Income is a lousy metric to compare a very specific expense to. Section 404 is only one part of the regulation. Fundamentally, it the cost has to be evaluated by the benefit it delivers, and the evaluation needs to be at the margin, not the average.
Hmmm, roadside cows huh, you mean like these??
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/NDSALcow.ht mlhttp://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/titans.html
He isn't kidding about mosquitoes either, well, at least in the eastern part of the state. They share Minnesota's mosquitos, affectionately known as the state bird. On the upside they aren't the right kind to be carrying malaria. So by jungle comparisons, the mosquitoes aren't bad at all. Compared to other "temperate" climates though, they are quite bad I guess.
Carbon trading helps to minimize the cost of reducing global warming, compared to other schemes for reducing CO2 emmissions. So while it's a more efficient way of doing it, It doesn't even come close to eliminating the cost/impact.
Heck, I'd prefer a good 480X480 mpeg4 file at 1Mbps to the 320x240 H264 at 756Kbps.
I wish they'd optimise the content so that it looked decent on an analog TV. It's going to be way to big (at this point) to aim for a good hi def file.
Is what constitutes foreign intelligence gathering, which the courts have held doesn't require a warrant and is outside the bounds of our criminal court system; and what constitutes domestic spying that requires a court order.
Congress doesn't determine the president's authority, the constitution does. An act of congress can't legally change the powers that the constitution grants the president. Other than that, what you said has much merit.
This is why the supreme court has ruled that is has jurisdiction over what situations constitute enemy combatant status, but not over the case itself against a combatant.
but I don't think the anlogy is correct. Devine grace doesn't recognize any limits on the power of the monarch. The claim about "warrantless wiretaps" isn't that the exectutive doesn't have any limits, but that these particular wiretaps are covered as part of the executive's contitutional role in gathering foreign intelligence. I'm much more worried about the slippery slope aspect of this. I think that most of the wiretaps that are being criticized now are pretty clearly foreign intel, and I think we can agree that Bin Laden et el. should be treated like we would treat the agent of a hostile coutry. The problem is where that line in drawn. Eco-terrorism? White supremacists? Drug runners? Serial killers? Where do we draw the line?
Indeed, AT&T was treated like a utility and was a monopoly, that doesn't mean that the infrastructure was paid for by the government however, which was the point of contention. At that point in time, the telephoone network probably would have been a natural monopoly, which is why the government stepped in to provide some regulation of the price.
I agree that it will be interesting to see how Wi-Max handles this challenge, but I imagine that it will force telecom carriers to more broadly examine the current peering and exchange agreements.
The characterization of the telco system as being "built with tax dollars and then handed over to the telcos for maintenence" is just plain wrong.
What is true is that local phone services were given power by local and state governments(right-of-way and monopoly status) in return for universal service requirements and the right to regulate the prices charged. In a separate initiative, areas that were simply uneconomical to wire for phone service (farms basically, on which only a small part of the population lives) at normal prices had their construction subsidized by federal funding. The federal spending certainly was a subsidy, but it's no where near the level you assert.
This would be true if the government actually had no power. In order to be in this state, the government in the US would have to receed to levels unprecidented in the history of the country; even including the history prior to the revolutionary war.
And I'd have to agree with you if we were talking about a courthouse or other place of public business. However, I don't understand this sort of regulation in places like restaurants or other private establishments. As long as people know what they are getting in to (eating in a place that allows smoking for example) then I guess I don't think it should be anyone's business. Look, I'm athsmatic, and smoking is a real problem for me, but I'm none to keen on giving government the power to control this in private establishments. We let people engage in behavior that may be considered much more risky.
At least in the US. Congress passes laws, both the house and senate. All spending bills have to start in the house. The Senate ratifies treaties. The president has to sign everything. He can veto laws passed by the house and senate but his veto can be overridden with a 2/3rds vote in both the house and senate.
Most (though admittedly not all) of the religious right types that I talk to don't mean that a Jewish or Christian god is enshrined in the constitution and is therefore a mandate for laws relfecting their religious views. To many of them, the argument over simply deism vs. Judeo/Christianity is beside the point (They don't really care whether Jefferson was or wasn't). The reference to a god or Nautural creator simply means that rights are a univeral and ordained by a higher moral authority than the whims of individuals or collectives. I don't get the impression that most of them fight because they see a need to impose their particular religious values on society (thought some certainly would go this far), I think most wouuld be happy if they didn't perceive society to be singling them out for exclusion using the aforementioned religious protection of the "separation" clause to justify some sort of bezarre reverse discrimination scenario. Public funding or religious schools is a good example. I don't think most of them feel that religious schools are entitled to public funding as a matter or course, but why should students who choose these schools be discriminated against (in their minds) for picking a religious school. See, if they had gone to a secular school, they would have been subsidized with public dollars, but not if attending a religious school. Why should students of K12 education be forced to forgo this subsidy for attending a religious school but not at the collegiate level?
In short, I don't think that a sizeable majority of conservative types want the government to be in the religious establishment business, they just disagree over where establishment ends and discrimination begins.
Not only that, the courts previously ruled that businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against minorities in hiring, even if the business is private, and the owners are KKK members and want to give KKK values to the world, to make the place better.
While I agree with the sentiment (I find racial discrimination to be morally repugnant, not to mention that it is clearly incompatible with our stated creeds), and agree that publically held companies that engage in discrimination would be acting outside the interests of their shareholders (thus leaving them open to shareholder lawsuits). While, no government should be allowed to make LAWS that distinguish and discriminate against people based on race, creed, etc; this does not mean that private individuals should be restricted in the same way
Govenments are different from private institutions in that they have a territorial monopoly of the law. No company today has that kind of power, no matter what their level of wealth. Just think, we let KKK protestors march because they have free speech, and I think we should let private organizations exclude people based on race, sex, and creed. In reality we do things like this already, we are just selective about when it offends our "common sense". To me this is simply freedom of association.
Like all things, just because we CAN, doesn't mean we SHOULD. Just because a law achcives an outcome you like doesn't mean that it is a good idea. One good test is to apply the power of that same law in a direction that you find repulsive. What if the law said that you HAVE to let people smoke in your place of business (you can't discriminate against their rights) or that the government could take land away from the nature conservancy so an oil company can drill. Remember that any time you grant the government power that it can you that power in ways that you don't like either. I don't that an exclusive all black or women's college should be forced to take me under "equal protection". Sure it might be good for diversity, but we recognize that these places offer something the students want that may (or may not) be good for society. When in doubt, we should err on the side of protecting an individual's rights, even if it sometimes generates outcomes that we don't like.
The difference is that a business doesn't have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Say what you want about corporate power, but no company, no matter how large, has a monopoly on employment. You can always take a job doing something else. To escape the power of a government, you have to leave a city, state, or country. The larger the governmental unit, the more absolute it's power and the less influence you have as a person over its dentiny.
In most American schools, "if the student wants to be, they will be." The question is simply one of desire on the part of students and also their parents to some degree. The value of learning has to be instilled early on. America's biggest problem is a culture (i'll refer to it as the "ghetto" culture) that exists in neighborhoods and schools and schools that actually discourages learning, for a variety of reasons. Even most of the jock culture doesn't view intelligence negatively persay, unless it comes at the expense of social and athletic ability. Basically, in these places, the community and parents place little to negative value on education. In these schools and communities, smost tudents and parents don't demand challenging classes; thus these classes aren't offered because there simply isn't sufficient student demand to meet them. That's why US schools score much better on these international tests when we excluse our very worst schools. There is far more variance in educational quality in the US than in most developed or partly developed countries. Though this isn't a total surprise, given the the generally greater ethnic and geographic spread in the US.
Getting to the top, in and of itself, doesn't magically bestow monopoly powers upon you. This is only true in industries with a combination of relatively poor substitutes and falling average costs. Basically, monopolies only happen when having less competition results in lower costs. So monopolies that would form naturally have an upside, which is that they result in an overall lower cost solution than competition. The problem is that even though the average cost will be lower than under competition, the consumer gets little of the benefit. The monopoly captures the entire difference as profit unless regulated.
Also, monopoly power isn't an all or nothing proposition. A monopoly's power is really a function of two things, the ability to make economic profits (above normal, given the level of risk) and the ability to sustain these profits over time. The larger the profits and the longer the time period, the stronger the monopoly.
Given the differnt nature of each monopoly, the approach the government takes to each one should be a little bit different.
I'm simply arguing that the calculus on global warming is such that you can't factor it in to a cost-benefit analysis the way you do things like better insulation or cleaner burning fuel, etc. Those things have both potential economic and environmental merits outside of the global warming debate. I'm not suggesting no concern for the environment, simply saying that all these things need to be weighed before deciding to take one course of action or another.
But your scanario gets even better than that. We don't know with great certainty how significant any of the other multuple (non anthropogentic) forces are that are being applied to the pendulum. We also don't know the precise level of force that anthropogenic effects have on teh pendulum.
So really we are dealing with three unknows, uncertainly about the nature of the system we are applying forces to (re: pendulum behavoir), uncertainly about the degree and effect of nonanthropogenic forces (present, past and future) on the system, uncertainly about the degree and effect of anthropogenic forces (pp&f) on the system.
On top of this, even if we ARE able to model this with nearly perfect accuracy (almost impossible with something this complex) to predict climate change based on human activities, nonhuman activities (solar, geologic, etc) and how all of these effect the movement of the climate system; (IE we gain the ability to "control" earth's climate) then we need to decide what program of climate control is "optimal". Is there such a thing?
Given our history of ecological management (and im not even talking about the intentional distruction, but the instances in which we have tried to "help" the environment, only to end up doing more damage) I'm not sure that there is compelling enough evidence to suggest that we should cease engaging in behaviors that have serious pros outside of global warming.
Sperm cells don't have that life potential until they become combined with an egg. They need additional genetic information in order to become a fully functional being. Sperm cells in that way are much more like a tonsil than an embryo. You can't make the case that sperm is somehow a separate living being. That doesn't square with the facts.
I also fail to see how you can categorically say that abortions are a net benefit to society. We have no way to know the total value of the alternative outcomes to each case. For example, though we probably aborted a lot of people that would otherwise be in prison, we may also have aborted a small number of people who would have contributed very positive things. How do you weigh the value of these things against eachother? Which do you value more, a cure for cancer or a 20% drop in the crime rate? Further more, does this cold social benefit calculus even apply to a society that claims to give preference to individual rights over the common good. Does the fact the many of those who were aborted were statistically more likely to become criminals excuse the abortion of those that wouldn't have turned out that way, and doesn't this all violate the "guily until proven innocent" presumption of common law jurisprudence.
Finally as to your discussion about overpopulation, you might want to update your 1960's era data an talking points. Population growth is projected to peak during this century and begin to decline. If you look at the OECD countries you can already see the large declines in population beginning, those that aren't seeing population declines are being saved by immigration. The "millions" waiting to be adopted are primarily older children who have severe and problems that probably require extensive (and expensive?) treatment, things that most parents aren't going to take on voluntarily. Have you any idea what waiting lists and red tape and cost that one must endure to adopt a baby? There are plenty of people looking to adopt children, just not many that want to take a 4 year old crack baby. That is a crack problem, not one related to "excess population" or lack of adoptive home in general.
As for poverty, the biggest CAUSE of poverty is not lack of aid, as the lack of aid does not explain why they are poor in the first place, and how anyone else can afford to give them aid. Obviously there are reasons that some countries are wealthy and others are poor. When you boil down the statistics on wealth though, one thing becomes clear. Corruption specifically and fair legal institutions in general as well as some semblance of a transparent market economy is pretty much a sure predictor of wealth. The correlation is significant, and very strong running both ways, unlike resources and other proposed causes of wealth. Fundamentally, giving aid is a wonderful thing to do, but given the alternative uses of the money, and given the relatively low level of pass through of government aid to the people that it is supposed to help, you can't help but question if it's such a good idea, at least on the governmental level.
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Income is a lousy metric to compare a very specific expense to. Section 404 is only one part of the regulation. Fundamentally, it the cost has to be evaluated by the benefit it delivers, and the evaluation needs to be at the margin, not the average.
Hmmm, roadside cows huh, you mean like these?? http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/NDSALcow.ht ml
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/titans.html
He isn't kidding about mosquitoes either, well, at least in the eastern part of the state. They share Minnesota's mosquitos, affectionately known as the state bird. On the upside they aren't the right kind to be carrying malaria. So by jungle comparisons, the mosquitoes aren't bad at all. Compared to other "temperate" climates though, they are quite bad I guess.
Carbon trading helps to minimize the cost of reducing global warming, compared to other schemes for reducing CO2 emmissions. So while it's a more efficient way of doing it, It doesn't even come close to eliminating the cost/impact.
Heck, I'd prefer a good 480X480 mpeg4 file at 1Mbps to the 320x240 H264 at 756Kbps. I wish they'd optimise the content so that it looked decent on an analog TV. It's going to be way to big (at this point) to aim for a good hi def file.
Can't you use squash_root?
Is what constitutes foreign intelligence gathering, which the courts have held doesn't require a warrant and is outside the bounds of our criminal court system; and what constitutes domestic spying that requires a court order.
Congress doesn't determine the president's authority, the constitution does. An act of congress can't legally change the powers that the constitution grants the president. Other than that, what you said has much merit.
The TTL would have to be far to great and the latency far to high on a network like this. At least for geographically distant locations.
This is why the supreme court has ruled that is has jurisdiction over what situations constitute enemy combatant status, but not over the case itself against a combatant.
but I don't think the anlogy is correct. Devine grace doesn't recognize any limits on the power of the monarch. The claim about "warrantless wiretaps" isn't that the exectutive doesn't have any limits, but that these particular wiretaps are covered as part of the executive's contitutional role in gathering foreign intelligence. I'm much more worried about the slippery slope aspect of this. I think that most of the wiretaps that are being criticized now are pretty clearly foreign intel, and I think we can agree that Bin Laden et el. should be treated like we would treat the agent of a hostile coutry. The problem is where that line in drawn. Eco-terrorism? White supremacists? Drug runners? Serial killers? Where do we draw the line?
And when you say that, all that comes to mind is that pavarotti is the tenor, paganini is the composer.
I agree that it will be interesting to see how Wi-Max handles this challenge, but I imagine that it will force telecom carriers to more broadly examine the current peering and exchange agreements.
What is true is that local phone services were given power by local and state governments(right-of-way and monopoly status) in return for universal service requirements and the right to regulate the prices charged. In a separate initiative, areas that were simply uneconomical to wire for phone service (farms basically, on which only a small part of the population lives) at normal prices had their construction subsidized by federal funding. The federal spending certainly was a subsidy, but it's no where near the level you assert.
This would be true if the government actually had no power. In order to be in this state, the government in the US would have to receed to levels unprecidented in the history of the country; even including the history prior to the revolutionary war.
And I'd have to agree with you if we were talking about a courthouse or other place of public business. However, I don't understand this sort of regulation in places like restaurants or other private establishments. As long as people know what they are getting in to (eating in a place that allows smoking for example) then I guess I don't think it should be anyone's business. Look, I'm athsmatic, and smoking is a real problem for me, but I'm none to keen on giving government the power to control this in private establishments. We let people engage in behavior that may be considered much more risky.
At least in the US. Congress passes laws, both the house and senate. All spending bills have to start in the house. The Senate ratifies treaties. The president has to sign everything. He can veto laws passed by the house and senate but his veto can be overridden with a 2/3rds vote in both the house and senate.
This is what i mean by selective outrage over discrimination.
In short, I don't think that a sizeable majority of conservative types want the government to be in the religious establishment business, they just disagree over where establishment ends and discrimination begins.
Govenments are different from private institutions in that they have a territorial monopoly of the law. No company today has that kind of power, no matter what their level of wealth. Just think, we let KKK protestors march because they have free speech, and I think we should let private organizations exclude people based on race, sex, and creed. In reality we do things like this already, we are just selective about when it offends our "common sense". To me this is simply freedom of association.
Like all things, just because we CAN, doesn't mean we SHOULD. Just because a law achcives an outcome you like doesn't mean that it is a good idea. One good test is to apply the power of that same law in a direction that you find repulsive. What if the law said that you HAVE to let people smoke in your place of business (you can't discriminate against their rights) or that the government could take land away from the nature conservancy so an oil company can drill. Remember that any time you grant the government power that it can you that power in ways that you don't like either. I don't that an exclusive all black or women's college should be forced to take me under "equal protection". Sure it might be good for diversity, but we recognize that these places offer something the students want that may (or may not) be good for society. When in doubt, we should err on the side of protecting an individual's rights, even if it sometimes generates outcomes that we don't like.
The difference is that a business doesn't have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Say what you want about corporate power, but no company, no matter how large, has a monopoly on employment. You can always take a job doing something else. To escape the power of a government, you have to leave a city, state, or country. The larger the governmental unit, the more absolute it's power and the less influence you have as a person over its dentiny.
In most American schools, "if the student wants to be, they will be." The question is simply one of desire on the part of students and also their parents to some degree. The value of learning has to be instilled early on. America's biggest problem is a culture (i'll refer to it as the "ghetto" culture) that exists in neighborhoods and schools and schools that actually discourages learning, for a variety of reasons. Even most of the jock culture doesn't view intelligence negatively persay, unless it comes at the expense of social and athletic ability. Basically, in these places, the community and parents place little to negative value on education. In these schools and communities, smost tudents and parents don't demand challenging classes; thus these classes aren't offered because there simply isn't sufficient student demand to meet them. That's why US schools score much better on these international tests when we excluse our very worst schools. There is far more variance in educational quality in the US than in most developed or partly developed countries. Though this isn't a total surprise, given the the generally greater ethnic and geographic spread in the US.
Also, monopoly power isn't an all or nothing proposition. A monopoly's power is really a function of two things, the ability to make economic profits (above normal, given the level of risk) and the ability to sustain these profits over time. The larger the profits and the longer the time period, the stronger the monopoly.
Given the differnt nature of each monopoly, the approach the government takes to each one should be a little bit different.
I'm simply arguing that the calculus on global warming is such that you can't factor it in to a cost-benefit analysis the way you do things like better insulation or cleaner burning fuel, etc. Those things have both potential economic and environmental merits outside of the global warming debate. I'm not suggesting no concern for the environment, simply saying that all these things need to be weighed before deciding to take one course of action or another.
So really we are dealing with three unknows, uncertainly about the nature of the system we are applying forces to (re: pendulum behavoir), uncertainly about the degree and effect of nonanthropogenic forces (present, past and future) on the system, uncertainly about the degree and effect of anthropogenic forces (pp&f) on the system.
On top of this, even if we ARE able to model this with nearly perfect accuracy (almost impossible with something this complex) to predict climate change based on human activities, nonhuman activities (solar, geologic, etc) and how all of these effect the movement of the climate system; (IE we gain the ability to "control" earth's climate) then we need to decide what program of climate control is "optimal". Is there such a thing? Given our history of ecological management (and im not even talking about the intentional distruction, but the instances in which we have tried to "help" the environment, only to end up doing more damage) I'm not sure that there is compelling enough evidence to suggest that we should cease engaging in behaviors that have serious pros outside of global warming.
I also fail to see how you can categorically say that abortions are a net benefit to society. We have no way to know the total value of the alternative outcomes to each case. For example, though we probably aborted a lot of people that would otherwise be in prison, we may also have aborted a small number of people who would have contributed very positive things. How do you weigh the value of these things against eachother? Which do you value more, a cure for cancer or a 20% drop in the crime rate? Further more, does this cold social benefit calculus even apply to a society that claims to give preference to individual rights over the common good. Does the fact the many of those who were aborted were statistically more likely to become criminals excuse the abortion of those that wouldn't have turned out that way, and doesn't this all violate the "guily until proven innocent" presumption of common law jurisprudence.
Finally as to your discussion about overpopulation, you might want to update your 1960's era data an talking points. Population growth is projected to peak during this century and begin to decline. If you look at the OECD countries you can already see the large declines in population beginning, those that aren't seeing population declines are being saved by immigration. The "millions" waiting to be adopted are primarily older children who have severe and problems that probably require extensive (and expensive?) treatment, things that most parents aren't going to take on voluntarily. Have you any idea what waiting lists and red tape and cost that one must endure to adopt a baby? There are plenty of people looking to adopt children, just not many that want to take a 4 year old crack baby. That is a crack problem, not one related to "excess population" or lack of adoptive home in general.
As for poverty, the biggest CAUSE of poverty is not lack of aid, as the lack of aid does not explain why they are poor in the first place, and how anyone else can afford to give them aid. Obviously there are reasons that some countries are wealthy and others are poor. When you boil down the statistics on wealth though, one thing becomes clear. Corruption specifically and fair legal institutions in general as well as some semblance of a transparent market economy is pretty much a sure predictor of wealth. The correlation is significant, and very strong running both ways, unlike resources and other proposed causes of wealth. Fundamentally, giving aid is a wonderful thing to do, but given the alternative uses of the money, and given the relatively low level of pass through of government aid to the people that it is supposed to help, you can't help but question if it's such a good idea, at least on the governmental level.