Minimize the impact of fluctuations in revenue by minimizing government services and expenditures.
Solve the problem of bureaucracy ("the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy") and apply the fix to every state and local government.
The state should be fiscally prudent so that it is able to borrow money to make it through temporary tough times. Then, since it is fiscally prudent, it will be able to pay that debt off during good times.
Obviously no state government is going to do those things, but that's a better arrangement than what we have now (spending higher than revenues all the time.)
Other countries have done what we are proposing, in fact the rest of the developed world with the exception of China have done it.
On the contrary: other countries have passed cap and trade legislation endorsed by environmentalists. This legislation has been watered down so much that environmentalists now oppose it.
IMO universities should be teaching core principles and methods, not attempting to impart up-to-date job skills.
I used to agree, but I changed my mind. In addition to having learned core principles and methods, graduates from universities should be able to support themselves immediately after graduation. That means that they should be able to bring enough value to an organization (possibly one they form themselves) to justify their employment, to provide themselves with food, shelter and the other essentials of life. University is not Trade School: University is a superset of Trade School.
Granted, most of those "job skills" should be learned before a student enters the university: every high school graduate should be able to make a budget, provide themselves with food and shelter, tie their own shoes without help and so on. Obviously we're far from that.
On the specific topic of this story: some scientists need to know Fortran to do their jobs. It may well be good to teach some other language first, or to require a Programming Languages course in every undergraduate science program, but it's essential for undergraduates to learn the programming language(s) that dominate(s) their field.
More cute wishful thinking. See: health care. Socialized medicine provides better care for less money. Which is of course not to say that that government is always better than private enterprise, it's to say that believing that one is invariably superior to the other is just drinking a different flavor of Kool Aid.
Socialized medicine is a poor counterexample because people disagree about what constitutes "better care"[0], illustrating an important point about rule by "experts": central planners seldom know my needs as well as I do. Decentralized decision-making[1] limits the individual[2] and collective[3] impact of bad decisions, and as a bonus increases personal freedom[4] as well.
Private enterprises are just as subject as governments to the inefficiencies of separating decisions from consequences. So are families.
[0] some prefer to provide a minimal level of care to everyone; some prefer to provide a high level of care to a few; some prefer to maximize the total amount of care provided regardless of distribution; some prefer to maximize individual choice; some prefer to maximize life span; some prefer to maximize quality of life . . . In the United States, socialized medicine (Medicare and Medicaid) has failed by any of those metrics.
[1] a.k.a. a free market
[2] individual: the most my bad decisions can cost me is all I have. A government's bad decisions can lose more than we all have together.
[3] collective: when the decision-makers feel the effects directly, the quality of decision improves; this reduces the total number of bad decisions, and thus the collective impact of bad decisions.
[4] freedom: central planners need a justice system to force people to comply with their decisions. In a decentralized decision-making system people make their own decisions.
Going from Windows to Windows + MacOS grows the possible market by 6-7%. Going from Windows + MacOS to Windows + MacOS + Fedora + Debian grows by... maybe 1% at what kind of cost increase?
At a minimal cost increase, because your program is well-designed. Your program is well-designed, right?
In the context of the story, the decision to develop a cross-platform application has already been made. We're discussing how hard that is given the variety of Linux distributions. As someone else pointed out, it's easier than I thought.
In the context of the story, the issue at hand is that Google is being pressured by "the Linux community" to develop a version of their browser "for Linux". If your Debian desktop is different than my Fedora desktop, then we can't both run Chrome. Either Google targets Fedora, or Debian, or OpenBSD, or, or or...
If the code base is already cross-platform, then the idiosyncrasies of different Linux distributions are minor; making it run on Debian and Fedora is much easier than making it run on Windows and MacOS. A variety of fine cross platform toolkits and languages exist. Yes, when distributing binaries one must target not only a specific distribution, but a specific release and a specific CPU architecture as well. The easy way out is to not do just that: if you release source packages for Debian and Fedora (whose package managers include automatic dependency resolution), the eager beavers behind other distributions will do the rest of the heavy lifting for you. Or at least, they will for Google.
There is nothing inherent in the concept of government that makes it unable to achieve the same efficiency as private industry.
Some aspects of government make it less likely to achieve the same efficiency as a private organization. It is more difficult for government to fail/fall than it is for a private corporation. It is easier for decisions to be separated from consequences within the government than within a private corporation. In general people can't opt out of government as easily as they can opt out of purchasing a product from a corporation. The more power an entity has, the bigger the impact of its mistakes.
The notion that it's a good idea or even possible for one set of people to force its will on another is what leads to war, and it's one we might do well to change.
A functioning society forces people to limit the extent to which they force their will on others.
If you believe it's not possible for one set of people to force its will on another, try not paying your taxes.
The world is a dangerous place, "sheepdog" security theater isn't going to save them
I think you're misunderstanding part of the analogy. "Sheepdogs" include ordinary citizens who go around armed, who many of the "sheep" believe should be disarmed. Allowing "sheepdogs" to keep their guns is the opposite of security theater because in most places firearms must be carried concealed, and because no politician can claim credit for the presence of an armed bystander.
Terrorism is an irregular attack, against civilians, with a political goal.
Then you're better then the UN because so far they couldn't agree on a proper definition.
We're all better than the U.N. The only thing they agree on is diplomatic immunity for parking tickets. This is the organization that made Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the keynote speaker at its racism conference.:)
I can't remember any genocide that was not conducted in conjunction with some kind of war or war-like conflict
Germany started oppressing Jews in the 30s before it started invading its neighbors (though the actual death camps weren't formed until later). Many ethnic cleansings started or were primarily performed by "irregular" government-backed forces (East Timur, Darfur, and the former Yugoslavia are some of the most recent). The USSR's centrally-planned famines in the 1930s occurred after the civil war was over.
Unfortunately, there doesn't exist exist a generally accepted definition of what terrorism really is. More often that not one sides freedom fighter is the others sides terrorist.
I disagree on both counts. Terrorism is an irregular attack, against civilians, with a political goal. If it's kids making bombs and blowing up nightclubs for fun, it's not terrorism (no political goal); if it's insurgents ambushing an American convoy in Iraq it's not terrorism (not against civilians); if it's the London Blitz it's not terrorism (performed by uniformed military, not irregular). Being a terrorist or a freedom fighter is not an either-or condition; someone can be both or neither.
Genocide and other large-scale one-sided killing: in war, at least you have two sides shooting at each other, whereas in this scenario one side does all the killing and the other side does all the dying. (Usually preceded by or done in conjunction with war, but not necessarily.)
Terrorism: in war, militaries attempt to force policy goals by destroying their opponents' ability to resist. Terrorism by contrast tries to force a policy goal by targeting innocent bystanders. Whatever overlap exists is optional for war (a military doesn't have to target civilians) and accidental for terrorism (which primarily targets civilians).
Hell: real or not, as popularly described ("lake of fire; eternal torment") it's worse than war.
Borderline are small-scale but high-impact crimes against innocent people, like a serial killer who tortures 50 people. It's pretty bad for those people, and for all their friends and family, but probably not the entire country... unless it's a small country, which there are lots of.
Progressive taxation isn't just about redistribution of wealth, it is about a fair tax system that tries to match the value of the tax taken and the benefits an individual receives to the amount they pay.
It used to be. Now, though, governments at all levels are spending so much so quickly that the rich can't pay for it all (even if you taxed them at 100%), so they'll have to increase taxes on the middle class and the poor, taxing them more than they benefit from society.
No, the fishy part is that the Bush admin apparently blackmailed her into supporting the warrantless program.
No, the fishy part is that the Bush administration blocked the prosecution of one of their allies. Her comment to the foreign agent, "this conversation never happened," was fishy too.
Using illegally gathered information to effectively blackmail politicians?
According to the article (I know, I'm new here compared to you) the information wasn't gathered illegally (it was a court-approved wiretap of a foreign agent) and there was no blackmail (Rep. Harman was already on the record as supporting the Bush Administration's position).
A Constitutional convention. New amendments, passed from the ground up, not the top down, are the way to implement sweeping changes that might enable a system that is more mathematically friendly towards other parties.
I used to think that way, but you know who would make up the delegates to a new constitutional convention? Members of the political class.
A new constitutional convention would not create an elegant set of rules or lay the groundwork for utopia. Instead it would more closely resemble the stimulus bill that just got passed. (We'd be lucky if anybody read it before voting.)
Unfortunately our hopes were squelched effectively when the mainstream media made a point to shoot Ron Paul's election bid in the face before it had a chance to be recognized.
Fortunately the mainstream media is hemorrhaging customers and market share like a three legged whorehouse made of bricks. Er, something like that.
So to ensure that the party I do hate does not win I am forced to vote for the other main party.
Judging by the last five years, voting for your second least favorite party hasn't ensured anything.
Don't expect change to come from the establishment. Revolution is not an AOL keyword. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
"Hate" is too strong a word to use against a political party. They're at least as incompetent and ignorant as they are evil (and I don't even have to know which party is your least favorite to know that.)
I'm not one of those people, but if I was, I would sleep better knowing that the software was written by someone competent.
Having a robot pull the trigger is not morally worse than having a human pull the trigger. Militarization of robots won't result in more humans being killed (aside from the robot apocalypse). Using robots against our enemies has many advantages over using people against our enemies.
I've been in the same position (of hypothetical contemplation), and you're right: if a choice has to be made, I'd choose my wife over my unborn baby. It's not heartless, it's practical.
I wouldn't phrase it as "who cares" though; lots of people, especially mothers, care about the health of a fetus, and those people should favor the development of artificial womb technology, which can shield a fetus from lots bad things, like car accidents or prenatal exposure to dangerous medicine.
Yes, at first it's unlikely to be safer than the average natural womb, but there are lots of high risk pregnancies where the fetus would be better off in a machine tended 24/7 by tireless robots. Maybe the mother was in a car accident, or has a dangerous disease; this technology could help premies to survive too. Once the bugs are worked out we can move on to the feminist paradise stage where cloned babies are grown in vats and men are superfluous. (Maybe that's what Louisiana is worried about.)
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If by "the previous administration" you mean the Nixon Administration then you are correct.
Minimize the impact of fluctuations in revenue by minimizing government services and expenditures.
Solve the problem of bureaucracy ("the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy") and apply the fix to every state and local government.
The state should be fiscally prudent so that it is able to borrow money to make it through temporary tough times. Then, since it is fiscally prudent, it will be able to pay that debt off during good times.
Obviously no state government is going to do those things, but that's a better arrangement than what we have now (spending higher than revenues all the time.)
On the contrary: other countries have passed cap and trade legislation endorsed by environmentalists. This legislation has been watered down so much that environmentalists now oppose it.
I used to agree, but I changed my mind. In addition to having learned core principles and methods, graduates from universities should be able to support themselves immediately after graduation. That means that they should be able to bring enough value to an organization (possibly one they form themselves) to justify their employment, to provide themselves with food, shelter and the other essentials of life. University is not Trade School: University is a superset of Trade School.
Granted, most of those "job skills" should be learned before a student enters the university: every high school graduate should be able to make a budget, provide themselves with food and shelter, tie their own shoes without help and so on. Obviously we're far from that.
On the specific topic of this story: some scientists need to know Fortran to do their jobs. It may well be good to teach some other language first, or to require a Programming Languages course in every undergraduate science program, but it's essential for undergraduates to learn the programming language(s) that dominate(s) their field.
Socialized medicine is a poor counterexample because people disagree about what constitutes "better care"[0], illustrating an important point about rule by "experts": central planners seldom know my needs as well as I do. Decentralized decision-making[1] limits the individual[2] and collective[3] impact of bad decisions, and as a bonus increases personal freedom[4] as well.
Private enterprises are just as subject as governments to the inefficiencies of separating decisions from consequences. So are families.
[0] some prefer to provide a minimal level of care to everyone; some prefer to provide a high level of care to a few; some prefer to maximize the total amount of care provided regardless of distribution; some prefer to maximize individual choice; some prefer to maximize life span; some prefer to maximize quality of life . . . In the United States, socialized medicine (Medicare and Medicaid) has failed by any of those metrics.
[1] a.k.a. a free market
[2] individual: the most my bad decisions can cost me is all I have. A government's bad decisions can lose more than we all have together.
[3] collective: when the decision-makers feel the effects directly, the quality of decision improves; this reduces the total number of bad decisions, and thus the collective impact of bad decisions.
[4] freedom: central planners need a justice system to force people to comply with their decisions. In a decentralized decision-making system people make their own decisions.
Markets are the worst way to distribute goods, except for all the others that have been tried.
As a technocrat, rule by technocrat appeals to me, but it consistently produces worse outcomes.
At a minimal cost increase, because your program is well-designed. Your program is well-designed, right?
In the context of the story, the decision to develop a cross-platform application has already been made. We're discussing how hard that is given the variety of Linux distributions. As someone else pointed out, it's easier than I thought.
I stand corrected. Is X as binary compatible as the kernel?
If the code base is already cross-platform, then the idiosyncrasies of different Linux distributions are minor; making it run on Debian and Fedora is much easier than making it run on Windows and MacOS. A variety of fine cross platform toolkits and languages exist. Yes, when distributing binaries one must target not only a specific distribution, but a specific release and a specific CPU architecture as well. The easy way out is to not do just that: if you release source packages for Debian and Fedora (whose package managers include automatic dependency resolution), the eager beavers behind other distributions will do the rest of the heavy lifting for you. Or at least, they will for Google.
Some aspects of government make it less likely to achieve the same efficiency as a private organization. It is more difficult for government to fail/fall than it is for a private corporation. It is easier for decisions to be separated from consequences within the government than within a private corporation. In general people can't opt out of government as easily as they can opt out of purchasing a product from a corporation. The more power an entity has, the bigger the impact of its mistakes.
A functioning society forces people to limit the extent to which they force their will on others.
If you believe it's not possible for one set of people to force its will on another, try not paying your taxes.
The world is a dangerous place, "sheepdog" security theater isn't going to save them
I think you're misunderstanding part of the analogy. "Sheepdogs" include ordinary citizens who go around armed, who many of the "sheep" believe should be disarmed. Allowing "sheepdogs" to keep their guns is the opposite of security theater because in most places firearms must be carried concealed, and because no politician can claim credit for the presence of an armed bystander.
We're all better than the U.N. The only thing they agree on is diplomatic immunity for parking tickets. This is the organization that made Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the keynote speaker at its racism conference. :)
Germany started oppressing Jews in the 30s before it started invading its neighbors (though the actual death camps weren't formed until later). Many ethnic cleansings started or were primarily performed by "irregular" government-backed forces (East Timur, Darfur, and the former Yugoslavia are some of the most recent). The USSR's centrally-planned famines in the 1930s occurred after the civil war was over.
I disagree on both counts. Terrorism is an irregular attack, against civilians, with a political goal. If it's kids making bombs and blowing up nightclubs for fun, it's not terrorism (no political goal); if it's insurgents ambushing an American convoy in Iraq it's not terrorism (not against civilians); if it's the London Blitz it's not terrorism (performed by uniformed military, not irregular). Being a terrorist or a freedom fighter is not an either-or condition; someone can be both or neither.
Genocide and other large-scale one-sided killing: in war, at least you have two sides shooting at each other, whereas in this scenario one side does all the killing and the other side does all the dying. (Usually preceded by or done in conjunction with war, but not necessarily.)
Terrorism: in war, militaries attempt to force policy goals by destroying their opponents' ability to resist. Terrorism by contrast tries to force a policy goal by targeting innocent bystanders. Whatever overlap exists is optional for war (a military doesn't have to target civilians) and accidental for terrorism (which primarily targets civilians).
Hell: real or not, as popularly described ("lake of fire; eternal torment") it's worse than war.
Borderline are small-scale but high-impact crimes against innocent people, like a serial killer who tortures 50 people. It's pretty bad for those people, and for all their friends and family, but probably not the entire country... unless it's a small country, which there are lots of.
when we're dealing with the worst of all things, war.
War's bad, but some things are worse.
It used to be. Now, though, governments at all levels are spending so much so quickly that the rich can't pay for it all (even if you taxed them at 100%), so they'll have to increase taxes on the middle class and the poor, taxing them more than they benefit from society.
And call it "football" when it's almost completely played with one's hands.
They call it "football" because it's (descended from a game that was) not played on horseback.
No, the fishy part is that the Bush admin apparently blackmailed her into supporting the warrantless program.
No, the fishy part is that the Bush administration blocked the prosecution of one of their allies. Her comment to the foreign agent, "this conversation never happened," was fishy too.
Using illegally gathered information to effectively blackmail politicians?
According to the article (I know, I'm new here compared to you) the information wasn't gathered illegally (it was a court-approved wiretap of a foreign agent) and there was no blackmail (Rep. Harman was already on the record as supporting the Bush Administration's position).
A Constitutional convention. New amendments, passed from the ground up, not the top down, are the way to implement sweeping changes that might enable a system that is more mathematically friendly towards other parties.
I used to think that way, but you know who would make up the delegates to a new constitutional convention? Members of the political class.
A new constitutional convention would not create an elegant set of rules or lay the groundwork for utopia. Instead it would more closely resemble the stimulus bill that just got passed. (We'd be lucky if anybody read it before voting.)
Fortunately the mainstream media is hemorrhaging customers and market share like a three legged whorehouse made of bricks. Er, something like that.
So to ensure that the party I do hate does not win I am forced to vote for the other main party.
Judging by the last five years, voting for your second least favorite party hasn't ensured anything.
Don't expect change to come from the establishment. Revolution is not an AOL keyword. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
"Hate" is too strong a word to use against a political party. They're at least as incompetent and ignorant as they are evil (and I don't even have to know which party is your least favorite to know that.)
How can that person sleep at night?
I'm not one of those people, but if I was, I would sleep better knowing that the software was written by someone competent.
Having a robot pull the trigger is not morally worse than having a human pull the trigger. Militarization of robots won't result in more humans being killed (aside from the robot apocalypse). Using robots against our enemies has many advantages over using people against our enemies.
I've been in the same position (of hypothetical contemplation), and you're right: if a choice has to be made, I'd choose my wife over my unborn baby. It's not heartless, it's practical.
I wouldn't phrase it as "who cares" though; lots of people, especially mothers, care about the health of a fetus, and those people should favor the development of artificial womb technology, which can shield a fetus from lots bad things, like car accidents or prenatal exposure to dangerous medicine.
Yes, at first it's unlikely to be safer than the average natural womb, but there are lots of high risk pregnancies where the fetus would be better off in a machine tended 24/7 by tireless robots. Maybe the mother was in a car accident, or has a dangerous disease; this technology could help premies to survive too. Once the bugs are worked out we can move on to the feminist paradise stage where cloned babies are grown in vats and men are superfluous. (Maybe that's what Louisiana is worried about.)