The $25 million reward the U.S. is offering for Bin Laden's capture just isn't enough. Sure, $25 million would induce a Pakistani peasant to turn in Bin Laden, but it's not enough to attract the financial markets to the Bin Laden hunt. With the possibility of earning a $1 billion bounty, however, professional Bin Laden hunting firms would form, allowing the U.S. to enlist the efficiency and creativity of the free market in our fight against Osama.
The twentieth century's economic battles between capitalism and socialism proved that the private sector is far more effective than the government at providing services. Unfortunately, though, for many activities such as terrorist tracking, private companies have little incentive to engage. But a $1 billion bounty would motivate firms to join the hunt for Bin Laden.
With a $1 billion reward in place, an international group of intelligence, military and terrorist experts that could credibly claim to have, say, at least a 5% chance of finding Bin Laden could easily raise $20 million or so from the financial markets to finance their search. With several such organizations unleashed on the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Osama's margin of safety would shrink.
...
If the billion dollar bounty failed and Bin Laden ended up being located by the CIA or the U.S. armed forces rather than the private sector, the bounty wouldn't cost the taxpayers anything. But it still would have sent a powerful signal to our enemies that the massive wealth of the U.S. can be deployed against those who strike us.
Many other nations don't seem to care very much about whether we catch Bin Laden and $25 million certainly isn't enough to change their priorities. But $1 billion would make a difference to nations like Pakistan and perhaps motivate them to search seriously for our main enemy.
quoted from http://www.techcentralstation.com/080904D.ht ml
actually those same poll results also show that the vast majority of europeans don't want a strong american president. so i guess that means a vote for Kerry is a vote for weaker leadership.
ok, for a while i thought you were going to make some kind of point worth responding to but then you said:
constant economic growth is going to destroy us all
when i first read that i thought maybe i misread that so i read it again. but no. like AIDS, it was only too real. because the ability to see that economic growth is a good thing ranks somewhere between tying your shoe laces and not choking to death on your drool in the universal spectrum of skills i am forced to conclude that continuing this conversation is no longer worth while.
well i would support getting rid of all tax breaks for any company or any individual. that only seems fair. everyone should pay the same tax rate. only the wealthy can afford to pay lawyers to avoid their taxes. if government simplified the tax code we wouldn't have a huge industry devoted to evading taxes and government would take in more revenue (this was one of reagan's most important achievements).
however, i suspect there would still be companies that outsourced because overseas labor will still be cheaper in some instances.
hmm... so wouldn't that mean people in minnesota shouldn't buy bananas unless they were grown and picked by people in minnesota? that doesn't seem like a good solution
what about comparative advantage? people in minnesota can't grow bananas as well as people in california or chile.
you are saying we shouldn't have a globalized economy? what!? how are people in minnesota supposed to get bananas if they can only buy things grown in minnesota? how do they get gold when there isn't any gold in minnesota? how are they supposed to get oil? the theory of competitive advantage?
you completely avoided answering the question. why should companies hire people here if they can get the same value from people in india for 1/10 the cost?
honestly there is no way around this. what is the solution? you can't pass a law to forbid it. companies will just leave the states and go elsewhere because they won't be able to compete with imports. you could tax the imports. but that would mean less products available at a higher cost. that means poor people will pay more for food, clothing and everything else. but they won't be able to afford it because american companies won't be able to compete in the international marketplace because their costs are higher they will have to begin laying off people.
preventing outsourcing will lead to a much greater loss of jobs than outsourcing will.
wake up and realize that we aren't just competing with other americans for jobs now. its a global marketplace. there is no sense whining or getting mad about it. compete for christs sake.
here in minnesota there was recently a controversy about something similar. it seems there is a federal law prohibiting payment in exchange for votes OR for voter registration. even if its just a candy bar.
http://wcco.com/localnews/local_story_244093451. ht ml http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/mnmain.htm
right canada has the world's best health care system. oh wait no, that would be the united states where you don't have to stand in line for 3 years to see a doctor.
You are quite naive, Sir. There is a finite amount of reserch facilities and personell available, not to mention top scientific talent. If you put them to work on viagras of the world, very few remain to do anything else.
so you know what the truly important things are that need to be cured. everyone should just listen to you. thankfully america is still a somewhat free country without a centrally managed economy. people are free to decide what they personally think is worth putting their money into. they vote with their hard earned money when the purchase something like viagra.
profit motive creates a frivoulous use of resources?
what you are advocating is a disgusting system of waste and abuse that was tried for almost a century in the soviet union. welcome to 2004. communism is like so last century bro. pick up a wall street journal.
what do you think the bank does with the money? put it under their big corporate mattress?
they hire people or they buy a car or a jet or invest it in other companies. anyway you slice it that money gets put back into the economy and ends up creating more jobs.
but hey go on and believe whatever you like. just try not to choke on your drool while you're learning to tye those shoe laces. WTF.
"And if they fail, will music and the other fruits of artists suddenly be free?"
no, competitors will replace them by providing a cheaper, better product.
the riaa has for a long time been trying to limit distribution of music to cd's only. its only recently they allowed some content to be distributed online. online distribution is extremely cheap. and therefore the price of music should fall accordingly. however, the riaa has not lowered their prices and changed their distribution model. they haven't responded to changes in the market the way a normal company should. technology has changed the market forever and they will never be able to go back in time to the old model. instead of recognizing that, they have resisted the change. they have tried to get laws passed to make online distributon illegal and have refused to license their music to online distributers. but using their oligopoly power to prevent a cheap good at an artificially high price won't work prevent a black market. the only reason this black market hasn't become violent or a part of organized crime is that music distribution is so cheap (in the US where everyone has a computer anyway) that individuals are willing to do the distribution for free.
i don't think that any of this justifies the moral issue of taking something that you didn't pay for. however, ignoring the realities of the market doesn't do anyone any good either. and the fact is, its not just p2p users who are behaving immorally. its the music industry who is using its political clout and oligopoly position to keep down competition in the market place.
i'm a little confused when you try to link this issue to terrorism so i'll just ignore that.
i agree. i mean thats certainly true from a moral perspective. but from a practical perspective if you want this behavior to go away, simply passing a law against it isn't going to do any good. something needs to fundamentally change. the fact is, that an artificially high price will always create a black market. see cigarette smuggling between states with low taxes to states with high taxes, drug smuggling, prohibition, countries who are embargoed, etc. market forces are always at work even when laws are passed to eliminate a market or cartels try to artificially put limits on the market.
the problem is that the industry is trying to protect a profit model thats obsolete. almost nothing is stronger than the market forces which at work and i predict they will either fail or adapt.
yeah. darn that progress thing. we should all go back to using wheelbarrows to get to work. those were way friendly, less expensive and didn't use oil.
Slashdot Mirror
ditto. things started picking up for me in january and got strong in april and since then i still get emails.
the liberals who have been trying to tell us the economy is down and not growing for the last year are just economic girlymen.
The $25 million reward the U.S. is offering for Bin Laden's capture just isn't enough. Sure, $25 million would induce a Pakistani peasant to turn in Bin Laden, but it's not enough to attract the financial markets to the Bin Laden hunt. With the possibility of earning a $1 billion bounty, however, professional Bin Laden hunting firms would form, allowing the U.S. to enlist the efficiency and creativity of the free market in our fight against Osama.
...
t ml
The twentieth century's economic battles between capitalism and socialism proved that the private sector is far more effective than the government at providing services. Unfortunately, though, for many activities such as terrorist tracking, private companies have little incentive to engage. But a $1 billion bounty would motivate firms to join the hunt for Bin Laden.
With a $1 billion reward in place, an international group of intelligence, military and terrorist experts that could credibly claim to have, say, at least a 5% chance of finding Bin Laden could easily raise $20 million or so from the financial markets to finance their search. With several such organizations unleashed on the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Osama's margin of safety would shrink.
If the billion dollar bounty failed and Bin Laden ended up being located by the CIA or the U.S. armed forces rather than the private sector, the bounty wouldn't cost the taxpayers anything. But it still would have sent a powerful signal to our enemies that the massive wealth of the U.S. can be deployed against those who strike us.
Many other nations don't seem to care very much about whether we catch Bin Laden and $25 million certainly isn't enough to change their priorities. But $1 billion would make a difference to nations like Pakistan and perhaps motivate them to search seriously for our main enemy.
quoted from
http://www.techcentralstation.com/080904D.h
actually those same poll results also show that the vast majority of europeans don't want a strong american president. so i guess that means a vote for Kerry is a vote for weaker leadership.
Most Western European states are decidedly socialist (by U.S. standards) and they're doing pretty well
not as well as the US
ok, for a while i thought you were going to make some kind of point worth responding to but then you said:
constant economic growth is going to destroy us all
when i first read that i thought maybe i misread that so i read it again. but no. like AIDS, it was only too real. because the ability to see that economic growth is a good thing ranks somewhere between tying your shoe laces and not choking to death on your drool in the universal spectrum of skills i am forced to conclude that continuing this conversation is no longer worth while.
well i would support getting rid of all tax breaks for any company or any individual. that only seems fair. everyone should pay the same tax rate. only the wealthy can afford to pay lawyers to avoid their taxes. if government simplified the tax code we wouldn't have a huge industry devoted to evading taxes and government would take in more revenue (this was one of reagan's most important achievements).
however, i suspect there would still be companies that outsourced because overseas labor will still be cheaper in some instances.
hmm... so wouldn't that mean people in minnesota shouldn't buy bananas unless they were grown and picked by people in minnesota? that doesn't seem like a good solution
what about comparative advantage? people in minnesota can't grow bananas as well as people in california or chile.
you are saying we shouldn't have a globalized economy? what!? how are people in minnesota supposed to get bananas if they can only buy things grown in minnesota? how do they get gold when there isn't any gold in minnesota? how are they supposed to get oil? the theory of competitive advantage?
good grief. go back to 1st grade.
you completely avoided answering the question. why should companies hire people here if they can get the same value from people in india for 1/10 the cost?
honestly there is no way around this. what is the solution? you can't pass a law to forbid it. companies will just leave the states and go elsewhere because they won't be able to compete with imports. you could tax the imports. but that would mean less products available at a higher cost. that means poor people will pay more for food, clothing and everything else. but they won't be able to afford it because american companies won't be able to compete in the international marketplace because their costs are higher they will have to begin laying off people.
preventing outsourcing will lead to a much greater loss of jobs than outsourcing will.
wake up and realize that we aren't just competing with other americans for jobs now. its a global marketplace. there is no sense whining or getting mad about it. compete for christs sake.
great post actually.
heh that was funny
just to see if anyone will fifth.
i think this is illegal.
. ht mlm
here in minnesota there was recently a controversy about something similar. it seems there is a federal law prohibiting payment in exchange for votes OR for voter registration. even if its just a candy bar.
http://wcco.com/localnews/local_story_244093451
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/mnmain.ht
right canada has the world's best health care system. oh wait no, that would be the united states where you don't have to stand in line for 3 years to see a doctor.
You are quite naive, Sir. There is a finite amount of reserch facilities and personell available, not to mention top scientific talent. If you put them to work on viagras of the world, very few remain to do anything else.
so you know what the truly important things are that need to be cured. everyone should just listen to you. thankfully america is still a somewhat free country without a centrally managed economy. people are free to decide what they personally think is worth putting their money into. they vote with their hard earned money when the purchase something like viagra.
profit motive creates a frivoulous use of resources?
what you are advocating is a disgusting system of waste and abuse that was tried for almost a century in the soviet union. welcome to 2004. communism is like so last century bro. pick up a wall street journal.
i agree with that.
that would be fun. what sorts of applications could you use that for?
- jet pack
- laser guns
- personal computing
- powered rollerblades, skateboard, waterskis, sled, unicycle
- exoskeleton.
no kidding
i agree. this is exactly what i was thinking.
you're my friend
what do you think the bank does with the money? put it under their big corporate mattress?
they hire people or they buy a car or a jet or invest it in other companies. anyway you slice it that money gets put back into the economy and ends up creating more jobs.
but hey go on and believe whatever you like. just try not to choke on your drool while you're learning to tye those shoe laces. WTF.
"And if they fail, will music and the other fruits of artists suddenly be free?"
no, competitors will replace them by providing a cheaper, better product.
the riaa has for a long time been trying to limit distribution of music to cd's only. its only recently they allowed some content to be distributed online. online distribution is extremely cheap. and therefore the price of music should fall accordingly. however, the riaa has not lowered their prices and changed their distribution model. they haven't responded to changes in the market the way a normal company should. technology has changed the market forever and they will never be able to go back in time to the old model. instead of recognizing that, they have resisted the change. they have tried to get laws passed to make online distributon illegal and have refused to license their music to online distributers. but using their oligopoly power to prevent a cheap good at an artificially high price won't work prevent a black market. the only reason this black market hasn't become violent or a part of organized crime is that music distribution is so cheap (in the US where everyone has a computer anyway) that individuals are willing to do the distribution for free.
i don't think that any of this justifies the moral issue of taking something that you didn't pay for. however, ignoring the realities of the market doesn't do anyone any good either. and the fact is, its not just p2p users who are behaving immorally. its the music industry who is using its political clout and oligopoly position to keep down competition in the market place.
i'm a little confused when you try to link this issue to terrorism so i'll just ignore that.
i agree. i mean thats certainly true from a moral perspective. but from a practical perspective if you want this behavior to go away, simply passing a law against it isn't going to do any good. something needs to fundamentally change. the fact is, that an artificially high price will always create a black market. see cigarette smuggling between states with low taxes to states with high taxes, drug smuggling, prohibition, countries who are embargoed, etc. market forces are always at work even when laws are passed to eliminate a market or cartels try to artificially put limits on the market.
the problem is that the industry is trying to protect a profit model thats obsolete. almost nothing is stronger than the market forces which at work and i predict they will either fail or adapt.
yeah. darn that progress thing. we should all go back to using wheelbarrows to get to work. those were way friendly, less expensive and didn't use oil.
no kidding. why on earth does the UN have anything to do with technical standards?