Any proof of a subadditive function will suffice, mathematically.
The more precise answer is that a natural monopoly is any market where increasing output decreases the average cost per unit because the marginal cost doesn't increase as the firm produces more output for all reasonable values of output, and introducing competition ruins the economy of scale where that is true, thereby increasing the cost per unit if competition is introduced.
In the case of telecommunications, adding capacity to a pre-existing network is far, far, far cheaper than building out a brand new network, which is what any competition would have to do, and the overall addition to total network capacity lowers the cost per bit delivered for the original monopoly company.
Just because food is plentiful here doesn't mean it's plentiful everywhere. If you can't afford food, you steal it, steal the means to acquire it, or expire. Fortunately, we generally don't let people starve here, much like we don't deny them health care when they're acutely ill.
The issue is hardly providers in health care -- the bills get run up on acute issues or illnesses requirement expensive treatments, not visiting your GP for a checkup. Being acutely ill also severely impacts the amount of supply you can access -- it's not like you're going to change ICUs once you're in one, or frankly, that you give a shit what you're being charged as long as you live.
If you do have such a monetary price (or, even easier, a percentage of your income) that you're unwilling to pay to keep yourself or a beloved family member alive, please let us know what it is.
If there isn't one, thank you for making my argument for me.
The only way the government is at fault here is by not requiring Comcast to allow competitors to use their lines (thereby bringing a market back into play) or strictly regulating profit due to the lack of natural competition. It's less about protecting us from companies, and more about the idea that in any competition, there needs to be a referee. Adam Smith realized this, and while government in this role sucks, there hasn't been (and there likely isn't) a more effective option. Beyond that, I make my living at a corporation, I have plans to start one here in the near future, and in areas of the market with acceptable risk involved, they are by far the best option available for their spot in the market.
Finally, it's a matter of governments, in many cases, not a government, as the franchise agreements are signed by municipalities, and city councils are relatively cheap to purchase.
He doesn't have a case against his employer unless they were stupid and gave a reason for termination.
He likely does have a case against Comcast under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, as the company is not allowed to contact an employer about a debt or matters relating to it.
Since this is Comcast we're talking about though, they'll settle, claim this settlement was never recorded in their system, not pay, make the plaintiff call 37 times, then apologize to the plaintiff, offer him 3 months of HBO for free, then charge him in triplicate for that and the amount of the settlement.
Natural monopolies, which utility services belong to, absolutely are a product of capitalism, and they require regulation to prevent predatory practices due to their position in the market as a natural monopoly. One of the biggest issues with the Austrian school of economics is that they ignore the mathematical proof of certain monopolies being more efficient than a competitive market.
I'm a firm believer in the power of capitalism as the most efficient market-sorting mechanism out there, but in order for it to work correctly, one needs to recognize the areas where it breaks down, either due to unlimited demand as in a health care market, which is effectively buying life, on which there is no price too great to overcome the natural will to live, or natural monopolies where first to market/mass market is more efficient due to the significant infrastructure (and therefore capital costs) necessary to compete.
I think systems admins would care a lot less about systemd if it didn't take over a ton of other things beyond booting, to make gains on boot time, when that's something that a sysadmin should be doing rarely (and in a cloud infrastructure, once per instance).
systemd is fine for the desktop. It's great software for that. My issue is with the project managers for the various major distros that make this the new normal going forward and sacrifice stability and tested software on the server side for the desktop.
I think the world as we know it serves as sufficient proof of that concept, no?
Ethics and law are frameworks to resolve said conflicts without the use of force.
You've got it. There isn't an objective "right". This does not mean all systems of ethics are equal. As societies, we set standards via law backed with the threat of force.
Sometimes, just the threat of force.
Are you aware that many of those who carried out the atrocities of the 20th Century thought they were doing right?
Yep. Thinking you're right doesn't mean you're acting in an ethical fashion.
Also, I wouldn't use this line of argument:
Are you aware that many of those who carried out the atrocities of the 20th Century thought they were doing right?
...you're not going to like where that leads, since I'm sure we can all name the atrocities done in God's name.
Finally, I certainly hope you're not arguing that you, yourself, would immediately begin doing things you consider evil just because there's no God telling you that they're evil. That would make you a sociopath and an overall terrible person, belief in $DEITY or not.
Need? Nobody.
Being able to auto-generate a shopping list based on the contents of your fridge and cupboards, or order said list for delivery from Safeway/Amazon Fresh/etc.? Timesaver.
Hacking someone's smart fridge to order random embarrassing things as a prank?
Priceless.
I wish I'd done better in school. Not because I would have actually learned anything else, but reinforcing the habit of finishing work you don't like would have helped me earlier in my career.
I love 90% of my job. If I don't do the 10% that sucks and I haven't automated away yet, I find that the company wants to "move in a different direction" and no longer needs my services. I do 100% of my job, and I get to hire people to do the 10% that sucks.
I'm salaried-exempt. This means I get paid to do a job, not to work X hours a week.
Meanwhile, I will be happy to hire the guy you fired for turning an X hour a week job into an X/2 or X/4 hour a week job, because those people, when properly motivated, will save me enough in payroll to be worth what it costs to achieve said motivation.
...but sometimes I really wonder how disconnected from reality people are that think a reader featuring this display is going to replace a ten-buck pair of reading glasses you can get at the drug store, or thinks that by the time this gets cheap enough to put in a dash-mounted GPS display that those will even still be a thing. In-car dash-mounted GPS devices have pretty much already been replaced by cell-phones and built-in displays.
Criticisms of the possible uses in the summary aside, seems like this would be good for computer displays (especially laptops) and TVs, and would definitely have military applications.
I see where you're coming from, but you're acting like we live in a world where Dual_EC_DRBG didn't happen, where the heartbeat weakness in OpenSSL wasn't overlooked for years, and where the level of outrage or disagreement doesn't need rise to a level that outweighs the pain in the ass of changing something to change something.
It doesn't require the NSA (or any determined, capable organization) being supergeniuses to subvert technology or processes. It just takes the trust and misplaced confidence of a few people to assume it's far too hard for someone to do.
When you're linking political blogs to try to refute scientific fact, you're either trolling, stupid, or so partisan that the opposition could say the sky is blue and you'd link mysideisright.com/blog proving that the color of sky is "in dispute".
EIther way, those all translate to wrong. Stop being wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but that would kill the joke, dude.
Any proof of a subadditive function will suffice, mathematically.
The more precise answer is that a natural monopoly is any market where increasing output decreases the average cost per unit because the marginal cost doesn't increase as the firm produces more output for all reasonable values of output, and introducing competition ruins the economy of scale where that is true, thereby increasing the cost per unit if competition is introduced.
In the case of telecommunications, adding capacity to a pre-existing network is far, far, far cheaper than building out a brand new network, which is what any competition would have to do, and the overall addition to total network capacity lowers the cost per bit delivered for the original monopoly company.
Just because food is plentiful here doesn't mean it's plentiful everywhere. If you can't afford food, you steal it, steal the means to acquire it, or expire. Fortunately, we generally don't let people starve here, much like we don't deny them health care when they're acutely ill.
The issue is hardly providers in health care -- the bills get run up on acute issues or illnesses requirement expensive treatments, not visiting your GP for a checkup. Being acutely ill also severely impacts the amount of supply you can access -- it's not like you're going to change ICUs once you're in one, or frankly, that you give a shit what you're being charged as long as you live.
If you do have such a monetary price (or, even easier, a percentage of your income) that you're unwilling to pay to keep yourself or a beloved family member alive, please let us know what it is.
If there isn't one, thank you for making my argument for me.
The only way the government is at fault here is by not requiring Comcast to allow competitors to use their lines (thereby bringing a market back into play) or strictly regulating profit due to the lack of natural competition. It's less about protecting us from companies, and more about the idea that in any competition, there needs to be a referee. Adam Smith realized this, and while government in this role sucks, there hasn't been (and there likely isn't) a more effective option. Beyond that, I make my living at a corporation, I have plans to start one here in the near future, and in areas of the market with acceptable risk involved, they are by far the best option available for their spot in the market. Finally, it's a matter of governments, in many cases, not a government, as the franchise agreements are signed by municipalities, and city councils are relatively cheap to purchase.
He doesn't have a case against his employer unless they were stupid and gave a reason for termination. He likely does have a case against Comcast under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, as the company is not allowed to contact an employer about a debt or matters relating to it. Since this is Comcast we're talking about though, they'll settle, claim this settlement was never recorded in their system, not pay, make the plaintiff call 37 times, then apologize to the plaintiff, offer him 3 months of HBO for free, then charge him in triplicate for that and the amount of the settlement.
Natural monopolies, which utility services belong to, absolutely are a product of capitalism, and they require regulation to prevent predatory practices due to their position in the market as a natural monopoly. One of the biggest issues with the Austrian school of economics is that they ignore the mathematical proof of certain monopolies being more efficient than a competitive market.
I'm a firm believer in the power of capitalism as the most efficient market-sorting mechanism out there, but in order for it to work correctly, one needs to recognize the areas where it breaks down, either due to unlimited demand as in a health care market, which is effectively buying life, on which there is no price too great to overcome the natural will to live, or natural monopolies where first to market/mass market is more efficient due to the significant infrastructure (and therefore capital costs) necessary to compete.
I think systems admins would care a lot less about systemd if it didn't take over a ton of other things beyond booting, to make gains on boot time, when that's something that a sysadmin should be doing rarely (and in a cloud infrastructure, once per instance). systemd is fine for the desktop. It's great software for that. My issue is with the project managers for the various major distros that make this the new normal going forward and sacrifice stability and tested software on the server side for the desktop.
Thought I stumbled into r/TheRedPill.
I think the world as we know it serves as sufficient proof of that concept, no? Ethics and law are frameworks to resolve said conflicts without the use of force.
You've got it. There isn't an objective "right". This does not mean all systems of ethics are equal. As societies, we set standards via law backed with the threat of force. Sometimes, just the threat of force.
Are you aware that many of those who carried out the atrocities of the 20th Century thought they were doing right?
Yep. Thinking you're right doesn't mean you're acting in an ethical fashion. Also, I wouldn't use this line of argument:
Are you aware that many of those who carried out the atrocities of the 20th Century thought they were doing right?
...you're not going to like where that leads, since I'm sure we can all name the atrocities done in God's name. Finally, I certainly hope you're not arguing that you, yourself, would immediately begin doing things you consider evil just because there's no God telling you that they're evil. That would make you a sociopath and an overall terrible person, belief in $DEITY or not.
Need? Nobody. Being able to auto-generate a shopping list based on the contents of your fridge and cupboards, or order said list for delivery from Safeway/Amazon Fresh/etc.? Timesaver. Hacking someone's smart fridge to order random embarrassing things as a prank? Priceless.
I wish I'd done better in school. Not because I would have actually learned anything else, but reinforcing the habit of finishing work you don't like would have helped me earlier in my career. I love 90% of my job. If I don't do the 10% that sucks and I haven't automated away yet, I find that the company wants to "move in a different direction" and no longer needs my services. I do 100% of my job, and I get to hire people to do the 10% that sucks.
I'm salaried-exempt. This means I get paid to do a job, not to work X hours a week. Meanwhile, I will be happy to hire the guy you fired for turning an X hour a week job into an X/2 or X/4 hour a week job, because those people, when properly motivated, will save me enough in payroll to be worth what it costs to achieve said motivation.
...but sometimes I really wonder how disconnected from reality people are that think a reader featuring this display is going to replace a ten-buck pair of reading glasses you can get at the drug store, or thinks that by the time this gets cheap enough to put in a dash-mounted GPS display that those will even still be a thing. In-car dash-mounted GPS devices have pretty much already been replaced by cell-phones and built-in displays. Criticisms of the possible uses in the summary aside, seems like this would be good for computer displays (especially laptops) and TVs, and would definitely have military applications.
I'd tell you, but I got a National Security Letter telling me I can't.
That's hardly nothing. Frankly, your data is far more valuable to them than if you were handing them cash instead.
Data is as much a currency as dollars, and if you're interacting with Google, you're paying quite a bit.
I see where you're coming from, but you're acting like we live in a world where Dual_EC_DRBG didn't happen, where the heartbeat weakness in OpenSSL wasn't overlooked for years, and where the level of outrage or disagreement doesn't need rise to a level that outweighs the pain in the ass of changing something to change something. It doesn't require the NSA (or any determined, capable organization) being supergeniuses to subvert technology or processes. It just takes the trust and misplaced confidence of a few people to assume it's far too hard for someone to do.
You wouldn't be admitted to a UK university, let alone graduate, with writing like that.
I was supposed to graduate from a university before getting this gig? Damn. Don't tell my boss.
When you're linking political blogs to try to refute scientific fact, you're either trolling, stupid, or so partisan that the opposition could say the sky is blue and you'd link mysideisright.com/blog proving that the color of sky is "in dispute". EIther way, those all translate to wrong. Stop being wrong.