I think the big issue here is that some government(s) will no doubt be using this to break up protests or at any time when other less-than-lethal weapons would have been used in the past.
Well I'm absolutely positively sure that nothing like that would ever happen in the Land of the Free.
The best part about your currency plan is that we can create a lot of jobs dealing with preventing the inflation problem from getting out of hand, by hiring people to burn down all the forests. Everybody wins! My spreadsheet here suggests that we can hire eleventy million people to do this very critical work.
Pretend for a moment that every not-completely-stupid attempt at terrorism against the US had succeeded. The shoe and underpants bombers succeed. The USS Cole sinks.
The number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks would go from roughly 3000 to roughly 10,000 (being generous to Al Qaida and the Bush administration). You'd still be looking at a fraction of the number of deaths that you see annually for car accidents.
Not true. The US government will not quarter troops in your home without your consent. In addition, jury trials are still available for federal lawsuits.
I actually did have a pretty clear idea. Really. The rest of this post was done from memory.
My congressman and one of my two senators are both generally in the "fair trade" camp, which argues that tariff-free or low-tariff trade should be limited to countries with environmental, human rights, and labor rights laws similar to the US. My congressman especially makes a big deal about those sorts of standards being critical to preventing US jobs from being shipped overseas, and members of his union base seemed to be pretty familiar with those views when I asked some of them about it.
My other senator is pretty completely in the pocket of big business. He supports essentially no tariffs for anyone, much like he supports essentially 0 taxes for anyone. While he claims to be a supporter of deficit reduction, he had no good answers for me when I asked him about why he was supporting the Bush tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts.
But then again, I'm one of the minority of citizens who pay attention to what the guys who are supposed to represent me are actually doing.
Quite a bit longer than 150 years, and usually we push them around by military means as much as economic. Hence our repeated invasions of most of the countries in Latin America, as well as not infrequent support of coup attempts.
As Maj Gen Smedley Butler put it back in the 1930's, when this sort of thing was in full swing:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
It's history like that, by the way, that makes accusations that the US supported the coup against Hugo Chavez carry significant weight (whether true or not).
Come on, these lobbyists are just the most recent expression of the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
And just to be clear, this sort of thing is nothing new. For instance, the political meaning of the word "railroading" comes from the common practice of railroad company management going into Washington with a bunch of briefcases, and each congressman going in and leaving with fist-fulls of cash, with the bill passed extremely quickly for some strange reason.
With those choices, why not vote for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party this year? I mean, they couldn't do any worse than the current UK government.
Those companies are only abusing their monopoly if someone new comes in and is pressured out of the market by anti-competitive tactics.
Not necessarily true. It depends on the economies of scale that can be realized by the dominant manufacturer. There are markets in which the most efficient producer (in terms of lowest cost to the manufacturer) is a monopoly, and that throws a big wrench into the idea that markets always produce the lowest possible price.
For instance, assume that there are 10,000 people who need widgets. The monopoly "M" can produce 10,000 widgets at a cost of $2 apiece. A potential competitor "C" can initially produce 500 widgets for $5 apiece. Allowing for a rather tidy profit of 50% for M, the price of a widget ought to be $3, but the only check on M's price is C, so M charges $4.99 when C starts up, and $10 when it doesn't. C is kept out of the market (because it can't compete), M always remains profitable (so it can legitimately argue that all it's doing is competing with C), but the price of a widget is still way higher than it would be in an efficient marketplace.
It's worth noting that the existence of competitors would help consumers considerably, but because it's a losing proposition for any competitor the competitor either won't exist or drop out rather quickly. And the losers in this scenario are the 10,000 customers, who end up paying a higher price than they should.
Way more than 7 Americans read that thing. It was actually one of the most popular government publications of all time. Way more popular than, say, the Starr Report.
I always thought "Disagree" was spelled "Overrated" in the/. mod system. At least, anytime someone wants to slap me with a "I disagree with your politics" mod, that's the one they use.
There isn't supposed to be a -1 Disagree mod on/., but apparently at least a few mods are doing precisely that.
To quote Monty Python: "Well nowadays a really blithering idiot can make anything up to ten thousand pounds a year - if he's the head of some big industrial combine."
A slightly more modernized version: "Well nowadays a really blithering idiot can make anything up to $100 million a year - if he's the head of some big investment bank."
Electronic information sent without having it physically stored on the laptop will get picked up by the NSA in room 641A as a matter of routine.
Of course, that's easily gotten around as well: you use an encrypted connection with a key transferred via non-intercepted means, but that's the theory which those who want a police state operate with. There's a reason the original attempt at this sort of routine searching was named "Total Information Awareness".
Quick reminder: The Pakistani government is actively providing support to the US in the War On Terror (TM). A lot of their recent instability has been their attempts to remove Al Qaida and other groups from their country. So they aren't so much "Jihadist" as they are "anti-Jihadist but ineffective".
The India-Pakistan conflict (which is probably the primary motivation of this) goes back to the 1940's, and have little to do with Al Qaida and its ilk.
In a conversation with a (fairly honest) recruiter a while back, I asked him about the market for new grads, since I had friends who were just graduating and might want some referrals. He explained that any software guy with less than 3 years of experience was considered essentially impossible to place, because statistically most techies make their biggest mistakes in the first 3 years, and all employers know this. Well, about 3 years after that policy became the norm, for some reason a lot of tech firms are having a tough time finding qualified entry level applicants here in the US and are "forced" to look at oversees applicants.
Searches on Monster and the like will bear this out: most "entry-level" positions advertised require 3-5 years of experience.
So you can say a short prayer, something like this: "Hail Steve, full of grace, the turtleneck is with thee. Blessed art thou among fanboys, and blessed is the fruit of thy twisted mind, for thou hast borne the savior of our social lives."
When poorer kids in the 1930's started having problems in school, they were labeled as "stupid" or "lazy", given D's and F's, and that was it. Now, a school counselor is brought in and a much more specific and medically accurate label for their problem and recommend a treatment for them.
For wealthier kids, it seems to be partially a way of ensuring that their kid does well in school and other activities. A lot of these parents are going to start thinking something is medically wrong if the kid's grades start slipping into the B-/C range, and will find a counselor who will tell them just that and create a treatment. A diagnosed mental illness can turn a C student into a B+/A student due to extra time on exams, special help on projects, and so forth, as well as drugs that improve concentration (among other things).
The upside of this pattern is that more kids who do have real mental illnesses are getting treated properly and are able to handle their schoolwork better, rather than being simply dismissed as bad students. The downside is that you now have a large population of kids (and adults for that matter) who are wandering around drugged and a much narrower understanding of what behavior is "normal" enough to be *not* indicative of a mental illness.
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What is private enterprise going to do when some jackass starts spewing noise all over a chunk of spectrum?
Wait, how is this different from what Rush Limbaugh does now?
And I should point out that your sarcasm detector appears to be faulty.
I think the big issue here is that some government(s) will no doubt be using this to break up protests or at any time when other less-than-lethal weapons would have been used in the past.
Well I'm absolutely positively sure that nothing like that would ever happen in the Land of the Free.
You're absolutely right, he was more important, although he did need Socrates to head in the odd goal. Plato didn't do anything in that match.
The best part about your currency plan is that we can create a lot of jobs dealing with preventing the inflation problem from getting out of hand, by hiring people to burn down all the forests. Everybody wins! My spreadsheet here suggests that we can hire eleventy million people to do this very critical work.
Practically obligatory reading on this issue, by some guy named Stallman:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
In the case of the Third Amendment, in its one and only significant use, it was upheld:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engblom_v._Carey
Pretend for a moment that every not-completely-stupid attempt at terrorism against the US had succeeded. The shoe and underpants bombers succeed. The USS Cole sinks.
The number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks would go from roughly 3000 to roughly 10,000 (being generous to Al Qaida and the Bush administration). You'd still be looking at a fraction of the number of deaths that you see annually for car accidents.
none of the bill of rights has any meaning left
Not true. The US government will not quarter troops in your home without your consent. In addition, jury trials are still available for federal lawsuits.
"On the contrary, gravity is the foremost thing on my mind" -- Kirk
I actually did have a pretty clear idea. Really. The rest of this post was done from memory.
My congressman and one of my two senators are both generally in the "fair trade" camp, which argues that tariff-free or low-tariff trade should be limited to countries with environmental, human rights, and labor rights laws similar to the US. My congressman especially makes a big deal about those sorts of standards being critical to preventing US jobs from being shipped overseas, and members of his union base seemed to be pretty familiar with those views when I asked some of them about it.
My other senator is pretty completely in the pocket of big business. He supports essentially no tariffs for anyone, much like he supports essentially 0 taxes for anyone. While he claims to be a supporter of deficit reduction, he had no good answers for me when I asked him about why he was supporting the Bush tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts.
But then again, I'm one of the minority of citizens who pay attention to what the guys who are supposed to represent me are actually doing.
Quite a bit longer than 150 years, and usually we push them around by military means as much as economic. Hence our repeated invasions of most of the countries in Latin America, as well as not infrequent support of coup attempts.
As Maj Gen Smedley Butler put it back in the 1930's, when this sort of thing was in full swing:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
It's history like that, by the way, that makes accusations that the US supported the coup against Hugo Chavez carry significant weight (whether true or not).
Come on, these lobbyists are just the most recent expression of the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
And just to be clear, this sort of thing is nothing new. For instance, the political meaning of the word "railroading" comes from the common practice of railroad company management going into Washington with a bunch of briefcases, and each congressman going in and leaving with fist-fulls of cash, with the bill passed extremely quickly for some strange reason.
With those choices, why not vote for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party this year? I mean, they couldn't do any worse than the current UK government.
Those companies are only abusing their monopoly if someone new comes in and is pressured out of the market by anti-competitive tactics.
Not necessarily true. It depends on the economies of scale that can be realized by the dominant manufacturer. There are markets in which the most efficient producer (in terms of lowest cost to the manufacturer) is a monopoly, and that throws a big wrench into the idea that markets always produce the lowest possible price.
For instance, assume that there are 10,000 people who need widgets. The monopoly "M" can produce 10,000 widgets at a cost of $2 apiece. A potential competitor "C" can initially produce 500 widgets for $5 apiece. Allowing for a rather tidy profit of 50% for M, the price of a widget ought to be $3, but the only check on M's price is C, so M charges $4.99 when C starts up, and $10 when it doesn't. C is kept out of the market (because it can't compete), M always remains profitable (so it can legitimately argue that all it's doing is competing with C), but the price of a widget is still way higher than it would be in an efficient marketplace.
It's worth noting that the existence of competitors would help consumers considerably, but because it's a losing proposition for any competitor the competitor either won't exist or drop out rather quickly. And the losers in this scenario are the 10,000 customers, who end up paying a higher price than they should.
Way more than 7 Americans read that thing. It was actually one of the most popular government publications of all time. Way more popular than, say, the Starr Report.
Yeah, I thought the article was wrong on this point:
But what does it take to beat off hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow applicants and land a job at one of the tech elite?
You're supposed to do that to your potential bosses, not your fellow applicants.
I always thought "Disagree" was spelled "Overrated" in the /. mod system. At least, anytime someone wants to slap me with a "I disagree with your politics" mod, that's the one they use.
There isn't supposed to be a -1 Disagree mod on /., but apparently at least a few mods are doing precisely that.
To quote Monty Python: "Well nowadays a really blithering idiot can make anything up to ten thousand pounds a year - if he's the head of some big industrial combine."
A slightly more modernized version: "Well nowadays a really blithering idiot can make anything up to $100 million a year - if he's the head of some big investment bank."
The best part: it wasn't even a decade, just 8 years, so the phrase "decade of failure" is yet more fail.
Of course, it did feel at least a couple of years longer than it actually was.
If too many of us do that, though, we'll get the Canadian equivalent of Lou Dobbs complaining about all those dirty American immigrants.
Electronic information sent without having it physically stored on the laptop will get picked up by the NSA in room 641A as a matter of routine.
Of course, that's easily gotten around as well: you use an encrypted connection with a key transferred via non-intercepted means, but that's the theory which those who want a police state operate with. There's a reason the original attempt at this sort of routine searching was named "Total Information Awareness".
Quick reminder: The Pakistani government is actively providing support to the US in the War On Terror (TM). A lot of their recent instability has been their attempts to remove Al Qaida and other groups from their country. So they aren't so much "Jihadist" as they are "anti-Jihadist but ineffective".
The India-Pakistan conflict (which is probably the primary motivation of this) goes back to the 1940's, and have little to do with Al Qaida and its ilk.
Damn straight.
In a conversation with a (fairly honest) recruiter a while back, I asked him about the market for new grads, since I had friends who were just graduating and might want some referrals. He explained that any software guy with less than 3 years of experience was considered essentially impossible to place, because statistically most techies make their biggest mistakes in the first 3 years, and all employers know this. Well, about 3 years after that policy became the norm, for some reason a lot of tech firms are having a tough time finding qualified entry level applicants here in the US and are "forced" to look at oversees applicants.
Searches on Monster and the like will bear this out: most "entry-level" positions advertised require 3-5 years of experience.
So you can say a short prayer, something like this:
"Hail Steve, full of grace, the turtleneck is with thee. Blessed art thou among fanboys, and blessed is the fruit of thy twisted mind, for thou hast borne the savior of our social lives."
When poorer kids in the 1930's started having problems in school, they were labeled as "stupid" or "lazy", given D's and F's, and that was it. Now, a school counselor is brought in and a much more specific and medically accurate label for their problem and recommend a treatment for them.
For wealthier kids, it seems to be partially a way of ensuring that their kid does well in school and other activities. A lot of these parents are going to start thinking something is medically wrong if the kid's grades start slipping into the B-/C range, and will find a counselor who will tell them just that and create a treatment. A diagnosed mental illness can turn a C student into a B+/A student due to extra time on exams, special help on projects, and so forth, as well as drugs that improve concentration (among other things).
The upside of this pattern is that more kids who do have real mental illnesses are getting treated properly and are able to handle their schoolwork better, rather than being simply dismissed as bad students. The downside is that you now have a large population of kids (and adults for that matter) who are wandering around drugged and a much narrower understanding of what behavior is "normal" enough to be *not* indicative of a mental illness.