"However, this does not mean that the treaties can trump the Constitution itself."
In Missouri v. Holland (the case I linked to in the text you quoted), the Supreme Court ruled that a treaty granted Congress the right to pass laws it otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to pass (because of the Tenth Amendment in this case). Of course the limits of this are fuzzy because the Tenth Amendment talks about stuff that isn't explicitly stated, and it is explicitly stated that Congress has the power to make sure we stay within the bounds of a treaty.
On the flip side, we have Reid v. Covert which says things that are explicity stated in the Constitution still trump treaties. So things are maybe alright again.
Except then we have United States v. Pink, where we learn that executive agreements (like treaties, only they only have an effect as long as the current president agrees to them, and Congress isn't involved) are treated as treaties when looking at the precedent set back by Missouri v. Holland. And this is worrisome in this case because because the First Amendment only keeps Congress from limiting your speech, not the president. Whether or not he'd get impeached after trying it depends on who's in Congress at the time, and we're 0 for 2 so far for convictions in presidential impeachments.
I'm no scholar either, this is just stuff I've pieced together from Google.
"In other words - if there is something in our laws which state rules and regulations to the contrary of some treaty - then the treaty is unenforceable and we are not bound by it."
First off, concerning the part you stressed in the quote, is that saying that a treaty can't be to the contrary of our constitutions or laws, or simply that judges are bound to the various "supreme laws of the land" unless there's something in the constitutions or laws that say otherwise? I've seen interesting claims (though probably unfounded) that this passage gives Congress the ability to pass a law that is explicitly outside the authority of the Supreme Court.
Secondly, the Supreme Court case I linked to (Missouri v. Holland) sets the precedent of the Senate being able to pass treaties that at least give Congress more power than it would have otherwise. Under the Tenth Amendment, Congress did not have the ability to limit the hunting of certain endangered migratory birds (since that right wasn't expressly given to Congress in the Constitution). However, because the Senate ratified a treaty with the UK concerning these birds Congress then had the power to pass laws "nessecary and proper" to stay within the bounds of the treaty (ie. start the Fish and Wildlife Service) according to the Supreme Court.
Whether or not a treaty could give Congress the ability to ignore the First Amendment (or Second, if the UN has its way) as well as the Tenth is unclear at best and will probably require the Supreme Court to decide. Whether such a case would ever get up to the Supreme Court remains to be seen, let alone how the court might decide.
As an example, part of what prompted the Bricker Amendment to be presented to Congress was the position of the political right that joining the UN had trumped Congress' war-making ability and dragged the US into the Korean War in the process. To my knowledge there has never been a court case questioning the legality of getting involved in any UN "peace-keeping" mission, even the on-going Korean War.
Back in the 1950's there was a bill floating around Congress known as the Bricker Amendment that would have forbade Congress from ratifying a treaty (only requires 2/3 of the Senate) that would require a constituational amendment to do otherwise (which requires 2/3 of both houses and then 2/3 of the states). It didn't pass. Do a Google for more info.
This means that a group of people who we don't have any control over for six years at a time can trump the Constitution whenever 67 of them agree to. (Yet another reason to repeal the 17th, probably.)
There's been a new interest in the Bricker Amendment in recent years from the political right and other groups, but I don't think anything's been really done about it.
BEGIN subtleHint();
Perhaps if we all wrote to our Congresscritters and Senators and bitched about the lack of such a law protecting us from abuses in WIPO and WTO something might get done about it.
Just because your local cable or DSS provider doesn't carry this particular US network doesn't mean you can't get it at all. Those of you who at least live in the western hemisphere and have a relatively unobstructed horizon in the direction of the equator can get themselves a C-band dish and watch along with us.
As for the Europeans or Asians, all depends on what satellites you can see. Not that you bother checking before you complain about how stories like this affect "only" the United States...
I'm not even talking about Lomborg. I'm talking about how the "scientific establishment" eerily resembles the Roman Catholic Church of 400 years ago. Both organizations have a vested interest in maintaining their influence in international politics, both organizations claim to be attempting to save humanity from themselves, both organizations feel that they are automatically right by way of their title and both organizations seem to defend themsleves through character assassination rather than actually looking at the facts. All that remains to complete the pattern is for someone to get beatified for denouncing Lomborg (a Nobel, perhaps?).
Both the value of the research and information in this book and the reception it's getting from the Informational Powers that Be seems to differe from the reception Galileo got from the Roman Catholic Church in a matter of degrees only. Both the Church and the rabid environmentalists have had a history of speaking the "Truth" and a vested political interest in being the only source of this "Truth." And instead of disputing the information in question, the church and the environmentalists decided to take the route of character assassination. 400+ years later and herecy is still dealth with the same way.
Anyway, the more I learn about the environmentalist debacle, the more I'm reminded of Ian Douglas' (a pen name for William Keith) Heritage Trilogy. A totalitarian world government taking power to "save the world from itself and the pending environmental disaster" and the dissenting voices weened down to the US and a handful of others. The more I hear about the single-mindedness of the environmentalists (and though that know better and use scare tactics anyway deserve their share of the blame), the more frightened I get of the multi-national organizations they hold sway with.
"let's stop doing the things that people suggest may be harming the environment, because if they actually do, we'll be screwed in 50 years? And if they're not harming the environment, we did no harm anyway?"
To my knowledge nobody is debating that something needs to be done (or at least those that say nothing needs to be done are loonies). The question is a matter of degrees. This is not a black-and-white matter.
Some things that could be done are simpler to implement and have a greater impact than others. Making cars more fuel-efficient not only cuts down on carbon monoxide but also makes economic sense. On the other hand, putting spark arresters on the rear ends of cattle in order to cut down on their methane emissions is more expensive than the solution is worth (and just plain silly). But "doing everything we can to save the environment" would require us to do both.
Yeah, warning labels! They solve everything! Just look at how smoking went away once the Surgeon General ordered warnings to be placed on cigarettes!
Seriously, anybody remember how long it was until the tobacco companies got around to (ie. were forced to) putting the warnings on a white background, making them legible? And if this is how labels about a lethal product are treated, why should we expect warning labels on music to be any better?
Of course, the light on the end of the tunnel is that not even the warning labels were enough to keep the tobacco companies from getting their pants sued off.
"It's easy to get scammed on ebay. This happened to a friend of mine."
You don't need to involve eBay to be STUPID enough to give out your credit card number like that! That boy needs to be smacked upside the head with a clue-by-four and smacked HARD!
Will this friend of yours be in the running for a Darwin award in the next few years? I hope so! I'm not sure I want to be sharing the same precious atmosphere with this waste of perfectly good brain cells!
Hell, I don't think the credit card issuer should be held accountable for the charges the seller put on the card. The poor bank had no idea your friend was so dense. And he didn't begin to suspect at least a little bit when he got the invoice for the camera?
True, but mail fraud can be easier to prove if you still have the money order receipt (and/or delivery notification from certified mail if you paid for it). And Postal Inspectors worry about mail crimes exclusively and are more likely to have the resources available to do something than the FBI.
Each and every example Blizzard cites for their chasing down bnetd is an example of Blizzard trying to control what the consumer does with their software after the point-of-sale. Especially the "we want to expire the Warcraft 3 betas" excuse. They can go after pirates as much as they want, but if I have a legitimate copy they have no right to infringe upon my own rights.
"How in the world is blizzard going to handle complaints and support."
And we have the same, tired old excuse of "But Blizzard will have to support it!" Where the heck do you people get that idea? I answered Dell tech support calls a few years back and I only got support questions about non-Dell peripherals maybe once a day. And I never got a call asking to support hardware that the customer didn't buy through Dell (such as an HP printer).
Customers aren't quite as dense as you seem to think. And this is before you consider the amount of work they'd have to go through to set up a connection to a non-Battle.net server. I will truly be surprised if anybody went through the effort to play StarCraft on one of these servers under the assumption that the server was owned and operated by Blizzard.
At best this is an example of Blizzard using the excuse of a very small minority to infringe upon the rights of everybody.
"It would damage all the work they put into making network play secure and reasonably safe from identity theft."
Then why are they afraid to let it compete with the security of other server operators?
"The US just so happens to have arguably the worst health system in the West too - its the most expensive health system in the world, both per capita, & as a percentage of GDP, plus in total too, even though 40 million Americans have no coverage what-so-ever."
The US also arguably has the most advanced medical and biotechnology in the world. The US medical industry has a world-wide reputation similar to our aerospace and computer industries. The brightest foreign medical students consistantly study in the US (even if they don't intend to practice in the US) while the main reason American medical students study abroad is that they can't cut it in American universities.
Don't kid yourself: if the only issue here were the cost to the end-user the problem would have been solved by now.
"That's the trouble with basing policy on ideaology, one loses flexibility."
This is the United States. We have at least 50 unique approaches to the health care issue (ie. deciding the government's role). If anything, what you're asking for is limited to one ideology by asking the federal government to get involved.
"You see, compared with other sectors, demand for healthcare services are relative static in reaction to price - people do not get less sick just because prices go up."
1.) Getting sick != seeing a doctor.
2.) Even if it did, foreigners will stop coming to the US for medical attention if the price that comes with the reputation seems too high.
Supply and demand is still at work, it's just more limited.
"Consequently in a market based healthcare system like the US, relative speaking healthcare providers can charge what they want & mostly get away with it."
This is what the insurance companies are arguing and they have price tags to prove their point. On the other side of the argument are the providers who claim that they can't make ends meet with what little money the insurance companies are willing to pay and they have over-worked, under-paid hospital staff to prove their point. Who's (more) right it's too early to tell.
" A couple of Years ago some doctors decided to opt out of the system & charge what they want, well the govt just said we won't pay them, & if patients wanted to see them they'd have to pay them themselves."
1.) Why pay for an independent doctor when you've literally already paid for a state-funded doctor reguardless? This is not a fair test unless the patients who saw the independent doctors got a tax deduction.
2.) You assume that the patients who didn't see the independent Canadian doctors went to see the state-funded Canadian doctors instead. It's quite common for those Canadians that can do it to get their health care in the US.
"Consequently in the rest of 'the West' healthcare costs are only about 8% of GDP, or something, while in the US its nearly about 15%"
You know, we also pay a larger percentage of our GDP (and per capita) on space exploration as well. Yes, we're spending more than anybody else. Yes, what we pay for may be over-priced. Yes, others can do some of the more basic things for less money. But I don't see anybody else operating a shuttle fleet.
"One standard for comparing health systems is life expectancies. M'nn "it appears all those countries with 'socialist health systems' have better life expectancy rates than the US" [mrdowling.com]. Ecen Cuba's almost matches the US's."
The availabilty and quality of health care aren't the top two factors in longevity. I'm not even sure they're on the top ten. The trick to longevity isn't so much getting treatment when ill as much as not getting ill to begin with. The two big hits against our longevity compared to the rest of the industrialized world are:
Culture - The average American worker works more hours per year than anybody else in the industrialied world. Even Japan. More work means more stress means weakened immune system.
Climate - While this is hard to quantify and it does not have as much an affect on our longevity as it did a few thousand (or even hundred) years ago, it still has an undeniable effect. Large portions of the US tend to have harsher geography and weather than most of Europe (as well as more people living in those extremes). Tropical cyclones on the east coast, tornadoes and floods in the mid-west, desert lying between that and the blizzards in the Rockies, which brings us to the earthquakes on the west coast (and that's before we talk about volcanic activity in Alaska and Hawaii). There's may also be the issue of pollution.
And while I'm on the subject: the US has a far larger sample population than the other industrialized countries (or even two or three of them combined), so the mathematical basis for that comparison is on shakey ground.
"which means US highways are bound to be more efficient if they were all privacised & there were tollbooths on every entry ramp."
Privatized? Not technically. Centrallized? Hell no!
Anybody that's ever felt a thunk while driving over a state or county line on a federal highway knows that the management of federal highways is far from centrallized. A "federal" highway only means that the federal government is spending money on it, not that all the money being spent on it is from the federal government.
There is competition between them as well. The state (county, city, whatever) that has the better highways gets more traffic through it (both civil and commercial), which means more gasoline tax, more tolls, more traffic tickets, more trucks going through weigh stations, more sales tax on restaraunts, hotels, billboards, etc...
"Afterall increasing choice always makes things better - look at the 60 TV channels, that's much better than just having BBC 1, 2 & 3 & a couple of token private channels like they have in the UK."
Ignoring the quality commercial stuff like A&E and Discovery Channel (both of who the BBC often teams up with in productions) and the private non-profit stuff on C-SPAN, I've still got two PBS stations. And while they are partially funded by the government, they also rely on corporate and private donations and so in a sense compete with each other. They're close enough to the BBC in concept to be carrying some of the same programming. While I only get two to their three, I also get quite a few channels in general on broadcast TV alone.
Both our health care dillema and the country in general aren't as cut-and-dry as most people (Americans included) seem to think. At least we don't have compulsory voting forcing control of the government into the hands of the ignorant (and apathetic)...
There seem to be quite a few peole who've had too much money withdrawn by PayPal. IANAL, but it sounds like if it can be proven that PayPal knowingly let a problem like this continue after receiving the initial complaint, they can get charged with bank fraud (up to 30 years in jail and/or $1 million). PayPal has plenty of incentive to let these problems happen (since the money never gets transferred to somebody else) and there's no reason for this to be treated much differently from a forged check.
If an auction seller screws you over one way or the other, eBay's complaint process is rather lame and PayPal literally can't do a damn thing for you (speaking from experience here).
However, if you spare a little more money to mail them a money order instead, what they did magically turns into something called "mail fraud." Federal agents wearing dark suits and carrying badges begin looking for this person to throw them into pound-you-up-the-ass penetentiary for up to five years (multiplied by however many other people he's ripped off through the mail).
Of course, if this is the first and last time they defrauded someone through the mail, there's a chance the Postal Inspectors might not have the time to really give it much attention. But just because they're not activley seeking the person doesn't mean there's not a felony warrant issued for the culprit, which will make employment background checks, driver's license renewals and plane ticket purchases a whole lot more interesting. And that's before we wonder how often he gets pulled over for traffic violations...
I ask you: If you don't wholly trust who you're buying from, where can you get more entertainment for $1.24? Certainly not PayPal!
Personally I always thought the French connection was the most obvious. H-B bought the rights to air English episodes in the US from the Belgian copyright owner Peyo, and we all know Belgium is more French than Quebec.:)
The last time when what I watched made an iota of difference in what a network makes on advertising was the last (and first) time I watched a TV that had a Nielson box on it, about ten years ago.
And even if I did have a Nielson box in my home it's only on one television. And if I'm watching television in a different room (say, on my computer) I still don't count.
As anybody with a dish capable of receiving in the C-band can tell you, we're all getting HBO for free. The trick is just getting around the macrovision...
Speaking of which, would it still be illegal if I uploaded an episode of The Sopranos still encrypted?
It's striking that this news comes out right around the same time that the Big N starts putting pressure on Zophar's Domain.
It seems obvious that if you put GameCube hardware into a PC it will become that much easier to write a GameCube emulator. Why try to translate between console-native code and Direc3D or OpenGL when you can just feed in the machine-native code directly? The only speed bump I see after this is the question of those proprietary disks.
Antimatter propulsion would make even nuclear rockets seem like not much more than a rubber-band airplane. But until we can mass-produce the stuff fission still seems to be the most cost-effective thing we have.
It's striking that this news hits about the same time that the Big N starts putting legal pressure on Zophar's Domain. It seems obvious to me that putting GameCube hardware into a PC will make GameCube emulation that much easier to accomplish. The only thing that might be in the way now is just how proprietary the disc format is.
Slashdot Mirror
"However, this does not mean that the treaties can trump the Constitution itself."
In Missouri v. Holland (the case I linked to in the text you quoted), the Supreme Court ruled that a treaty granted Congress the right to pass laws it otherwise wouldn't have been allowed to pass (because of the Tenth Amendment in this case). Of course the limits of this are fuzzy because the Tenth Amendment talks about stuff that isn't explicitly stated, and it is explicitly stated that Congress has the power to make sure we stay within the bounds of a treaty.
On the flip side, we have Reid v. Covert which says things that are explicity stated in the Constitution still trump treaties. So things are maybe alright again.
Except then we have United States v. Pink, where we learn that executive agreements (like treaties, only they only have an effect as long as the current president agrees to them, and Congress isn't involved) are treated as treaties when looking at the precedent set back by Missouri v. Holland. And this is worrisome in this case because because the First Amendment only keeps Congress from limiting your speech, not the president. Whether or not he'd get impeached after trying it depends on who's in Congress at the time, and we're 0 for 2 so far for convictions in presidential impeachments.
I'm no scholar either, this is just stuff I've pieced together from Google.
"In other words - if there is something in our laws which state rules and regulations to the contrary of some treaty - then the treaty is unenforceable and we are not bound by it."
First off, concerning the part you stressed in the quote, is that saying that a treaty can't be to the contrary of our constitutions or laws, or simply that judges are bound to the various "supreme laws of the land" unless there's something in the constitutions or laws that say otherwise? I've seen interesting claims (though probably unfounded) that this passage gives Congress the ability to pass a law that is explicitly outside the authority of the Supreme Court.
Secondly, the Supreme Court case I linked to (Missouri v. Holland) sets the precedent of the Senate being able to pass treaties that at least give Congress more power than it would have otherwise. Under the Tenth Amendment, Congress did not have the ability to limit the hunting of certain endangered migratory birds (since that right wasn't expressly given to Congress in the Constitution). However, because the Senate ratified a treaty with the UK concerning these birds Congress then had the power to pass laws "nessecary and proper" to stay within the bounds of the treaty (ie. start the Fish and Wildlife Service) according to the Supreme Court.
Whether or not a treaty could give Congress the ability to ignore the First Amendment (or Second, if the UN has its way) as well as the Tenth is unclear at best and will probably require the Supreme Court to decide. Whether such a case would ever get up to the Supreme Court remains to be seen, let alone how the court might decide.
As an example, part of what prompted the Bricker Amendment to be presented to Congress was the position of the political right that joining the UN had trumped Congress' war-making ability and dragged the US into the Korean War in the process. To my knowledge there has never been a court case questioning the legality of getting involved in any UN "peace-keeping" mission, even the on-going Korean War.
"Since when does a law outside the United States apply to us? Especially when our Constitution overrules it."
Take a REAL close look at Article VI. Then look up the Supreme Court decision Missouri v. Holland and look at the ramifications there.
The Constitution doesn't overrule international treaties, it's the other way around.
Here's an interesting little snipped from Article VI of the US Constitution that most of you probably didn't know about (emphasis mine):
This Constitution... and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land.
The Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that international treaties hold the same weight as the Constitution. This means that if a WIPO treaty trumps the First Amendment, you're up a creek.
Back in the 1950's there was a bill floating around Congress known as the Bricker Amendment that would have forbade Congress from ratifying a treaty (only requires 2/3 of the Senate) that would require a constituational amendment to do otherwise (which requires 2/3 of both houses and then 2/3 of the states). It didn't pass. Do a Google for more info.
This means that a group of people who we don't have any control over for six years at a time can trump the Constitution whenever 67 of them agree to. (Yet another reason to repeal the 17th, probably.)
There's been a new interest in the Bricker Amendment in recent years from the political right and other groups, but I don't think anything's been really done about it.
BEGIN subtleHint();
Perhaps if we all wrote to our Congresscritters and Senators and bitched about the lack of such a law protecting us from abuses in WIPO and WTO something might get done about it.
END subtleHint();
Just because your local cable or DSS provider doesn't carry this particular US network doesn't mean you can't get it at all. Those of you who at least live in the western hemisphere and have a relatively unobstructed horizon in the direction of the equator can get themselves a C-band dish and watch along with us.
As for the Europeans or Asians, all depends on what satellites you can see. Not that you bother checking before you complain about how stories like this affect "only" the United States...
I'm not even talking about Lomborg. I'm talking about how the "scientific establishment" eerily resembles the Roman Catholic Church of 400 years ago. Both organizations have a vested interest in maintaining their influence in international politics, both organizations claim to be attempting to save humanity from themselves, both organizations feel that they are automatically right by way of their title and both organizations seem to defend themsleves through character assassination rather than actually looking at the facts. All that remains to complete the pattern is for someone to get beatified for denouncing Lomborg (a Nobel, perhaps?).
Have I spelled it out clearly enough for you?
Everybody knows that the Road Runner cartoons are based almost entirely on quantum physics.
Both the value of the research and information in this book and the reception it's getting from the Informational Powers that Be seems to differe from the reception Galileo got from the Roman Catholic Church in a matter of degrees only. Both the Church and the rabid environmentalists have had a history of speaking the "Truth" and a vested political interest in being the only source of this "Truth." And instead of disputing the information in question, the church and the environmentalists decided to take the route of character assassination. 400+ years later and herecy is still dealth with the same way.
Anyway, the more I learn about the environmentalist debacle, the more I'm reminded of Ian Douglas' (a pen name for William Keith) Heritage Trilogy. A totalitarian world government taking power to "save the world from itself and the pending environmental disaster" and the dissenting voices weened down to the US and a handful of others. The more I hear about the single-mindedness of the environmentalists (and though that know better and use scare tactics anyway deserve their share of the blame), the more frightened I get of the multi-national organizations they hold sway with.
"let's stop doing the things that people suggest may be harming the environment, because if they actually do, we'll be screwed in 50 years? And if they're not harming the environment, we did no harm anyway?"
To my knowledge nobody is debating that something needs to be done (or at least those that say nothing needs to be done are loonies). The question is a matter of degrees. This is not a black-and-white matter.
Some things that could be done are simpler to implement and have a greater impact than others. Making cars more fuel-efficient not only cuts down on carbon monoxide but also makes economic sense. On the other hand, putting spark arresters on the rear ends of cattle in order to cut down on their methane emissions is more expensive than the solution is worth (and just plain silly). But "doing everything we can to save the environment" would require us to do both.
Yeah, warning labels! They solve everything! Just look at how smoking went away once the Surgeon General ordered warnings to be placed on cigarettes!
Seriously, anybody remember how long it was until the tobacco companies got around to (ie. were forced to) putting the warnings on a white background, making them legible? And if this is how labels about a lethal product are treated, why should we expect warning labels on music to be any better?
Of course, the light on the end of the tunnel is that not even the warning labels were enough to keep the tobacco companies from getting their pants sued off.
"It's easy to get scammed on ebay. This happened to a friend of mine."
You don't need to involve eBay to be STUPID enough to give out your credit card number like that! That boy needs to be smacked upside the head with a clue-by-four and smacked HARD!
Will this friend of yours be in the running for a Darwin award in the next few years? I hope so! I'm not sure I want to be sharing the same precious atmosphere with this waste of perfectly good brain cells!
Hell, I don't think the credit card issuer should be held accountable for the charges the seller put on the card. The poor bank had no idea your friend was so dense. And he didn't begin to suspect at least a little bit when he got the invoice for the camera?
I sincerely hope that you were telling a joke...
True, but mail fraud can be easier to prove if you still have the money order receipt (and/or delivery notification from certified mail if you paid for it). And Postal Inspectors worry about mail crimes exclusively and are more likely to have the resources available to do something than the FBI.
Each and every example Blizzard cites for their chasing down bnetd is an example of Blizzard trying to control what the consumer does with their software after the point-of-sale. Especially the "we want to expire the Warcraft 3 betas" excuse. They can go after pirates as much as they want, but if I have a legitimate copy they have no right to infringe upon my own rights.
"How in the world is blizzard going to handle complaints and support."
And we have the same, tired old excuse of "But Blizzard will have to support it!" Where the heck do you people get that idea? I answered Dell tech support calls a few years back and I only got support questions about non-Dell peripherals maybe once a day. And I never got a call asking to support hardware that the customer didn't buy through Dell (such as an HP printer).
Customers aren't quite as dense as you seem to think. And this is before you consider the amount of work they'd have to go through to set up a connection to a non-Battle.net server. I will truly be surprised if anybody went through the effort to play StarCraft on one of these servers under the assumption that the server was owned and operated by Blizzard.
At best this is an example of Blizzard using the excuse of a very small minority to infringe upon the rights of everybody.
"It would damage all the work they put into making network play secure and reasonably safe from identity theft."
Then why are they afraid to let it compete with the security of other server operators?
"The US just so happens to have arguably the worst health system in the West too - its the most expensive health system in the world, both per capita, & as a percentage of GDP, plus in total too, even though 40 million Americans have no coverage what-so-ever."
The US also arguably has the most advanced medical and biotechnology in the world. The US medical industry has a world-wide reputation similar to our aerospace and computer industries. The brightest foreign medical students consistantly study in the US (even if they don't intend to practice in the US) while the main reason American medical students study abroad is that they can't cut it in American universities.
Don't kid yourself: if the only issue here were the cost to the end-user the problem would have been solved by now.
"That's the trouble with basing policy on ideaology, one loses flexibility."
This is the United States. We have at least 50 unique approaches to the health care issue (ie. deciding the government's role). If anything, what you're asking for is limited to one ideology by asking the federal government to get involved.
"You see, compared with other sectors, demand for healthcare services are relative static in reaction to price - people do not get less sick just because prices go up."
1.) Getting sick != seeing a doctor.
2.) Even if it did, foreigners will stop coming to the US for medical attention if the price that comes with the reputation seems too high.
Supply and demand is still at work, it's just more limited.
"Consequently in a market based healthcare system like the US, relative speaking healthcare providers can charge what they want & mostly get away with it."
This is what the insurance companies are arguing and they have price tags to prove their point. On the other side of the argument are the providers who claim that they can't make ends meet with what little money the insurance companies are willing to pay and they have over-worked, under-paid hospital staff to prove their point. Who's (more) right it's too early to tell.
" A couple of Years ago some doctors decided to opt out of the system & charge what they want, well the govt just said we won't pay them, & if patients wanted to see them they'd have to pay them themselves."
1.) Why pay for an independent doctor when you've literally already paid for a state-funded doctor reguardless? This is not a fair test unless the patients who saw the independent doctors got a tax deduction.
2.) You assume that the patients who didn't see the independent Canadian doctors went to see the state-funded Canadian doctors instead. It's quite common for those Canadians that can do it to get their health care in the US.
"Consequently in the rest of 'the West' healthcare costs are only about 8% of GDP, or something, while in the US its nearly about 15%"
You know, we also pay a larger percentage of our GDP (and per capita) on space exploration as well. Yes, we're spending more than anybody else. Yes, what we pay for may be over-priced. Yes, others can do some of the more basic things for less money. But I don't see anybody else operating a shuttle fleet.
"One standard for comparing health systems is life expectancies. M'nn "it appears all those countries with 'socialist health systems' have better life expectancy rates than the US" [mrdowling.com]. Ecen Cuba's almost matches the US's."
The availabilty and quality of health care aren't the top two factors in longevity. I'm not even sure they're on the top ten. The trick to longevity isn't so much getting treatment when ill as much as not getting ill to begin with. The two big hits against our longevity compared to the rest of the industrialized world are:
Culture - The average American worker works more hours per year than anybody else in the industrialied world. Even Japan. More work means more stress means weakened immune system.
Climate - While this is hard to quantify and it does not have as much an affect on our longevity as it did a few thousand (or even hundred) years ago, it still has an undeniable effect. Large portions of the US tend to have harsher geography and weather than most of Europe (as well as more people living in those extremes). Tropical cyclones on the east coast, tornadoes and floods in the mid-west, desert lying between that and the blizzards in the Rockies, which brings us to the earthquakes on the west coast (and that's before we talk about volcanic activity in Alaska and Hawaii). There's may also be the issue of pollution.
And while I'm on the subject: the US has a far larger sample population than the other industrialized countries (or even two or three of them combined), so the mathematical basis for that comparison is on shakey ground.
"which means US highways are bound to be more efficient if they were all privacised & there were tollbooths on every entry ramp."
Privatized? Not technically. Centrallized? Hell no!
Anybody that's ever felt a thunk while driving over a state or county line on a federal highway knows that the management of federal highways is far from centrallized. A "federal" highway only means that the federal government is spending money on it, not that all the money being spent on it is from the federal government.
There is competition between them as well. The state (county, city, whatever) that has the better highways gets more traffic through it (both civil and commercial), which means more gasoline tax, more tolls, more traffic tickets, more trucks going through weigh stations, more sales tax on restaraunts, hotels, billboards, etc...
"Afterall increasing choice always makes things better - look at the 60 TV channels, that's much better than just having BBC 1, 2 & 3 & a couple of token private channels like they have in the UK."
Ignoring the quality commercial stuff like A&E and Discovery Channel (both of who the BBC often teams up with in productions) and the private non-profit stuff on C-SPAN, I've still got two PBS stations. And while they are partially funded by the government, they also rely on corporate and private donations and so in a sense compete with each other. They're close enough to the BBC in concept to be carrying some of the same programming. While I only get two to their three, I also get quite a few channels in general on broadcast TV alone.
Both our health care dillema and the country in general aren't as cut-and-dry as most people (Americans included) seem to think. At least we don't have compulsory voting forcing control of the government into the hands of the ignorant (and apathetic)...
So did this all come about after he got fined for not putting the French text of the sign higher than the English, complete with a bigger font?
(And while I'm intending this post as a joke, there really is a law up there stating that you have to do this)
Could Mono Kill Gnome?
Gnome should be safe so long as they don't go around kissing too many people. Of course, who has ever heard of somebody dying from Mono, anyway?
*duck*
"Why is it then that my insurance gets to jack my rates two hundred bucks a year when I get one lousy ticket?"
Because they're paying for the insurance on just the car. You're paying for the insurance on you as a driver as well as your car.
There seem to be quite a few peole who've had too much money withdrawn by PayPal. IANAL, but it sounds like if it can be proven that PayPal knowingly let a problem like this continue after receiving the initial complaint, they can get charged with bank fraud (up to 30 years in jail and/or $1 million). PayPal has plenty of incentive to let these problems happen (since the money never gets transferred to somebody else) and there's no reason for this to be treated much differently from a forged check.
If an auction seller screws you over one way or the other, eBay's complaint process is rather lame and PayPal literally can't do a damn thing for you (speaking from experience here).
However, if you spare a little more money to mail them a money order instead, what they did magically turns into something called "mail fraud." Federal agents wearing dark suits and carrying badges begin looking for this person to throw them into pound-you-up-the-ass penetentiary for up to five years (multiplied by however many other people he's ripped off through the mail).
Of course, if this is the first and last time they defrauded someone through the mail, there's a chance the Postal Inspectors might not have the time to really give it much attention. But just because they're not activley seeking the person doesn't mean there's not a felony warrant issued for the culprit, which will make employment background checks, driver's license renewals and plane ticket purchases a whole lot more interesting. And that's before we wonder how often he gets pulled over for traffic violations...
I ask you: If you don't wholly trust who you're buying from, where can you get more entertainment for $1.24? Certainly not PayPal!
Personally I always thought the French connection was the most obvious. H-B bought the rights to air English episodes in the US from the Belgian copyright owner Peyo, and we all know Belgium is more French than Quebec. :)
The last time when what I watched made an iota of difference in what a network makes on advertising was the last (and first) time I watched a TV that had a Nielson box on it, about ten years ago.
And even if I did have a Nielson box in my home it's only on one television. And if I'm watching television in a different room (say, on my computer) I still don't count.
As anybody with a dish capable of receiving in the C-band can tell you, we're all getting HBO for free. The trick is just getting around the macrovision...
Speaking of which, would it still be illegal if I uploaded an episode of The Sopranos still encrypted?
It's striking that this news comes out right around the same time that the Big N starts putting pressure on Zophar's Domain.
It seems obvious that if you put GameCube hardware into a PC it will become that much easier to write a GameCube emulator. Why try to translate between console-native code and Direc3D or OpenGL when you can just feed in the machine-native code directly? The only speed bump I see after this is the question of those proprietary disks.
Antimatter propulsion would make even nuclear rockets seem like not much more than a rubber-band airplane. But until we can mass-produce the stuff fission still seems to be the most cost-effective thing we have.
It's striking that this news hits about the same time that the Big N starts putting legal pressure on Zophar's Domain. It seems obvious to me that putting GameCube hardware into a PC will make GameCube emulation that much easier to accomplish. The only thing that might be in the way now is just how proprietary the disc format is.