Huh? So you're saying in a market where demand is little impacted by price (since there is a monopoly on a necessity), consumers would not pay the tax? That seems to be contradictory. Did I misunderstand your position?
> However, the secondary effect will be that audits do, in fact, improve, because > the premiums on your insurance depend on how often you fuck up and the insurance > company has to pay for it.
You are essentially suggesting that audit quality does not current affect an auditor's demand and the market instead would benefit from direct price impacts of insurance premium changes due to audit quality. Do I restate you correctly?
The auditor's customers will always be liable for the cost, not matter the outcome. The only question is whether they pay the compensation directly to those damaged or via higher prices for audits.
> I just don't believe in this widespread approach of dealing only with the > symptoms of problems
Well, sure, when you put it that way it sounds bad. But in reality he is dealing with what he has control over. He has control over the symptom. Other people have control over the cause. I don't agree that he should forgo what he believes (even if I disagree) will keep his daughter safe in favor or relying on others to get their shit together and keep his daughter safe.
Ah, collectivism at its finest. His solution involves convincing a vendor to take his money in exchange for a GPS (shouldn't be hard) and convincing the daughter not to take off the device (shouldn't be too hard). Your solution involves convincing an entire community, and you think that's the better one?
Part of individual freedom and responsibility is an acknowledgment that not everyone is going to have the same values as you and, in this case, not everyone is going to be as paranoid as you. First solve your problem; then do the raising awareness thing and see if it catches on to other people. If it does, then it was a global problem. If it doesn't, no harm done; your problem is solved and you didn't have to disrupt other people's values.
Please include statistics on how often this worst case scenario that happens more often than we realize actually happens. In the meanwhile, thanks for fearmongering and thinking of the children.
Sorry, who are you to tell him how to parent his child? I disagree with him, too, but that doesn't mean I should tell him how he should be parenting his own child.
Understood. There are definitely a lot of problems with the proposed implementation. However, the bottom line is that the Internet is not as rich because the consumer has no way to pay for content it wants. In the end this hurts everyone and it will be replaced by a pricing model of some sort. Whether that is the current proposed implementation or not, I don't know. Luckily we have a somewhat free market and can try things until something that works sticks.
> but it's not a positive development for the consumer no matter how you slice it.
Hey, you said that very definitively, so it must be true. And I agree with you. I'm tired of the "business types" trying to make money off me. Just give me everything I want for free, already. Is it that hard???
Well, just playing devil's advocate here, let's consider whether micropayments really a logical step to make the Internet better for consumers. Contrary to popular belief on the left side of things, the payment of goods is not a way for rich people to become richer, it's a way for consumers to get what they want. Without payment for goods, there is no signal to business about what items consumers demand and what items consumers don't want, and by how much consumers demand A over B, and how much producers should be willing to spend on the creation of both A and B.
Micropayments are difficult to pull off logistically, but the bottom line is that eventually content will be price-differentiated. You will pay for better content. There will be plenty of content for free. Surprisingly to many people, this is not a new model... see radio, television, books, magazines, newsletters, and pretty much everything else.
> 1. There are extremely few (if any) programs that will actually > help someone who wants to get back to work - get back to work.
Again, I don't know what you're talking about. Every state has programs to give you free training and help you find work. It is in their best interest to do so because it reduces their unemployment compensation spend.
> 2. Food and shelter take hours of yoru time to acquire. Typically, > in California (SF and LA) there is a several hour wait in line to > see if there will be room in a shelter. No room - come back and > wait tomorrow. Food can take a trip across town to acquire - you > need bus fare and and hour or two to get there. You will be > spending 3-4 hours a day in lines waiting for food or a cot for > the night . Try to get a job when 4 hours or more a day (job hours) > are going to be spent in line.
Seriously? Look, resources are scarce and when the price is zero there will be shortages and long waits. It is not possible for government to fix this problem. This is a reality of an economy (any economy). You're essentially complaining that free food and free shelter is a pain to obtain. There is not a fix for this.
> 3. If you have no money , a single person will receive about 45 > bucks a week food stamps and about $110 a month cash for all other > expenses. For the $110 a month you will have to spend about 5-10 > hours a week working for the welfare dept. Not looking for a job > $180 a month food stamps sound like a lot? You have no stove- no > refrigerator. Everything you eat has to be prepackaged. You know > what that costs? I do. It's a lot more then $180 a month
Yes, beans aren't the most tasty things in the world. They are free and they will keep you alive.
> 4. Just getting a shower took me a one hour wait in line.
It was free.
> 5. Shelters are not safe. Women are regularly raped and > beaten and robbed in them. They are understaffed bu the > lowest quality of people imaginable. People who do not > only care about you but will go out of their way to make > fun of you.
I can't speak to this one personally, so I will take your word for it. I know I certainly would not feel safe in a shelter, but I would feel safer than being on the streets.
> 6. Job and housing programs are basically a sham. When you > go there you are told it will take 18 months to get > housing and no job training money is currently available - > come back next month. LOTS of staff there. No actual jobs or > training being given out.
This is not at all my experience, and I'm not sure what you're referring to. Again, training programs are in the state's best interest because it reduces their UC spend. By housing programs, are you referring to section 8? There is plenty of section 8 housing, because landlords make a killing off of the portion paid by the government (the tenant portion is almost never paid) and almost never have to pay eviction costs for nonpayment (not true for normal tenants).
> And that's the short version of what I mean by "it's a sham"
You didn't address why you were denied for all the programs I listed.
All I could think of while reading your comment is the Jay Leno pieces where they ask similar questions of Americans on the street and get just as many blank stares.
2. Ubuntu (yes, its not an application), it gave Linux to the masses and made it, for the first time in many years, to get a popular brand of computers (Dell) preinstalled with something other than OS X or Windows
Cheaper than what? Lobbying the federal government? Apples and oranges. My point is that if the federal government controls $x, it is much cheaper to lobby for that $x than if it were distributed amongst the states. It would cost about 50x as much to lobby for that same $x, which destroys the cost-benefit balance of corruptive lobbying.
You said a lot of words. What you have left out is quantifiable evidence that Obama is any better than Bush. Can we list a few things that has been done that shows he's the vehicle of significant change in Washington (which is what we were sold on)?
It's a good thing because the collective needs to be represented. The problem is that power in this country is so centralized that very little money is required to influence the entire country's policies. If the power were decentralized, lobbying would still exist but corruption would be much, much harder.
This has very little to do with social science vs "real" science. Most studies cannot use controlled laboratory experiments to extract meaningful information. The problem is almost always the same: once you bring the everyday scenario that you care about into the lab, it's no longer the everyday scenario you care about. To suggest that the "real" sciences don't have this problem too shows a significant lack of understanding of the "real" sciences.
I'm always amazed when non-economists make glaringly obvious comments as if they criticize the field of economic study altogether. It's as if PhDs around the globe never realized that we common folk have always known.
Or perhaps you don't know enough about economics to realize that these things you point out as criticisms are already handled in economics. Psychology is a huge driver in markets and, not surprisingly, it is central to the study of economics.
FAIL. You clearly don't know much about these financial instruments. Most financial products distribute risk in a win-win fashion from the seller to the purchaser, in the same way insurance policies do.
> You think there are State run programs to help people out there. I am here > to tell you you are so so wrong. It;s all a sham. There are a very few. > Very few. Most are fronts just to make it seem like something is being > done. Nothing is. I've seen it. I've been there. > > You haven't seen it. You don't know.
What are you talking about? I work with these programs every day. You're going on like there was nowhere you could turn. How about talking about specifics? Why were you denied unemployment compensation? Why were you denied food stamps? Why were you denied medicaid? Why were you denied federal and state cash assistance? Why were you denied help from your church and local charities?
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit unless you can explain why "it's all a sham". If it's all a sham, I think there are a lot of people who would like their tax dollars back, so please share your insight.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think the demand for MS products is highly elastic, you are living in a /. dreamworld.
Huh? So you're saying in a market where demand is little impacted by price (since there is a monopoly on a necessity), consumers would not pay the tax? That seems to be contradictory. Did I misunderstand your position?
> However, the secondary effect will be that audits do, in fact, improve, because
> the premiums on your insurance depend on how often you fuck up and the insurance
> company has to pay for it.
You are essentially suggesting that audit quality does not current affect an auditor's demand and the market instead would benefit from direct price impacts of insurance premium changes due to audit quality. Do I restate you correctly?
I guess I didn't really explain. The reason is audits are usually mandatory, so there is little or no loss of demand due to higher prices.
The auditor's customers will always be liable for the cost, not matter the outcome. The only question is whether they pay the compensation directly to those damaged or via higher prices for audits.
Brilliant argument, sir.
Whew... at least only the list was secret and not the nuclear sites. That would have been embarrassing!
"Holy crap- you are, what we in the biz call, an over-reacting parent" isn't advice
> I just don't believe in this widespread approach of dealing only with the
> symptoms of problems
Well, sure, when you put it that way it sounds bad. But in reality he is dealing with what he has control over. He has control over the symptom. Other people have control over the cause. I don't agree that he should forgo what he believes (even if I disagree) will keep his daughter safe in favor or relying on others to get their shit together and keep his daughter safe.
Ah, collectivism at its finest. His solution involves convincing a vendor to take his money in exchange for a GPS (shouldn't be hard) and convincing the daughter not to take off the device (shouldn't be too hard). Your solution involves convincing an entire community, and you think that's the better one?
Part of individual freedom and responsibility is an acknowledgment that not everyone is going to have the same values as you and, in this case, not everyone is going to be as paranoid as you. First solve your problem; then do the raising awareness thing and see if it catches on to other people. If it does, then it was a global problem. If it doesn't, no harm done; your problem is solved and you didn't have to disrupt other people's values.
Please include statistics on how often this worst case scenario that happens more often than we realize actually happens. In the meanwhile, thanks for fearmongering and thinking of the children.
Seriously???
Sorry, who are you to tell him how to parent his child? I disagree with him, too, but that doesn't mean I should tell him how he should be parenting his own child.
Understood. There are definitely a lot of problems with the proposed implementation. However, the bottom line is that the Internet is not as rich because the consumer has no way to pay for content it wants. In the end this hurts everyone and it will be replaced by a pricing model of some sort. Whether that is the current proposed implementation or not, I don't know. Luckily we have a somewhat free market and can try things until something that works sticks.
> but it's not a positive development for the consumer no matter how you slice it.
Hey, you said that very definitively, so it must be true. And I agree with you. I'm tired of the "business types" trying to make money off me. Just give me everything I want for free, already. Is it that hard???
Well, just playing devil's advocate here, let's consider whether micropayments really a logical step to make the Internet better for consumers. Contrary to popular belief on the left side of things, the payment of goods is not a way for rich people to become richer, it's a way for consumers to get what they want. Without payment for goods, there is no signal to business about what items consumers demand and what items consumers don't want, and by how much consumers demand A over B, and how much producers should be willing to spend on the creation of both A and B.
Micropayments are difficult to pull off logistically, but the bottom line is that eventually content will be price-differentiated. You will pay for better content. There will be plenty of content for free. Surprisingly to many people, this is not a new model... see radio, television, books, magazines, newsletters, and pretty much everything else.
> 1. There are extremely few (if any) programs that will actually
> help someone who wants to get back to work - get back to work.
Again, I don't know what you're talking about. Every state has programs to give you free training and help you find work. It is in their best interest to do so because it reduces their unemployment compensation spend.
> 2. Food and shelter take hours of yoru time to acquire. Typically,
> in California (SF and LA) there is a several hour wait in line to
> see if there will be room in a shelter. No room - come back and
> wait tomorrow. Food can take a trip across town to acquire - you
> need bus fare and and hour or two to get there. You will be
> spending 3-4 hours a day in lines waiting for food or a cot for
> the night . Try to get a job when 4 hours or more a day (job hours)
> are going to be spent in line.
Seriously? Look, resources are scarce and when the price is zero there will be shortages and long waits. It is not possible for government to fix this problem. This is a reality of an economy (any economy). You're essentially complaining that free food and free shelter is a pain to obtain. There is not a fix for this.
> 3. If you have no money , a single person will receive about 45
> bucks a week food stamps and about $110 a month cash for all other
> expenses. For the $110 a month you will have to spend about 5-10
> hours a week working for the welfare dept. Not looking for a job
> $180 a month food stamps sound like a lot? You have no stove- no
> refrigerator. Everything you eat has to be prepackaged. You know
> what that costs? I do. It's a lot more then $180 a month
Yes, beans aren't the most tasty things in the world. They are free and they will keep you alive.
> 4. Just getting a shower took me a one hour wait in line.
It was free.
> 5. Shelters are not safe. Women are regularly raped and
> beaten and robbed in them. They are understaffed bu the
> lowest quality of people imaginable. People who do not
> only care about you but will go out of their way to make
> fun of you.
I can't speak to this one personally, so I will take your word for it. I know I certainly would not feel safe in a shelter, but I would feel safer than being on the streets.
> 6. Job and housing programs are basically a sham. When you
> go there you are told it will take 18 months to get
> housing and no job training money is currently available -
> come back next month. LOTS of staff there. No actual jobs or
> training being given out.
This is not at all my experience, and I'm not sure what you're referring to. Again, training programs are in the state's best interest because it reduces their UC spend. By housing programs, are you referring to section 8? There is plenty of section 8 housing, because landlords make a killing off of the portion paid by the government (the tenant portion is almost never paid) and almost never have to pay eviction costs for nonpayment (not true for normal tenants).
> And that's the short version of what I mean by "it's a sham"
You didn't address why you were denied for all the programs I listed.
All I could think of while reading your comment is the Jay Leno pieces where they ask similar questions of Americans on the street and get just as many blank stares.
2. Ubuntu (yes, its not an application), it gave Linux to the masses and made it, for the first time in many years, to get a popular brand of computers (Dell) preinstalled with something other than OS X or Windows
So?
Cheaper than what? Lobbying the federal government? Apples and oranges. My point is that if the federal government controls $x, it is much cheaper to lobby for that $x than if it were distributed amongst the states. It would cost about 50x as much to lobby for that same $x, which destroys the cost-benefit balance of corruptive lobbying.
You seem to have missed my point. My point is that this issue is not at all limited to social sciences.
You said a lot of words. What you have left out is quantifiable evidence that Obama is any better than Bush. Can we list a few things that has been done that shows he's the vehicle of significant change in Washington (which is what we were sold on)?
It's a good thing because the collective needs to be represented. The problem is that power in this country is so centralized that very little money is required to influence the entire country's policies. If the power were decentralized, lobbying would still exist but corruption would be much, much harder.
This has very little to do with social science vs "real" science. Most studies cannot use controlled laboratory experiments to extract meaningful information. The problem is almost always the same: once you bring the everyday scenario that you care about into the lab, it's no longer the everyday scenario you care about. To suggest that the "real" sciences don't have this problem too shows a significant lack of understanding of the "real" sciences.
I'm always amazed when non-economists make glaringly obvious comments as if they criticize the field of economic study altogether. It's as if PhDs around the globe never realized that we common folk have always known.
Or perhaps you don't know enough about economics to realize that these things you point out as criticisms are already handled in economics. Psychology is a huge driver in markets and, not surprisingly, it is central to the study of economics.
FAIL. You clearly don't know much about these financial instruments. Most financial products distribute risk in a win-win fashion from the seller to the purchaser, in the same way insurance policies do.
> You think there are State run programs to help people out there. I am here
> to tell you you are so so wrong. It;s all a sham. There are a very few.
> Very few. Most are fronts just to make it seem like something is being
> done. Nothing is. I've seen it. I've been there.
>
> You haven't seen it. You don't know.
What are you talking about? I work with these programs every day. You're going on like there was nowhere you could turn. How about talking about specifics? Why were you denied unemployment compensation? Why were you denied food stamps? Why were you denied medicaid? Why were you denied federal and state cash assistance? Why were you denied help from your church and local charities?
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit unless you can explain why "it's all a sham". If it's all a sham, I think there are a lot of people who would like their tax dollars back, so please share your insight.