One government intervention in the market usually fails, which then leads to another intervention, which then fails, which then leads to another intervention... and so on. Wouldn't it be nice to have one of these laws/regulations come with a measurable goal and be automatically repealed if it didn't meet it?
Speaking of wishful thinking... We have subsidies to buyers, then subsidies to suppliers, then loan guarantees to risky manufacturers, then tariffs on imports... what's next, skip it all with an individual mandate that all Americans purchase solar panels for their home, but only from certified U.S. union-run companies?
It would be cheaper and less economically destructive if the government just gave a few billion directly to the bank accounts of their special interest buddies instead of distorting the Catallaxy with this farce.
This may be too obvious to be helpful, but since the submitter mentioned that they use Drupal on top of their database, why not just use one of the Drupal Google Maps modules as a starting point?
Google Maps Tools provides the very proximity function he's looking for (among other things) and there are many other easy integrations with Google Maps he can use as well.
That said, if he really wants to do the calculations at the DB layer, then switch the installation to Postgres GIS as mentioned elsewhere.
It seems like the system you describe would lead to more power in elections going to incumbents, because they are already better known than challengers, and to the news media, because they publish their views without it being "advertising".
Any indications of this in Norway? Do incumbents win in a much higher percentage than challengers? Do the candidates that the media favors tend to do much better?
There's a system that, based on sensor input, shuts the OBOGS oxygen system down automatically. Why design it so that it then requires the pilot to manually activate the other system?
If you can cut off the pilot's oxygen based on a sensor reading, why not also activate the backup system automatically at the same time?
The problem with many of the online charity rating services is that because information on religious charities isn't easy to access without federal tax reports, they tend to just exclude them, when they also tend to have some of the most cost effective.
100 percent of all donations go to help those in need. No administrative costs are deducted by LDS Philanthropies or our affiliated charities
They can do that because the church members cover all administrative costs with a different fund and volunteer time separately, so all donations can go to those in need.
If you only care about humanitarian needs, then their approach of helping people in emergencies and also helping people become more self-reliant (clean water, food production, etc...) then donate online.
This particular school board member was an education major.
A very low percentage of education majors are interested in lowering taxes or in religion in school. They tend to advocate for higher property taxes at every turn (last four elections in my area, including one special election for just the one issue of raising taxes to give the district more money) and for ensuring religion is banned as much as possible from school.
Nope, this is just your common variety math stupidity, from the dumbest group of college graduates, the education majors.
What was the status of labor unions under regimes historicly regarded as fascist?
From Mein Kampf: "I think that I have already answered the first question adequately. In the present state of affairs I am convinced that we cannot possibly dispense with the trades unions. On the contrary, they are among the most important institutions in the economic life of the nation. Not only are they important in the sphere of social policy but also, and even more so, in the national political sphere. For when the great masses of a nation see their vital needs satisfied through a just trade unionist movement the stamina of the whole nation in its struggle for existence will be enormously reinforced thereby.
"Before everything else, the trades unions are necessary as building stones for the future economic parliament, which will be made up of chambers representing the various professions and occupations."
There is some confusion brought on by apologists, but once Hitler took power, he replaced the Weimar Unions with "the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF), which was comprised of 2 primary entities, the National Socialist Factory Organization and the National Socialist Trade and Industry Organization."
Anyway, the bottom line is that once "the people" allowed the federal government to seize so much unauthorized power, especially economic power they've squeezed out of the interstate commerce clause (which should just be, no trade barriers between the states), then politicians giving their cronies and backers (unions, large corporations, universities, etc... pretty much anyone else with power) payoffs was just a matter of public choice incrementalism.
>At least in the US, you seem to be willing to accept the highest pharmaceutical costs in the world while letting the drug companies make huge profits.
Yes, we subsidize new drug development for your country. It's because of the potential profits that drug companies develop new drugs and pay for testing to get through the regulatory process.
It almost sounds like the freaking government actually kind of owns some of the auto companies.... oh wait....
Next you'll be telling me that the only way a government controlled car company can compete is to force all the other car companies to adopt their stupid political-inspired policies for building "green" cars instead of competing in the market for what consumers actually want and need...
The only problem with your analysis is that it doesn't match the facts. Did inflation adjusted tax revenue go up or down during the Reagan and Bush years?
Since the answer is up, then how can you blame tax cuts for a larger deficit? Any chance the larger deficit was caused by Congress increasing spending ever more?
Your story leaves a LOT out....
Congress has been spending WAY too much for years. It gets worse when the Republicans control both houses. It gets even worse when Democrats control both houses.
When Republicans spend too much, their party members (not all, but a decent majority) make them lose primaries and general elections. When Democrats spend too much, they've just paid of their core constituency as expected.
Hence the cycle of Republicans always becoming the party of lower spending once they lose elections.
whether you earn 1 million a Year or 2 millions a year, your lifestyle is pretty much identical. However, that second million can cause 20 paupers to be middle-class.
Or could be invested by someone who has clearly proven they know how to create wealth in starting or expanding a wealth creating business that causes thousands of paupers to be middle-class and millions of other people to have their standard of living increased by a tiny amount.
Having some elitist bureaucrat decide what to do with other people's money is the least effective method of increasing overall wealth in society and reducing poverty. The U.S. is to the point where we call people with a car, tv, air conditioner, microwave and too much caloric intake "poor" while they are the top 1% of the world's population in terms of wealth and lifestyle.
If you really want to help poor people, help them get the U.S.'s institutions in their country (a slow process, people don't deal well with change) or immigrate to the U.S. I literally don't know anyone in the U.S. that is truly poor. If I did, I'd certainly help them personally. Otherwise, I'll spend time and resources either helping the actual poor or helping create more wealth that benefits everyone.
What about social workers? Have you ever been helped by someone? Did you teach yourself to read and write? Do you put out your own fires?
There are more ways to accomplish these things than are dreamt of in your philosophy....
This is a request for public records of public work-related messages. They're not asking for his private emails, but for his "work" emails and works for the state, so they're subject to the FOIA.
What happened to all that talk about "transparency"? All government records should be open to the public unless there is a very specific exception, like current, not past, records relating to ongoing covert operations.
Since percentages aren't distorted by exponential growth...
Of course, population isn't consistently exponential over time, but based more on environmental and technological factors, so he probably actually had a minimal impact on total world population over time.
Still, it's worth remembering that the ultimate goal of radical environmentalists seems to be to have less people, or at least have people be poorer than they otherwise would be...
Play their game against them with the Walmart "different SKU" for price comparisons trick. It's much easier with digital content to have a different "edition" that's specific to the Amazon app store.
Selling Pinball 2.0? Call it Pinball 2.0a or Pinball 2.0 Deluxe and set a different list price for the Amazon App store. You can add some minor feature so that it's not a "similar" edition anymore.
Re:Article doesn't live up to expectations
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
If you're saying he's wrong and has no idea what he's talking about, then place a bet with him. Easy money, right?
That's the beauty of scientific bets... they show confidence level. You can argue all you want that he's an idiot, but why should we believe you if you don't even believe yourself enough to risk a few bucks on the chance you may be wrong?
Perhaps you are unaware that it can take several years and millions of dollars to get a new "medical device" through the FDA?
Perhaps now you can see the possible implications in limiting a hospital's choices of networking devices if the FDA starts to regulate them as medical devices.... not to mention the delays in implementing a new higher bandwidth network when the technology is out there, but no one has put a 10 Gig Ethernet switch through the FDA approval process yet, for example.
There is one thing that the election in 2010 taught me: if someone campaigns on vague promises and commits to nothing, then assume the worst of intentions and do not, under any circumstances give the party seeking a large majority a carte blanche.
You could have learned that two years earlier from the 2008 election in the U.S....
I understand how the internet works just fine... I started with a 300 baud modem in the days of BBSs and started an ISP along the way. This issue is about property rights vs government regulation being the best way to preserve freedom.
Net Neutrality is about increasing government control of the private portions of the internet for the ultimate benefit of large corporations and federal bureaucrats.
It's the same story of regulatory capture over and over again. It happened with the ICC, the FCC, the WTO, the FDA, FAA, the MMS, etc... It's standard public choice economic theory.
Regulatory capture starts with well-meaning people (of which I assume you are one) who see a potential problem and call for allowing the government the power to solve it. It ends with the most powerful of the special interest groups involved running things to keep out competition and cutting in some bureaucrats and politicians to keep them happy.
So, you state that problems with a former government mandated monopoly (Telefónica) in a highly regulated industry are caused by the free market? Why do people persist in saying that problems with heavily government controlled and regulated things are market issues? How about you use as an example something that is actually in something close to a free market? Something with minimal government regulation limited to the basics of ensuring property rights.
Your other example is Enron. Again, the energy market in the U.S. is one of the most heavily government regulated. The scandal was a failure of government regulations where those regulated outsmarted the regulators (like pretty much always happens, as extensively proven with public choice theory) and used loopholes and legal fictions of entities authorized by the government. The heavy government regulation and control of the industry is what failed, yet somehow you blame capitalism and markets???
Next you'll be explaining that in Capitalism 104, the U.S. Post office hemorrhages money and can't keep up with the times, and that in Capitalism 105 service at motor vehicle departments suck.
Methinks the word doesn't mean what you seem to think it means....
If only someone had warned that the reality of net neutrality imposed by the FCC would be regulatory capture and ultimately less freedom for consumers... its too bad no one thought of that ahead of time, huh?
"Fox News viewers disagree with the WorldPublicOpinion.org's conclusions about various politically charged questions."
All of the questions they ask in both surveys are ones where there is significant public disagreement. Someone not agreeing with your viewpoint isn't the same as someone being misinformed.
Give me any of the questions on their surveys and I can give you plausible fact-based arguments for either side of the question.
Calling your political opponents misinformed because they don't agree with you is more of a circular than a scientific result...
Slashdot Mirror
One government intervention in the market usually fails, which then leads to another intervention, which then fails, which then leads to another intervention... and so on. Wouldn't it be nice to have one of these laws/regulations come with a measurable goal and be automatically repealed if it didn't meet it?
Speaking of wishful thinking...
We have subsidies to buyers, then subsidies to suppliers, then loan guarantees to risky manufacturers, then tariffs on imports... what's next, skip it all with an individual mandate that all Americans purchase solar panels for their home, but only from certified U.S. union-run companies?
It would be cheaper and less economically destructive if the government just gave a few billion directly to the bank accounts of their special interest buddies instead of distorting the Catallaxy with this farce.
This may be too obvious to be helpful, but since the submitter mentioned that they use Drupal on top of their database, why not just use one of the Drupal Google Maps modules as a starting point?
Google Maps Tools provides the very proximity function he's looking for (among other things) and there are many other easy integrations with Google Maps he can use as well.
That said, if he really wants to do the calculations at the DB layer, then switch the installation to Postgres GIS as mentioned elsewhere.
It seems like the system you describe would lead to more power in elections going to incumbents, because they are already better known than challengers, and to the news media, because they publish their views without it being "advertising".
Any indications of this in Norway? Do incumbents win in a much higher percentage than challengers? Do the candidates that the media favors tend to do much better?
There's a system that, based on sensor input, shuts the OBOGS oxygen system down automatically. Why design it so that it then requires the pilot to manually activate the other system?
If you can cut off the pilot's oxygen based on a sensor reading, why not also activate the backup system automatically at the same time?
Seems like a poor design, to me.
The problem with many of the online charity rating services is that because information on religious charities isn't easy to access without federal tax reports, they tend to just exclude them, when they also tend to have some of the most cost effective.
An example:
The humanitarian arm of LDS Philanthropies:
They can do that because the church members cover all administrative costs with a different fund and volunteer time separately, so all donations can go to those in need.
If you only care about humanitarian needs, then their approach of helping people in emergencies and also helping people become more self-reliant (clean water, food production, etc...) then donate online.
The best incremental use of your money, IMHO.
This particular school board member was an education major.
A very low percentage of education majors are interested in lowering taxes or in religion in school. They tend to advocate for higher property taxes at every turn (last four elections in my area, including one special election for just the one issue of raising taxes to give the district more money) and for ensuring religion is banned as much as possible from school.
Nope, this is just your common variety math stupidity, from the dumbest group of college graduates, the education majors.
He's an education major.
That pretty much explains how he can be so dumb. Education majors are the lowest scoring on standardized tests. They also don't "do" math in college.
Yes, that's who they think should be teaching all the kids in the U.S. .... it would be funny if it wasn't so sad...
From Mein Kampf:
"I think that I have already answered the first question adequately. In the present state of affairs I am convinced that we cannot possibly dispense with the trades unions. On the contrary, they are among the most important institutions in the economic life of the nation. Not only are they important in the sphere of social policy but also, and even more so, in the national political sphere. For when the great masses of a nation see their vital needs satisfied through a just trade unionist movement the stamina of the whole nation in its struggle for existence will be enormously reinforced thereby.
"Before everything else, the trades unions are necessary as building stones for the future economic parliament, which will be made up of chambers representing the various professions and occupations."
There is some confusion brought on by apologists, but once Hitler took power, he replaced the Weimar Unions with "the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF), which was comprised of 2 primary entities, the National Socialist Factory Organization and the National Socialist Trade and Industry Organization."
Anyway, the bottom line is that once "the people" allowed the federal government to seize so much unauthorized power, especially economic power they've squeezed out of the interstate commerce clause (which should just be, no trade barriers between the states), then politicians giving their cronies and backers (unions, large corporations, universities, etc... pretty much anyone else with power) payoffs was just a matter of public choice incrementalism.
The app doesn't actually work. An example was it giving 140 degrees outside during winter in Philly.
How much user testing could they possibly have done?
>At least in the US, you seem to be willing to accept the highest pharmaceutical costs in the world while letting the drug companies make huge profits.
Yes, we subsidize new drug development for your country. It's because of the potential profits that drug companies develop new drugs and pay for testing to get through the regulatory process.
So you're welcome....
Next you'll be telling me that the only way a government controlled car company can compete is to force all the other car companies to adopt their stupid political-inspired policies for building "green" cars instead of competing in the market for what consumers actually want and need ...
The only problem with your analysis is that it doesn't match the facts. Did inflation adjusted tax revenue go up or down during the Reagan and Bush years?
Since the answer is up, then how can you blame tax cuts for a larger deficit? Any chance the larger deficit was caused by Congress increasing spending ever more?
Your story leaves a LOT out....
Congress has been spending WAY too much for years. It gets worse when the Republicans control both houses. It gets even worse when Democrats control both houses.
When Republicans spend too much, their party members (not all, but a decent majority) make them lose primaries and general elections. When Democrats spend too much, they've just paid of their core constituency as expected.
Hence the cycle of Republicans always becoming the party of lower spending once they lose elections.
whether you earn 1 million a Year or 2 millions a year, your lifestyle is pretty much identical. However, that second million can cause 20 paupers to be middle-class.
Or could be invested by someone who has clearly proven they know how to create wealth in starting or expanding a wealth creating business that causes thousands of paupers to be middle-class and millions of other people to have their standard of living increased by a tiny amount.
Having some elitist bureaucrat decide what to do with other people's money is the least effective method of increasing overall wealth in society and reducing poverty. The U.S. is to the point where we call people with a car, tv, air conditioner, microwave and too much caloric intake "poor" while they are the top 1% of the world's population in terms of wealth and lifestyle.
If you really want to help poor people, help them get the U.S.'s institutions in their country (a slow process, people don't deal well with change) or immigrate to the U.S. I literally don't know anyone in the U.S. that is truly poor. If I did, I'd certainly help them personally. Otherwise, I'll spend time and resources either helping the actual poor or helping create more wealth that benefits everyone.
There are more ways to accomplish these things than are dreamt of in your philosophy....
This is a request for public records of public work-related messages. They're not asking for his private emails, but for his "work" emails and works for the state, so they're subject to the FOIA.
What happened to all that talk about "transparency"? All government records should be open to the public unless there is a very specific exception, like current, not past, records relating to ongoing covert operations.
Of course, population isn't consistently exponential over time, but based more on environmental and technological factors, so he probably actually had a minimal impact on total world population over time.
Still, it's worth remembering that the ultimate goal of radical environmentalists seems to be to have less people, or at least have people be poorer than they otherwise would be...
Time to setup an LLC or something to market your Amazon-specific apps..
Play their game against them with the Walmart "different SKU" for price comparisons trick. It's much easier with digital content to have a different "edition" that's specific to the Amazon app store.
Selling Pinball 2.0? Call it Pinball 2.0a or Pinball 2.0 Deluxe and set a different list price for the Amazon App store. You can add some minor feature so that it's not a "similar" edition anymore.
If you're saying he's wrong and has no idea what he's talking about, then place a bet with him. Easy money, right?
That's the beauty of scientific bets... they show confidence level. You can argue all you want that he's an idiot, but why should we believe you if you don't even believe yourself enough to risk a few bucks on the chance you may be wrong?
Exactly. Start shopping your resume while you still have time, this company is unlikely to last much longer.
Play along with all the B.S. you can stand until you actually have a new job, though.
Perhaps you are unaware that it can take several years and millions of dollars to get a new "medical device" through the FDA?
Perhaps now you can see the possible implications in limiting a hospital's choices of networking devices if the FDA starts to regulate them as medical devices.... not to mention the delays in implementing a new higher bandwidth network when the technology is out there, but no one has put a 10 Gig Ethernet switch through the FDA approval process yet, for example.
You could have learned that two years earlier from the 2008 election in the U.S....
I understand how the internet works just fine... I started with a 300 baud modem in the days of BBSs and started an ISP along the way. This issue is about property rights vs government regulation being the best way to preserve freedom.
Net Neutrality is about increasing government control of the private portions of the internet for the ultimate benefit of large corporations and federal bureaucrats.
It's the same story of regulatory capture over and over again. It happened with the ICC, the FCC, the WTO, the FDA, FAA, the MMS, etc... It's standard public choice economic theory.
Regulatory capture starts with well-meaning people (of which I assume you are one) who see a potential problem and call for allowing the government the power to solve it. It ends with the most powerful of the special interest groups involved running things to keep out competition and cutting in some bureaucrats and politicians to keep them happy.
So, you state that problems with a former government mandated monopoly (Telefónica) in a highly regulated industry are caused by the free market? Why do people persist in saying that problems with heavily government controlled and regulated things are market issues? How about you use as an example something that is actually in something close to a free market? Something with minimal government regulation limited to the basics of ensuring property rights.
Your other example is Enron. Again, the energy market in the U.S. is one of the most heavily government regulated. The scandal was a failure of government regulations where those regulated outsmarted the regulators (like pretty much always happens, as extensively proven with public choice theory) and used loopholes and legal fictions of entities authorized by the government. The heavy government regulation and control of the industry is what failed, yet somehow you blame capitalism and markets???
Next you'll be explaining that in Capitalism 104, the U.S. Post office hemorrhages money and can't keep up with the times, and that in Capitalism 105 service at motor vehicle departments suck.
Methinks the word doesn't mean what you seem to think it means....
If only someone had warned that the reality of net neutrality imposed by the FCC would be regulatory capture and ultimately less freedom for consumers... its too bad no one thought of that ahead of time, huh?
Here's a shorter summary of the article:
"Fox News viewers disagree with the WorldPublicOpinion.org's conclusions about various politically charged questions."
All of the questions they ask in both surveys are ones where there is significant public disagreement. Someone not agreeing with your viewpoint isn't the same as someone being misinformed.
Give me any of the questions on their surveys and I can give you plausible fact-based arguments for either side of the question.
Calling your political opponents misinformed because they don't agree with you is more of a circular than a scientific result...