While generally correct, the problem is that people are trying to apply the characteristics of a market in equilibrium to the case where there is an explicit shock. If a new equilibrium is achieved, then the price shift is obvious; if the market reverts to the old equilibrium after the removal of the shock then it is not so clear that you have induced supply in an efficient manner.
The point is not that markets use shocks to improve long term supply, but rather that they improve supply during the shock. For example, if you have a demand shock in an Uber-like market (low barrier to entry, casual supply possible), then it's just a matter of advertising the mad money to be made (as well as a few pointers about how new drivers can effectively profit from the service). If it's a high barrier to entry field with repeated shocks (like oil refineries), then higher prices still provide incentive to create surge production and other such schemes which have the side effect of making the market more efficient during future shocks.
Unless, of course, the central authority people don't actually do that. And if you're including market analysis, you might as well make that your authority in the first place.
That's a terrible argument. It's a have cake and eat it argument. If the Beale strategy works, it shows there is no conspiracy. If the Beale strategy doesn't work, then it shows that there is no conspiracy. The only thing that doesn't support the argument is having no one protest against the conspiracy - which shows that there is no conspiracy.
Think about how amazing it would be if you could tell "the man" to go to hell, and go out and start your own company with your own ideas and initiative. Knowing that in the years it's going to take to build a market segment large enough to become significantly profitable that you, your spouse, and your children will all have their education covered, their medical expenses covered, and enough money to cover your mortgage and food.
That makes the people who actually take all that risk now all the more remarkable. When are they going to get some respect?
Also, who's paying for this? You mention some really expensive items in your wish list.
Now, that's escape velocity sarcasm right there. Too bad you didn't pick a better stalking horse though. The ISS was a worse boondoggle, but I don't have respect for the SCSC either.
The way you state that makes it seem like you believe the student is the only beneficiary of a college education, and that if the government pays for the costs of their degree it represents a grant from the taxpayer.
Sounds accurate. Here's the obvious thing. Anyone who wants an education will get one whether or not it is "free". So the obvious solution is to have them pay for their education and save that government money for a better use, such as not collecting the taxes in the first place.
Society benefits from having an educated workforce, and things that benefit everybody should be funded by everybody.
Unless of course, the education in question is worse than not having that education. Marxism comes to mind as a classic example of something worse than mindless burger-flipping. A number of the leaders of various Marxist groups were not only college educated, but were exposed to Marxist beliefs while in college (this starts with Karl Marx I might add). And some of those groups have racked up quite the body count.
My take here is that a "free" education which isn't actually free would instill a destructive sense of entitlement towards appropriating the works of other people. And belief systems like Marxism are IMHO a direct consequence of that sense of entitlement (eg, Marx's labor theory of value is a classic example, especially, when it was used to claim that workers had a better and enduring claim to the products of their work than the people, the capitalists who made the labor and the products possible in the first place as well as paying for that labor).
And frankly, I think people treat their education better, if they have to work for it. IMHO, paying for your education is a valuable part of education in itself.
Just think - SpaceX would have to build a low earth orbit launch system so it could go nowhere and do exactly nothing. Oh and with no outside funding.
Except launch piles of valuable satellites, likely including space stations. Yes, the ISS was convenient for SpaceX, but so would a Mir-sized space station for a hundredth the overall cost (including the cost of extending Space Shuttle missions a decade).
There's no evidence that any of the proposed efforts to mitigate global warming would increase poverty.
Like a doubling of the price of electricity in Germany and Denmark due to their subsidies for renewable energy? And what of the developing world and its tremendous need for electricity from any source? Taking down their fossil fuel infrastructure and replacing it with an expensive renewable infrastructure will drive more people to poverty just like making any other necessity of life more expensive would. Nor are they going to get wealthier when developed world economies are self-introducing massive inefficiencies and hence, dampening their ability to trade with the rest of the world.
Another annoying aspect of these measures is that they won't do much, if anything, to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. For example, Germany uses just as much coal as it used to, due to renewable energy and taking down nuclear plants. The Kyoto Treaty which was the first attempt to restrict greenhouse gases emissions was already know to be woefully inadequate for the claimed need.
Quite the opposite - large infrastructure projects tend to employ a lot of people,
There are opportunity costs to infrastructure projects like anything else that requires a considerable allocation of resources and labor. For example, people working on those infrastructure projects are not gainfully working elsewhere. The wealth paying for their employment comes now or later from taxpayers who in turn could have used that wealth for various productive purposes. The benefits need to justify those costs. Mere job creation, especially when it is actually coupled with job loss elsewhere, isn't good enough.
I would argue that solar and wind subsidies in Spain and California, for example, have not been a net benefit to society precisely because they encouraged the construction of expensive, inefficient renewable projects wasting a lot of peoples' time and wealth in the process.
... and efficiency improvements save money in the long term.
Unless they don't. Sometimes efficiency improvements don't happen because it's not anyone's job, like improving an electricity grid which isn't owned by anyone who would profit from it. There, you might have a legitimate reason to encourage efficiency improvements. But most of society has an interest in paying less for energy. If the efficiency improvements really are that good, they'll adopt them without a need for government to intervene, except possibly via a mild degree of education projects.
There's the rise of the SUV in the US. For a few decades, light trucks were subject to fewer regulations on emissions and fuel consumption than cars. While it might be mysterious to the people who value efficiency over utility, there has been massive demand for SUVs over the past thirty years precisely because the public wanted a powerful vehicle that wasn't hamstrung by various US regulations.
Then there was the rise of multi-head showers in the US because the feds mandated water efficient shower heads, but didn't specify one head per shower.
What I'm illustrating here is a key problem with efficiency improvements. They usually are just not that valuable. And as a result, people route around the damage and find ways to get what they want, which is not slightly more efficiency.
There is a simpler approach which works. If energy, water, or whatever resource is really valuable enough that it needs to be conserved, then price the resource accordingly. If people are willing to pay the elevated price without embracing more efficient technology or practices, then that's fine with me. They're paying for the privilege of wasting a scarce resource.
A dollar misdirected is not necessarily a dollar lost. But I think it's foolish to ignore the costs associated with global warming mitigation, especially ineffective mitigation.
Let's say it's a relatively small disruption, then only 1% of population dies off. That's not too bad? That's 70 million people. If you kill 70 people, you're a serial killer. If you kill 70 million people, you're a climate change denier.
And let's say 140 million people die because they were thrust into poverty by the supposed fix for global warming. I guess you're a climate change denier times two then.
In Chicago, which has the country's second biggest fleet with roughly 7,000 taxis, the median sale price for a medallion hovered around $70,000 in 2007 before reaching a median sales peak of $357,000 in late 2013.
Since reaching that high point more than a year ago, the value of medallions in the Windy City have sharply declined and sales have ground to a near haltâ"with the city recording only seven medallion transfers in the first quarter of 2015â"as the median sale price fell to about $270,000.
[...]
Earlier this month, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which regulates the city's taxi industry, had sold newly-created medallions for wheel-chair accessible taxis for $80,000 each. The bargain price came after the authority put the medallions on the market last fall, with an initial asking price of $475,000, but received no bids.
Note that the city of Philadelphia lost money due to taxi competition from Uber. There's a huge conflict of interest between the city government and customers of taxis.
In New York, taxi mogul Evgeny Friedman is locked in a court battle with Citibank, to whom he owes some $31 million after some medallion loans matured.
Citibank is looking to seize 87 of Freidman's 900 medallions in New York, which has seen medallion prices drop to about $870,000 last fall from a peak of about $1.2 million last spring. Freidman, the biggest medallion owner in the USA, also owns fleets in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.
There's the money. There's the conflicts of interest. There's the conspiracy between taxi medallion holders and city governments neither who has an interest in providing enough ridership services for the general public.
What was most striking about this story was that Uber made $750 million in New York City during the first four years it provided its service there. That indicates to me huge pent up demand that is not being met by the taxi industry. It's time for change.
Because gangs and organized crime won't be able to get their people into this police force? I don't buy that at all. I believe it'll be ridden with moles, plants, and people you can turn with a little cash. And the worst and smartest of these will be the cleanest of them all.
A 20 year veteran on the other hand, has considerable incentives not to do that. They have stuff they'll lose, if they get caught. Their reputation will be destroyed. They will have betrayed people they have known their entire adult life. The three year guy who's out in six months is just betraying some strangers he doesn't care about.
Further, who will train and manage these people? After a couple of generations,there won't be anyone in society with more than three years of police experience.
No. We already know that it is very easy to mess up police work. It's a complex, difficult, dangerous job. You already admit that and that it requires a lot of training to even start to do such work. It's not a noob job.
Gotta do whatever is necessary to keep the idiots away.
That means good hiring practices, rewarding honest officers, and a willingness to punish police officers when they do wrong. If you aren't willing to do that, then it doesn't matter if your officers have 20 years of experience or two years of experience. You will get the same outcome, a corrupt police force with "idiots".
And three years of training for three years of service is a waste of society's resources. You are making the police considerably more expensive for worse results.
Yes, the "rapid" advance of our technology... We don't even have the Concorde anymore.
We have plenty of supersonic aircraft, there just wasn't enough demand for the Concorde to justify its cost.
The thing with people like you is that you are just like a religious person. You don't want to hear reality.
What "reality" am I not "hearing"? You just present vague talk. The writer linked to earlier, presents arguments that just don't have much relevance to space activities.
But just in case, how much more time of nothing (in the sense of the grandiose stuff you propose, not cameras on wheels and radios in orbit) happening will convince you that nothing will ever happen?
I'd say about half a billion years probably would do. If life hasn't left Earth by the time the Sun goes nova, then that's a good indication that this stuff is impossible.
There will be no Moon colonies, no asteroid mining, no great shiny expansion of the glorious species into the empty vacuum of space, nothing.
And what is that based on? We've already demonstrated the physics and hence, reality allow it. We've seen steady progress on many technological fronts, such as cheaper manufacturing, cheaper orbital launch, and demonstration that we can maintain infrastructure and habitats in space indefinitely. People who say things are impossible have a really bad track record and I think this will end up being more of the same.
Then start them with military boot camp and three years in the Corp.
How is that supposed to help? Let us keep in mind that a lot of the problem cops have military training too. The rules and environment of a civilian cop is far more complex than the simple one of a Marine grunt.
And what happens when the police routinely bungle cases to the point that no one can be prosecuted? Keep in mind that inability to provide public safety is a frequent contributor to tyranny.
"Bizarre assumptions" is Space Nutter code for physics, reality, and limits.
Nothing will happen in space. Ever.
We already know that technology allows us to do a whole lot more in space than "nothing". That's already demonstrated to be false. Why argue that we can't live in space or other such things when there's been people living in space for over 15 years and profitable and useful satellites?
And the rapid advance of technology these days rules out that things will stay as they are forever. Just because it's relatively expensive now to put things in space and as a result do useful things in space, doesn't mean it will always stay that way. It just doesn't take that much physically to put things in orbit. Energy is extremely cheap and reaction mass for delta-v is only about an order of magnitude more expensive. The physics just isn't in the way.
The current welfare system for the insurance companies isn't optimum by any means. But it's a damn sight better than what we had before.
I don't buy that in the least. The same government that spies to the limit of its capabilities on everyone is not a government I want anywhere near my health care. It's going to be just another intelligence source to them.
QA, there are so many bizarre assumptions and bad arguments in that link, such as assuming we can't both solve problems on Earth and do space stuff. Or throwing in some irrelevant rant about the impossibility of forever exponentially increasing energy consumption (which isn't needed for anything). Or the bizarre distance argument about difficulty of reaching some location being somehow proportional to its distance from Earth rather delta v or availability of energy/resources at the destination. And of course, there's the argument that because space is bad for naked people, then we can't possibly go there.
Sounds like you need a break from the internet. I'm not going to do major research for a light weight discussion on Slashdot. I made an assertion which turned out to be wrong. I agreed with you in the end, because you were right. I don't see the point to this.
This is the internet, numbnuts. Seek out information from credible sources directly pertaining to the subject you're commenting on.
I don't even know who you are, so how can I determine what sources you will have a vague feeling are credible?
Then why should I care about your post? You seem simply seem to be restating the previous posters observation about private watchdog companies, but in a way that gives the impression you are trying to disagree?
Slashdot Mirror
While generally correct, the problem is that people are trying to apply the characteristics of a market in equilibrium to the case where there is an explicit shock. If a new equilibrium is achieved, then the price shift is obvious; if the market reverts to the old equilibrium after the removal of the shock then it is not so clear that you have induced supply in an efficient manner.
The point is not that markets use shocks to improve long term supply, but rather that they improve supply during the shock. For example, if you have a demand shock in an Uber-like market (low barrier to entry, casual supply possible), then it's just a matter of advertising the mad money to be made (as well as a few pointers about how new drivers can effectively profit from the service). If it's a high barrier to entry field with repeated shocks (like oil refineries), then higher prices still provide incentive to create surge production and other such schemes which have the side effect of making the market more efficient during future shocks.
Unless, of course, the central authority people don't actually do that. And if you're including market analysis, you might as well make that your authority in the first place.
That's a terrible argument. It's a have cake and eat it argument. If the Beale strategy works, it shows there is no conspiracy. If the Beale strategy doesn't work, then it shows that there is no conspiracy. The only thing that doesn't support the argument is having no one protest against the conspiracy - which shows that there is no conspiracy.
The real world doesn't provide an education for all, no matter how hard they pull on their bootstraps.
I'm not interested in an education for all. I already stated I'm interested in an education for those who want one. We have that.
Think about how amazing it would be if you could tell "the man" to go to hell, and go out and start your own company with your own ideas and initiative. Knowing that in the years it's going to take to build a market segment large enough to become significantly profitable that you, your spouse, and your children will all have their education covered, their medical expenses covered, and enough money to cover your mortgage and food.
That makes the people who actually take all that risk now all the more remarkable. When are they going to get some respect?
Also, who's paying for this? You mention some really expensive items in your wish list.
LOL! What world do you live in? History says otherwise.
Same world you live in.
Now, that's escape velocity sarcasm right there. Too bad you didn't pick a better stalking horse though. The ISS was a worse boondoggle, but I don't have respect for the SCSC either.
The way you state that makes it seem like you believe the student is the only beneficiary of a college education, and that if the government pays for the costs of their degree it represents a grant from the taxpayer.
Sounds accurate. Here's the obvious thing. Anyone who wants an education will get one whether or not it is "free". So the obvious solution is to have them pay for their education and save that government money for a better use, such as not collecting the taxes in the first place.
Society benefits from having an educated workforce, and things that benefit everybody should be funded by everybody.
Unless of course, the education in question is worse than not having that education. Marxism comes to mind as a classic example of something worse than mindless burger-flipping. A number of the leaders of various Marxist groups were not only college educated, but were exposed to Marxist beliefs while in college (this starts with Karl Marx I might add). And some of those groups have racked up quite the body count.
My take here is that a "free" education which isn't actually free would instill a destructive sense of entitlement towards appropriating the works of other people. And belief systems like Marxism are IMHO a direct consequence of that sense of entitlement (eg, Marx's labor theory of value is a classic example, especially, when it was used to claim that workers had a better and enduring claim to the products of their work than the people, the capitalists who made the labor and the products possible in the first place as well as paying for that labor).
And frankly, I think people treat their education better, if they have to work for it. IMHO, paying for your education is a valuable part of education in itself.
Just think - SpaceX would have to build a low earth orbit launch system so it could go nowhere and do exactly nothing. Oh and with no outside funding.
Except launch piles of valuable satellites, likely including space stations. Yes, the ISS was convenient for SpaceX, but so would a Mir-sized space station for a hundredth the overall cost (including the cost of extending Space Shuttle missions a decade).
There's no evidence that any of the proposed efforts to mitigate global warming would increase poverty.
Like a doubling of the price of electricity in Germany and Denmark due to their subsidies for renewable energy? And what of the developing world and its tremendous need for electricity from any source? Taking down their fossil fuel infrastructure and replacing it with an expensive renewable infrastructure will drive more people to poverty just like making any other necessity of life more expensive would. Nor are they going to get wealthier when developed world economies are self-introducing massive inefficiencies and hence, dampening their ability to trade with the rest of the world.
Another annoying aspect of these measures is that they won't do much, if anything, to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. For example, Germany uses just as much coal as it used to, due to renewable energy and taking down nuclear plants. The Kyoto Treaty which was the first attempt to restrict greenhouse gases emissions was already know to be woefully inadequate for the claimed need.
Quite the opposite - large infrastructure projects tend to employ a lot of people,
There are opportunity costs to infrastructure projects like anything else that requires a considerable allocation of resources and labor. For example, people working on those infrastructure projects are not gainfully working elsewhere. The wealth paying for their employment comes now or later from taxpayers who in turn could have used that wealth for various productive purposes. The benefits need to justify those costs. Mere job creation, especially when it is actually coupled with job loss elsewhere, isn't good enough.
I would argue that solar and wind subsidies in Spain and California, for example, have not been a net benefit to society precisely because they encouraged the construction of expensive, inefficient renewable projects wasting a lot of peoples' time and wealth in the process.
... and efficiency improvements save money in the long term.
Unless they don't. Sometimes efficiency improvements don't happen because it's not anyone's job, like improving an electricity grid which isn't owned by anyone who would profit from it. There, you might have a legitimate reason to encourage efficiency improvements. But most of society has an interest in paying less for energy. If the efficiency improvements really are that good, they'll adopt them without a need for government to intervene, except possibly via a mild degree of education projects.
There's the rise of the SUV in the US. For a few decades, light trucks were subject to fewer regulations on emissions and fuel consumption than cars. While it might be mysterious to the people who value efficiency over utility, there has been massive demand for SUVs over the past thirty years precisely because the public wanted a powerful vehicle that wasn't hamstrung by various US regulations.
Then there was the rise of multi-head showers in the US because the feds mandated water efficient shower heads, but didn't specify one head per shower.
What I'm illustrating here is a key problem with efficiency improvements. They usually are just not that valuable. And as a result, people route around the damage and find ways to get what they want, which is not slightly more efficiency.
There is a simpler approach which works. If energy, water, or whatever resource is really valuable enough that it needs to be conserved, then price the resource accordingly. If people are willing to pay the elevated price without embracing more efficient technology or practices, then that's fine with me. They're paying for the privilege of wasting a scarce resource.
A dollar misdirected is not necessarily a dollar lost. But I think it's foolish to ignore the costs associated with global warming mitigation, especially ineffective mitigation.
Let's say it's a relatively small disruption, then only 1% of population dies off. That's not too bad? That's 70 million people. If you kill 70 people, you're a serial killer. If you kill 70 million people, you're a climate change denier.
And let's say 140 million people die because they were thrust into poverty by the supposed fix for global warming. I guess you're a climate change denier times two then.
Can you imagine Slashdot without all our fucking insightful comments?
Who couldn't? It'd be that blog with one comment every ten posts.
In Chicago, which has the country's second biggest fleet with roughly 7,000 taxis, the median sale price for a medallion hovered around $70,000 in 2007 before reaching a median sales peak of $357,000 in late 2013.
Since reaching that high point more than a year ago, the value of medallions in the Windy City have sharply declined and sales have ground to a near haltâ"with the city recording only seven medallion transfers in the first quarter of 2015â"as the median sale price fell to about $270,000.
[...]
Earlier this month, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which regulates the city's taxi industry, had sold newly-created medallions for wheel-chair accessible taxis for $80,000 each. The bargain price came after the authority put the medallions on the market last fall, with an initial asking price of $475,000, but received no bids.
Note that the city of Philadelphia lost money due to taxi competition from Uber. There's a huge conflict of interest between the city government and customers of taxis.
In New York, taxi mogul Evgeny Friedman is locked in a court battle with Citibank, to whom he owes some $31 million after some medallion loans matured.
Citibank is looking to seize 87 of Freidman's 900 medallions in New York, which has seen medallion prices drop to about $870,000 last fall from a peak of about $1.2 million last spring. Freidman, the biggest medallion owner in the USA, also owns fleets in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.
There's the money. There's the conflicts of interest. There's the conspiracy between taxi medallion holders and city governments neither who has an interest in providing enough ridership services for the general public.
What was most striking about this story was that Uber made $750 million in New York City during the first four years it provided its service there. That indicates to me huge pent up demand that is not being met by the taxi industry. It's time for change.
any currency to absolute dominance.
My dollar bills are smarter than your dollar bills?
Better a noob than a crook, I say.
Because gangs and organized crime won't be able to get their people into this police force? I don't buy that at all. I believe it'll be ridden with moles, plants, and people you can turn with a little cash. And the worst and smartest of these will be the cleanest of them all.
A 20 year veteran on the other hand, has considerable incentives not to do that. They have stuff they'll lose, if they get caught. Their reputation will be destroyed. They will have betrayed people they have known their entire adult life. The three year guy who's out in six months is just betraying some strangers he doesn't care about.
Further, who will train and manage these people? After a couple of generations,there won't be anyone in society with more than three years of police experience.
You are speculating.
No. We already know that it is very easy to mess up police work. It's a complex, difficult, dangerous job. You already admit that and that it requires a lot of training to even start to do such work. It's not a noob job.
Gotta do whatever is necessary to keep the idiots away.
That means good hiring practices, rewarding honest officers, and a willingness to punish police officers when they do wrong. If you aren't willing to do that, then it doesn't matter if your officers have 20 years of experience or two years of experience. You will get the same outcome, a corrupt police force with "idiots".
And three years of training for three years of service is a waste of society's resources. You are making the police considerably more expensive for worse results.
Already happens far too frequently.
So it'll be better if it happens even more frequently than far too frequently?
And if other countries can require three to four years of training and a college education for cops, we should to.
For a job that only lasts three years? That's not even worth arguing for the sake of sophistry.
Yes, the "rapid" advance of our technology... We don't even have the Concorde anymore.
We have plenty of supersonic aircraft, there just wasn't enough demand for the Concorde to justify its cost.
The thing with people like you is that you are just like a religious person. You don't want to hear reality.
What "reality" am I not "hearing"? You just present vague talk. The writer linked to earlier, presents arguments that just don't have much relevance to space activities.
But just in case, how much more time of nothing (in the sense of the grandiose stuff you propose, not cameras on wheels and radios in orbit) happening will convince you that nothing will ever happen?
I'd say about half a billion years probably would do. If life hasn't left Earth by the time the Sun goes nova, then that's a good indication that this stuff is impossible.
There will be no Moon colonies, no asteroid mining, no great shiny expansion of the glorious species into the empty vacuum of space, nothing.
And what is that based on? We've already demonstrated the physics and hence, reality allow it. We've seen steady progress on many technological fronts, such as cheaper manufacturing, cheaper orbital launch, and demonstration that we can maintain infrastructure and habitats in space indefinitely. People who say things are impossible have a really bad track record and I think this will end up being more of the same.
Then start them with military boot camp and three years in the Corp.
How is that supposed to help? Let us keep in mind that a lot of the problem cops have military training too. The rules and environment of a civilian cop is far more complex than the simple one of a Marine grunt.
And what happens when the police routinely bungle cases to the point that no one can be prosecuted? Keep in mind that inability to provide public safety is a frequent contributor to tyranny.
"Bizarre assumptions" is Space Nutter code for physics, reality, and limits.
Nothing will happen in space. Ever.
We already know that technology allows us to do a whole lot more in space than "nothing". That's already demonstrated to be false. Why argue that we can't live in space or other such things when there's been people living in space for over 15 years and profitable and useful satellites?
And the rapid advance of technology these days rules out that things will stay as they are forever. Just because it's relatively expensive now to put things in space and as a result do useful things in space, doesn't mean it will always stay that way. It just doesn't take that much physically to put things in orbit. Energy is extremely cheap and reaction mass for delta-v is only about an order of magnitude more expensive. The physics just isn't in the way.
The current welfare system for the insurance companies isn't optimum by any means. But it's a damn sight better than what we had before.
I don't buy that in the least. The same government that spies to the limit of its capabilities on everyone is not a government I want anywhere near my health care. It's going to be just another intelligence source to them.
In and out, nobody gets hurt...
Police work is the very last place I want a sea of inexperienced people. A lot of people will get hurt.
QA, there are so many bizarre assumptions and bad arguments in that link, such as assuming we can't both solve problems on Earth and do space stuff. Or throwing in some irrelevant rant about the impossibility of forever exponentially increasing energy consumption (which isn't needed for anything). Or the bizarre distance argument about difficulty of reaching some location being somehow proportional to its distance from Earth rather delta v or availability of energy/resources at the destination. And of course, there's the argument that because space is bad for naked people, then we can't possibly go there.
This is the internet, numbnuts. Seek out information from credible sources directly pertaining to the subject you're commenting on.
I don't even know who you are, so how can I determine what sources you will have a vague feeling are credible?
Then why should I care about your post? You seem simply seem to be restating the previous posters observation about private watchdog companies, but in a way that gives the impression you are trying to disagree?