And a lot of that "efficiency" they force on their other suppliers results in off-loading infrastructure costs onto the taxpayer.
Uh, why should my employer pay my health care? This happened only because of WWII era wage controls leading to non-cash benefits for medical care being tax deductible to corporations.
I know a company that does business in Venezuela (note: I don't work for them:) They keep all of their expensive IT equipment in the US, and only use a satellite link to provide their services there. They do this because they are too afraid to install much physical plant in Venezuela, lest it be appropriated by the government. The recent power issues have also shown this strategy to be a good one.
what socialized healthcare system in the world stops you from doing any of those?
Medicaid. Let's not forget that the US system is 50% socialized already (% of medical expenditures) by Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc.
The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement was due to a lawsuit by 46 states demanding reimbursement for Medicaid payment from the four largest tobacco companies. This lead to a $10/carton price hike for cigarette users.
So if the government is a bunch of incompetent, inefficient morons who can never be as good as private industry, then why the hell do you care if they give people the OPTION of choosing a government plan?
Because the government will subsidize the public option and put additional regulations on the private market to ensure that the public option becomes the only option. Even if this is not how the option starts out, it will be how it goes. Much like how Medicare has expanded over the years to include things like the drug benefit.
Also see public schools versus private schools in the US, or NHS versus private doctors in the UK.
In truth, I expect the evolution of the "public option" to put serious reductions on doctor pay (as we see in all European/Canadian health systems). A private insurance company can try to negotiate lower doctor pay (and they try), but only the government can mandate it. I'm wary, but I don't know exactly what will happen to our doctor pool if US doctor pay is reduced to European levels. Maybe nothing. Maybe something bad.
Even Medicare in the US has lower overheads than private American insurers.
Actually Medicare has higher per-patient Administrative costs than US private insurers. But Medicare has lower overall Administrative costs as a total percent of medical expenditures than private insurance. This is likely because old people on medicare are sicker and have much higher per-patient medical costs than the private insurance pool, which tends to be younger and healthier.
US private insurers have a lot of non-Administrative costs, including state insurance premium taxes, corporate income taxes, but also private insurers provide a range of services besides direct medical payments (such as health call centers, health information programs for their corporate clients, etc.)
By the way, here is an interesting article about the NHS computerization efforts: Tories accuse government of handcuffing health service computer contracts. "It is devastating for taxpayers to watch the government sign away billions more pounds on a failing IT Programme and tie the hands of the next government".
one of the primary reasons that the FAA was saddled with ancient technology for years was the practice of losing bidders (including us more often than not) dragging the results into court.
I've seen this from another viewpoint. A government-funded project by a large non-profit bids and evaluates technological solution. One vendor is chosen. The losing vendor calls up their Congressman, who applies political pressure for the government-funded project to adopt the losing technology.
Private businesses are much better at keeping their failures under wraps.
From the public, perhaps, but if you are a private company and your competitor is more efficient than you, you lose profitability and may go out of business.
Thus we have Walmart, the most efficient retailer on the planet, who also pushes efficiency requirements on their suppliers.
In government, there is little incentive to enhance efficiency. Government budget reductions are rarely related to efficiency, but due to public choice politics. It is true that promises to be efficient may help your political chances of getting more funding, but efficiency track record rarely has budgetary results.
I'll add that government employees are more difficult to shift job responsibilities to enhance efficiency, or to lay off to reduce costs once efficiencies have been enhanced, because they are more highly unionized than private employees.
Oh, c'mon. What risk is there in practice, and not in theoretical conjectures?
I can tell you that right now there are plenty of NHL games on TicketsNow that are reselling below the lowest face value of a ticket in the arena (like $7 for Phoenix vs. St. Louis).
Resellers may try to go for events that are sell-outs, but it doesn't always work that way. For example, last year Green Day did not sell out the New Orleans Arena, and neither did Coldplay nor Creed. Many tickets were probably left in the hands of resellers.
If reselling were risk-free, why would venues push the risk onto ticketing companies (through fixed exclusive "lock-in" payments) and resellers? Venues can't afford the risk because they tend to have fixed regular commercial mortgage and labor costs.
The scalper makes money by making an item scarcer that it would have otherwise been, and then selling it for what the market will now bear.
How about the scalper makes money by taking on the risk that he/she may/may not be able to resell tickets for above face value. In doing so, they remove some of the risk to their suppliers (the artist, the promoter, the venue, and the ticketing company).
Risk is generally correlated with potential reward in investments.
Thus a scalper also makes tickets less scarce by reducing the risk to the suppliers and thus encouraging a concert to happen that would not otherwise occur.
I talked with a few of the bigger scalpers and offered them $20 bucks for a pair of seats.
Indeed, often scalpers take a bath. For example, you can go on TicketsNow right now and get nosebleed seats for St. Louis Blues at Phoenix Coyotes for $7, which is $3.75 cheaper than the cheapest primary market ticket for that game.
The reason that scalping is illegal is NOT because the act of selling tickets at the highest possible price is illegal. It's because its very hard for the purchaser to know whether the ticket is legitimate or not.
TicketsNow can re-issue valid barcodes for Ticketmaster tickets, thus this problem has been eradicated...
Scalping actually became illegal because of the perceived problems of people standing around a venue offering speculatively purchased tickets (sometimes below face price!) The "stand outside the venue" kind of scalping is still illegal in many cities.
Because of the history of these laws, legit resellers like StubHub and TicketsNow must maintain huge databases of local laws and ensure they are doing legal reselling. For example, in Ontario and Arkansas you can't resell a ticket for more than face value. New Jersey has a 20% mark-up limit. Many cities also have their own rules.
Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin found that famine in her native Ethiopia was not due to a lack of supply of food, but to a problem with distribution.
How about the fact that most farmers in Ethiopia cannot own their land, they must lease it from the government, making it impossible to get a loan for supplies.
You know what else is wrong with Ethiopia:
Relatively rigid labor regulations hinder employment and productivity growth. Firing unneeded or poorly performing employees is difficult. Restrictions on work hours are inflexible.
Corruption is perceived as pervasive. Ethiopia ranks 126th out of 179 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2008.
The government strongly influences lending and owns the largest bank, which dominates the banking sector.
Foreign participation is prohibited in domestic banking, insurance and microcredit services, and several other activities. All investments must be approved and certified and may be subject to additional restrictions. The judicial system remains poorly staffed and inexperienced. Foreign exchange accounts, payments, and current transfers are subject to tight controls and restrictions.
Inflation has skyrocketed, averaging 21.8 percent between 2006 and 2008.
Ethiopia's weighted average tariff rate was 11.5 percent in 2008. Import taxes, import restrictions, restrictive foreign exchange controls, services market barriers, non-transparent government procurement, import licensing, cumbersome customs clearance, and inadequate infrastructure add to the cost of trade. All imports must be channeled through Ethiopian nationals registered as official import or distribution agents with the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
The overall freedom to conduct a business remains constrained by Ethiopia's regulatory environment.
is it really true that a lot people out there believe this anticompetitive bullshit is acceptable, even legal?
Yes, I think anti-trust laws are totally stupid and unnecessary. I don't care what price a Miley Cyrus concert ticket is.
I do care that when I talk with competitors about file standards for our industry that I need to have a lawyer in the room to avoid being sued by someone for anti-competitive practice. Almost as annoying as broad patents that try to cover obvious things.
A rise in prices will price out some people who could have afforded the lower fixed prices
A rise in price is a signal to entrepreneurs to produce more (in this case play the band in bigger stadiums, more nights, more tours, etc.)
That is why command economies fail, there is now way in a commanded economy to calculate the incredible web of supplies needed for production without price signals.
Artists HATE this idea. They are trying to signal to their fans that they believe "in the little guy", thus (in public) they say they like cheap tickets that sell on the primary market below their actual value in the resale market.
Yet artists typically resell the batch of tickets they get for their shows. Plus when their tickets resell for big money, it signals to promoters and venues that they are "sure sell-outs" which helps them put together tours to ensure their ongoing livelihood.
Hell why don't we just go all the way and print the purchasers name on the damned ticket and if you don't show up at the event with positive ID sorry out of luck.
Some artists (such as Miley Cyrus) are insisting on "ticketless" ticketing, where you just show your credit card and ID at the venue.
There is a tension between artists who want to seem like anyone can buy a cheap ticket, the venues who dislike the variability of ticket sales, ticketing companies that make money by mitigating the risk to the venue, and brokers who mitigate the risk to the ticketers. A "sure sell-out" artist like Miley Cyrus can do "no-scalping" ticketless ticketing, but most artists who may or may not sell out a venue could not get the venue to agree to ticketless ticketing without reselling.
Ever heard of the infamous Ticketmaster(TM) "convenience fee"?
A look at their SEC filing shows that most of the "convenience fee" ends up going back to the venues as exclusive lock-in fees. This shifts risk away from the venue by replacing variable earnings from tickets into dependable flat payments from Ticketmaster.
Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. The child workers were found in a facility with high vaulted ceilings, elegantly crafted marble work benches and a classical quartet playing in the background in a corner of the floor.
Yes, and after the kids were thrown out of the factory, they went back to spending all day in a rice paddy with water up to their waist in both in winter and in summer, working sun-up to sunset.
someone who has grown up in Sweden. I have had a 100/100 Mbit/s unmetered connection for the last 3 years
I'd love to see the network diagrams of these 100 Mbps consumer networks!
Do you actually typically see Internet throughput of 100 Mbps at any time (not just "speed checks", but actual FTPs, P2P, etc. ?)
Also what kind of Internet peering connections does your ISP have? I'd like to figure out just how many subscribers could do 100 Mbps at the same time...only 100 people could do 100 Mbps this on an OC-192 uplink. An OC-192 line card for a router costs ~$100,000.
A stalled US economy has lead to a lot of upset Chinese unemployed.
China's unemployment rate in March 2007 was 4.1%, and as of December 2009 was 4.3%. Not much from a percentage standpoint, but with a labor force of 800 million, that still adds up to 1.6 million more unemployed.
Slashdot Mirror
And a lot of that "efficiency" they force on their other suppliers results in off-loading infrastructure costs onto the taxpayer.
Uh, why should my employer pay my health care? This happened only because of WWII era wage controls leading to non-cash benefits for medical care being tax deductible to corporations.
I know a company that does business in Venezuela (note: I don't work for them :) They keep all of their expensive IT equipment in the US, and only use a satellite link to provide their services there. They do this because they are too afraid to install much physical plant in Venezuela, lest it be appropriated by the government. The recent power issues have also shown this strategy to be a good one.
what socialized healthcare system in the world stops you from doing any of those?
Medicaid. Let's not forget that the US system is 50% socialized already (% of medical expenditures) by Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc.
The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement was due to a lawsuit by 46 states demanding reimbursement for Medicaid payment from the four largest tobacco companies. This lead to a $10/carton price hike for cigarette users.
So if the government is a bunch of incompetent, inefficient morons who can never be as good as private industry, then why the hell do you care if they give people the OPTION of choosing a government plan?
Because the government will subsidize the public option and put additional regulations on the private market to ensure that the public option becomes the only option. Even if this is not how the option starts out, it will be how it goes. Much like how Medicare has expanded over the years to include things like the drug benefit.
Also see public schools versus private schools in the US, or NHS versus private doctors in the UK.
In truth, I expect the evolution of the "public option" to put serious reductions on doctor pay (as we see in all European/Canadian health systems). A private insurance company can try to negotiate lower doctor pay (and they try), but only the government can mandate it. I'm wary, but I don't know exactly what will happen to our doctor pool if US doctor pay is reduced to European levels. Maybe nothing. Maybe something bad.
Even Medicare in the US has lower overheads than private American insurers.
Actually Medicare has higher per-patient Administrative costs than US private insurers. But Medicare has lower overall Administrative costs as a total percent of medical expenditures than private insurance. This is likely because old people on medicare are sicker and have much higher per-patient medical costs than the private insurance pool, which tends to be younger and healthier.
US private insurers have a lot of non-Administrative costs, including state insurance premium taxes, corporate income taxes, but also private insurers provide a range of services besides direct medical payments (such as health call centers, health information programs for their corporate clients, etc.)
By the way, here is an interesting article about the NHS computerization efforts: Tories accuse government of handcuffing health service computer contracts. "It is devastating for taxpayers to watch the government sign away billions more pounds on a failing IT Programme and tie the hands of the next government".
one of the primary reasons that the FAA was saddled with ancient technology for years was the practice of losing bidders (including us more often than not) dragging the results into court.
I've seen this from another viewpoint. A government-funded project by a large non-profit bids and evaluates technological solution. One vendor is chosen. The losing vendor calls up their Congressman, who applies political pressure for the government-funded project to adopt the losing technology.
Private businesses are much better at keeping their failures under wraps.
From the public, perhaps, but if you are a private company and your competitor is more efficient than you, you lose profitability and may go out of business.
Thus we have Walmart, the most efficient retailer on the planet, who also pushes efficiency requirements on their suppliers.
In government, there is little incentive to enhance efficiency. Government budget reductions are rarely related to efficiency, but due to public choice politics. It is true that promises to be efficient may help your political chances of getting more funding, but efficiency track record rarely has budgetary results.
I'll add that government employees are more difficult to shift job responsibilities to enhance efficiency, or to lay off to reduce costs once efficiencies have been enhanced, because they are more highly unionized than private employees.
SMPTE (in coordination with the European Boradcasting Union and other groups) developed the Material eXchange Format (MXF) container:
MXF is exceedingly flexible. Many MXF-wrapped files play back in VLC today.
Does this thing really measure brain neuron electrical signals, or does it measure scalp muscle electrical signals (electromyograph)?
Oh, c'mon. What risk is there in practice, and not in theoretical conjectures?
I can tell you that right now there are plenty of NHL games on TicketsNow that are reselling below the lowest face value of a ticket in the arena (like $7 for Phoenix vs. St. Louis).
Resellers may try to go for events that are sell-outs, but it doesn't always work that way. For example, last year Green Day did not sell out the New Orleans Arena, and neither did Coldplay nor Creed. Many tickets were probably left in the hands of resellers.
If reselling were risk-free, why would venues push the risk onto ticketing companies (through fixed exclusive "lock-in" payments) and resellers? Venues can't afford the risk because they tend to have fixed regular commercial mortgage and labor costs.
The scalper makes money by making an item scarcer that it would have otherwise been, and then selling it for what the market will now bear.
How about the scalper makes money by taking on the risk that he/she may/may not be able to resell tickets for above face value. In doing so, they remove some of the risk to their suppliers (the artist, the promoter, the venue, and the ticketing company).
Risk is generally correlated with potential reward in investments.
Thus a scalper also makes tickets less scarce by reducing the risk to the suppliers and thus encouraging a concert to happen that would not otherwise occur.
I talked with a few of the bigger scalpers and offered them $20 bucks for a pair of seats.
Indeed, often scalpers take a bath. For example, you can go on TicketsNow right now and get nosebleed seats for St. Louis Blues at Phoenix Coyotes for $7, which is $3.75 cheaper than the cheapest primary market ticket for that game.
The reason that scalping is illegal is NOT because the act of selling tickets at the highest possible price is illegal. It's because its very hard for the purchaser to know whether the ticket is legitimate or not.
TicketsNow can re-issue valid barcodes for Ticketmaster tickets, thus this problem has been eradicated...
Scalping actually became illegal because of the perceived problems of people standing around a venue offering speculatively purchased tickets (sometimes below face price!) The "stand outside the venue" kind of scalping is still illegal in many cities.
Because of the history of these laws, legit resellers like StubHub and TicketsNow must maintain huge databases of local laws and ensure they are doing legal reselling. For example, in Ontario and Arkansas you can't resell a ticket for more than face value. New Jersey has a 20% mark-up limit. Many cities also have their own rules.
Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin found that famine in her native Ethiopia was not due to a lack of supply of food, but to a problem with distribution.
How about the fact that most farmers in Ethiopia cannot own their land, they must lease it from the government, making it impossible to get a loan for supplies.
You know what else is wrong with Ethiopia:
Relatively rigid labor regulations hinder employment and productivity growth. Firing unneeded or poorly performing employees is difficult. Restrictions on work hours are inflexible.
Corruption is perceived as pervasive. Ethiopia ranks 126th out of 179 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2008.
The government strongly influences lending and owns the largest bank, which dominates the banking sector.
Foreign participation is prohibited in domestic banking, insurance and microcredit services, and several other activities. All investments must be approved and certified and may be subject to additional restrictions. The judicial system remains poorly staffed and inexperienced. Foreign exchange accounts, payments, and current transfers are subject to tight controls and restrictions.
Inflation has skyrocketed, averaging 21.8 percent between 2006 and 2008.
Ethiopia's weighted average tariff rate was 11.5 percent in 2008. Import taxes, import restrictions, restrictive foreign exchange controls, services market barriers, non-transparent government procurement, import licensing, cumbersome customs clearance, and inadequate infrastructure add to the cost of trade. All imports must be channeled through Ethiopian nationals registered as official import or distribution agents with the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
The overall freedom to conduct a business remains constrained by Ethiopia's regulatory environment.
is it really true that a lot people out there believe this anticompetitive bullshit is acceptable, even legal?
Yes, I think anti-trust laws are totally stupid and unnecessary. I don't care what price a Miley Cyrus concert ticket is.
I do care that when I talk with competitors about file standards for our industry that I need to have a lawyer in the room to avoid being sued by someone for anti-competitive practice. Almost as annoying as broad patents that try to cover obvious things.
A rise in prices will price out some people who could have afforded the lower fixed prices
A rise in price is a signal to entrepreneurs to produce more (in this case play the band in bigger stadiums, more nights, more tours, etc.)
That is why command economies fail, there is now way in a commanded economy to calculate the incredible web of supplies needed for production without price signals.
How about a dutch auction?
Artists HATE this idea. They are trying to signal to their fans that they believe "in the little guy", thus (in public) they say they like cheap tickets that sell on the primary market below their actual value in the resale market.
Yet artists typically resell the batch of tickets they get for their shows. Plus when their tickets resell for big money, it signals to promoters and venues that they are "sure sell-outs" which helps them put together tours to ensure their ongoing livelihood.
Hell why don't we just go all the way and print the purchasers name on the damned ticket and if you don't show up at the event with positive ID sorry out of luck.
Some artists (such as Miley Cyrus) are insisting on "ticketless" ticketing, where you just show your credit card and ID at the venue.
There is a tension between artists who want to seem like anyone can buy a cheap ticket, the venues who dislike the variability of ticket sales, ticketing companies that make money by mitigating the risk to the venue, and brokers who mitigate the risk to the ticketers. A "sure sell-out" artist like Miley Cyrus can do "no-scalping" ticketless ticketing, but most artists who may or may not sell out a venue could not get the venue to agree to ticketless ticketing without reselling.
Ever heard of the infamous Ticketmaster(TM) "convenience fee"?
A look at their SEC filing shows that most of the "convenience fee" ends up going back to the venues as exclusive lock-in fees. This shifts risk away from the venue by replacing variable earnings from tickets into dependable flat payments from Ticketmaster.
Stubhub is owned by Ticketmaster?
No, Stubhub is NOT owned by Ticketmaster, it is owned by eBay. Reseller TicketsNow is owned by Ticketmaster.
You can get conductive fabric to make EMF-shielding curtains from LessEMF.com.
I was the biggest significant whitespace disbeliever until I had to write a lot of Python. I'm sold now!!! It is awesome.
Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. The child workers were found in a facility with high vaulted ceilings, elegantly crafted marble work benches and a classical quartet playing in the background in a corner of the floor.
Yes, and after the kids were thrown out of the factory, they went back to spending all day in a rice paddy with water up to their waist in both in winter and in summer, working sun-up to sunset.
someone who has grown up in Sweden. I have had a 100/100 Mbit/s unmetered connection for the last 3 years
I'd love to see the network diagrams of these 100 Mbps consumer networks!
Do you actually typically see Internet throughput of 100 Mbps at any time (not just "speed checks", but actual FTPs, P2P, etc. ?)
Also what kind of Internet peering connections does your ISP have? I'd like to figure out just how many subscribers could do 100 Mbps at the same time...only 100 people could do 100 Mbps this on an OC-192 uplink. An OC-192 line card for a router costs ~$100,000.
A stalled US economy has lead to a lot of upset Chinese unemployed.
China's unemployment rate in March 2007 was 4.1%, and as of December 2009 was 4.3%. Not much from a percentage standpoint, but with a labor force of 800 million, that still adds up to 1.6 million more unemployed.