From what we hear about him, he seems to be a guy who raises money to spend to promote himself and his favorite political causes. And that's about it. Maybe he has ideas, but they're not news. Only the fundraising is news.
Buy insurance, so you can get the cure and only pay the deductible.
Everybody wins. Sick people get cured. Healthy people are already winners because they're healthy. Drug companies get paid and get a really nice incentive to keep finding disease cures. The insurance company tries to negotiate costs down so they can make a profit. Insurance buyers force the insurance companies to compete for their business.
Tell a poor family to do the same. Just buy all this stuff instead of healthier food or a reliable used car. Except they rent, so they can't. They're stuck paying higher energy bills.
We (know we) have more now than (they knew) they had 50 years ago. There's no reason to expect they won't (know they) have more in 50 years than (we know) we have now.
There are big new discoveries all the time. Someday it will start to tail off, but the current trend is that available reserves are increasing at an accelerated rate, especially relative to demand. So if you're betting on true scarcity in fossil fuel energy sources, you will be wrong for a very, very long time.
It's better than sending the government out to bully people, police their energy choices, and burden them with higher energy bills that only rich Tesla drivers can afford.
Obviously the good choice is to have insurance. This is exactly what insurance is for, to protect you from financial loss in case of an unlikely mishap. It's the same as if your house caught on fire.
A dog bite isn't an emergency. For $40k, you take a few hours to find the dog to get it tested for rabies, and failing that, you'd shop around for someone who might charge less than $40k. If you had to pay the $40k, you'd still want to find the dog afterward and get his owner (or his owner's liability insurance provider) to pay you back.
Which do you want, the smartphone from 3 years ago, of the latest one? The old one works ok. It has Skype and you can text. It's enough. Which one will "the majority" choose if they're the same price? Do you think even 5 percent of the people will choose the one from 3 years ago?
If you don't like that, then consider your food example. Clearly there's limited value in having a quantity of food beyond a certain amount. That's why people don't go to all-you-can-eat restaurants for every meal. Food gets value from initial quality, preparation, and variety. When given the choice at the same price, would "the majority" ask for "enough" of this added value -- essentially ordinary preparation with limited variety and medium quality -- or more a lot more than enough -- artistic preparation, high quality, and ample variety? Do food companies advertise their food is "good enough"? If that will make "the majority" happy, why not?
1. Dishwashers in homes don't "sanitize". It's not an autoclave. 2. "Clean" is good enough for home food preparation and consumption. And you're fooling yourself if you think anything in your kitchen is beyond merely "clean" anyway.
No. Dying in the desert is never fair. Getting sick or hungry isn't fair. Everyone should live forever in perfect health or it's not fair. Why does President Obama let all this unfairness keep happening?
But someone else was cured, and it's not fair, so the disease should never have been cured to begin with. (Even though the patent runs out in 8-12 years and then everyone who ever gets the disease from that day until the end of time can get a cheap cure for it.)
Bladerunner. But seriously, the most likely future extrapolates from what we have now. People are healthier now than 50 years ago, we have much more material wealth, scarcity is a smaller problem for a smaller fraction of the population, the environment is cleaner, travel is more common for more people, etc. Add 50 more years, extrapolate the trends in the same general direction, and you'll get a good guess. It's not a dramatic adventure story though, so expect a lot of storytelling between now and then to entertain everyone.
I was responding to a guy who said "the majority" is happy with "enough". Clearly, "the majority" wants a smartphone, even though a feature phone is "enough", so he's 100% wrong and it's 100% obvious. That's the entire point.
If he wanted to claim "the majority" would be happy with a very high degree of luxury and wouldn't yearn for extreme luxury, that wouldn't be so easily refuted with such obvious real world examples.
Even on Star Trek they had to reserve holodeck time. There were never enough holodecks for everyone to have all the time they wanted.
Yeah, I get it. It's too much profit, so nevermind being cured of your deadly disease. Those extra 40 years you get to live are an obscenity because the guys who cured you got paid way too much.
A correction, the majority of people do not have "ever increasing unlimited desires and wants", only a tiny minority.... The majority are happy with enough...
We have machines to wash dishes in our houses, even though it's really not difficult to wash them by hand. Is "the majority" happy to do it by hand, or would "the majority" rather have a mechanical dishwasher?
Does "the majority" want a smart phone, or a feature phone?
When auto-driving cars become widely available, will "the majority" be happy with an old-style manually driven car or a bus ride, or will "the majority" wish for one of the new auto driving cars?
#4 When your government drug has a crippling side-effect, you can't sue them. No one at the government has anything to lose. #5 When you have a disease that you need treatment for, you get research and treatment based on how politically powerful (usually meaning how popular and fashionable) you and your fellow disease-sufferers are. You're a popular political heavyweight, aren't you? #6 You compete for budget resources with retirees on benefits and children who need schools. You're more powerful than retirees on benefits and more sympathetic than young children, aren't you? #7 Companies have to hurry to bring drugs to market before the patent expires. Governments can take their time. You don't want to be cured or treated soon, do you?
Why would anyone who already has a laptop want to own a TV at all? If you can answer this, you can answer why a laptop owner might want to watch content on a TV instead of a laptop.
Slashdot Mirror
From what we hear about him, he seems to be a guy who raises money to spend to promote himself and his favorite political causes. And that's about it. Maybe he has ideas, but they're not news. Only the fundraising is news.
Buy insurance, so you can get the cure and only pay the deductible.
Everybody wins. Sick people get cured. Healthy people are already winners because they're healthy. Drug companies get paid and get a really nice incentive to keep finding disease cures. The insurance company tries to negotiate costs down so they can make a profit. Insurance buyers force the insurance companies to compete for their business.
Tell a poor family to do the same. Just buy all this stuff instead of healthier food or a reliable used car. Except they rent, so they can't. They're stuck paying higher energy bills.
We (know we) have more now than (they knew) they had 50 years ago. There's no reason to expect they won't (know they) have more in 50 years than (we know) we have now.
There are big new discoveries all the time. Someday it will start to tail off, but the current trend is that available reserves are increasing at an accelerated rate, especially relative to demand. So if you're betting on true scarcity in fossil fuel energy sources, you will be wrong for a very, very long time.
is to not worry about it.
It's better than sending the government out to bully people, police their energy choices, and burden them with higher energy bills that only rich Tesla drivers can afford.
It's not distinct from "clean" in any important way. Hand washing dishes leaves them more than clean enough.
No, we have a lot more fossil fuel than we did 50 years ago. Stop telling stories and pay attention to facts.
Obviously the good choice is to have insurance. This is exactly what insurance is for, to protect you from financial loss in case of an unlikely mishap. It's the same as if your house caught on fire.
A dog bite isn't an emergency. For $40k, you take a few hours to find the dog to get it tested for rabies, and failing that, you'd shop around for someone who might charge less than $40k. If you had to pay the $40k, you'd still want to find the dog afterward and get his owner (or his owner's liability insurance provider) to pay you back.
I hope you can sleep tonight knowing companies are still out there making large profits by curing people of deadly diseases.
Which do you want, the smartphone from 3 years ago, of the latest one? The old one works ok. It has Skype and you can text. It's enough. Which one will "the majority" choose if they're the same price? Do you think even 5 percent of the people will choose the one from 3 years ago?
If you don't like that, then consider your food example. Clearly there's limited value in having a quantity of food beyond a certain amount. That's why people don't go to all-you-can-eat restaurants for every meal. Food gets value from initial quality, preparation, and variety. When given the choice at the same price, would "the majority" ask for "enough" of this added value -- essentially ordinary preparation with limited variety and medium quality -- or more a lot more than enough -- artistic preparation, high quality, and ample variety? Do food companies advertise their food is "good enough"? If that will make "the majority" happy, why not?
1. Dishwashers in homes don't "sanitize". It's not an autoclave.
2. "Clean" is good enough for home food preparation and consumption. And you're fooling yourself if you think anything in your kitchen is beyond merely "clean" anyway.
No. Dying in the desert is never fair. Getting sick or hungry isn't fair. Everyone should live forever in perfect health or it's not fair. Why does President Obama let all this unfairness keep happening?
But someone else was cured, and it's not fair, so the disease should never have been cured to begin with. (Even though the patent runs out in 8-12 years and then everyone who ever gets the disease from that day until the end of time can get a cheap cure for it.)
Bladerunner. But seriously, the most likely future extrapolates from what we have now. People are healthier now than 50 years ago, we have much more material wealth, scarcity is a smaller problem for a smaller fraction of the population, the environment is cleaner, travel is more common for more people, etc. Add 50 more years, extrapolate the trends in the same general direction, and you'll get a good guess. It's not a dramatic adventure story though, so expect a lot of storytelling between now and then to entertain everyone.
That will be sad for ideologues who dislike such arrangements, but at least they'll have something new to moralize about.
I was responding to a guy who said "the majority" is happy with "enough". Clearly, "the majority" wants a smartphone, even though a feature phone is "enough", so he's 100% wrong and it's 100% obvious. That's the entire point.
If he wanted to claim "the majority" would be happy with a very high degree of luxury and wouldn't yearn for extreme luxury, that wouldn't be so easily refuted with such obvious real world examples.
Even on Star Trek they had to reserve holodeck time. There were never enough holodecks for everyone to have all the time they wanted.
Scarcity, like death, is an enduring reality.
Yeah, I get it. It's too much profit, so nevermind being cured of your deadly disease. Those extra 40 years you get to live are an obscenity because the guys who cured you got paid way too much.
In other words, you were cured of your deadly disease and you get to live another 40 years, but someone made a profit so it wasn't worth it.
A correction, the majority of people do not have "ever increasing unlimited desires and wants", only a tiny minority. ... The majority are happy with enough...
We have machines to wash dishes in our houses, even though it's really not difficult to wash them by hand. Is "the majority" happy to do it by hand, or would "the majority" rather have a mechanical dishwasher?
Does "the majority" want a smart phone, or a feature phone?
When auto-driving cars become widely available, will "the majority" be happy with an old-style manually driven car or a bus ride, or will "the majority" wish for one of the new auto driving cars?
#4 When your government drug has a crippling side-effect, you can't sue them. No one at the government has anything to lose.
#5 When you have a disease that you need treatment for, you get research and treatment based on how politically powerful (usually meaning how popular and fashionable) you and your fellow disease-sufferers are. You're a popular political heavyweight, aren't you?
#6 You compete for budget resources with retirees on benefits and children who need schools. You're more powerful than retirees on benefits and more sympathetic than young children, aren't you?
#7 Companies have to hurry to bring drugs to market before the patent expires. Governments can take their time. You don't want to be cured or treated soon, do you?
It really sounds like the Apple fans who utterly ignored Apple TV for seven years are just now realizing it exists and trying to drum up the support.
iPhone 2G was a curiosity before the App Store. It was a slow phone/iPod hybrid with an interesting GUI.
For 7 years, the Apple TV without the App Store has been second rate. The App Store changes things.
This isn't true. Do a Bing search for "orphan drugs".
Orphan drugs:
I just did some searching and, yeah, most of what I was hoping to see is already on Roku. Now I'm thinking of buying one.
But maybe with the new Apple/Cisco deal, the Apple TV will have WebEx support. That's one thing I don't see on Roku.
Hmm. I didn't know that. Apple's entry into the market should still lead to a lot more content choices.
Why would anyone who already has a laptop want to own a TV at all? If you can answer this, you can answer why a laptop owner might want to watch content on a TV instead of a laptop.