We're in a cycling race where the government is riding point and the others are drafting behind us, and if someone comes alongside us and can pass us because they’ve found a better way, we don’t get out our tire pump and stick it between their spokes."
That's a great metaphor. Keep in mind that (1) riding point doesn't mean you're the winner, (2) bicycling relies heavily on doping, and (3) once they see themselves losing their funding, any remaining good intentions of "playing fair" will fall by the wayside.
I wasn't aware that so much research was funded by the private sector and I'll honestly still be a bit suspicious of the numbers
What you should really question is on what grounds you are "suspicious". You apparently had no data to base opinions on before I pointed you at those statistics, so your "suspicions" must be based on your political and/or economic preconceptions; ask yourself where those came from.
But that graphic is misleading because it suggests that funding in the US and Europe has a similar split between public and private. In fact, the US is pretty unique in that a large amount of basic research is funded through private foundations, trusts, and non-profits; even the public funding in the US is often dispensed through private entities (private universities, corporations). On the other side, a lot of the "private research funding" in other countries is little more than product development, and the government has a virtual monopoly on basic research.And in the former East Bloc, all research and development was government funded. Take it from someone who actually "flocked here".
Politicians write these rules - they are legislators.
What rules? You just confirmed that there never have been rules restricting these kinds of deals. You merely want them to write such rules in the future, on your (mistaken) belief that somehow they help the US.
If you raise the operating costs of US companies through taxation or regulation, they are going to become uncompetitive. The only option they have is to leave for places where they can be competitive again. If you prevent them from leaving, they'll simply be driven out of business by foreign competitors with lower costs. The only solution to that is for the US to lower taxes to be competitive with places like Ireland again.
No, they work because they want money, and possibly also because they enjoy their profession. So, you make research grants, you pay them to work, and with a little luck you have innovation. You don't need Pfizer to make that work.
That's a nice theory, but it doesn't work that way in practice. Countries that finance most or all their research through public funding are dismal places for researchers. People either leave or they don't really push themselves.
No, it's called "taking advantage of our society for their profit". It's like using H1-B workers to make American profits using foreign labor prices.
I came in on an H-1B visa, like pretty much all other skilled immigrants. I've always earned far above average for my job category, as is required by US law. And, no, I have never "taken advantage" of US society, and neither have my employers.
Gotta understand the decision-making process for politicians:
What "decisions" by politicians do you think were involved in this? It's always been legal in the West for people to move their businesses to other countries if they thought they got a better deal. Politicians didn't need to be bribed to enable this.
Many of them are still smart enough to know that trying to intervene would be a really bad idea. Some even realize that the proper response is to lower tax rates in the US, to match the lower tax rates in Europe.
I think this tax heaven thing will come to an end one day and they will suffer the consequences.
Actually, the opposite is true: it's the high tax welfare state that has come to an end in Ireland and that they suffered the consequences of. They have now come to their senses. The US will sooner or later have to follow suit.
Forbid Medicare and Medicaid payments to companies that choose to move headquarters for the purpose of avoiding US tax. Maybe that will cause them to change their mind.
You mean not reimburse Pfizer drugs through Medicare and Medicaid? Sounds like a good idea to me. Medicare and Medicaid should only reimburse generics anyway.
If they stop "innovating" then fine. We hire folks to innovate in their place and tell them to go pound sand.
Do you think skilled scientists and engineers work just because you snap your fingers?
What you do _not_ do is let them control negotiations and play their game. You will lose sir.
No, people with your views will lose, because your views are simply untenable.
See, this is what's called a "Race to the Bottom".
No, what it is called is "labor mobility" and "competitiveness". That means, in the end, governments do not get to set the rules and cannot force people to work or invest under conditions that they don't like. Actually, it's called "the real world", and you are simply delusional about it.
If you carefully read my comment, you will notice that it does not contain any appraisal.
Of course it does: "And killing people with guns and bombs is something you want to prevent instead of penalizing it after it happens." That's not just a statement of existing policy, it's a preference.
Thus you need prevention, and prevention only works when you have information.
Of course you need some information for prevention; that is a trivial observation. What you actually said is:
The more you observe, the more predictive power you gain. Large-scale organized activities (like organized crime or organized terrorism) usually require monetary support, thus observation of monetary transfers gives valuable information about the existence of organized structures, which in turn improves prediction about terroristic (or criminal) activity.
That is, you made a specific assertion about what information (transfer of money) and policy is needed for homicide and terrorism prevent, and it is wrong on two accounts. First, increasing the amount of information beyond a certain point overwhelms police and anti-terrorism efforts. Second, the kind of terrorism we have experienced does not require large amounts of money.
Terrorists do not care about the punishment when they blow themselves up in the end anyway
I might point out another inconsistency in your argument, namely that in your argument you talk about "organized crime or organized terrorism", and people engaging in organized crime most certainly do care about punishment, because they are in it for the money. What that shows is that you really aren't even trying to make a consistent argument about terrorism prevention; instead, you already have decided, perhaps subconsciously, that you want a STASI-like police force to make you feel safe, and then you try to come up with rationalizations for it.
Certainly, there are intricate trade-offs involved in coming up with a good policy.
Those are meaningless weasel words. You turned a specific (and incorrect) argument about the need for massive surveillance of financial transactions for the prevention of terrorism into "well, we need to make intricate tradeoffs". Bullshit.
In addition, your statement also suggests a fundamentally incorrect underlying assumption, namely that we need a "policy" at all to deal with either homicide or terrorism and suggests that that policy needs to be coercive. We could deal with preventing both homicides and terrorism through private means, for example institutions similar to credit reporting agencies, mortgage insurance, self-defense, and private security companies. In addition, people could give up financial information voluntarily to another private party of their choice, instead of being coerced to give it up to the government, in return for services.
economy: the government does not have direct control over the economy [...] Incidentally, none of this is specific to space exploration. Figuring out what you have some degree of control over should be one of the things that anyone considers when evaluating campaign promises
Which means that if a candidate promises that under his government, the economy would do X, while under his opponent's government, the economy would do Y, we should consider that candidate a liar. Yet, we keep electing such liars based on the false promises they make. Obama won in large part because of that, and Sanders is also running on such promises.
And if you fucked on the head neo-cons would quit trying to build and maintain a worldwide military hegemony, the US AND the world would be a better place. Fucking coward.
If you think that's just "neo-cons", you really haven't been paying attention. I used to vote for Democrats because they promised to reduce "US worldwide military hegemony", but those promises turned out to be empty. Obama's actual record vs. his promises is abysmal.
In fact, blind Democratic partisanship has sapped the strength of the anti-war movement. Apparently, as long as Democrats get "their man" into office, it doesn't really matter what he does.
But lets make sure we get this straight.... privatization ALWAYS increases costs, and only blind deaf idiots miss the point where the government covers those costs AND MORE through new "subsidies" for the corporations who now have control over what SHOULD BE working for the people of this country. Look at what happened to Medicare B. It is the poster child for what shit happens when "privatization" happens. Services go down, costs go up, everyone's screwed except the corporations.
Your analysis is essentially correct. What you fail to understand that that kind of "privatization" like that has little to do with free markets, it is simple government corruption. That is, people are forced to pay for Medicare part B (or the space program or whatever), and then politicians take that money and hand it to corporations and special interests they are in bed with. And the Democrats are engaging in that kind of corruption even more than Republicans. In an actual free market, you get to choose whether you spend your money at all and what to spend it on. "Privatization" in the sense used by you and Democrats doesn't result in that kind of market.
See if reality can penetrate your blind partisan bullshit.
You should take your own advice to heart, because you are a complete fool if you believe that Democrats deliver what you want them to deliver. Democrats are completely beholding to corporate interests, Wall Street, and special interests, and they want to raise taxes and spending to hand out ever more money to their corporate cronies.
I used to vote Democratic until I figured out what a sham and fraud the Democrats actually were. Now I'm an independent.
I seriously wish all the fucking asswipes who hate this country, and society in general, would do humanity a favor and go fucking live on their own out in the woods
I immigrated to this country precisely because it still has less government and more individual liberty than other nations. I would prefer it if people like you didn't turn it into the kind of depressing paternalistic dump that I came from.
What I don't get is why people like you don't do the reverse: go to Europe, where government is as socialist and progressive as you apparently like it to be. Europe has a big shortage of skilled worker and a huge demographic problem, so if you can write "Hello World", they basically roll out the red carpet for you.
First of all, the Preamble does not grant enumerated powers, so they are only a statement of intent. In addition, terms like "domestic tranquility" and "general welfare" refer to peace and welfare at the state level, not at the individual level.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say that the Preamble actually said "We want government to reduce the number of homicides". What would the complete meaning of the 2A in that context be? It wouldn't be "We want government to reduce the number of homicides, therefore we give government the power to limit gun ownership." To the contrary, a complete reading would be "We want government to reduce the number of homicides, therefore we explicitly prohibit government from infringing the right to keep and bear arms." So, even if your reading of the Preamble were correct, it would mean something entirely different from what you are suggesting.
The general meaning of the Preamble and the Constitution is really more like:
In order for a bunch of states to live peacefully together and preserve the ability of the people to live freely and pursue their own dreams and goals, we recognize that government must be limited, lest it become tyrannical and corrupt. Therefore, we institute a form of limited government, government that has only the following powers...
That is, the Constitution is effectively saying we limit the power of government because that is the best way of making people safe and prosperous.
Now, I won't pretend that this was unanimous. The discussion between people wanting a strong federal government that runs the country, and people who want individual liberty, went on back then as well. Much of the somewhat muddled phrasing is due to political compromises between these groups. The Bill of Rights is also somewhat ambiguous in that regard: the Anti-Federalists saw it as a means to ensure that at least some rights would never be taken away, while the Federalists may have seen it as a political strategy to get people to believe that rights not mentioned in the Bill of Rights were somehow less important. Overall, though, the US ended up with a Constitution that strongly leaned towards limited government and individual rights, and it has served the US very well. European style rational and paternalistic government, government rooted in enumerated individual rights, has done poorly in comparison.
Well, it doesn't seem to be a big deal with customers. I think what companies really focus on is making things fast enough so that you don't have to worry about progress bars in the first place.
When I'm on Windows, I want to see a list of what it needs to do, maybe one I can scroll through.
And that's a really good thing. But it's not a "progress bar".
We're not talking about any kind of circular meaning of "law abiding", we are talking about gun control in the US and whether there is any justification to limit the right and ability of (currently) law abiding citizens to own and carry guns. And I'm saying that until someone has actually caused harm to someone else, there is no justification for government to restrict their ownership of guns.
Perfection isn't possible
I'm not advocating "perfection". We're talking about two guiding principles of government: liberty and common welfare. I'm saying you have to make a choice between the two; you can't say that you are for both, because they are in conflict. That doesn't mean that any government based on either principle necessarily fails to completely deliver on the other. In fact, to the contrary: governments that adopt individual liberty as their guiding principle also deliver the most common welfare. Governments that adopt the common welfare as their primary principle deliver neither liberty nor common welfare, because they descend into corruption and tyranny.
it's historically one of the clearest reasons for law and governmental intervention. Gun laws, zoning laws for hazardous businesses, fences around railroads, and eminent domain used to confiscate land in flood zones and erect dams are all classic examples of government doing exactly that.
Most of the West used to operate on a much more libertarian model, with most services provided privately, property owners making decisions for their own property, and almost all decisions being made locally in "political" units smaller than my HOA. To use that history as justification for the kind of all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all federal legislation you envision is ludicrous.
In different words, there is no reason why some gun collector in Arcata, CA, should have to register his guns with the federal government just because permanently jobless black teenagers in Detroit, MI, keep killing each other with guns. The idea that a single gun policy is appropriate to both locations is ridiculous.
The "progress bar" metaphor simply doesn't work, because people do expect it to correspond to time.
What software should do it provide programmatic feedback that some work was done. That might be messages in a dialog box, or a color-changing indicator driven under program control, with the option of getting to a detailed progress log.
The reason they got rid of progress bars in many cases is because they never figured out a good way of making them even remotely accurate. Often, things would breeze through 95% of the progress bar only to get stuck in the last 5%.
Slashdot Mirror
To get "activity signatures" clandestinely, companies could simply use the microphone on pretty much every device in your house.
That should be easy enough to check, shouldn't it?
That's a great metaphor. Keep in mind that (1) riding point doesn't mean you're the winner, (2) bicycling relies heavily on doping, and (3) once they see themselves losing their funding, any remaining good intentions of "playing fair" will fall by the wayside.
Well, if you want numbers for the US, you can go to the NSF:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/...
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/...
What you should really question is on what grounds you are "suspicious". You apparently had no data to base opinions on before I pointed you at those statistics, so your "suspicions" must be based on your political and/or economic preconceptions; ask yourself where those came from.
Most research (all basic research and most applied research) in the US is publicly funded and people are flocking here to do research
In fact, the opposite is true: most of the research is privately funded in the US:
http://scienceogram.org/blog/2...
But that graphic is misleading because it suggests that funding in the US and Europe has a similar split between public and private. In fact, the US is pretty unique in that a large amount of basic research is funded through private foundations, trusts, and non-profits; even the public funding in the US is often dispensed through private entities (private universities, corporations). On the other side, a lot of the "private research funding" in other countries is little more than product development, and the government has a virtual monopoly on basic research.And in the former East Bloc, all research and development was government funded. Take it from someone who actually "flocked here".
What rules? You just confirmed that there never have been rules restricting these kinds of deals. You merely want them to write such rules in the future, on your (mistaken) belief that somehow they help the US.
If you raise the operating costs of US companies through taxation or regulation, they are going to become uncompetitive. The only option they have is to leave for places where they can be competitive again. If you prevent them from leaving, they'll simply be driven out of business by foreign competitors with lower costs. The only solution to that is for the US to lower taxes to be competitive with places like Ireland again.
That's a nice theory, but it doesn't work that way in practice. Countries that finance most or all their research through public funding are dismal places for researchers. People either leave or they don't really push themselves.
I came in on an H-1B visa, like pretty much all other skilled immigrants. I've always earned far above average for my job category, as is required by US law. And, no, I have never "taken advantage" of US society, and neither have my employers.
No, "labor mobility" means that people like me move away from countries that have too many people like you in them.
What "decisions" by politicians do you think were involved in this? It's always been legal in the West for people to move their businesses to other countries if they thought they got a better deal. Politicians didn't need to be bribed to enable this.
Many of them are still smart enough to know that trying to intervene would be a really bad idea. Some even realize that the proper response is to lower tax rates in the US, to match the lower tax rates in Europe.
Actually, the opposite is true: it's the high tax welfare state that has come to an end in Ireland and that they suffered the consequences of. They have now come to their senses. The US will sooner or later have to follow suit.
You mean not reimburse Pfizer drugs through Medicare and Medicaid? Sounds like a good idea to me. Medicare and Medicaid should only reimburse generics anyway.
Do you think skilled scientists and engineers work just because you snap your fingers?
No, people with your views will lose, because your views are simply untenable.
No, what it is called is "labor mobility" and "competitiveness". That means, in the end, governments do not get to set the rules and cannot force people to work or invest under conditions that they don't like. Actually, it's called "the real world", and you are simply delusional about it.
Of course it does: "And killing people with guns and bombs is something you want to prevent instead of penalizing it after it happens." That's not just a statement of existing policy, it's a preference.
Of course you need some information for prevention; that is a trivial observation. What you actually said is:
That is, you made a specific assertion about what information (transfer of money) and policy is needed for homicide and terrorism prevent, and it is wrong on two accounts. First, increasing the amount of information beyond a certain point overwhelms police and anti-terrorism efforts. Second, the kind of terrorism we have experienced does not require large amounts of money.
I might point out another inconsistency in your argument, namely that in your argument you talk about "organized crime or organized terrorism", and people engaging in organized crime most certainly do care about punishment, because they are in it for the money. What that shows is that you really aren't even trying to make a consistent argument about terrorism prevention; instead, you already have decided, perhaps subconsciously, that you want a STASI-like police force to make you feel safe, and then you try to come up with rationalizations for it.
Those are meaningless weasel words. You turned a specific (and incorrect) argument about the need for massive surveillance of financial transactions for the prevention of terrorism into "well, we need to make intricate tradeoffs". Bullshit.
In addition, your statement also suggests a fundamentally incorrect underlying assumption, namely that we need a "policy" at all to deal with either homicide or terrorism and suggests that that policy needs to be coercive. We could deal with preventing both homicides and terrorism through private means, for example institutions similar to credit reporting agencies, mortgage insurance, self-defense, and private security companies. In addition, people could give up financial information voluntarily to another private party of their choice, instead of being coerced to give it up to the government, in return for services.
Do you think the people who favor "green energy" care? To them, anybody who talks of space exploration is a "space nutter".
Which means that if a candidate promises that under his government, the economy would do X, while under his opponent's government, the economy would do Y, we should consider that candidate a liar. Yet, we keep electing such liars based on the false promises they make. Obama won in large part because of that, and Sanders is also running on such promises.
If you think that's just "neo-cons", you really haven't been paying attention. I used to vote for Democrats because they promised to reduce "US worldwide military hegemony", but those promises turned out to be empty. Obama's actual record vs. his promises is abysmal.
In fact, blind Democratic partisanship has sapped the strength of the anti-war movement. Apparently, as long as Democrats get "their man" into office, it doesn't really matter what he does.
Your analysis is essentially correct. What you fail to understand that that kind of "privatization" like that has little to do with free markets, it is simple government corruption. That is, people are forced to pay for Medicare part B (or the space program or whatever), and then politicians take that money and hand it to corporations and special interests they are in bed with. And the Democrats are engaging in that kind of corruption even more than Republicans. In an actual free market, you get to choose whether you spend your money at all and what to spend it on. "Privatization" in the sense used by you and Democrats doesn't result in that kind of market.
You should take your own advice to heart, because you are a complete fool if you believe that Democrats deliver what you want them to deliver. Democrats are completely beholding to corporate interests, Wall Street, and special interests, and they want to raise taxes and spending to hand out ever more money to their corporate cronies.
I used to vote Democratic until I figured out what a sham and fraud the Democrats actually were. Now I'm an independent.
I immigrated to this country precisely because it still has less government and more individual liberty than other nations. I would prefer it if people like you didn't turn it into the kind of depressing paternalistic dump that I came from.
What I don't get is why people like you don't do the reverse: go to Europe, where government is as socialist and progressive as you apparently like it to be. Europe has a big shortage of skilled worker and a huge demographic problem, so if you can write "Hello World", they basically roll out the red carpet for you.
First of all, the Preamble does not grant enumerated powers, so they are only a statement of intent. In addition, terms like "domestic tranquility" and "general welfare" refer to peace and welfare at the state level, not at the individual level.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say that the Preamble actually said "We want government to reduce the number of homicides". What would the complete meaning of the 2A in that context be? It wouldn't be "We want government to reduce the number of homicides, therefore we give government the power to limit gun ownership." To the contrary, a complete reading would be "We want government to reduce the number of homicides, therefore we explicitly prohibit government from infringing the right to keep and bear arms." So, even if your reading of the Preamble were correct, it would mean something entirely different from what you are suggesting.
The general meaning of the Preamble and the Constitution is really more like:
That is, the Constitution is effectively saying we limit the power of government because that is the best way of making people safe and prosperous.
Now, I won't pretend that this was unanimous. The discussion between people wanting a strong federal government that runs the country, and people who want individual liberty, went on back then as well. Much of the somewhat muddled phrasing is due to political compromises between these groups. The Bill of Rights is also somewhat ambiguous in that regard: the Anti-Federalists saw it as a means to ensure that at least some rights would never be taken away, while the Federalists may have seen it as a political strategy to get people to believe that rights not mentioned in the Bill of Rights were somehow less important. Overall, though, the US ended up with a Constitution that strongly leaned towards limited government and individual rights, and it has served the US very well. European style rational and paternalistic government, government rooted in enumerated individual rights, has done poorly in comparison.
And that's why it shouldn't be left to Florida legislators or government military contractors.
Well, it doesn't seem to be a big deal with customers. I think what companies really focus on is making things fast enough so that you don't have to worry about progress bars in the first place.
And that's a really good thing. But it's not a "progress bar".
We're not talking about any kind of circular meaning of "law abiding", we are talking about gun control in the US and whether there is any justification to limit the right and ability of (currently) law abiding citizens to own and carry guns. And I'm saying that until someone has actually caused harm to someone else, there is no justification for government to restrict their ownership of guns.
I'm not advocating "perfection". We're talking about two guiding principles of government: liberty and common welfare. I'm saying you have to make a choice between the two; you can't say that you are for both, because they are in conflict. That doesn't mean that any government based on either principle necessarily fails to completely deliver on the other. In fact, to the contrary: governments that adopt individual liberty as their guiding principle also deliver the most common welfare. Governments that adopt the common welfare as their primary principle deliver neither liberty nor common welfare, because they descend into corruption and tyranny.
Most of the West used to operate on a much more libertarian model, with most services provided privately, property owners making decisions for their own property, and almost all decisions being made locally in "political" units smaller than my HOA. To use that history as justification for the kind of all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all federal legislation you envision is ludicrous.
In different words, there is no reason why some gun collector in Arcata, CA, should have to register his guns with the federal government just because permanently jobless black teenagers in Detroit, MI, keep killing each other with guns. The idea that a single gun policy is appropriate to both locations is ridiculous.
Who knew?
The "progress bar" metaphor simply doesn't work, because people do expect it to correspond to time.
What software should do it provide programmatic feedback that some work was done. That might be messages in a dialog box, or a color-changing indicator driven under program control, with the option of getting to a detailed progress log.
The reason they got rid of progress bars in many cases is because they never figured out a good way of making them even remotely accurate. Often, things would breeze through 95% of the progress bar only to get stuck in the last 5%.