And there's an easy answer as to why: False theories in economics can be very profitable, and where there is large profit to be made there will be somebody trying to make it (that's one of the few settled theories of economics).
For instance, the Laffer Curve has been consistently demonstrated to be absolutely nothing like what Arthur Laffer postulated it would be (namely, a smooth parabola) when tax rates are anywhere in between about 10% and 90%. But the Laffer Curve also motivates politicians to cut taxes, which for people who pay a lot of taxes is very profitable. So if I'm an economically rational wealthy guy who normally pays $1 million in taxes, and I can pay somebody $30,000 to tout the Laffer Curve to help convince politicians to cut my taxes by 5% (thus with a potential savings of $50,000), I'm going to do just that.
I think you've reversed cause and effect in your analysis.
One important counterargument to this: Historically, American families in the 19th century were frequently large, and women (even more so than men) were often poorly educated or not educated at all. As various immigrant groups moved in, they started out with pretty large families, and have gradually gotten smaller and smaller families as families became wealthier.
When you're a subsistence farmer or factory worker where child labor is legal, extra children mean more productive capacity available to the family, so large families are in fact economically rational choices. When you're in an environment where a child costs you $250,000 over 18 years (plus another $150,000 for college), fewer children are an economically rational choice.
That's definitely not true. For the most part, Asian nations forced out European invaders, whereas Africans didn't do as well, and the American Indians completely failed at defending their territory.
China pushed the British and other Europeans back to Hong Kong through sheer numbers as much as anything else. Japan adopted a different strategy, and basically submitted to the trade agreements the western powers wanted in exchange for advisors who gave Japan the technology and skills needed to kick the western powers out. India was in pretty bad shape before Gandhi convinced the Brits to leave using nonviolent resistance. Afghanistan has also resisted repeated invasion militarily, but the constant takeover attempts are a large part of why they're in such bad shape.
Compare that to Africa, where there were definite attempts at resistance (notably the Zulu War), and some limited success (independent Ethiopia lasted until WWI), but in general the African nations had spears and bows against muskets and cannons, and any Civ player can tell you that that isn't a winnable fight.
And of course, compare that to the Americas, where not only were the locals outmatched technologically, but much of the population was wiped out by disease.
"Capitalism is a philosophy of private ownership, pacifism, and protection of property rights."
What happens in your capitalist utopia when Smith is broke and starving, and Jones is wealthy and has surplus food, so Smith tries to steal food from Jones? Smith is desperate enough that he's going to do whatever he needs to to get that food, because he either steals or he dies. That means that ultimately Jones has to use violence (either directly or via an intermediary like the police) to prevent Smith from getting that food if he wants to protect his property rights and private ownership. We could play out this exact scenario with other essentials, such as water and housing.
And this isn't purely a hypothetical, either. For instance, consider the Cochabamba water protests, which were a reaction to access to water becoming both privatized and too expensive for most city's residents to pay for it. When you have that sort of situation, it would be unreasonable to expect that the folks who couldn't pay for water were going to simply sit around dehydrating themselves out of respect for property rights.
But most people will kill innocent people just because a sociopath told them to do so, as Stanley Milgram demonstrated.
Also, an interesting part of the terrorism issue is that the UN was challenged to come up with a definition of terrorism that didn't also included the kind of stuff governments (including the US) do all the time. Their solution was to specifically include the rule that terrorism can only be done by "non-state actors".
Which is why a responsible person carries insurance.
What about a responsible person who's monthly income is so low they can only partially pay for rent, electricity, heating, and food? How do you plan on paying for that person's health care? Or do you propose instead letting them die?
Nobody goes to the ER for a minor issue that takes a few minutes of work and 15 minutes of discussion to clear up.
Actually, yes, sometimes they do. If your only source of medical care is the ER, and you have a sore wrist, you go to the ER. Is it stupid? You betcha. But that doesn't stop them from doing it.
The real issue is the total cost of medical care period. It doesn't matter how it's delivered.
Did I not just point out that ER visits are at least twice as expensive as doctor office visits? That was exactly point 1.
So only the sick get health insurance. Their premiums are high, because they use their health insurance a lot.
Not quite true, although this doesn't change your salient point. The people most likely to need medical care are those who are on Medicare. That means that the government is already taking on the costs of the most expensive patients.
We've tried that both in the United States (pre-1930's) and many Third World countries. The end result is that people die because they can't afford relatively cheap medical care, things like antibiotics for bacterial infections.
Here's the basic moral dilemma involved in the discussion of health care: If somebody else in your country is sick, hurt, or dying, and can't (for whatever reason) afford the health care that would save their life, do you (a) let them die, or (b) collectively kick in as much as is needed to save their life, or (c) kick in a certain amount to try to help out, but if they're going to cost more than that, let them die? How you answer that moral question generally determines whether you're more in the "universal health care" camp or the "free market health care" camp.
IMHO, the fatal flaw with the bill is that it doesn't (as a first step) try the low-cost solutions to fixing our system
That's because these sorts of changes would result in lower profits for the insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical industries. They like a completely opaque system where it's pretty much "pay what we tell you, or you die".
Before Obamacare you could get medical assistance with having a baby or if your life is endangered regardless if you are a citizen or not.
I take it you mean that in an emergency you can go to the ER. There are at least 2 major problems with that: 1. The ER is the #1 most expensive way to treat patients. If the cost isn't paid by the patient, it's going to get paid by everybody else via higher prices. For instance, a typical ER visit is in the range of $300-$500. A typical office visit is closer to $150 to $200.
2. If you do need to get treatment for life-threatening issues, it could well cost you not only everything you own, but everything you'd possibly be able to save after you recover. You'll be alive, but you and your family will be impoverished more-or-less permanently.
That's the real question. Because if 'broadband' is a term with a real official meaning, it would be possible to go after any ISP selling 'broadband' that isn't 'broadband' for false advertising. Alternately, if their contracts and the like say that they're selling 5 Mbps and they're actually selling 1 Mbps, that could also be actionable.
Either way, without some sort of legal liability, this is going to become standard practice.
You can protect your equipment from rust monsters by becoming confused (e.g. with a potion of booze) and then reading a non-cursed scroll of enchant weapon / enchant armor. No problemo. Or alternately, you can simply remove the metal items and club or punch them to death.
Many jury systems allow potential jurors to delay their service up to a point (e.g. 3 months). So that gives your lawyers and doctors a chance to plan properly for their absence.
And think about it - if it was your butt on the line, and the case hinged on a medical question, wouldn't you want at least 1 doctor on the jury? If it was your butt on the line, and the prosecution's case rested on a bit of legal flim-flam, wouldn't you want a lawyer on the jury? (Although lawyers are often excluded due to their obvious conflict-of-interest issues)
A citizen of the United States has 3 civic duties: 1. Vote as wisely as you can. 2. Serve on juries when called upon to do so. 3. Contribute funds to pay for the government i.e. taxes.
Some of them are a pain in the butt - nobody likes paying taxes, for instance. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be willing to do the job that Americans fought and died to have. I've done it, and it's really not all that difficult. You go in in the morning, hang out with a group of strangers you're eventually going to know pretty well, listen carefully to evidence presented to you, and decide whether the state has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant has committed the crime he is charged with committing. It may take a while, but it's important to do and do well, for the benefit of the defendant, victim, and society. Because it someday might be your future on the line, and you'd want your jury to do the same.
The obvious citation is the Communist Manifesto, which calls for the workers of the world uniting to overthrow their rich and powerful oppressors. A less obvious citation would be Das Kapital, which provides the theory that leads inevitably to my summarized conclusion.
Either way, I don't think my short summary of his views on the rich and powerful is inaccurate.
Slashdot Mirror
Signed, Arthur XXII, King of Britain and Jupiter.
Well, I didn't vote for you!
The same is not true for economics
And there's an easy answer as to why: False theories in economics can be very profitable, and where there is large profit to be made there will be somebody trying to make it (that's one of the few settled theories of economics).
For instance, the Laffer Curve has been consistently demonstrated to be absolutely nothing like what Arthur Laffer postulated it would be (namely, a smooth parabola) when tax rates are anywhere in between about 10% and 90%. But the Laffer Curve also motivates politicians to cut taxes, which for people who pay a lot of taxes is very profitable. So if I'm an economically rational wealthy guy who normally pays $1 million in taxes, and I can pay somebody $30,000 to tout the Laffer Curve to help convince politicians to cut my taxes by 5% (thus with a potential savings of $50,000), I'm going to do just that.
The rules are different, but the rights in question don't go away just because he's a soldier.
Access to council: section 832. Art. 32. (b) and section 838. Art. 38. (b)
Speedy trial: section 810. Art. 10.
I distinctly remember reading something about a right to a speedy and public trial, and access to council. Mr Manning has had neither.
I think you've reversed cause and effect in your analysis.
One important counterargument to this: Historically, American families in the 19th century were frequently large, and women (even more so than men) were often poorly educated or not educated at all. As various immigrant groups moved in, they started out with pretty large families, and have gradually gotten smaller and smaller families as families became wealthier.
When you're a subsistence farmer or factory worker where child labor is legal, extra children mean more productive capacity available to the family, so large families are in fact economically rational choices. When you're in an environment where a child costs you $250,000 over 18 years (plus another $150,000 for college), fewer children are an economically rational choice.
That's definitely not true. For the most part, Asian nations forced out European invaders, whereas Africans didn't do as well, and the American Indians completely failed at defending their territory.
China pushed the British and other Europeans back to Hong Kong through sheer numbers as much as anything else. Japan adopted a different strategy, and basically submitted to the trade agreements the western powers wanted in exchange for advisors who gave Japan the technology and skills needed to kick the western powers out. India was in pretty bad shape before Gandhi convinced the Brits to leave using nonviolent resistance. Afghanistan has also resisted repeated invasion militarily, but the constant takeover attempts are a large part of why they're in such bad shape.
Compare that to Africa, where there were definite attempts at resistance (notably the Zulu War), and some limited success (independent Ethiopia lasted until WWI), but in general the African nations had spears and bows against muskets and cannons, and any Civ player can tell you that that isn't a winnable fight.
And of course, compare that to the Americas, where not only were the locals outmatched technologically, but much of the population was wiped out by disease.
As in, can Watson properly misinterpret such categories as The Pen Is Mightier or An Album Cover?
"Capitalism is a philosophy of private ownership, pacifism, and protection of property rights."
What happens in your capitalist utopia when Smith is broke and starving, and Jones is wealthy and has surplus food, so Smith tries to steal food from Jones? Smith is desperate enough that he's going to do whatever he needs to to get that food, because he either steals or he dies. That means that ultimately Jones has to use violence (either directly or via an intermediary like the police) to prevent Smith from getting that food if he wants to protect his property rights and private ownership. We could play out this exact scenario with other essentials, such as water and housing.
And this isn't purely a hypothetical, either. For instance, consider the Cochabamba water protests, which were a reaction to access to water becoming both privatized and too expensive for most city's residents to pay for it. When you have that sort of situation, it would be unreasonable to expect that the folks who couldn't pay for water were going to simply sit around dehydrating themselves out of respect for property rights.
But most people will kill innocent people just because a sociopath told them to do so, as Stanley Milgram demonstrated.
Also, an interesting part of the terrorism issue is that the UN was challenged to come up with a definition of terrorism that didn't also included the kind of stuff governments (including the US) do all the time. Their solution was to specifically include the rule that terrorism can only be done by "non-state actors".
Which is why a responsible person carries insurance.
What about a responsible person who's monthly income is so low they can only partially pay for rent, electricity, heating, and food? How do you plan on paying for that person's health care? Or do you propose instead letting them die?
Nobody goes to the ER for a minor issue that takes a few minutes of work and 15 minutes of discussion to clear up.
Actually, yes, sometimes they do. If your only source of medical care is the ER, and you have a sore wrist, you go to the ER. Is it stupid? You betcha. But that doesn't stop them from doing it.
The real issue is the total cost of medical care period. It doesn't matter how it's delivered.
Did I not just point out that ER visits are at least twice as expensive as doctor office visits? That was exactly point 1.
We've never had bionic limbs cause changes in people's minds before, right?
So only the sick get health insurance. Their premiums are high, because they use their health insurance a lot.
Not quite true, although this doesn't change your salient point. The people most likely to need medical care are those who are on Medicare. That means that the government is already taking on the costs of the most expensive patients.
a free-market in health care
We've tried that both in the United States (pre-1930's) and many Third World countries. The end result is that people die because they can't afford relatively cheap medical care, things like antibiotics for bacterial infections.
Here's the basic moral dilemma involved in the discussion of health care: If somebody else in your country is sick, hurt, or dying, and can't (for whatever reason) afford the health care that would save their life, do you (a) let them die, or (b) collectively kick in as much as is needed to save their life, or (c) kick in a certain amount to try to help out, but if they're going to cost more than that, let them die? How you answer that moral question generally determines whether you're more in the "universal health care" camp or the "free market health care" camp.
IMHO, the fatal flaw with the bill is that it doesn't (as a first step) try the low-cost solutions to fixing our system
That's because these sorts of changes would result in lower profits for the insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical industries. They like a completely opaque system where it's pretty much "pay what we tell you, or you die".
Before Obamacare you could get medical assistance with having a baby or if your life is endangered regardless if you are a citizen or not.
I take it you mean that in an emergency you can go to the ER. There are at least 2 major problems with that:
1. The ER is the #1 most expensive way to treat patients. If the cost isn't paid by the patient, it's going to get paid by everybody else via higher prices. For instance, a typical ER visit is in the range of $300-$500. A typical office visit is closer to $150 to $200.
2. If you do need to get treatment for life-threatening issues, it could well cost you not only everything you own, but everything you'd possibly be able to save after you recover. You'll be alive, but you and your family will be impoverished more-or-less permanently.
That's the real question. Because if 'broadband' is a term with a real official meaning, it would be possible to go after any ISP selling 'broadband' that isn't 'broadband' for false advertising. Alternately, if their contracts and the like say that they're selling 5 Mbps and they're actually selling 1 Mbps, that could also be actionable.
Either way, without some sort of legal liability, this is going to become standard practice.
For some reason, though, the horse's asses in the US military consistently outnumber the horses.
It's obvious what their company theme song should be: Never Gonna Give You Up
You can protect your equipment from rust monsters by becoming confused (e.g. with a potion of booze) and then reading a non-cursed scroll of enchant weapon / enchant armor. No problemo. Or alternately, you can simply remove the metal items and club or punch them to death.
Many jury systems allow potential jurors to delay their service up to a point (e.g. 3 months). So that gives your lawyers and doctors a chance to plan properly for their absence.
And think about it - if it was your butt on the line, and the case hinged on a medical question, wouldn't you want at least 1 doctor on the jury? If it was your butt on the line, and the prosecution's case rested on a bit of legal flim-flam, wouldn't you want a lawyer on the jury? (Although lawyers are often excluded due to their obvious conflict-of-interest issues)
No, I don't.
A citizen of the United States has 3 civic duties:
1. Vote as wisely as you can.
2. Serve on juries when called upon to do so.
3. Contribute funds to pay for the government i.e. taxes.
Some of them are a pain in the butt - nobody likes paying taxes, for instance. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be willing to do the job that Americans fought and died to have. I've done it, and it's really not all that difficult. You go in in the morning, hang out with a group of strangers you're eventually going to know pretty well, listen carefully to evidence presented to you, and decide whether the state has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant has committed the crime he is charged with committing. It may take a while, but it's important to do and do well, for the benefit of the defendant, victim, and society. Because it someday might be your future on the line, and you'd want your jury to do the same.
Like anything related to Microsoft, I guess you need to get to at least version 3 before you have something useful. *ducks*
The obvious citation is the Communist Manifesto, which calls for the workers of the world uniting to overthrow their rich and powerful oppressors. A less obvious citation would be Das Kapital, which provides the theory that leads inevitably to my summarized conclusion.
Either way, I don't think my short summary of his views on the rich and powerful is inaccurate.
"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize." - Tom Lehrer