The NSA's standard operating practice is to assume that a system has already been compromised. Borrow a page from their playbook: If your security and privacy is truly important to you, shouldn't you have already been taking steps to protect it?
Exactly, and before these leaks most people just assumed that their data would be safe anyways. Now they know otherwise. That is why it is important.
Get your head screwed on straight: Personal privacy is an issue, but it's not a priority and it doesn't trump more basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing -- and we need those right now. A lot of people need them. We are now coming up on year SEVEN and economists estimate that unemployment levels won't return to pre-recession levels for ANOTHER seven years. Don't tell me Snowden matters. Don't tell me the NSA is important. We have hungry people out there. Hungry, desperate, unemployed people.
Justice delayed is justice denied. There's no reason why this can't be addressed at the moment either. On top of that; lack of food, shelter and clothing aren't exactly a major problem in the US - this is nothing more than a red herring because you're just another one of those who believes that privacy is unimportant. If you did think it was important, you wouldn't be trivializing it in the face of an issue that has little to no bearing on American citizens. (Failing that, then it's as I stated earlier: You argue just to argue.)
Right, because clearly if nobody ever revealed anything about the NSA spying, we'd still magically know about it anyways and we'd already be taking countermeasures.
Seriously, how can you be so stupid? The speaking is what inspired people to act. We didn't simply attack the British troops and say "there, we're separate now." Works like "Common Sense" from people like Thomas Paine, as well as numerous other acts of speaking are what inspired the colonists to rebel, and it didn't just all magically happen in one day; the events leading up to the revolution spanned years before it was officially declared. And I especially like how you throw the constitution in there, because it wasn't ratified for a good 12 years until after we declared independence (prior to that the US was a confederacy.) Really, get a clue dude, or at the very least stop arguing just for the sake of arguing, which is what all of your posts seem to do.
The Snowden leaks are leading to a big change - it just isn't happening overnight.
The leak accomplishes a lot. Maybe not in the short term, but in the long term it is causing us to take a much greater look at security that will not only prevent NSA style spying, but very easily could further harden the global cloud infrastructure at large against data breaches. Namely, if we go out of our way to secure our information against even those who have physical access to it, then it makes it that much harder for somebody else to get a hold if it as well, legally or not.
Something as big as this, hitting something as well established as what we already have, isn't going to change overnight or even over a year: This could take up to a decade because we're not only looking at software changes, but also hardware changes in a big ocean of already existing datacenters.
What I'm thinking of is data storage akin to mega where only the end user holds the keys. Others are already working on their own variants of this same concept, only they're trying to do so in such a way that makes content manipulation possible while leaving the data secured. Yes, I'm aware of the possible exploit of the website feeding you a bogus javascript page that steals your keys, however that can be fixed.
And by the way, I don't think he was upmodded for toilet humor, rather the message just happened to contain it. Besides, toilet humor has its place, and I think it's suitable here. If it offends you, you should probably disconnect from the internet and go live in a tree somewhere.
Except Google doesn't actually read your emails - it's just machines parsing data.
If you want to balk at machines reading the contents of your messages, you probably shouldn't be using the internet at all then. Nearly all of your communications is "read" by a machine - namely routers and switches at numerous points of the network are running IDS and/or IPS systems, in addition to doing the normal processing that they already do. Layer 7 packet inspection is hardly new, in fact I've worked with Cisco equipment that is over 10 years old that even supports it.
But hell let's just localize it to email. Nearly all of your emails pass through a Bayesian system which "reads" your emails in the same manner that google does for its ad content, only this is for the purpose of deleting spam messages. To me a machine parsing text is a LOT different than a person rummaging through your messages - the later of which Google does NOT do. And for that reason, I have no qualms about using gmail, and in fact have rather enjoyed using it for the past 7 or so years now (I started using it during the early beta days when you had to know somebody who had invitations.)
I don't really have an ideological narrative when it comes to health care, mainly because I'm knee deep in it. In fact, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to (though we're all hypocrites in one way or another) sit there and gawk at government funded medicine when I myself depend on medicaid for assistance with my stage 4 chronic kidney disease without acknowledging that there are obviously cases where having access to nothing at all can leave you pretty well screwed.
What I have observed is this: The care I receive is ALL through private providers - not a single one of them works on the government dime. In fact, the ones who manage my care and run the "insurance" program itself are privatized. From what I'm told, the upshot of this is that anything I need comes quick. I just recently had an operation done that I was on a one month waiting list for, and I know that you wait up to a year for in Canada. The down side is that some things they advise me to do or tell me I'm a candidate for when I really don't think they are necessary (I'm not going to name the specific operations here, but trust me two of the surgeries I've been offered were for rather trivial conditions that I would rather just deal with than have to put up with the recovery time.)
I had to pay for these things, I wouldn't bother, and they're things that won't get worse over time or make me worse over time - and in fact a different doctor told me that in England they flat out wouldn't authorize one of these operation period even though it is technically medically beneficial. And that may actually be a good thing, (and he even said it would be a good thing - but due to a lack of resources rather than for medical reasons - and this guy actually prefers the system in England over what we have here, by the way) though I could see a case where somebody with a more severe case than mine would be frustrated to no end with red tape. I don't know which is better to be honest, but it is worthy of consideration - i.e. insurance companies maybe being able to turn down coverage or at least require a high deductible for operations that you really can live without. They already deny coverage for cosmetic operations, so why not?
My comment on Iran is something you should probably pick up on before you run your mouth, by the way, because with as much as I do like what I currently have (no really, it's actually quite nice - though I pay almost zero for it, maybe the occasional $5 copay for doctor visits, or $4 maximum cost per prescription refill, even for my expensive as fuck cellcept prescription I once had, which the pharmacy bills them $500 for a 30 pill bottle...) I think we even have this wrong. Dialysis costs medicair/medicaid up to $100,000 per year per patient, whereas a kidney transplant has just a one time cost of about that much. Yet we as a society have deemed it immoral to allow people to sell their kidneys. Hell, have medicaid do what Iran does, only adjust it to scale to our economy, say $25,000 tax credit for donating a kidney - you'd have people lining up for that, and medicaid would literally save billions, not to mention the patients would live longer and more productive lives. The only bad thing that will happen is some poor schmoe who donated his kidney might end up $25,000 richer - why our society views that as an abhorrent thing just lost on me - and if you could see me, I'd be doing a very long "Picard" facepalm. Really, everybody wins in this situation. We already allow women to sell their eggs, the extraction of which happens to be more dangerous than a modern nephrectomy, and is certainly less medically necessary. Go figure.
At the same time, by the way, I've been cared for by doctors who were on the government dime - namely when I was in the Army. One of the most frustrating things about them is that no matter what ails you, be it a cold or you stubbed your toe too hard, they prescribe Motrin 800mg three times a day. Several years of that may be a contributor to my stage 4 kidney failure - jussayin.
I think it better that freedom must entail being free to own stuff. That also means you are free to do what you want with said things, including commercial ventures.
A wise man once said that communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff. When you analyze an economy along its spectrum of communism on one end to socialism in the middle to capitalism (free markets) on the other end, the countries at the end of capitalism tend to be the wealthiest. Socialist countries with strong production potential (that is, being strong in one or more areas of the five factors of production) end up becoming wealthier when they break or end socialist policies.
Socialists like to believe that socialism results in everybody being middle class, but in reality it does not. It just results in everybody being poorer overall. The term "everybody equally miserable" applies. This is why most of the world experiences a brain drain, while the US experiences a brain gain (and yes, it still very much goes on to this day, that isn't just a post-WWII phenomenon.)
Try for example looking at a policy like that of Venezuela where it's illegal to fire people. You literally have the inalienable right to a job there - a Democrat's dream come true (at least, if FDR had a say in it.) Yet that country can't retain production worth shit because it's so risky to start a business there that you almost may as well not even try - better emigrate to some place that is less hostile. As soon as their oil runs out...they're royally screwed. (Though admittedly the same is true of the US government once it realizes that its pockets really aren't bottomless after all - but the private economy will continue to function at least.)
Actually it does, under case law. Numerous, numerous case laws in fact. It's just easier for me to say first amendment than to name all of the landmark decisions.
Anyways, if you think people never make violent threats, you ought to read up on this guy Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church - they get them all the time, only they actually think they've got an edict from their silly little god that makes them feel even more righteous every time they receive them where normal people would just say "enough is enough".
Slashdot and dslreports surely must be some hardcore radical right wing forums then, because they're really the only ones I actually read.
Not only that but what makes you think my view is right wing? Free speech is one of the highest values I uphold, I'm even vehemently opposed to DDOS attacks against websites that I myself really hate, because I view a DDOS as a form of censorship. People on slashdot likewise give me shit every time I talk about how anonymous are nothing more than common thug asshats these days, because that is basically all they do. If believing in free speech makes me a right wing nut (whatever the hell that implies,) then so be it.
Sorry wedding cakes not cupcakes. (There was a cupcake one too in Wisconsin or something, but I can't find it ATM, however this business in Oregon is the one I had in mind when I wrote that.)
The proprietor didn't want to make a gay themed wedding cake supposedly. After the media storm, her business saw an immediate uptick:
That however was followed by bullying, which led to the close of the business:
"There's a lot of close-minded people out there that would like to pretend to be very tolerant and just want equal rights," Aaron said. "But on the other hand, they've been very, very mean-spirited. They've been militant. The best way I can describe it is they've used mafia tactics against the business. Basically, if you do business with Sweet Cakes, we will shut you down."
The Kleins cited a break-in to their bakery truck as one example of what's been happening to them. They said it was ransacked Sunday evening. We checked with the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office and learned there was a report filed, but no one has been apprehended.
They also said critics harassed their vendors to the point that vendors would no longer refer customers, which led to their income dropping off dramatically.
Well I'm pretty sure that he was actually right in the thick of it for a pretty long time, so I'm also pretty sure that I'll take his word for it over yours.
Life expectancy doesn't equate to quality of health care. That is an even bigger logical fallacy actually - cultural and behavioral influence plays a much bigger role. For example, an improved health care system won't reduce obesity, smoking, alcoholism, and countless other things that people do based on their own life choices which contribute to their reduced life expectancy.
And the world's best Cancer center in Texas, or Neurology center in Tucson aren't the best due to the power grid backing them - they're the best because the brightest in their fields work there.
Well by that argument, everything is rationed. In fact that is ultimately what economies sort out, is how scarce resources are allocated.
Rationing in this sense however doesn't mean that, it means "we're only making X available no matter the circumstances, actual price and supply-and-demand be damned."
The thing with this is there's a difference between a boycott, and then threatening them, their customers, sponsors, partners, etc with physical violence. All too often the later is what ends up happening. That cupcake business for example didn't stop because they had no customers, they had to stop because they were in fear for their lives. That is where the freedom of speech comes in.
Somebody cracking a gay joke or not wanting to put a gay themed ad out doesn't deserve that kind of thing. Even if you don't agree, the first amendment does.
The reason we pay so much for health care is because the recipient doesn't know and/or doesn't care how much it costs, namely because they don't pay for it. Likewise, they don't shop around. So even though it is all privatized, there isn't really much of a free market system.
Every doctor I've known (which admittedly isn't many) who has worked in a country with a nationalized health care system always talks about how it is problematic because as the end of the year approaches they have to stop caring for their patients because the money has run out. In addition to that, the pay is crap compared to here, which results in a brain drain (notice how when a foreign country needs the *best* care for a particular patient, they pay to have them shipped here for their operation. Always here. In the US resides the world's top centers for cancer, neurology, cardio, and numerous other medical disciplines, and this didn't happen by accident.)
Rationing is a horrible idea because it just reproduces that problem, in addition to putting you on long ass waiting lists for even basic operations, and making the medical field less attractive as a career choice. It's already bad enough that we have waiting lists for organ transplants (Which by the way this problem is very solvable - have a look at how Iran does transplants. With as much shit as that country gets wrong, they shockingly nailed that one better than anybody else.)
Anyways, find a way to get the patient to actually care about the cost of their medical services, and you'll see the prices go down. This socialized medicine shit is absolutely NOT without its set of problems, and price ceilings and rationing have always resulted in more problems than they solve, especially for products with inelastic demand (in the 70's we did both for gasoline, and the result was shitty. And that's just for gasoline - the notion that people want to try it with health care - basically playing with people's lives - is stupid.)
The Al Gore and Jim Hanson's of the world have been predicting "tipping points" and "points of no return" for quite some time now, several of which have already long since passed and the events of that movie "the day after tomorrow" still haven't happened yet. This just sounds to me like yet another one of those, and it's getting annoying to listen to.
Yeah yeah the end is coming, I get it. Beachfront property is a bad investment, I get it (come to think of it, has there ever been any point in history where shore lines remained constant for more than a few thousand years? Last I checked, the climate in the period we live in now is remarkably stable compared to just about every other period in earth's history.)
You also said these pair of statements which aren't exactly oppositional but do lessen each other:
* Everybody needs socks though, so we all pay more for socks * The demand for socks (both foreign and domestic) falls
These rules depend on the individual good, depending on available substitutes and other issues, which goes to effect price elasticity. Socks do work both ways on this one, at least in my experience anyways. I like to keep a fair bit of extra socks, and apparently so do other people. However they may keep fewer socks around if they cost more, and at the same time they may hang on to worn out socks longer, etc.
So is that a tariff that worked out or didn't work out? I don't know but even considering your quite reasonable and complete argument, I don't think it's plain that the answer is that it didn't work out.
I don't know the math on that particular issue, but every time I have looked into the actual figures, it has always ended up to the tune of the tariff having a net cost on the economy much higher than the salary that would have otherwise been paid to each job that was supposedly saved. In addition to that, remember that the poor are affected by these marginal price increases worse than anybody else.
What a lot of people also don't realize is that money isn't wealth. Wealth is material goods that you own. I myself have income below the federal poverty level, so by government standards I'm poor. Yet I own a nice car, 5 TV's that are larger than 40", a smartphone with an unlimited everything plan, a house, a nice gaming computer, access to all of the tv shows and movies I want, and plenty of food to eat. I don't feel poor at all (back in the 80's you didn't own a big screen TV, a portable phone, and a personal computer unless you were pretty damn well off.) But, I'm yet another number on a spreadsheet that socialist groups use as justification for saying "see, we need income redistribution." We don't need that to solve the "poor" problem, what we need are cheaper material goods. Tariffs take that away. Tariffs are basically the government saying "you must be at least this rich to have nice things." (When I say rich, I am referring to money, btw.)
Maybe your purchasing power has gone down by a nickel but the purchasing power of the economy is the same, maybe greater. If you would have put that nickel into your coin jar to languish, then the tariff increased the economy by five cents. That nickel is still there, now in the pocket of a sockmaker or a tax enforcer or a recipient of government services.
No, it does not, namely because it reduces sales. That is what the purpose of a tariff is - to reduce sales of foreign goods. In the process, it also reduces the sales of domestic goods for the same reason that it reduces the sales of foreign goods. It doesn't suddenly make the domestic goods more attractive, rather the domestic goods tend to rise to about the same price level of the foreign goods after the tariff is added. Thus we end up with this:
- The demand for socks (both foreign and domestic) falls. - Since fewer people buy socks, fewer people are spending money. - Fewer people spending money means that e.g. distributors, retailers, shippers (well, the whole supply chain really) now have less money to spend. - This ripples across the rest of the economy, though in ways that are difficult to quantify or realize.
Other things to consider are the following:
- Socks are a form of wealth (money is NOT wealth) and since fewer people have them, they are less wealthy. - Generally that nickel means a lot more to a poor person than a rich person, so the rich are only marginally affected.
I just don't think it's true that "it's already known that tariffs only serve to damage the local economy". If that were true then there would be no tariffs anywhere in the world because nobody would have an incentive to have one. Every local economy would maximize itself by eliminating tariffs, but that isn't so, so I don't think the premise is right.
You'd think that, but people don't realize that, hence we have them. Case in point: Your first paragraph. Have a look here:
The essay on Free Trade at The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics looks at the issue of international trade policy. In the essay, Alan Blinder states that "one study estimated that in 1984 U.S. consumers paid $42,000 annually for each textile job that was preserved by import quotas, a sum that greatly exceeded the average earnings of a textile worker. That same study estimated that restricting foreign imports cost $105,000 annually for each automobile worker's job that was saved, $420,000 for each job in TV manufacturing, and $750,000 for every job saved in the steel industry."
In the year 2000 President Bush raised tariffs on imported steel goods between 8 and 30 percent. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy cites a study which indicates that the tariff will reduce U.S. national income by between 0.5 to 1.4 billion dollars. The study estimates that less than 10,000 jobs in the steel industry will be saved by the measure at a cost of over $400,000 per job saved. For every job saved by this measure, 8 will be lost.
The cost of protecting these jobs is not unique to the steel industry or to the United States. The National Center For Policy Analysis estimates that in 1994 tariffs cost the U.S. economy 32.3 billion dollars or $170,000 for every job saved. Tariffs in Europe cost European consumers $70,000 per job saved while Japanese consumers lost $600,000 per job saved through Japanese tariffs.
When somebody sees an industry threatened by foreign competition, a tariff is the first idea that comes to their mind. Most people don't actually realize that the US is still by far the largest exporter of goods, and is second only to China in manufacturing. They also don't realize that we don't depend on tariffs to be this way, nor will tariffs ever help us maintain it. Some people subscribe to this idea that the US is completely self sustaining an
If the pornographers want to make porn, they don't change the price of my ticket to "Prisoners." If the gamblers want to gamble, it doesn't change what I pay for admission to Six Flags.
What does that have to do with the price of cheese in Timbuktu?
HFT makes money because actual people sell a stock for less than the actual buyer pays.
And that's bad because?...I think if you don't like markup or fully automated transactions, your best bet would be to protest places like Amazon, Best Buy or...hell, probably even Whole Foods. These places have computer systems that place orders without human intervention, and "skim off the top" in the process.
When the buyer ultimately makes the decision to buy, they already know what they are paying, and they are paying what they feel it is worth. If they didn't feel it was worth it, they wouldn't buy it. If they were being billed for more than they agreed to pay, THEN there would be a problem - however that isn't the case.
It adds nothing? You certain about that? It seems to me that HFT has been pushing technology to bring about lower latency networking. TFA alone is the first example I've seen of layer 7 switching. As somebody who eats, breathes, and shits networking I find that rather impressive.
I don't get why it's so popular on slashdot to bash high frequency trading. If the pornographers want to film porn, let them film porn. If the gamblers want to gamble, let them gamble. If the high frequency traders want to trade, let them trade. Why do we feel the need to stop somebody from doing something that doesn't hurt us?
You strike me as somebody who gets into fights often over what somebody doesn't say.
Look guy, the whole topic is about rent seekers, and many people had already said things that I would have said. So I didn't repeat them, otherwise that would be redundant.
What did you expect me to do, say "Rabble rabble, let's get out our pitchforks and torches and get those rent seekers!" in addition to what I already said? Why bother? Yet I didn't say anything, so you then assume that clearly I'm on their side or that I don't care about them?
That's a rather stupid and asinine assumption to make, and it says a lot about your character.
No, it doesn't. Since the price of socks are now more expensive, people also buy less of them. In addition to that, your purchasing power has gone down, which by the way has a worse impact on the poor than inflation and unemployment.
No I wouldn't say that, however cash for clunkers was a horrible idea and a flat out waste. It literally destroyed wealth and capital for pretty much no good reason - several environmentalists even got together and did the math, and they found that cash for clunkers probably saved about an hour worth of carbon emissions per year, with several of them being upset because the costs of that program could have been better spent elsewhere to much greater effect.
Besides that, the program cost the taxpayers about $24,000 per car sold, however the cost to the economy itself was much greater due to the destruction of capital (the program itself required that the cars weren't too old and had to work at least somewhat decently in order to qualify for destruction.)
Obama has done a lot of dumb things during his term, and this is by far one of the dumbest. And I'm going to say that anybody who thinks it is a good idea is also dumb.
Of course it benefits some segments, I don't think anybody will argue against that one.
Just it benefits them at an even bigger cost to somebody else, which is a rather dick move. I often get accused of being a cold hearted libertarian, yet the people who make those accusations seem to think that having the government protect your job while kicking somebody else to the curb is such a nice benevolent thing to do.
It's not just jobs that this impacts though. I mean the sugar sellers love not having to compete, which is partly why in America our traditional meals always include high fructose corn syrup. Also keep in mind that this isn't quite the same as a tax - strictly speaking, a tax is designed to collect revenue, whereas a tariff is designed to protect a market against competition. Does it collect revenue? Yeah, but it's discriminatory with the explicit intention of lowering sales.
Slashdot Mirror
The NSA's standard operating practice is to assume that a system has already been compromised. Borrow a page from their playbook: If your security and privacy is truly important to you, shouldn't you have already been taking steps to protect it?
Exactly, and before these leaks most people just assumed that their data would be safe anyways. Now they know otherwise. That is why it is important.
Get your head screwed on straight: Personal privacy is an issue, but it's not a priority and it doesn't trump more basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing -- and we need those right now. A lot of people need them. We are now coming up on year SEVEN and economists estimate that unemployment levels won't return to pre-recession levels for ANOTHER seven years. Don't tell me Snowden matters. Don't tell me the NSA is important. We have hungry people out there. Hungry, desperate, unemployed people.
Justice delayed is justice denied. There's no reason why this can't be addressed at the moment either. On top of that; lack of food, shelter and clothing aren't exactly a major problem in the US - this is nothing more than a red herring because you're just another one of those who believes that privacy is unimportant. If you did think it was important, you wouldn't be trivializing it in the face of an issue that has little to no bearing on American citizens. (Failing that, then it's as I stated earlier: You argue just to argue.)
Right, because clearly if nobody ever revealed anything about the NSA spying, we'd still magically know about it anyways and we'd already be taking countermeasures.
Seriously, how can you be so stupid? The speaking is what inspired people to act. We didn't simply attack the British troops and say "there, we're separate now." Works like "Common Sense" from people like Thomas Paine, as well as numerous other acts of speaking are what inspired the colonists to rebel, and it didn't just all magically happen in one day; the events leading up to the revolution spanned years before it was officially declared. And I especially like how you throw the constitution in there, because it wasn't ratified for a good 12 years until after we declared independence (prior to that the US was a confederacy.) Really, get a clue dude, or at the very least stop arguing just for the sake of arguing, which is what all of your posts seem to do.
The Snowden leaks are leading to a big change - it just isn't happening overnight.
The leak accomplishes a lot. Maybe not in the short term, but in the long term it is causing us to take a much greater look at security that will not only prevent NSA style spying, but very easily could further harden the global cloud infrastructure at large against data breaches. Namely, if we go out of our way to secure our information against even those who have physical access to it, then it makes it that much harder for somebody else to get a hold if it as well, legally or not.
Something as big as this, hitting something as well established as what we already have, isn't going to change overnight or even over a year: This could take up to a decade because we're not only looking at software changes, but also hardware changes in a big ocean of already existing datacenters.
What I'm thinking of is data storage akin to mega where only the end user holds the keys. Others are already working on their own variants of this same concept, only they're trying to do so in such a way that makes content manipulation possible while leaving the data secured. Yes, I'm aware of the possible exploit of the website feeding you a bogus javascript page that steals your keys, however that can be fixed.
And by the way, I don't think he was upmodded for toilet humor, rather the message just happened to contain it. Besides, toilet humor has its place, and I think it's suitable here. If it offends you, you should probably disconnect from the internet and go live in a tree somewhere.
Except Google doesn't actually read your emails - it's just machines parsing data.
If you want to balk at machines reading the contents of your messages, you probably shouldn't be using the internet at all then. Nearly all of your communications is "read" by a machine - namely routers and switches at numerous points of the network are running IDS and/or IPS systems, in addition to doing the normal processing that they already do. Layer 7 packet inspection is hardly new, in fact I've worked with Cisco equipment that is over 10 years old that even supports it.
But hell let's just localize it to email. Nearly all of your emails pass through a Bayesian system which "reads" your emails in the same manner that google does for its ad content, only this is for the purpose of deleting spam messages. To me a machine parsing text is a LOT different than a person rummaging through your messages - the later of which Google does NOT do. And for that reason, I have no qualms about using gmail, and in fact have rather enjoyed using it for the past 7 or so years now (I started using it during the early beta days when you had to know somebody who had invitations.)
I don't really have an ideological narrative when it comes to health care, mainly because I'm knee deep in it. In fact, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to (though we're all hypocrites in one way or another) sit there and gawk at government funded medicine when I myself depend on medicaid for assistance with my stage 4 chronic kidney disease without acknowledging that there are obviously cases where having access to nothing at all can leave you pretty well screwed.
What I have observed is this: The care I receive is ALL through private providers - not a single one of them works on the government dime. In fact, the ones who manage my care and run the "insurance" program itself are privatized. From what I'm told, the upshot of this is that anything I need comes quick. I just recently had an operation done that I was on a one month waiting list for, and I know that you wait up to a year for in Canada. The down side is that some things they advise me to do or tell me I'm a candidate for when I really don't think they are necessary (I'm not going to name the specific operations here, but trust me two of the surgeries I've been offered were for rather trivial conditions that I would rather just deal with than have to put up with the recovery time.)
I had to pay for these things, I wouldn't bother, and they're things that won't get worse over time or make me worse over time - and in fact a different doctor told me that in England they flat out wouldn't authorize one of these operation period even though it is technically medically beneficial. And that may actually be a good thing, (and he even said it would be a good thing - but due to a lack of resources rather than for medical reasons - and this guy actually prefers the system in England over what we have here, by the way) though I could see a case where somebody with a more severe case than mine would be frustrated to no end with red tape. I don't know which is better to be honest, but it is worthy of consideration - i.e. insurance companies maybe being able to turn down coverage or at least require a high deductible for operations that you really can live without. They already deny coverage for cosmetic operations, so why not?
My comment on Iran is something you should probably pick up on before you run your mouth, by the way, because with as much as I do like what I currently have (no really, it's actually quite nice - though I pay almost zero for it, maybe the occasional $5 copay for doctor visits, or $4 maximum cost per prescription refill, even for my expensive as fuck cellcept prescription I once had, which the pharmacy bills them $500 for a 30 pill bottle...) I think we even have this wrong. Dialysis costs medicair/medicaid up to $100,000 per year per patient, whereas a kidney transplant has just a one time cost of about that much. Yet we as a society have deemed it immoral to allow people to sell their kidneys. Hell, have medicaid do what Iran does, only adjust it to scale to our economy, say $25,000 tax credit for donating a kidney - you'd have people lining up for that, and medicaid would literally save billions, not to mention the patients would live longer and more productive lives. The only bad thing that will happen is some poor schmoe who donated his kidney might end up $25,000 richer - why our society views that as an abhorrent thing just lost on me - and if you could see me, I'd be doing a very long "Picard" facepalm. Really, everybody wins in this situation. We already allow women to sell their eggs, the extraction of which happens to be more dangerous than a modern nephrectomy, and is certainly less medically necessary. Go figure.
At the same time, by the way, I've been cared for by doctors who were on the government dime - namely when I was in the Army. One of the most frustrating things about them is that no matter what ails you, be it a cold or you stubbed your toe too hard, they prescribe Motrin 800mg three times a day. Several years of that may be a contributor to my stage 4 kidney failure - jussayin.
Anyways, my
I think it better that freedom must entail being free to own stuff. That also means you are free to do what you want with said things, including commercial ventures.
A wise man once said that communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff. When you analyze an economy along its spectrum of communism on one end to socialism in the middle to capitalism (free markets) on the other end, the countries at the end of capitalism tend to be the wealthiest. Socialist countries with strong production potential (that is, being strong in one or more areas of the five factors of production) end up becoming wealthier when they break or end socialist policies.
Socialists like to believe that socialism results in everybody being middle class, but in reality it does not. It just results in everybody being poorer overall. The term "everybody equally miserable" applies. This is why most of the world experiences a brain drain, while the US experiences a brain gain (and yes, it still very much goes on to this day, that isn't just a post-WWII phenomenon.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_drain
Try for example looking at a policy like that of Venezuela where it's illegal to fire people. You literally have the inalienable right to a job there - a Democrat's dream come true (at least, if FDR had a say in it.) Yet that country can't retain production worth shit because it's so risky to start a business there that you almost may as well not even try - better emigrate to some place that is less hostile. As soon as their oil runs out...they're royally screwed. (Though admittedly the same is true of the US government once it realizes that its pockets really aren't bottomless after all - but the private economy will continue to function at least.)
The first amendment doesn't, really.
Actually it does, under case law. Numerous, numerous case laws in fact. It's just easier for me to say first amendment than to name all of the landmark decisions.
Anyways, if you think people never make violent threats, you ought to read up on this guy Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church - they get them all the time, only they actually think they've got an edict from their silly little god that makes them feel even more righteous every time they receive them where normal people would just say "enough is enough".
Slashdot and dslreports surely must be some hardcore radical right wing forums then, because they're really the only ones I actually read.
Not only that but what makes you think my view is right wing? Free speech is one of the highest values I uphold, I'm even vehemently opposed to DDOS attacks against websites that I myself really hate, because I view a DDOS as a form of censorship. People on slashdot likewise give me shit every time I talk about how anonymous are nothing more than common thug asshats these days, because that is basically all they do. If believing in free speech makes me a right wing nut (whatever the hell that implies,) then so be it.
Sorry wedding cakes not cupcakes. (There was a cupcake one too in Wisconsin or something, but I can't find it ATM, however this business in Oregon is the one I had in mind when I wrote that.)
The proprietor didn't want to make a gay themed wedding cake supposedly. After the media storm, her business saw an immediate uptick:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/sweet-cakes-by-melissa-oregon-lesbian-couple-business-booms_n_2664036.html
That however was followed by bullying, which led to the close of the business:
"There's a lot of close-minded people out there that would like to pretend to be very tolerant and just want equal rights," Aaron said. "But on the other hand, they've been very, very mean-spirited. They've been militant. The best way I can describe it is they've used mafia tactics against the business. Basically, if you do business with Sweet Cakes, we will shut you down."
The Kleins cited a break-in to their bakery truck as one example of what's been happening to them. They said it was ransacked Sunday evening. We checked with the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office and learned there was a report filed, but no one has been apprehended.
They also said critics harassed their vendors to the point that vendors would no longer refer customers, which led to their income dropping off dramatically.
http://www.katu.com/news/investigators/Sweet-Cakes-responds-to--222094901.html
That's quite a bit more than a boycott.
Well I'm pretty sure that he was actually right in the thick of it for a pretty long time, so I'm also pretty sure that I'll take his word for it over yours.
Life expectancy doesn't equate to quality of health care. That is an even bigger logical fallacy actually - cultural and behavioral influence plays a much bigger role. For example, an improved health care system won't reduce obesity, smoking, alcoholism, and countless other things that people do based on their own life choices which contribute to their reduced life expectancy.
And the world's best Cancer center in Texas, or Neurology center in Tucson aren't the best due to the power grid backing them - they're the best because the brightest in their fields work there.
If it helps, the particular doctor who complains about this problem the most around me spent about 20 years of his career in England.
Well by that argument, everything is rationed. In fact that is ultimately what economies sort out, is how scarce resources are allocated.
Rationing in this sense however doesn't mean that, it means "we're only making X available no matter the circumstances, actual price and supply-and-demand be damned."
The thing with this is there's a difference between a boycott, and then threatening them, their customers, sponsors, partners, etc with physical violence. All too often the later is what ends up happening. That cupcake business for example didn't stop because they had no customers, they had to stop because they were in fear for their lives. That is where the freedom of speech comes in.
Somebody cracking a gay joke or not wanting to put a gay themed ad out doesn't deserve that kind of thing. Even if you don't agree, the first amendment does.
The reason we pay so much for health care is because the recipient doesn't know and/or doesn't care how much it costs, namely because they don't pay for it. Likewise, they don't shop around. So even though it is all privatized, there isn't really much of a free market system.
Every doctor I've known (which admittedly isn't many) who has worked in a country with a nationalized health care system always talks about how it is problematic because as the end of the year approaches they have to stop caring for their patients because the money has run out. In addition to that, the pay is crap compared to here, which results in a brain drain (notice how when a foreign country needs the *best* care for a particular patient, they pay to have them shipped here for their operation. Always here. In the US resides the world's top centers for cancer, neurology, cardio, and numerous other medical disciplines, and this didn't happen by accident.)
Rationing is a horrible idea because it just reproduces that problem, in addition to putting you on long ass waiting lists for even basic operations, and making the medical field less attractive as a career choice. It's already bad enough that we have waiting lists for organ transplants (Which by the way this problem is very solvable - have a look at how Iran does transplants. With as much shit as that country gets wrong, they shockingly nailed that one better than anybody else.)
Anyways, find a way to get the patient to actually care about the cost of their medical services, and you'll see the prices go down. This socialized medicine shit is absolutely NOT without its set of problems, and price ceilings and rationing have always resulted in more problems than they solve, especially for products with inelastic demand (in the 70's we did both for gasoline, and the result was shitty. And that's just for gasoline - the notion that people want to try it with health care - basically playing with people's lives - is stupid.)
The Al Gore and Jim Hanson's of the world have been predicting "tipping points" and "points of no return" for quite some time now, several of which have already long since passed and the events of that movie "the day after tomorrow" still haven't happened yet. This just sounds to me like yet another one of those, and it's getting annoying to listen to.
Yeah yeah the end is coming, I get it. Beachfront property is a bad investment, I get it (come to think of it, has there ever been any point in history where shore lines remained constant for more than a few thousand years? Last I checked, the climate in the period we live in now is remarkably stable compared to just about every other period in earth's history.)
You also said these pair of statements which aren't exactly oppositional but do lessen each other:
* Everybody needs socks though, so we all pay more for socks
* The demand for socks (both foreign and domestic) falls
These rules depend on the individual good, depending on available substitutes and other issues, which goes to effect price elasticity. Socks do work both ways on this one, at least in my experience anyways. I like to keep a fair bit of extra socks, and apparently so do other people. However they may keep fewer socks around if they cost more, and at the same time they may hang on to worn out socks longer, etc.
So is that a tariff that worked out or didn't work out? I don't know but even considering your quite reasonable and complete argument, I don't think it's plain that the answer is that it didn't work out.
I don't know the math on that particular issue, but every time I have looked into the actual figures, it has always ended up to the tune of the tariff having a net cost on the economy much higher than the salary that would have otherwise been paid to each job that was supposedly saved. In addition to that, remember that the poor are affected by these marginal price increases worse than anybody else.
What a lot of people also don't realize is that money isn't wealth. Wealth is material goods that you own. I myself have income below the federal poverty level, so by government standards I'm poor. Yet I own a nice car, 5 TV's that are larger than 40", a smartphone with an unlimited everything plan, a house, a nice gaming computer, access to all of the tv shows and movies I want, and plenty of food to eat. I don't feel poor at all (back in the 80's you didn't own a big screen TV, a portable phone, and a personal computer unless you were pretty damn well off.) But, I'm yet another number on a spreadsheet that socialist groups use as justification for saying "see, we need income redistribution." We don't need that to solve the "poor" problem, what we need are cheaper material goods. Tariffs take that away. Tariffs are basically the government saying "you must be at least this rich to have nice things." (When I say rich, I am referring to money, btw.)
Maybe your purchasing power has gone down by a nickel but the purchasing power of the economy is the same, maybe greater. If you would have put that nickel into your coin jar to languish, then the tariff increased the economy by five cents. That nickel is still there, now in the pocket of a sockmaker or a tax enforcer or a recipient of government services.
No, it does not, namely because it reduces sales. That is what the purpose of a tariff is - to reduce sales of foreign goods. In the process, it also reduces the sales of domestic goods for the same reason that it reduces the sales of foreign goods. It doesn't suddenly make the domestic goods more attractive, rather the domestic goods tend to rise to about the same price level of the foreign goods after the tariff is added. Thus we end up with this:
- The demand for socks (both foreign and domestic) falls.
- Since fewer people buy socks, fewer people are spending money.
- Fewer people spending money means that e.g. distributors, retailers, shippers (well, the whole supply chain really) now have less money to spend.
- This ripples across the rest of the economy, though in ways that are difficult to quantify or realize.
Other things to consider are the following:
- Socks are a form of wealth (money is NOT wealth) and since fewer people have them, they are less wealthy.
- Generally that nickel means a lot more to a poor person than a rich person, so the rich are only marginally affected.
I just don't think it's true that "it's already known that tariffs only serve to damage the local economy". If that were true then there would be no tariffs anywhere in the world because nobody would have an incentive to have one. Every local economy would maximize itself by eliminating tariffs, but that isn't so, so I don't think the premise is right.
You'd think that, but people don't realize that, hence we have them. Case in point: Your first paragraph. Have a look here:
The essay on Free Trade at The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics looks at the issue of international trade policy. In the essay, Alan Blinder states that "one study estimated that in 1984 U.S. consumers paid $42,000 annually for each textile job that was preserved by import quotas, a sum that greatly exceeded the average earnings of a textile worker. That same study estimated that restricting foreign imports cost $105,000 annually for each automobile worker's job that was saved, $420,000 for each job in TV manufacturing, and $750,000 for every job saved in the steel industry."
In the year 2000 President Bush raised tariffs on imported steel goods between 8 and 30 percent. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy cites a study which indicates that the tariff will reduce U.S. national income by between 0.5 to 1.4 billion dollars. The study estimates that less than 10,000 jobs in the steel industry will be saved by the measure at a cost of over $400,000 per job saved. For every job saved by this measure, 8 will be lost.
The cost of protecting these jobs is not unique to the steel industry or to the United States. The National Center For Policy Analysis estimates that in 1994 tariffs cost the U.S. economy 32.3 billion dollars or $170,000 for every job saved. Tariffs in Europe cost European consumers $70,000 per job saved while Japanese consumers lost $600,000 per job saved through Japanese tariffs.
http://economics.about.com/cs/taxpolicy/a/tariffs.htm
When somebody sees an industry threatened by foreign competition, a tariff is the first idea that comes to their mind. Most people don't actually realize that the US is still by far the largest exporter of goods, and is second only to China in manufacturing. They also don't realize that we don't depend on tariffs to be this way, nor will tariffs ever help us maintain it. Some people subscribe to this idea that the US is completely self sustaining an
If the pornographers want to make porn, they don't change the price of my ticket to "Prisoners." If the gamblers want to gamble, it doesn't change what I pay for admission to Six Flags.
What does that have to do with the price of cheese in Timbuktu?
HFT makes money because actual people sell a stock for less than the actual buyer pays.
And that's bad because?...I think if you don't like markup or fully automated transactions, your best bet would be to protest places like Amazon, Best Buy or...hell, probably even Whole Foods. These places have computer systems that place orders without human intervention, and "skim off the top" in the process.
When the buyer ultimately makes the decision to buy, they already know what they are paying, and they are paying what they feel it is worth. If they didn't feel it was worth it, they wouldn't buy it. If they were being billed for more than they agreed to pay, THEN there would be a problem - however that isn't the case.
It adds nothing? You certain about that? It seems to me that HFT has been pushing technology to bring about lower latency networking. TFA alone is the first example I've seen of layer 7 switching. As somebody who eats, breathes, and shits networking I find that rather impressive.
I don't get why it's so popular on slashdot to bash high frequency trading. If the pornographers want to film porn, let them film porn. If the gamblers want to gamble, let them gamble. If the high frequency traders want to trade, let them trade. Why do we feel the need to stop somebody from doing something that doesn't hurt us?
You strike me as somebody who gets into fights often over what somebody doesn't say.
Look guy, the whole topic is about rent seekers, and many people had already said things that I would have said. So I didn't repeat them, otherwise that would be redundant.
What did you expect me to do, say "Rabble rabble, let's get out our pitchforks and torches and get those rent seekers!" in addition to what I already said? Why bother? Yet I didn't say anything, so you then assume that clearly I'm on their side or that I don't care about them?
That's a rather stupid and asinine assumption to make, and it says a lot about your character.
No, it doesn't. Since the price of socks are now more expensive, people also buy less of them. In addition to that, your purchasing power has gone down, which by the way has a worse impact on the poor than inflation and unemployment.
No I wouldn't say that, however cash for clunkers was a horrible idea and a flat out waste. It literally destroyed wealth and capital for pretty much no good reason - several environmentalists even got together and did the math, and they found that cash for clunkers probably saved about an hour worth of carbon emissions per year, with several of them being upset because the costs of that program could have been better spent elsewhere to much greater effect.
Besides that, the program cost the taxpayers about $24,000 per car sold, however the cost to the economy itself was much greater due to the destruction of capital (the program itself required that the cars weren't too old and had to work at least somewhat decently in order to qualify for destruction.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Obama has done a lot of dumb things during his term, and this is by far one of the dumbest. And I'm going to say that anybody who thinks it is a good idea is also dumb.
Of course it benefits some segments, I don't think anybody will argue against that one.
Just it benefits them at an even bigger cost to somebody else, which is a rather dick move. I often get accused of being a cold hearted libertarian, yet the people who make those accusations seem to think that having the government protect your job while kicking somebody else to the curb is such a nice benevolent thing to do.
It's not just jobs that this impacts though. I mean the sugar sellers love not having to compete, which is partly why in America our traditional meals always include high fructose corn syrup. Also keep in mind that this isn't quite the same as a tax - strictly speaking, a tax is designed to collect revenue, whereas a tariff is designed to protect a market against competition. Does it collect revenue? Yeah, but it's discriminatory with the explicit intention of lowering sales.