By the same reasoning, an aircraft autopilot is just a "neat toy" of no real value, since the pilot must maintain situational awareness at all times: funny how airlines always waste money on such useless toys.
While you do have to maintain awareness of what's going on, you don't have to make the thousands of little corrections to keep the car's speed and trajectory in the acceptable range. After a long drive with Tesla Autopilot, I always feel less tired than driving in a regular car.
The role the FDA played was in not honoring the approval of generics by drugs agencies in untrustworthy banana republics like Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. Since the FDA thinks it has incomparably superior skills and knowledge, manufacturers must pay for redundant FDA approval to sell in the USA, so that can be uneconomic to get a small-market generic approved for the USA. This can produce a monopoly situation ripe for price gouging.
I think civil forfeiture is a pestilence that should be completely stamped out. Fortunately this can be done by simple legislation. What we cannot do is rely on the Constitution to save us from this plague.
In interpreting the phrase "due process of law", the Supreme Court looks at Anglo-American law as it existed at the time the Constitution was written. The British Navigation Acts had provided for civil forfeiture in smuggling cases, and the early US Congress wrote it into US customs laws. Therefore this unusual (and, IMHO, patently unjust) practice is understood to satisfy "due process of law". I don't like it, but that's the current state of US constitutional law.
Quite so. Rather than hand out green cards at random, we should issue them to the applicants most likely to help the domestic economy, as Canada and many other nations do.
An autopilot handles routine operations. Every aircraft autopilot requires a qualified human pilot supervising it in case the operation ceases to be routine. The Tesla autopilot works in precisely the same way.
Thalidomide?? Give me a break. The FDA has been trading on thalidomide forever, pretending that non-US regulators are utterly incapable of learning from the past. So where are the other thalidomides that those European imbeciles have let through? The truth that the FDA will not admit is that thalidomide is a sad part of the past that will not be repeated. But, bureaucratic fairy tales are immortal. As long as they had some grain of truth at one time, no one can ever contradict them.
The Epipen disaster is squarely due to FDA's hubris, maintaining that every other drug regulator in the world is incompetent.
If the FDA would accept generic-drug approvals from other first-world agencies, like those in Canada and Europe, we wouldn't have this problem. Understand that they are not approving the drug, which is already approved, but just approving the manufacturing process. The FDA insists on an expensive, redundant approval process that results in a non-competitive market that leads to gouging.
In Canada, Uber is a Canadian corporation, registered in Canada, paying Canadian taxes, and employing Canadians. That Canadian corporation has a relationship with Uber in the US, but that does not mean it doesn't pay taxes or employ people in Canada.
The federal government can control interstate and foreign commerce, and can supersede state and local laws to do so. This 'commerce clause' has been stretched to cover some pretty dubious cases, but if Internet access isn't legitimately a part of interstate and foreign commerce, I don't know what is.
That's simply not true. By appealing to 'the majority of voters', you are automatically choosing a method of counting. As the USA is a federal democracy, counting votes state-by-state, as is done for Congress and the Presidency, has much to recommend it.
Counted one way, the US people favored Trump. Counted another way, the US people favored Clinton. Almost without exception, political observers now profess a clear preference for the vote-counting method that would have worked best for their favored candidate: Clinton supporters have discovered a new passion for using the aggregate popular vote, while Trump supporters see great virtue in the Electoral College. Politics as usual.
If the Epi-Pen fiasco is due to "corporate greed", then why doesn't every drug carry a $500/dose price tag? Are the corporations that make those other drugs any less greedy? No, the prices of other drugs are held down by competition. Epi-pen prices are through the roof due to lack of competition, and that lack of competition is due to FDA arrogance and incompetence.
The Epipen fiasco would have been completely avoided if the FDA didn't have the position that it alone, among all regulatory agencies, is qualified to evaluate generic drugs and devices. The sensible thing, which is not being done because the FDA is protecting its turf, is to recognize generic drug approvals from other advanced countries such as the European countries and Canada. The Epipen has a de-facto monopoly due to FDA foot-dragging.
The FDA, ad nauseam, trots out the Thalidomide tragedy to prove that everyone else in the world is incompetent, but the world has changed since 1957, and people can and have learned from their mistakes. Now it's the FDA that's incompetent, introducing needless delays in approving drugs that have already been fully vetted elsewhere.
Anyone who has actually flown with a real autopilot knows that it does not relieve the pilot of responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle. An autopilot takes over a set of routine operations, but the pilot must still be ready to take over if needed. "Autopilot" != "Autonomous". Tesla makes this very clear.
This is the modern version of Pascal's Wager. Just as with the original, the modern version fails because it underestimates the downside of accepting the wager. Radical restrictions on the use of fossil fuels would push the world into recession, and foreclose any possibility that the truly poor, in their billions, will have any hope of approaching the comfortable lives we take for granted in the developed world.
Fossil fuels have impacted human life in an immeasurably positive way, and removing them would be painful for the developed world, but catastrophic for the "developing" world (which would be developing no more due to the lack of reliable, plentiful, affordable energy).
Time and again we see the claim that Uber is a taxi company, despite the obvious differences between Uber and traditional taxi companies. What you are saying is that the differences between taxis and Uber are inconsequential and irrelevant, hence "Uber drivers are taxi drivers".
You are entitled to your opinion about the differences between Uber and taxis, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to agree with you. I find the differences between Uber and taxis to be both relevant and consequential, so I believe that Uber drivers are NOT taxi drivers.
As for Uber being a monopoly, I fear that you have not really looked closely enough into the market that Uber serves. There is significant competition to Uber, and if Uber falters in its remarkable record of satisfying its customers, its competitors will swoop in to claim its market share.
A driver who "cuts corners" and puts third parties in peril also puts the passengers in peril. Centuries ago, the only way to deal with this problem might have been regulation. With Uber, such driver behavior would rapidly earn bad ratings, and such drivers would either reform themselves or be forced to quit.
How is an abritrarily difficult commercial licensing scheme superior to this, especially given the overwhelming tendency for regulatory systems to be captured by the industries they regulate?
This is the usual content-industry twaddle, trying to muddle the distinction between taking tangible property ("stealing") and violating legal rights in intangible goods ("infringment"). They yell and scream that infringement is totally, absolutely and completely the same thing as stealing, yet screaming doesn't make it so. Stealing has been intuitively understood as wrong from time immemorial. Infringement is a modern invention, with none of that moral underpinning. The content industry seeks to confuse the issue by baldly asserting that two different things are actually the same. The common person, in his internal moral calculus, will realize this and continue to reject the intellectual-property maximalists such as a Bell Media.
And we all know that the Republicans oppose absolutely everything that Obama supports. For example, now that Obama has come out in favor of free trade, every Republican is utterly opposed to it.
Slashdot Mirror
By the same reasoning, an aircraft autopilot is just a "neat toy" of no real value, since the pilot must maintain situational awareness at all times: funny how airlines always waste money on such useless toys. While you do have to maintain awareness of what's going on, you don't have to make the thousands of little corrections to keep the car's speed and trajectory in the acceptable range. After a long drive with Tesla Autopilot, I always feel less tired than driving in a regular car.
The role the FDA played was in not honoring the approval of generics by drugs agencies in untrustworthy banana republics like Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. Since the FDA thinks it has incomparably superior skills and knowledge, manufacturers must pay for redundant FDA approval to sell in the USA, so that can be uneconomic to get a small-market generic approved for the USA. This can produce a monopoly situation ripe for price gouging.
Whoosh!
I think civil forfeiture is a pestilence that should be completely stamped out. Fortunately this can be done by simple legislation. What we cannot do is rely on the Constitution to save us from this plague.
In interpreting the phrase "due process of law", the Supreme Court looks at Anglo-American law as it existed at the time the Constitution was written. The British Navigation Acts had provided for civil forfeiture in smuggling cases, and the early US Congress wrote it into US customs laws. Therefore this unusual (and, IMHO, patently unjust) practice is understood to satisfy "due process of law". I don't like it, but that's the current state of US constitutional law.
Quite so. Rather than hand out green cards at random, we should issue them to the applicants most likely to help the domestic economy, as Canada and many other nations do.
An autopilot handles routine operations. Every aircraft autopilot requires a qualified human pilot supervising it in case the operation ceases to be routine. The Tesla autopilot works in precisely the same way.
Thalidomide?? Give me a break. The FDA has been trading on thalidomide forever, pretending that non-US regulators are utterly incapable of learning from the past. So where are the other thalidomides that those European imbeciles have let through? The truth that the FDA will not admit is that thalidomide is a sad part of the past that will not be repeated. But, bureaucratic fairy tales are immortal. As long as they had some grain of truth at one time, no one can ever contradict them.
The Epipen disaster is squarely due to FDA's hubris, maintaining that every other drug regulator in the world is incompetent. If the FDA would accept generic-drug approvals from other first-world agencies, like those in Canada and Europe, we wouldn't have this problem. Understand that they are not approving the drug, which is already approved, but just approving the manufacturing process. The FDA insists on an expensive, redundant approval process that results in a non-competitive market that leads to gouging.
In Canada, Uber is a Canadian corporation, registered in Canada, paying Canadian taxes, and employing Canadians. That Canadian corporation has a relationship with Uber in the US, but that does not mean it doesn't pay taxes or employ people in Canada.
The federal government can control interstate and foreign commerce, and can supersede state and local laws to do so. This 'commerce clause' has been stretched to cover some pretty dubious cases, but if Internet access isn't legitimately a part of interstate and foreign commerce, I don't know what is.
That's simply not true. By appealing to 'the majority of voters', you are automatically choosing a method of counting. As the USA is a federal democracy, counting votes state-by-state, as is done for Congress and the Presidency, has much to recommend it.
Counted one way, the US people favored Trump. Counted another way, the US people favored Clinton. Almost without exception, political observers now profess a clear preference for the vote-counting method that would have worked best for their favored candidate: Clinton supporters have discovered a new passion for using the aggregate popular vote, while Trump supporters see great virtue in the Electoral College. Politics as usual.
A 32MB disk? Luxury. After having to rely an ASR-33 teletype and paper tape, disk storage of any type is paradise.
Madoff went to prison, and will be there for the rest of his life. He was no "pleb".
If the Epi-Pen fiasco is due to "corporate greed", then why doesn't every drug carry a $500/dose price tag? Are the corporations that make those other drugs any less greedy? No, the prices of other drugs are held down by competition. Epi-pen prices are through the roof due to lack of competition, and that lack of competition is due to FDA arrogance and incompetence.
The Epipen fiasco would have been completely avoided if the FDA didn't have the position that it alone, among all regulatory agencies, is qualified to evaluate generic drugs and devices. The sensible thing, which is not being done because the FDA is protecting its turf, is to recognize generic drug approvals from other advanced countries such as the European countries and Canada. The Epipen has a de-facto monopoly due to FDA foot-dragging. The FDA, ad nauseam, trots out the Thalidomide tragedy to prove that everyone else in the world is incompetent, but the world has changed since 1957, and people can and have learned from their mistakes. Now it's the FDA that's incompetent, introducing needless delays in approving drugs that have already been fully vetted elsewhere.
Anyone who has actually flown with a real autopilot knows that it does not relieve the pilot of responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle. An autopilot takes over a set of routine operations, but the pilot must still be ready to take over if needed. "Autopilot" != "Autonomous". Tesla makes this very clear.
Try this: Federal Obstruction of Medical Marijuana Research
This is the modern version of Pascal's Wager. Just as with the original, the modern version fails because it underestimates the downside of accepting the wager. Radical restrictions on the use of fossil fuels would push the world into recession, and foreclose any possibility that the truly poor, in their billions, will have any hope of approaching the comfortable lives we take for granted in the developed world. Fossil fuels have impacted human life in an immeasurably positive way, and removing them would be painful for the developed world, but catastrophic for the "developing" world (which would be developing no more due to the lack of reliable, plentiful, affordable energy).
Why do those drivers continue to drive for Uber? Do they all want to drive for other people as a hobby?
Time and again we see the claim that Uber is a taxi company, despite the obvious differences between Uber and traditional taxi companies. What you are saying is that the differences between taxis and Uber are inconsequential and irrelevant, hence "Uber drivers are taxi drivers". You are entitled to your opinion about the differences between Uber and taxis, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to agree with you. I find the differences between Uber and taxis to be both relevant and consequential, so I believe that Uber drivers are NOT taxi drivers. As for Uber being a monopoly, I fear that you have not really looked closely enough into the market that Uber serves. There is significant competition to Uber, and if Uber falters in its remarkable record of satisfying its customers, its competitors will swoop in to claim its market share.
A driver who "cuts corners" and puts third parties in peril also puts the passengers in peril. Centuries ago, the only way to deal with this problem might have been regulation. With Uber, such driver behavior would rapidly earn bad ratings, and such drivers would either reform themselves or be forced to quit. How is an abritrarily difficult commercial licensing scheme superior to this, especially given the overwhelming tendency for regulatory systems to be captured by the industries they regulate?
We can expect a zealous investigation of these allegations against Hillary by the Obama Justice Department. Not.
This is the usual content-industry twaddle, trying to muddle the distinction between taking tangible property ("stealing") and violating legal rights in intangible goods ("infringment"). They yell and scream that infringement is totally, absolutely and completely the same thing as stealing, yet screaming doesn't make it so. Stealing has been intuitively understood as wrong from time immemorial. Infringement is a modern invention, with none of that moral underpinning. The content industry seeks to confuse the issue by baldly asserting that two different things are actually the same. The common person, in his internal moral calculus, will realize this and continue to reject the intellectual-property maximalists such as a Bell Media.
And we all know that the Republicans oppose absolutely everything that Obama supports. For example, now that Obama has come out in favor of free trade, every Republican is utterly opposed to it.