The primary reason for the death penalty is still the factor of revenge.
The other is incapacitation, but that can be achieved almost as effectively through lifetime imprisonment.
The remaining purposes of justice are rehabilitation (which is impossible with the death penalty and irrelevant with lifetime imprisonment), reparation (which is impossible for crimes that would earn the death penalty), deterrence (the effectiveness of which is still under debate), and denunciation (which doesn't seem to justify an eye for an eye).
A society that kills people because of revenge, has still a lot of learning to do. Revenge seldom leads to something good for anybody involved...
I agree. Does revenge really need to be a purpose of justice? I think we could achieve the other purposes more easily without it. If we gave prisons a portion of the money our society saves for each prisoner released who doesn't re-offend, it would make rehabilitation the primary purpose of imprisonment. Would it really be so bad if murderers walked free after being fully rehabilitated to a very high degree of certainty? Or if a serial burglar were kept away from society indefinitely if he can't be rehabilitated?
If you take the cost of a 40 cent 60 watt incandescent bulb and invest it in the market at 8% average annual interest, assuming 3.5% inflation, you could make 2 inflation-adjusted cents per year. So the total cost of ownership of 40 cent 60 watt incandescent bulbs are $8.35/year.
If you take the cost of a $2.50 13 watt CFL bulb (60W-equivalent) and invest it in the market at 8% average annual interest, assuming 3.5% inflation, you could make 11 inflation-adjusted cents per year. So the total cost of ownership of $2.50 13 watt CFL bulbs are $2.32/year.
If you take the cost of a $13.00 9.5 watt CFL bulb (60W-equivalent) and invest it in the market at 8% average annual interest, assuming 3.5% inflation, you could make 59 inflation-adjusted cents per year. So the total cost of ownership of $13.00 9.5 watt LED bulbs are $2.40/year.
A 60W incandescent costs about 40 cents and lasts 0.9 years, so it costs 44 cents per year in replacement costs. At 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and 3 hours per day, it costs $7.89 per year in electricity. Total: $8.33/year.
A 13W CFL bulb (60W-equivalent) costs about $2.50 and lasts 5 years, so it costs 50 cents per year in replacement costs. At 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and 3 hours per day, it costs $1.71 per year in electricity. Total: $2.21/year.
A 9.5W LED bulk (60W-equivalent) costs about $13 and lasts 22.8 years, so it costs 57 cents per year in replacement costs. At 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and 3 hours per day, it costs $1.25 per year in electricity. Total: $1.82 per year.
What's missing in these calculations is the opportunity cost of capital, which may make LEDs more expensive overall than CFLs. But it's clear that CFLs are cheaper than incandescents.
Poor people still won't buy [CFLs], because the incandescent ones will still be cheaper. It's one example of why it's so expensive to be poor.
If I were poor and couldn't afford to replace my incandescent bulbs all at once, I would replace them one at a time. Each time I replace one, the energy and bulb replacement savings would begin immediately, allowing me to replace the remaining bulbs more and more quickly.
If it's a good investment for the rich, then it's a good investment for the poor.
Maybe your area is too rural to support more than one broadband provider, just like it might be too rural to support more than one freeway, or gas station, or supermarket, or school. Some things are more economical in cities, so consider the lack of broadband providers one of the costs of living close to nature.
Or maybe your neighborhood signed a contract with a broadband provider that prevents others from competing. Such contracts ought to be illegal, but they aren't. Until the FCC makes such contracts illegal, if such a contract is in force in your community, you should lobby your community representative to end that contract.
Meanwhile, you're always free to setup a community broadband co-op. Just don't ask the city to pay for it or the incumbent communication company will have a fit.
The article I linked says even $14,000 per year in fuel and highway taxes "does not come close to paying for the damage to roads and bridges caused by trucks," because one 80,000 pound truck causes as much road wear as 9,600 automobiles going the same distance.
If trucks had to start paying their fair share, they would carry lighter loads from the rail yard to the local stores in order to save money. Or the big-box stores would locate themselves next to rail yards in order to save money.
Don't worry, making people pay their fair share for things they buy is better for the economy than subsidies.
Cheating? Whose fault is it for rating schools according to test scores and thereby incentivizing them to reject students who don't perform so well, instead of rating schools by how much their students improve relative to their peers in other schools (value added)?
As W. Edwards Deming would say, blame the process, not the school.
In other words, we should raise the cost of all consumer goods...
And reduce or eliminate transportation sales taxes, which hurt the poor the most.
Get rid of all sales, gas, and registration taxes, all tolls, all property tax, and have the sole source of government income be income tax (including inheritance as income).
We built our society on the principle that the people who benefit the most from a product or service should pay the most for it. People do not benefit from the roads in proportion to their income, so using the income tax to pay for roads violates this principle.
All taxes should be minimized, not just taxes that aren't the income tax. Taxes should be replaced with user fees wherever it's feasible. This helps explain what is and isn't a tax.
Instead of building additional lanes, it may make sense to start charging truckers their fair share for the damage trucks do to our roads. This would move more freight to rail where it does less damage and creates less traffic congestion, while generating more revenue to pay for the roads and allow gas taxes to be lowered.
In California, slow vehicles shall be driven in the right-hand lane for traffic according to the law. But because slow vehicles in the left lane arguably aren't impeding traffic if traffic can change lanes to pass, this law is rarely enforced.
On the Autobahn, it's illegal to pass on the right; therefore, a vehicle being driven slowly in the left lane is unambiguously impeding traffic. Would you be in favor of a similar law in your state or country?
Python 3.x has no relation to Windows Unicode filename support... Also, Python 3.x has proven significantly slower in almost all benchmarks that matter to us, especially start-up time.
an autonomous car would have to obey all laws of the road. Thus, instead of two cars driving side-by-side blocking others from passing, you'll have ALL cars moving at that speed.
Legally, on a two lane road where passing is prohibited, if there are five or more vehicles...formed in line behind, you must pull over. So maybe we'll see autonomous cars playing a sort of "musical chairs" where the lead car pulls over and lets the other cars pass, only to have the new lead car do the same at the next opportunity for the same reason, and so on.
So if EVERY car was autonomous with no override, we could do away with things like lights at intersections...
We can do that now, no stop lights or stop signs and no autonomous cars necessary.
Zoning laws are also fascism (or more accurately dirigism, which is closely associated with fascism) which we've tolerated for decades, despite their history of oppressing the poor and minorities.
What rationale is there for a seller to simply take more off a price which a buyer has already indicated a willingness to pay?
I don't know, but they do it anyway. The only hint are the words "Product Details at Checkout" which isn't very meaningful, and the words "Your Final Price" are missing but chances are you won't realize they are missing.
Online retailers often offer hidden, unadvertised prices that you won't see before you start the checkout process. But you will always see the final price before the transaction is completed--before your credit card is charged.
In this case, was the additional 50% discount shown before or after both parties agreed to the terms of the sale? TFA is silent on this point.
Further, the cost of the train is not cost effective.
The alternative to spending $68.4 billion (YOE) on HSR is spending $119.0 billion (YOE) for 4,295 new lane-miles of highway, plus $38.6 billion billion (YOE) for 115 new airport gates and 4 new runways, for a total cost of $158 billion, just to move the same number of people.
The train is more expensive on a per passenger basis then the plane.
You made that up.
Planes can go anywhere there is an airport. Trains only go where the track connects.
It's much, much cheaper to build a new train station than build a new airport.
Also, the quality of the track doesn't appear to be high enough to support bullet train speeds so a speed of 80 mph looks like it will be more common.
That only applies to legacy track until it gets upgraded. The new track they're about to start building in the Central Valley will support 220 mph.
That is the primary reason you do not see more urbanization in SV - the people who already own there do not want their property values to go down.
No, it's because they would have to pay most of the cost (increased traffic, more crime, etc.) while the additional sales and property tax revenue has to be shared with the rest of the city. It's the classic unscrupulous diner's dilemma.
It can literally take 45 minutes to an hour to drive 5 miles across town...
That's easy to fix by eliminating minimum parking requirements to stop encouraging people to drive and contribute to traffic, and by lifting the price ceiling on freeway travel.
a bullet train in California makes about as much sense as a beach resort on the moon.
Why? Traveling from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco will be faster on HSR than flying (a 5 minute taxi ride to LA Union Station plus 2h 40m on the train, vs. 40m to LAX plus be there 45~90 mins early plus 70 mins flying plus 15 mins getting your luggage plus 30 mins taxi or 45 mins BART to SF), and cheaper on average (83% of airfares), and less security, and you can use your laptop and cell phone the whole way.
People taking HSR will wonder why anyone would want to fly to SFO anymore.
Here's how to fix the increase in fender benders. Yellow lights timings are set to give you one second to react, plus enough time to slow to a stop or proceed through the intersection on the yellow. When you're speeding, you have less time to react and must brake harder or blow the red. If intersections with red light cameras also had speed cameras, people would no longer speed through those intersections and therefore wouldn't need to brake so hard when the light changes. As a result, there would be fewer rear-end collisions.
Of course the best solution of all is to eliminate traffic signals and their associated red-light cameras, and switch to roundabouts which not only can handle greater volumes of traffic more efficiently than signals but also result in a 37 percent reduction in overall collisions, a 75 percent reduction in injury collisions, a 90 percent reduction in fatality collisions, and a 40 percent reduction in pedestrian collisions.
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Then we would emit less carbon and reduce the public debt at the same time, all for the price of a carbon tax. Who doesn't like two-for-one deals?
The other is incapacitation, but that can be achieved almost as effectively through lifetime imprisonment.
The remaining purposes of justice are rehabilitation (which is impossible with the death penalty and irrelevant with lifetime imprisonment), reparation (which is impossible for crimes that would earn the death penalty), deterrence (the effectiveness of which is still under debate), and denunciation (which doesn't seem to justify an eye for an eye).
I agree. Does revenge really need to be a purpose of justice? I think we could achieve the other purposes more easily without it. If we gave prisons a portion of the money our society saves for each prisoner released who doesn't re-offend, it would make rehabilitation the primary purpose of imprisonment. Would it really be so bad if murderers walked free after being fully rehabilitated to a very high degree of certainty? Or if a serial burglar were kept away from society indefinitely if he can't be rehabilitated?
"Twenty-oughts" and "twenty-tens."
An S&P 500 index fund.
If you take the cost of a 40 cent 60 watt incandescent bulb and invest it in the market at 8% average annual interest, assuming 3.5% inflation, you could make 2 inflation-adjusted cents per year. So the total cost of ownership of 40 cent 60 watt incandescent bulbs are $8.35/year.
If you take the cost of a $2.50 13 watt CFL bulb (60W-equivalent) and invest it in the market at 8% average annual interest, assuming 3.5% inflation, you could make 11 inflation-adjusted cents per year. So the total cost of ownership of $2.50 13 watt CFL bulbs are $2.32/year.
If you take the cost of a $13.00 9.5 watt CFL bulb (60W-equivalent) and invest it in the market at 8% average annual interest, assuming 3.5% inflation, you could make 59 inflation-adjusted cents per year. So the total cost of ownership of $13.00 9.5 watt LED bulbs are $2.40/year.
A 60W incandescent costs about 40 cents and lasts 0.9 years, so it costs 44 cents per year in replacement costs. At 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and 3 hours per day, it costs $7.89 per year in electricity. Total: $8.33/year.
A 13W CFL bulb (60W-equivalent) costs about $2.50 and lasts 5 years, so it costs 50 cents per year in replacement costs. At 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and 3 hours per day, it costs $1.71 per year in electricity. Total: $2.21/year.
A 9.5W LED bulk (60W-equivalent) costs about $13 and lasts 22.8 years, so it costs 57 cents per year in replacement costs. At 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and 3 hours per day, it costs $1.25 per year in electricity. Total: $1.82 per year.
What's missing in these calculations is the opportunity cost of capital, which may make LEDs more expensive overall than CFLs. But it's clear that CFLs are cheaper than incandescents.
If I were poor and couldn't afford to replace my incandescent bulbs all at once, I would replace them one at a time. Each time I replace one, the energy and bulb replacement savings would begin immediately, allowing me to replace the remaining bulbs more and more quickly.
If it's a good investment for the rich, then it's a good investment for the poor.
Maybe your area is too rural to support more than one broadband provider, just like it might be too rural to support more than one freeway, or gas station, or supermarket, or school. Some things are more economical in cities, so consider the lack of broadband providers one of the costs of living close to nature.
Or maybe your neighborhood signed a contract with a broadband provider that prevents others from competing. Such contracts ought to be illegal, but they aren't. Until the FCC makes such contracts illegal, if such a contract is in force in your community, you should lobby your community representative to end that contract.
Meanwhile, you're always free to setup a community broadband co-op. Just don't ask the city to pay for it or the incumbent communication company will have a fit.
The article I linked says even $14,000 per year in fuel and highway taxes "does not come close to paying for the damage to roads and bridges caused by trucks," because one 80,000 pound truck causes as much road wear as 9,600 automobiles going the same distance.
If trucks had to start paying their fair share, they would carry lighter loads from the rail yard to the local stores in order to save money. Or the big-box stores would locate themselves next to rail yards in order to save money.
Don't worry, making people pay their fair share for things they buy is better for the economy than subsidies.
Cheating? Whose fault is it for rating schools according to test scores and thereby incentivizing them to reject students who don't perform so well, instead of rating schools by how much their students improve relative to their peers in other schools (value added)?
As W. Edwards Deming would say, blame the process, not the school.
And reduce or eliminate transportation sales taxes, which hurt the poor the most.
We built our society on the principle that the people who benefit the most from a product or service should pay the most for it. People do not benefit from the roads in proportion to their income, so using the income tax to pay for roads violates this principle.
All taxes should be minimized, not just taxes that aren't the income tax. Taxes should be replaced with user fees wherever it's feasible. This helps explain what is and isn't a tax.
Instead of building additional lanes, it may make sense to start charging truckers their fair share for the damage trucks do to our roads. This would move more freight to rail where it does less damage and creates less traffic congestion, while generating more revenue to pay for the roads and allow gas taxes to be lowered.
In California, slow vehicles shall be driven in the right-hand lane for traffic according to the law. But because slow vehicles in the left lane arguably aren't impeding traffic if traffic can change lanes to pass, this law is rarely enforced.
On the Autobahn, it's illegal to pass on the right; therefore, a vehicle being driven slowly in the left lane is unambiguously impeding traffic. Would you be in favor of a similar law in your state or country?
(source)
Legally, on a two lane road where passing is prohibited, if there are five or more vehicles...formed in line behind, you must pull over. So maybe we'll see autonomous cars playing a sort of "musical chairs" where the lead car pulls over and lets the other cars pass, only to have the new lead car do the same at the next opportunity for the same reason, and so on.
We can do that now, no stop lights or stop signs and no autonomous cars necessary.
People who have to park on the street likely can't afford an electric car anyway.
Zoning laws are also fascism (or more accurately dirigism, which is closely associated with fascism) which we've tolerated for decades, despite their history of oppressing the poor and minorities.
If you had to slaughter 100 willing people, why wouldn't you choose the ones who demand the least compensation?
I don't know, but they do it anyway. The only hint are the words "Product Details at Checkout" which isn't very meaningful, and the words "Your Final Price" are missing but chances are you won't realize they are missing.
Online retailers often offer hidden, unadvertised prices that you won't see before you start the checkout process. But you will always see the final price before the transaction is completed--before your credit card is charged.
In this case, was the additional 50% discount shown before or after both parties agreed to the terms of the sale? TFA is silent on this point.
The alternative to spending $68.4 billion (YOE) on HSR is spending $119.0 billion (YOE) for 4,295 new lane-miles of highway, plus $38.6 billion billion (YOE) for 115 new airport gates and 4 new runways, for a total cost of $158 billion, just to move the same number of people.
You made that up.
It's much, much cheaper to build a new train station than build a new airport.
That only applies to legacy track until it gets upgraded. The new track they're about to start building in the Central Valley will support 220 mph.
No, it's because they would have to pay most of the cost (increased traffic, more crime, etc.) while the additional sales and property tax revenue has to be shared with the rest of the city. It's the classic unscrupulous diner's dilemma.
That's easy to fix by eliminating minimum parking requirements to stop encouraging people to drive and contribute to traffic, and by lifting the price ceiling on freeway travel.
Why? Traveling from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco will be faster on HSR than flying (a 5 minute taxi ride to LA Union Station plus 2h 40m on the train, vs. 40m to LAX plus be there 45~90 mins early plus 70 mins flying plus 15 mins getting your luggage plus 30 mins taxi or 45 mins BART to SF), and cheaper on average (83% of airfares), and less security, and you can use your laptop and cell phone the whole way.
People taking HSR will wonder why anyone would want to fly to SFO anymore.
But it's still a leap, so using that as an argument against all license plate scanning, is an example of the "slippery slope" logical fallacy.
This is true. The Federal Highway Administration found that red-light cameras increase rear-end collisions but reduce more severe right-angle collisions, saving $50,000 in collisions per intersection per year in medical and repair costs.
Here's how to fix the increase in fender benders. Yellow lights timings are set to give you one second to react, plus enough time to slow to a stop or proceed through the intersection on the yellow. When you're speeding, you have less time to react and must brake harder or blow the red. If intersections with red light cameras also had speed cameras, people would no longer speed through those intersections and therefore wouldn't need to brake so hard when the light changes. As a result, there would be fewer rear-end collisions.
Of course the best solution of all is to eliminate traffic signals and their associated red-light cameras, and switch to roundabouts which not only can handle greater volumes of traffic more efficiently than signals but also result in a 37 percent reduction in overall collisions, a 75 percent reduction in injury collisions, a 90 percent reduction in fatality collisions, and a 40 percent reduction in pedestrian collisions.