You know, when I hear about how expensive taxi medallions in NYC are, and also the density of cabs (you can get one whenever you want), it makes me think that the mandated taxi rate in NYC is way to high.
Cut it until taxi medallions are reasonably priced. Problem solved.
I don't know what the GP was referring to, but you can imagine a tragedy of the commons situation with cabs. In a given city, if their numbers were unregulated they might increase at the expense of mass transit riders. That would increase congestion, pollution, wear on infrastructure, etc.
Here's the wikipedia entry on market systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.... It has a reasonable description. A lot of general economics textbooks will talk about black markets.
Black markets aren't perfect models, but they are much closer to completely free markets than pretty much anything else that exists. The supply and/or demand is sometimes restricted by the whole thing being illegal, but only broadly.
Black markets aren't just things like dealing heroin on a street corner. It's just a market that operates outside of regulation. Paying your gardener under the table is a black market transaction. So is Uber, in most places.
As an example, lots of countries peg their exchange rate with the US dollar or the Euro. Generally that rate is quite a bit higher than the free market rate would be. So you can change your money in the airport, or you can walk outside and get a better rate. Of you can skip changing the money altogether: in lots of places with weak or unstable currencies, even if they aren't pegged, it's technically illegal to trade in foreign currency, but you can often buy things much cheaper if you pay in dollars or Euro. Those are black markets, but they provide a more accurate valuation of the traded goods (including the currencies) than the official market.
English likes to steal other people's old words. Everyone else steal's English's new words. Sometimes there's an "official" language specific word for something, but everyone else just uses the English word anyway; words like "e-mail."
I live in Quebec Canadian French might officially try and avoid stealing words at all costs, but it certainly isn't what's practiced. In fast food places you get the choice of a "petite", "grande" or "extra large." Last year there was a fight about whether restaurants could use the word "pasta" on menus. The government said it was an English word. Everyone else said "la fuck?"
Or spend some time in one of the many places where the local advice is something along the lines of "always take the RED taxis, because they're at least all owned by a company. The others, well, you might make it, or you might not."
If Uber were running a cab service with professional, full-time drivers, then absolutely. Actually, they DO that, but nobody cares. The controversial part of Uber is the gypsy cab bit, where somebody with a credit card and a phone is suddenly a cabby.
"Anything that becomes molten will mix into the fuel and dilute it, lowering the reaction rate and moving you further and further away from a self-sustaining reaction."
There's that, yes. And also the antigravity that's required on the second half of the trip.
None of the people you mentioned were proponents of *completely* free markets. I didn't add the word completely because I like hearing myself talk (like Ayn Rand). Libertarians, non-insane capitalists etc. advocate markets with a *minimum* of regulation, not an absence of it. Black markets are as close as you're likely to get to completely unregulated, perfectly free of all artificial rules.
If you could write ils'ont in French I wonder if that would be true. Learning formal English, where you can't use contractions, also emphasizes that distinction.
Find a friend and ask him or her to try to speak mostly to you in Spanish, and you'll try to reply. Lots of people are happy to do this because, honestly, it's pretty hilarious. The trick is for you not to get frustrated.
There's a theory that one of the reasons English is so common is because it's easy to learn a working version of it. "Proper" English is fairly hard to learn because there are lots of inconsistencies, but working English is easier than many languages because the grammar rules really aren't very important. Often take you can words a group of and understood be.
Anybody who's studied the history of fortifications could come up with many additional distinctions, no doubt in both languages. In North America we don't have very many castles, citadels, fortresses, strongholds, bastions or palaces, so we tend not to use many different words when we see fortified buildings, but the words still exist.
I disagree that language ever determines what we can think about. That was a popular theory among some linguists, but it just doesn't seem to ever really play out.
Take a famous example. English has no one-word equivalent for the German word schadenfreude. Yet Wikipedia requires only seven words to explain what it means. The language may make it awkward to think about certain things, but not impossible. And when the concept became important to a group of English speakers, they just appropriated the German word.
The major linguistics example was a tribe who didn't seem to have any words for colours, time, etc. It turns out they can express these things, but they have to use phrases instead of single words. German is actually interesting to consider in that context: many German "words" are phrases with the spaces between words removed.
Black markets are often considered models of completely free markets because the government regulation is so uniform. "Completely forbidden" means that, so long as you can manage to actually exist, the market mechanics are completely free. No external barriers to competition and whatever tactics work: theft, intimidation, violence, offering a better product.
It's called noise. Most people, most of the time will not slam on the brakes for no reason. Averaging over the behaviour of many drivers over long periods of time lets the algorithm discount your aberrant behaviour.
Hydro-Quebec pays the province of Quebec dividends every year. From there, that money is equitably distributed, along with the rest of the province's income, to various special individuals and organizations, often through infrastructure projects with special budgeting for wealth redistribution.
Actually, the more expensive a placebo is, the better it works. What countries with public health care systems need to do is let doctors prescribe cheap placebos for cases where real treatment isn't available or warranted, but tell patients that they're actually getting very expensive drugs.
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You know, when I hear about how expensive taxi medallions in NYC are, and also the density of cabs (you can get one whenever you want), it makes me think that the mandated taxi rate in NYC is way to high.
Cut it until taxi medallions are reasonably priced. Problem solved.
I don't know what the GP was referring to, but you can imagine a tragedy of the commons situation with cabs. In a given city, if their numbers were unregulated they might increase at the expense of mass transit riders. That would increase congestion, pollution, wear on infrastructure, etc.
Here's the wikipedia entry on market systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.... It has a reasonable description. A lot of general economics textbooks will talk about black markets.
Black markets aren't perfect models, but they are much closer to completely free markets than pretty much anything else that exists. The supply and/or demand is sometimes restricted by the whole thing being illegal, but only broadly.
Black markets aren't just things like dealing heroin on a street corner. It's just a market that operates outside of regulation. Paying your gardener under the table is a black market transaction. So is Uber, in most places.
As an example, lots of countries peg their exchange rate with the US dollar or the Euro. Generally that rate is quite a bit higher than the free market rate would be. So you can change your money in the airport, or you can walk outside and get a better rate. Of you can skip changing the money altogether: in lots of places with weak or unstable currencies, even if they aren't pegged, it's technically illegal to trade in foreign currency, but you can often buy things much cheaper if you pay in dollars or Euro. Those are black markets, but they provide a more accurate valuation of the traded goods (including the currencies) than the official market.
English likes to steal other people's old words. Everyone else steal's English's new words. Sometimes there's an "official" language specific word for something, but everyone else just uses the English word anyway; words like "e-mail."
I live in Quebec Canadian French might officially try and avoid stealing words at all costs, but it certainly isn't what's practiced. In fast food places you get the choice of a "petite", "grande" or "extra large." Last year there was a fight about whether restaurants could use the word "pasta" on menus. The government said it was an English word. Everyone else said "la fuck?"
Or spend some time in one of the many places where the local advice is something along the lines of "always take the RED taxis, because they're at least all owned by a company. The others, well, you might make it, or you might not."
If Uber were running a cab service with professional, full-time drivers, then absolutely. Actually, they DO that, but nobody cares. The controversial part of Uber is the gypsy cab bit, where somebody with a credit card and a phone is suddenly a cabby.
Don't worry, the "my brain is magic" people will come up with lots more to replace anything that's crossed off.
"Anything that becomes molten will mix into the fuel and dilute it, lowering the reaction rate and moving you further and further away from a self-sustaining reaction."
There's that, yes. And also the antigravity that's required on the second half of the trip.
http://www.wordfind.com/word/o...
Oxes is a valid scrabble word.
The -en pluralization used to be more common, but I think it's only used in two or three words now. Oxen is the oddity, not the rule.
None of the people you mentioned were proponents of *completely* free markets. I didn't add the word completely because I like hearing myself talk (like Ayn Rand). Libertarians, non-insane capitalists etc. advocate markets with a *minimum* of regulation, not an absence of it. Black markets are as close as you're likely to get to completely unregulated, perfectly free of all artificial rules.
If you could write ils'ont in French I wonder if that would be true. Learning formal English, where you can't use contractions, also emphasizes that distinction.
Find a friend and ask him or her to try to speak mostly to you in Spanish, and you'll try to reply. Lots of people are happy to do this because, honestly, it's pretty hilarious. The trick is for you not to get frustrated.
There's a theory that one of the reasons English is so common is because it's easy to learn a working version of it. "Proper" English is fairly hard to learn because there are lots of inconsistencies, but working English is easier than many languages because the grammar rules really aren't very important. Often take you can words a group of and understood be.
Anybody who's studied the history of fortifications could come up with many additional distinctions, no doubt in both languages. In North America we don't have very many castles, citadels, fortresses, strongholds, bastions or palaces, so we tend not to use many different words when we see fortified buildings, but the words still exist.
I disagree that language ever determines what we can think about. That was a popular theory among some linguists, but it just doesn't seem to ever really play out.
Take a famous example. English has no one-word equivalent for the German word schadenfreude. Yet Wikipedia requires only seven words to explain what it means. The language may make it awkward to think about certain things, but not impossible. And when the concept became important to a group of English speakers, they just appropriated the German word.
The major linguistics example was a tribe who didn't seem to have any words for colours, time, etc. It turns out they can express these things, but they have to use phrases instead of single words. German is actually interesting to consider in that context: many German "words" are phrases with the spaces between words removed.
Black markets are often considered models of completely free markets because the government regulation is so uniform. "Completely forbidden" means that, so long as you can manage to actually exist, the market mechanics are completely free. No external barriers to competition and whatever tactics work: theft, intimidation, violence, offering a better product.
That's one of the most contrived explanations I've ever seen used to cover up "but my brain is magic!"
It's called noise. Most people, most of the time will not slam on the brakes for no reason. Averaging over the behaviour of many drivers over long periods of time lets the algorithm discount your aberrant behaviour.
Writers don't look for magic pens to make them good writers. Managers seem to look for magic tools (like big data) to make them good managers.
Yup. With an interesting source.
http://youtu.be/gCSWbTv3hng
Hydro-Quebec pays the province of Quebec dividends every year. From there, that money is equitably distributed, along with the rest of the province's income, to various special individuals and organizations, often through infrastructure projects with special budgeting for wealth redistribution.
If it's a copy of an existing drug the trials are much easier. You don't have to demonstrate efficacy, just equivalence.
I think the OP was getting at printing his own pharmaceuticals though. He can have fun with that.
You know 200 years ago London looked like Beijing does today because of all the coal smoke, right?
Well, that's not quite true. Somebody is making vast amounts of money, but it isn't Quebec.
Actually, the more expensive a placebo is, the better it works. What countries with public health care systems need to do is let doctors prescribe cheap placebos for cases where real treatment isn't available or warranted, but tell patients that they're actually getting very expensive drugs.