Will the CxOs pay? Doubtful; they are likely just as money-grubbing as the next executive board.
Will the poorer countries pay? Clearly not.
Can R&D and production be outsourced to those poorer countries, to reduce costs? Production, perhaps, but R&D? Doubtful. And you still have the enormous regulatory red tape imposed by e.g. the FDA during development of a new drug (unless the U.S. is not a targeted market for the new drug - which is very unlikely). The FDA's approval process adds an average of $800m to the cost of developing a single drug.
So: management doesn't pay. The recipients and poorer users of the drugs don't pay. Efficiency gains to offset the reduced revenues are an unknown. Assuming the latter is also non-existent, that leaves 1 group of people holding the bag: wealthier countries.
Of course, that's a business decision GSK is well-within its rights to make; assuming no market-distorting price controls, GSK is free to charge whatever prices it sees fit to whomever it wants...
Because people cry tears of joy when Obama speaks? Particularly when he speaks about how he is going to fix this country, and the world?
Obama said it himself: people are ascribing their hopes and dreams on a man because he is a blank-slate in terms of experience. Excellent oratory combined with a feeling of unlimited possibility and a world populace whose economic fears now likely approach those found during the Great Depression are going to lead to people believing in exceptional powers in a leader and casting their every hope and dream to him -- unjustifiably, as the man himself has said...
This is the man touting his "transparency" with the American public. Those of us who think the man is little more than a very slick used-car salesman (who has long-since oversold his case and has since his election been trying to back-down his true-believers and the media lapdogs who bend to his every whim) in a nice suit will laugh at the notion that he will actually be usefully-transparent with us. But, like his legions of naive believers, let's idealistically assume those Obammunists have their way.
So what? If Rod Blagojevich, Mayor Daley, and the rest of the Chicago crew -- that den of thieves of Crook County from which Barack is emerging -- haven't convinced you that more transparency in government is needed, nothing will.
Despite the more-limited powers enumerated by the Constitution, the Presidency has devolved into too-important a job to be entrusted to a single individual, ever. The POTUS, by design, is not a King. IMO, there is no email, phone call, written document, or word spoken, or any other moment in the President's life which should not be recorded and made available for all to see on the Internet (and though it would be popular for the purpose of outrage, I doubt there is much titillation to be had from Clinton's moments with Monica). *That* is true transparency -- the likes of which we will never see under any administration, ever -- not in the wildest fantasies of David Brin.
I could make exceptions for specific, i.e. technical details (dates, times, locations, force vectors, etc.) of ongoing or planned military offensives. But general discussions of such offensives? No (not that its lack is generally a concern anymore, given the evolved state of media attention towards governments).
That's the one of the main reasons I moved from becoming a sysadmin to doing development.:) (That, and the greater intellectual challenge, individual power and control, and far-greater creativity involved...)
Other jobs do demand unpaid work outside of work (even government-employed lawyers often work on Sundays). But IT is unique in:
* Its very-rapid evolution, demanding lots of unpaid study and training time just to stay current with the marketplace.
* Its Puritanical, irrationally anti-union, and generally-libertarian culture, which says "more work is good, at any cost!" and "faster progress, at any cost!" (including human lives)
* Its people tend to be loner shut-in types who've had little or no respect their whole lives, and when management comes crying to them for help, they feel great to oblige and finally, after perhaps 1-2 decades without it, gain some measure of respect and admiration.
* Its people tend to be non-confrontational; "wimps", as the high school jocks called us. We tend not to stand-up for ourselves and fight for our rights and our free time and dignity and self-respect.
All these things can change; it doesn't *have* to be this way. But these facts require cultural change -- and cultural changes don't often happen from within; they require an external force, either force of law or force of market change (i.e. environment) which changes the behavior of the culture.
I don't see that happening. So, you can either fight it and likely lose, put up with it (as I do, for now), or find a job in another profession...
This is true. However, this culture is based (I have learned from an HR professional) on the flawed HR assumption that a salaried person is in control of their own hours, is capable of planning their own work, and so forth. It originally imagined that such professionals might work less than 40 hours/week if they were good enough.
This is not reality: 40 hours/week is the minimum, assuming you and your co-workers are perfect and management doesn't feel like giving you extra work to do in your spare time for free.
Hence, the fact is that labor laws need to be aggressively changed to deal with this flawed, inaccurate culture. For a variety of reasons (but mainly that he is too gutless), I sincerely doubt "Mr. Change" himself, Barack Obama, is going to do a damn thing about it.
People in developed nations live in economies that can be described to varying degrees as "capitalist" (capitalist-enough, at least, to use a price system) -- so why are the white-collar professionals in these economies (most-notoriously those of us in the U.S., though I'm biased here) giving away their time for no extra pay?
That is, why are we working for free? Isn't that what communists do, "for the good of the collective" (or "the good of the firm", which is a form of collective)? Out of the greedy desire to get more for less, that is what businesspeople demand of us...
(Yes, as a salaried consultant, I work lots of unpaid overtime, with the promise of rapid title and salary increases and corporate ladder-climbing. Ultimately, I enjoy my work, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like my free time back.)
Psst: want to know why fewer developers than ever are willing to code for free? Because fewer are getting paid these days, due to mass layoffs!
When one is unsure where their next paycheck is coming-from, developing for an OSS project is going to drop in priority. The fact that the Linux kernel is seeing a record low number of devs ought to be supporting correlation here...
I agree with the author's proposal of deregulation (at least of the stupid parts of SarbOx).
But he's a journalist, not an economist or a lawyer; ergo, he doesn't really know anything about the subject about which he is pontificating. Why should we listen to him?
Dear God!! CODE REVIEWS! Heaven forbid we might be required to *gasp* do our jobs correctly, instead of just whipping-together whatever fancy comes to mind and pushing it out the door!
The developer world has (for the current developer-fad's iteration) been taken over by agilist monkeys who want to rid the developer world of having to produce documentation, having to do QA and rigorous bug-checking and fixing, status meetings, documented and well-reviewed requirements gathering and design -- basically, everything except pure coding.
Everything except, you know, the less-fun work that is necessary to do our jobs properly and to communicate and pass our work on to project non-members...
Just because your car is powered by electricity doesn't mean the electricity was generated without the use of fossil fuels. Might I remind the greens that most electricity in the U.S. is (unfortunately) still produced by burning coal? The same coal combustion which causes acid rain?
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (but solar and tidal energy are as close as we'll get).
(Disclaimer: IANAE, but I do have both a minor degree and a personal curiosity in the subject...)
It's simple. When you are booting your computer for work, to perform work-specific duties, are you performing an action you otherwise *would not* have performed, if you were not paid?
That is, would you have booted your work computer if you were not paid to do it?
Not likely, if you are even a *slightly* rational consumer of your time; it's a waste of your time to do so.
So, you boot the computer because somebody else has asked (or more likely, demanded) you to do so. Unless you plan to work for free, in an even vaguely market-based economy, people trade their freedom and their free time (whether an assumed quantity of time, for salaried people, or pay-as-the-employer-goes, for hourly people) for money. That's how most of us earn a paycheck.
Therefore, the employers should pay their employees. Duh.
This isn't a criticism of the poster, but rather, of the state of general human knowledge, reasoning, and our educational system. Why does Econ101 and basic financial literacy remain so elusive a subject to business, government, and the public at-large such that this is a serious question?
It's true! And in a CS dept, the sex will be bad because the guys have no experience, and the money... well, how does a CS major get money when the jobs are all going to BRIC countries?:P
Nonsense! We live in Barack Obama's world now, where not a regulation conceived by any inherently-imperfect man could ever *possibly* be imperfect, undesirable, counterproductive, or unjustifiable.
This is the Age of Obama: the sooner we enslave children (via mandatory national service) and take away freedoms (through increased regulation) and stifle what little remains of an actual free-market in the U.S. (so it can be blamed for all our ills, yet-again), the better.
C&E News is apparently a tool of those dirty libertarians. For shame!!
I've used Songbird on OSX, because it's the next-best thing to Winamp on the OS. iTunes is tolerable, but I hate the way it organizes music and -- in characteristic Apple style -- is inflexible about letting the user customize its behavior.
Unfortunately, Songbird (0.7, anyway) uses about 2-3x the RAM that iTunes does. It's slower to load MP3s than iTunes. It searches the library and playlists more slowly than iTunes (even after they somehow improved its behavior from an even-worse search design). And it can't play all MP3s -- that's right, I have MP3s in my library that Songbird simply won't play. Why? Beats me -- they play just fine in iTunes and Winamp.
And then there's music-player device interop. Let me know when I can sync music with my Windows Mobile phone (over Bluetooth, or wi-fi, or (god forbid) ActiveSync)...
Songbird has potential, but it needs to lose weight and refine its technique before it can fly with the big birds. (Sorry, couldn't help myself...)
What joke? I have the misfortune of living in Obama's senatorial district. People here actually seem to think Obama *can* walk on water, if only they believe as much as he does that it's possible!
Seriously, I've never seen more sheep in my life. I feel bad when I crush the hopes and dreams of friends and family, but in the case of Obama voters, I think I am actually going to enjoy the next 4 years of seeing their dreams -- fantasies, really -- written on the blank slate-wall of Obama, torn-down by reality.
Just like I would've enjoyed seeing the same among Bush's gang of neocons -- if only their actions didn't have such a negative impact on hundreds of millions (or more) of people...
Hot off the press today in the American Statistical Association is a study *PROVING* -- that's right, despite only citing a non-limit probability, a logical deduction has been formed! -- the link between lazy studies and axes ground.
The study PROVED that 88% of all studies which find a correlation between independent variables were lazy studies, and, in a freak occurrence of nature, that the same studies were also grinding political axes. It also demonstrated a very strong positive correlation between the laziness of the researcher and the number of axes ground.
The study has been hailed by various sources as conclusive evidence demonstrating that correlation is, in fact, equivalent to causation.
It could well be that even then, Apple would reject it from the App Store on anti-competitive grounds -- but contrary to this week's speculation, that has not happened.
What is "anti-competitive" about allowing Opera to release their browser on Apple's phone?
This is a complete misunderstanding of the term "anti-competitive" -- or a lack of the most basic English skills, take your pick.
The action of Apple's rejection of the browser on Apple's phone would be an example of Apple behaving anti-competitively -- after all, when the quantity of competing products in a given market increases, this is obviously an increase in competition.
Thus, permitting Opera to release the browser on the iPhone would be exemplify increased competition -- it would be "pro-competitive", to turn-around the submitter's incorrect phrase.
Why does Apple get a free pass on Slashdot with regards to its anti-competitive behavior -- preventing apps which compete with their own from running on the phone they produce -- whereas Microsoft does not (on Windows)?
We have several examples of this behavior from Apple. Where is the outrage?
Oh, right, Apple has the "OOOH, SHINY!!!" effect brought-about by Steve Jobs' reality distortion field. Carry on then!
No doubt. I didn't mean to imply jaywalking tickets *never* occur (although that seems to be how I wrote), only that it's very infrequent. A particularly-egregious, dangerous form of jaywalking (like crossing diagonally at an intersection with 2 or more 4-lane streets) is more likely to draw police ire...
But, like laws against bathing in the nude in the privacy of one's own bathroom (Tampa, FL), I'm sure there will be edge cases where somebody will simply cross the street illegally when a cop is having a bad day...
Preacher, meet choir.:P I completely agree about marijuana, hemp -- basically every drug under the sun. For adult use, of course... And only if the costs of using such drugs can be largely (or entirely) confined to the user (so, if we eventually come to have socialized healthcare, then the negative health effects of drug use is not taxpayer-supported), or, at least, that sufficient taxes exist on the drugs to compensate for the externalities of drug use...
I'm a big believer that the "war" on drugs is an abject failure and a monstrous waste of tax dollars that could've been either better-spent elsewhere (on healthcare for children? On fighting corruption in government? On fundamental science research? On better-educating the public about personal finance and economics, so we might've reduced the impact of this current financial crisis?) or returned to the public's pockets, or more-likely, some combination thereof...
I seem to recall a word problem in Calculus I in which the concept of an infinite limit was used to demonstrate the cost of the war on drugs as the level of enforcement rose.:)
Very true. That wasn't my intention, but I can see how my (less-great as I re-read it) writing could suggest such a thing... If my history books and various articles (and movies, and TV shows, etc.) aren't completely lying to me, the mob's influence is certainly far-less than it was even, say, 20 years ago...
It's not actually happening in the UK. Unlike the US, doing this kind of thing is illegal in the UK.
A law without enforcement is no law at all, practically-speaking. It is merely a dream - an ideal.
Apply your logic to jaywalking. In the U.S., jaywalking -- crossing the street outside of a crosswalk -- is a crime. But it is a very minor one; virtually nobody is ever bothered for doing it. I personally, like thousands of others daily in major metropolitan areas, have jaywalked in immediate, unobstructed view of police officers in squad cars, or on bicycles, or horses, etc.. Not once have I or anybody I've ever seen or heard of been so much as talked-to about it.
The same thing happens with much more serious crimes: murders go unsolved all the time; the Mafia exists in spite of powerful RICO statutes and anti-racketeering laws, tens of millions spent on FBI investigations, etc..
So long as the level of enforcement is insufficient to enforce the law, the law is irrelevant. In economic terms, if the supply of illegal behavior is not met with equivalent demand for enforcement, the illegal behavior above the supply/demand equilibrium will go unpunished...
Why should any CxOs be imprisoned? Has anything they have done wrong been illegal?
If not, then there is no legal basis for them to face imprisonment. There is only your revengeful desire for punitive damages for actions they were within their rights to do, and the rest of us, as consumers, were free not to support -- but we, as consumers, played-along in their game.
Should consumers who bought their services -- thus providing those CxOs the money to make them the fat-cats they are -- go to jail as well?
I suppose you think Obama will be a great President too -- just like every other economic fool who believes that taxpayer funding makes things "free"...
Golly, what do you mean? Politicians have only the public's best interests at heart.
Well, Democratic politicians anyway - after all, only Democrats care about people... And they NEVER make mistakes in government!
This country is going to be taken over in November by an ideologue socialist (presently masquerading as a moderate to garner votes) as President and an technological moron as VP.
Slashdot Mirror
TANSTAAFL. So how does GSK afford to do this?
Will the CxOs pay? Doubtful; they are likely just as money-grubbing as the next executive board.
Will the poorer countries pay? Clearly not.
Can R&D and production be outsourced to those poorer countries, to reduce costs? Production, perhaps, but R&D? Doubtful. And you still have the enormous regulatory red tape imposed by e.g. the FDA during development of a new drug (unless the U.S. is not a targeted market for the new drug - which is very unlikely). The FDA's approval process adds an average of $800m to the cost of developing a single drug.
So: management doesn't pay. The recipients and poorer users of the drugs don't pay. Efficiency gains to offset the reduced revenues are an unknown. Assuming the latter is also non-existent, that leaves 1 group of people holding the bag: wealthier countries.
Of course, that's a business decision GSK is well-within its rights to make; assuming no market-distorting price controls, GSK is free to charge whatever prices it sees fit to whomever it wants...
Because people cry tears of joy when Obama speaks? Particularly when he speaks about how he is going to fix this country, and the world?
Obama said it himself: people are ascribing their hopes and dreams on a man because he is a blank-slate in terms of experience. Excellent oratory combined with a feeling of unlimited possibility and a world populace whose economic fears now likely approach those found during the Great Depression are going to lead to people believing in exceptional powers in a leader and casting their every hope and dream to him -- unjustifiably, as the man himself has said...
This is the man touting his "transparency" with the American public. Those of us who think the man is little more than a very slick used-car salesman (who has long-since oversold his case and has since his election been trying to back-down his true-believers and the media lapdogs who bend to his every whim) in a nice suit will laugh at the notion that he will actually be usefully-transparent with us. But, like his legions of naive believers, let's idealistically assume those Obammunists have their way.
So what? If Rod Blagojevich, Mayor Daley, and the rest of the Chicago crew -- that den of thieves of Crook County from which Barack is emerging -- haven't convinced you that more transparency in government is needed, nothing will.
Despite the more-limited powers enumerated by the Constitution, the Presidency has devolved into too-important a job to be entrusted to a single individual, ever. The POTUS, by design, is not a King. IMO, there is no email, phone call, written document, or word spoken, or any other moment in the President's life which should not be recorded and made available for all to see on the Internet (and though it would be popular for the purpose of outrage, I doubt there is much titillation to be had from Clinton's moments with Monica). *That* is true transparency -- the likes of which we will never see under any administration, ever -- not in the wildest fantasies of David Brin.
I could make exceptions for specific, i.e. technical details (dates, times, locations, force vectors, etc.) of ongoing or planned military offensives. But general discussions of such offensives? No (not that its lack is generally a concern anymore, given the evolved state of media attention towards governments).
That's the one of the main reasons I moved from becoming a sysadmin to doing development. :) (That, and the greater intellectual challenge, individual power and control, and far-greater creativity involved...)
I wish I could give you +100, Damn Right!
Other jobs do demand unpaid work outside of work (even government-employed lawyers often work on Sundays). But IT is unique in:
* Its very-rapid evolution, demanding lots of unpaid study and training time just to stay current with the marketplace.
* Its Puritanical, irrationally anti-union, and generally-libertarian culture, which says "more work is good, at any cost!" and "faster progress, at any cost!" (including human lives)
* Its people tend to be loner shut-in types who've had little or no respect their whole lives, and when management comes crying to them for help, they feel great to oblige and finally, after perhaps 1-2 decades without it, gain some measure of respect and admiration.
* Its people tend to be non-confrontational; "wimps", as the high school jocks called us. We tend not to stand-up for ourselves and fight for our rights and our free time and dignity and self-respect.
All these things can change; it doesn't *have* to be this way. But these facts require cultural change -- and cultural changes don't often happen from within; they require an external force, either force of law or force of market change (i.e. environment) which changes the behavior of the culture.
I don't see that happening. So, you can either fight it and likely lose, put up with it (as I do, for now), or find a job in another profession...
This is true. However, this culture is based (I have learned from an HR professional) on the flawed HR assumption that a salaried person is in control of their own hours, is capable of planning their own work, and so forth. It originally imagined that such professionals might work less than 40 hours/week if they were good enough.
This is not reality: 40 hours/week is the minimum, assuming you and your co-workers are perfect and management doesn't feel like giving you extra work to do in your spare time for free.
Hence, the fact is that labor laws need to be aggressively changed to deal with this flawed, inaccurate culture. For a variety of reasons (but mainly that he is too gutless), I sincerely doubt "Mr. Change" himself, Barack Obama, is going to do a damn thing about it.
People in developed nations live in economies that can be described to varying degrees as "capitalist" (capitalist-enough, at least, to use a price system) -- so why are the white-collar professionals in these economies (most-notoriously those of us in the U.S., though I'm biased here) giving away their time for no extra pay?
That is, why are we working for free? Isn't that what communists do, "for the good of the collective" (or "the good of the firm", which is a form of collective)? Out of the greedy desire to get more for less, that is what businesspeople demand of us...
(Yes, as a salaried consultant, I work lots of unpaid overtime, with the promise of rapid title and salary increases and corporate ladder-climbing. Ultimately, I enjoy my work, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like my free time back.)
Psst: want to know why fewer developers than ever are willing to code for free? Because fewer are getting paid these days, due to mass layoffs!
When one is unsure where their next paycheck is coming-from, developing for an OSS project is going to drop in priority. The fact that the Linux kernel is seeing a record low number of devs ought to be supporting correlation here...
I agree with the author's proposal of deregulation (at least of the stupid parts of SarbOx).
But he's a journalist, not an economist or a lawyer; ergo, he doesn't really know anything about the subject about which he is pontificating. Why should we listen to him?
Dear God!! CODE REVIEWS! Heaven forbid we might be required to *gasp* do our jobs correctly, instead of just whipping-together whatever fancy comes to mind and pushing it out the door!
The developer world has (for the current developer-fad's iteration) been taken over by agilist monkeys who want to rid the developer world of having to produce documentation, having to do QA and rigorous bug-checking and fixing, status meetings, documented and well-reviewed requirements gathering and design -- basically, everything except pure coding.
Everything except, you know, the less-fun work that is necessary to do our jobs properly and to communicate and pass our work on to project non-members...
Just because your car is powered by electricity doesn't mean the electricity was generated without the use of fossil fuels. Might I remind the greens that most electricity in the U.S. is (unfortunately) still produced by burning coal? The same coal combustion which causes acid rain?
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (but solar and tidal energy are as close as we'll get).
(Disclaimer: IANAE, but I do have both a minor degree and a personal curiosity in the subject...)
It's simple. When you are booting your computer for work, to perform work-specific duties, are you performing an action you otherwise *would not* have performed, if you were not paid?
That is, would you have booted your work computer if you were not paid to do it?
Not likely, if you are even a *slightly* rational consumer of your time; it's a waste of your time to do so.
So, you boot the computer because somebody else has asked (or more likely, demanded) you to do so. Unless you plan to work for free, in an even vaguely market-based economy, people trade their freedom and their free time (whether an assumed quantity of time, for salaried people, or pay-as-the-employer-goes, for hourly people) for money. That's how most of us earn a paycheck.
Therefore, the employers should pay their employees. Duh.
This isn't a criticism of the poster, but rather, of the state of general human knowledge, reasoning, and our educational system. Why does Econ101 and basic financial literacy remain so elusive a subject to business, government, and the public at-large such that this is a serious question?
It's true! And in a CS dept, the sex will be bad because the guys have no experience, and the money... well, how does a CS major get money when the jobs are all going to BRIC countries? :P
Nonsense! We live in Barack Obama's world now, where not a regulation conceived by any inherently-imperfect man could ever *possibly* be imperfect, undesirable, counterproductive, or unjustifiable.
This is the Age of Obama: the sooner we enslave children (via mandatory national service) and take away freedoms (through increased regulation) and stifle what little remains of an actual free-market in the U.S. (so it can be blamed for all our ills, yet-again), the better.
C&E News is apparently a tool of those dirty libertarians. For shame!!
I've used Songbird on OSX, because it's the next-best thing to Winamp on the OS. iTunes is tolerable, but I hate the way it organizes music and -- in characteristic Apple style -- is inflexible about letting the user customize its behavior.
Unfortunately, Songbird (0.7, anyway) uses about 2-3x the RAM that iTunes does. It's slower to load MP3s than iTunes. It searches the library and playlists more slowly than iTunes (even after they somehow improved its behavior from an even-worse search design). And it can't play all MP3s -- that's right, I have MP3s in my library that Songbird simply won't play. Why? Beats me -- they play just fine in iTunes and Winamp.
And then there's music-player device interop. Let me know when I can sync music with my Windows Mobile phone (over Bluetooth, or wi-fi, or (god forbid) ActiveSync)...
Songbird has potential, but it needs to lose weight and refine its technique before it can fly with the big birds. (Sorry, couldn't help myself...)
What joke? I have the misfortune of living in Obama's senatorial district. People here actually seem to think Obama *can* walk on water, if only they believe as much as he does that it's possible!
Seriously, I've never seen more sheep in my life. I feel bad when I crush the hopes and dreams of friends and family, but in the case of Obama voters, I think I am actually going to enjoy the next 4 years of seeing their dreams -- fantasies, really -- written on the blank slate-wall of Obama, torn-down by reality.
Just like I would've enjoyed seeing the same among Bush's gang of neocons -- if only their actions didn't have such a negative impact on hundreds of millions (or more) of people...
Hot off the press today in the American Statistical Association is a study *PROVING* -- that's right, despite only citing a non-limit probability, a logical deduction has been formed! -- the link between lazy studies and axes ground.
The study PROVED that 88% of all studies which find a correlation between independent variables were lazy studies, and, in a freak occurrence of nature, that the same studies were also grinding political axes. It also demonstrated a very strong positive correlation between the laziness of the researcher and the number of axes ground.
The study has been hailed by various sources as conclusive evidence demonstrating that correlation is, in fact, equivalent to causation.
What is "anti-competitive" about allowing Opera to release their browser on Apple's phone?
This is a complete misunderstanding of the term "anti-competitive" -- or a lack of the most basic English skills, take your pick.
The action of Apple's rejection of the browser on Apple's phone would be an example of Apple behaving anti-competitively -- after all, when the quantity of competing products in a given market increases, this is obviously an increase in competition.
Thus, permitting Opera to release the browser on the iPhone would be exemplify increased competition -- it would be "pro-competitive", to turn-around the submitter's incorrect phrase.
Why does Apple get a free pass on Slashdot with regards to its anti-competitive behavior -- preventing apps which compete with their own from running on the phone they produce -- whereas Microsoft does not (on Windows)?
We have several examples of this behavior from Apple. Where is the outrage?
Oh, right, Apple has the "OOOH, SHINY!!!" effect brought-about by Steve Jobs' reality distortion field. Carry on then!
No doubt. I didn't mean to imply jaywalking tickets *never* occur (although that seems to be how I wrote), only that it's very infrequent. A particularly-egregious, dangerous form of jaywalking (like crossing diagonally at an intersection with 2 or more 4-lane streets) is more likely to draw police ire...
But, like laws against bathing in the nude in the privacy of one's own bathroom (Tampa, FL), I'm sure there will be edge cases where somebody will simply cross the street illegally when a cop is having a bad day...
Preacher, meet choir. :P I completely agree about marijuana, hemp -- basically every drug under the sun. For adult use, of course... And only if the costs of using such drugs can be largely (or entirely) confined to the user (so, if we eventually come to have socialized healthcare, then the negative health effects of drug use is not taxpayer-supported), or, at least, that sufficient taxes exist on the drugs to compensate for the externalities of drug use...
I'm a big believer that the "war" on drugs is an abject failure and a monstrous waste of tax dollars that could've been either better-spent elsewhere (on healthcare for children? On fighting corruption in government? On fundamental science research? On better-educating the public about personal finance and economics, so we might've reduced the impact of this current financial crisis?) or returned to the public's pockets, or more-likely, some combination thereof...
I seem to recall a word problem in Calculus I in which the concept of an infinite limit was used to demonstrate the cost of the war on drugs as the level of enforcement rose. :)
Very true. That wasn't my intention, but I can see how my (less-great as I re-read it) writing could suggest such a thing... If my history books and various articles (and movies, and TV shows, etc.) aren't completely lying to me, the mob's influence is certainly far-less than it was even, say, 20 years ago...
A law without enforcement is no law at all, practically-speaking. It is merely a dream - an ideal.
Apply your logic to jaywalking. In the U.S., jaywalking -- crossing the street outside of a crosswalk -- is a crime. But it is a very minor one; virtually nobody is ever bothered for doing it. I personally, like thousands of others daily in major metropolitan areas, have jaywalked in immediate, unobstructed view of police officers in squad cars, or on bicycles, or horses, etc.. Not once have I or anybody I've ever seen or heard of been so much as talked-to about it.
The same thing happens with much more serious crimes: murders go unsolved all the time; the Mafia exists in spite of powerful RICO statutes and anti-racketeering laws, tens of millions spent on FBI investigations, etc..
So long as the level of enforcement is insufficient to enforce the law, the law is irrelevant. In economic terms, if the supply of illegal behavior is not met with equivalent demand for enforcement, the illegal behavior above the supply/demand equilibrium will go unpunished...
Why should any CxOs be imprisoned? Has anything they have done wrong been illegal?
If not, then there is no legal basis for them to face imprisonment. There is only your revengeful desire for punitive damages for actions they were within their rights to do, and the rest of us, as consumers, were free not to support -- but we, as consumers, played-along in their game.
Should consumers who bought their services -- thus providing those CxOs the money to make them the fat-cats they are -- go to jail as well?
"Free" health care? Where?
Anybody who claims anything is somehow "free" demonstrates economic cluelessness. You really think there is no cost to medicine? Doctors work for free? Drugs require no time or money/property to develop? Hospitals erect themselves out of infinitely-available materials?
I suppose you think Obama will be a great President too -- just like every other economic fool who believes that taxpayer funding makes things "free"...
Golly, what do you mean? Politicians have only the public's best interests at heart.
Well, Democratic politicians anyway - after all, only Democrats care about people... And they NEVER make mistakes in government!
This country is going to be taken over in November by an ideologue socialist (presently masquerading as a moderate to garner votes) as President and an technological moron as VP.