...couldn't you request better work conditions? Glove, a jacket, portable heater? Divide that cost by the thousands of packages you handle per day and I don't think it would represent a price change.
You forgot to multiply by the thousands of workers requesting such changes.
Hackintoshes do not count because the BSA comes down hard on people using pirated operating systems for commercial gain.
Hackintoshes are not necessarily "pirated." Although they violate the terms of Apple's EULA*, violating an EULA is not the same as copyright infringement. If the hackintosh-builder could show that he purchased one of those $30 Snow Leopard discs, the BSA would have a more difficult time.
(* Arguments about the legal enforceability of EULAs and whether putting an Apple sticker on a hackintosh makes it "Apple-labeled" or whatever are beyond the scope of this post.)
Technically I have a choice between wireless providers, but since for all intents and purposes the plans and rates are identical (other than meaningless and/or superfluous differences) it doesn't matter which provider I choose.
I used to say that too, but the second-tier carriers are starting to come out with some Android phone plans (including web) that are actually cheap. I was paying $40/month for 450 minutes (and only minutes; no web or text) with AT&T, but I just switched today to Virgin Mobile and am paying the same price for 1200 minutes and unlimited text and web. They also have a 300-minute plan for $25/month, which is the same that you'd pay for just the data part of an iPhone plan.
The only downsides I see are that the higher-end phones (e.g. HTC Evo 4G) aren't available (unless you can figure out how to get one from Sprint and unlock it) and that all the minutes actually count (in contrast to the "free" mobile-to-mobile, night-and-weekend, and rollover minutes AT&T has).
But we're not just talking about labs, we're talking about dorms -- i.e., the students' homes. There's a difference between a lab (i.e., work) Internet connection and a dorm Internet connection!
it's not a crime to tell the police about a civil affair.....
Filing false police reports (especially over and over again, like the dumbasses in charge of Valdosta State intend to do) certainly is a crime! It's abusing police resources, preventing them from doing their real jobs.
If I were a resident of Valdosta, I'd be incredibly pissed off right now...
Why don’t you tell them instead of posting your theories on slashdot?
Because, for one thing, I never accepted your premise that it would be "much cheaper to not have insurance" (i.e, to pay the fine instead) in the first place. First, I don't know (and I don't think anybody knows) what the prices of each option will actually be yet. Second, even if paying the fine has a smaller price tag than the insurance premium, you're getting no value for that money. People who realize that might choose to go ahead and pay the difference for the insurance, and thereby get the benefits (since the insurance would probably cover non-catastrophic medical expenses too).
What was really amazing was the number of medicare recipients protesting against universal healthcare.
What's amazing about that? They just don't want to pay for anybody else to get on their gravy train. That attitude is disgustingly selfish and hypocritical, but it's not surprising.
In many occupations - from programming to maid service - it is essentially impossible to work directly for a client. You must work through a middleman you don't own.
No matter how much documentation, contractual paperwork, and external stuff you've got in place (office, health insurance, DBA or incorporation, etc.), if you don't keep up your tax payments the IRS will go to your client, say you were really an employee, and demand the withholdings, half the social-security payments, plus penalties and interest. Even if you work through a middleman corporation, if you and/or your family members own half or more of it the IRS will treat it as a scam and non-existent.
I think you're a bit confused (or disingenuous). Sure, if you only have one client that you work for the entire time (or nearly so), then the IRS could come after them... but that's because then you really are an employee in all but name. On the other hand, if you have a bunch of clients such that your livelihood doesn't depend on any particular one (which is what the "independent" in "independent contractor" means), then there's no problem.
The fact that one particular implementation of healthcare reform (i.e., Obamacare) sucks does not mean that all possible different healthcare reforms would also necessarily suck.
So how is this any different than "cooperating" with each other to build roads, fund schools, etc.
If the property owners choose not to cooperate, the property still gets defended (they just do it themselves... or they shortly get displaced by others who will defend the property). If people choose not to cooperate with each other on roads and schools, then they just won't exist, and there's nothing wrong (in the sense of "impossible", not "undesirable") about that. Or they'd be privately owned, which is what what would actually happen.
And if it's not a forced social contract, how can I opt out of it?
See, that's where you misunderstand: the fact that it's forced is precisely why it's not a social contract! Social contracts can be opted out of (by opting out of society or picking a society with different social contracts). You can't opt out of property because it's (essentially) the Law of the Jungle.
I mean, if I don't want to participate in your system of property and consider land to be un-ownable, are you going to let me mine your coal mine, or are you going to use force to make me comply?
Yes, force will be used to make you comply... unless you can exert greater force and thereby win, in which case the mine is still property and you merely become the owner. That kind of competition is inherent to nature; you can't escape it.
They pretend that somehow the force they want to use to enforce their social contracts is somehow different than the force other people would use.
The force libertarians use is inherent (it exists whether anybody wants it to or not). The other sort of force you're talking about (i.e., morality) is a construct of man. It may be more morally acceptable than physical force (in fact, that's kind of a tautology...), but ultimately, you don't really have a choice (because if you try to choose to not believe in property, eventually someone else will come along and take all your stuff).
However, in practice, it'll be much cheaper to not have insurance, pay the fine for not having the "mandatory" coverage
Rather than prove some wacky conspiracy theory, all that shows to me is that the fine is too low. Raise it until getting insurance is cheaper and you've solved the problem!
Considering that said solution is so bleedingly obvious I'm forced to conclude that you're either an idiot or a nutjob. For future reference, which is it?
You could even go so far as to remove the whole concept of prescriptions. Why pay $150 (copay + premiums) to go to a doctor when I have the sniffles when all I want is the $15 antibiotic?
The idea of prescriptions is that they're for medicines to dangerous to be used without professional supervision. If you're really finding yourself in the situation you describe, then the real problem is either:
your sniffles are severe enough to warrant treatment with (dangerous) prescription medication,
the treatment you seek is safe enough that it ought to be made available over-the-counter, or
the cost to provide the doctor's supervision is too high.
Note, by the way, that "dangerous" encompasses more than just danger to the patient. For example, the $15 antibiotics you mentioned are prescription-only because improper use causes drug-resistant bacteria, which is dangerous to the public at large.
Currently, there are many laws preventing insurance companies from operating in all 50 states. This reduces competition and drives prices up. There should be made a federal law that explicitly bans the limitation of states or any other government institution on preventing insurance companies from operating on all 50 states (or any potential future states)
There already is a law a law doing that: the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. In fact, this is one of the few things that the ICC legitimately should be used for!*
By the way, you should add "4) Prohibition on advertising prescription drugs to the public" to your list. Normal people have absolutely no business choosing them for themselves (because if they did, the drugs could be over-the-counter instead of prescription!). Therefore, advertising to the public only pressures doctors to prescribe unnecessarily and irresponsibly. Advertising to doctors themselves is a bad idea too (they can and should learn about new drugs via medical journals and whatnot instead), but probably prohibitively difficult to get rid of.
(* In contrast to bullshit like justifying drug laws by claiming that a person growing pot for their own consumption at home is "interstate commerce" merely because it affects supply and demand.)
There are two problems with insurance. One is that it's tied to employment, and unaffordable otherwise. The second is that it's increasingly being abused to cover foreseeable expenses (e.g. well checkups) instead of being merely a hedge against catastrophic injuries or illnesses.
You could abolish employer-provided health care without socializing it, though. If everyone had to pay directly themselves it would drive down costs (by both increasing competition and decreasing unnecessary services) as well as shift insurance back towards covering only unforeseeable and/or catastrophic situations instead of being abused to cover known, budget-able expenses (e.g. checkups, prescriptions etc.).
Of course, you'd have to either force everyone to participate in the system (e.g. by compulsory insurance a la Obamacare) or resolve to allow people to bear the consequences of their decisions (by refusing treatment to those unable/unwilling to pay) in order to prevent abuse.
By the way, I'd like to point out something that nobody seems to be thinking about: there's no reason all this has to be decided at the Federal level! Why not let California choose one thing, and Texas another? The only thing stopping it is the asinine funding system we have where we send most of our taxes to the Federal government, who then doles it back out to states with tons of strings attached, instead of just paying most of our taxes to the states directly. In other words, the real problem is not that California and Texas can't agree, but rather a failure in the separation of powers. Fix that, and they'll no longer have to agree!
Honestly, I always found the critical hypocrisy in libertarianism to fall into the fact that they denounce all types of social contract using force to implement at the expense of one's individual rights, except one. The concept of property. Seriously, except that we all agree to pay taxes and abide by the social contract that is property, what else gives you the right to declare a piece of land or an automobile yours? Perhaps I could make a living mining and selling coal, but you "own" all the coal mines. What gives you that right? In nature, if a squirrel drops an acorn out of his tree and another squirrel picks it up, there's no court of law in place that will assure the acorn is returned to it's "rightful owner." So where does this right come from?
Force.
Property is not a "social contract;" property is a way of codifying "might makes right" to make it somewhat civilized (i.e., efficient). Instead of each property owner having to defend his property himself (or hire a private army), they cooperate with each other to construct a court system and police force to do it for them. (This system also acts as a check against certain types of mistakes, such as accidentally dropping one's acorns. Is it that surprising that, being under the control of property owners, the system would expand the concept of "property" over time?)
Why else did you think libertarians are so enthusiastic about the 2nd Amendment? They recognize the need to defend their property!
The difference between you and me is that I also see how this same concept of social contract could be applied elsewhere. Public schools. Public libraries. Public roads. And yes, even unemployment insurance, medicare and social security. They are all social contracts, like the concept of property, meant to better society and make life more enjoyable for everyone.
On the contrary, the difference between you and libertarians is not that you recognize those other things as social contracts, but instead that you don't recognize that property is not one.
Why not do away with all social contracts and be an anarchist?
Of course, my observation is that libertarianism is really just a euphemism for "I'm rich and I want to do whatever I want."
Some libertarians are anarchist; others realize they aren't rich/powerful enough to survive anarchy, and still others recognize the value of social contracts and call themselves "libertarian" mostly because the other obvious choices (Democrat and Republican) have both gone off the deep end of authoritarianism.
I don't believe animals base these sorts of behaviors on anything more sophisticated than "might makes right", it's mine b/c I want it and can take it/keep it from you (if there are counter examples, I would be interested to hear them). Human society has mostly rejected this philosophy.
On the contrary; "might makes right" is exactly what property is! All the laws and whatnot are constructed by society merely to make the process less barbaric.
I think my use of the term "natural rights" has led us a bit astray. My point is simply that people often refer to private property rights as an inalienable right. I have never heard a compelling argument as to the fundamental nature of these rights as compared to let's say the right to life.
Well, now you really are talking about two different things. Rights that are "natural" (i.e., default) are entirely different from rights that are necessary for some particular moral system. In fact, I would argue that neither the right to life or the right to freedom of association are natural rights. The right to life is incompatible with the concept of the food chain, and the right to freedom of association is downright modern (and still doesn't exist even in many human societies today!). Naturally speaking, a right to free association would be downright dangerous because it would reduce tribal cohesion.
All this isn't to say I don't like having a moral system that includes the rights to life and freedom of association; quite the opposite. However, it's still possible to imagine other systems.
Ants and bees form sort of collective super-organisms; they don't exhibit individual property behaviors because they aren't really individuals to begin with (instead, their actions are determined by pheromones in a way that resembles control more than it does communication). Humans are not like that.
Fish do exhibit individual property behaviors, in that they can be territorial (see Siamese fighting fish for an extreme example), and even schooling fish compete with each other for food. To see cooperative behavior you have to go way up the evolutionary chain to higher mammals, such as dolphins (and their cooperation is just as much a social construct as ours is).
Nope, our equivalent to the EU ended in the Civil War, when the Federal Government took powers that the Constitution didn't afford to it. After that point, it was all downhill.
Yeah, I omitted that argument because I didn't want replies going off on tangents about slavery.
Our states are simply too small.
I would be surprised if our states are smaller than EU countries, on average (by area or population).
There are other practical methods of apportioning property use that don't utilize private property rights.
If you want to decide what's natural, look at what animals do. Animals don't get together and "apportion" their nests or dens or territory; they obtain them by occupying and defending them. Humans naturally do exactly the same thing; codifying those natural rights into law merely allow humanity to be more efficient by not having to hire private armies to guard everything (instead, the police and courts guard it on each property owner's behalf).
Those other methods of apportioning you mention might be practical, but they aren't natural -- "natural" means what happens in nature by default.
Slashdot Mirror
Living in Yellowknife? Yes, yes they would.
You forgot to multiply by the thousands of workers requesting such changes.
Being marked 'fragile' implies shitty packaging, because if it had sufficiently good packaging it wouldn't need to be marked fragile.
Hackintoshes are not necessarily "pirated." Although they violate the terms of Apple's EULA*, violating an EULA is not the same as copyright infringement. If the hackintosh-builder could show that he purchased one of those $30 Snow Leopard discs, the BSA would have a more difficult time.
(* Arguments about the legal enforceability of EULAs and whether putting an Apple sticker on a hackintosh makes it "Apple-labeled" or whatever are beyond the scope of this post.)
I used to say that too, but the second-tier carriers are starting to come out with some Android phone plans (including web) that are actually cheap. I was paying $40/month for 450 minutes (and only minutes; no web or text) with AT&T, but I just switched today to Virgin Mobile and am paying the same price for 1200 minutes and unlimited text and web. They also have a 300-minute plan for $25/month, which is the same that you'd pay for just the data part of an iPhone plan.
The only downsides I see are that the higher-end phones (e.g. HTC Evo 4G) aren't available (unless you can figure out how to get one from Sprint and unlock it) and that all the minutes actually count (in contrast to the "free" mobile-to-mobile, night-and-weekend, and rollover minutes AT&T has).
But we're not just talking about labs, we're talking about dorms -- i.e., the students' homes. There's a difference between a lab (i.e., work) Internet connection and a dorm Internet connection!
Filing false police reports (especially over and over again, like the dumbasses in charge of Valdosta State intend to do) certainly is a crime! It's abusing police resources, preventing them from doing their real jobs.
If I were a resident of Valdosta, I'd be incredibly pissed off right now...
The Economist needs a better chart designer, one that understands how to choose colors that maintain their contrast when converted to grayscale.
Because, for one thing, I never accepted your premise that it would be "much cheaper to not have insurance" (i.e, to pay the fine instead) in the first place. First, I don't know (and I don't think anybody knows) what the prices of each option will actually be yet. Second, even if paying the fine has a smaller price tag than the insurance premium, you're getting no value for that money. People who realize that might choose to go ahead and pay the difference for the insurance, and thereby get the benefits (since the insurance would probably cover non-catastrophic medical expenses too).
What if someone is against distinguishing the Net from Cable TV in the sense that they want to abolish Cable TV in favor of a neutral Internet only?
What's amazing about that? They just don't want to pay for anybody else to get on their gravy train. That attitude is disgustingly selfish and hypocritical, but it's not surprising.
I think you're a bit confused (or disingenuous). Sure, if you only have one client that you work for the entire time (or nearly so), then the IRS could come after them... but that's because then you really are an employee in all but name. On the other hand, if you have a bunch of clients such that your livelihood doesn't depend on any particular one (which is what the "independent" in "independent contractor" means), then there's no problem.
The fact that one particular implementation of healthcare reform (i.e., Obamacare) sucks does not mean that all possible different healthcare reforms would also necessarily suck.
If the property owners choose not to cooperate, the property still gets defended (they just do it themselves... or they shortly get displaced by others who will defend the property). If people choose not to cooperate with each other on roads and schools, then they just won't exist, and there's nothing wrong (in the sense of "impossible", not "undesirable") about that. Or they'd be privately owned, which is what what would actually happen.
See, that's where you misunderstand: the fact that it's forced is precisely why it's not a social contract! Social contracts can be opted out of (by opting out of society or picking a society with different social contracts). You can't opt out of property because it's (essentially) the Law of the Jungle.
Yes, force will be used to make you comply... unless you can exert greater force and thereby win, in which case the mine is still property and you merely become the owner. That kind of competition is inherent to nature; you can't escape it.
The force libertarians use is inherent (it exists whether anybody wants it to or not). The other sort of force you're talking about (i.e., morality) is a construct of man. It may be more morally acceptable than physical force (in fact, that's kind of a tautology...), but ultimately, you don't really have a choice (because if you try to choose to not believe in property, eventually someone else will come along and take all your stuff).
Rather than prove some wacky conspiracy theory, all that shows to me is that the fine is too low. Raise it until getting insurance is cheaper and you've solved the problem!
Considering that said solution is so bleedingly obvious I'm forced to conclude that you're either an idiot or a nutjob. For future reference, which is it?
The idea of prescriptions is that they're for medicines to dangerous to be used without professional supervision. If you're really finding yourself in the situation you describe, then the real problem is either:
Note, by the way, that "dangerous" encompasses more than just danger to the patient. For example, the $15 antibiotics you mentioned are prescription-only because improper use causes drug-resistant bacteria, which is dangerous to the public at large.
There already is a law a law doing that: the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. In fact, this is one of the few things that the ICC legitimately should be used for!*
By the way, you should add "4) Prohibition on advertising prescription drugs to the public" to your list. Normal people have absolutely no business choosing them for themselves (because if they did, the drugs could be over-the-counter instead of prescription!). Therefore, advertising to the public only pressures doctors to prescribe unnecessarily and irresponsibly. Advertising to doctors themselves is a bad idea too (they can and should learn about new drugs via medical journals and whatnot instead), but probably prohibitively difficult to get rid of.
(* In contrast to bullshit like justifying drug laws by claiming that a person growing pot for their own consumption at home is "interstate commerce" merely because it affects supply and demand.)
There are two problems with insurance. One is that it's tied to employment, and unaffordable otherwise. The second is that it's increasingly being abused to cover foreseeable expenses (e.g. well checkups) instead of being merely a hedge against catastrophic injuries or illnesses.
You could abolish employer-provided health care without socializing it, though. If everyone had to pay directly themselves it would drive down costs (by both increasing competition and decreasing unnecessary services) as well as shift insurance back towards covering only unforeseeable and/or catastrophic situations instead of being abused to cover known, budget-able expenses (e.g. checkups, prescriptions etc.).
Of course, you'd have to either force everyone to participate in the system (e.g. by compulsory insurance a la Obamacare) or resolve to allow people to bear the consequences of their decisions (by refusing treatment to those unable/unwilling to pay) in order to prevent abuse.
By the way, I'd like to point out something that nobody seems to be thinking about: there's no reason all this has to be decided at the Federal level! Why not let California choose one thing, and Texas another? The only thing stopping it is the asinine funding system we have where we send most of our taxes to the Federal government, who then doles it back out to states with tons of strings attached, instead of just paying most of our taxes to the states directly. In other words, the real problem is not that California and Texas can't agree, but rather a failure in the separation of powers. Fix that, and they'll no longer have to agree!
Force.
Property is not a "social contract;" property is a way of codifying "might makes right" to make it somewhat civilized (i.e., efficient). Instead of each property owner having to defend his property himself (or hire a private army), they cooperate with each other to construct a court system and police force to do it for them. (This system also acts as a check against certain types of mistakes, such as accidentally dropping one's acorns. Is it that surprising that, being under the control of property owners, the system would expand the concept of "property" over time?)
Why else did you think libertarians are so enthusiastic about the 2nd Amendment? They recognize the need to defend their property!
On the contrary, the difference between you and libertarians is not that you recognize those other things as social contracts, but instead that you don't recognize that property is not one.
Some libertarians are anarchist; others realize they aren't rich/powerful enough to survive anarchy, and still others recognize the value of social contracts and call themselves "libertarian" mostly because the other obvious choices (Democrat and Republican) have both gone off the deep end of authoritarianism.
The complaint is that those agencies don't do those things successfully or well most of the time.
Is "not doing something well" the same as "not doing something"? Not quite, but perhaps it's close enough for government work!
On the contrary; "might makes right" is exactly what property is! All the laws and whatnot are constructed by society merely to make the process less barbaric.
Well, now you really are talking about two different things. Rights that are "natural" (i.e., default) are entirely different from rights that are necessary for some particular moral system. In fact, I would argue that neither the right to life or the right to freedom of association are natural rights. The right to life is incompatible with the concept of the food chain, and the right to freedom of association is downright modern (and still doesn't exist even in many human societies today!). Naturally speaking, a right to free association would be downright dangerous because it would reduce tribal cohesion.
All this isn't to say I don't like having a moral system that includes the rights to life and freedom of association; quite the opposite. However, it's still possible to imagine other systems.
Ants and bees form sort of collective super-organisms; they don't exhibit individual property behaviors because they aren't really individuals to begin with (instead, their actions are determined by pheromones in a way that resembles control more than it does communication). Humans are not like that.
Fish do exhibit individual property behaviors, in that they can be territorial (see Siamese fighting fish for an extreme example), and even schooling fish compete with each other for food. To see cooperative behavior you have to go way up the evolutionary chain to higher mammals, such as dolphins (and their cooperation is just as much a social construct as ours is).
Yeah, I omitted that argument because I didn't want replies going off on tangents about slavery.
I would be surprised if our states are smaller than EU countries, on average (by area or population).
If you want to decide what's natural, look at what animals do. Animals don't get together and "apportion" their nests or dens or territory; they obtain them by occupying and defending them. Humans naturally do exactly the same thing; codifying those natural rights into law merely allow humanity to be more efficient by not having to hire private armies to guard everything (instead, the police and courts guard it on each property owner's behalf).
Those other methods of apportioning you mention might be practical, but they aren't natural -- "natural" means what happens in nature by default.