I had no idea that hydro was so dangerous! A massive and poorly designed dam in China isn't necessarily just about running a turbine -- you can do that with a 2 foot drop. Then there are those tsunamis and hurricanes -- solution; we've got to get rid of all this dangerous water!
Next thing we'll find out there is a decommissioning cost to solar that makes it still more expensive than nuclear. I'm sure there's a solar clock from the Egyptian pyramids that people are still watching with suspicion -- if that were a nuclear power plant, it would be safe to bury it by now.
All you need is your important stuff in a pocket dimension which you access with your bag of holding and portal ring. You can escape by jumping in the pocket dimension and finding an exit in another location.
I'm betting that this poster is a woman assuming that scent molecules can be controlled for by double-blind when it's going to be difficult controlling the dose.
For instance; We've all known scientifically since the days of sailing that women are just bad luck.
I see a Monty Python skit here, Comcast forms the new company and they send out their agents in chain mail; "Bring out your pensioners, bring out your pensioners!" They throw all the older workers in the new "Omega Righteous Liabilities inc."
"But I'm not dead yet!"
The club him and continue dragging the cart to the next lucky employee.
Government doesn't HAVE TO approve monopolies -- they happen naturally if government does not regulate commerce. The regulation is faulty because the government depends on money to get elected and regulators are allowed to become lobbyists and lobbyists to become regulators.
Yes, this is fascism, on that I'll agree. And in our world, regulations are coddling and protecting the powerful from everyone else -- though that is because of corruption, not due to the nature of government.
If I'm the king of Spain, I suppose I'm going to want to SELL the serfs living in lands held by Napoleon.
If Comcast gets rid of people who HAVE A CHOICE to the competition -- they can just raise rates where there is no competition and overlap.
Yeah this is bullshit and the emperor has no clothes but the media and the bought out government are all there to tell the King of Comcast that he looks very regal in his birthday suit. It does not matter that anyone paying attention knows this is a bogus deal to screw customers.
"his base is too stupid to realize that that money is ultimately coming out of their pockets" -- The only thing I can reply to such a moronic statement is to pretend I'm talking to anyone who did NOT make such a statement. Cost of business comes out of profits. The market decides prices. Over time, if all companies have to pay the same tax -- it's a wash.
If we don't tax a company, there is no revenue to pay for anything -- and I don't get a discount on the happy meal. If we don't tax the company, who do we tax? Consumption, the worker, the land? Sales taxes are the most regressive and expensive to procure -- and of course the darling of people who don't live hand to mouth.
I just want to reiterate how annoying this think tank derived garbage is of "we can't tax businesses otherwise consumers pay". Because we already pay for more things out of pocket than we used to, and our country has less economic power than it used to.
"double taxation" -- cry me a river. By this stupid accounting, I'm quintuple taxed and I'm just a poor working stiff if I'm lucky.
US has one of the lowest effective taxes on corporations. And many of the fortune 500 companies pay 5% or less. Now if you are a small startup - taxes might be high, but you're not paying attention to who runs things.
And what is wrong with Hippies? They were right. Was Vietnam a good war? Is making love not better than war?
If the taxes just came from capital gains, then you eliminate stocks and companies become privately owned -- or they trade stock in other countries. There's no one solution. Economic activity where money is made is where you tax.
Or we could just stop paying banks to make loans -- and just pay all the people, which I think is the only viable solution for a future where most labor gets replaced by robots.
In FDR's day, corporations paid around 35% of the tax burden -- now it's under 7% and dropping.
We can't "afford things any more for some reason" we hear from the media.
We are supposed to be "more competitive" by allowing H1B visas so we can import educated people to work. These same corporations pay less of the bill and we pay more for education -- and then compete with workers who get education from a socialist government.
The discussion that we "can't tax rich people and corporations otherwise they would leave" is moot. What is the benefit of competing to have have a deadbeat over some other country where they won't pay taxes? The rich have made themselves useless to have in the hope that one day they might donate back to the society. Tax them all and if they leave, tax the hell out of imports and all companies unless they are local.
This term is abused and overused but in this case it is absolutely pertinent; "That blew my mind."
Seriously -- it's so staggering to consider that wild animals are barely like a sideshow or a zoo to domesticated livestock. Survival of the fittest? Not anymore; survival of the tasty.
If we ever come up with a really great artificial substitute that is more nutritious, it will make a huge difference to carbon "footprint" and water consumption to remove so many mammals in a few short years.
Oh I see, Proper Regulation is just like communism - it's just never been done right before!
And gravity doesn't work -- because I waved my hands in the air and said so.
I'm holding back a huge list of regulations that do work. But keep praying that planes don't fly into each other, people stop at stop lights, and drinking water that doesn't have amoebas in it. The idea that you could get karma to be marked insightful, is more of a testament that Slashdot has lowered the bar.
The FCC is being driven by corporations now -- and most regulation these days is created by corporations for corporations. Who likes Sarbanes-Oxley? Big financial institutions who can produce mounds of paperwork nobody can read that solves nothing so that small companies cannot do financial services.
So you can say there is good and bad legislation, based on who pushed it forward -- but to say "regulations cannot be good" is like saying Hammers are all bad because you just gave them to psychotics in the super max prison.
"Something worth noting is that there have been cases of insurance companies cancelling individual and group policies, blaming it on the ACA, when in actuality, it was just the usual dicking around on their part." Before the ACA, insurance premium increases were just insurance premium increases. About a few years ago they were "due to expectations about the ACA" and now after the ACA and henceforth they will be "due to the ACA we will have to ask you for more money we are totally sorry about this and it's out of our hands."
What is not out of the hands of insurance companies, is enough money to choke a small country.
The ACA just requires a policy to cover some basics -- and there were a lot of policies that were junk. Insurance companies are canceling people so they can make money and not be forced to give you a decent policy -- that's all there is to it. This is like leaving the mafia in a small town and the only change is the enforcer who extorts money out of you has to wash his hands and follow a dress code. And after getting their legs broken, some a-hole blames the dress code and not the mafia.
As a Libertarian, when have you NOT followed the Republicans? Seriously. You mention; "go ahead and continue to follow your elites and their welfare state agenda" which is exactly the kind of phrase that comes out of a think tank created by wealthy elites who get the government to look after the welfare of big business.
You do know that the ACA codifies money to insurance programs? It's the exact opposite of a welfare state. If they had expanded Medicare, it would be a lot cheaper. 54% of all medical expenses are paid for by tax dollars (filling a huge hole of not-profitable left by insurance companies). That money right there could pay for healthcare if we had no insurance companies at all. All the benefits you have right now and no premiums or co-pay -- if you had Germany running the system.
The ACA sucks, but it sucks slightly less than the Year Over Year increases in premiums for our lousy, stinking, healthcare system. Please don't sully socialism by attaching it to something that has nothing to do with socialism as a civilized nation might do it.
Instead of a lottery or affirmative action -- why don't we let everyone have higher education who wants it.
This country progressed with the GI bill and letting a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise afford college go. And we could do the same for trade schools. You only have to pay for education if you leave the country.
It's the reverse of the "H1-B Visa" where businesses don't pay for education in the USA and import people who got educations paid for by their countries.
Scalia dissented from an opinion where a right to innocence is removed? That's a surprise.
I can only assume that Thomas and Scalia take turns being "the bad guy" so it doesn't always look like a slam dunk that they'll vote with fascism each and every time.
What would shock me is real thought and concern for citizens from the likes of Scalia and Thomas.
Many police officers are quite certain of their ability to determine guilt or innocence; usually in direct relation to how much the person in front of them is pissing them off.
If it takes an "anonymous call" to make sure they get the bad guy they are 100% certain is bad -- then it's going to happen. There's already a drop bag and a drop gun for mistakes. Now there's going to be the burner phone.
Is America falling apart because we don't have enough poor people in prison or enough bankers in prison?
No a lawyer, but I thought "probable cause" was that the original CAUSE for the police stop and search has to be legit. If you can't arrest the driver for "forcing someone off the road" then anything found after that wasn't supported by the search.
Or maybe I'm living in a fantasy world. I'm just not too enthused to live in a country where the "right to imprison" supersedes the right to liberty. Pot shouldn't be against the law -- but it is, because of stupidity and it means we have to buy a lot of anti depressants to compensate.
But really, society isn't breaking down because we don't have enough people in prison. A person should be a real menace to society in order to justify the government taking away their liberty. Prison is a sick, sad place. And I don't want to make this an easy process for the state.
What people don't realize here is how efficient Comcasts business model is; They create a problem and some company that uses their network pays them to resolve it -- no in-between muss and fuss and no need to involve the customer.
If Comcast can grow larger, they can create more toll booths on their digital superhighway to guarantee that people who use their network a lot, pay for it a lot.
If we all buy Comcast stock, we'll make a bundle and be able to afford to move to a country that isn't putting up with this fascist shit.
Ideally, a lot of ways that people avoid taxes would be to put money into endeavors that help society.
The MOST important thing is election reform and getting rid of all the pro corporate rulings of the Roberts Court -- those fascists have turned this country into an Oligarchy so tax law will become increasingly jury-rigged in favor of cheaters and not creators.
I agree that we should have a simple tax --- and it could look like that, but it would also need Progressive taxation -- and perhaps no taxes on people below the Median income. There is no way to have a Democracy if you do not redistribute wealth -- a point that will become very clear to everyone if we allow our current pooling of money with the top.1%.
The other issue here is -- we have to do something about the jobs this would remove. If you think that "make work" is wrong and our society is all about efficiency -- then you probably have one of the few jobs that is essential. Teachers, builders, doctors -- those are some of the "must have" jobs. I worked in marketing doing multimedia -- I only have a job because there isn't one company providing the product (and thus efficiency). Competition does lead to better products -- but it's very wasteful, why have two or more companies? Advertising is a large expense -- and it produces nothing. It does not really inform, it merely drowns out mindshare of other companies.
The fact is that MOST employment is created by government regulation and artificial rules of the game -- like not having monopolies.
If there were no complex taxes -- you don't need all the accountants -- much less TurboTax. But you also lose a lot of other professionals involved in this process. If you have no pollution controls -- then you don't need scrubbers and technicians to build them. It's more efficient to have only trains and houses set up on a grid -- you don't need people to build and service cars.
So yes -- make taxes simpler and fairer -- but we also have to have ways for people to be employed and that requires government -- it's really sad that the people who propose free market everything don't notice the cesspools on this planet where there are no rules for the game.
Then we have the people who don't get that concern over nuclear war prevented nuclear war and concern over ozone depletion pushed laws to reduce ozone depletion. We have an overabundance of people NOT listening to the sirens because they don't trust the smoke alarm.
The problem is if there is NO MONEY going to research -- there won't be enough people trained in the science because selfishly, they want to eat and raise families while doing their job.
Companies are perfectly happy to make billions a year pimping new formulations of old drugs or cough medicine -- next year's innovation; Avocado flavor! Evidenced by the fact that there is more spent on marketing at most drug companies than research.
Slashdot Mirror
I had no idea that hydro was so dangerous! A massive and poorly designed dam in China isn't necessarily just about running a turbine -- you can do that with a 2 foot drop. Then there are those tsunamis and hurricanes -- solution; we've got to get rid of all this dangerous water!
Next thing we'll find out there is a decommissioning cost to solar that makes it still more expensive than nuclear. I'm sure there's a solar clock from the Egyptian pyramids that people are still watching with suspicion -- if that were a nuclear power plant, it would be safe to bury it by now.
That seems like a lot of bother.
All you need is your important stuff in a pocket dimension which you access with your bag of holding and portal ring. You can escape by jumping in the pocket dimension and finding an exit in another location.
I'm betting that this poster is a woman assuming that scent molecules can be controlled for by double-blind when it's going to be difficult controlling the dose.
For instance; We've all known scientifically since the days of sailing that women are just bad luck.
I see a Monty Python skit here, Comcast forms the new company and they send out their agents in chain mail; "Bring out your pensioners, bring out your pensioners!" They throw all the older workers in the new "Omega Righteous Liabilities inc."
"But I'm not dead yet!"
The club him and continue dragging the cart to the next lucky employee.
Government doesn't HAVE TO approve monopolies -- they happen naturally if government does not regulate commerce. The regulation is faulty because the government depends on money to get elected and regulators are allowed to become lobbyists and lobbyists to become regulators.
Yes, this is fascism, on that I'll agree. And in our world, regulations are coddling and protecting the powerful from everyone else -- though that is because of corruption, not due to the nature of government.
If I'm the king of Spain, I suppose I'm going to want to SELL the serfs living in lands held by Napoleon.
If Comcast gets rid of people who HAVE A CHOICE to the competition -- they can just raise rates where there is no competition and overlap.
Yeah this is bullshit and the emperor has no clothes but the media and the bought out government are all there to tell the King of Comcast that he looks very regal in his birthday suit. It does not matter that anyone paying attention knows this is a bogus deal to screw customers.
Your comments are incredibly wrong.
"his base is too stupid to realize that that money is ultimately coming out of their pockets" -- The only thing I can reply to such a moronic statement is to pretend I'm talking to anyone who did NOT make such a statement. Cost of business comes out of profits. The market decides prices. Over time, if all companies have to pay the same tax -- it's a wash.
If we don't tax a company, there is no revenue to pay for anything -- and I don't get a discount on the happy meal. If we don't tax the company, who do we tax? Consumption, the worker, the land? Sales taxes are the most regressive and expensive to procure -- and of course the darling of people who don't live hand to mouth.
I just want to reiterate how annoying this think tank derived garbage is of "we can't tax businesses otherwise consumers pay". Because we already pay for more things out of pocket than we used to, and our country has less economic power than it used to.
"double taxation" -- cry me a river. By this stupid accounting, I'm quintuple taxed and I'm just a poor working stiff if I'm lucky.
US has one of the lowest effective taxes on corporations. And many of the fortune 500 companies pay 5% or less. Now if you are a small startup - taxes might be high, but you're not paying attention to who runs things.
And what is wrong with Hippies? They were right. Was Vietnam a good war? Is making love not better than war?
If the taxes just came from capital gains, then you eliminate stocks and companies become privately owned -- or they trade stock in other countries. There's no one solution. Economic activity where money is made is where you tax.
Or we could just stop paying banks to make loans -- and just pay all the people, which I think is the only viable solution for a future where most labor gets replaced by robots.
In FDR's day, corporations paid around 35% of the tax burden -- now it's under 7% and dropping.
We can't "afford things any more for some reason" we hear from the media.
We are supposed to be "more competitive" by allowing H1B visas so we can import educated people to work. These same corporations pay less of the bill and we pay more for education -- and then compete with workers who get education from a socialist government.
The discussion that we "can't tax rich people and corporations otherwise they would leave" is moot. What is the benefit of competing to have have a deadbeat over some other country where they won't pay taxes? The rich have made themselves useless to have in the hope that one day they might donate back to the society. Tax them all and if they leave, tax the hell out of imports and all companies unless they are local.
This term is abused and overused but in this case it is absolutely pertinent; "That blew my mind."
Seriously -- it's so staggering to consider that wild animals are barely like a sideshow or a zoo to domesticated livestock. Survival of the fittest? Not anymore; survival of the tasty.
If we ever come up with a really great artificial substitute that is more nutritious, it will make a huge difference to carbon "footprint" and water consumption to remove so many mammals in a few short years.
I just had some simulated meat at Burger King -- I can't recommend what they call the chicken strips.
Oh I see, Proper Regulation is just like communism - it's just never been done right before!
And gravity doesn't work -- because I waved my hands in the air and said so.
I'm holding back a huge list of regulations that do work. But keep praying that planes don't fly into each other, people stop at stop lights, and drinking water that doesn't have amoebas in it. The idea that you could get karma to be marked insightful, is more of a testament that Slashdot has lowered the bar.
The FCC is being driven by corporations now -- and most regulation these days is created by corporations for corporations. Who likes Sarbanes-Oxley? Big financial institutions who can produce mounds of paperwork nobody can read that solves nothing so that small companies cannot do financial services.
So you can say there is good and bad legislation, based on who pushed it forward -- but to say "regulations cannot be good" is like saying Hammers are all bad because you just gave them to psychotics in the super max prison.
"Something worth noting is that there have been cases of insurance companies cancelling individual and group policies, blaming it on the ACA, when in actuality, it was just the usual dicking around on their part."
Before the ACA, insurance premium increases were just insurance premium increases. About a few years ago they were "due to expectations about the ACA" and now after the ACA and henceforth they will be "due to the ACA we will have to ask you for more money we are totally sorry about this and it's out of our hands."
What is not out of the hands of insurance companies, is enough money to choke a small country.
The ACA just requires a policy to cover some basics -- and there were a lot of policies that were junk. Insurance companies are canceling people so they can make money and not be forced to give you a decent policy -- that's all there is to it. This is like leaving the mafia in a small town and the only change is the enforcer who extorts money out of you has to wash his hands and follow a dress code. And after getting their legs broken, some a-hole blames the dress code and not the mafia.
" Sorry, but your brand of libertarianism is too close to sociopathy in my book."
Is there ANOTHER brand of libertarianism?
As a Libertarian, when have you NOT followed the Republicans? Seriously. You mention; "go ahead and continue to follow your elites and their welfare state agenda" which is exactly the kind of phrase that comes out of a think tank created by wealthy elites who get the government to look after the welfare of big business.
You do know that the ACA codifies money to insurance programs? It's the exact opposite of a welfare state. If they had expanded Medicare, it would be a lot cheaper. 54% of all medical expenses are paid for by tax dollars (filling a huge hole of not-profitable left by insurance companies). That money right there could pay for healthcare if we had no insurance companies at all. All the benefits you have right now and no premiums or co-pay -- if you had Germany running the system.
The ACA sucks, but it sucks slightly less than the Year Over Year increases in premiums for our lousy, stinking, healthcare system. Please don't sully socialism by attaching it to something that has nothing to do with socialism as a civilized nation might do it.
Honestly, I don't know how it can tell the difference between snooping a fast-acting poison and a Happy Meal.
Instead of a lottery or affirmative action -- why don't we let everyone have higher education who wants it.
This country progressed with the GI bill and letting a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise afford college go. And we could do the same for trade schools. You only have to pay for education if you leave the country.
It's the reverse of the "H1-B Visa" where businesses don't pay for education in the USA and import people who got educations paid for by their countries.
Scalia dissented from an opinion where a right to innocence is removed? That's a surprise.
I can only assume that Thomas and Scalia take turns being "the bad guy" so it doesn't always look like a slam dunk that they'll vote with fascism each and every time.
What would shock me is real thought and concern for citizens from the likes of Scalia and Thomas.
Many police officers are quite certain of their ability to determine guilt or innocence; usually in direct relation to how much the person in front of them is pissing them off.
If it takes an "anonymous call" to make sure they get the bad guy they are 100% certain is bad -- then it's going to happen. There's already a drop bag and a drop gun for mistakes. Now there's going to be the burner phone.
Is America falling apart because we don't have enough poor people in prison or enough bankers in prison?
No a lawyer, but I thought "probable cause" was that the original CAUSE for the police stop and search has to be legit. If you can't arrest the driver for "forcing someone off the road" then anything found after that wasn't supported by the search.
Or maybe I'm living in a fantasy world. I'm just not too enthused to live in a country where the "right to imprison" supersedes the right to liberty. Pot shouldn't be against the law -- but it is, because of stupidity and it means we have to buy a lot of anti depressants to compensate.
But really, society isn't breaking down because we don't have enough people in prison. A person should be a real menace to society in order to justify the government taking away their liberty. Prison is a sick, sad place. And I don't want to make this an easy process for the state.
What people don't realize here is how efficient Comcasts business model is; They create a problem and some company that uses their network pays them to resolve it -- no in-between muss and fuss and no need to involve the customer.
If Comcast can grow larger, they can create more toll booths on their digital superhighway to guarantee that people who use their network a lot, pay for it a lot.
If we all buy Comcast stock, we'll make a bundle and be able to afford to move to a country that isn't putting up with this fascist shit.
Ideally, a lot of ways that people avoid taxes would be to put money into endeavors that help society.
The MOST important thing is election reform and getting rid of all the pro corporate rulings of the Roberts Court -- those fascists have turned this country into an Oligarchy so tax law will become increasingly jury-rigged in favor of cheaters and not creators.
I agree that we should have a simple tax --- and it could look like that, but it would also need Progressive taxation -- and perhaps no taxes on people below the Median income. There is no way to have a Democracy if you do not redistribute wealth -- a point that will become very clear to everyone if we allow our current pooling of money with the top .1%.
The other issue here is -- we have to do something about the jobs this would remove. If you think that "make work" is wrong and our society is all about efficiency -- then you probably have one of the few jobs that is essential. Teachers, builders, doctors -- those are some of the "must have" jobs. I worked in marketing doing multimedia -- I only have a job because there isn't one company providing the product (and thus efficiency). Competition does lead to better products -- but it's very wasteful, why have two or more companies? Advertising is a large expense -- and it produces nothing. It does not really inform, it merely drowns out mindshare of other companies.
The fact is that MOST employment is created by government regulation and artificial rules of the game -- like not having monopolies.
If there were no complex taxes -- you don't need all the accountants -- much less TurboTax. But you also lose a lot of other professionals involved in this process. If you have no pollution controls -- then you don't need scrubbers and technicians to build them. It's more efficient to have only trains and houses set up on a grid -- you don't need people to build and service cars.
So yes -- make taxes simpler and fairer -- but we also have to have ways for people to be employed and that requires government -- it's really sad that the people who propose free market everything don't notice the cesspools on this planet where there are no rules for the game.
Then we have the people who don't get that concern over nuclear war prevented nuclear war and concern over ozone depletion pushed laws to reduce ozone depletion. We have an overabundance of people NOT listening to the sirens because they don't trust the smoke alarm.
The problem is if there is NO MONEY going to research -- there won't be enough people trained in the science because selfishly, they want to eat and raise families while doing their job.
Companies are perfectly happy to make billions a year pimping new formulations of old drugs or cough medicine -- next year's innovation; Avocado flavor! Evidenced by the fact that there is more spent on marketing at most drug companies than research.