Health care is a type of good can't be fairly traded in a free market.
Oh, I left something out in my previous reply to this post, as it happens I had 2 appointments at my doctor's office today and I was running a little late.
Now let's see what freer markets in health care can do. In 1999 the cost of LASIK eye corrective surgery was "well over $2,000 per eye", whereas "in 2001 one in five surgeons was offering LASIK for less than $1,000 per eye." Competition cut the cost of LASIK by almost half. Or take medical tourism, it has also driven surgery costs down. Even with airfare and any hotel stay flying to China, India, Russia, or other countries the costs are lower, and you can get care just as good. While medical care cares are rising in general, competition has driven cost down in some medical fields.
Just as real competition in other fields, such as computers, drives costs down competition in medicine has and will continue to drive costs down. Heck, despite the complaints Walmart gets about driving pay down they have also driven living costs down. My doc has given me a few prescriptions, just today she adjusted one of them, and although the clinic can send them electronically I ask for a printed form so I can go shopping for the lowest cost. With Walmart's $10 max price on thousands of drugs, they have been the lowest price for all of the prescriptions I've been given but one. What I think is ironic is that the one price that was lower was at Target yet for other drugs Target cost twice as much.
A market can be made unfree by government decree, or by the actions of those in the market. A monopoly or monopsony is not a free market, for instance.
Agreed, and usually it's government that grants those monopolies.
A pump and dump scheme makes the market it is done in unfree
Like SCO?
Interesting bit about the birth of insurance, but I'm not sure how accurate it is
In many states including mine, you can set up a pre-tax medical fund and pay for any medical expenses out of that, which kind of demolishes the main argument of the Time piece.
Does it really, can you cross state lines to buy insurance? States control who can and can not offer health insurance in each state. The federal government has the 2 biggest insurance plans, Medicare and Medicaid, with the states practically running Medicaid. And that, employer provided insurance, was the basis of the "Time"article.
Health care is a type of good can't be fairly traded in a free market.
I compleatly and totally disagree.
But more than that, providing health care to all is a moral issue. We are the only rich and powerful nation that does not see it as such. Every nation that has socialized health care framed it as a moral issue: letting the poor die is just wrong.
That's right it's a moral issue and the government has nothing to do with it. The best government can do is get out of the way and let private citizens and organizations provide health care.
The workers, customers, suppliers and neighbors also all have a stake in the endeavor, but they have no representation in the decision making process.
Sure they do, workers can choose not to work for an employer, customers can choose not to patronize a business, and suppliers can choose not to supply a buyer. There may not be a choice you like but there is a choice and as such people can effect corporations.
What Randy Weaver was trying to do was not a boycott, it was theft. He was taking the services of the government, like armed protection, roads, a legal system, and so forth, without paying for them
BS!!! Boy, do you have your info wrong. Randy Weaver's family was not shot, or charged, for refusing to pay taxes. The FBI only files charges against him when he refused to become an informant for the FBI. And as for theft of government services that's BS too. There are many of us who are quite willing to pay to use roads and so forth. There are even some who advocate privatizing roads and services, but many oppose that.
If I don't like the country I'm in, but I like every other country even less, or can't get citizenship, that does not give me the right to demand that the country do things my way.
Isn't that exactly what's going on now? Take health care, people are demanding it be nationalized, made into a single payer system, or otherwise turned into socialize medicine. If they want it they can move to Canada or almost anywhere else. Some of us believe in and want what the USA was supposed to be, small government with it staying within the limits put on it by the Constitution of the USA.
Unfortunately most people don't seem to care about little things like whether their congresscritters actually read the legislation they vote on. They're too busy demonizing the other side to notice. After all, their side is always doing what's right and the other side is trying to destroy America!
Unfortunately I have to agree with you, too many people vote along party lines as well as for their own reps. "My reps are alright, it's all the others that are bad (or wrong)." I never did understand how people allow others to do the thinking for them, though I tend to lean towards Libertarians I have never been registered with any party and I've voted for candidates in more than 2 parties, I vote for the candidate who comes closest to my positions on the issues that matter to me.
The same day/. reported about this, they also reported that the FBI director just nabbed the BIGGEST ring ever of fraud reported at 1.5 million dollars.
Did the FBI break it or did the FBI director? I bet at most he oversaw the operation.
If you account for at least 1 million credit cards (very small number for any hacking ring), and then know that most hackers tax those cards with 1.5$ per month so the activity is minute, then you know this constitutes just a very,very,very small portion of the big pie out there, and so insignificant,
But I don't account for it, now where did you get your stats from?
but I doubt he was the most qualified for the job, usually these positions are given to friends of friends, nothing to do with experience nor talent.
Personally I don't want the most qualified, I want government to be ineffective. You may not have lived through it but there are still people alive that did live through the reign of the most effective FBI director, J Edgar Hoover. It was because of him, COINTELPRO, and Nixon domestic intelligence was weakened. I'd rather ineffective ID theft than a government agency that spies on the likes of Martin Luther King and other civil rights as well as peace activists.
Why not? I don't see those as being any more or less secure than any ISP's normal email services. Email is fundamentally insecure anyway. Most people have one email address that they regularly use and so that is what will be provided to financial institutions.
My ISP knows, and needs to know, who I am. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! do not need to know.
I assume they at least have aides skimming it for stuff to scream at the other side about, but who knows what all is in there
If the average person has trouble reading and understanding the whole bill then there's something wrong with the bill, if someone getting paid to voted on bills can't read the whole thing then it's too long or they need to get another job. And aids are no substitute for knowing what a bill says. I will not sign anything I have not read the whole of and I expect nothing less from those who are supposed to represent me.
And what if you can't login? Not often but I have gotten email from my bank, such as when I screwed up logging in, I got an email saying someone tried to login.
This guy might have thought coming out about this would help tell people "hey, even I got almost nabbed" thinking it would help solidify the threat level, but the only threat level I see, is the fact we got a dolt running things at the FBI!
Do you know how to investigate terrorism or narcotrafficers? If not what sort of dolt are you?
So, if the market is not supplying a needed public good, then it is up to government to supply it?
Yes, if a free market doesn't provide a public good then I have no problem with government doing it, local or state. However not if the Constitution does not give the federal government the authority, if you want the feds to do it but the Constitution doesn't authorize it then propose an amendment.
We all benefit from good health care for all, making health care a public good. Therefore, according to Adam Smith's reasoning, government should provide health care.
You missed something, Smith said government should "supply goods that the free market may not provide." The free market has not been given the chance to provide health care. Under a freer market, notice the "r", a person living in Arizona would be able to buy health insurance in New York. However that's not possible now, each state controls who can sell insurance in the state and sets what type of insurance is offered. Then there are the tax breaks involved. During World War II the feds passed wage control laws, employers were not allowed to offer employees higher pay. And FDR issued an executive order controlling prices. This created problems for those employers, prospective employees wanted more pay, so to make it easier for employers to find employees they were allowed to offer employees benefits such as health insurance. The government then gave a tax break to those employers who did offer it. However the self employed and those who want to buy their own health insurance do not get tax breaks. If individuals and the self employed had a level playing field, they got the same tax breaks or employers did not get the breaks, then insurance companies would compeat to insurance the millions of people in the market for insurance. Combined with health savings accounts (HSA) people could decide what type of insurance they would pay for. A single or a couple without dependents, children, could elect to deposit money in an HSA to pay for normal health care costs and buy catastrophic coverage for serious injuries, illnesses, or disabilities. Then because they pay normal costs out of pocket, because filing insruance claims are expensive for doctors if you pay out of pocket they will reduce their charges, the cost of catastrophic coverage would be low. Meanwhile a family of 4 may want to get full coverage for the parents, if a parent can't work their income may be reduced, and pay out of pocket for normal health care cost for the children with coverage for things like broken bones.
Notice how the Time article says "That's how we ended up with the health-insurance system we have now, based on employers. You get a tax break if you get your insurance through your job. If you get a raise and use it to buy your own insurance instead, you have to pay taxes on that money. (Ditto if you use your raise to pay doctors directly.) Almost everyone takes the tax break. The market for insurance bought by individuals is, as a result, small and stunted, which is all the more reason to stay in the employer system." However even with tax breaks some employers can't afford to offer health insurance.
The question is, do we let the sociopaths dictate the rules of the game, or do we honor the bulk of humanities inbred sense of fairness?
Did you read about the Stanford Prison Experiment? Brutality is inbred as well.
Why the director of the FBI was even reading an unsolicited bank email is behind comprehension to begin with. The guy should be fired for stupidity. I mean... he's the director of the FBI, you'd expect him to know better.
Do you know about fighting espionage, narcotraffickers, and terrorism? Why do you expect him to about this? As the director of the FBI he has expert assistants who know how to deal with these, he doesn't need to know everything himself.
Corporations aren't worse than governments, we, the people, just have less control over them.
Perhaps you misinterpreted me, my point is that corporations aren't worse than governments, unlike corporations government is an evil, necessary perhaps but an evil. And it's best to keep their power limited. We also have more power over not just corporations but all voluntary businesses than we do government, except at the local level. Which is why most government should be local. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the wonderful book "Democracy in America" describing how during his tour of America in the early 1830s almost all government was local and how free people were. Of course there was slavery but for freemen, and there were Black Freemen some Blacks even owned slaves themselves, the liberty they enjoyed was almost limitless.
With government, at least we have mechanisms, available to all citizens, for controlling and directing the system.
What good are the mechanisms if they aren't used. For instance what happened to all that talk about impeaching Bush last year? There was more talk about putting Bush admin officials on trial when Obama came into office, what happened with that? The last tyme a sitting US president came close to impeachment was Richard Nixon but he resigned in 1974 first. His VP, who became president, then pardoned him. There were only 2 presidents who went through impeachment hearings before congress, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999. Neither one was found guilty.
With corporations, most stakeholders have no control over the system.
Most stakeholders have more control than they realize or are willing to exercise. How many stockholders file petitions or vote on corporate issues? How many employees use collective bargaining? How many suppliers say they will not accept a price below X dollars? How many buyer or clients say they will not buy more than X dollars? People complain Walmart drives local shops out of business or pay low wages, yet how many of those people shop at or work for Walmart?
Now both businesses, no just corporations, and governments will grab as much power as they can but it's easier to control a business than a government. You can boycott a business legally but if you try that with government you may find yourself facing firearms. Randy Weaver couldn't stop the feds from killing his family at Ruby Ridge, not without giving up his freedom after the government framed him.
Falcon
Ooh, BTW don't confuse what I say above about Randy Weaver as support for him. If he was a supremest as the feds say I disagree with that but I also disagree with the feds framing him when he refused to inform for them.
Another bank I know, the computer makes up the security questions and the person in the call centre just relays them and keys in the answer the customer gives. Too many wrong answers, and computer says no.
My bank does that for online banking. When you sign up for online banking you're asked a bunch of questions, some questions you can choose, you then supply answers. When you try to login you're asked those questions and you have to answer them. I went through a hassle once because I couldn't recall a right answer. I made up some answers because someone who knew me could guess the answers, such as "what is your favorite animal?" or "what is your pet's name?"
What it makes me wonder is why someone who is so out of touch is the head of the FBI. Granted many people fall for such things, but for example, probably most readers here wouldn't.
The head of the FBI has more to worry about than cybercrime, like terrorism. Is he supposed to be an expert in all of them? No, that's why he has assistants who should be experts in those fields. As others have pointed out above the head of the FBI can't be expected to know everything.
He's someone good at playing the politics neccessairy to get and hold the position. I would be shocked if he had any experience at all in criminal investigation, much less cybercrime, at anything other than a manager-of-investigators (or higher) level.
Robert Mueller served in the Marine Corp then earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. "He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices." He was chief of the criminal division for the Northern District of California before moving to Boston. There "he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers."
what if they did sign their emails? Well, it still wouldn't matter because Gmail and Yahoo and Hotmail have no provision for verifying digital signatures so the tools used by millions lack a fundamental security feature.
Related, in that regular people may not realize what they're doing but why would you use Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo for financial communications?
It is right to be suspicious of any email claiming to be from your bank, but the fact is that my banks have sent me legitimate emails
So has mine. However my ISP allows users to use a whitelist, I have an online address book and only email from someone in it is send directly to my inbox. Anything that makes it through my spam/phishing filter but isn't in the address book is diverted to a "suspected" folder. So I have added the addies of those places I have a financial relationship to my book.
Actually I've been using the filters my ISP offers for more than 10 years and I wonder why more people don't use them. On top of that, because my ISP has webmail I only download messages that go to my inbox.
Reading I see where the bill is 1017 pages long. That's a bad sign right there. Never mind regular citizens, how many congressmen are going to read the whole thing? Not one of them read the entire PATRIOT Act before voting for it, I seriously doubt any will here.
I do online banking and my bank's emails are pretty sterile. I have to pay close attention to keep from tossing them.
Same here but I use a whitelist, if a sender address it's in my online address book the email get put into a "suspect" folder. My bank's address is in the book so email from it goes right through to my inbox. I then type the url into the address br to go there.
On the other hand, they do NOT include clickable links, and they do have a multi-step logon that shows me a picture and an associated phrase (that I picked) that I'm expecting to see.
Same here, there's the photo I picked out. But I also answer a number of questions I answered when I set up the online account.
Makes you wonder. If the head of the FBI, the guy who knows all the secrets, that sees all the scams all the time almost falls for this, what can we expect from you average house folks? Scams are getting more and more elaborate this days.
I sometimes wonder how anyone falls for these phishing attempts. Perhaps a brain fart. But the only email addie I use as regards money, online banking, credit card stuff, or the occasional Amazon order, I set up a white list for. If the sender is not in my address book it gets put into a "suspect" folder. If I'm expecting an email from someone I don't know the email addie I'll scan the email to make sure I know the sender and if I don't I'll delete them. And I never click on a link in email, the tymes I've been sent user account info I have requested it and I'll type the url when I return.
The thing is, modern economic research has shown we are not primarily self interested. People are more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than by self interest. Well, most people. In the right circumstances.
The key phrase being "Most people. In the right circumstances." Most people in the right circumstances can also be brutal prison guards and torture people. The Stanford Prison Experiment had to be ended after 6 days even though it was scheduled to last 2 weeks. People have asked how Germans allowed the NAZIs to get away with the Holocaust. A teacher in 1967 in a California high school was asked this so he set up an experiment, which got out of control, the The Third Wave. A fictionalized account was written as the book and movie "The Wave". Finally the German remake, "Die Welle" was released in 2008. Read some of the results Google returns.
Remember, Adam Smith also said, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. " and "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. "
Adam Smith also believed in small government. He argued for a limited government, the role being to "provide national defense, the administration of justice, and public goods. In other words, it should protect citizens from external and internal aggression and supply goods that the free market may not provide."
I've been advocating for that penalty for a while.
As have I. I've argued for corporate charter revocation for more than 10 years, ever seen I heard of it about 12 years ago. What I really like about it is companies wouldn't get away with stuff like Exxon Valdez or Bhopal, India. While Union Carbide paid a small settlement, Exxon hasn't paid the Alaskan Fishermen a dime from destroying fishing after more than 20 years. They've managed to keep it tied up in court.
Not that corporations are worse than government, at least none have killed millions in a Holocaust or tens of millions in a revolution. Even today government is the biggest polluter in the US.
Well as you say they will have missed the boat and more than likely a new "patent" filed in their absence, so the cycle starts all over again.
Like Microsoft was able to do that to Eolas. Only after Eolas was awarded more than half a billion dollars. How many individuals and SMBs can afford that?
Slashdot Mirror
Health care is a type of good can't be fairly traded in a free market.
Oh, I left something out in my previous reply to this post, as it happens I had 2 appointments at my doctor's office today and I was running a little late.
Now let's see what freer markets in health care can do. In 1999 the cost of LASIK eye corrective surgery was "well over $2,000 per eye", whereas "in 2001 one in five surgeons was offering LASIK for less than $1,000 per eye." Competition cut the cost of LASIK by almost half. Or take medical tourism, it has also driven surgery costs down. Even with airfare and any hotel stay flying to China, India, Russia, or other countries the costs are lower, and you can get care just as good. While medical care cares are rising in general, competition has driven cost down in some medical fields.
Just as real competition in other fields, such as computers, drives costs down competition in medicine has and will continue to drive costs down. Heck, despite the complaints Walmart gets about driving pay down they have also driven living costs down. My doc has given me a few prescriptions, just today she adjusted one of them, and although the clinic can send them electronically I ask for a printed form so I can go shopping for the lowest cost. With Walmart's $10 max price on thousands of drugs, they have been the lowest price for all of the prescriptions I've been given but one. What I think is ironic is that the one price that was lower was at Target yet for other drugs Target cost twice as much.
Falcon
A market can be made unfree by government decree, or by the actions of those in the market. A monopoly or monopsony is not a free market, for instance.
Agreed, and usually it's government that grants those monopolies.
A pump and dump scheme makes the market it is done in unfree
Like SCO?
Interesting bit about the birth of insurance, but I'm not sure how accurate it is
If you mean employer provided insurance besides the "Time" article there are other sources. Findarticles has this article, "Health care in the twentieth century: a history of government interference and protection". At employer provided health insurance historyGoogle has more.
In many states including mine, you can set up a pre-tax medical fund and pay for any medical expenses out of that, which kind of demolishes the main argument of the Time piece.
Does it really, can you cross state lines to buy insurance? States control who can and can not offer health insurance in each state. The federal government has the 2 biggest insurance plans, Medicare and Medicaid, with the states practically running Medicaid. And that, employer provided insurance, was the basis of the "Time"article.
Health care is a type of good can't be fairly traded in a free market.
I compleatly and totally disagree.
But more than that, providing health care to all is a moral issue. We are the only rich and powerful nation that does not see it as such. Every nation that has socialized health care framed it as a moral issue: letting the poor die is just wrong.
That's right it's a moral issue and the government has nothing to do with it. The best government can do is get out of the way and let private citizens and organizations provide health care.
Falcon
The workers, customers, suppliers and neighbors also all have a stake in the endeavor, but they have no representation in the decision making process.
Sure they do, workers can choose not to work for an employer, customers can choose not to patronize a business, and suppliers can choose not to supply a buyer. There may not be a choice you like but there is a choice and as such people can effect corporations.
What Randy Weaver was trying to do was not a boycott, it was theft. He was taking the services of the government, like armed protection, roads, a legal system, and so forth, without paying for them
BS!!! Boy, do you have your info wrong. Randy Weaver's family was not shot, or charged, for refusing to pay taxes. The FBI only files charges against him when he refused to become an informant for the FBI. And as for theft of government services that's BS too. There are many of us who are quite willing to pay to use roads and so forth. There are even some who advocate privatizing roads and services, but many oppose that.
If I don't like the country I'm in, but I like every other country even less, or can't get citizenship, that does not give me the right to demand that the country do things my way.
Isn't that exactly what's going on now? Take health care, people are demanding it be nationalized, made into a single payer system, or otherwise turned into socialize medicine. If they want it they can move to Canada or almost anywhere else. Some of us believe in and want what the USA was supposed to be, small government with it staying within the limits put on it by the Constitution of the USA.
Falcon
Unfortunately most people don't seem to care about little things like whether their congresscritters actually read the legislation they vote on. They're too busy demonizing the other side to notice. After all, their side is always doing what's right and the other side is trying to destroy America!
Unfortunately I have to agree with you, too many people vote along party lines as well as for their own reps. "My reps are alright, it's all the others that are bad (or wrong)." I never did understand how people allow others to do the thinking for them, though I tend to lean towards Libertarians I have never been registered with any party and I've voted for candidates in more than 2 parties, I vote for the candidate who comes closest to my positions on the issues that matter to me.
Falcon
The same day /. reported about this, they also reported that the FBI director just nabbed the BIGGEST ring ever of fraud reported at 1.5 million dollars.
Did the FBI break it or did the FBI director? I bet at most he oversaw the operation.
If you account for at least 1 million credit cards (very small number for any hacking ring), and then know that most hackers tax those cards with 1.5$ per month so the activity is minute, then you know this constitutes just a very,very,very small portion of the big pie out there, and so insignificant,
But I don't account for it, now where did you get your stats from?
but I doubt he was the most qualified for the job, usually these positions are given to friends of friends, nothing to do with experience nor talent.
Personally I don't want the most qualified, I want government to be ineffective. You may not have lived through it but there are still people alive that did live through the reign of the most effective FBI director, J Edgar Hoover. It was because of him, COINTELPRO, and Nixon domestic intelligence was weakened. I'd rather ineffective ID theft than a government agency that spies on the likes of Martin Luther King and other civil rights as well as peace activists.
Falcon
One person's failure doesn't indicate intent, unless corporate management was aware of the issue for months, and deliberately chose to do nothing.
What do they say about ignorance? "Ignorance is no excuse" isn't it?
Falcon
Why not? I don't see those as being any more or less secure than any ISP's normal email services. Email is fundamentally insecure anyway. Most people have one email address that they regularly use and so that is what will be provided to financial institutions.
My ISP knows, and needs to know, who I am. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! do not need to know.
Falcon
I assume they at least have aides skimming it for stuff to scream at the other side about, but who knows what all is in there
If the average person has trouble reading and understanding the whole bill then there's something wrong with the bill, if someone getting paid to voted on bills can't read the whole thing then it's too long or they need to get another job. And aids are no substitute for knowing what a bill says. I will not sign anything I have not read the whole of and I expect nothing less from those who are supposed to represent me.
Falcon
And what if you can't login? Not often but I have gotten email from my bank, such as when I screwed up logging in, I got an email saying someone tried to login.
Falcon
This guy might have thought coming out about this would help tell people "hey, even I got almost nabbed" thinking it would help solidify the threat level, but the only threat level I see, is the fact we got a dolt running things at the FBI!
Do you know how to investigate terrorism or narcotrafficers? If not what sort of dolt are you?
Falcon
So, if the market is not supplying a needed public good, then it is up to government to supply it?
Yes, if a free market doesn't provide a public good then I have no problem with government doing it, local or state. However not if the Constitution does not give the federal government the authority, if you want the feds to do it but the Constitution doesn't authorize it then propose an amendment.
We all benefit from good health care for all, making health care a public good. Therefore, according to Adam Smith's reasoning, government should provide health care.
You missed something, Smith said government should "supply goods that the free market may not provide." The free market has not been given the chance to provide health care. Under a freer market, notice the "r", a person living in Arizona would be able to buy health insurance in New York. However that's not possible now, each state controls who can sell insurance in the state and sets what type of insurance is offered. Then there are the tax breaks involved. During World War II the feds passed wage control laws, employers were not allowed to offer employees higher pay. And FDR issued an executive order controlling prices. This created problems for those employers, prospective employees wanted more pay, so to make it easier for employers to find employees they were allowed to offer employees benefits such as health insurance. The government then gave a tax break to those employers who did offer it. However the self employed and those who want to buy their own health insurance do not get tax breaks. If individuals and the self employed had a level playing field, they got the same tax breaks or employers did not get the breaks, then insurance companies would compeat to insurance the millions of people in the market for insurance. Combined with health savings accounts (HSA) people could decide what type of insurance they would pay for. A single or a couple without dependents, children, could elect to deposit money in an HSA to pay for normal health care costs and buy catastrophic coverage for serious injuries, illnesses, or disabilities. Then because they pay normal costs out of pocket, because filing insruance claims are expensive for doctors if you pay out of pocket they will reduce their charges, the cost of catastrophic coverage would be low. Meanwhile a family of 4 may want to get full coverage for the parents, if a parent can't work their income may be reduced, and pay out of pocket for normal health care cost for the children with coverage for things like broken bones.
Notice how the Time article says "That's how we ended up with the health-insurance system we have now, based on employers. You get a tax break if you get your insurance through your job. If you get a raise and use it to buy your own insurance instead, you have to pay taxes on that money. (Ditto if you use your raise to pay doctors directly.) Almost everyone takes the tax break. The market for insurance bought by individuals is, as a result, small and stunted, which is all the more reason to stay in the employer system." However even with tax breaks some employers can't afford to offer health insurance.
The question is, do we let the sociopaths dictate the rules of the game, or do we honor the bulk of humanities inbred sense of fairness?
Did you read about the Stanford Prison Experiment? Brutality is inbred as well.
Falcon
Why the director of the FBI was even reading an unsolicited bank email is behind comprehension to begin with. The guy should be fired for stupidity. I mean... he's the director of the FBI, you'd expect him to know better.
Do you know about fighting espionage, narcotraffickers, and terrorism? Why do you expect him to about this? As the director of the FBI he has expert assistants who know how to deal with these, he doesn't need to know everything himself.
Falcon
Corporations aren't worse than governments, we, the people, just have less control over them.
Perhaps you misinterpreted me, my point is that corporations aren't worse than governments, unlike corporations government is an evil, necessary perhaps but an evil. And it's best to keep their power limited. We also have more power over not just corporations but all voluntary businesses than we do government, except at the local level. Which is why most government should be local. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the wonderful book "Democracy in America" describing how during his tour of America in the early 1830s almost all government was local and how free people were. Of course there was slavery but for freemen, and there were Black Freemen some Blacks even owned slaves themselves, the liberty they enjoyed was almost limitless.
With government, at least we have mechanisms, available to all citizens, for controlling and directing the system.
What good are the mechanisms if they aren't used. For instance what happened to all that talk about impeaching Bush last year? There was more talk about putting Bush admin officials on trial when Obama came into office, what happened with that? The last tyme a sitting US president came close to impeachment was Richard Nixon but he resigned in 1974 first. His VP, who became president, then pardoned him. There were only 2 presidents who went through impeachment hearings before congress, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999. Neither one was found guilty.
With corporations, most stakeholders have no control over the system.
Most stakeholders have more control than they realize or are willing to exercise. How many stockholders file petitions or vote on corporate issues? How many employees use collective bargaining? How many suppliers say they will not accept a price below X dollars? How many buyer or clients say they will not buy more than X dollars? People complain Walmart drives local shops out of business or pay low wages, yet how many of those people shop at or work for Walmart?
Now both businesses, no just corporations, and governments will grab as much power as they can but it's easier to control a business than a government. You can boycott a business legally but if you try that with government you may find yourself facing firearms. Randy Weaver couldn't stop the feds from killing his family at Ruby Ridge, not without giving up his freedom after the government framed him.
Falcon
Ooh, BTW don't confuse what I say above about Randy Weaver as support for him. If he was a supremest as the feds say I disagree with that but I also disagree with the feds framing him when he refused to inform for them.
Another bank I know, the computer makes up the security questions and the person in the call centre just relays them and keys in the answer the customer gives. Too many wrong answers, and computer says no.
My bank does that for online banking. When you sign up for online banking you're asked a bunch of questions, some questions you can choose, you then supply answers. When you try to login you're asked those questions and you have to answer them. I went through a hassle once because I couldn't recall a right answer. I made up some answers because someone who knew me could guess the answers, such as "what is your favorite animal?" or "what is your pet's name?"
Falcon
If he's got 10 million invested, having 500k in the bank is a reasonable percentage. You don't want all your money tied up in non-liquid assets.
You only need 500k in the bank if your living expenses are at least 500k a year.
Falcon
I moved the money to a different account that can not be accessed unless I physically walk into the bank's building and display photo ID.
When someone gets their photo on ID with your info that won't matter. Right now people's ID is being bought and sold online.
Falcon
What it makes me wonder is why someone who is so out of touch is the head of the FBI. Granted many people fall for such things, but for example, probably most readers here wouldn't.
The head of the FBI has more to worry about than cybercrime, like terrorism. Is he supposed to be an expert in all of them? No, that's why he has assistants who should be experts in those fields. As others have pointed out above the head of the FBI can't be expected to know everything.
Falcon
He's someone good at playing the politics neccessairy to get and hold the position. I would be shocked if he had any experience at all in criminal investigation, much less cybercrime, at anything other than a manager-of-investigators (or higher) level.
Robert Mueller served in the Marine Corp then earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. "He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices." He was chief of the criminal division for the Northern District of California before moving to Boston. There "he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers."
Falcon
what if they did sign their emails? Well, it still wouldn't matter because Gmail and Yahoo and Hotmail have no provision for verifying digital signatures so the tools used by millions lack a fundamental security feature.
Related, in that regular people may not realize what they're doing but why would you use Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo for financial communications?
It is right to be suspicious of any email claiming to be from your bank, but the fact is that my banks have sent me legitimate emails
So has mine. However my ISP allows users to use a whitelist, I have an online address book and only email from someone in it is send directly to my inbox. Anything that makes it through my spam/phishing filter but isn't in the address book is diverted to a "suspected" folder. So I have added the addies of those places I have a financial relationship to my book.
Actually I've been using the filters my ISP offers for more than 10 years and I wonder why more people don't use them. On top of that, because my ISP has webmail I only download messages that go to my inbox.
Falcon
Let's just clear some things up for you.
Reading I see where the bill is 1017 pages long. That's a bad sign right there. Never mind regular citizens, how many congressmen are going to read the whole thing? Not one of them read the entire PATRIOT Act before voting for it, I seriously doubt any will here.
Falcon
I do online banking and my bank's emails are pretty sterile. I have to pay close attention to keep from tossing them.
Same here but I use a whitelist, if a sender address it's in my online address book the email get put into a "suspect" folder. My bank's address is in the book so email from it goes right through to my inbox. I then type the url into the address br to go there.
On the other hand, they do NOT include clickable links, and they do have a multi-step logon that shows me a picture and an associated phrase (that I picked) that I'm expecting to see.
Same here, there's the photo I picked out. But I also answer a number of questions I answered when I set up the online account.
Falcon
Makes you wonder. If the head of the FBI, the guy who knows all the secrets, that sees all the scams all the time almost falls for this, what can we expect from you average house folks? Scams are getting more and more elaborate this days.
I sometimes wonder how anyone falls for these phishing attempts. Perhaps a brain fart. But the only email addie I use as regards money, online banking, credit card stuff, or the occasional Amazon order, I set up a white list for. If the sender is not in my address book it gets put into a "suspect" folder. If I'm expecting an email from someone I don't know the email addie I'll scan the email to make sure I know the sender and if I don't I'll delete them. And I never click on a link in email, the tymes I've been sent user account info I have requested it and I'll type the url when I return.
Falcon
The thing is, modern economic research has shown we are not primarily self interested. People are more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than by self interest. Well, most people. In the right circumstances.
The key phrase being "Most people. In the right circumstances." Most people in the right circumstances can also be brutal prison guards and torture people. The Stanford Prison Experiment had to be ended after 6 days even though it was scheduled to last 2 weeks. People have asked how Germans allowed the NAZIs to get away with the Holocaust. A teacher in 1967 in a California high school was asked this so he set up an experiment, which got out of control, the The Third Wave. A fictionalized account was written as the book and movie "The Wave". Finally the German remake, "Die Welle" was released in 2008. Read some of the results Google returns.
Remember, Adam Smith also said, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. " and "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. "
Adam Smith also believed in small government. He argued for a limited government, the role being to "provide national defense, the administration of justice, and public goods. In other words, it should protect citizens from external and internal aggression and supply goods that the free market may not provide."
Falcon
I've been advocating for that penalty for a while.
As have I. I've argued for corporate charter revocation for more than 10 years, ever seen I heard of it about 12 years ago. What I really like about it is companies wouldn't get away with stuff like Exxon Valdez or Bhopal, India. While Union Carbide paid a small settlement, Exxon hasn't paid the Alaskan Fishermen a dime from destroying fishing after more than 20 years. They've managed to keep it tied up in court.
Not that corporations are worse than government, at least none have killed millions in a Holocaust or tens of millions in a revolution. Even today government is the biggest polluter in the US.
Falcon
Well as you say they will have missed the boat and more than likely a new "patent" filed in their absence, so the cycle starts all over again.
Like Microsoft was able to do that to Eolas. Only after Eolas was awarded more than half a billion dollars. How many individuals and SMBs can afford that?
Falcon