We KNOW that converting to nuclear energy would largely solve the global warming problem. Have a nice gander people, the solution to this seemingly intractible problem is staring us in the face.
No, nuclear isn't perfect. But in combination with electric cars, the CO2 problem is solved.
With alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and tidal all the energy needs of the US can be met, without the problems of nuclear energy.
Though halogen lights may be more "efficient" than incandescent lights, halogen torchieres are usually 300 or 500 watts. People don't have incandescent lamps that take a single bulb that use 500 watts. (I have a 300 watt halogen one, and definitely want to replace it.)
Why do you need such a large, high wattage, light? Photography? Florescent lights do funky thinks with photos but I'd think halogens would have an even funkier effect.
Cheap, and it works. But I'm looking at a 32" LCD. The LCD might pull less electricity, but would the difference offset the energy costs of making the TV?
Either the TV will have to be replaced or you will need a converter for it anyway because of the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting.
But why regress? I like my electric toys. They are what separate us from the animals. And what about all those electric cars the tree-huggers want us to drive? We need the nuclear power plants to provide that energy.
In the US the Rockies alone contain enough potential wind power to provide the lower 48 states with all of the energy needed. Other states good for wind gennies are North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, and California. In the Mid Atlantic and North East there are more states with good wind potential. Off the coast both Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras are good sites for offshore wind farms, unfortunately NIMBYs are fighting for wind farms in the capes. Then both CA and TX are also good for solar power as are Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida.
Simply there is no need for any nuclear power plants.
I fail to see why as a society we should revert to a colder, darker time when we have the technology to simply produce more electricity.
With alternative energy sources there is no need to revert.
I have a Lux meter and a power meter and a test rig and a large assortment of bulbs... The savings from CFL isn't much and the amount of real light they produced isn't what the packages claim and they reduce their light output faster than older bulbs. It appears that the light output is based on their highest intensity point as if the entire bulb produced that (like the incandescent bulbs). Most of the non twist designs put out 1/3 the light on the end as the brightest part of the side and the twisties tend to produce less total light but are more consistent. I started by testing 20 bulbs I got from a local K-mart and grocery store and have since collected a few more. The best so far have been LED or halogen and the worst was ones are CFLs. Good quality long life incancesdents are in the same range as mid tier CFL. CFLs dim rapidly (to being useless based on their stated output in less than 1000 hours) while old bulbs would last 1000 hours at nearly full intensity 50% of the time (and 0% intensity 49.999% of the time)
What, did you buy cheap Chinese CFLs? I've been using CFLs for more than 20 years and never had these problems, actually I've gotten better CFL bulbs cheaper the last tyme I bought some. The only problem I've had with CFLs is some of them have taken more than a minute for the light to be full strength when used outdoors while cold, but new CFLs are better here too.
The author spent $200 to buy an LCD monitor to replace a 19" CRT, saving $18 / yr electricity: more than a five year payoff. And he's putting a CRT into a landfill somewhere.
Having RTFA I didn't see where it said he was putting the old CRT into a landfill, can you point it out for me?
Wouldn't these devices simply measure voltage and current and multiply them to give watts?
With purely resistive loads 1 VA is 1 watt, however with an inductive or capacitive load VA and watts are different. My electrical knowledge is way too rusty but maybe another/.er can give you the formulas to calculate VA and watts.
Although there's not much individuals can do about it, here's another look at the bigger pictures.
Unfortunately TFA only talks about emissions from power plants. Though TFA says nothing about it Brazil is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases including CO2. The form of agriculture practiced in Amazonian Brazil emits a lot of CO2 when "farmers" slash and burn the Amazon.
True. But "society" had better improve the availability of (and education about) proper disposal for CF bulbs. In a few years when all the bulbs sold in the recent surge wear out, most will probably go into the regular trash and landfill.
I bought my first CFL more than 20 years ago, replacing the incandescent bulbs with CFLs when they burned out, and I've only replaced 3 CFLs in that tyme. Meanwhile the added energy needed to power incandescent lights over CFLs mean more mercury is emitted burning coal. I bet the mercury in CFLs is less than that emitted from coal fire power plants. But you're right, good collection systems need to be in place to recycle CFLs. A similar system to what done with car batteries, motor oil, and tires can be put in place in some places. Have a "deposit" being paid on CFLs when bought, but if a bad CFL is brought in then waive the deposit.
And for this reason, the government must subsidize energy-efficient monitors and TV's (like LCD's) so the change is viable for the consumer (and subsidizing the newest LED light bulbs wouldn't be a bad idea, either).
Instead of just subsidizing energy efficient appliances I'd rather see energy users pay for what they use, not let power generators pass Externalities or external costs to others. This would raise prices but would encourage efficiency. This brings up what Australia has done and what California is going to do, outlaw incandescent lights. Some companies are working on energy efficient incandescent lights however these laws discourage research into them. Making users pay more will encourage more research. Research may be able to develop an incandescent light more efficient than CFLs.
I would advocate buying newer more energy efficient equipment as your old equipment dies, but I would not advocate going out and replacing perfectly good equipment with more energy efficient (and more expensive) alternatives. It will not only cost you a lot of money, but will also mean more waste from throwing out perfectly good equipment that will likely end up in a landfill.
Yea, TFA writer says replacing his cable modem would only save 5 watts, but he'd have to drive 30 miles to pick up a new one, as his cableco Comcast wouldn't drop it off, so he decided not to upgrade it.
I guess that is a decent argument for improved CAFE standards.
Politicians will never raise CAFE standards until they're bit in the ass. While the big 3 US makers; Chrysler, Ford, and GM, fight any raise in CAFE their foreign competitors are eating their lunch. The same thing happened in the 1970's, they didn't learn then and they aren't learning now.
If you sell your gas guzzler to someone else in favor of a more efficient model you aren't really reducing pollution at all. Would it be better to just send it directly to the scrapyard?
If you sell and the buyer uses the vehicle for transportation it's being reused not recycled. As for whether it's more efficient to reuse it or send it to the scrapyard, recycling it if the material is salvaged and melted down to be made into something else, it depends on the energy used in both processes. I once read of a lifecycle study that showed it took more energy and other resources to mine fresh metals and use it to make something than does recycling used metal. However today I don't know if this still applies as vehicles are using more resources than just metals such as the composites used. To an existent this is being worked on by companies like GM. GM has worked on a Hy-Wire Concept car with a skateboard design. The skateboard provides locomotion, the engine and drivetrain, which allows the body to be interchanged. A person would be able to get a car with one body type but then a few years later they could then change the body style from say a muscle car to a SUV when they have a family.
Then again, I still use some of those really inefficient halogen touchier lamps. I use CFL bulbs in the light fixtures that don't dim, but there's something really nice about being able to vary the light from intense and white for reading to warm and dim for movies or dinner.
While halogen lights are not as efficient as CFLs they are more efficient than incandescent lights. As for using CFLs with dimmer switches, there are some CFLs capable of dimming. Though they are more expensive here are some dimmable CFLs. Though I don't see where they say what the manufacturer is on that page both GE and Philips make dimmable CFLs.
my focus was on the word "illegal". used extensively throughout this discussion and, I thought, well understood as to its meaning and relevance.
Who's being smarmy now? Fact is is these laws making it immigration illegal is nothing more than racistic. European settlers invaded, conquered, and massacred the natives in the Americas and now set the rules. The only place American Indians have a strong say now are in Bolivia and Ecuador, but only because they've were successful in getting their own representatives or supporters elected in national elections. Racism in the USA has been going on almost it was founded. Benjamin Franklin proposed a law barring Germans from immigrating. In the 1850s it was the Know Nothings who wanted to bar some from immigrating. They opposed Irish and Roman Catholics from migrating to the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricted Chinese immigration. At other tymes Eastern and Southern Europeans were barred from immigration, the Immigration Act of 1924 for instance. Now it's Latin Americans, many of whom their ancesters inhabited the Americas before it was "discovered", who are being discriminated against.
I didn't suggest that the concept of privacy or the desire for it was invented in the 60s. What I believe was invented in the 60s was the idea that information existing within an "expectation of privacy" was automatically excluded from criminal investigators without court intervention.
So, the US has Sweden beat for population by a factor of 30. Sweden is broken down into "Swedes with Finnish and Sami minorities", whereas the US is listed as 81.7% white.
I noted you gave percentages for the US population but none for Sweden, why? Is it because the population isn't as homogeneous as you say? And while you mention the Finnish and Saami (Inuits in Alaska, Canada, and Iceland and Lapps in Finland and Russia), there is nothing of other Swedish peoplessuch as the ethnic Danes and Germanic tribes.
Chinese leaders had to call in army units from other places because the local units refused to fire on their own people.
What makes you think that leaders in the U.S. will do any different? And what makes you think U.S. soldiers are any different from Chinese soldiers in this regard?
Because there's a big difference in the Chinese army and the US's army. members of the US armed forces can, and are, from all over the US. In my unit I had people from different states and different ethnic groups, even different religions. In China however things were different when the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square happened. China has at least 56 different ethnic groups and back then army units didn't mix different groups much in individual units. The unit a person was in was typically stationed in the area where the person was from. The army unit that refused to put down the demonstrations was from Beijing, where Tianamen Square is, and was made up of Hui people who are native to Beijing. So the government had to bring in an army unit that wasn't Hui.
Throughout history, soldiers have shown their willingness to kill their own countrymen in order to "keep the peace" and, especially, to protect those in power. There is absolutely no reason at all to believe that U.S. soldiers are somehow "special" and magically exempt from this.
Have you ever been in the military? I have and there were a number of people who would have refused to shoot onto US citizens, me being one of them.
No, I'm talking about civilians attempting to overthrow the government by force. What do you think a revolution is, anyway? Do you really think you and your fellow soliders will be allowed to just stand by and watch it happen?
Just as Germans in the German military tried to assassinate Hilter during WWII there are people in the US military who would fight against unlawful or unconstitutional orders. And we wouldn't have just stood by and waited to be shot, instead we would of been shooting ourselves. During Viet Nam soldiers would Frag, assassinate, officers and others when a bad order, or one that ended in needless deaths, was given.
If civilians started pointing guns at you, I dare say you wouldn't hesitate to point yours back at them
Go ahead and dare, I know I wouldn't shoot, I'd desert or frag an officer that gave an order for me to shoot civilians. I can't go on with this seeing as how you're making things up.
Because access to fundamental services should not be a lottery decided by place of birth. I should have thought that much was obvious.
I wonder how many people, adults, still live in the state they were born in. I've lived in 6 different states and haven't been back to the state I was born in since moving out of the state when I was 3.
nd as for the bit about having my own "like minded state", that's the last thing I want. Diversity breeds challenge and adversity. They in turn make life interesting and lead to new discoveries and developments. Diversity encourages constant change, and it is without a doubt a huge advantage that western nations have over more isolationist countries. It's also perhaps the best reason I can think of for NOT allowing states to become miniature nations - such a system would encourage further isolation and alienation amongst political, ural, and even religious lines. You think Texans New Yorkers now, just wait until they've been practically autonomous for a few decades. Do you really want to Balcanize the US?
That's the thing about states being able to set their own laws. Instead of one national lab, there can be 50 different labs. What then works in one state can be copied in other states and visa versa, what doesn't work in one state other states don't have to waste money trying out the same thing. In the end what works would spread faster and what fails will be gotten rid of.
If he were elected, I'm not sure how much of his own agenda he'd be able to accomplish since he can only propose new legislation & veto things he disagrees with, but he could make it VERY difficult for Congress to pass things that there wasn't unanimous agreement about, and he wouldn't be giving the protection of the President's Office to those agents of the executive branch who are blatantly violating the Constitution.
The veto is anyone who wants to be president most powerful weapon. I'd love to see a president that would veto most of the bills passed by congress. In 2004 that's what Michael Badnarik promised. Congress can override vetoes but it isn't homogeneous enough to do it now. That would be a good sight to see, the federal government screeching to a halt.
One bit of feedback I'll offer to your Scandinavian anecdote is the same rebuttal I offer my Swedish friend:
Comparing the situation in a country with a relatively homogeneous population the size of New York City to the USA might be unfair.
In other words, one wonders whether any of those countries would fare so well if you jacked their population up an order of magnitude, and gave it the cultural mish-mash that is the USA. Additionally, and this is a serious question about the foot vote: in which direction, North America or Scandinavia, is there greater human migration? For relatively prosperous countries like your Finland and Norway, I would expect the numbers are small and roughly equivalent. For all the purported superiority of these systems, we don't see a stampede towards the old country.
You may want to rethink the statement that Sweden has a homogeneous population. As with other European countries Sweden has a sizable immigrant population:
"Sweden struggles to integrate Muslim immigrants". As TFA says "'Immigrants to Sweden have become political refugees. First there were people from South America, then Iran, Afghanistan and now Iraq,' he said." Fact is is many European nations welcomed foreigners, many from Africa and the Middle East, as workers as early as the 1950s. Maybe not all, I don't know, but many Northern European nations have growing African, Middle Eastern, and Muslim populations.
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We KNOW that converting to nuclear energy would largely solve the global warming problem. Have a nice gander people, the solution to this seemingly intractible problem is staring us in the face.
No, nuclear isn't perfect. But in combination with electric cars, the CO2 problem is solved.
With alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and tidal all the energy needs of the US can be met, without the problems of nuclear energy.
Though halogen lights may be more "efficient" than incandescent lights, halogen torchieres are usually 300 or 500 watts. People don't have incandescent lamps that take a single bulb that use 500 watts. (I have a 300 watt halogen one, and definitely want to replace it.)
Why do you need such a large, high wattage, light? Photography? Florescent lights do funky thinks with photos but I'd think halogens would have an even funkier effect.
FalconCheap, and it works. But I'm looking at a 32" LCD. The LCD might pull less electricity, but would the difference offset the energy costs of making the TV?
Either the TV will have to be replaced or you will need a converter for it anyway because of the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting.
FalconBut why regress? I like my electric toys. They are what separate us from the animals. And what about all those electric cars the tree-huggers want us to drive? We need the nuclear power plants to provide that energy.
In the US the Rockies alone contain enough potential wind power to provide the lower 48 states with all of the energy needed. Other states good for wind gennies are North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, and California. In the Mid Atlantic and North East there are more states with good wind potential. Off the coast both Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras are good sites for offshore wind farms, unfortunately NIMBYs are fighting for wind farms in the capes. Then both CA and TX are also good for solar power as are Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida.
Simply there is no need for any nuclear power plants.
I fail to see why as a society we should revert to a colder, darker time when we have the technology to simply produce more electricity.
With alternative energy sources there is no need to revert.
FalocnI have a Lux meter and a power meter and a test rig and a large assortment of bulbs... The savings from CFL isn't much and the amount of real light they produced isn't what the packages claim and they reduce their light output faster than older bulbs. It appears that the light output is based on their highest intensity point as if the entire bulb produced that (like the incandescent bulbs). Most of the non twist designs put out 1/3 the light on the end as the brightest part of the side and the twisties tend to produce less total light but are more consistent. I started by testing 20 bulbs I got from a local K-mart and grocery store and have since collected a few more. The best so far have been LED or halogen and the worst was ones are CFLs. Good quality long life incancesdents are in the same range as mid tier CFL. CFLs dim rapidly (to being useless based on their stated output in less than 1000 hours) while old bulbs would last 1000 hours at nearly full intensity 50% of the time (and 0% intensity 49.999% of the time)
What, did you buy cheap Chinese CFLs? I've been using CFLs for more than 20 years and never had these problems, actually I've gotten better CFL bulbs cheaper the last tyme I bought some. The only problem I've had with CFLs is some of them have taken more than a minute for the light to be full strength when used outdoors while cold, but new CFLs are better here too.
FalconThe author spent $200 to buy an LCD monitor to replace a 19" CRT, saving $18 / yr electricity: more than a five year payoff. And he's putting a CRT into a landfill somewhere.
Having RTFA I didn't see where it said he was putting the old CRT into a landfill, can you point it out for me?
FalconWhat about if a CRT uses less power than my new HDTV of similar size?
Ah, I saw some HDTVs that were CRTs. While LCD TVs use less power than CRTs a plasma TV may use more.
FalconWouldn't these devices simply measure voltage and current and multiply them to give watts?
With purely resistive loads 1 VA is 1 watt, however with an inductive or capacitive load VA and watts are different. My electrical knowledge is way too rusty but maybe another /.er can give you the formulas to calculate VA and watts.
FalconAlthough there's not much individuals can do about it, here's another look at the bigger pictures.
Unfortunately TFA only talks about emissions from power plants. Though TFA says nothing about it Brazil is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases including CO2. The form of agriculture practiced in Amazonian Brazil emits a lot of CO2 when "farmers" slash and burn the Amazon.
FalconTrue. But "society" had better improve the availability of (and education about) proper disposal for CF bulbs. In a few years when all the bulbs sold in the recent surge wear out, most will probably go into the regular trash and landfill.
I bought my first CFL more than 20 years ago, replacing the incandescent bulbs with CFLs when they burned out, and I've only replaced 3 CFLs in that tyme. Meanwhile the added energy needed to power incandescent lights over CFLs mean more mercury is emitted burning coal. I bet the mercury in CFLs is less than that emitted from coal fire power plants. But you're right, good collection systems need to be in place to recycle CFLs. A similar system to what done with car batteries, motor oil, and tires can be put in place in some places. Have a "deposit" being paid on CFLs when bought, but if a bad CFL is brought in then waive the deposit.
FalconAnd for this reason, the government must subsidize energy-efficient monitors and TV's (like LCD's) so the change is viable for the consumer (and subsidizing the newest LED light bulbs wouldn't be a bad idea, either).
Instead of just subsidizing energy efficient appliances I'd rather see energy users pay for what they use, not let power generators pass Externalities or external costs to others. This would raise prices but would encourage efficiency. This brings up what Australia has done and what California is going to do, outlaw incandescent lights. Some companies are working on energy efficient incandescent lights however these laws discourage research into them. Making users pay more will encourage more research. Research may be able to develop an incandescent light more efficient than CFLs.
FalconI would advocate buying newer more energy efficient equipment as your old equipment dies, but I would not advocate going out and replacing perfectly good equipment with more energy efficient (and more expensive) alternatives. It will not only cost you a lot of money, but will also mean more waste from throwing out perfectly good equipment that will likely end up in a landfill.
Yea, TFA writer says replacing his cable modem would only save 5 watts, but he'd have to drive 30 miles to pick up a new one, as his cableco Comcast wouldn't drop it off, so he decided not to upgrade it.
FalconI guess that is a decent argument for improved CAFE standards.
Politicians will never raise CAFE standards until they're bit in the ass. While the big 3 US makers; Chrysler, Ford, and GM, fight any raise in CAFE their foreign competitors are eating their lunch. The same thing happened in the 1970's, they didn't learn then and they aren't learning now.
FalconIf you sell your gas guzzler to someone else in favor of a more efficient model you aren't really reducing pollution at all. Would it be better to just send it directly to the scrapyard?
If you sell and the buyer uses the vehicle for transportation it's being reused not recycled. As for whether it's more efficient to reuse it or send it to the scrapyard, recycling it if the material is salvaged and melted down to be made into something else, it depends on the energy used in both processes. I once read of a lifecycle study that showed it took more energy and other resources to mine fresh metals and use it to make something than does recycling used metal. However today I don't know if this still applies as vehicles are using more resources than just metals such as the composites used. To an existent this is being worked on by companies like GM. GM has worked on a Hy-Wire Concept car with a skateboard design. The skateboard provides locomotion, the engine and drivetrain, which allows the body to be interchanged. A person would be able to get a car with one body type but then a few years later they could then change the body style from say a muscle car to a SUV when they have a family.
FalconThen again, I still use some of those really inefficient halogen touchier lamps. I use CFL bulbs in the light fixtures that don't dim, but there's something really nice about being able to vary the light from intense and white for reading to warm and dim for movies or dinner.
While halogen lights are not as efficient as CFLs they are more efficient than incandescent lights. As for using CFLs with dimmer switches, there are some CFLs capable of dimming. Though they are more expensive here are some dimmable CFLs. Though I don't see where they say what the manufacturer is on that page both GE and Philips make dimmable CFLs.
Falconmy focus was on the word "illegal". used extensively throughout this discussion and, I thought, well understood as to its meaning and relevance.
Who's being smarmy now? Fact is is these laws making it immigration illegal is nothing more than racistic. European settlers invaded, conquered, and massacred the natives in the Americas and now set the rules. The only place American Indians have a strong say now are in Bolivia and Ecuador, but only because they've were successful in getting their own representatives or supporters elected in national elections. Racism in the USA has been going on almost it was founded. Benjamin Franklin proposed a law barring Germans from immigrating. In the 1850s it was the Know Nothings who wanted to bar some from immigrating. They opposed Irish and Roman Catholics from migrating to the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricted Chinese immigration. At other tymes Eastern and Southern Europeans were barred from immigration, the Immigration Act of 1924 for instance. Now it's Latin Americans, many of whom their ancesters inhabited the Americas before it was "discovered", who are being discriminated against.
FalconI didn't suggest that the concept of privacy or the desire for it was invented in the 60s. What I believe was invented in the 60s was the idea that information existing within an "expectation of privacy" was automatically excluded from criminal investigators without court intervention.
Ok.
FalconThe goal should be to include as many people into our circle as possible.
True, as I've said before I realize I am biased however I try not to be. I try to meet and get along with people of different ethnicity.
FalconSo, the US has Sweden beat for population by a factor of 30. Sweden is broken down into "Swedes with Finnish and Sami minorities", whereas the US is listed as 81.7% white.
I noted you gave percentages for the US population but none for Sweden, why? Is it because the population isn't as homogeneous as you say? And while you mention the Finnish and Saami (Inuits in Alaska, Canada, and Iceland and Lapps in Finland and Russia), there is nothing of other Swedish peoplessuch as the ethnic Danes and Germanic tribes.
FalconChinese leaders had to call in army units from other places because the local units refused to fire on their own people.
What makes you think that leaders in the U.S. will do any different? And what makes you think U.S. soldiers are any different from Chinese soldiers in this regard?
Because there's a big difference in the Chinese army and the US's army. members of the US armed forces can, and are, from all over the US. In my unit I had people from different states and different ethnic groups, even different religions. In China however things were different when the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square happened. China has at least 56 different ethnic groups and back then army units didn't mix different groups much in individual units. The unit a person was in was typically stationed in the area where the person was from. The army unit that refused to put down the demonstrations was from Beijing, where Tianamen Square is, and was made up of Hui people who are native to Beijing. So the government had to bring in an army unit that wasn't Hui.
Throughout history, soldiers have shown their willingness to kill their own countrymen in order to "keep the peace" and, especially, to protect those in power. There is absolutely no reason at all to believe that U.S. soldiers are somehow "special" and magically exempt from this.
Have you ever been in the military? I have and there were a number of people who would have refused to shoot onto US citizens, me being one of them.
No, I'm talking about civilians attempting to overthrow the government by force. What do you think a revolution is, anyway? Do you really think you and your fellow soliders will be allowed to just stand by and watch it happen?
Just as Germans in the German military tried to assassinate Hilter during WWII there are people in the US military who would fight against unlawful or unconstitutional orders. And we wouldn't have just stood by and waited to be shot, instead we would of been shooting ourselves. During Viet Nam soldiers would Frag, assassinate, officers and others when a bad order, or one that ended in needless deaths, was given.
If civilians started pointing guns at you, I dare say you wouldn't hesitate to point yours back at them
Go ahead and dare, I know I wouldn't shoot, I'd desert or frag an officer that gave an order for me to shoot civilians. I can't go on with this seeing as how you're making things up.
FalconBecause access to fundamental services should not be a lottery decided by place of birth. I should have thought that much was obvious.
I wonder how many people, adults, still live in the state they were born in. I've lived in 6 different states and haven't been back to the state I was born in since moving out of the state when I was 3.
Falconnd as for the bit about having my own "like minded state", that's the last thing I want. Diversity breeds challenge and adversity. They in turn make life interesting and lead to new discoveries and developments. Diversity encourages constant change, and it is without a doubt a huge advantage that western nations have over more isolationist countries. It's also perhaps the best reason I can think of for NOT allowing states to become miniature nations - such a system would encourage further isolation and alienation amongst political, ural, and even religious lines. You think Texans New Yorkers now, just wait until they've been practically autonomous for a few decades. Do you really want to Balcanize the US?
That's the thing about states being able to set their own laws. Instead of one national lab, there can be 50 different labs. What then works in one state can be copied in other states and visa versa, what doesn't work in one state other states don't have to waste money trying out the same thing. In the end what works would spread faster and what fails will be gotten rid of.
FalconThat's rather like giving Jeffry Dahmer the keys to your house because you think he'd be an interesting interior decorator.
Your equation of Ron Paul with Dahmer reveals about you that it does Ron Paul. Paul is nothing like the serial murderer Dahmer.
FalconIf he were elected, I'm not sure how much of his own agenda he'd be able to accomplish since he can only propose new legislation & veto things he disagrees with, but he could make it VERY difficult for Congress to pass things that there wasn't unanimous agreement about, and he wouldn't be giving the protection of the President's Office to those agents of the executive branch who are blatantly violating the Constitution.
The veto is anyone who wants to be president most powerful weapon. I'd love to see a president that would veto most of the bills passed by congress. In 2004 that's what Michael Badnarik promised. Congress can override vetoes but it isn't homogeneous enough to do it now. That would be a good sight to see, the federal government screeching to a halt.
FalconOne bit of feedback I'll offer to your Scandinavian anecdote is the same rebuttal I offer my Swedish friend:
Comparing the situation in a country with a relatively homogeneous population the size of New York City to the USA might be unfair.
In other words, one wonders whether any of those countries would fare so well if you jacked their population up an order of magnitude, and gave it the cultural mish-mash that is the USA. Additionally, and this is a serious question about the foot vote: in which direction, North America or Scandinavia, is there greater human migration? For relatively prosperous countries like your Finland and Norway, I would expect the numbers are small and roughly equivalent. For all the purported superiority of these systems, we don't see a stampede towards the old country.
You may want to rethink the statement that Sweden has a homogeneous population. As with other European countries Sweden has a sizable immigrant population:
"Sweden struggles to integrate Muslim immigrants". As TFA says "'Immigrants to Sweden have become political refugees. First there were people from South America, then Iran, Afghanistan and now Iraq,' he said." Fact is is many European nations welcomed foreigners, many from Africa and the Middle East, as workers as early as the 1950s. Maybe not all, I don't know, but many Northern European nations have growing African, Middle Eastern, and Muslim populations.
Falcon