The rates for car insurance in Massachusetts are the highest in the nation. Massachusetts did not regulate insurance to bring rates down for their citizens; they regulated to compensate for the large accident rate by fixing the rates across the board so that a small number of people didn't pay a large portion of insurance premiums. They are largely based on garaging location of the vehicle, not, say, miles driven. Companies like Geico are able to offer lower prices because they can set very specific rates to a person based on a large amount of statistical information. Massachusetts auto insurance companies cannot do this; they must set their rates based on the state criteria, which is not as flexible and prone to the whim of legislators.
I also didn't say anything was wrong with it: Companies won't lose money, they're not philanthropists, that's my point. Companies are agile while lawmaking bodies are not. Companies have self-preservation in mind; they will refuse business that doesn't make sense to them.
Businesses will refuse to do business in a state if it doesn't make economic sense to do so. Massachusetts is the only state that sets car insurance rates via the state legislature instead of the free market. The result? most of the car insurers that you see on TV will not insure you if you live in Massachusetts. (Geico, Allstate, State Farm, Progressive... anywhere that will give you a free quote online, basically).
Cable companies are much richer than Vonage, and major ones own their own Fiber Optic lines/aren't at all dependant on Verizon. Verizon is picking a fight with Vonage because they're the smallest and easiest to bully.
Why not create a tag called "grid" that acts like a table, but is designed for page layout?
Because the idea behind the semantic web is: Markup should tell us ABOUT the data, not how to show the data. That's what CSS is for.
What the hope was behind moving to standards is that you could separate layout and design so that multiple devices can see the same markup and interpret the visualization of the markup differently based on CSS. What would 'GRID' mean to a lynx browser, or a PDA? What about Google and other bots? What about screenreaders? which order should they read the grid in?
I agree. Extend the idea to video chats, as well. Chat rooms should also be able to consolidate friends into games as 'parties'. Halo 2 had this, and the platform should support it. With all the great games out for the 360, its almost impossible to join a ranked game with a friend.
Microsoft has done some cool things in the space over the last two years. USB peripherals that are PC interchangeable, unified online environment for consistent gameplay experiences.
But there's this 10% that's missing. I can buy south park episodes, some in HD, but I can't do anything but watch it on my 360. I want to put those that I don't have time to watch right away on my ipod so I can watch the episodes on the way to work. I can't believe that I can't BROWSE THE WEB from my 360. that seems like a no-brainer.
the Xbox 360 has a video delivery platform under the 'Xbox Live' service. They allow you to choose which resolution you wish to buy, and HD is a little more. However, getting the video off of the xbox isn't possible, ( to , say, put on your ipod video), so looks like there's no market innovator that allows it all.
Personally, I wish I could buy the rights to enjoy a piece of media universally. Right now I usually buy DVDs, rip them to my ipod, or watch the disk. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I get HD-DVDs
If the state government got rid of the monopolies on cable and phone lines, we'd see some movement.
How do you suppose they do that?
What we need are more companies running their own cable lines. That would give us more competition. In Boston several neighborhoods are already served by two cable companies. The state will probably just fuck it up more. What we need are more RCNs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCN_(company) (except without going bankrupt due to poor aquisitions in the.com era)
However, I suspect you aren't mentally ill but are simply using the fact that nobody is perfect to justify your being as destructive as you like
And what the fuck do you call your 'holier-than-thou' rant about lightbulbs ? that's pretty destructive, not to mention all your comments are assumptions. Maybe he's a CFL-using, subway riding citizen like myself.
His point was probably more about taking personal responsibility for actions, like 'you should probably focus more on your own personal consumption instead of screaming at the heavens about a test flight that probably had to happen anyways'. And if that was his gist, then its a good point. We get way more done when we focus on things we can actually change. (instead of, say, screaming at jet owners, or screaming at those who aren't screaming at jet owners).
I am continuously surprised that on a forum like slashdot ( which is frequented by enginereers, techies, scientists, etc) someone would, when confronted with a problem, throw up his hands in despair and cry instead of thinking of a solution. Or, at least trust the brains of the world can and would fix the problem.
Our waste will not kill us because we are problem solving creatures.
It isn't their work, though. Just like if you produce work at a company and it is owned by the employer, so too is work produced for a university study the property of the professor and university. Professors for years have been using the work of students as tools to show new students good, effective writing or research.
If the paper database does not disclose the substance except in the event to flag another newer paper as plagarism, then I don't see the harm. In effect if you are saying that the students Intellectual Property rights allow him to disclose exactly who 'sees' the paper including the prying eyes of a server somewhere, then I would argue you are incorrect. The student cannot be guarunteed that the paper won't be read aloud to other students, faculty... it may be email forwarded to other staff members. The paper essentially becomes the property of the professor; it was procured for that professor's class to determine the aptitude of the student with regards to the material learned.
In effect, the database actually PROTECTS the IP of the students and professors who had original ideas in the first place that were stolen.
If you want to read about the real old school roulette cheaters, see the Eudaemonic Pie. Its a book by thomas bass about some real old school 70s hackers who built computers into their shoes to cheat.
I'm more afraid of the politicians than I am of the terrorists Your attitude would change if you were flying 500 mph towards the world trade center and certain death.
terrorism is just one of the risks we face Also, you seem to equate terrorism, a crime, with natural 'risks we face'. Mugging is a 'risk we face', yet we absolutely fight against it. Just because something is common and confronts humans doesn't mean we should be complacent about it happening. Cancer, traffic accidents and muggings are all things that fit that criteria, and no one complains when we enact legislation to fund cancer research or harsher punishment for drunk drivers or muggers.
When you rape Nanking, you are not affored the luxury of a 'conditional' surrender.
The United States was attacked simply because we stopped selling oil to the Japanese. They dragged our nation into a protracted struggle and murdered thousands of Americans. They, through their use of force, conquered many nations, forced labor and life from many citizens, and forced thousands of decent human beings to kill them in order to stop them.
When you initiate the use of force you surrender your right to 'fair' or 'balanced'. This was not an example of "death penatly for a traffic ticket", this was "death penalty for murder". Any suffering the Japanese experienced was due to their government, and the failure of its citizens to stop its government. Righteous men and women flee or fight their own nation when it is bent on world domination through force.
The Atomic Bomb was nothing. It was simply One Action that killed civilians instead of the millions of bombs dropped on Japan. If the firebombing of Tokyo was acceptable, then the Atomic Bomb is just as moral. Civilians being killed was war back then, before laser guided munitions. Killing civilians who went to factories to build bombs to drop on Americans MADE SENSE. So did killing them so that their families would become overcome with grief and lose morale. Don't agree with the way the war was waged? Such is your luxury, having not had to fight it. We didn't get much choice about the timing to start the war, but we sure took advantage of the ability to end it.
However, that's going to require OSS to start thinking about polish - making applications that Grandma can use. It's not impossible, but a lot of OSS projects need to concentrate on making applications that work well and look decent on Windows - even if we don't particularly care for the platform or the company that makes it.
Cheers to that. The Grandma test is pretty much what keeps people out of linux. I love firefox, but its not because its better than any other open source software package; its because on Windows firefox installs like any other program. It has an executable installer that runs in GUI space on windows. I don't have to go into cygwin or do some crazy config file editing to get it to work. I don't have to compile it. It Just Works.
When mainstream people started using computers is when following the commands written like type 'run a:\install.exe' became obsolete. there are great many OSS applications that require inside knowledge... most of the ones ported to windows have a shell that gui-fies that knowledge (like what config files to edit, etc). Once we got users to understand an easy-to-learn interface like WIMP (windows icons menus pointers), those OSes took off. Linux has a WIMP interface, but it hasn't taken off because you still need to go under the hood for a ton of things.
I hate to break it to you, but you're using your brain to type a slashdot post. What does it matter if you use a keyboard or an EEG (or whatever the acronym is?).
Whenever someone writes 'the truth is' without providing evidence to back up his claim or theory, I have a hard time believing it.
The Emergency Broadcast System which interrupts television and radio is much older than the Bush Administration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Broadcast_S ystem From the article, it sounds like this is an expansion of the EBS (now EAS) to give focused, targeted information to appropriate parties. Your claim that it is a propaganda tool to scare citizens and/or influence elections fails to take into the account the age of the system.
If your point was so, then there must have been an increase in the number of activations of the Federal EAS (the state, local and feds all have access to issue EAS alerts. So a storm in Massachusetts can be alerted to Massachusetts area residents only) during this administration. I seriously doubt you'd find that, though. In fact, on 9/11, the EAS wasn't even used. (Mostly because the antennae to broadcast the information and the command center were destroyed because they were in the WTC). If your claim is that this is a propaganda tool, you'd probably be surprised to see that it was not used for any of the instances you mention: Not for the gas explosion in NYC, not for delayed flights or kicked puppies. So you claim it will be used for propaganda but there is no past issue of the EAS being used as such by this or any administration.
This system is most likely there to provide timely targeted information to help citizens and emergency personnel respond to crisis situations effectively. Why would something that is effectively a tool of the good be claimed to be evil, especially with no evidence to that point?
The planet is viable now. To say it isn't is to ignore the highest lifespan average of humanity, EVER. Right now humans are living longer better lives than ever in the history of history.
More humans mean greater distribution of labor. More distribution means more specialization which leads to greater technical achievements which lead to things like, but not limited to, 100% of the population living off of food farmed by 2% of the population.
Rights violations? What right do you have to use Western Union? It's a private company and they can choose who they do business with.
Besides, I would gladly exclude ten-thousand Muslims from Western Union, along with their hurt feelings, in exchange to prevent one payment that goes to a hijacker or suicide bomber. I would offend ten-thousand men to have one less death from 9/11.
Not being able to fly on an airplane or transfer money is NOT the same as imprisonment/internment.
Weapons are weapons. Once you decide that you're going to create a device to kill a man, then the morality of HOW you do it is very negligible. A land mine is just as moral as a laser guided bomb, or a 50 cal sniper rifle.
The morality of a weapon is not the weapon itself but whether the users are morally right in using them. For instance, I would completely advocate a minefield on the Israeli-Gaza border, because the fence to keep out suicide bombers and gun-toting terrorists isn't working. However I would not advocate one on the U.S. / Mexican border, since Mexicans aren't carrying bombs at the border guards.
Wealth is CREATED solely (SOLELY!) by natural resources How is this the case? How is it the wealthiest man on earth is not the one who owns the most natural resources? Bill Gates built a company of ideas, not gas or oil or anything else. Wealth is built by the efforts of human minds, not by the existence of gold or dirt. In fact, if it weren't for the efforts of man, these resources would be useless. Oil does not hold value or create wealthy men if there is no automobile to drive it with. In this case, natural resources are assigned value by the efforts of men who use them, not vice versa. Can a man create wealth by extracting oil under the land he owns? Yes. But a man can create wealth by designing a car that runs on something other than oil and selling that car. Or selling that idea for the car. Wealth begins with the efforts of men. That is why natural-resource-'poor' nations like Israel pre-1948 can become economic success stories.
And what I meant about oil producing nations being poor is that the wealth is piddled away by Sheiks in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is the largest oil exporter. It is 30th on the GNP list and has a GDP pp of $12,800 (2005 est.) Meanwhile the U.S. has a GDP pp of $42,000. I would say selling the most of the arguably the easiest to sell, most in demand product in the world, and still only being at maybe the bottom of the first world economies is pretty terrible.
I dunno if I agree. One of the tenets of Zimbabwe's fall was that Mugabe gave land away to a large population of people who had little farming experience. They were a huge financial investment risk. So banks wouldn't give loans to these farmers because they felt the loans would default. Mugabe made it a requirement for banks to give out loans to newly-landed citizens regardless.
'lowering market barriers' usually means forcing an industry or group to assume a risk they normally wouldn't. Sometimes it works, but that risk doesn't evaporate. Someone pays for the defaulted loans somehow. I can't call forcing an industry to assume a risk they normally wouldn't 'rational'.
Also, 'expanding the consumer base' is also a euphamism. When you take an increased amount of taxes to put into welfare, that money is no longer in the position of people most likely to use it for investment. Sure, consumer spending is increased but capital is not. This is actually a large part of the transformation of the American economy. No longer producing capital goods or services, we rely heavy on outside investors to prop up our currency value. I also don't find this trend very rational. Eventually we have to produce something the world wants or else our dollar becomes worthless.
This is bollocks. If that's the case then the fall of an economy should be based just on the same amount of luck.
If you want to read a story about how an economy is not a matter of resources or luck, but rather how little or much a government meddles in the economy, read about Zimbabwe.
Economies are based on the decisions of its citizens... a million little decisions controls the tide of the economy. When a hands-off, rational minded government or political climate takes place, economies do better. When a meddling, irrational government takes seed, then that's what you get.
If natural resources take such a huge stance, why are most of the oil producing nations still 'poor'?
Your reference to the empires of 100+ years ago doesn't apply because the wealth of that period was 'exported', a.k.a. stolen and redistributed. The American 'exceptionalism' you quote was by large not built on Empire wealth but by the wealth of industry of its citizens. And that itself is pretty exceptional.
The availability is very odd with Verizon in Massachusetts. My friend has the FiOS service in Tewksbury, a town of about 28,000, about 40 minutes north of boston. However, in Lowell, which adjoins Tewksbury and is the third or fourth largest city in the state with about 80,000+ residents, my other friend does not have service available.
I thought the way they rolled these out was to cities and densely populated areas first
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I would think it wouldn't matter a damn to the European Union if Microsoft was un-american.
I know! look at the thing, it's in French. How are they supposed to know how to use it?
The rates for car insurance in Massachusetts are the highest in the nation. Massachusetts did not regulate insurance to bring rates down for their citizens; they regulated to compensate for the large accident rate by fixing the rates across the board so that a small number of people didn't pay a large portion of insurance premiums. They are largely based on garaging location of the vehicle, not, say, miles driven. Companies like Geico are able to offer lower prices because they can set very specific rates to a person based on a large amount of statistical information. Massachusetts auto insurance companies cannot do this; they must set their rates based on the state criteria, which is not as flexible and prone to the whim of legislators.
I also didn't say anything was wrong with it: Companies won't lose money, they're not philanthropists, that's my point. Companies are agile while lawmaking bodies are not. Companies have self-preservation in mind; they will refuse business that doesn't make sense to them.
Businesses will refuse to do business in a state if it doesn't make economic sense to do so. Massachusetts is the only state that sets car insurance rates via the state legislature instead of the free market. The result? most of the car insurers that you see on TV will not insure you if you live in Massachusetts. (Geico, Allstate, State Farm, Progressive... anywhere that will give you a free quote online, basically).
Cable companies are much richer than Vonage, and major ones own their own Fiber Optic lines/aren't at all dependant on Verizon. Verizon is picking a fight with Vonage because they're the smallest and easiest to bully.
Why not create a tag called "grid" that acts like a table, but is designed for page layout?
Because the idea behind the semantic web is: Markup should tell us ABOUT the data, not how to show the data. That's what CSS is for.
What the hope was behind moving to standards is that you could separate layout and design so that multiple devices can see the same markup and interpret the visualization of the markup differently based on CSS. What would 'GRID' mean to a lynx browser, or a PDA? What about Google and other bots? What about screenreaders? which order should they read the grid in?
I agree. Extend the idea to video chats, as well. Chat rooms should also be able to consolidate friends into games as 'parties'. Halo 2 had this, and the platform should support it. With all the great games out for the 360, its almost impossible to join a ranked game with a friend.
Microsoft has done some cool things in the space over the last two years. USB peripherals that are PC interchangeable, unified online environment for consistent gameplay experiences.
But there's this 10% that's missing. I can buy south park episodes, some in HD, but I can't do anything but watch it on my 360. I want to put those that I don't have time to watch right away on my ipod so I can watch the episodes on the way to work. I can't believe that I can't BROWSE THE WEB from my 360. that seems like a no-brainer.
the Xbox 360 has a video delivery platform under the 'Xbox Live' service. They allow you to choose which resolution you wish to buy, and HD is a little more. However, getting the video off of the xbox isn't possible, ( to , say, put on your ipod video), so looks like there's no market innovator that allows it all.
Personally, I wish I could buy the rights to enjoy a piece of media universally. Right now I usually buy DVDs, rip them to my ipod, or watch the disk. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I get HD-DVDs
If the state government got rid of the monopolies on cable and phone lines, we'd see some movement.
.com era)
How do you suppose they do that?
What we need are more companies running their own cable lines. That would give us more competition. In Boston several neighborhoods are already served by two cable companies. The state will probably just fuck it up more. What we need are more RCNs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCN_(company) (except without going bankrupt due to poor aquisitions in the
However, I suspect you aren't mentally ill but are simply using the fact that nobody is perfect to justify your being as destructive as you like
And what the fuck do you call your 'holier-than-thou' rant about lightbulbs ? that's pretty destructive, not to mention all your comments are assumptions. Maybe he's a CFL-using, subway riding citizen like myself.
His point was probably more about taking personal responsibility for actions, like 'you should probably focus more on your own personal consumption instead of screaming at the heavens about a test flight that probably had to happen anyways'. And if that was his gist, then its a good point. We get way more done when we focus on things we can actually change. (instead of, say, screaming at jet owners, or screaming at those who aren't screaming at jet owners).
I am continuously surprised that on a forum like slashdot ( which is frequented by enginereers, techies, scientists, etc) someone would, when confronted with a problem, throw up his hands in despair and cry instead of thinking of a solution. Or, at least trust the brains of the world can and would fix the problem.
Our waste will not kill us because we are problem solving creatures.
It isn't their work, though. Just like if you produce work at a company and it is owned by the employer, so too is work produced for a university study the property of the professor and university. Professors for years have been using the work of students as tools to show new students good, effective writing or research.
If the paper database does not disclose the substance except in the event to flag another newer paper as plagarism, then I don't see the harm. In effect if you are saying that the students Intellectual Property rights allow him to disclose exactly who 'sees' the paper including the prying eyes of a server somewhere, then I would argue you are incorrect. The student cannot be guarunteed that the paper won't be read aloud to other students, faculty... it may be email forwarded to other staff members. The paper essentially becomes the property of the professor; it was procured for that professor's class to determine the aptitude of the student with regards to the material learned.
In effect, the database actually PROTECTS the IP of the students and professors who had original ideas in the first place that were stolen.
If you want to read about the real old school roulette cheaters, see the Eudaemonic Pie. Its a book by thomas bass about some real old school 70s hackers who built computers into their shoes to cheat.
I'm more afraid of the politicians than I am of the terrorists
Your attitude would change if you were flying 500 mph towards the world trade center and certain death.
terrorism is just one of the risks we face
Also, you seem to equate terrorism, a crime, with natural 'risks we face'. Mugging is a 'risk we face', yet we absolutely fight against it. Just because something is common and confronts humans doesn't mean we should be complacent about it happening. Cancer, traffic accidents and muggings are all things that fit that criteria, and no one complains when we enact legislation to fund cancer research or harsher punishment for drunk drivers or muggers.
When you rape Nanking, you are not affored the luxury of a 'conditional' surrender.
The United States was attacked simply because we stopped selling oil to the Japanese. They dragged our nation into a protracted struggle and murdered thousands of Americans. They, through their use of force, conquered many nations, forced labor and life from many citizens, and forced thousands of decent human beings to kill them in order to stop them.
When you initiate the use of force you surrender your right to 'fair' or 'balanced'. This was not an example of "death penatly for a traffic ticket", this was "death penalty for murder". Any suffering the Japanese experienced was due to their government, and the failure of its citizens to stop its government. Righteous men and women flee or fight their own nation when it is bent on world domination through force.
The Atomic Bomb was nothing. It was simply One Action that killed civilians instead of the millions of bombs dropped on Japan. If the firebombing of Tokyo was acceptable, then the Atomic Bomb is just as moral. Civilians being killed was war back then, before laser guided munitions. Killing civilians who went to factories to build bombs to drop on Americans MADE SENSE. So did killing them so that their families would become overcome with grief and lose morale. Don't agree with the way the war was waged? Such is your luxury, having not had to fight it. We didn't get much choice about the timing to start the war, but we sure took advantage of the ability to end it.
However, that's going to require OSS to start thinking about polish - making applications that Grandma can use. It's not impossible, but a lot of OSS projects need to concentrate on making applications that work well and look decent on Windows - even if we don't particularly care for the platform or the company that makes it.
Cheers to that. The Grandma test is pretty much what keeps people out of linux. I love firefox, but its not because its better than any other open source software package; its because on Windows firefox installs like any other program. It has an executable installer that runs in GUI space on windows. I don't have to go into cygwin or do some crazy config file editing to get it to work. I don't have to compile it. It Just Works.
When mainstream people started using computers is when following the commands written like
type 'run a:\install.exe' became obsolete. there are great many OSS applications that require inside knowledge... most of the ones ported to windows have a shell that gui-fies that knowledge (like what config files to edit, etc). Once we got users to understand an easy-to-learn interface like WIMP (windows icons menus pointers), those OSes took off. Linux has a WIMP interface, but it hasn't taken off because you still need to go under the hood for a ton of things.
I hate to break it to you, but you're using your brain to type a slashdot post. What does it matter if you use a keyboard or an EEG (or whatever the acronym is?).
How is it slavery? Its completely voluntary.
Whenever someone writes 'the truth is' without providing evidence to back up his claim or theory, I have a hard time believing it.
S ystem
The Emergency Broadcast System which interrupts television and radio is much older than the Bush Administration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Broadcast_
From the article, it sounds like this is an expansion of the EBS (now EAS) to give focused, targeted information to appropriate parties. Your claim that it is a propaganda tool to scare citizens and/or influence elections fails to take into the account the age of the system.
If your point was so, then there must have been an increase in the number of activations of the Federal EAS (the state, local and feds all have access to issue EAS alerts. So a storm in Massachusetts can be alerted to Massachusetts area residents only) during this administration. I seriously doubt you'd find that, though. In fact, on 9/11, the EAS wasn't even used. (Mostly because the antennae to broadcast the information and the command center were destroyed because they were in the WTC). If your claim is that this is a propaganda tool, you'd probably be surprised to see that it was not used for any of the instances you mention: Not for the gas explosion in NYC, not for delayed flights or kicked puppies. So you claim it will be used for propaganda but there is no past issue of the EAS being used as such by this or any administration.
This system is most likely there to provide timely targeted information to help citizens and emergency personnel respond to crisis situations effectively. Why would something that is effectively a tool of the good be claimed to be evil, especially with no evidence to that point?
The planet is viable now. To say it isn't is to ignore the highest lifespan average of humanity, EVER. Right now humans are living longer better lives than ever in the history of history.
More humans mean greater distribution of labor. More distribution means more specialization which leads to greater technical achievements which lead to things like, but not limited to, 100% of the population living off of food farmed by 2% of the population.
How is the planet exactly not viable?
Rights violations? What right do you have to use Western Union? It's a private company and they can choose who they do business with.
Besides, I would gladly exclude ten-thousand Muslims from Western Union, along with their hurt feelings, in exchange to prevent one payment that goes to a hijacker or suicide bomber. I would offend ten-thousand men to have one less death from 9/11.
Not being able to fly on an airplane or transfer money is NOT the same as imprisonment/internment.
Weapons are weapons. Once you decide that you're going to create a device to kill a man, then the morality of HOW you do it is very negligible. A land mine is just as moral as a laser guided bomb, or a 50 cal sniper rifle.
The morality of a weapon is not the weapon itself but whether the users are morally right in using them. For instance, I would completely advocate a minefield on the Israeli-Gaza border, because the fence to keep out suicide bombers and gun-toting terrorists isn't working. However I would not advocate one on the U.S. / Mexican border, since Mexicans aren't carrying bombs at the border guards.
Wealth is CREATED solely (SOLELY!) by natural resources
How is this the case? How is it the wealthiest man on earth is not the one who owns the most natural resources? Bill Gates built a company of ideas, not gas or oil or anything else. Wealth is built by the efforts of human minds, not by the existence of gold or dirt. In fact, if it weren't for the efforts of man, these resources would be useless. Oil does not hold value or create wealthy men if there is no automobile to drive it with. In this case, natural resources are assigned value by the efforts of men who use them, not vice versa. Can a man create wealth by extracting oil under the land he owns? Yes. But a man can create wealth by designing a car that runs on something other than oil and selling that car. Or selling that idea for the car. Wealth begins with the efforts of men. That is why natural-resource-'poor' nations like Israel pre-1948 can become economic success stories.
And what I meant about oil producing nations being poor is that the wealth is piddled away by Sheiks in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is the largest oil exporter. It is 30th on the GNP list and has a GDP pp of $12,800 (2005 est.)
Meanwhile the U.S. has a GDP pp of $42,000. I would say selling the most of the arguably the easiest to sell, most in demand product in the world, and still only being at maybe the bottom of the first world economies is pretty terrible.
I dunno if I agree. One of the tenets of Zimbabwe's fall was that Mugabe gave land away to a large population of people who had little farming experience. They were a huge financial investment risk. So banks wouldn't give loans to these farmers because they felt the loans would default. Mugabe made it a requirement for banks to give out loans to newly-landed citizens regardless.
'lowering market barriers' usually means forcing an industry or group to assume a risk they normally wouldn't. Sometimes it works, but that risk doesn't evaporate. Someone pays for the defaulted loans somehow. I can't call forcing an industry to assume a risk they normally wouldn't 'rational'.
Also, 'expanding the consumer base' is also a euphamism. When you take an increased amount of taxes to put into welfare, that money is no longer in the position of people most likely to use it for investment. Sure, consumer spending is increased but capital is not. This is actually a large part of the transformation of the American economy. No longer producing capital goods or services, we rely heavy on outside investors to prop up our currency value. I also don't find this trend very rational. Eventually we have to produce something the world wants or else our dollar becomes worthless.
This is bollocks. If that's the case then the fall of an economy should be based just on the same amount of luck.
If you want to read a story about how an economy is not a matter of resources or luck, but rather how little or much a government meddles in the economy, read about Zimbabwe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2780775.stm
Economies are based on the decisions of its citizens... a million little decisions controls the tide of the economy. When a hands-off, rational minded government or political climate takes place, economies do better. When a meddling, irrational government takes seed, then that's what you get.
If natural resources take such a huge stance, why are most of the oil producing nations still 'poor'?
Your reference to the empires of 100+ years ago doesn't apply because the wealth of that period was 'exported', a.k.a. stolen and redistributed. The American 'exceptionalism' you quote was by large not built on Empire wealth but by the wealth of industry of its citizens. And that itself is pretty exceptional.
The availability is very odd with Verizon in Massachusetts. My friend has the FiOS service in Tewksbury, a town of about 28,000, about 40 minutes north of boston. However, in Lowell, which adjoins Tewksbury and is the third or fourth largest city in the state with about 80,000+ residents, my other friend does not have service available.
I thought the way they rolled these out was to cities and densely populated areas first