If somebody has potential, but has bad high school grades, low SAT/ACT scores, and no other marks of distinction, that person isn't showing any signs of wanting to develop potential, and college is probably wasted on that person at that time.
I think that may be a point of disagreement. Someone can have potential, want to develop it, and for various reasons not be in a position to develop it. It's too vague of a problem with too many possible causes to give any kind of exhaustive list, but essentially they could just be in a bad situation. They might have emotional/psychological issues that need some working out, or they may have physical/economic issues.
They might be, just as an example to throw out there, poor. In being poor, they might be in a bad school. They might not be able to pay for the same SAT tutors that your other applicants used. They might be working a job to help pay for their own food and rent, without enough time to study and do homework.
So my point is, I think it would be fair to say, "The application process is still appropriate for what we're doing, because colleges are ill-equipped to help these students. Though these students may have potential, it's not clear that they could be successful in our current college system." I'm not sure that's true, but I think it's a valid argument. I don't think, however, that it's a valid argument to say, "These students either have no potential or are not interested in developing their potential."
I mean, I don't know. Maybe you're someone who just never had to face anything hard enough that you know what it's like. There are actually problems that people can't surmount without help. There are also problems that people could surmount if someone could just teach them how. I don't think it's good to be jump to the conclusion that anyone who struggles is simply "a waste of time."
The downsides of central planning manifest itself in what the OP was talking about - when self-styled hypocritical "elitists" start dictating what other people should do and think.
Right, so all this "central planning" stuff is fine as long as it's good, but it's bad if it's bad. As opposed to... um...
You just think you're so clever, don't you?
I guess. I mean, I don't really, but in comparison. At least I can make a consistent logical argument, and I sometimes notice when other people are completely full of crap. Does it really bother you, the idea of speaking to a clever person? It's too much for you?
I love this as an argument. I show that your position doesn't make any sense, and your response is to accuse me of being clever. Well... ok, I guess.
I would not argue that rail is always the best and cheapest and most efficient method of transportation for everything everywhere, no matter how it's implemented or how well it's implemented. However, the facts all point to trains having the potential of being a very effective, efficient, and convenient method of transportation in some circumstances.
Unfortunately, the United States often won't consider investing in trains in those circumstances. There are too many people who will object for purely ideological reasons, believing "trains" = "socialism". This is why we can't have nice things, because of the "get your government hands off of my Medicare" wing of the Republican party.
But, I dare say they are not abusing the privilege.
I hope you won't try to make me go back and find the articles, but I read a few different articles from different sources that indicated that part of Snowden's leaks included information that the system could easily be abused, and was being abused. "Abuse" like NSA guys reading their ex-girlfriends' emails, or something awful like that. I don't remember the details.
Do you know of anybody being tried for crimes detected though NSA gathered data?
Would we know if they were? For one thing, we know that our government holds secret trials and then puts people into secret prisons without every publicly disclosing the nature of the crime or the evidence against them. Also, there have been indications that the government has been using parallel construction in building some cases to hide where the case originated. They may have gotten the information from the NSA.
Remember that the US Constitution only applies to US territory and citizens.
Yes, and one of the things the NSA is allowed to do, apparently, without even breaking the rules, is to expand their monitoring to American citizens within... I think it was 3 degrees of separation?... of a foreign terrorist suspect. So if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who the government even suspects might possibly be a foreign terrorist, then they're allowed to monitor all of your communications. (Or something crazy like that. It's been months since I've read the articles, so I don't quite remember all of the details.)
I'm hung up on this because it was fundamentally the original point I wanted to make: People who object to government projects on the basis that it's "central planning" are usually being very inconsistent. And I'm being generous in phrasing it that way, as merely 'inconsistent'.
The people who evoke "central planning", as I think you can see, are not worth arguing with about actual issues, since they won't keep the different arguments straight.
I don't quite see where you're coming from. You seem to claim that many colleges are aimed at turning out drones, and that creative people can have difficulty being admitted...
Yeah, I think you missed something. I'm not worried about "creative" people, at least not in the way I assume you're thinking. I'm not saying, for example, "It really stinks that my son can't get into Harvard Law. I know he didn't do well in undergrad and his LSATs are terrible, but he's a really good painter!"
I'm saying that one of the major goals of our entire school system, from kindergarten through PhD programs, is to churn out nice little respectable people who do what they're told, follow the party line, reinforce conformity within the society, and never think too deeply about anything. Even the counter-culture anti-conformist environments that I've been exposed to are largely pushing a different set of standards that you're supposed to conform to.
And I'm not sure that's an entirely bad thing, and I'm not sure there's a real solution to that. But I'm pretty sure we can do better than what we do now.
So is the current college entrance process rejecting students with a lot of potential? I'm sure. Again, not "creative" types. I'm talking about potential businessmen, engineers, lawyers, doctors, or whatever else you like. I'm sure there are young people who have the potential to be outstanding who are being rejected because they don't fit well into the system.
But what I'm saying is, I think the college entrance process is the wrong place to look for reform. Let's imagine for the sake of argument that you have a 17 year old kid who could potentially be a great engineer, but essentially has not performed well in high school, at least partially due to the failure of that high school. Now if he applies to a college with the same failings of his high school, then his high-school performance actually is probably a pretty decent indicator of his future performance in that college.
Fair enough? So what I'm saying is, yes, I'm sure the college entrance process is excluding people with potential, but I'm not convinced that dealing with the entrance process does anything to solve the problem. Instead, we should look toward reforming out high schools and colleges with the aim of helping students with potential reach closer to their full potential.
And yes, I'm saying that, in my experience, most schools don't do that.
I'm not saying that it is effective, but the NSA is subject to the FISA law which includes a "court" that approves it's monitoring activities.
Except that I'm pretty sure part of the whole scandal was that Snowden revealed that the NSA wasn't necessarily restricted by FISA. The NSA has already gathered all of the information, and they've promised that they just won't look at it without a FISA warrant, but they can, and do, look at it without a warrant.
The OP you responded to pointed out a flaw of central planning in imposing an external top-down judgement of what are a person needs or wants.
Yes, and what we've established is that central planning is actually a perfectly valid way of going about things, so long as it's executed well. So that OP is full of crap. Isn't it lovely that we agreed on that?
Now don't go backtracking and being inconsistent. You've already said that central planning is fine.
Can you imagine if we had the NSA building out all the broadband services in the USA?
We'd have... like the same exact situation that we have today. They're already monitoring all of your communications. They already have access to literally everything they want to see without oversight.
I don't know about "most". The "populist 'small government' ideology" probably holds too much sway with too many people to get support from *most* Americans. However, if you could disguise municipal broadband to make people think that they're cheating the system somehow, then they'd probably be fine with it.
You claimed there was a hypocrisy in people who don't like rail over automobiles as both are "central planning". Hypocrisy is not a part of it at all, because rail is overall a worse solution to human transit demand.
Well we could debate rail vs. roads, but that's not really what we were talking about. You're right, I said that there was hypocrisy in people who prefer cars/roads over rail because rail is an example of "central planning". That is hypocritical, regardless of which mode is better.
It's kind of like someone getting angry about society eating beef because it's cruel to eat animals, and then that person arguing in favor of eating pork instead. Now, you might be able to present other arguments that we, as a society, should eat pork instead of meat. That's a different debate. But if you're arguing that we should eat pork instead of beef specifically because "cows are animals and it's immoral to butcher animals for food," then you're just being silly and inconsistent.
You think it all boils down to "central planning" even when it's spelled out how it isn't.
No, what we've been talking about since the beginning is whether "central planning" is a bad thing. I've put it in quotes because, of all the responses I've gotten, I don't think the people who hate "central planning" even have a clear idea of what it is or why it's bad.
But now you're saying central planning is fine, then, so long as it's a good plan. So that's a load off my mind. Thanks.
Oh, I'm way too old for that "Common Core" stuff. I just remember being in high school and having to fill out worksheets like, "What was the color of Atticus Finch's house?" or "What is the setting of 'The Great Gatsby'?" or "Name 3 symbols used in this chapter of 'Lord of the Flies'."
I'm making that up, but things like that, which are kind of unimportant, but they'd give us pages of those things to fill out every night. And it was basically just a scavenger hunt of little facts from the book, showing no comprehension, usually requiring a specific answer chosen by the teacher ahead of time. Like if you put "Long Island" as the setting for "The Great Gatsby", it might be wrong, because the teacher was looking for something more specific (the actual location on Long Island), more general (1920s New York), or just something arbitrary (Gatsby's house).
If there was anything to learn from those worksheets, I'd learned it by the 5th grade. No need to put me through another 7 years. By the 11th grade, I was getting something like 5 hours a night of these worksheets to fill out, and I started seriously asking the question, "What am I doing here?"
You have to understand WHY we say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Oh, I understand why. I don't think that our current situation constitutes "ain't broke". And I don't doubt that you're fine with change, which is why I made my "flippant remark". There's a common theme here of circular arguments with random exceptions entirely based on personal preferences.
"We can't do anything to try to improve our society, because that would be central planning, which is bad. Except when I'm fine with central planning, then it's good. But central planning is bad because you shouldn't ever change things, except when you should, in which case it's fine. But people shouldn't try to look ahead and make plans and decisions, so I think we should decide on a plan to stick with the status quo. Because you shouldn't try to fix things that are broken, because if it aint broke, don't fix it."
Really, I don't think what you're presenting is a logical argument. It's not a discussion of whether we should plan or how we should plan, but a statement that you favor the status quo because it suits you just fine.
You have some criticisms of society that I more or less agree with, but are irrelevant to college admissions.
If you read some of my other posts, I argue that this is not a problem with college admissions. High school is aimed at turning out drones. Many colleges are aimed at turning out drones. Why shouldn't the entrance standards be based on whether you're a good drone? It only makes sense, if our entire purpose is to turn out some particular thing, to base our evaluations and metrics on whether you're good at that particular thing.
So our education system is doing a phenomenal job at achieving its goals, and so are our entrance evaluations. The question should really be, are we happy with our education system's current goals?
the interstate highway does not tell you what to do
Well first, there are all kinds of laws about what I can and cannot do on Interstate highways. Second, by creating them, the government has established, endorsed, and subsidized a particular method of travel. In doing so, it constrains all other economic options.
Using the freeway is optional
Using trains would also be optional, in about the same way.
The Level3 article (not Netflix) is actually pointing out that Verizon, in their complaint, had accidentally admitted that they had been degrading service.
He has clearly admitted that Verizon is deliberately constraining capacity from network providers like Level 3
Central planning is involved with both forms of transportation, but you make an error to treat them as if they use an equal amount of central planning.
So then central planning is bad, unless you're using a different amount of central planning, in which case it's good. And I'm still guessing the "right amount" of central planning is when you get to have a cool car.
Everyone says trains are expensive because you have to build the train tracks, whereas with cars, people buy their own cars, totally ignoring all of the costs associated with building roads, repairing roads, paying traffic cops to police the roads, dealing with the damage from car accidents, dealing with the loss of anywhere between 30,000 and 55,000 deaths per year. Let's not forget about the hospital bills of the survivers of car accidents. Oh, then there are things like running the DMV paying for drivers ed, paying for court cases for various traffic incidents. There's really no end to it.
That's not to say that you can't have any problems with rail, but if we're being legitimate little economists here, we can't just say, "Trains are expensive because the government needs to buy the train and lay the tracks, but with cars, the government doesn't need to lay rails, and it doesn't buy cars for people." It's immensely more complicated.
WAS. Was until they cancelled their service with Level3 because Level3 didn't have sufficient peering.
Ok, when did this happen? Because as of... something like 2 weeks ago, they were with Level3. And who's their ISP now?
Yes, they are. Netflix buys service from Verizon. First, they asked Verizon for free service.
When? I don't believe you, frankly. I can't find any news article claiming that Netflix switched over to Verizon as an ISP. I know that they buckeled under pressure and paid for additional peering-- and again, peering is not the same as having Verizon as your ISP. I suspect that you're mixed up and have your facts wrong.
Everybody else just uses a good backbone provider who already has contracts in place with all of the major ISPs.
Which is what Netflix did with Level3.
Where it all comes together is that Netflix bought cheap/crappy, then tried to change the law to require that Verizon provide premium/expensive service at the cheap/crappy price, saying that all connections should be treated the same.
I'm pretty sure you're either confused or full of crap. Netflix used Level3, who had peering agreements with Verizon, which are generally free. Verizon decided they wanted a piece of the action, and degraded service. It's been shown that it was intentional, and not the result of insufficient hardware. Verizon said that if Level3/Netflix wanted better peering, they'd have to pay for it. Netflix eventually gave in, paid for the peering. As far as I know (and as far as anything I can find online) Netflix has not started using Verizon as their ISP, let alone demanding free Internet service from Verizon. Please provide a citation if you have one.
I'm going to stop now, because unless you can provide evidence, I think it's clear that you are a troll, some kind of paid shill, or somehow misinformed.
For that $50 you pay or whatever, do you expect you'll be able to transfer files at 50 Mbps to a guy in Uganda who has 56K dial up?
No. But if I have a 50mbps connection and the guy in Uganda has a 50mbps connection, I don't expect Verizon to tell me, "Sorry, but we're going to throttle that connection from the guy in Uganda intentionally, because he hasn't paid us for use of our bandwidth." It's really that simple.
If there's a routing problem or a bottleneck somewhere, and we get a crappy/slow connection between me and the guy in Uganda, that doesn't violate net neutrality. If the guy in Uganda has a 56K connection and so we're limited by that, again, not a violation of net neutrality.
But here's what's happening: Imagine Verizon notices that the guy in Uganda is making money from doing business with me, and they say, "Hey, you're making money by sending data over our network. Give us 10% of what you're making when you sell products to nine-times, or we'll watch for your IP address and throttle/block all the data that you send to nine-times so that you can't do business anymore."
And nobody would claim in this situation that the guy from Uganda is asking Verizon for a free Internet connection. If he has a 50 mbps connection through a Ugandan ISP, he's paid for his Internet connection. And I've paid for mine. So thank you, this is really a helpful example, because it's the same exact thing. Netflix is just like the guy from Uganda. And just like the Ugandan man shouldn't have to pay 10% to Verizon just because the traffic goes over Verizon's network, neither should Netflix.
Maybe a different approach will move this discussion along better. Suppose you have a friend in New York. Your New Yorkhas a 5 Mbps connection. You have a 50 Mbps connection. You use P2P software to send your friend a 5MB file. How fast do you think the file will be transferred?
Yes, that would work if Netflix were a Verizon customer who had only paid for a 5mbps connection, but they're not. Look, there are really two different (though connected) issues. One is, whether the Level3/Verizon peering agreement is fair. This is very connected, since Verizon is making complaints about this as a way to get Netflix to pay them money, and those complaints have since been debunked. But either way, Netflix is a Level3 customer who has paid Level3 for plenty of bandwidth, and I'm a Verizon customer who has paid Verizon for plenty of bandwidth. Network peering agreements are different from being a customer of the ISP.
But that's not even really an argument about net neutrality! Net neutrality is the question of whether Verizon has the right to simply say, "I'm going to throttle Netflix traffic unless they pay me," or "I'm going to prioritize my own traffic unless Netflix pays me."
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If somebody has potential, but has bad high school grades, low SAT/ACT scores, and no other marks of distinction, that person isn't showing any signs of wanting to develop potential, and college is probably wasted on that person at that time.
I think that may be a point of disagreement. Someone can have potential, want to develop it, and for various reasons not be in a position to develop it. It's too vague of a problem with too many possible causes to give any kind of exhaustive list, but essentially they could just be in a bad situation. They might have emotional/psychological issues that need some working out, or they may have physical/economic issues.
They might be, just as an example to throw out there, poor. In being poor, they might be in a bad school. They might not be able to pay for the same SAT tutors that your other applicants used. They might be working a job to help pay for their own food and rent, without enough time to study and do homework.
So my point is, I think it would be fair to say, "The application process is still appropriate for what we're doing, because colleges are ill-equipped to help these students. Though these students may have potential, it's not clear that they could be successful in our current college system." I'm not sure that's true, but I think it's a valid argument. I don't think, however, that it's a valid argument to say, "These students either have no potential or are not interested in developing their potential."
I mean, I don't know. Maybe you're someone who just never had to face anything hard enough that you know what it's like. There are actually problems that people can't surmount without help. There are also problems that people could surmount if someone could just teach them how. I don't think it's good to be jump to the conclusion that anyone who struggles is simply "a waste of time."
IF it's executed well.
The downsides of central planning manifest itself in what the OP was talking about - when self-styled hypocritical "elitists" start dictating what other people should do and think.
Right, so all this "central planning" stuff is fine as long as it's good, but it's bad if it's bad. As opposed to... um...
You just think you're so clever, don't you?
I guess. I mean, I don't really, but in comparison. At least I can make a consistent logical argument, and I sometimes notice when other people are completely full of crap. Does it really bother you, the idea of speaking to a clever person? It's too much for you?
I love this as an argument. I show that your position doesn't make any sense, and your response is to accuse me of being clever. Well... ok, I guess.
I would not argue that rail is always the best and cheapest and most efficient method of transportation for everything everywhere, no matter how it's implemented or how well it's implemented. However, the facts all point to trains having the potential of being a very effective, efficient, and convenient method of transportation in some circumstances.
Unfortunately, the United States often won't consider investing in trains in those circumstances. There are too many people who will object for purely ideological reasons, believing "trains" = "socialism". This is why we can't have nice things, because of the "get your government hands off of my Medicare" wing of the Republican party.
But, I dare say they are not abusing the privilege.
I hope you won't try to make me go back and find the articles, but I read a few different articles from different sources that indicated that part of Snowden's leaks included information that the system could easily be abused, and was being abused. "Abuse" like NSA guys reading their ex-girlfriends' emails, or something awful like that. I don't remember the details.
Do you know of anybody being tried for crimes detected though NSA gathered data?
Would we know if they were? For one thing, we know that our government holds secret trials and then puts people into secret prisons without every publicly disclosing the nature of the crime or the evidence against them. Also, there have been indications that the government has been using parallel construction in building some cases to hide where the case originated. They may have gotten the information from the NSA.
Remember that the US Constitution only applies to US territory and citizens.
Yes, and one of the things the NSA is allowed to do, apparently, without even breaking the rules, is to expand their monitoring to American citizens within... I think it was 3 degrees of separation?... of a foreign terrorist suspect. So if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who the government even suspects might possibly be a foreign terrorist, then they're allowed to monitor all of your communications. (Or something crazy like that. It's been months since I've read the articles, so I don't quite remember all of the details.)
I'm hung up on this because it was fundamentally the original point I wanted to make: People who object to government projects on the basis that it's "central planning" are usually being very inconsistent. And I'm being generous in phrasing it that way, as merely 'inconsistent'.
The people who evoke "central planning", as I think you can see, are not worth arguing with about actual issues, since they won't keep the different arguments straight.
I don't quite see where you're coming from. You seem to claim that many colleges are aimed at turning out drones, and that creative people can have difficulty being admitted...
Yeah, I think you missed something. I'm not worried about "creative" people, at least not in the way I assume you're thinking. I'm not saying, for example, "It really stinks that my son can't get into Harvard Law. I know he didn't do well in undergrad and his LSATs are terrible, but he's a really good painter!"
I'm saying that one of the major goals of our entire school system, from kindergarten through PhD programs, is to churn out nice little respectable people who do what they're told, follow the party line, reinforce conformity within the society, and never think too deeply about anything. Even the counter-culture anti-conformist environments that I've been exposed to are largely pushing a different set of standards that you're supposed to conform to.
And I'm not sure that's an entirely bad thing, and I'm not sure there's a real solution to that. But I'm pretty sure we can do better than what we do now.
So is the current college entrance process rejecting students with a lot of potential? I'm sure. Again, not "creative" types. I'm talking about potential businessmen, engineers, lawyers, doctors, or whatever else you like. I'm sure there are young people who have the potential to be outstanding who are being rejected because they don't fit well into the system.
But what I'm saying is, I think the college entrance process is the wrong place to look for reform. Let's imagine for the sake of argument that you have a 17 year old kid who could potentially be a great engineer, but essentially has not performed well in high school, at least partially due to the failure of that high school. Now if he applies to a college with the same failings of his high school, then his high-school performance actually is probably a pretty decent indicator of his future performance in that college.
Fair enough? So what I'm saying is, yes, I'm sure the college entrance process is excluding people with potential, but I'm not convinced that dealing with the entrance process does anything to solve the problem. Instead, we should look toward reforming out high schools and colleges with the aim of helping students with potential reach closer to their full potential.
And yes, I'm saying that, in my experience, most schools don't do that.
I'm not saying that it is effective, but the NSA is subject to the FISA law which includes a "court" that approves it's monitoring activities.
Except that I'm pretty sure part of the whole scandal was that Snowden revealed that the NSA wasn't necessarily restricted by FISA. The NSA has already gathered all of the information, and they've promised that they just won't look at it without a FISA warrant, but they can, and do, look at it without a warrant.
The OP you responded to pointed out a flaw of central planning in imposing an external top-down judgement of what are a person needs or wants.
Yes, and what we've established is that central planning is actually a perfectly valid way of going about things, so long as it's executed well. So that OP is full of crap. Isn't it lovely that we agreed on that?
Now don't go backtracking and being inconsistent. You've already said that central planning is fine.
Can you imagine if we had the NSA building out all the broadband services in the USA?
We'd have... like the same exact situation that we have today. They're already monitoring all of your communications. They already have access to literally everything they want to see without oversight.
I don't know about "most". The "populist 'small government' ideology" probably holds too much sway with too many people to get support from *most* Americans. However, if you could disguise municipal broadband to make people think that they're cheating the system somehow, then they'd probably be fine with it.
You claimed there was a hypocrisy in people who don't like rail over automobiles as both are "central planning". Hypocrisy is not a part of it at all, because rail is overall a worse solution to human transit demand.
Well we could debate rail vs. roads, but that's not really what we were talking about. You're right, I said that there was hypocrisy in people who prefer cars/roads over rail because rail is an example of "central planning". That is hypocritical, regardless of which mode is better.
It's kind of like someone getting angry about society eating beef because it's cruel to eat animals, and then that person arguing in favor of eating pork instead. Now, you might be able to present other arguments that we, as a society, should eat pork instead of meat. That's a different debate. But if you're arguing that we should eat pork instead of beef specifically because "cows are animals and it's immoral to butcher animals for food," then you're just being silly and inconsistent.
You think it all boils down to "central planning" even when it's spelled out how it isn't.
No, what we've been talking about since the beginning is whether "central planning" is a bad thing. I've put it in quotes because, of all the responses I've gotten, I don't think the people who hate "central planning" even have a clear idea of what it is or why it's bad.
But now you're saying central planning is fine, then, so long as it's a good plan. So that's a load off my mind. Thanks.
Oh, I'm way too old for that "Common Core" stuff. I just remember being in high school and having to fill out worksheets like, "What was the color of Atticus Finch's house?" or "What is the setting of 'The Great Gatsby'?" or "Name 3 symbols used in this chapter of 'Lord of the Flies'."
I'm making that up, but things like that, which are kind of unimportant, but they'd give us pages of those things to fill out every night. And it was basically just a scavenger hunt of little facts from the book, showing no comprehension, usually requiring a specific answer chosen by the teacher ahead of time. Like if you put "Long Island" as the setting for "The Great Gatsby", it might be wrong, because the teacher was looking for something more specific (the actual location on Long Island), more general (1920s New York), or just something arbitrary (Gatsby's house).
If there was anything to learn from those worksheets, I'd learned it by the 5th grade. No need to put me through another 7 years. By the 11th grade, I was getting something like 5 hours a night of these worksheets to fill out, and I started seriously asking the question, "What am I doing here?"
You have to understand WHY we say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Oh, I understand why. I don't think that our current situation constitutes "ain't broke". And I don't doubt that you're fine with change, which is why I made my "flippant remark". There's a common theme here of circular arguments with random exceptions entirely based on personal preferences.
"We can't do anything to try to improve our society, because that would be central planning, which is bad. Except when I'm fine with central planning, then it's good. But central planning is bad because you shouldn't ever change things, except when you should, in which case it's fine. But people shouldn't try to look ahead and make plans and decisions, so I think we should decide on a plan to stick with the status quo. Because you shouldn't try to fix things that are broken, because if it aint broke, don't fix it."
Really, I don't think what you're presenting is a logical argument. It's not a discussion of whether we should plan or how we should plan, but a statement that you favor the status quo because it suits you just fine.
You have some criticisms of society that I more or less agree with, but are irrelevant to college admissions.
If you read some of my other posts, I argue that this is not a problem with college admissions. High school is aimed at turning out drones. Many colleges are aimed at turning out drones. Why shouldn't the entrance standards be based on whether you're a good drone? It only makes sense, if our entire purpose is to turn out some particular thing, to base our evaluations and metrics on whether you're good at that particular thing.
So our education system is doing a phenomenal job at achieving its goals, and so are our entrance evaluations. The question should really be, are we happy with our education system's current goals?
the interstate highway does not tell you what to do
Well first, there are all kinds of laws about what I can and cannot do on Interstate highways. Second, by creating them, the government has established, endorsed, and subsidized a particular method of travel. In doing so, it constrains all other economic options.
Using the freeway is optional
Using trains would also be optional, in about the same way.
The Level3 article (not Netflix) is actually pointing out that Verizon, in their complaint, had accidentally admitted that they had been degrading service.
He has clearly admitted that Verizon is deliberately constraining capacity from network providers like Level 3
Did you even read the first paragraph?
Citation that Verizon is now Netflix's ISP, and that they're getting service for free. BTW, your link goes to 404, which is appropriate.
Basic engineering principle is that you don't throw away the working solution for a theoretically better solution.
Yes, I love how civilization has just stuck with the status quo. I enjoy fetching water from my well every day and riding my chariot into town.
Citation needed.
So now we're changing the subject again, and admitting that you're talking about peering issue, which is not the same as the network neutrality issue.
Good. I'm done.
Central planning is involved with both forms of transportation, but you make an error to treat them as if they use an equal amount of central planning.
So then central planning is bad, unless you're using a different amount of central planning, in which case it's good. And I'm still guessing the "right amount" of central planning is when you get to have a cool car.
Everyone says trains are expensive because you have to build the train tracks, whereas with cars, people buy their own cars, totally ignoring all of the costs associated with building roads, repairing roads, paying traffic cops to police the roads, dealing with the damage from car accidents, dealing with the loss of anywhere between 30,000 and 55,000 deaths per year. Let's not forget about the hospital bills of the survivers of car accidents. Oh, then there are things like running the DMV paying for drivers ed, paying for court cases for various traffic incidents. There's really no end to it.
That's not to say that you can't have any problems with rail, but if we're being legitimate little economists here, we can't just say, "Trains are expensive because the government needs to buy the train and lay the tracks, but with cars, the government doesn't need to lay rails, and it doesn't buy cars for people." It's immensely more complicated.
WAS. Was until they cancelled their service with Level3 because Level3 didn't have sufficient peering.
Ok, when did this happen? Because as of... something like 2 weeks ago, they were with Level3. And who's their ISP now?
Yes, they are. Netflix buys service from Verizon. First, they asked Verizon for free service.
When? I don't believe you, frankly. I can't find any news article claiming that Netflix switched over to Verizon as an ISP. I know that they buckeled under pressure and paid for additional peering-- and again, peering is not the same as having Verizon as your ISP. I suspect that you're mixed up and have your facts wrong.
Everybody else just uses a good backbone provider who already has contracts in place with all of the major ISPs.
Which is what Netflix did with Level3.
Where it all comes together is that Netflix bought cheap/crappy, then tried to change the law to require that Verizon provide premium/expensive service at the cheap/crappy price, saying that all connections should be treated the same.
I'm pretty sure you're either confused or full of crap. Netflix used Level3, who had peering agreements with Verizon, which are generally free. Verizon decided they wanted a piece of the action, and degraded service. It's been shown that it was intentional, and not the result of insufficient hardware. Verizon said that if Level3/Netflix wanted better peering, they'd have to pay for it. Netflix eventually gave in, paid for the peering. As far as I know (and as far as anything I can find online) Netflix has not started using Verizon as their ISP, let alone demanding free Internet service from Verizon. Please provide a citation if you have one.
I'm going to stop now, because unless you can provide evidence, I think it's clear that you are a troll, some kind of paid shill, or somehow misinformed.
For that $50 you pay or whatever, do you expect you'll be able to transfer files at 50 Mbps to a guy in Uganda who has 56K dial up?
No. But if I have a 50mbps connection and the guy in Uganda has a 50mbps connection, I don't expect Verizon to tell me, "Sorry, but we're going to throttle that connection from the guy in Uganda intentionally, because he hasn't paid us for use of our bandwidth." It's really that simple.
If there's a routing problem or a bottleneck somewhere, and we get a crappy/slow connection between me and the guy in Uganda, that doesn't violate net neutrality. If the guy in Uganda has a 56K connection and so we're limited by that, again, not a violation of net neutrality.
But here's what's happening: Imagine Verizon notices that the guy in Uganda is making money from doing business with me, and they say, "Hey, you're making money by sending data over our network. Give us 10% of what you're making when you sell products to nine-times, or we'll watch for your IP address and throttle/block all the data that you send to nine-times so that you can't do business anymore."
And nobody would claim in this situation that the guy from Uganda is asking Verizon for a free Internet connection. If he has a 50 mbps connection through a Ugandan ISP, he's paid for his Internet connection. And I've paid for mine. So thank you, this is really a helpful example, because it's the same exact thing. Netflix is just like the guy from Uganda. And just like the Ugandan man shouldn't have to pay 10% to Verizon just because the traffic goes over Verizon's network, neither should Netflix.
Maybe a different approach will move this discussion along better. Suppose you have a friend in New York. Your New Yorkhas a 5 Mbps connection. You have a 50 Mbps connection. You use P2P software to send your friend a 5MB file. How fast do you think the file will be transferred?
Yes, that would work if Netflix were a Verizon customer who had only paid for a 5mbps connection, but they're not. Look, there are really two different (though connected) issues. One is, whether the Level3/Verizon peering agreement is fair. This is very connected, since Verizon is making complaints about this as a way to get Netflix to pay them money, and those complaints have since been debunked. But either way, Netflix is a Level3 customer who has paid Level3 for plenty of bandwidth, and I'm a Verizon customer who has paid Verizon for plenty of bandwidth. Network peering agreements are different from being a customer of the ISP.
But that's not even really an argument about net neutrality! Net neutrality is the question of whether Verizon has the right to simply say, "I'm going to throttle Netflix traffic unless they pay me," or "I'm going to prioritize my own traffic unless Netflix pays me."