does, instead of merely inconveniencing a few foolish people, it throws entire nations into chaos. With government issued currency as a cure for private bank failures, the cure is worse than the disease.
"We" don't do that because it's illegal. And it's illegal because governments find it convenient to manipulate the means of exchange in various ways. Without an artificially created monopoly, government issued currency would likely be rarely used, in particular today, where technology can pretty much eliminate any remaining risks of a private banking system.
PIKUL: "Free will" is obviously not a big factor in this little world of ours.
GELLER: It's like real life - there's just enough to make it interesting.
Except for the word "iron" that was complete gibberish.
"You have been authenticated based on your palm print; last login 11/15/2013. Also, you will meet a beautiful but mysterious woman with long blond hair, and you will have a long and healthy life."
You better believe it. I'm certainly going to suck out the maximum amount of money that I can from social security and Medicare, even though I oppose those programs and want to see them abolished. I took mortgage interest deductions even though I think they are lousy policy and should be abolished. Etc.
It's perfectly logically and morally consistent to oppose a government program, and yet accept money from that program.
(Of course, the Tax Payer Foundation study is bogus and outdated anyway.)
No, not "same result". The level of incompetence and dysfunction brought to government by Obama is in a new category. Romney would likely have done things I would have disagreed with (I didn't vote for him), but nowhere near as much as Obama.
And Obama has used his presidency to become rich: he's worth around $10m and draws an annual salary of $400k. That places him firmly in "the 1%".
Many first world nations have mixed public/private systems, or regulated private systems. Switzerland has a regulated private system, and probably better healthcare and health than wherever you are living. Germany has a mixed public/private system, and has explicitly rejected a nationalized single payer system.
I'd point out that Singapore is a rich, small island nation with a political system is much less free than the US. That makes implementing single payer and/or nationalized health care and cost controls much easier. And nobody knows how long any of that is going to last either.
So you refuse to make concrete statements that could be attacked by argument. And when you say something wrong, I should assume that you merely misspoke instead of actually being wrong. And finally, you refuse to put facts on the table because you presume others will just make irrational attacks, and based on that presumption you then engage in some preemptive ad hominems and name calling.
You accused me of driving you away (odd since I was living abroad much of the time you were still in the US). But hearing you, if I can contribute to making the US just a little less pleasant for people like you, I consider that a good thing. Please do me a favor and stay away.
The US actually has a huge single payer system, Medicare/Medicaid, and its costs are out of control. Single payer only controls costs when government makes tough cost control choices and limits coverage, but the political will for that is obviously missing.
You really need to do your research before making such ludicrous statements. Almost no nation has the kind of system you propose, a tax-financed health care system that pays for "any treatment that is effective and extends life / quality of life". Most have mixed public/private systems or regulated private systems. The problem with ACA isn't that it's a mixed system, it's that it does nothing for cost control and represents a huge handout to insurance companies, drug companies, and medical providers.
That's a nice fiction, but the US has had Medicare/Medicaid for decades.
Single payer only works if the government is willing to make tough choices: cut doctors' salaries, cut services, etc. until expenses are under control.
Medicare is the US single payer system, and it pays around $10000 per person per year; not much cost control there.
Red states don't want this money: they don't want their citizens to be taxed for it, and they don't want it to be redistributed back to them. The fact that they don't want it even though many of them supposedly make a profit on it according to this analysis tells you one of two things: either the analysis is wrong, or it causes harm that the analysis doesn't account for.
Next you're going to tell us that the prisoners in Guantanamo should be grateful that fully 100% of their living expenses are paid for by the US federal government.
"Caring" doesn't fix the economy, it doesn't put food on the table. And Obama may "care", but he still engages in targeted killings, he still keeps people locked up in Guantanamo, he still persecutes Snowden, and his NSA still violates our privacy.
I'd rather have a competent "rich, old, self-entitled, uncaring Republican white guy" than an incompetent "poor, young, progressive Democratic guy of your preferred race".
Whatever it is you can nearly "free" get per month, it's more than you're paying in. So, if your doctor tells you you "need" something, you are not going to make a big fuss about it as long as it stays under the limit.
The kind of "healthcare" that matters in developing countries is something that costs a few hundred dollars a year; less than a month of an ACA bronze plan. The kind of "healthcare" that is under discussion in the US is mostly overpriced, unnecessary fixes for poor lifestyle choices, plus useless intensive care at the end of life.
Keeping people healthy so that they live longer is not something healthcare does, it's something that good nutrition and exercise do.
Most people in the US die after retirement, so keeping them alive longer actually is not good financially like you imply. But American are covered by Medicare after age 65 anyway, so even if what you wrote were true, the US already has single payer, socialized medicine for those people.
Finally, your thinking that government should keep people alive longer so that they pay more taxes is pretty telling, and rather scary.
I'm not referring to GRAS. GRAS is stuff that we believe is safe because it has been in common use for a long time without problems. Some GM foods are starting to fall in this category. But GRAS is not a scientific standard.
I'm saying that, from a biological point of view, there is no reason or evidence to believe that GM foods are intrinsically unsafe. The only way anybody knows to produce harmful GM organisms is to deliberately engineer them to be harmful. That means GMOs are generally presumed to be safe if they are constructed from safe components. (Of course, just to be sure, we still test them anyway, since nature does sometimes surprise us.)
No, you didn't, we already established that you believe that the US was better for some other reason.
What you did say is this:
So you accuse me of being "evil" for doing unnamed things that destroyed whatever unnamed attributes of the US you used to like. I'm trying to figure out what "evil people" like me supposedly have done.
So I asked:
You responded:
I did ask. You refuse to answer when you think the US was better, why it was better, how "evil people like [me]" destroyed it. You also refuse to answer which country you live in that you keep citing as being superior.
The problem isn't me failing to ask, it is you failing to answer and resorting to name calling instead.