That doesn't necessarily mean the motivator is *envy*, tho. I see someone driving a bigger truck, I realise my truck just ain't doing the job anymore and I should get THAT truck next time -- that's not envy, that's common sense based on simple observation.
"I want it because I saw it and liked it" (desire) is not the same as "I want it because the Joneses have it" (envy).
Exactly my problem with it. What on earth is wrong with steady-state economics, where income remains flat but regular? People complain about my favourite city because it doesn't experience "growth". It's been static for decades. No booms, no busts, population the same as it was 50 years ago. What's wrong with *stability*, anyway?!
The problem is that "growth" dilutes the outcome, so the outcome has to grow to remain spread among 'em at the previous level...
Check out Winco Grocery, which is employee-owned. They seem to practice mainly JIT stocking, but can special-order any quantity you want. They also have a full instore bakery (non-union so they can do both the mixing and baking in-house, which makes a huge difference in quality) and a freeform bulk-shopping area where you package up as much or little as you want of various staples and notions, and pay by the pound. Service is good and you NEVER see an employee lollygagging around.
I've seen many people do an impulse purchase of a car (makes you wonder how little *real money* $35k actually IS), but I've NEVER known anyone to do an "envy purchase", not even here in Yuppieville. It's always about "how good it felt" at the time, never "because Joe next door has one".
The Corvette occupies that same niche as the Harley, where it's a sort of lifestyle symbol and quality is irrelevant, just so long as it represents that lifestyle in its original form.
I haven't had good reception in over two decades, no cable access at all, and sat was way overpriced for what I wanted to see (having become weary of everything else, most especially sensationalist "news" -- if it isn't SF, baseball, or football, I'm really not interested). I miss the sports but I can get the SF on DVD with less bother (my connection isn't up to Hulu).
As Anubis points out, sometimes what you're really looking for is mindless downtime, anything to just let the brain vegetate and decompress (which is why shows like Baywatch are popular) but that doesn't have to be TV. Watching ants or clouds, or digging in the garden also fit the bill.
Seems to me this could be win-win for everyone. Let owners or manufacturers of a given product buy links at the bottom of relevant articles (limit of one link per company per page). Charge them by the impression, so much per link per impression, or if that's too open to fraud or cost uncertainty, let a link on each page be charged by a flat rate based on the previous year's worth of hits for that page. That way costs are proportional to benefits.
Then I can immediately find vendors of whatever product I just looked up in Wikipedia, the vendors might make some sales, and Wikipedi gets ad revenue -- all without annoying users at all, since the only ad is an ordinary link to an external site, at the bottom of the page where you don't have to look at it unless you want to.
Totally agreed. The moment you have an undercover police force, the potential for abuse is introduced, particularly for victimless crimes. And since no bureaucracy wants to shrink, there needs to be a growth in the number of victimless crimes to support it, hence a great deal of today's legislation. "Three Felonies a Day" may be a slight exaggeration, but the principle remains.
See also my reply to your other respondent, where we examine the financial support mechanism for this system.;(
Trouble is, in any venue where the usual police behaviour is search-and-seizure, these "anonymous tips" are being used as a sort of pretrial conviction. If there is a tip, there must be a crime, therefore we will seize your property just in case. No crime after all? So sad, but your property it already in custody and you have to prove your innocence to get it back, and no we won't tell you who your accuser was.
Having witnessed the growth of this "industry" across several decades, I have turned from being in favour of anonymous reporting, to being absolutely against it, because in my observation the actual abuse far outweighs the potential to do good.
Aside from the little detail that these anonymous informants do an end-run on the Constitutional requirement of being allowed to face your accuser.
Any society, or aspect thereof, that relies on the snitch system for enforcement, is already halfway to being a totalitarian state (defined as one where the gov't deems everything you do to be its business).
There's an interesting pay-as-you-go billing chart on the wall at the Los Angeles County Health Clinic. Most procedures are $80 and any surgery is $400. This is their actual cost, without any billing or admin fees or insurance. (I asked.)
Also, there have been some studies of hospital bills which found they are typically padded by up to 80%, therefore you should always verify EVERY item on the bill, as you'll find many you never received, but are simply part of the default billing.
And while Romania is a lovely country, it isn't exactly the hotbed of industrial or economic development of eastern Europe. Which goes go show that our American providers really have no excuse -- if Romania can do it, and charge such reasonable rates, why can't we?
(I'm paying twice what you are for about 1% as much bandwidth.:(
Except that now even the most "basic" websites think 300k worth of scripts, stock images, and other crap constitutes a "plain" page. On one forum I've been using for about 3 years now, I've watched the "blank page" size grow from 40k to over 160k, and that's before anyone adds comments (ten small comments brings it to over 300k per page!) and not counting any user-added images or site-added advertising. This is becoming the rule rather than the exception, so that even slower broadband (like my paltry 1.5Mbit) is becoming painfully slow, and now often feels like I'm back on 14k dialup.
Stream TV online? Not with any reliability (and I have NO over-the-air reception). Whether it's a congestion problem upstream or what I don't know, but often I can't even listen to a 128k online radio station, because the connection is slow enough to make it choppy.
Not only that, but I now pay TEN TIMES as much for using 1/3 LESS electricity, compared to before "deregulation". The same situation occurred in Montana when it "deregulated".
Deregulation, as presently used, is simply a golden exit strategy for infrastructure owners, and a golden opportunity for foreign investors who then get to gouge without limit.
Which is why the best I can get (in SoCal no less) for less than $50/month is 1.5Mbit down and 256k up... well, nominally that. In practical terms it's about half that.
As to cost, my provider is a one-man band and he likes to talk about his business. He tells me that AT&T (his upstream) charges 5 CENTS PER GB for upload but NOTHING for download (this is so the backbones don't wind up billing one another into oblivion over downloaded data). Of course there's also some infrastructure cost, but nowhere else other than printer ink do they get away with such a lopsided cost shift onto the end purchaser.
My college physics and chemistry classes went as you describe -- for classwork, metric was assumed and no one thought anything of it. For everything else, Imperial was used. So you might hear something like (making up absurd example to shoehorn it all into one sentence) "I had to move my desk twenty feet just to get a measurement of less than one millimeter!" and it sounded perfectly natural to us. We're measurement-bilingual.;)
Slashdot Mirror
[observing string of airports growing on Denver's east side over the past few decades]
I'd say the scam did get put into operation, it's just taking a lot longer to complete than expected. ;)
That doesn't necessarily mean the motivator is *envy*, tho. I see someone driving a bigger truck, I realise my truck just ain't doing the job anymore and I should get THAT truck next time -- that's not envy, that's common sense based on simple observation.
"I want it because I saw it and liked it" (desire) is not the same as "I want it because the Joneses have it" (envy).
Exactly my problem with it. What on earth is wrong with steady-state economics, where income remains flat but regular? People complain about my favourite city because it doesn't experience "growth". It's been static for decades. No booms, no busts, population the same as it was 50 years ago. What's wrong with *stability*, anyway?!
The problem is that "growth" dilutes the outcome, so the outcome has to grow to remain spread among 'em at the previous level...
Check out Winco Grocery, which is employee-owned. They seem to practice mainly JIT stocking, but can special-order any quantity you want. They also have a full instore bakery (non-union so they can do both the mixing and baking in-house, which makes a huge difference in quality) and a freeform bulk-shopping area where you package up as much or little as you want of various staples and notions, and pay by the pound. Service is good and you NEVER see an employee lollygagging around.
I've seen many people do an impulse purchase of a car (makes you wonder how little *real money* $35k actually IS), but I've NEVER known anyone to do an "envy purchase", not even here in Yuppieville. It's always about "how good it felt" at the time, never "because Joe next door has one".
The Corvette occupies that same niche as the Harley, where it's a sort of lifestyle symbol and quality is irrelevant, just so long as it represents that lifestyle in its original form.
I haven't had good reception in over two decades, no cable access at all, and sat was way overpriced for what I wanted to see (having become weary of everything else, most especially sensationalist "news" -- if it isn't SF, baseball, or football, I'm really not interested). I miss the sports but I can get the SF on DVD with less bother (my connection isn't up to Hulu).
As Anubis points out, sometimes what you're really looking for is mindless downtime, anything to just let the brain vegetate and decompress (which is why shows like Baywatch are popular) but that doesn't have to be TV. Watching ants or clouds, or digging in the garden also fit the bill.
Seems to me this could be win-win for everyone. Let owners or manufacturers of a given product buy links at the bottom of relevant articles (limit of one link per company per page). Charge them by the impression, so much per link per impression, or if that's too open to fraud or cost uncertainty, let a link on each page be charged by a flat rate based on the previous year's worth of hits for that page. That way costs are proportional to benefits.
Then I can immediately find vendors of whatever product I just looked up in Wikipedia, the vendors might make some sales, and Wikipedi gets ad revenue -- all without annoying users at all, since the only ad is an ordinary link to an external site, at the bottom of the page where you don't have to look at it unless you want to.
Slashdot. ;)
Seriously, I haven't seen my TV in about four years now either. If the world ends someone will tell me about it soon enough.
Totally agreed. The moment you have an undercover police force, the potential for abuse is introduced, particularly for victimless crimes. And since no bureaucracy wants to shrink, there needs to be a growth in the number of victimless crimes to support it, hence a great deal of today's legislation. "Three Felonies a Day" may be a slight exaggeration, but the principle remains.
See also my reply to your other respondent, where we examine the financial support mechanism for this system. ;(
Trouble is, in any venue where the usual police behaviour is search-and-seizure, these "anonymous tips" are being used as a sort of pretrial conviction. If there is a tip, there must be a crime, therefore we will seize your property just in case. No crime after all? So sad, but your property it already in custody and you have to prove your innocence to get it back, and no we won't tell you who your accuser was.
Having witnessed the growth of this "industry" across several decades, I have turned from being in favour of anonymous reporting, to being absolutely against it, because in my observation the actual abuse far outweighs the potential to do good.
Which lets me enjoy the content rather than fight with the presentation :)
in 3...2...1...
*BOOM*
That girl sure has talent as a photojournalist. Thanks for reminding me about her other work.
I'm thinking the entire collection would make a real nice coffee-table book -- some smart publisher ought to approach her about that.
Agreed. It's still a beautiful piece of journalism, even if the backstory isn't quite as claimed.
Aside from the little detail that these anonymous informants do an end-run on the Constitutional requirement of being allowed to face your accuser.
Any society, or aspect thereof, that relies on the snitch system for enforcement, is already halfway to being a totalitarian state (defined as one where the gov't deems everything you do to be its business).
There's an interesting pay-as-you-go billing chart on the wall at the Los Angeles County Health Clinic. Most procedures are $80 and any surgery is $400. This is their actual cost, without any billing or admin fees or insurance. (I asked.)
Also, there have been some studies of hospital bills which found they are typically padded by up to 80%, therefore you should always verify EVERY item on the bill, as you'll find many you never received, but are simply part of the default billing.
Consider that costs for the MD and for the administration are roughly proportional -- and regard this chart with due alarm:
http://www.capecare.info/img/pnhp_growthphysadmin.png
THAT is where the inflation in healthcare costs comes from.
And yes, I too remember when anyone with 10 or 20 bucks could afford to see the doctor.
Sounds a lot like the old rural phone and electric co-ops that used to be common in America, but are now almost extinct. :(
And while Romania is a lovely country, it isn't exactly the hotbed of industrial or economic development of eastern Europe. Which goes go show that our American providers really have no excuse -- if Romania can do it, and charge such reasonable rates, why can't we?
(I'm paying twice what you are for about 1% as much bandwidth. :(
Except that now even the most "basic" websites think 300k worth of scripts, stock images, and other crap constitutes a "plain" page. On one forum I've been using for about 3 years now, I've watched the "blank page" size grow from 40k to over 160k, and that's before anyone adds comments (ten small comments brings it to over 300k per page!) and not counting any user-added images or site-added advertising. This is becoming the rule rather than the exception, so that even slower broadband (like my paltry 1.5Mbit) is becoming painfully slow, and now often feels like I'm back on 14k dialup.
Stream TV online? Not with any reliability (and I have NO over-the-air reception). Whether it's a congestion problem upstream or what I don't know, but often I can't even listen to a 128k online radio station, because the connection is slow enough to make it choppy.
Not only that, but I now pay TEN TIMES as much for using 1/3 LESS electricity, compared to before "deregulation". The same situation occurred in Montana when it "deregulated".
Deregulation, as presently used, is simply a golden exit strategy for infrastructure owners, and a golden opportunity for foreign investors who then get to gouge without limit.
Which is why the best I can get (in SoCal no less) for less than $50/month is 1.5Mbit down and 256k up... well, nominally that. In practical terms it's about half that.
As to cost, my provider is a one-man band and he likes to talk about his business. He tells me that AT&T (his upstream) charges 5 CENTS PER GB for upload but NOTHING for download (this is so the backbones don't wind up billing one another into oblivion over downloaded data). Of course there's also some infrastructure cost, but nowhere else other than printer ink do they get away with such a lopsided cost shift onto the end purchaser.
Imported carpet, obviously :(
But a good example -- I didn't have any problem picturing the right size on the fly, and I'll bet you didn't either.
My college physics and chemistry classes went as you describe -- for classwork, metric was assumed and no one thought anything of it. For everything else, Imperial was used. So you might hear something like (making up absurd example to shoehorn it all into one sentence) "I had to move my desk twenty feet just to get a measurement of less than one millimeter!" and it sounded perfectly natural to us. We're measurement-bilingual. ;)
Translation (I don't know how accurate it is, but it's readable enough):
http://tinyurl.com/2d8eyto
English page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage
Interesting to compare the two.