This assumes that companies don't have a choice of insurance providers, which is nonsense; they do, and they change them all the time. The options available to an individual are limited, yes. It's an extraordinarily distorted market, yes. But it is a market.
Unless you create a -1, Spam downmod and badly punish those who use it on stuff that isn't spam (maybe if a dozen metamods agree the comment isn't spam, the editors take a look and if justified, the modder's karma is reset to the minimum possible value), this doesn't solve the problem.
I'm 38. Draw your own conclusions about how experienced I am. I'm from a small city in the South; Wal-Mart is not only cheaper than the stores that preceded it, it's better, too. Not all of us can live in Beverly Hills, and I make a metric fuckton more money living in a crappy little metro in the South (right next to both our families) than I would in a big city. The airport's only 15 minutes from the house, and you never need to get there more than 45 minutes before your flight leaves.
High-end stereo shops weren't killed by Wal-Mart. I don't buy electronics at Wal-Mart for the same reason I don't buy my steak there: they don't sell high-end stuff, they sell cheap stuff. You're a fool to buy anything that isn't commodity-grade there. OTOH, I'm still using a $30 food processor I bought at WM years ago, because I use a food processor once or twice a year. Saved me about $300 vs a Cuisinart.
Record stores? Those were killed by Amazon and piracy, not Wal-Mart.
Pharmacy and optometrist? I buy contacts at Wal-Mart because my contacts are a cheap commodity. I buy glasses from a local optician because I have awful myopia and need the thinnest material possible, but they cost over $500/pair for the lenses alone.
Hardware and garden/nursery? Hardware stores weren't put out of business by Wal-Mart; they've been killed by Lowes and Home Depot. Nurseries are doing just fine, they've moved away from the commodity plants and specialized in pots, better/rarer plants, and landscape/garden design. When I want to get this year's herbs (sweet and Thai basil every year, some peppers, maybe cilantro), I go to Wal-Mart because it's cheaper. When I want 400 impatiens, I go to a big-box. When I want a palmetto, I go to a nursery.
local businesses that usually have great service and do one thing really well. And we all know how that's turning out...
What great service, and what one thing do they do really well? I've never been impressed with the service obtained at the sort of store that Wal-Mart has killed. Wal-Mart is open 24/7 at nearly all locations. In big cities this isn't necessarily a huge triumph, but - actual example from ca. 2008 - your iPod adapter dies at 8 AM on Sunday, in the rural South, just after the start of a twelve-hour road trip. If you're lucky, there will be a Radio Shack down the road that will open around noon. Wal-Mart? They're open, the nearest one is visible from the highway, and it's only 20 miles down the road, because they put stores in towns of 5000 people. You go inside, get your adapter for far less than the Radio Shack rape price, and maybe even pick up some snacks for the road while you're in there. I don't buy my steak at Wal-Mart... but commodity stuff? Absolutely.
Not Amazon's fault. Apple's. Amazon used to sell ebooks at ebook prices - new $18 hardbacks for $9.99 in Kindle Edition - until the "agency model" gave the publishers the upper hand.
I don't think Amazon is a perfect company, but they definitely are pro-consumer in the same way that great multi-supplier salesmen all are - they want the best deal for the customer, not the supplier, and they collect their money for providing good customers to the suppliers.
It will. My wife is a godawful driver - not just technically, but because she can't navigate (true story: first day she had a driver's license, she had to ask her parents how to get to school; from their house only three turns are required on roads that are otherwise straight as an arrow). She is a special case of the women-can't-do-spatial-visualization problem, in that she couldn't stand at our front door and tell you which direction it faces even as the afternoon sun streams in. I can assure you that she will be the proud owner of the first sub-$100k self-driving car because it will make my life so much easier when she doesn't need to be driven places.
So now it's not that monopolies will develop because your school board are idiots, nor that private schools are engaged in a race to the bottom (how you can come up with such confused ideas is beyond me - when private schools suck, the parents take their kids out). Now it's all about the tiny handful of students who are either learning-disabled or uneducable? You've moved the goalposts so many times they're no longer in the arena, and you are clearly engaged in mala fides argumentation.
The answer is that you fund a specific school for such children, just like modern alternative schools. That took me all of ten seconds to think up. Was that so hard?
First response, you proposed the incredibly idiotic idea of handing over your entire school district to one company. I suggested that was inimical to the whole idea of charter schools.
Second response, you tried to tell me that schools were like fire services, used by very few people. I suggested you were a fucking idiot if you actually believed that.
Third and fourth responses, you tried to tell me that private schools are engaged in a race to the bottom. Are you high on crack?
If you want to talk about a service very few use, well, how many people have house fires? Or medical emergencies? Not many, and a shitload fewer than those who send their kids to school.
That was your argument, not mine. Don't blame me if it sucks.
if all the schools are private, for-profit entities, you can count on the race to the bottom happening eventually
Yes, because they're all trying to go out of business. Do you espouse incredibly fucking idiotic ideas for fun or for profit?
Even if there were no consolidation, you can bet your ass that there would be a rapid race for the bottom in terms of who can provide the service the cheapest, quality be damned.
If parents choose the schools, this doesn't happen. See: the private school market. There are a wide variety of options at numerous price points.
I've never needed the fire department, should I be pissed that I'm paying for that?
If you can't see the difference between services used by very few and services used by nearly everyone, you must be a public school grad.
Why on earth would you give the whole district over to one company? That would be idiocy. The entire point of charter schools is to introduce competition and let parents choose where to send their kids.
I already pay for a set of schools that I never used, that my sister never used, that my wife and her brother never used, and that none of our children will ever use, because they're terrible. Does the fact that they're provided by the government somehow make them better?
I'll never understand those who think that if the government just spent more money, things will get better. Unless you're a complete and utter Stalinist, you must support at least some limitation on the size of the state.
The fact that governments spend money does not mean that governments create wealth - at best they can create the conditions that make wealth-creation possible. They take money away from people who actually do create wealth and spend it to do all sorts of things - some of them are extremely beneficial (like basic policing), some are neutral, and some are incredibly harmful (like the Farm Bill). As long as they're spending money on things in the first category, it's useful. When they do stuff in the last one, they're actively harming the citizens by wasting money.
A) The alternative is worse.
Not proven. In fact, why don't you look at what the Feds say? We've roughly doubled our education spending per pupil in the last forty years in public elementary and secondary schools. Is it your contention that we've doubled the quality of results?
But though the common people cannot, in any civilised society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
Does that sound like a university education to you? Or just an elementary one? BTW, he advocates that university professors be paid directly by their students.
The advantage in the private sector is not that companies are inherently more efficient than governments. It's that inefficient companies tend to go out of business.
Smith was also dealing with a world in which there was mass illiteracy. Advocating the public provision of a sixth-grade education is very different from saying that we should push every single student, regardless of intellectual abilities and interests, to go to college.
Few people are too stupid to learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. Once you start hitting real science and math, typically in junior high/middle school, people start to fall by the wayside. At that point, we are engaged in the provision of free babysitting, not education, in an increasingly large portion of the population. This is counterproductive, because it simultaneously prevents students who don't want to be there from being able to go out and earn a living and subjects those who do want to be there to their antics.
Would I like to live in a well-educated society? Yes, of course I would. But my world - and the world of most Slashdotters - is not the world of most people. Most people aren't capable of getting a college degree from even the crappiest of schools, and the idiotic idea that every person should spend their first twenty-two years on earth in pursuit of a bachelor's degree is holding us back as a society. We spend far too much money on education, for far too little return. The fact that Adam Smith saw some low-hanging fruit to pick doesn't mean that the marginal dollar spent on education is always a net positive.
Benzoate does not acidify to benzene. It acidifies to benzoic acid, which despite its name would be better named phenylic acid - there's a carbon hanging off that ring, just like in phenylalanine.
It doesn't do that if you are turning at a light, just if you lane-drift. And it doesn't stop you, just buzz the steering wheel. (My mother-in-law has one. Pretty neat.)
at least 100 miles apart where it starts to become too far to drive
Uh, what? 100 mi is nothing. I've driven that far each way for lunch. Combined with door-to-door service and no timetables to meet? The personal car is the acme of transportation for the foreseeable future (i.e., at least until we develop essentially free energy). The self-driving personal car will only magnify this effect.
Slashdot Mirror
This assumes that companies don't have a choice of insurance providers, which is nonsense; they do, and they change them all the time. The options available to an individual are limited, yes. It's an extraordinarily distorted market, yes. But it is a market.
Unless you create a -1, Spam downmod and badly punish those who use it on stuff that isn't spam (maybe if a dozen metamods agree the comment isn't spam, the editors take a look and if justified, the modder's karma is reset to the minimum possible value), this doesn't solve the problem.
I'm 38. Draw your own conclusions about how experienced I am. I'm from a small city in the South; Wal-Mart is not only cheaper than the stores that preceded it, it's better, too. Not all of us can live in Beverly Hills, and I make a metric fuckton more money living in a crappy little metro in the South (right next to both our families) than I would in a big city. The airport's only 15 minutes from the house, and you never need to get there more than 45 minutes before your flight leaves.
High-end stereo shops weren't killed by Wal-Mart. I don't buy electronics at Wal-Mart for the same reason I don't buy my steak there: they don't sell high-end stuff, they sell cheap stuff. You're a fool to buy anything that isn't commodity-grade there. OTOH, I'm still using a $30 food processor I bought at WM years ago, because I use a food processor once or twice a year. Saved me about $300 vs a Cuisinart.
Record stores? Those were killed by Amazon and piracy, not Wal-Mart.
Pharmacy and optometrist? I buy contacts at Wal-Mart because my contacts are a cheap commodity. I buy glasses from a local optician because I have awful myopia and need the thinnest material possible, but they cost over $500/pair for the lenses alone.
Hardware and garden/nursery? Hardware stores weren't put out of business by Wal-Mart; they've been killed by Lowes and Home Depot. Nurseries are doing just fine, they've moved away from the commodity plants and specialized in pots, better/rarer plants, and landscape/garden design. When I want to get this year's herbs (sweet and Thai basil every year, some peppers, maybe cilantro), I go to Wal-Mart because it's cheaper. When I want 400 impatiens, I go to a big-box. When I want a palmetto, I go to a nursery.
local businesses that usually have great service and do one thing really well. And we all know how that's turning out...
What great service, and what one thing do they do really well? I've never been impressed with the service obtained at the sort of store that Wal-Mart has killed. Wal-Mart is open 24/7 at nearly all locations. In big cities this isn't necessarily a huge triumph, but - actual example from ca. 2008 - your iPod adapter dies at 8 AM on Sunday, in the rural South, just after the start of a twelve-hour road trip. If you're lucky, there will be a Radio Shack down the road that will open around noon. Wal-Mart? They're open, the nearest one is visible from the highway, and it's only 20 miles down the road, because they put stores in towns of 5000 people. You go inside, get your adapter for far less than the Radio Shack rape price, and maybe even pick up some snacks for the road while you're in there. I don't buy my steak at Wal-Mart... but commodity stuff? Absolutely.
Not Amazon's fault. Apple's. Amazon used to sell ebooks at ebook prices - new $18 hardbacks for $9.99 in Kindle Edition - until the "agency model" gave the publishers the upper hand.
I don't think Amazon is a perfect company, but they definitely are pro-consumer in the same way that great multi-supplier salesmen all are - they want the best deal for the customer, not the supplier, and they collect their money for providing good customers to the suppliers.
It will. My wife is a godawful driver - not just technically, but because she can't navigate (true story: first day she had a driver's license, she had to ask her parents how to get to school; from their house only three turns are required on roads that are otherwise straight as an arrow). She is a special case of the women-can't-do-spatial-visualization problem, in that she couldn't stand at our front door and tell you which direction it faces even as the afternoon sun streams in. I can assure you that she will be the proud owner of the first sub-$100k self-driving car because it will make my life so much easier when she doesn't need to be driven places.
3 nucleotides is not a genome of a living thing
If it can self-replicate, it is. A single self-replicating molecule in the right conditions is all you need to start life.
Sorry, I thought you wanted to have a serious discussion. I didn't realize you owned a straw man factory. Have a nice day.
We do this every day. Private businesses are required not to discriminate based on race, sex, ethnicity, or disabled status.
So now it's not that monopolies will develop because your school board are idiots, nor that private schools are engaged in a race to the bottom (how you can come up with such confused ideas is beyond me - when private schools suck, the parents take their kids out). Now it's all about the tiny handful of students who are either learning-disabled or uneducable? You've moved the goalposts so many times they're no longer in the arena, and you are clearly engaged in mala fides argumentation.
The answer is that you fund a specific school for such children, just like modern alternative schools. That took me all of ten seconds to think up. Was that so hard?
First response, you proposed the incredibly idiotic idea of handing over your entire school district to one company. I suggested that was inimical to the whole idea of charter schools.
Second response, you tried to tell me that schools were like fire services, used by very few people. I suggested you were a fucking idiot if you actually believed that.
Third and fourth responses, you tried to tell me that private schools are engaged in a race to the bottom. Are you high on crack?
If you want to talk about a service very few use, well, how many people have house fires? Or medical emergencies? Not many, and a shitload fewer than those who send their kids to school.
That was your argument, not mine. Don't blame me if it sucks.
if all the schools are private, for-profit entities, you can count on the race to the bottom happening eventually
Yes, because they're all trying to go out of business. Do you espouse incredibly fucking idiotic ideas for fun or for profit?
Even if there were no consolidation, you can bet your ass that there would be a rapid race for the bottom in terms of who can provide the service the cheapest, quality be damned.
If parents choose the schools, this doesn't happen. See: the private school market. There are a wide variety of options at numerous price points.
I've never needed the fire department, should I be pissed that I'm paying for that?
If you can't see the difference between services used by very few and services used by nearly everyone, you must be a public school grad.
Why on earth would you give the whole district over to one company? That would be idiocy. The entire point of charter schools is to introduce competition and let parents choose where to send their kids.
I already pay for a set of schools that I never used, that my sister never used, that my wife and her brother never used, and that none of our children will ever use, because they're terrible. Does the fact that they're provided by the government somehow make them better?
The fact that governments spend money does not mean that governments create wealth - at best they can create the conditions that make wealth-creation possible. They take money away from people who actually do create wealth and spend it to do all sorts of things - some of them are extremely beneficial (like basic policing), some are neutral, and some are incredibly harmful (like the Farm Bill). As long as they're spending money on things in the first category, it's useful. When they do stuff in the last one, they're actively harming the citizens by wasting money.
A) The alternative is worse.
Not proven. In fact, why don't you look at what the Feds say? We've roughly doubled our education spending per pupil in the last forty years in public elementary and secondary schools. Is it your contention that we've doubled the quality of results?
But though the common people cannot, in any civilised society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
Does that sound like a university education to you? Or just an elementary one? BTW, he advocates that university professors be paid directly by their students.
The advantage in the private sector is not that companies are inherently more efficient than governments. It's that inefficient companies tend to go out of business.
Smith was also dealing with a world in which there was mass illiteracy. Advocating the public provision of a sixth-grade education is very different from saying that we should push every single student, regardless of intellectual abilities and interests, to go to college.
Few people are too stupid to learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. Once you start hitting real science and math, typically in junior high/middle school, people start to fall by the wayside. At that point, we are engaged in the provision of free babysitting, not education, in an increasingly large portion of the population. This is counterproductive, because it simultaneously prevents students who don't want to be there from being able to go out and earn a living and subjects those who do want to be there to their antics.
Would I like to live in a well-educated society? Yes, of course I would. But my world - and the world of most Slashdotters - is not the world of most people. Most people aren't capable of getting a college degree from even the crappiest of schools, and the idiotic idea that every person should spend their first twenty-two years on earth in pursuit of a bachelor's degree is holding us back as a society. We spend far too much money on education, for far too little return. The fact that Adam Smith saw some low-hanging fruit to pick doesn't mean that the marginal dollar spent on education is always a net positive.
To the cockfaces that downmodded us: downmod this, asswipe. Burn your mod points. I'll still be sitting at Karma: Fuck You Awesome forever.
No shit. Fuck the downmods.
If drinkypoo and I agree on an idea, it must be the right choice.
You can get gas for $1.99 a gallon? Do tell.
I've driven a lot farther than that for sex... but it was great sex.
Benzoate does not acidify to benzene. It acidifies to benzoic acid, which despite its name would be better named phenylic acid - there's a carbon hanging off that ring, just like in phenylalanine.
It doesn't do that if you are turning at a light, just if you lane-drift. And it doesn't stop you, just buzz the steering wheel. (My mother-in-law has one. Pretty neat.)
at least 100 miles apart where it starts to become too far to drive
Uh, what? 100 mi is nothing. I've driven that far each way for lunch. Combined with door-to-door service and no timetables to meet? The personal car is the acme of transportation for the foreseeable future (i.e., at least until we develop essentially free energy). The self-driving personal car will only magnify this effect.