A lot of people don't vote for things which are good for themselves now, they vote for things that will be good when they get rich. That is the American Dream (TM) an also Thatcher's biggest con in the UK. Most people never get rich, they spend their lives working for someone else for a salary. Everyone thinks they are middle class or above so vote against tax increases at that end of the scale, when in fact most people are working class and would be better off if the higher earners took on a bit more of the burden.
You're making an assumption about these folks' motives that may not be correct.
Some of them may be voting out of self-interest, not because they think they're going to be "rich" (however you define that), but because they know the economy is an ecosystem, and their ability to make a living is intertwined with the prospects of the businesspeople that employ them, and the prospects of the people who want to buy the products they make, whether it's TVs or boats or houses or restaurants or whatever. Taking money from any of those groups is going to hurt more than just the person you take it from. There's no free lunch when it comes to generating tax revenue, much though politicians try to sell that fantasy to us.
I don't think that the news organizations were any more responsible in the past, they just had an ideological and information-distribution monopoly, so the holes in their storytelling were less likely to be noticed. The habit has long been to print sensational stories on page 1, and when it turns out to be untrue, print the correction a week later on page A19. Getting caught is just easier and faster these days, with ideologically opposed news outlets ready to call BS on them (and vice versa), and word of said BS spreads more easily on the Internet.
News people talk about the "narrative" for a reason - they're spinning us a story. Sometimes the story's a reasonable approximation of truth, sometimes it's not, but it's always got a point of view. Losing the ability to dictate the point of view applied to a given event is what's really gotten under the skin of media outlets used to being the only bard in town.
I find it frustrating to watch television news of any ideological stripe, because everytime I try, the reporting is terrible. Political and economic issues can be a bit complicated, but rather than get someone to give a decent explanation, they turn it into some vapid, low-information Red vs Blue horse race. If your reason for watching the news is to feel good about your preferred religion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hparty, OK, but if you want to actually understand an issue, the news rarely delivers. Jon Stewart's comedy show gives a more intellectually credible coverage of the news than the "real" news shows do (I don't share his politics, but respect his committment to providing well-informed, intellectually honest coverage in an otherwise vapid media world). What does that say about the news, that a comic does their job better than they do?
The worry about Chinese espionage is not prejudice.
First, nobody's presuming dishonorability. They're presuming that nation-states will do what they have always done, whether from the West or East, which is espionage. There's a long history, even among supposed Western allies like the French and the US, or the US and Israel, of spying on each other. The spying isn't always for strictly "national security" concerns either, it has also included economic espionage performed to advantage companies from the spying country.
Second, if you consider espionage dishonorable; given that every nation does it, that would make all nations "dishonorable", in which case worrying about it isn't prejudice against any particular player, it's just reality.
Re: the Chinese in particular... if countries where industry is privately-owned do economic espionage, do we really expect that a country where the major industries are state-owned would not? Especially given the enormous advantage it would provide over having to invent technologies the hard way? Do we think the Chinese would worry less about their national security concerns than we do about ours? Would not backdoors in foreign equipment be a potent countermeasure in the event of military conflict?
Do the Chinese get a disproportionate share of media attention for espionage? Probably - it's not like the other world powers have stopped doing these sorts of things. Media attention tends to go in fads, and the incredible rate of economic growth the Chinese have had in recent years has brought a lot of attention. But it doesn't mean the threat isn't real.
A teacher found failing students because of their opinions really should be fired.
They won't call it that. It will be "disruptive behavior" or "disciplinary problems" or some such thing. But really, if a teacher and a student are trading insults, it's a sign the teacher has no more maturity than the student, and thus should not be a teacher.
I don't see what good thing the kids are going to learn from this episode, other than that their teacher lacks maturity. If they didn't respect her before, they sure as hell won't now. By throwing a public temper tantrum, this woman has utterly undermined any authority she may have had with the kids. Good luck getting them to learn anything from her now.
Being "compliance sheep" isn't the only possible bad outcome. The kids could also turn into self-absorbed twits with an unjustified sense of entitlement. Seems to me her rant just makes bad outcome B more likely than bad outcome A, rather than doing anything to improve the kids' learning or emotional skills.
1. The teacher is a representative of the school. It reflects poorly on the school when their employee goes around demeaning their customers in a public forum. If you did this in any other business, you'd be fired by any half-intelligent employer. The teacher is being paid to provide a service, namely to educate kids. That position includes behavioral expectations so that they are not detracting from the educational mission. If they can't handle the job, they should be fired.
The kids and their parents, on the other hand, are customers (not to mention that they are customers being compelled to pay for, and attend, a particular school by force of law, simply by virtue of where they can afford to live). Customers should expect to be treated with civility, not personal insults.
2. Kids are required to attend, as well as to follow the instructions of the teachers. Because we give teachers authority, it is reasonable to hold them to a higher standard.
Well, if you have a "public" school, then the public gets to decide what is taught. If this concerns you, then advocate for school choice, so you don't have to subsidize beliefs you disagree with, and can choose a school for your kids that will do a better job.
It's not just Texas that influences textbooks - California does too, and its has its own pet ideologies for textbooks too. We won't break this cycle unless we address the cost issues associated with designing textbooks for many small markets. Maybe moving to electronic formats would help. Maybe open-sourcing textbooks could help. But I suspect as long as what's in textbooks is mandated by the state, you will find the contents to be politically-driven crap.
I think the root problem are "dumb shits" in general.
No, the problems start when we give power to such people. An idiot without power has a limited ability to do harm. An idiot with the force of government behind his idiocy can do a lot of harm, indeed.
At least "dumb shits" in business are often (not always) a self-solving problem: their stupidity drives them out of business. Unless, of course, they can find an idiot in government to bail them out. And idiocy in government is practically speaking permanent, given the lack of accountability or competitive pressure.
Parents are not experts in education. We have boards of educators who design curricula,
And therein lies the problem. These "boards of educators" are generally politicians who are directly elected or are political appointees. They are not necessarily even experts in the subjects. They are chosen to a significant degree based upon their ideological leanings.
and it's not up to Bible-thumping parents to meddle with the science curriculum
No, it's up to the elected True Believers (TM), whether they thump Bibles or their own chests, to do that.
Allowing parents to set the curriculum in this way would lead to utter chaos and total mediocrity.
Sounds like a good description of the schools we get when we let politics design our curricula.
You wouldn't sanction another instructor walking into the room and trying to offer the students "alternate options" like a flat earth or the moon made of cheese.
If they followed up those examples with "and now let's see how we could test/falsify these theories", such alternate options would be fantastic. A theory that the moon is made of cheese is wrong, but is scientific because you can test it to see if you're wrong. Scientists come up with wrong theories all the time, but then they test them, find out their hypothesis was wrong, and move on.
So by all means, tell the kids the moon is made of cheese, and then ask them how they'd prove you wrong.
What are these "open-minded" teachers supposed to do?
Well, in an ideal world where our schools were not micromanaged by government fiat, teachers would teach the kids how science really works. Namely that you have a hypothesis and try to falsify it.
Do this first with a non-controversial topic, so kids can be taught the scientific method without all the emotional and religious issues around evolution. Find an example simple enough that kids can propose their own theories of how something works, then design little experiments to try to prove those theories wrong. This lets teachers explain that theories must be falsifiable before you get to any hot-button topics.
Once they're used to following a disciplined, scientific approach to problems, THEN introduce evolution and let the kids think it through for themselves.
If we're waiting until high school biology class to teach kids fundamentals of the scientific process, we're doing it wrong.
IANAL, but it seems there are things the prisons could do:
1. For existing facilities: Pay the licensed carriers (AT&T, Verizon, etc) to install custom cells at the prison. Give the base station low power, and program it to only allow pre-determined cell numbers to connect to anything other than 911. Because it is low power, cells outside the prison will choose to use higher-power signals from nearby real cells instead, so there is no interference with neighbors. Yet inside the prison, it will still be the highest power signal, and thus all the prison phones will use lock to it. Because it's a real cell operated by the licensed operators in that spectrum, there shouldn't be the legal issues associated with jamming.
You've now rendered all the smuggled phones useless to prisoners. Guards can still use cell phones by having their phone registered (and calls monitored so they don't just sell/rent the phone to prisoners).
2. For new prisons, you could build shielding in. The government knows how to make facilities that block a lof of radio-frequency transmissions - they use it for national security all the time. So you keep landlines for the guards, and the prisoners can't get cell reception. Less flexible than solution #1, but it'd probably be sufficient.
3. At least use detection devices to locate cell phones as they enter the grounds. Such things do exist.
Dallas has 2x the population of North Dakota. More people, closer together, more chance for crime. Texas also has many more people below the poverty level
Density is almost certainly a factor.
Poverty level, though - is the poverty the cause of the crime, or crime the cause of the poverty? Or are both the result of a 3rd factor, such as people with poor self-control? A lot of folks assume the first, but the other two seem just as, if not more, likely.
Perhaps you are not against "all regulation." But a lot of libertarians are.
Libertarians are not against "all regulation". That's anarchy, not liberty. Statists just like this strawman argument because it lets them dismiss the real arguments of libertarians. Don't fall for it.
What we have here, though, is not an example of regulation. It is an example of someone deciding that being a government employee gives him the right, nay, the responsibility to act like a petty tyrant
The practical problem is that regulations, to be effective, need to be enforced. Enforcement is done by those human beings we call "regulators". Being human beings, many of them lack maturity and competence, just as many folks in the general population do. So the more regulations you have, the more regulators, and the more immature tyrants are given their own little fiefdoms. This is compounded by government rules that make it hard to fire the incompetent, and that dissuade many talented professionals from seeking government employment.
You can't separate out such bad behaviors as being "not an example of regulation". There may be a theoretical distinction, but in practice, they are an inevitable consequence of granting power to real-world, flawed human beings.
These sorts of issues are exactly why libertarians are always trying to find solutions that create a system of incentives for voluntary transactions rather than government force. Lack of power over each other means we need to cooperate. Power means one person can (and often will) abuse the other. If you can design a system which lacks extreme power imbalances, you can avoid the need to create more government bureaucracies and the ills that come with them. This is not always possible, but it's worth trying to do so before creating the next bureaucratic fiefdom.
You're right it's not easy. You're right the situation is complicated. You're right we can't browbeat the Chinese government into treating their people decently. To me, that says the only thing we can realistically do is lead by example. Show the peoples of the world that America still believes in something more than expediency of the moment.
Unfortunately, for far too long, under far too many Presidents, we have done little of that. We coddle dictators as long as they give us something in return. China finances our debt and sells us cheap goods. Egypt gave us aid against terrorists. Ditto for the Saudis. For years we aided Saddam Hussein. All because it was expedient in the short-term, never mind that such dictatorships foster unrest and radicalism. Never mind that this makes these peoples feel we care nothing for them and undermines our future diplomacy.
The hardest part is that Congress is not of one mind on the subject. Most politicians don't think beyond the next election, and aren't likely to go out on a limb unless they have cover. That's why you need leadership. Unfortunately, we haven't had it for a while.
If the goal was to recognize contributions to peace, free speech, or knowledge of government actions, Wikileaks is a poor candidate.
Wikileaks didn't tell us anything about the big-picture actions of the US government we didn't already know from the press. This was no Watergate with its revelations of duplicity. The US government has, in fact, been doing exactly what it's said it was doing. Those US actions have angered a lot of people, but we knew that before Wikileaks. So much for informing the public - we already knew what we needed to know to hold our leaders accountable.
What we did see is a bunch of diplomatically damaging commentaries, such as US ambassadors' assessments of the character flaws of foreign rulers. If you undermine diplomacy, you make war MORE likely, not less. So much for peace.
Finally, the most likely result of this scandal is that the free speech laws will become MORE restrictive. Historically our country has relied upon publishers to exercise some discretion about disclosure of classified information, so as not to risk our soldiers or allies on the battlefield. The press has generally tried to balance the public good against the public harm, even while it's disclosed quite a bit. Wikileaks however, by publishing names of Afghan informants, put lives at risk and gave the country a reason to consider stricter laws.
And what did Wikileaks hope to achieve by recklessly disclosing anything it could get its hands on? Other than notoriety, or vandalism of US diplomatic or anti-terror efforts, that is? It's not like the Taliban Assange aided are any friends of free speech, or of transparent and accountable government.
Now infant mortality has been conquered, we have enough to eat and a welfare state to look after us when we are old we don't have to have as many children as possible.
Actually, having a lot of children is the only thing that is going to keep the welfare state funded, as an ageing population places increasing demands upon it. We need more young people to fund all those entitlement programs.
Given that the main reason for environmental destruction and social decay is an expanding population
Why do you say that? Our population is at record highs, we protect the environment more than ever, and our society is far more just than previous ones. We polluted a lot more during the Industrial Revolution, for example, and nobody would want to live in that society rather than today, where we have less discrimination, etc. Having greater population leads to greater specialization of labor (not everyone needs to be a farmer), which produces greater wealth and technology, so that we are both technologically and economically more able to protect the environment.
I think he's suggesting that many pro-choice people find it hard to identify with a fetus as being fully human. Thus they are reluctant to use the law (which is force) to defend the fetus against the mother's decision to kill it.
But if you start to realize the fetuses could be killed because of a human quality - a quality they share with you - that may change your perspective. Imagine the reaction on Slashdot if scientists found a "geek" gene and non-geek parents started aborting such fetuses because they didn't want their kids to turn out "like that". That's the situation gays are going to face once we discover which genes predispose one to homosexuality (I say "predispose" because genes aren't a guarantee - identical twins are not always the same orientation, just more likely to be).
It's not pro-lifers that are going to abort the gay kids. It's the moderate, middle-class pro-choice folks who don't want their kids to have certain "undesirable" traits - whether it's mental retardation, being gay, having whatever gender the parents don't want, etc.
Companies need to make a compelling (yet affordable) electric car for me. That probably means the government needs to provide subsidies/incentives of some sort, because until there are buyers, there won't be models available, but until there are models available, there won't be buyers.
I agree the electrics aren't compelling yet, but I disagree with your conclusion that subsidies are necessary for this problem to be solved. If such a chicken-and-egg dilemma were really true, then we would never have had automobiles to begin with. Before the car was invented, there were no buyers of cars, and there were no models. Just horses. But businesses, such as Henry Ford's, invested their money and brainpower in new products in anticipation of future buyers. They didn't need government subsidies.
The reason why these companies want subsidies is precisely because they don't have something compelling to offer consumers, such that consumers would give up their hard-earned money voluntarily.
The source I got it from was Chad Hermann's the Radical Middle blog, which itself was quoting other sources and had the mixed use of "wealth" and "income" terms.
I've seen similar numbers earlier, such as the NY Times (top 1 percent had 21.8 percent of income in 2005) and NY Times Economics Blog (top 1 percent had slightly over 20% of income and paid 40% of income taxes in 2007). The latter source links to the IRS data and also has some good charts.
Surprisingly, not much lower. You hear a lot about waste/inefficiency, but although you can find any number of egregious examples of misapropriation, they amount to a small fraction of the total.
Outright fraudlent spending is pretty small. But what's harder to quantify is how much we're spending because the government "business practices" are still archaic. Normal businesses expect that each year, they need to find ways to trim their expenses to do the same work. Government bureaucracies expect to get a percentage increase each year to do the same work.
I've spent time working for a federal contractor. Initially I was naive enough to think that providing government a service for less money would be rewarded. It turns out that spending less money than your customer planned to spend is frowned upon by the government. Why? Because if the agency doesn't spend every penny, next year their budget will be cut - the powers that be reason that if you didn't spend it, you don't need it. What bureaucrat wants his budget cut? He may need the funds next year, so he's not going to risk losing every future year's funding by spending less this year.
It's logical at a local level, but crazy at the macro level.
Also, what is "waste"?
I would say it's waste if government is providing something that, however desirable to me, is either:
A) not absolutely essential for people to have, or B) more effectively provided by organizations other than government.
Stuff that broad majorities would agree we absolutely cannot do without as a society - some degree of national defense, police protection, and basic social insurance. There will be debates over how much of these things we need, but large majorities agree that some level of these things are vital and cannot be effectively provided other than through government.
Things that we don't need the government to produce or subsidize: our entertainment (the arts). I love going to concerts, for example. But if folks like the entertainment, they'll gladly pay admission. We don't need to use taxes to force everyone to subsidize the entertainment of a few.
Examples of government doing things that would be better managed elsewhere: Central Park in New York. It used to be government-run, and was poorly maintained and crime-ridden. The city handed management over to a private company, which has to do well or lose the business, and now the park is beautifully maintained and safe.
A disproportionate amount while the filthy rich pay virtually nothing?
In some countries that may be true.
But in the US, the "rich" - to be specific, let's say the top 1% - earned 25% of the wealth and paid 38% of the income taxes. That doesn't sound like "virtually nothing".
Or more importantly, how much lower could the taxes be if waste/inefficiency was eliminated,
Probably a lot. The problem is that government bureaucracies have no competition. No accountability for poor performance means most governments (like other monopolies) perform poorly.
As a liberal, I can play this argument too: It starts with short-term tax cuts
You could, and there is truth to the argument in that direction too. But if you look at the history of government in the US, it has been pretty uniformly in the direction of bigger and more expensive, so I doubt you have to worry that we'll be getting rid of popular entitlement programs like Social Security, incrementally or otherwise.
But when an "incremental" change involves the granting of new authority to a regulator, we do need to be careful. Especially when that regulator is the FCC, which has a long history of standing in the way of competition and new technology (ie the public interest), to appease politically connected incumbents. It's a stretch to think that the FCC leopard is suddenly going to change its spots and become some sort of protector of the consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of people don't vote for things which are good for themselves now, they vote for things that will be good when they get rich. That is the American Dream (TM) an also Thatcher's biggest con in the UK. Most people never get rich, they spend their lives working for someone else for a salary. Everyone thinks they are middle class or above so vote against tax increases at that end of the scale, when in fact most people are working class and would be better off if the higher earners took on a bit more of the burden.
You're making an assumption about these folks' motives that may not be correct.
Some of them may be voting out of self-interest, not because they think they're going to be "rich" (however you define that), but because they know the economy is an ecosystem, and their ability to make a living is intertwined with the prospects of the businesspeople that employ them, and the prospects of the people who want to buy the products they make, whether it's TVs or boats or houses or restaurants or whatever. Taking money from any of those groups is going to hurt more than just the person you take it from. There's no free lunch when it comes to generating tax revenue, much though politicians try to sell that fantasy to us.
I don't think that the news organizations were any more responsible in the past, they just had an ideological and information-distribution monopoly, so the holes in their storytelling were less likely to be noticed. The habit has long been to print sensational stories on page 1, and when it turns out to be untrue, print the correction a week later on page A19. Getting caught is just easier and faster these days, with ideologically opposed news outlets ready to call BS on them (and vice versa), and word of said BS spreads more easily on the Internet.
News people talk about the "narrative" for a reason - they're spinning us a story. Sometimes the story's a reasonable approximation of truth, sometimes it's not, but it's always got a point of view. Losing the ability to dictate the point of view applied to a given event is what's really gotten under the skin of media outlets used to being the only bard in town.
I find it frustrating to watch television news of any ideological stripe, because everytime I try, the reporting is terrible. Political and economic issues can be a bit complicated, but rather than get someone to give a decent explanation, they turn it into some vapid, low-information Red vs Blue horse race. If your reason for watching the news is to feel good about your preferred religion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hparty, OK, but if you want to actually understand an issue, the news rarely delivers. Jon Stewart's comedy show gives a more intellectually credible coverage of the news than the "real" news shows do (I don't share his politics, but respect his committment to providing well-informed, intellectually honest coverage in an otherwise vapid media world). What does that say about the news, that a comic does their job better than they do?
Presumed dishonorability = prejudice.
The worry about Chinese espionage is not prejudice.
First, nobody's presuming dishonorability. They're presuming that nation-states will do what they have always done, whether from the West or East, which is espionage. There's a long history, even among supposed Western allies like the French and the US, or the US and Israel, of spying on each other. The spying isn't always for strictly "national security" concerns either, it has also included economic espionage performed to advantage companies from the spying country.
Second, if you consider espionage dishonorable; given that every nation does it, that would make all nations "dishonorable", in which case worrying about it isn't prejudice against any particular player, it's just reality.
Re: the Chinese in particular... if countries where industry is privately-owned do economic espionage, do we really expect that a country where the major industries are state-owned would not? Especially given the enormous advantage it would provide over having to invent technologies the hard way? Do we think the Chinese would worry less about their national security concerns than we do about ours? Would not backdoors in foreign equipment be a potent countermeasure in the event of military conflict?
Do the Chinese get a disproportionate share of media attention for espionage? Probably - it's not like the other world powers have stopped doing these sorts of things. Media attention tends to go in fads, and the incredible rate of economic growth the Chinese have had in recent years has brought a lot of attention. But it doesn't mean the threat isn't real.
A teacher found failing students because of their opinions really should be fired.
They won't call it that. It will be "disruptive behavior" or "disciplinary problems" or some such thing. But really, if a teacher and a student are trading insults, it's a sign the teacher has no more maturity than the student, and thus should not be a teacher.
I don't see what good thing the kids are going to learn from this episode, other than that their teacher lacks maturity. If they didn't respect her before, they sure as hell won't now. By throwing a public temper tantrum, this woman has utterly undermined any authority she may have had with the kids. Good luck getting them to learn anything from her now.
Being "compliance sheep" isn't the only possible bad outcome. The kids could also turn into self-absorbed twits with an unjustified sense of entitlement. Seems to me her rant just makes bad outcome B more likely than bad outcome A, rather than doing anything to improve the kids' learning or emotional skills.
Couple of points:
1. The teacher is a representative of the school. It reflects poorly on the school when their employee goes around demeaning their customers in a public forum. If you did this in any other business, you'd be fired by any half-intelligent employer. The teacher is being paid to provide a service, namely to educate kids. That position includes behavioral expectations so that they are not detracting from the educational mission. If they can't handle the job, they should be fired.
The kids and their parents, on the other hand, are customers (not to mention that they are customers being compelled to pay for, and attend, a particular school by force of law, simply by virtue of where they can afford to live). Customers should expect to be treated with civility, not personal insults.
2. Kids are required to attend, as well as to follow the instructions of the teachers. Because we give teachers authority, it is reasonable to hold them to a higher standard.
Well, if you have a "public" school, then the public gets to decide what is taught. If this concerns you, then advocate for school choice, so you don't have to subsidize beliefs you disagree with, and can choose a school for your kids that will do a better job.
It's not just Texas that influences textbooks - California does too, and its has its own pet ideologies for textbooks too. We won't break this cycle unless we address the cost issues associated with designing textbooks for many small markets. Maybe moving to electronic formats would help. Maybe open-sourcing textbooks could help. But I suspect as long as what's in textbooks is mandated by the state, you will find the contents to be politically-driven crap.
I think the root problem are "dumb shits" in general.
No, the problems start when we give power to such people. An idiot without power has a limited ability to do harm. An idiot with the force of government behind his idiocy can do a lot of harm, indeed.
At least "dumb shits" in business are often (not always) a self-solving problem: their stupidity drives them out of business. Unless, of course, they can find an idiot in government to bail them out. And idiocy in government is practically speaking permanent, given the lack of accountability or competitive pressure.
Parents are not experts in education. We have boards of educators who design curricula,
And therein lies the problem. These "boards of educators" are generally politicians who are directly elected or are political appointees. They are not necessarily even experts in the subjects. They are chosen to a significant degree based upon their ideological leanings.
and it's not up to Bible-thumping parents to meddle with the science curriculum
No, it's up to the elected True Believers (TM), whether they thump Bibles or their own chests, to do that.
Allowing parents to set the curriculum in this way would lead to utter chaos and total mediocrity.
Sounds like a good description of the schools we get when we let politics design our curricula.
You wouldn't sanction another instructor walking into the room and trying to offer the students "alternate options" like a flat earth or the moon made of cheese.
If they followed up those examples with "and now let's see how we could test/falsify these theories", such alternate options would be fantastic. A theory that the moon is made of cheese is wrong, but is scientific because you can test it to see if you're wrong. Scientists come up with wrong theories all the time, but then they test them, find out their hypothesis was wrong, and move on.
So by all means, tell the kids the moon is made of cheese, and then ask them how they'd prove you wrong.
What are these "open-minded" teachers supposed to do?
Well, in an ideal world where our schools were not micromanaged by government fiat, teachers would teach the kids how science really works. Namely that you have a hypothesis and try to falsify it.
Do this first with a non-controversial topic, so kids can be taught the scientific method without all the emotional and religious issues around evolution. Find an example simple enough that kids can propose their own theories of how something works, then design little experiments to try to prove those theories wrong. This lets teachers explain that theories must be falsifiable before you get to any hot-button topics.
Once they're used to following a disciplined, scientific approach to problems, THEN introduce evolution and let the kids think it through for themselves.
If we're waiting until high school biology class to teach kids fundamentals of the scientific process, we're doing it wrong.
IANAL, but it seems there are things the prisons could do:
1. For existing facilities: Pay the licensed carriers (AT&T, Verizon, etc) to install custom cells at the prison. Give the base station low power, and program it to only allow pre-determined cell numbers to connect to anything other than 911. Because it is low power, cells outside the prison will choose to use higher-power signals from nearby real cells instead, so there is no interference with neighbors. Yet inside the prison, it will still be the highest power signal, and thus all the prison phones will use lock to it. Because it's a real cell operated by the licensed operators in that spectrum, there shouldn't be the legal issues associated with jamming.
You've now rendered all the smuggled phones useless to prisoners. Guards can still use cell phones by having their phone registered (and calls monitored so they don't just sell/rent the phone to prisoners).
2. For new prisons, you could build shielding in. The government knows how to make facilities that block a lof of radio-frequency transmissions - they use it for national security all the time. So you keep landlines for the guards, and the prisoners can't get cell reception. Less flexible than solution #1, but it'd probably be sufficient.
3. At least use detection devices to locate cell phones as they enter the grounds. Such things do exist.
Dallas has 2x the population of North Dakota. More people, closer together, more chance for crime. Texas also has many more people below the poverty level
Density is almost certainly a factor.
Poverty level, though - is the poverty the cause of the crime, or crime the cause of the poverty? Or are both the result of a 3rd factor, such as people with poor self-control? A lot of folks assume the first, but the other two seem just as, if not more, likely.
Perhaps you are not against "all regulation." But a lot of libertarians are.
Libertarians are not against "all regulation". That's anarchy, not liberty. Statists just like this strawman argument because it lets them dismiss the real arguments of libertarians. Don't fall for it.
What we have here, though, is not an example of regulation. It is an example of someone deciding that being a government employee gives him the right, nay, the responsibility to act like a petty tyrant
The practical problem is that regulations, to be effective, need to be enforced. Enforcement is done by those human beings we call "regulators". Being human beings, many of them lack maturity and competence, just as many folks in the general population do. So the more regulations you have, the more regulators, and the more immature tyrants are given their own little fiefdoms. This is compounded by government rules that make it hard to fire the incompetent, and that dissuade many talented professionals from seeking government employment.
You can't separate out such bad behaviors as being "not an example of regulation". There may be a theoretical distinction, but in practice, they are an inevitable consequence of granting power to real-world, flawed human beings.
These sorts of issues are exactly why libertarians are always trying to find solutions that create a system of incentives for voluntary transactions rather than government force. Lack of power over each other means we need to cooperate. Power means one person can (and often will) abuse the other. If you can design a system which lacks extreme power imbalances, you can avoid the need to create more government bureaucracies and the ills that come with them. This is not always possible, but it's worth trying to do so before creating the next bureaucratic fiefdom.
what do you seriously expect Mr. Obama to do
Lead.
You're right it's not easy. You're right the situation is complicated. You're right we can't browbeat the Chinese government into treating their people decently. To me, that says the only thing we can realistically do is lead by example. Show the peoples of the world that America still believes in something more than expediency of the moment.
Unfortunately, for far too long, under far too many Presidents, we have done little of that. We coddle dictators as long as they give us something in return. China finances our debt and sells us cheap goods. Egypt gave us aid against terrorists. Ditto for the Saudis. For years we aided Saddam Hussein. All because it was expedient in the short-term, never mind that such dictatorships foster unrest and radicalism. Never mind that this makes these peoples feel we care nothing for them and undermines our future diplomacy.
The hardest part is that Congress is not of one mind on the subject. Most politicians don't think beyond the next election, and aren't likely to go out on a limb unless they have cover. That's why you need leadership. Unfortunately, we haven't had it for a while.
If the goal was to recognize contributions to peace, free speech, or knowledge of government actions, Wikileaks is a poor candidate.
Wikileaks didn't tell us anything about the big-picture actions of the US government we didn't already know from the press. This was no Watergate with its revelations of duplicity. The US government has, in fact, been doing exactly what it's said it was doing. Those US actions have angered a lot of people, but we knew that before Wikileaks. So much for informing the public - we already knew what we needed to know to hold our leaders accountable.
What we did see is a bunch of diplomatically damaging commentaries, such as US ambassadors' assessments of the character flaws of foreign rulers. If you undermine diplomacy, you make war MORE likely, not less. So much for peace.
Finally, the most likely result of this scandal is that the free speech laws will become MORE restrictive. Historically our country has relied upon publishers to exercise some discretion about disclosure of classified information, so as not to risk our soldiers or allies on the battlefield. The press has generally tried to balance the public good against the public harm, even while it's disclosed quite a bit. Wikileaks however, by publishing names of Afghan informants, put lives at risk and gave the country a reason to consider stricter laws.
And what did Wikileaks hope to achieve by recklessly disclosing anything it could get its hands on? Other than notoriety, or vandalism of US diplomatic or anti-terror efforts, that is? It's not like the Taliban Assange aided are any friends of free speech, or of transparent and accountable government.
Now infant mortality has been conquered, we have enough to eat and a welfare state to look after us when we are old we don't have to have as many children as possible.
Actually, having a lot of children is the only thing that is going to keep the welfare state funded, as an ageing population places increasing demands upon it. We need more young people to fund all those entitlement programs.
Given that the main reason for environmental destruction and social decay is an expanding population
Why do you say that? Our population is at record highs, we protect the environment more than ever, and our society is far more just than previous ones. We polluted a lot more during the Industrial Revolution, for example, and nobody would want to live in that society rather than today, where we have less discrimination, etc. Having greater population leads to greater specialization of labor (not everyone needs to be a farmer), which produces greater wealth and technology, so that we are both technologically and economically more able to protect the environment.
I think he's suggesting that many pro-choice people find it hard to identify with a fetus as being fully human. Thus they are reluctant to use the law (which is force) to defend the fetus against the mother's decision to kill it.
But if you start to realize the fetuses could be killed because of a human quality - a quality they share with you - that may change your perspective. Imagine the reaction on Slashdot if scientists found a "geek" gene and non-geek parents started aborting such fetuses because they didn't want their kids to turn out "like that". That's the situation gays are going to face once we discover which genes predispose one to homosexuality (I say "predispose" because genes aren't a guarantee - identical twins are not always the same orientation, just more likely to be).
It's not pro-lifers that are going to abort the gay kids. It's the moderate, middle-class pro-choice folks who don't want their kids to have certain "undesirable" traits - whether it's mental retardation, being gay, having whatever gender the parents don't want, etc.
Companies need to make a compelling (yet affordable) electric car for me. That probably means the government needs to provide subsidies/incentives of some sort, because until there are buyers, there won't be models available, but until there are models available, there won't be buyers.
I agree the electrics aren't compelling yet, but I disagree with your conclusion that subsidies are necessary for this problem to be solved. If such a chicken-and-egg dilemma were really true, then we would never have had automobiles to begin with. Before the car was invented, there were no buyers of cars, and there were no models. Just horses. But businesses, such as Henry Ford's, invested their money and brainpower in new products in anticipation of future buyers. They didn't need government subsidies.
The reason why these companies want subsidies is precisely because they don't have something compelling to offer consumers, such that consumers would give up their hard-earned money voluntarily.
100% agreed. I was quoting a particular source and had been too lazy to find an alternative source with phrasing to distinguish wealth and income.
However, since then I got over my laziness, and posted stats from the NY Times here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1953940&cid=34909250
The source I got it from was Chad Hermann's the Radical Middle blog, which itself was quoting other sources and had the mixed use of "wealth" and "income" terms.
I've seen similar numbers earlier, such as the NY Times (top 1 percent had 21.8 percent of income in 2005) and NY Times Economics Blog (top 1 percent had slightly over 20% of income and paid 40% of income taxes in 2007). The latter source links to the IRS data and also has some good charts.
Surprisingly, not much lower. You hear a lot about waste/inefficiency, but although you can find any number of egregious examples of misapropriation, they amount to a small fraction of the total.
Outright fraudlent spending is pretty small. But what's harder to quantify is how much we're spending because the government "business practices" are still archaic. Normal businesses expect that each year, they need to find ways to trim their expenses to do the same work. Government bureaucracies expect to get a percentage increase each year to do the same work.
I've spent time working for a federal contractor. Initially I was naive enough to think that providing government a service for less money would be rewarded. It turns out that spending less money than your customer planned to spend is frowned upon by the government. Why? Because if the agency doesn't spend every penny, next year their budget will be cut - the powers that be reason that if you didn't spend it, you don't need it. What bureaucrat wants his budget cut? He may need the funds next year, so he's not going to risk losing every future year's funding by spending less this year.
It's logical at a local level, but crazy at the macro level.
Also, what is "waste"?
I would say it's waste if government is providing something that, however desirable to me, is either:
A) not absolutely essential for people to have, or
B) more effectively provided by organizations other than government.
Stuff that broad majorities would agree we absolutely cannot do without as a society - some degree of national defense, police protection, and basic social insurance. There will be debates over how much of these things we need, but large majorities agree that some level of these things are vital and cannot be effectively provided other than through government.
Things that we don't need the government to produce or subsidize: our entertainment (the arts). I love going to concerts, for example. But if folks like the entertainment, they'll gladly pay admission. We don't need to use taxes to force everyone to subsidize the entertainment of a few.
Examples of government doing things that would be better managed elsewhere: Central Park in New York. It used to be government-run, and was poorly maintained and crime-ridden. The city handed management over to a private company, which has to do well or lose the business, and now the park is beautifully maintained and safe.
A disproportionate amount while the filthy rich pay virtually nothing?
In some countries that may be true.
But in the US, the "rich" - to be specific, let's say the top 1% - earned 25% of the wealth and paid 38% of the income taxes. That doesn't sound like "virtually nothing".
Or more importantly, how much lower could the taxes be if waste/inefficiency was eliminated,
Probably a lot. The problem is that government bureaucracies have no competition. No accountability for poor performance means most governments (like other monopolies) perform poorly.
As a liberal, I can play this argument too: It starts with short-term tax cuts
You could, and there is truth to the argument in that direction too. But if you look at the history of government in the US, it has been pretty uniformly in the direction of bigger and more expensive, so I doubt you have to worry that we'll be getting rid of popular entitlement programs like Social Security, incrementally or otherwise.
But when an "incremental" change involves the granting of new authority to a regulator, we do need to be careful. Especially when that regulator is the FCC, which has a long history of standing in the way of competition and new technology (ie the public interest), to appease politically connected incumbents. It's a stretch to think that the FCC leopard is suddenly going to change its spots and become some sort of protector of the consumer.
I need to proofread better. I meant to say the *former* (food/lifestyle judgmentalism) is more recent.