A person voting 3rd party is different than a potential voter that stayed at home. The one that votes shows that they will vote. So if a 3rd party candidate takes enough votes from a major party to cause the other major party to win a state, then the losing major party will try to court that 3rd party vote in the next election. So voting for a 3rd party candidate can have more of an affect than a non-voter.
They are the same on 99% of the issues. Neither want to ban tinted windows or put Tofu in all McDonald's cheeseburgers. I can create more issues to up that to 99.999999%.
You are under the impression that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. That's soooo 1790's. Do you want us to live like it is 1790? We wouldn't even have toilets!
Candidate 1: Jump off a cliff in the Grand Canyon Candidate 2: Jump off the Empire State Building Candidate 3: Jump off a 10 foot roof (Idealistic)
You can vote to choose which way you want to die, or you can vote for candidate 3. However, not matter who you vote for, candidate 1 or 2 will win. So you will have to die. Personally, I would rather jump off the Grand Canyon. There is less cleaning up to do and I would get a great view on my way to the bottom. So the current system says I should vote to die in the Grand Canyon as opposed to living.
Yet you seem to be overlooking cost of entry. That is precisely why they are charging so much. And if they charged enough to make huge margins, a venture capitalist would create a new company to get a piece of that easy money. Without collusion or fraud, you then get the costs down to a healthy margin to make the business successful, employment stable, and providing a service to customers at an optimal price.
Or you could take that money from people at gunpoint or handcuffs (tax) and build an infrastructure at public expense (subsidy) and provide really low prices for the same service. But that makes cell phones the winners and will prevent alternate competition from entering the market. Like satellite phones or entangled particle phones or wormhole phones.
I can travel into the future and see the earthquake happen. But I don't have the technology to travel back into the past and alarm the public that it will happen.
To me, it sounds like they said "don't listen to the tea leaf reader" and turned off the traffic lights. They just let everyone drive through the intersection without stop signs or warning of an intersection. They didn't say, "well, as always, an earthquake could happen tomorrow, so ALWAYS be prepared."
I think the point was that it was these guys job to minimize injury and death when an earthquake does occur. That could be through ample warning, but also through education on what to do when was does occur. They failed.
That is assuming that was their role, as the GP insinuated from reading TFA.
I think you are missing the point of my post. You are assuming that the scientists acted as a scientist should and followed the accepted practice.
What if 95% of scientists would have correctly predicted something that some guy in some area failed to do because they are incompetent. How do you measure that? In this case, who would be the judge? Other geologists? From where? How many? Maybe the scientists are following some antiquated/cheap model and that would not be discovered without an inquiry or judgement of some kind. They could just be sapping people for free paychecks.
But it also raises a good point. How do you hold scientists accountable? If they are making money, then there should be accountability. If the money is from the government, then they are accountable to the people.
There has to be a threshold of "good work". Like if a weatherman is 75% right, then it is pretty good. What is an acceptable rate of competence for earthquake predictability? I would think it would be near the lines of volcano predicting.
The polar opposite would be asteroid collision predictability. If a scientist misses an asteroid, then they should be fired.
Where is this notion that Libertarian societies are bad for the environment?! Libertarians are not Republicans!
In a Libertarian society it wouldn't be illegal to sue over air/water/land/noise pollution seeping onto your property. The cost to pollution would be so astronomical, it would be infeasible to create a company that pollutes.
Isn't that the GP's point? The monument 350m from the seat of government is enough of a reminder. Why put censoring on top of that?
In America, it is like prohibition vs taxing for cigarettes. If you just banned them, it wouldn't have been nearly as effective as taxing and providing information on why they are bad. 20 years ago it was "cool". Now you are a societal outsider if you smoke.
You can't censor/prohibit something you don't like. It won't work. Demonizing it is better.
Very misinformed post. I didn't know we lived in a Libertarian society...or ever have. You should be blaming the cause not what you want to believe.
Before the EPA (and even with the EPA), we have had managed pollution. The laws of the country before and after the EPA protects polluters. They just try to keep it in check with arbitrary caps and controls. Like "oh, this is starting to look bad, let's stop that now". Or "that is bad, but company X gave me Y money, so let's let it slide for now".
We haven't been a Libertarian society and the closest we have been was over 200 years ago. Back then, if you threw poison in the river, you would probably be hanged. Now, they let you do it, but only a certain amount. On top of that, the company never realizes the full cost on society for that poison. In fact, the regulation of it levies a cost on society.
And not that you didn't already know, but China isn't Libertarian. It has more government control over private property than most countries.
So how is this a fault of Libertarian philosophy or Libertarian minded voters? It is the fault of Democrats and Republicans. It is the fault of the EPA. A pure Libertarian society (where the only recourse is suing and not taxes), pollution would be too expensive for companies. Pollution would be negligible or non-existent.
If the value of the interest increases over time, then the institution loaning that interest can factor that into their yield on the loan. This means they will be more willing to offer much lower interest rates than you would see without subsidization in today's economy. Today, the basis for loans is around Treasuries, which seen as one of the safest investments. With a deflationary currency, that basis would be the currency itself. Since a 0% rate is still a perceived "gain", the margin can be even closer to the basis on a near-fixed currency.
So instead of interest rates a point or two over Treasury rates (3-5%), you would have interest rates a fraction of point over the currency (0.25-1%).
Inflation and deflation are just ways to play with numbers. Inflation has the added "advantage" of benefiting the ones (government/banks) who get their hands on the money first, which is morally wrong.
There would be less speculating and more investing with a near-fixed currency too. Right now, the interest rates are set to force speculation in the stock market. And we wonder why bubbles happen?
Society can work either way. It is just something to accustomed to.
I was hoping someone would quote Gresham's Law. This is a practical case study lending more support to the law.
It goes further than just currency. The more a product/commodity devalues, the more liquid the market. Kind of like hot potato. "I want to use it as quickly as possible."
The pricing affects of deflation and inflation are all psychological if the currency is infinitely divisible. Bitcoins are not infinitely divisible, but it should go quite a while before 0.0000001 Bitcoins (or whatever the minimum is) are worth $1USD. People would just have to get used to cost of living adjustments in the salary to go down...and a promotion would result in your salary staying the same.
You can't do that. First, it costs a lot to regulate that. Also, we are already trying to do that and it hasn't changed campaign spending one bit.
But most importantly, it doesn't stop lobbyists from courting elected Congresspeople. So what if you find a magical way to keep them from being bought off during the election, when they are bought off after the election. They can be offered "bonuses" after their career. You can't stop it.
So back to my point. You have to limit that person's authority or make it impossible for the lobbyist to figure out who to lobby.
A Libertarian would support the ability of people to sue for pollution (even air pollution). They would also support the more practical way of controlling those externalities by taxing it. Because a Libertarian (as opposed to an anarchist) does believe in a government, which requires taxes, and something must be taxed.
So cap-n-trade is a far better solution to all pollution than current regulations. Wipe the current ones clear and tax each pollution at certain rates. If that means putting a cap to create a market, then so be it.
If 45% of the country jumped off the Manhattan Bridge and 45% of the country jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you join the 10% that didn't jump off any bridge or just follow the other 90%?
The only way you solve that is to (1) not give the government the authority to subsidize or (2) random/statistical representation so they have to lobby everyone in the electorate to get what they want.
Slashdot Mirror
A person voting 3rd party is different than a potential voter that stayed at home. The one that votes shows that they will vote. So if a 3rd party candidate takes enough votes from a major party to cause the other major party to win a state, then the losing major party will try to court that 3rd party vote in the next election. So voting for a 3rd party candidate can have more of an affect than a non-voter.
They are the same on 99% of the issues. Neither want to ban tinted windows or put Tofu in all McDonald's cheeseburgers. I can create more issues to up that to 99.999999%.
You are under the impression that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. That's soooo 1790's. Do you want us to live like it is 1790? We wouldn't even have toilets!
Candidate 1: Jump off a cliff in the Grand Canyon
Candidate 2: Jump off the Empire State Building
Candidate 3: Jump off a 10 foot roof (Idealistic)
You can vote to choose which way you want to die, or you can vote for candidate 3. However, not matter who you vote for, candidate 1 or 2 will win. So you will have to die. Personally, I would rather jump off the Grand Canyon. There is less cleaning up to do and I would get a great view on my way to the bottom. So the current system says I should vote to die in the Grand Canyon as opposed to living.
Yet you seem to be overlooking cost of entry. That is precisely why they are charging so much. And if they charged enough to make huge margins, a venture capitalist would create a new company to get a piece of that easy money. Without collusion or fraud, you then get the costs down to a healthy margin to make the business successful, employment stable, and providing a service to customers at an optimal price.
Or you could take that money from people at gunpoint or handcuffs (tax) and build an infrastructure at public expense (subsidy) and provide really low prices for the same service. But that makes cell phones the winners and will prevent alternate competition from entering the market. Like satellite phones or entangled particle phones or wormhole phones.
If a geek cries out in terror and there's not site to read it on, do they really cry out in terror?
I can travel into the future and see the earthquake happen. But I don't have the technology to travel back into the past and alarm the public that it will happen.
To me, it sounds like they said "don't listen to the tea leaf reader" and turned off the traffic lights. They just let everyone drive through the intersection without stop signs or warning of an intersection. They didn't say, "well, as always, an earthquake could happen tomorrow, so ALWAYS be prepared."
I think the point was that it was these guys job to minimize injury and death when an earthquake does occur. That could be through ample warning, but also through education on what to do when was does occur. They failed.
That is assuming that was their role, as the GP insinuated from reading TFA.
I think you are missing the point of my post. You are assuming that the scientists acted as a scientist should and followed the accepted practice.
What if 95% of scientists would have correctly predicted something that some guy in some area failed to do because they are incompetent. How do you measure that? In this case, who would be the judge? Other geologists? From where? How many? Maybe the scientists are following some antiquated/cheap model and that would not be discovered without an inquiry or judgement of some kind. They could just be sapping people for free paychecks.
Very true.
But it also raises a good point. How do you hold scientists accountable? If they are making money, then there should be accountability. If the money is from the government, then they are accountable to the people.
There has to be a threshold of "good work". Like if a weatherman is 75% right, then it is pretty good. What is an acceptable rate of competence for earthquake predictability? I would think it would be near the lines of volcano predicting.
The polar opposite would be asteroid collision predictability. If a scientist misses an asteroid, then they should be fired.
Some weather services offer weather insurance. Elsewhere, they shouldn't be relied on.
Weather insurance is big in construction or weddings.
Are you sure you aren't just an anti-Romney voter? And the Green party best opposes the Republicans? Because Democrats sure don't.
Because if government doesn't do it, no one will.
* that was sarcasm
Libertarians want government. Therefore, there is a public sector and public property. So your whole post is off-base.
Where is this notion that Libertarian societies are bad for the environment?! Libertarians are not Republicans!
In a Libertarian society it wouldn't be illegal to sue over air/water/land/noise pollution seeping onto your property. The cost to pollution would be so astronomical, it would be infeasible to create a company that pollutes.
Isn't that the GP's point? The monument 350m from the seat of government is enough of a reminder. Why put censoring on top of that?
In America, it is like prohibition vs taxing for cigarettes. If you just banned them, it wouldn't have been nearly as effective as taxing and providing information on why they are bad. 20 years ago it was "cool". Now you are a societal outsider if you smoke.
You can't censor/prohibit something you don't like. It won't work. Demonizing it is better.
Very misinformed post. I didn't know we lived in a Libertarian society...or ever have. You should be blaming the cause not what you want to believe.
Before the EPA (and even with the EPA), we have had managed pollution. The laws of the country before and after the EPA protects polluters. They just try to keep it in check with arbitrary caps and controls. Like "oh, this is starting to look bad, let's stop that now". Or "that is bad, but company X gave me Y money, so let's let it slide for now".
We haven't been a Libertarian society and the closest we have been was over 200 years ago. Back then, if you threw poison in the river, you would probably be hanged. Now, they let you do it, but only a certain amount. On top of that, the company never realizes the full cost on society for that poison. In fact, the regulation of it levies a cost on society.
And not that you didn't already know, but China isn't Libertarian. It has more government control over private property than most countries.
So how is this a fault of Libertarian philosophy or Libertarian minded voters? It is the fault of Democrats and Republicans. It is the fault of the EPA. A pure Libertarian society (where the only recourse is suing and not taxes), pollution would be too expensive for companies. Pollution would be negligible or non-existent.
I do not follow.
If the value of the interest increases over time, then the institution loaning that interest can factor that into their yield on the loan. This means they will be more willing to offer much lower interest rates than you would see without subsidization in today's economy. Today, the basis for loans is around Treasuries, which seen as one of the safest investments. With a deflationary currency, that basis would be the currency itself. Since a 0% rate is still a perceived "gain", the margin can be even closer to the basis on a near-fixed currency.
So instead of interest rates a point or two over Treasury rates (3-5%), you would have interest rates a fraction of point over the currency (0.25-1%).
Inflation and deflation are just ways to play with numbers. Inflation has the added "advantage" of benefiting the ones (government/banks) who get their hands on the money first, which is morally wrong.
There would be less speculating and more investing with a near-fixed currency too. Right now, the interest rates are set to force speculation in the stock market. And we wonder why bubbles happen?
Society can work either way. It is just something to accustomed to.
I was hoping someone would quote Gresham's Law. This is a practical case study lending more support to the law.
It goes further than just currency. The more a product/commodity devalues, the more liquid the market. Kind of like hot potato. "I want to use it as quickly as possible."
The pricing affects of deflation and inflation are all psychological if the currency is infinitely divisible. Bitcoins are not infinitely divisible, but it should go quite a while before 0.0000001 Bitcoins (or whatever the minimum is) are worth $1USD. People would just have to get used to cost of living adjustments in the salary to go down...and a promotion would result in your salary staying the same.
You can't do that. First, it costs a lot to regulate that. Also, we are already trying to do that and it hasn't changed campaign spending one bit.
But most importantly, it doesn't stop lobbyists from courting elected Congresspeople. So what if you find a magical way to keep them from being bought off during the election, when they are bought off after the election. They can be offered "bonuses" after their career. You can't stop it.
So back to my point. You have to limit that person's authority or make it impossible for the lobbyist to figure out who to lobby.
A Libertarian would support the ability of people to sue for pollution (even air pollution). They would also support the more practical way of controlling those externalities by taxing it. Because a Libertarian (as opposed to an anarchist) does believe in a government, which requires taxes, and something must be taxed.
So cap-n-trade is a far better solution to all pollution than current regulations. Wipe the current ones clear and tax each pollution at certain rates. If that means putting a cap to create a market, then so be it.
If 45% of the country jumped off the Manhattan Bridge and 45% of the country jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you join the 10% that didn't jump off any bridge or just follow the other 90%?
The only way you solve that is to (1) not give the government the authority to subsidize or (2) random/statistical representation so they have to lobby everyone in the electorate to get what they want.