But critics have questioned the privacy implications of such a system
Why? The proposal is to make border control more efficient and accurate; They already check to see who you are when you enter or leave the country and you are required to show ID. You have no privacy now. Next, you will continue to have no privacy but transiting the the border will be faster and terrorists and other criminals faking their identities will be more easily detected.
If you oppose a government policy, then change the law, don't handicap its enforcement. We end up with these wasteful compromises in democracies, where one group prevails and enacts a policy as law, while its opponents undermine it by weakening its enforcement. ("Don't Ask Don't Tell" being the perfect example, the treatment of speed limits in the U.S. a good one as well.) Not collectively rational behavior.
I didn't think 30mil was enough money to entice the expenditures of space exploration...
Well that is a fascinating aspect of these X prize competitions, that the total amount of money and effort invested by the competitors and the quality of the best work produced is far greater than what could be purchased with the award money.
There must be some interesting lessons in the sociology and economics of that effect and perhaps some useful insights for managers there too.
That kind of thing has been going on at least since Stephenson's Rocket won the Rainhill Trials in 1829.
Good...the cesspool of political correctness is blowing up in their faces
While I don't agree with political correctness either (and do agree with what John Cleese says on the subject) , the Twitter problem is more general than that: Twitter's decision to police speech on their platform at all was the idiot move there. While their customers do reasonably want filters, those customers should be able to collectively create and individually select those filters, or none at all. Consider in comparison the Slashdot rating system: it is primitive and flawed, but its is the right kind of approach and more-or-less sort of works to permit free speech while de-emphasizing crap. The Slashdot editors censor and some great points get modded down by unfair moderators, but usually the better posts do percolate to the top.
Milo Yiannopoulos has made the point that Twitter's most controversial posters are also its biggest draws, so that therefore banning them is stupid for the platform and stupid for business. He's predicted its financial decline on that basis since he was banned on Twitter in July. Twitter stock has mostly hovered under $20/share since, so not down, but not the growth they need.
Russia's influence on the recent U.S. Presidential contest further legitimized the electoral outcome. Because Russia is a potent adversary, confronting it during the campaign as a candidate made the electoral competition a better test, one more representative of the winner's subsequent and challenging work in international relations. Hillary Clinton failed that test abysmally by surrounded herself with incompetent sycophants who fell for the stupidest of phishing scams, by her having engaged in such scandalous conduct for so many years that the leaks were significantly damaging, and by relying on such a thin veil of secrecy to conceal her dishonesty; Information wants to be free and those million-dollar speeches to Wall Street bankers were getting out one way or another.
It is backwards to assert that her evident ineptitude in protecting herself from the hacking and leaks which exposed her corruption recommends her for the office of U.S. President. On the contrary, getting owned by Russia in a presidential campaign is a good indication that the United States would have lost big to Russia in any subsequent foreign relations dispute with her as President.
After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these the moving impulses of our life. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence, but we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it...But it calls for additional effort to avoid even the appearance of the evil of selfishness. In every worthy profession, of course, there will always be a minority who will appeal to the baser instinct. There always have been, probably always will be, some who will feel that their own temporary interest may be furthered by betraying the interest of others.
The only government subsidy specific to fossil fuels is a home heating oil subsidy available to consumers; it is targeted at those too poor to afford winter heating to prevent them from freezing to death.
Democrat party congressmen rant on about how terrible are fossil fuel subsidies then they all turn on a dime and vote for that one with perfect reliability. The point is not that home heating oil subsidies are either good or bad, but instead that critics of fossil fuel subsidies are absolute hypocrites.
"A country is more than an economy. We're a civic society."
True, the "health" of the economy is an imperfect proxy for aggregate material wealth. While positively related to the social well-being of a society, there are additional determining factors, both spiritual and social.
The one advantage of the Chinese setup is you don't get a demagogue rising to the top purely by promising the ignorant and hateful everything they hope to get....
True, they tend to rely more on torture and execution of political dissidents over there.
Actually, in followup to my own post, Netflix might not really believe their own story about viewer indifference to movie catalog size. Rather, it is a negotiating tactic: They tell that to the studios when negotiating for streaming rights, "see, we don't really need a deal with you guys to be successful, so you'll have to lower your prices." By that interpretation, the Netflix executives are no dummies, but they assume the studio executives to be.
It's funny to watch executives try to reason from statistical evidence through to a valid interpretation of that evidence. I mean "funny", not in the ironic sense, but in the clownshow sense.
So it has not occurred to any of these bozos that that American viewers who care about the the size of the movie catalog do not use Netflix but choose an alternative, and Canadians who care about the size of the catalog do choose Netflix? American thinks, "Netflix sucks, too small a catalog, I'm renting elsewhere." Canadian thinks: "Hey, Netflix has a good size catalog, I'll go with them". It fits the evidence which Netflix offers perfectly. It's not a proven fact, it is an alternative explanation which must be excluded on the basis of evidence before concluding that the audiences do not care about the catalog. It might be the people who are not your customers who do care.
MBA : noun, A magical power which greatly increases the ratio of income to brains.
While it's not an exact match, Trump and Bannon are best described as mercantalist. Mercantilism is an antiquated and discredited economic theory and practice largely abandoned in Europe after the 18th century.
Among the flaws in that system is that it trades visible gains for hidden losses. (Over at the National Review, Kevin D. Williamson cites Frédéric Bastiat on that point in a great analysis of Trump's Carrier deal). An interesting thing about China luring away talent is that it draws attention to that loss of talent, making it less hidden.
Android commoditizes the remainder of the cell phone market, making margins slim. The revenue from Android is captured by Google in the form of advertising sales on their integrated browser/search instead of by the cell phone manufacturers.
It merits the reward of higher social status among your peer group of the neo-progressives perennially oblivious to the midwestern distaste for snotty liberal know-it-alls presuming to be our intellectual betters while demanding ever-more tax dollars, political power and control over our lives.
Not at all. Rule of law. Rule of law is the restriction of the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws. Regulation is the granting of arbitrary power to bureaucrats by legislatures.
If an employer satisfies his labor demand using foreign labor, they will not be hiring from the domestic labor pool.
I stated that intuitions about trade are mistaken. Better, I should have instead stated that they are stubbornly mistaken.
To quote myself in previous response within this thread: You neglect the essential point that for every diminution of domestic employment to the advance of foreign, there is necessarily a reciprocal expenditure by foreigners within the U.S. Trade is, to a first approximation, balanced; You name what is lost to us by trade while neglecting compensating gains from reciprocal transactions which, though unidentifiable in the specific, must necessarily exist, those being fundamental to the definition of trade
This is analogous to the claim that ownership of wealth by one individual does not deprive others of the ability to own wealth since the economy is not a zero sum game.
No, it is not analogous. Consider an example: Because you start making ice cream cones I immediately have to stop making bicycle tires, but if you continue to make ice cream cones for a sufficiently long duration then I can resume making bicycle tires? You are being absurd.
You neglect the essential point that for every diminution of domestic employment to the advance of foreign, there is necessarily a reciprocal expenditure by foreigners within the U.S. Trade is, to a first approximation, balanced; You name what is lost to us by trade while neglecting compensating gains from reciprocal transactions which, though unidentifiable in the specific, must necessarily exist, those being fundamental to the definition of trade; You do not make a point so much as miss the point.
Yours is a contrary view deriving from a failure of understanding and remains such until addressing that pervasive flaw in your argumentation.
Re-reading it now, the second listed point would be better stated as, "employment stimulates more employment because every producer is also a consumer".
Slashdot Mirror
And best of all, I don't have a driver tell me, "Cash only, credit card machine is broken."
The last cab I took, the driver asked for my credit card and skimmed my card. That's why it was the last cab I took.
from the ./ summary:
Why? The proposal is to make border control more efficient and accurate; They already check to see who you are when you enter or leave the country and you are required to show ID. You have no privacy now. Next, you will continue to have no privacy but transiting the the border will be faster and terrorists and other criminals faking their identities will be more easily detected.
If you oppose a government policy, then change the law, don't handicap its enforcement. We end up with these wasteful compromises in democracies, where one group prevails and enacts a policy as law, while its opponents undermine it by weakening its enforcement. ("Don't Ask Don't Tell" being the perfect example, the treatment of speed limits in the U.S. a good one as well.) Not collectively rational behavior.
I didn't think 30mil was enough money to entice the expenditures of space exploration...
Well that is a fascinating aspect of these X prize competitions, that the total amount of money and effort invested by the competitors and the quality of the best work produced is far greater than what could be purchased with the award money.
There must be some interesting lessons in the sociology and economics of that effect and perhaps some useful insights for managers there too.
That kind of thing has been going on at least since Stephenson's Rocket won the Rainhill Trials in 1829.
From the summary:
"Theranos... failed to provide accurate results to patients"
No. They fraudulently claimed to provide accurate results. If they had merely failed it would not be a scandal.
There is no political mechanism to reverse the decision.
Not true. Similar actions have been reversed before.
Good...the cesspool of political correctness is blowing up in their faces
While I don't agree with political correctness either (and do agree with what John Cleese says on the subject) , the Twitter problem is more general than that: Twitter's decision to police speech on their platform at all was the idiot move there. While their customers do reasonably want filters, those customers should be able to collectively create and individually select those filters, or none at all. Consider in comparison the Slashdot rating system: it is primitive and flawed, but its is the right kind of approach and more-or-less sort of works to permit free speech while de-emphasizing crap. The Slashdot editors censor and some great points get modded down by unfair moderators, but usually the better posts do percolate to the top.
Milo Yiannopoulos has made the point that Twitter's most controversial posters are also its biggest draws, so that therefore banning them is stupid for the platform and stupid for business. He's predicted its financial decline on that basis since he was banned on Twitter in July. Twitter stock has mostly hovered under $20/share since, so not down, but not the growth they need.
Because of an ongoing non-compete pact between Samsung and Google...
How is that not collusion and an anti-competitive trade practice?
Russia's influence on the recent U.S. Presidential contest further legitimized the electoral outcome. Because Russia is a potent adversary, confronting it during the campaign as a candidate made the electoral competition a better test, one more representative of the winner's subsequent and challenging work in international relations. Hillary Clinton failed that test abysmally by surrounded herself with incompetent sycophants who fell for the stupidest of phishing scams, by her having engaged in such scandalous conduct for so many years that the leaks were significantly damaging, and by relying on such a thin veil of secrecy to conceal her dishonesty; Information wants to be free and those million-dollar speeches to Wall Street bankers were getting out one way or another.
It is backwards to assert that her evident ineptitude in protecting herself from the hacking and leaks which exposed her corruption recommends her for the office of U.S. President. On the contrary, getting owned by Russia in a presidential campaign is a good indication that the United States would have lost big to Russia in any subsequent foreign relations dispute with her as President.
After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these the moving impulses of our life. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence, but we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it...But it calls for additional effort to avoid even the appearance of the evil of selfishness. In every worthy profession, of course, there will always be a minority who will appeal to the baser instinct. There always have been, probably always will be, some who will feel that their own temporary interest may be furthered by betraying the interest of others.
--Calvin Coolidge
The only government subsidy specific to fossil fuels is a home heating oil subsidy available to consumers; it is targeted at those too poor to afford winter heating to prevent them from freezing to death.
Democrat party congressmen rant on about how terrible are fossil fuel subsidies then they all turn on a dime and vote for that one with perfect reliability. The point is not that home heating oil subsidies are either good or bad, but instead that critics of fossil fuel subsidies are absolute hypocrites.
from the ./ summary:
The justices in their 8-0 ruling sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.
Another way to put that is the Supreme Court unanimously decided that both sides need to keep paying their lawyers.
"A country is more than an economy. We're a civic society."
True, the "health" of the economy is an imperfect proxy for aggregate material wealth. While positively related to the social well-being of a society, there are additional determining factors, both spiritual and social.
The one advantage of the Chinese setup is you don't get a demagogue rising to the top purely by promising the ignorant and hateful everything they hope to get....
True, they tend to rely more on torture and execution of political dissidents over there.
Actually, in followup to my own post, Netflix might not really believe their own story about viewer indifference to movie catalog size. Rather, it is a negotiating tactic: They tell that to the studios when negotiating for streaming rights, "see, we don't really need a deal with you guys to be successful, so you'll have to lower your prices." By that interpretation, the Netflix executives are no dummies, but they assume the studio executives to be.
It's funny to watch executives try to reason from statistical evidence through to a valid interpretation of that evidence. I mean "funny", not in the ironic sense, but in the clownshow sense.
So it has not occurred to any of these bozos that that American viewers who care about the the size of the movie catalog do not use Netflix but choose an alternative, and Canadians who care about the size of the catalog do choose Netflix? American thinks, "Netflix sucks, too small a catalog, I'm renting elsewhere." Canadian thinks: "Hey, Netflix has a good size catalog, I'll go with them". It fits the evidence which Netflix offers perfectly. It's not a proven fact, it is an alternative explanation which must be excluded on the basis of evidence before concluding that the audiences do not care about the catalog. It might be the people who are not your customers who do care.
MBA : noun, A magical power which greatly increases the ratio of income to brains.
While it's not an exact match, Trump and Bannon are best described as mercantalist. Mercantilism is an antiquated and discredited economic theory and practice largely abandoned in Europe after the 18th century.
Among the flaws in that system is that it trades visible gains for hidden losses. (Over at the National Review, Kevin D. Williamson cites Frédéric Bastiat on that point in a great analysis of Trump's Carrier deal). An interesting thing about China luring away talent is that it draws attention to that loss of talent, making it less hidden.
Android commoditizes the remainder of the cell phone market, making margins slim. The revenue from Android is captured by Google in the form of advertising sales on their integrated browser/search instead of by the cell phone manufacturers.
Own the platform, not the factory.
Nothing is going to get through your cognitive dissonance...
Well, there you go again.
"...the effect COMPLETELY DISAPPEARS once you control for race and education levels."
See Nate Silver's tweet's here.
Well, as they say, truth has a liberal bias,..
Really, please, keep saying stuff just like that.
It merits the reward of higher social status among your peer group of the neo-progressives perennially oblivious to the midwestern distaste for snotty liberal know-it-alls presuming to be our intellectual betters while demanding ever-more tax dollars, political power and control over our lives.
Win elections much?
It is a well known fact that reality has a strong liberal bias.
What insufferable arrogance.
You just need to make it illegal to [...]
So... a regulation?
Not at all. Rule of law. Rule of law is the restriction of the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws. Regulation is the granting of arbitrary power to bureaucrats by legislatures.
If an employer satisfies his labor demand using foreign labor, they will not be hiring from the domestic labor pool.
I stated that intuitions about trade are mistaken. Better, I should have instead stated that they are stubbornly mistaken.
To quote myself in previous response within this thread: You neglect the essential point that for every diminution of domestic employment to the advance of foreign, there is necessarily a reciprocal expenditure by foreigners within the U.S. Trade is, to a first approximation, balanced; You name what is lost to us by trade while neglecting compensating gains from reciprocal transactions which, though unidentifiable in the specific, must necessarily exist, those being fundamental to the definition of trade
This is analogous to the claim that ownership of wealth by one individual does not deprive others of the ability to own wealth since the economy is not a zero sum game.
No, it is not analogous. Consider an example: Because you start making ice cream cones I immediately have to stop making bicycle tires, but if you continue to make ice cream cones for a sufficiently long duration then I can resume making bicycle tires? You are being absurd.
You neglect the essential point that for every diminution of domestic employment to the advance of foreign, there is necessarily a reciprocal expenditure by foreigners within the U.S. Trade is, to a first approximation, balanced; You name what is lost to us by trade while neglecting compensating gains from reciprocal transactions which, though unidentifiable in the specific, must necessarily exist, those being fundamental to the definition of trade; You do not make a point so much as miss the point.
Yours is a contrary view deriving from a failure of understanding and remains such until addressing that pervasive flaw in your argumentation.
Wish I had mod points.
Great post!
Thanks!
Re-reading it now, the second listed point would be better stated as, "employment stimulates more employment because every producer is also a consumer".