I thought one of the main reasons for IE's demise was that it would take too much to port it to Intel? I don't see developers putting that much effort into porting Internet Explorer.
After giving some though to one of the responses to this entry below, I have decided to take down the email thread between Jobs and myself. I have no way of knowing if Jobs would be OK with me posting the e-mail publicly, even though the contents of the e-mail didn't contain anything private or sensitive.
Ok, so now we're just talking about Objective C. So much for the news aspect of the story...
because it eventually ends up being based on guesswork, assumption and opinion, not just facts.
Such is the nature of legislation in general. My suggestion just has to do with efficiency of government. I'm not suggesting some new radical way to determine laws more rationally.
like the actual externalities that individuals produce. That's why I used the word 'rationalization' - it starts to sound like an excuse to punish some behaviors and reward others, regardless of the actual harm done.
If you have an idea of how to handle the smoking issue better, by all means share it. It's not as easy as the car issue, where we have measurements and ratings on the car from which to base the tax.
The "where we want national usage to be" part makes it much clearer. In this case, the question is "What should the national usage be?", and that's a tough question to answer. Answers would range from "none at all" to "a bit less than now" to "as much as they're willing to pay for". To complete your argument, you need to actually set that amount (or give a way to set it), and have a good justification for why that level is better than all of the others that have been suggested
Erm, while I enjoy your rhetoric, just because you imply that my argument is incomplete doesn't make it so. What the level is has no bearing whatsoever on whether my suggestion is valid.
At some point, where you're doubling the cost of a car in order to get 1% more fuel efficiency, even the stongest environmentaist has to say it isn't worth it.
I really wonder where you get some of this stuff from...
it's possible to reduce the externalities on your own
Whatever. This is purely academic. The bottom line is that even if negative consequences to society of something like smoking can be reduced, it's irrelevant. Some of the financial burden for your destructive behavior becomes a tax on society, unless you do something like I'm suggesting. Whether that's $5 or $500 doesn't matter; it only changes the amount of tax necessary on that item.
So it sounds like externalities are just a rationalization for the tax, not the real reason. Otherwise you'd just suggest fines for smoking in public and similar legislation that puts the focus on the externalities, rather than an activity that might cause them.
Um, what? You think we should tax lung cancer instead of its cause? The harmful thing here is smoking. The externality is a measure of its harm to society.
Yes, that's why I don't think you're a libertarian (big or small 'L').
Ok, fine. I'll use some other label. Does that make you feel like we've accomplished something?
No, I want to tax gasoline because its use is harmful to society. I am not suggesting that we only tax gasoline use that is wasteful. I know where you got that from, and I apologize for being confusing. The comment about national usage meant that we need only too look at current natinoal usage and where we want national usage to be, and calculate the tax such that market forces would push usage to the desired level. It is Economics 101.
There was an article a few weeks ago here about someone who calculated whether it was better economically to purchase a hybrid vehicle. The results were that it was not. So, even with our tax credit here in the US, we still have things structured to favor the vehicle that does more damage to society.
Some don't ask if you smoke, but mine does (as do many others). They will quite clearly tell you that smokers pay higher premiums to cover their increased risk. In this case, other people's health care costs are not affected by the extra risk smoking carries.
Dead wrong. Yes, their premiums are higher to reflect their increased risk of insurance claim. However, insurance angencies work by amortizing each claim across all payers, and their profit is whatever is left over (a lot). Yes, all else equal, a person who is a smoker will pay a higher % of that claim than a person who is not. But everyone pays on the claim, and everyone's premiums are based on frequency and magnitude of claims. Everyone's premiums are higher because some people have higher risk of injury (due to smoking or otherwise). To suggest that all the smokers on a plan cover all the injuries due to smoking is just wrong. That's not how insurance agencies work. (If it were, most smokers and anyone else at high risk wouldn't be able to afford insurance.)
And this was my whole point - it is possible for a smoker to eliminate (or vastly reduce) any negative externalities he might create. Your proposed tax treats all smokers the same, whether the damage they do is minimal or severe.
So does insurance! But even worse, because non-smokers get some of it too.
So in effect, you are tasing smoking itself, not the externalities.
Correct.
and taxes or prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
I don't consider wikipedia (or your friends) the primary source for what Libertarians believe. If Libertarians truly do believe that imposition of taxes on items with negative externalities is immoral, that would be one area where the party and I strongly disagree.
Ummm, what? The tax on a gallon of gas is related to the national usage by ??? - I think you're missing something.
Have you been reading anything I've been writing?
Paying insurance is taking responsibility for your own health care. I was just trying to avoid the "smokers use more Medicare" diversionary argument.
Your assumption that if you use your insurance to pay for health care costs due to smoking, then others' health care costs do not increase is flawed. Please look into how insurance agencies work.
Libertarians are also against... taxing alcohol and tobacco.
The Wikipedia article claims this is an imposition of morality. That is ridiculous. My suggestion only requires that someone who chooses to do X is required to take the responsibility for the damages of that action. You, rather, feel that the action of smoking or drinking or whatever should tax society and not the individual. I find it difficult to see how I am a liberal and you are a Libertarian.
I mean, do you think that loss just disappears? Either the individual pays it or society does.
And I strongly disagree. What counts as wasteful? SUVs, V6 cars, trips to the movies and mowing the lawn aren't really necessities.
You're thinking on the micro scale. We don't have to look anywhere but national usage. Base the per-unit tax on that, and impose it nationally.
How does smoking in my own home (where I live alone)
I don't know anyone who only smokes in their own home.
hurt anyone else (especially if I pay my own health care costs)?
I don't know anyone who pays all their health care costs. You don't have insurance?
Short answer: Libertarians, people who believe in natural rights, and I all feel that there's a vast difference between murdering someone or stealing a wallet and not wearing a helmet while bicycling or driving a big car.
Libertarians also believe in leveraging market forces rather than big government. I should know, because I am one.
That's why every flat tax scheme I've ever heard of has fairly large, standard deductions. You only pay the flat tax on income over a certain amount, and that makes it very progressive, unlike sales taxes. A poor person making less than N pays no tax at all, while someone making much more than N pays tax on almost all of his income. You can't just ignore the deductions in order to make it look regressive.
This is exactly how the fair tax works. Read the site.
Which sounds great, unless you're a poor person who builds yachts for a living - where do you get your bread money if your industry shrinks due to taxation?
So we should not tax the rich to save the poor who build things that only the rich purchase? Please. Demand naturally fluctuates for given skills and somehow people tend to do okay in the end. (In fact, in my opinion, this usually ends up causing an increase in the average standard of living, but I'll not go into that.)
On the other hand, gun ownership decreases crime rates, so it's a positive externality! Which is exactly my point, people can't even agree on which externalities are positive or negative, let alone exactly how much.
Actually, you just picked the tough one. Gasoline's negative externality can be quantified -- its price inflation due to wasteful use, easily; and its harm to the environment, with a little more trouble. Nevertheless, my point is for the things we are *already* throwing money at to stop, we can use taxation instead.
And that's why I (and most likely the libertarian GP) would be against it. It isn't the governments job to push "values" on us, and even if it was, who's values? That's how Jim Crow laws, "separate but equal" legislation and regulations censoring birth control information got started - people thought they had the right to use the government to impose their values on others.
I'm not talking about taxing the slave trade. I'm talking about taxing activities that clearly cause harm to society, like smoking. It's almost like you feel that the government shouldn't force it's anti-murder, anti-theft, etc. values on people. That actually is government's job.
"I'm a libertarian but I think if we're going to have taxes, they should be based on income."
Taxes should not be flat, I agree with you. However, one of the biggest problems is that government largely ignores the potential energy in taxes. Things that harm society, like smoking, alcohol, gasoline usage, guns, etc. could be controlled more with taxes and less by tax-funded people (which is something that hits society twice -- loss of potential tax revenue, and then using existing tax revenue to fund the enforcers).
These items are negative externalities, and should be taxed equal to that loss to society.
This reduces the size of government and provides more efficient enforcement.
The government does some of this with tobacco taxation and gasoline taxation, but not nearly enough. Want to have a SUV? Fine, but you have to pay society for the harm you are doing to gas prices and the environment. Want to have a gun? Fine, but you have to pay for the harm to society your gun purchase causes (even if you're a fine citizen, your ownership causes harm unless you never re-sell it, have it stolen, etc.). This tax money reduces consumption of that good, and offers a fund for the protection of society from the negative consequences of consumption that does continue.
It also opens up possibilities for tax exemptions or credits on certain goods that are positive externalities, like education, food, sanitation, etc. The government gets this to an extent as well, with environmentally friendly vehicle tax credits.
"The problem with any tax is that it ALWAYS reduces the amount of that item sold"
Exactly! Why aren't we harnessing this power?! Every once in a while gov't gets this right. But most of the time it just throws money at expansions of already inefficient government programs.
"Of course, I think we should switch to a better method of income tax like The Flat Tax (full disclosure: this was written half-hazardly by me over the course of a month).
It's progressive, simple, and will make you more attractive to the opposite sex."
Now who's captain regressive? You really think that FLAT TAX is progressive? You've got to be kidding me. The fact that tax percentages increase with income does not reflect the view that the rich should be taxed more. It reflects the view that the poor should be taxed less. Why? Because rich people are spending their money on yachts. Poor people are spending their money on bread.
"A flat tax is, to stretch the term, price discriminatory in that it squeezes what it can out of people in the fairest and most equitable way possible."
You seem to know a good bit about microeconomics, which is why your suggestion confuses the hell out of me. Think about elasticity of demand. Poor people are buying things with very low elasticities; necessities. This constitutes a very large percentage of their yearly purchases. Rich people also buy these necessities, but it is only a small percentage of their yearly purchases. That is why the flat tax is dumb. And that is why it is absolutely regressive. It's the same problem with sales taxes. Sales taxes are flat taxes.
"The problem is, it'd require most places to not implement their own silly and awkward taxes on things."
Taxes differ because values differ. The national government shouldn't be telling my local municipality not to tax extra on environmentally harmful things if people in my municipality are particularly sensitive to environmental destruction. Maybe we live in a very clean lake area and don't want our lake destroyed, as it harms the environment and destroys our property value. We should be allowed to institute a tax on such harmful goods.
I seriously suggest that you rethink your take on taxes. If you need more information and are genuinely interested, I'm willing to dig some up for you.
Then he tried to load it onto his professor's laptop for his presentation, and it barely worked. His professor didn't understand why it looked so crappy, even though he tried to explain, and the professor knocked down his grade a bit for poor presentation quality.
Hey, excellent article summary! I'm glad you included the aliases of two of the people named in the suit. You know what might also be pertinent? WHY THEY ARE BEING SUED.
Except that then the conspiracy theorists would then claim that the artifacts left on the moon were placed there by a separate unmanned mission.
Actually, this could also be tested to a decent degree of accuracy. Whether they have the resources/expertise to do that, though, is another question. Obviously if they have to have some government-sponsored lab (most labs are, to some degree), that won't satisfy the tin-hat-wearers.
Actually they structured their IPO such that this influence would be smaller than normal. I recall all the blowhards on the 24-hour news stations' business news shows telling everyone not to buy the Google IPO for long-term gain because of this. If I recall correctly, there are two types of stock shares: those owned by various people in Google, which get 10 votes per share; and those owned by the public, which get 1 vote per share.
Yes, obviously they want their stock price to go up. But they aren't nearly as accountable to shareholders as most public companies.
You're being very disingenuous. Of course google's always been pursuing the almighty buck. It's a company. You know that. I know that. And parent knows that.
So, if we can get a couple of our brain cells working for a minute and re-read parent's comment, we'll realize taht parent is talking about ignoring principles more and more as their potential for greater income increases.
And I don't buy for a minute that "Don't do evil" is only a marketing ploy. It's something that came out of how Google started, and someone along the way saw the marketing angle.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought one of the main reasons for IE's demise was that it would take too much to port it to Intel? I don't see developers putting that much effort into porting Internet Explorer.
The interesting thing is that average readership of posts is the same whether made in an online or offline diary.
After giving some though to one of the responses to this entry below, I have decided to take down the email thread between Jobs and myself. I have no way of knowing if Jobs would be OK with me posting the e-mail publicly, even though the contents of the e-mail didn't contain anything private or sensitive.
Ok, so now we're just talking about Objective C. So much for the news aspect of the story...
Yes.
because it eventually ends up being based on guesswork, assumption and opinion, not just facts.
Such is the nature of legislation in general. My suggestion just has to do with efficiency of government. I'm not suggesting some new radical way to determine laws more rationally.
like the actual externalities that individuals produce. That's why I used the word 'rationalization' - it starts to sound like an excuse to punish some behaviors and reward others, regardless of the actual harm done.
If you have an idea of how to handle the smoking issue better, by all means share it. It's not as easy as the car issue, where we have measurements and ratings on the car from which to base the tax.
Happy Holidays.
The "where we want national usage to be" part makes it much clearer. In this case, the question is "What should the national usage be?", and that's a tough question to answer. Answers would range from "none at all" to "a bit less than now" to "as much as they're willing to pay for". To complete your argument, you need to actually set that amount (or give a way to set it), and have a good justification for why that level is better than all of the others that have been suggested
Erm, while I enjoy your rhetoric, just because you imply that my argument is incomplete doesn't make it so. What the level is has no bearing whatsoever on whether my suggestion is valid.
At some point, where you're doubling the cost of a car in order to get 1% more fuel efficiency, even the stongest environmentaist has to say it isn't worth it.
I really wonder where you get some of this stuff from...
it's possible to reduce the externalities on your own
Whatever. This is purely academic. The bottom line is that even if negative consequences to society of something like smoking can be reduced, it's irrelevant. Some of the financial burden for your destructive behavior becomes a tax on society, unless you do something like I'm suggesting. Whether that's $5 or $500 doesn't matter; it only changes the amount of tax necessary on that item.
So it sounds like externalities are just a rationalization for the tax, not the real reason. Otherwise you'd just suggest fines for smoking in public and similar legislation that puts the focus on the externalities, rather than an activity that might cause them.
Um, what? You think we should tax lung cancer instead of its cause? The harmful thing here is smoking. The externality is a measure of its harm to society.
Yes, that's why I don't think you're a libertarian (big or small 'L').
Ok, fine. I'll use some other label. Does that make you feel like we've accomplished something?
From TFA:
"We don't expect any of our three viewers to see any significant changes to programming," executives said.
You want to tax the wasteful use of gasoline
No, I want to tax gasoline because its use is harmful to society. I am not suggesting that we only tax gasoline use that is wasteful. I know where you got that from, and I apologize for being confusing. The comment about national usage meant that we need only too look at current natinoal usage and where we want national usage to be, and calculate the tax such that market forces would push usage to the desired level. It is Economics 101.
There was an article a few weeks ago here about someone who calculated whether it was better economically to purchase a hybrid vehicle. The results were that it was not. So, even with our tax credit here in the US, we still have things structured to favor the vehicle that does more damage to society.
Some don't ask if you smoke, but mine does (as do many others). They will quite clearly tell you that smokers pay higher premiums to cover their increased risk. In this case, other people's health care costs are not affected by the extra risk smoking carries.
Dead wrong. Yes, their premiums are higher to reflect their increased risk of insurance claim. However, insurance angencies work by amortizing each claim across all payers, and their profit is whatever is left over (a lot). Yes, all else equal, a person who is a smoker will pay a higher % of that claim than a person who is not. But everyone pays on the claim, and everyone's premiums are based on frequency and magnitude of claims. Everyone's premiums are higher because some people have higher risk of injury (due to smoking or otherwise). To suggest that all the smokers on a plan cover all the injuries due to smoking is just wrong. That's not how insurance agencies work. (If it were, most smokers and anyone else at high risk wouldn't be able to afford insurance.)
And this was my whole point - it is possible for a smoker to eliminate (or vastly reduce) any negative externalities he might create. Your proposed tax treats all smokers the same, whether the damage they do is minimal or severe.
So does insurance! But even worse, because non-smokers get some of it too.
So in effect, you are tasing smoking itself, not the externalities.
Correct.
and taxes or prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
I don't consider wikipedia (or your friends) the primary source for what Libertarians believe. If Libertarians truly do believe that imposition of taxes on items with negative externalities is immoral, that would be one area where the party and I strongly disagree.
The danger is that the moondust might corrode the aiming system on our friggin moon-based laser beam.
That's what you get when you wage war on Christmas, America.
Close. The actually settled it with Wing Fu, the ancient art of chair-throwing.
Ummm, what? The tax on a gallon of gas is related to the national usage by ??? - I think you're missing something.
Have you been reading anything I've been writing?
Paying insurance is taking responsibility for your own health care. I was just trying to avoid the "smokers use more Medicare" diversionary argument.
Your assumption that if you use your insurance to pay for health care costs due to smoking, then others' health care costs do not increase is flawed. Please look into how insurance agencies work.
Libertarians are also against ... taxing alcohol and tobacco.
The Wikipedia article claims this is an imposition of morality. That is ridiculous. My suggestion only requires that someone who chooses to do X is required to take the responsibility for the damages of that action. You, rather, feel that the action of smoking or drinking or whatever should tax society and not the individual. I find it difficult to see how I am a liberal and you are a Libertarian.
I mean, do you think that loss just disappears? Either the individual pays it or society does.
$1 Billion for search engine optimization consulting?! I am in the wrong industry!
And I strongly disagree. What counts as wasteful? SUVs, V6 cars, trips to the movies and mowing the lawn aren't really necessities.
You're thinking on the micro scale. We don't have to look anywhere but national usage. Base the per-unit tax on that, and impose it nationally.
How does smoking in my own home (where I live alone)
I don't know anyone who only smokes in their own home.
hurt anyone else (especially if I pay my own health care costs)?
I don't know anyone who pays all their health care costs. You don't have insurance?
Short answer: Libertarians, people who believe in natural rights, and I all feel that there's a vast difference between murdering someone or stealing a wallet and not wearing a helmet while bicycling or driving a big car.
Libertarians also believe in leveraging market forces rather than big government. I should know, because I am one.
When your dishonest (or just stupid) so early in a article, you loose your reader.
Ironically, I was agreeing with you until this sentence.
That's why every flat tax scheme I've ever heard of has fairly large, standard deductions. You only pay the flat tax on income over a certain amount, and that makes it very progressive, unlike sales taxes. A poor person making less than N pays no tax at all, while someone making much more than N pays tax on almost all of his income. You can't just ignore the deductions in order to make it look regressive.
This is exactly how the fair tax works. Read the site.
Which sounds great, unless you're a poor person who builds yachts for a living - where do you get your bread money if your industry shrinks due to taxation?
So we should not tax the rich to save the poor who build things that only the rich purchase? Please. Demand naturally fluctuates for given skills and somehow people tend to do okay in the end. (In fact, in my opinion, this usually ends up causing an increase in the average standard of living, but I'll not go into that.)
On the other hand, gun ownership decreases crime rates, so it's a positive externality! Which is exactly my point, people can't even agree on which externalities are positive or negative, let alone exactly how much.
Actually, you just picked the tough one. Gasoline's negative externality can be quantified -- its price inflation due to wasteful use, easily; and its harm to the environment, with a little more trouble. Nevertheless, my point is for the things we are *already* throwing money at to stop, we can use taxation instead.
And that's why I (and most likely the libertarian GP) would be against it. It isn't the governments job to push "values" on us, and even if it was, who's values? That's how Jim Crow laws, "separate but equal" legislation and regulations censoring birth control information got started - people thought they had the right to use the government to impose their values on others.
I'm not talking about taxing the slave trade. I'm talking about taxing activities that clearly cause harm to society, like smoking. It's almost like you feel that the government shouldn't force it's anti-murder, anti-theft, etc. values on people. That actually is government's job.
"I'm a libertarian but I think if we're going to have taxes, they should be based on income."
Taxes should not be flat, I agree with you. However, one of the biggest problems is that government largely ignores the potential energy in taxes. Things that harm society, like smoking, alcohol, gasoline usage, guns, etc. could be controlled more with taxes and less by tax-funded people (which is something that hits society twice -- loss of potential tax revenue, and then using existing tax revenue to fund the enforcers).
These items are negative externalities, and should be taxed equal to that loss to society.
This reduces the size of government and provides more efficient enforcement.
The government does some of this with tobacco taxation and gasoline taxation, but not nearly enough. Want to have a SUV? Fine, but you have to pay society for the harm you are doing to gas prices and the environment. Want to have a gun? Fine, but you have to pay for the harm to society your gun purchase causes (even if you're a fine citizen, your ownership causes harm unless you never re-sell it, have it stolen, etc.). This tax money reduces consumption of that good, and offers a fund for the protection of society from the negative consequences of consumption that does continue.
It also opens up possibilities for tax exemptions or credits on certain goods that are positive externalities, like education, food, sanitation, etc. The government gets this to an extent as well, with environmentally friendly vehicle tax credits.
"The problem with any tax is that it ALWAYS reduces the amount of that item sold"
Exactly! Why aren't we harnessing this power?! Every once in a while gov't gets this right. But most of the time it just throws money at expansions of already inefficient government programs.
"Of course, I think we should switch to a better method of income tax like The Flat Tax (full disclosure: this was written half-hazardly by me over the course of a month). It's progressive, simple, and will make you more attractive to the opposite sex."
Now who's captain regressive? You really think that FLAT TAX is progressive? You've got to be kidding me. The fact that tax percentages increase with income does not reflect the view that the rich should be taxed more. It reflects the view that the poor should be taxed less. Why? Because rich people are spending their money on yachts. Poor people are spending their money on bread.
"A flat tax is, to stretch the term, price discriminatory in that it squeezes what it can out of people in the fairest and most equitable way possible."
You seem to know a good bit about microeconomics, which is why your suggestion confuses the hell out of me. Think about elasticity of demand. Poor people are buying things with very low elasticities; necessities. This constitutes a very large percentage of their yearly purchases. Rich people also buy these necessities, but it is only a small percentage of their yearly purchases. That is why the flat tax is dumb. And that is why it is absolutely regressive. It's the same problem with sales taxes. Sales taxes are flat taxes.
"The problem is, it'd require most places to not implement their own silly and awkward taxes on things."
Taxes differ because values differ. The national government shouldn't be telling my local municipality not to tax extra on environmentally harmful things if people in my municipality are particularly sensitive to environmental destruction. Maybe we live in a very clean lake area and don't want our lake destroyed, as it harms the environment and destroys our property value. We should be allowed to institute a tax on such harmful goods.
I seriously suggest that you rethink your take on taxes. If you need more information and are genuinely interested, I'm willing to dig some up for you.
So, you're writing this app in COBOL?
Then he tried to load it onto his professor's laptop for his presentation, and it barely worked. His professor didn't understand why it looked so crappy, even though he tried to explain, and the professor knocked down his grade a bit for poor presentation quality.
A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it.
Then:
The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions.
Poster can leap farther than Superman!
Hey, excellent article summary! I'm glad you included the aliases of two of the people named in the suit. You know what might also be pertinent? WHY THEY ARE BEING SUED.
Except that then the conspiracy theorists would then claim that the artifacts left on the moon were placed there by a separate unmanned mission.
Actually, this could also be tested to a decent degree of accuracy. Whether they have the resources/expertise to do that, though, is another question. Obviously if they have to have some government-sponsored lab (most labs are, to some degree), that won't satisfy the tin-hat-wearers.
I dislike removal of liberties more than I dislike any one president. You're wrong to think it's about Bush for most of the people resisting this.
Actually they structured their IPO such that this influence would be smaller than normal. I recall all the blowhards on the 24-hour news stations' business news shows telling everyone not to buy the Google IPO for long-term gain because of this. If I recall correctly, there are two types of stock shares: those owned by various people in Google, which get 10 votes per share; and those owned by the public, which get 1 vote per share.
Yes, obviously they want their stock price to go up. But they aren't nearly as accountable to shareholders as most public companies.
You're being very disingenuous. Of course google's always been pursuing the almighty buck. It's a company. You know that. I know that. And parent knows that.
So, if we can get a couple of our brain cells working for a minute and re-read parent's comment, we'll realize taht parent is talking about ignoring principles more and more as their potential for greater income increases.
And I don't buy for a minute that "Don't do evil" is only a marketing ploy. It's something that came out of how Google started, and someone along the way saw the marketing angle.