If you mean we should just forget the insurance and socialize medicine, I'll agree.
I don't.
Don't even try to claim it will make it more expensive since every country that has done it has cheaper healthcare than we do.
Obamacare is what the single payer people got when they had the votes to do something. Of course, it will be ludicrously expensive just like everything else the federal government does!
We can pay for them by no longer playing world police and dropping the failed war on drugs.
Whatever. I see no reason here to change my opinion. You see I operate on the basis of evidence. Even if we go by your rather weak standards, we still have periods where China was not by a little bit the greatest power in the world with non-cowardly armies. I wager we'll see another such period coming up.
as Russia has of landing on the moon.
Over what time frame are we speaking of here? I think there's a really good chance the Russians will land on the Moon this century - maybe 50-70% chance.
I know that there isn't a long history to the ozone hole and not a lot of evidence past the last few decades. Trying to extrapolate long time behavior from short term data is fraught with peril.
Here's where I stood on that. Way back then, I was trading on a play money prediction betting market called "Foresight Exchange". As of 2000 and early 2001, my biggest bet was a sell against the claim that the US would have a balanced budget including off budget/mandatory spending. When 9/11 happened, I won big because the government spigots opened up. I would probably have won anyway because people didn't understand how much of the 1999-2000 revenue was due to one time stock capital gains.
But it was clear that Bush wasn't going to continue for very long the policies of Clinton. 9/11 just provided a huge opportunity to spend like a drunk sailor. Same thing happened when Obama got elected. I figured out especially from his numerous "big plans", a lock on both branches of Congress, and complete lack of care about TARP that it was be a real spending doozy. And I was right.
One effect is that it weeds out fraudulent and redundant or minutely incremental research. My take is that there's a lot of research out there which has the low expectation of generating a certain number of published papers. That's it and it has no value to society. Something wonderful might come of just throwing money at research, even of fraudulent research, but that is hit and miss without any attempt to improve the odds.
It's also worth noting that the laser was used almost immediately to make holographs, a big advance in imaging.
No offense, but you seem to have very little experience with publicly funded research. Even basic research projects are continually held accountable, and funding is cut if results are not produced.
There are a number of big ticket counterexamples in my neck of woods (space development) such as the International Space Station and the James Webb Space Telescope. The two combined are chew up over $2 billion a year for rather mediocre results.
I guess you're unaware of what a theory is. Theories of gravity are still theories despite being confirmed to a lot of decimal places for the regimes where they apply. The speculated effect of surface emitted CFCs on the ozone layer is a theory.
Any rational person would be concerned about the lack of good data collection before the era of satellites. This problem cripples all of climate research.
I find it interesting how people babble about how bad "deniers" are while simultaneously demonstrating profound ignorance of scientific matters.
How does it weaken society? By reducing suffering?
Reduce suffering? You really don't get the problems with the law do you?
First, it's a misallocation of public funding and a large inefficiency in the economy. Rather than spend a lot of money to make medical care more expensive (via the large health insurance subsidies plus those mandates on insurers), wouldn't it be better used to pay for federal level law enforcement and disaster response? Roads? National defense? The more you spend on feel good stuff the less you have for the things that actually matter and the things that the federal government is actually tasked to do.
Second, it creates several perverse incentives such as an employer shift to part time employment and reducing personal income to meet subsidy requirements.
These are part of why this is remarkably bad law even by Washington, DC. The US can handle some level of bad law, but it keeps piling up year after year.
So it's just peachy for a child to buy illegal drugs or a politician to accept bribes with real money but not with BitCoins? I just don't see the "bleed" here.
Does not president Obamas treatment not clue you in to some of the "issues" the USA still has over race
No, it doesn't because the man was elected and reelected president and the political differences are all over obvious issues not the color of his skin.
There are racist ideas still around, for example, your assertions that colored people wouldn't be able to cut it in a libertarian society, but they no longer have the impact on US society that they did prior to the 1950s.
This theory suffers from the main problems of AGW, observation and confirmation bias. Here manifesting as a lack of evidence that it was actually a problem coupleld with a desire to see the model confirmed. Sure, there was an ozone hole. But there might have always been an ozone hole (as long as there has been an Antarctic continent) and it wasn't until we looked for it that we saw it.
So what you're saying is that BitCoin might not be the best investment choice for your life savings. Who would have thought that?
I don't get why people care so much about the illegal activity going on in BitCoin. If you don't like it, then don't get mixed up in it. No one is forcing you to invest in BitCoin Ponzi schemes.
To dust off an old joke: who cleans the shitters in Galt's Gulch? Who "opts-in" to be a janitor?
No idea since the book didn't say, but I bet it was a profitable business since you had all these rich guys, paying in gold, who probably didn't know and didn't want to know how to clean a toilet.
I must admit to being puzzled why this is even considered a joke. It's a pretty obvious and very long ago solved problem.
In another story, someone was yacking about it being a "trade agreement". I didn't buy that then. I think it's an out of control bureaucracy with too much power and the ability to barter to gain more power in trade for positions in the EU government.
While I agree with your reservations, your countries economy is built of consumption and capitalism yes? Then it's doomed,
Thanks for warning us that this post would be full of bullshit.
Just like mine and everyone else s. It was the natural step to take as society changed. However, It's weakness and end game are now spelled out clearly for anyone how cares to look.
Capitalism works and makes sense. Let us recall that the definition of capitalism is merely private ownership of capital. Experience has shown when people own something they take better care of it. They have an interest in making it work better. They make new capital on their own initiative.
Now, you allege a bunch of bad things about capitalism. My experience in the past has been that such people aren't really speaking of capitalism nor have any idea for a system that would work better for the dysfunctionality they are thinking of. We'll see if that is the case here as well.
It's worth noting, for example, that the "universal welfare state" mentioned in the grandparent is also a consumption and capitalism system since a) the welfare is oriented around providing for the consumption of basic needs, and b) people and private businesses are still allowed to own capital.
This form of social system is not maintainable and promotes the end our our species.
Evidence has shown that capitalism creates infrastructure for the survival of the human race and a great deal of cooperation. That doesn't promote the "end" of our species.
there are only two way to change this world. Slowly, or all at once.
I take it you've never done a complex, lengthy project before. All at once is just a recipe for failure since there will be so many details that you just don't understand when you start the project. Starting small is not just for knuckle draggers.
And starting small just makes sense. Figure out what works or doesn't work and scale up from there.
Fortunately with Obamacare, America is realizing that there needs to be some kind of social security. In the long run, there's no way around it if you want to keep exploiting people and keep them relatively peaceful at the same time.
You have to have a society in order to have social security. While some level of extravagant promises can be kept, these obligations just keep growing. For example, Obamacare's trade off is to offer cheap health insurance in exchange for the violation of law, degradation and grow in cost of health care, and a weakening of society. That's a terrible trade.
What's the point of social security if basic infrastructure stops working? I can live without a safety net better than I can live without clean water or law enforcement.
At some point, you have diminishing returns and I think the US well past that point.
The US does not have to pay its debts each year. In fact, the world economy would collapse if countries did that.
The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one. So the US doesn't have to refrain from collapsing the world economy! One wonders why they still pay their debts, if that's the only obstacle!
Historically, this is the type of research that has enabled the bulk of our rapid progress in the last couple of centuries.
No, it hasn't. As I've noted many times before, that fundamental research of the past had near future application at the time. This often devolves into a game of people naming research and then I countering with the near future expectations that people doing or funding that research would have had.
Anyone have suggestions on how to improve the funding situation?
Make researchers more accountable for the money they spend. I suggest doing it by eliminating most public funding of science which inherently is unaccountable.
17 trillion dollars sounds like a shipload of money, but you have to put in perspective: It's not that much compared with the GDP of the US.
LOL. Maybe to a galaxy spanning civilization this would be small potatoes, but it's kind of big for the US.
The biggest structural problem the US has is its insane right.
They keep holding back the suicidal left which is a bad thing apparently.
The debt ceiling standoff was very, very dangerous, far more dangerous than even 20 trillion $ of debt would be.
As I noted elsewhere, anyone who cared about a few week default of US on short term bonds had already sold them off.
It would have taken very little additional bad luck to triger a financial calamity of biblical proportions.
Reminds me of that Heinlein quote about "bad luck". There's a simple solution here: spend less at the federal level and stop getting in the way of people who create wealth.
but several of the people operating under that banner have other agendas
First time ever that someone had an ulterior motive! Unless your tastes are so particular and refined or your groups highly select so as to exclude anyone else other than you, then maybe your associations have this problem as well.
One issue is that it's hard to explain highly technical experiments within the required 6 pages or so for a grant, let alone something that a crowd would be willing to read.
But a reasonable thing to expect.
but funding from the federal government is still more reliable than crowdfunding
The government doesn't even care if you don't make any sort of scientific progress at all. If a truck were to back into the James Webb Space Telescope and hopelessly total it, there would some blame finding (with the truck driver instantly fired and some other people after a suitable period of public reflection via committee), but the end result would be a collective shrug and the signing of new checks. That's because most of the money for JWST has been spent. As far as Congress is concerned, JWST is already done and over with.
Looks like Snowden has become something of a disgruntled ex-employee now. I guess that's why he's keen on embarrassing the US rather than say Russia or China.
Slashdot Mirror
If you mean we should just forget the insurance and socialize medicine, I'll agree.
I don't.
Don't even try to claim it will make it more expensive since every country that has done it has cheaper healthcare than we do.
Obamacare is what the single payer people got when they had the votes to do something. Of course, it will be ludicrously expensive just like everything else the federal government does!
We can pay for them by no longer playing world police and dropping the failed war on drugs.
I'm cool with that.
as Russia has of landing on the moon.
Over what time frame are we speaking of here? I think there's a really good chance the Russians will land on the Moon this century - maybe 50-70% chance.
the disturbing aspect to the ozone measurements wasn't so much the finding of a hole, but that the levels were reducing markedly from year to year.
Since we don't know what ozone layer behavior was like before the modern era, we don't know if this was unusual behavior for the ozone hole or not.
I know that there isn't a long history to the ozone hole and not a lot of evidence past the last few decades. Trying to extrapolate long time behavior from short term data is fraught with peril.
Here's where I stood on that. Way back then, I was trading on a play money prediction betting market called "Foresight Exchange". As of 2000 and early 2001, my biggest bet was a sell against the claim that the US would have a balanced budget including off budget/mandatory spending. When 9/11 happened, I won big because the government spigots opened up. I would probably have won anyway because people didn't understand how much of the 1999-2000 revenue was due to one time stock capital gains.
But it was clear that Bush wasn't going to continue for very long the policies of Clinton. 9/11 just provided a huge opportunity to spend like a drunk sailor. Same thing happened when Obama got elected. I figured out especially from his numerous "big plans", a lock on both branches of Congress, and complete lack of care about TARP that it was be a real spending doozy. And I was right.
Crazy Republicans and even crazier Democrats.
We're already using your model for the vast majority of research, so it hardly qualifies as a "better model."
If that were true, then widespread use is evidence that it is a better model.
What I imagine the OP is asking for is a better model to finance research with a very far-away goal and a poorly understood path to it.
And I gave it. Make it a bunch of steps of near future research with near future goals.
It's also worth noting that the laser was used almost immediately to make holographs, a big advance in imaging.
No offense, but you seem to have very little experience with publicly funded research. Even basic research projects are continually held accountable, and funding is cut if results are not produced.
There are a number of big ticket counterexamples in my neck of woods (space development) such as the International Space Station and the James Webb Space Telescope. The two combined are chew up over $2 billion a year for rather mediocre results.
Hint : IT WASNT A THEORY
I guess you're unaware of what a theory is. Theories of gravity are still theories despite being confirmed to a lot of decimal places for the regimes where they apply. The speculated effect of surface emitted CFCs on the ozone layer is a theory.
Any rational person would be concerned about the lack of good data collection before the era of satellites. This problem cripples all of climate research.
I find it interesting how people babble about how bad "deniers" are while simultaneously demonstrating profound ignorance of scientific matters.
How does it weaken society? By reducing suffering?
Reduce suffering? You really don't get the problems with the law do you?
First, it's a misallocation of public funding and a large inefficiency in the economy. Rather than spend a lot of money to make medical care more expensive (via the large health insurance subsidies plus those mandates on insurers), wouldn't it be better used to pay for federal level law enforcement and disaster response? Roads? National defense? The more you spend on feel good stuff the less you have for the things that actually matter and the things that the federal government is actually tasked to do.
Second, it creates several perverse incentives such as an employer shift to part time employment and reducing personal income to meet subsidy requirements.
These are part of why this is remarkably bad law even by Washington, DC. The US can handle some level of bad law, but it keeps piling up year after year.
So it's just peachy for a child to buy illegal drugs or a politician to accept bribes with real money but not with BitCoins? I just don't see the "bleed" here.
Does not president Obamas treatment not clue you in to some of the "issues" the USA still has over race
No, it doesn't because the man was elected and reelected president and the political differences are all over obvious issues not the color of his skin.
There are racist ideas still around, for example, your assertions that colored people wouldn't be able to cut it in a libertarian society, but they no longer have the impact on US society that they did prior to the 1950s.
Ok, why is this awkward for "deniers"?
This theory suffers from the main problems of AGW, observation and confirmation bias. Here manifesting as a lack of evidence that it was actually a problem coupleld with a desire to see the model confirmed. Sure, there was an ozone hole. But there might have always been an ozone hole (as long as there has been an Antarctic continent) and it wasn't until we looked for it that we saw it.
So what you're saying is that BitCoin might not be the best investment choice for your life savings. Who would have thought that?
I don't get why people care so much about the illegal activity going on in BitCoin. If you don't like it, then don't get mixed up in it. No one is forcing you to invest in BitCoin Ponzi schemes.
and does Mr Srinivasan expect there will be a place for colored people in this brave new world
Let me guess, you're one of those people who thinks Western civilization disappears when the colored people are left to their own devices?
To dust off an old joke: who cleans the shitters in Galt's Gulch? Who "opts-in" to be a janitor?
No idea since the book didn't say, but I bet it was a profitable business since you had all these rich guys, paying in gold, who probably didn't know and didn't want to know how to clean a toilet.
I must admit to being puzzled why this is even considered a joke. It's a pretty obvious and very long ago solved problem.
In another story, someone was yacking about it being a "trade agreement". I didn't buy that then. I think it's an out of control bureaucracy with too much power and the ability to barter to gain more power in trade for positions in the EU government.
While I agree with your reservations, your countries economy is built of consumption and capitalism yes? Then it's doomed,
Thanks for warning us that this post would be full of bullshit.
Just like mine and everyone else s. It was the natural step to take as society changed. However, It's weakness and end game are now spelled out clearly for anyone how cares to look.
Capitalism works and makes sense. Let us recall that the definition of capitalism is merely private ownership of capital. Experience has shown when people own something they take better care of it. They have an interest in making it work better. They make new capital on their own initiative.
Now, you allege a bunch of bad things about capitalism. My experience in the past has been that such people aren't really speaking of capitalism nor have any idea for a system that would work better for the dysfunctionality they are thinking of. We'll see if that is the case here as well.
It's worth noting, for example, that the "universal welfare state" mentioned in the grandparent is also a consumption and capitalism system since a) the welfare is oriented around providing for the consumption of basic needs, and b) people and private businesses are still allowed to own capital.
This form of social system is not maintainable and promotes the end our our species.
Evidence has shown that capitalism creates infrastructure for the survival of the human race and a great deal of cooperation. That doesn't promote the "end" of our species.
there are only two way to change this world. Slowly, or all at once.
I take it you've never done a complex, lengthy project before. All at once is just a recipe for failure since there will be so many details that you just don't understand when you start the project. Starting small is not just for knuckle draggers.
And starting small just makes sense. Figure out what works or doesn't work and scale up from there.
Fortunately with Obamacare, America is realizing that there needs to be some kind of social security. In the long run, there's no way around it if you want to keep exploiting people and keep them relatively peaceful at the same time.
You have to have a society in order to have social security. While some level of extravagant promises can be kept, these obligations just keep growing. For example, Obamacare's trade off is to offer cheap health insurance in exchange for the violation of law, degradation and grow in cost of health care, and a weakening of society. That's a terrible trade.
What's the point of social security if basic infrastructure stops working? I can live without a safety net better than I can live without clean water or law enforcement.
At some point, you have diminishing returns and I think the US well past that point.
The US does not have to pay its debts each year. In fact, the world economy would collapse if countries did that.
The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one. So the US doesn't have to refrain from collapsing the world economy! One wonders why they still pay their debts, if that's the only obstacle!
Historically, this is the type of research that has enabled the bulk of our rapid progress in the last couple of centuries.
No, it hasn't. As I've noted many times before, that fundamental research of the past had near future application at the time. This often devolves into a game of people naming research and then I countering with the near future expectations that people doing or funding that research would have had.
Anyone have suggestions on how to improve the funding situation?
Make researchers more accountable for the money they spend. I suggest doing it by eliminating most public funding of science which inherently is unaccountable.
And the alternative - corporate funded research - is immune from financial instability and PBHs deciding what is and isn't studied?
There are plenty of research institutions which use a non profit model. SETI or March of Dimes doesn't use the "corporate funded research" model.
17 trillion dollars sounds like a shipload of money, but you have to put in perspective: It's not that much compared with the GDP of the US.
LOL. Maybe to a galaxy spanning civilization this would be small potatoes, but it's kind of big for the US.
The biggest structural problem the US has is its insane right.
They keep holding back the suicidal left which is a bad thing apparently.
The debt ceiling standoff was very, very dangerous, far more dangerous than even 20 trillion $ of debt would be.
As I noted elsewhere, anyone who cared about a few week default of US on short term bonds had already sold them off.
It would have taken very little additional bad luck to triger a financial calamity of biblical proportions.
Reminds me of that Heinlein quote about "bad luck". There's a simple solution here: spend less at the federal level and stop getting in the way of people who create wealth.
but several of the people operating under that banner have other agendas
First time ever that someone had an ulterior motive! Unless your tastes are so particular and refined or your groups highly select so as to exclude anyone else other than you, then maybe your associations have this problem as well.
One issue is that it's hard to explain highly technical experiments within the required 6 pages or so for a grant, let alone something that a crowd would be willing to read.
But a reasonable thing to expect.
but funding from the federal government is still more reliable than crowdfunding
The government doesn't even care if you don't make any sort of scientific progress at all. If a truck were to back into the James Webb Space Telescope and hopelessly total it, there would some blame finding (with the truck driver instantly fired and some other people after a suitable period of public reflection via committee), but the end result would be a collective shrug and the signing of new checks. That's because most of the money for JWST has been spent. As far as Congress is concerned, JWST is already done and over with.
Looks like Snowden has become something of a disgruntled ex-employee now. I guess that's why he's keen on embarrassing the US rather than say Russia or China.