The unintended consequences of any act upon a complex system are far greater than the intended consequence - if the intended consequence even occurs at all.
Morevoer, State intervention upon one issue opens the doors to State intervention on many issues.
Do we really think, overall, that the sum of State intervention will be positive or negative?
Given past performance, suspectibility to lobbying, short-sighted political behaviour, "it's for the children", simple incompetence and failure to understand the issues, I'd be far happier with zero State intevention.
> Half-Life 2 was worth the wait. Great story, beautiful graphics, > and inventive gameplay made the game a worthy successor to > Valve's 1998 classic.
You are bloody kidding me.
HL2 was to HL what Episode 1 was to Star Wars.
Valve made an unbeliveably basic mistake; having a non-speaking Gordon only works if there are no burning questions he would absolutely have asked - and he would have asked where the hell he's been and what and how do the resistance know about it.
HL2 was really good - graphics, gameplay, etc. But it's not a *great* because Valve fundamentally broke the plot.
> Further, her argument does not rely in any way on this "poll", no matter how > hard you try to spin it.
Then why did she say it?
However, note that I didn't read the article, so I can't be trying to argue her argument is undermined by her poll her invalid.
My post merely critiqued her statistic.
You're certainly right that she didn't say her poll was statistically valid. I think it's because she didn't even think about. I certainly had no conscious perception of just *HOW* invalid polling can be until I began reading Huff's book.
"I did an informal poll recently of chief security officers on the CSO Council, and a lot of them said they really thought the industry should be regulated,' she said, referring to the security think tank."
Funnily enough, I'm just now reading Darrell Huff's book, "How To Lie With Statistics".
The problems with her poll are manifold.
Firstly, her group is composed of securiy officers who are on the CSO Council; might their views differ from security officers not on the Council? perhaps tending to be more of the belong-to-an-organised body sort? might perhaps therefore be predisposed towards regulation?
Secondly, of the officers on the Council, which ones did she ask? all of them? or did she have a bias to tend to ask those she already knows will agree? perhaps those who found it rather boring and aren't quite so pro-organised bodies just don't turn up at the meetings.
Thirdly, what's her position in the organisation? if *she* askes the question, are people more likely to say "yes" than they would to another person?
Fourthly, are people inclined in this matter to say one thing and do another, anyway? e.g. if you do a survey asking how many people read trash tabloids and how many people read a decent newspaper, you find your survey telling you the decent newspaper should sell in the millions while the trash should sell in the thousands - and as we all know, it's the other way around!
Fifthly, even if the views of members of the CSO Council truely represent all security officers, and even if they were all polled, who is to say the view of high level security officers is not inherently biased in the first place, for example, towards regulation?
So what, at best, can her poll tell you? well, at best, it can tell you that chief security officers who regularly turn up at meetings will say to a particular pollster, for whatever reason, and there could be widely differing reasons, that they think regulation is a good idea.
Well, I have to say, that doesn't tell us very much, and that's even assuming the best case for some of the issues, which is highly unrealistic.
One of the reasons there are few providers is the very State regulation, which already exists, to force the telecoms to play nice.
If a provider pays the money to connect a home to his network, he must, by law, permit other providers to sell their services over that connection.
Result?
No one lays new connections.
Would YOU shell out your initial expensive outlay, just to see someone else - who doesn't have that cost to deal with - undercut your services?
Of course not, the idea is preposterous. But that's what you get from politicans; they're not economists and they can ignore reality, when passing laws, because of political pressure - but of course reality doesn't go away, and the practical result is disaster.
The existing major providers, who have the existing connections are of course forced to share, but as you say, they own the line in the first place.
These laws, they're all passed with the very best of intentions, but their *actual* effect is usually the opposite of their intention; they end up harming the public good, but being extremely benficial to a special interest group - in this case, the encumber providers.
As it is, there have been efforts in recent years to prevent the State from regulating new connections; this is why a few providers are now starting to invest in fibre to the home.
We all sit here and sigh with relief that the law is being used to ensure our beloved internet remains net-neutral, and yet - do we really understand the issues or just have a superfical knowledge from the media and fear based upon that?
And do we properly understand the consequences of State involement in this issue?
We applaud, from our fear, that the State will step in and ensure the net is kept neutral.
What we do we do if the State later steps in - as it will, now it has begun - and enacts bills which we detest and shudder at?
In both cases - those we applaude and those we detest - the choice has been taken out of our hands, the decision has been made by the State and will so be the same for everyone.
The solution to these matters lies properly in our own hands.
If you object, GET OUT THERE AND DO SOMETHING.
Make sure people know - convince them not to buy from a net-biased provider.
Those who care about it will have the choice to buy from someone else - they have what they want. Those who don't care can buy from who they like - they have what they want.
Don't use or applaud the use of the State to achieve your own ends and impose them upon everyone, because it will come back to bite you when the State is used to impose upon YOU.
Let people make their own individual choices with the money they pay.
Television's primacy in our culture - it *is* our culture - is so strong that it influences the nature of *all* the other means of communication. Other mediums come to reflect television, because television has defined what people think of as news; so the news other mediums show tends to reflect news in the way television shows it, because that's what people recognize *as* news.
Real news is factual, contextual, almost never has a simple answer is often abstract and involves a number of differing points of view; learning about real news takes time and investigation. Typically, people only put the effort in to investigate real news when it has a meaningful impact on their life.
Television news is visual (lots of video footage), contextless (presentation of one news item entirely separate to related or historical information), entirely concrete (*this* happened *today*), doesn't require thought (pictures of a train crash show you a scene, they don't present an idea), provides little or no background or history; and is then replaced by the next 30 second item of news. All of this news has *zero* impact on the life of the person watching. They will do nothing different because of what they've seen; in fact, they won't even *remember* what they've seen.
What's more, television news has to be entertaining, because you can switch over and watch another channel at any time. Almost all viewers are butterflies; they watch what they like most. Someone reading a book, by contrast, has usually paid for that book and usually chosen to read it; they are a willing audience who will take the time to comprehend extended thought. They will not throw the book aside the moment a paragraph becomes too complicated to absorb without thought.
Prior to television and radio, the primary medium for communication was *print*. People read books and pamphlets. As a medium, written works of some length can be used to communicate extended concepts with fluency; the medium permits genuine understanding of complex issues.
The fact that yellow journalism *co-existed* was sustainable; it was not the primary medium and the primary medium possessed properties such that it was beneficial to culture and society.
The killer problem today is that the primary medium is now television.
I got rid of mine back in 1998. It was adverts which finally pushed me over the edge. Only much later did I realise how harmful television is, both individually and to our culture and society; TV is absolutely fine for entertainment, but the process of trying to use it for other things - news in particular - is exceedingly harmful.
Let's say it takes one hour to say "do you believe in God?"
If we consider a conversation in person about something like the existance of God would take perhaps an hour, then we need to multiply that by a factor of about 1800 (takes two seconds to say "do you believe in God?") - which gives us about two and a half man months for a single conversation, which if they can gather enough wood and maintain eight hours of smoke signals per day, turns into seven and a half months real time.
The problem of course is twofold;
1. no one would undertake such a conversation 2. by the time the conversation was half-way (for example) though, the very thoughts underpinning the conversation would be likely to have changed in that time, rendering the earlier exchanges incorrect before the conversation is even complete.
It's another small step forward. This is good, but that's it.
In fact, far more interesting, is how this article is an example of the effect television has had upon the reporting of news in all mediums.
The medium through which a message passes shapes the message being transmitted.
You can't discuss philosophy using smoke signals; looking at a picture is utterly different to reading a discription of a picture, being in a church for a ceremony is entirely different to watching it on TV in your kitchen.
Television as a medium can only show entertainment.
As such, all messages shown on television are shaped into entertainment.
Unfortunately, where TV *is* our culture (do you remember back when the debate was merely if TV would reflect culture or shape it?) it strongly influences all other mediums as well.
As such, we *cannot* have an article which simply says: a researcher has made a small step forward, solving a possible problem with fusion technology.
No. What we get is "BIGGEST OBSTACLE OVERCOME!!? NUCLEAR FUSION NOW ON THE TABLE?!"
It has to be exciting. It has to grab the reader. It has to be *entertaining*.
The article describes a particular new threat - all good and well.
However, no information on the distribution of IM attacks is given. We have no idea if they are rare or frequent. How can it then be asked if IM safety is a lost cause? the question is almost orthagonal to the article; one cannot have a meaningful opionion about IM safety in general given only information about the *existance* of a particular, new threat.
Me or someone else? and if it's someone else, and they get to decide whether or not I can borrow money from another person, isn't my personal freedom being reduced? "for my own good", of course!
To be honest, I know well I can trust the main banks, and I am aware I take an increasing risk if I go elsewhere. If I've got half a brain, I'll turn to independent specialists for advice, just as for example I recently had to buy a fridge-freezer and bought a group review from Which? magazine, so I made a well-informed choice.
It's not hard for me to take steps to protect myself - but nevertheless, instead, we do in fact have that third person, the State, deciding we're not competent and telling us who we can and cannot borrow from. We lose a lot - a part of our freedom - for a gain which we could just as well obtain by our own actions, and in doing so, liberate the entire banking market, making it cheaper, far more innovative, reducing the cost of State (less bureaucracy) *and* returning our freedom to us.
As ever, though, there are no pressure groups pushing for the general public interest; there are only pressure groups pushing for specific, narrow vested interests.
I suspect the banking groups, when all is said and done, are fully in favour of regulation, because it consoladates and ensures their position in the market. They have passed the enourmous barrier to entry caused by regulation, so they're very happy to see that regulation continue; they do very well out of it indeed.
One of the drawbacks with banks et al is the insertion of the thick layer of bureaucracy between the lender and the lendee; its expensive, time consuming and impersonal.
If you have direct contact mechanisms like this, people find information far more accessable and that gives them a chance to take advantage of opportunities they wouldn't even have known about before.
It also gives people a chance to browse speculatively (bit like you do on Ebay).
My fear is that the State will barge in and regulate this to its death, since it's to do with money and lending and there's a LOT of State regulation of such industries, to the harm of everyone who wants to borrow and to the benefit of the banks, since it greatly reduces the competition they have to face.
The entire notion of unpaid overtime is complete bollocks.
It's bad for the employee, since they can be taken advantage of.
It's bad for the company, since it provides a method to ameilorate poor planning by providing unpaid labour, thus badly weakening one of the main incentives to plan properly - COST.
Companies like unpaid overtime in the same way drug addicts like their fix; it feels good ("phew, project saved!") which in fact being terribly harmful.
Like a lot of jobs, the range of pay depends on the difficulty of the work you're doing.
Some people get minimum wage, some people get plenty, and people in other countries find that the money they get paid buys a lot more of the local goods and services, so it's not useful in ANY way to directly compare only wages.
If it is acceptable to monitor the time and participants in an on-line conversation (e.g. through email snooping) then why is it not acceptable to have microphones in our gardens, even in our houses, monitoring the time and participants in our off-line conversation?
We would absolutely regard the latter as the grossest, most revolting violation of our individual privacy.
Yet here there would be an acceptance of exactly that violation, with the sole caveat that it is being limited to a given medium of communication, email.
Note in the EU that this violation is now law, for emails and in fact also for all mobile phone calls.
> > But that masks the underlying issue here; even if it were that the age were low, > > *why* does buying computer games mean you *must* give an additional part of your > > income to support schools?
> because as a school-age person, you use the school system more than someone who >... you know, doesn't go to school and should therefore pay more for them. Or, > more accurately, get your parents to pay more for them.
If this is the reason used, then why is tax only being applied to the parents of those children who buy games? surely it should be based on those parents who have kids who go to school?
I am completely in favour of people paying according to their use - but this tax does not achieve that goal anywhere near as properly as simply charging people for school services.
Why all this messing about with games?
Don't forgot, BTW, that this tax they pay for using schools - it is in no way a voluntary transaction. Parents are obliged to send their children to the local schools; they are *not* permitted to choose which school to use, no matter how appalling their local school is. In other words, they are forced by law to pay for something they have no choice over; and here we have another tax, reinforcing that situation!
> > If you accept that general taxation should pay for schools, why should that > > burden fall that much more on people who buy software?"
> First, it's not all software, it's games. Second, my guess is because a typical > video game consumer is still in school, and therefore the child should support his > school.
According to the Wiki, the average age of a game player is now 30.
But that masks the underlying issue here; even if it were that the age were low, *why* does buying computer games mean you *must* give an additional part of your income to support schools?
I see this as arbitrary.
That kid probably uses playgrounds, too, and walks down the street on the pavement. Do we also tax him for playgrounds and road maintenance? if not, *why not*, given we accept taxing for schools? on what basis would we object? and doesn't that kid also get helped if we pay some tax to keep the homeless off the streets?
And if that *kid* is benefitting in this way, well, what about adults, too? why not tax them, when they buy food, to help provide benefits to small grocery businesses, which keep going out of business.
You can make up an infinite array of causes which would "benefit" from being given money. The problem is that that money comes from tax and the more you tax, the more you hammer the economy *and* personal economic freedom until things are totally and utterly borked.
I mention personal economic freedom in particular here because if say half my income is taken in tax - which it is, as it happens - I am just as effectively prevented from buying a new house or car or holiday as if the State had restricted my *actual personal freedom* and passed laws banning me from buying a new house, car, or taking a holiday.
Economic freedom is as vital as personal freedom and taxation directly erodes economic freedom.
> > Not an explicit policy in this case, unless perhaps that people buying software > > are wealthy and can afford to pay more?"
> Luxury taxes have been around a long, long time.
So have fraud, larceny, theft and religion. Being around for a long time doesn't make something valid and correct.
Speaking as free marketier, I abhor luxury taxes. They distort the economy, making it allocate the available capital less efficiently and so reducing the overall growth of wealth that is the key to making us all better off.
> > but there is an implicit policy - that tax can be placed on fairly arbitrary > > transactions on the basis they raise revenue for "good causes", which is > > appalling.
> I'm not a big fan of the concept myself, but 'appalling' is kind of melodramatic, > don't you think?
Unfortunately no - consider the general case and the problems of definition; *who* decides exactly *what* is a "good cause"? and who decides what to tax? do we end up taxing in a way which minimizes the discouragement to industry, or do we end up taxing in ways which are politically acceptable? and how much do we end up taxing? what happens if the taxes keep increasing?
As Americans I'm sure have noticed, Congress spends the entire tax take *plus a little bit more*, which is why taxes keeping rising and the country is permanently in debt.
The notion that we can then throw even more taxes on the heap, for these dubious and almost certainly politically inspired "good causes", fills me with disgust for the corrupt and incompetent political process we are lumbered with.
Slashdot Mirror
Shit, I want one!
:-)
Got two steel bars in my back already - shame I don't get any extra sensory information from them, apart from "hey, your back aches!"
The State should not get involved.
The unintended consequences of any act upon a complex system are far greater than the intended consequence - if the intended consequence even occurs at all.
Morevoer, State intervention upon one issue opens the doors to State intervention on many issues.
Do we really think, overall, that the sum of State intervention will be positive or negative?
Given past performance, suspectibility to lobbying, short-sighted political behaviour, "it's for the children", simple incompetence and failure to understand the issues, I'd be far happier with zero State intevention.
> Half-Life 2 was worth the wait. Great story, beautiful graphics,
> and inventive gameplay made the game a worthy successor to
> Valve's 1998 classic.
You are bloody kidding me.
HL2 was to HL what Episode 1 was to Star Wars.
Valve made an unbeliveably basic mistake; having a non-speaking Gordon only works if there are no burning questions he would absolutely have asked - and he would have asked where the hell he's been and what and how do the resistance know about it.
HL2 was really good - graphics, gameplay, etc. But it's not a *great* because Valve fundamentally broke the plot.
Lovely comment in that recent /. article about that wiretapping equipment show -
The State broadly speaking may argue if we have nothing to hide, then why do we object to being watched?
If this is so, why does the State hide so much from *us*?
> Further, her argument does not rely in any way on this "poll", no matter how
> hard you try to spin it.
Then why did she say it?
However, note that I didn't read the article, so I can't be trying to argue her argument is undermined by her poll her invalid.
My post merely critiqued her statistic.
You're certainly right that she didn't say her poll was statistically valid. I think it's because she didn't even think about. I certainly had no conscious perception of just *HOW* invalid polling can be until I began reading Huff's book.
"I did an informal poll recently of chief security officers on the CSO Council, and a lot of them said they really thought the industry should be regulated,' she said, referring to the security think tank."
Funnily enough, I'm just now reading Darrell Huff's book, "How To Lie With Statistics".
The problems with her poll are manifold.
Firstly, her group is composed of securiy officers who are on the CSO Council; might their views differ from security officers not on the Council? perhaps tending to be more of the belong-to-an-organised body sort? might perhaps therefore be predisposed towards regulation?
Secondly, of the officers on the Council, which ones did she ask? all of them? or did she have a bias to tend to ask those she already knows will agree? perhaps those who found it rather boring and aren't quite so pro-organised bodies just don't turn up at the meetings.
Thirdly, what's her position in the organisation? if *she* askes the question, are people more likely to say "yes" than they would to another person?
Fourthly, are people inclined in this matter to say one thing and do another, anyway? e.g. if you do a survey asking how many people read trash tabloids and how many people read a decent newspaper, you find your survey telling you the decent newspaper should sell in the millions while the trash should sell in the thousands - and as we all know, it's the other way around!
Fifthly, even if the views of members of the CSO Council truely represent all security officers, and even if they were all polled, who is to say the view of high level security officers is not inherently biased in the first place, for example, towards regulation?
So what, at best, can her poll tell you? well, at best, it can tell you that chief security officers who regularly turn up at meetings will say to a particular pollster, for whatever reason, and there could be widely differing reasons, that they think regulation is a good idea.
Well, I have to say, that doesn't tell us very much, and that's even assuming the best case for some of the issues, which is highly unrealistic.
One of the reasons there are few providers is the very State regulation, which already exists, to force the telecoms to play nice.
If a provider pays the money to connect a home to his network, he must, by law, permit other providers to sell their services over that connection.
Result?
No one lays new connections.
Would YOU shell out your initial expensive outlay, just to see someone else - who doesn't have that cost to deal with - undercut your services?
Of course not, the idea is preposterous. But that's what you get from politicans; they're not economists and they can ignore reality, when passing laws, because of political pressure - but of course reality doesn't go away, and the practical result is disaster.
The existing major providers, who have the existing connections are of course forced to share, but as you say, they own the line in the first place.
These laws, they're all passed with the very best of intentions, but their *actual* effect is usually the opposite of their intention; they end up harming the public good, but being extremely benficial to a special interest group - in this case, the encumber providers.
As it is, there have been efforts in recent years to prevent the State from regulating new connections; this is why a few providers are now starting to invest in fibre to the home.
We all sit here and sigh with relief that the law is being used to ensure our beloved internet remains net-neutral, and yet - do we really understand the issues or just have a superfical knowledge from the media and fear based upon that?
And do we properly understand the consequences of State involement in this issue?
We applaud, from our fear, that the State will step in and ensure the net is kept neutral.
What we do we do if the State later steps in - as it will, now it has begun - and enacts bills which we detest and shudder at?
In both cases - those we applaude and those we detest - the choice has been taken out of our hands, the decision has been made by the State and will so be the same for everyone.
The solution to these matters lies properly in our own hands.
If you object, GET OUT THERE AND DO SOMETHING.
Make sure people know - convince them not to buy from a net-biased provider.
Those who care about it will have the choice to buy from someone else - they have what they want. Those who don't care can buy from who they like - they have what they want.
Don't use or applaud the use of the State to achieve your own ends and impose them upon everyone, because it will come back to bite you when the State is used to impose upon YOU.
Let people make their own individual choices with the money they pay.
Television's primacy in our culture - it *is* our culture - is so strong that it influences the nature of *all* the other means of communication. Other mediums come to reflect television, because television has defined what people think of as news; so the news other mediums show tends to reflect news in the way television shows it, because that's what people recognize *as* news.
Real news is factual, contextual, almost never has a simple answer is often abstract and involves a number of differing points of view; learning about real news takes time and investigation. Typically, people only put the effort in to investigate real news when it has a meaningful impact on their life.
Television news is visual (lots of video footage), contextless (presentation of one news item entirely separate to related or historical information), entirely concrete (*this* happened *today*), doesn't require thought (pictures of a train crash show you a scene, they don't present an idea), provides little or no background or history; and is then replaced by the next 30 second item of news. All of this news has *zero* impact on the life of the person watching. They will do nothing different because of what they've seen; in fact, they won't even *remember* what they've seen.
What's more, television news has to be entertaining, because you can switch over and watch another channel at any time. Almost all viewers are butterflies; they watch what they like most. Someone reading a book, by contrast, has usually paid for that book and usually chosen to read it; they are a willing audience who will take the time to comprehend extended thought. They will not throw the book aside the moment a paragraph becomes too complicated to absorb without thought.
Close.
I'm influenced by Neil Postman.
He develops his own line of thought which has some aspects derived from and/or similar to McLuhan's work.
Prior to television and radio, the primary medium for communication was *print*. People read books and pamphlets. As a medium, written works of some length can be used to communicate extended concepts with fluency; the medium permits genuine understanding of complex issues.
The fact that yellow journalism *co-existed* was sustainable; it was not the primary medium and the primary medium possessed properties such that it was beneficial to culture and society.
The killer problem today is that the primary medium is now television.
I got rid of mine back in 1998. It was adverts which finally pushed me over the edge. Only much later did I realise how harmful television is, both individually and to our culture and society; TV is absolutely fine for entertainment, but the process of trying to use it for other things - news in particular - is exceedingly harmful.
I think even in theory you couldn't.
Let's say it takes one hour to say "do you believe in God?"
If we consider a conversation in person about something like the existance of God would take perhaps an hour, then we need to multiply that by a factor of about 1800 (takes two seconds to say "do you believe in God?") - which gives us about two and a half man months for a single conversation, which if they can gather enough wood and maintain eight hours of smoke signals per day, turns into seven and a half months real time.
The problem of course is twofold;
1. no one would undertake such a conversation
2. by the time the conversation was half-way (for example) though, the very thoughts underpinning the conversation would be likely to have changed in that time, rendering the earlier exchanges incorrect before the conversation is even complete.
It's another small step forward. This is good, but that's it.
In fact, far more interesting, is how this article is an example of the effect television has had upon the reporting of news in all mediums.
The medium through which a message passes shapes the message being transmitted.
You can't discuss philosophy using smoke signals; looking at a picture is utterly different to reading a discription of a picture, being in a church for a ceremony is entirely different to watching it on TV in your kitchen.
Television as a medium can only show entertainment.
As such, all messages shown on television are shaped into entertainment.
Unfortunately, where TV *is* our culture (do you remember back when the debate was merely if TV would reflect culture or shape it?) it strongly influences all other mediums as well.
As such, we *cannot* have an article which simply says: a researcher has made a small step forward, solving a possible problem with fusion technology.
No. What we get is "BIGGEST OBSTACLE OVERCOME!!? NUCLEAR FUSION NOW ON THE TABLE?!"
It has to be exciting. It has to grab the reader. It has to be *entertaining*.
> Or is IM safety a lost cause?
The question is sensationalist given the context.
The article describes a particular new threat - all good and well.
However, no information on the distribution of IM attacks is given. We have no idea if they are rare or frequent. How can it then be asked if IM safety is a lost cause? the question is almost orthagonal to the article; one cannot have a meaningful opionion about IM safety in general given only information about the *existance* of a particular, new threat.
The thing is, who is to decide if I'm competent?
Me or someone else? and if it's someone else, and they get to decide whether or not I can borrow money from another person, isn't my personal freedom being reduced? "for my own good", of course!
To be honest, I know well I can trust the main banks, and I am aware I take an increasing risk if I go elsewhere. If I've got half a brain, I'll turn to independent specialists for advice, just as for example I recently had to buy a fridge-freezer and bought a group review from Which? magazine, so I made a well-informed choice.
It's not hard for me to take steps to protect myself - but nevertheless, instead, we do in fact have that third person, the State, deciding we're not competent and telling us who we can and cannot borrow from. We lose a lot - a part of our freedom - for a gain which we could just as well obtain by our own actions, and in doing so, liberate the entire banking market, making it cheaper, far more innovative, reducing the cost of State (less bureaucracy) *and* returning our freedom to us.
As ever, though, there are no pressure groups pushing for the general public interest; there are only pressure groups pushing for specific, narrow vested interests.
I suspect the banking groups, when all is said and done, are fully in favour of regulation, because it consoladates and ensures their position in the market. They have passed the enourmous barrier to entry caused by regulation, so they're very happy to see that regulation continue; they do very well out of it indeed.
Sounds amazing!
One of the drawbacks with banks et al is the insertion of the thick layer of bureaucracy between the lender and the lendee; its expensive, time consuming and impersonal.
If you have direct contact mechanisms like this, people find information far more accessable and that gives them a chance to take advantage of opportunities they wouldn't even have known about before.
It also gives people a chance to browse speculatively (bit like you do on Ebay).
My fear is that the State will barge in and regulate this to its death, since it's to do with money and lending and there's a LOT of State regulation of such industries, to the harm of everyone who wants to borrow and to the benefit of the banks, since it greatly reduces the competition they have to face.
I would say there is an expectation of an *appropriate degree of privacy*.
If I'm in my home, I expect no one else to see me.
If I'm in a street, I expect only the people on the street to see me.
What a complete waste of time.
Has the State involvement in this issue achieved anything?
And how much did it COST?
We're all sitting here paying tax through our noses.
Who's spending this money?
What are we getting for it?
How many millions have been spent on this excercise which has had no significant impact on the MS monopoly?
The entire notion of unpaid overtime is complete bollocks.
It's bad for the employee, since they can be taken advantage of.
It's bad for the company, since it provides a method to ameilorate poor planning by providing unpaid labour, thus badly weakening one of the main incentives to plan properly - COST.
Companies like unpaid overtime in the same way drug addicts like their fix; it feels good ("phew, project saved!") which in fact being terribly harmful.
I've just finished nine months of tech support.
I was paid 62k USD.
Like a lot of jobs, the range of pay depends on the difficulty of the work you're doing.
Some people get minimum wage, some people get plenty, and people in other countries find that the money they get paid buys a lot more of the local goods and services, so it's not useful in ANY way to directly compare only wages.
Film at 11.
If it is acceptable to monitor the time and participants in an on-line conversation (e.g. through email snooping) then why is it not acceptable to have microphones in our gardens, even in our houses, monitoring the time and participants in our off-line conversation?
We would absolutely regard the latter as the grossest, most revolting violation of our individual privacy.
Yet here there would be an acceptance of exactly that violation, with the sole caveat that it is being limited to a given medium of communication, email.
Note in the EU that this violation is now law, for emails and in fact also for all mobile phone calls.
> do they have any idea how much this would COST the ISP's and hosting companies??!
The cost is of course passed directly onto consumers in the form of higher charges.
It's agonizingly ironic; that Congress forces us to pay for the removal of our privacy.
> > But that masks the underlying issue here; even if it were that the age were low,
... you know, doesn't go to school and should therefore pay more for them. Or,
> > *why* does buying computer games mean you *must* give an additional part of your
> > income to support schools?
> because as a school-age person, you use the school system more than someone who
>
> more accurately, get your parents to pay more for them.
If this is the reason used, then why is tax only being applied to the parents of those children who buy games? surely it should be based on those parents who have kids who go to school?
I am completely in favour of people paying according to their use - but this tax does not achieve that goal anywhere near as properly as simply charging people for school services.
Why all this messing about with games?
Don't forgot, BTW, that this tax they pay for using schools - it is in no way a voluntary transaction. Parents are obliged to send their children to the local schools; they are *not* permitted to choose which school to use, no matter how appalling their local school is. In other words, they are forced by law to pay for something they have no choice over; and here we have another tax, reinforcing that situation!
> > If you accept that general taxation should pay for schools, why should that
y
> > burden fall that much more on people who buy software?"
> First, it's not all software, it's games. Second, my guess is because a typical
> video game consumer is still in school, and therefore the child should support his
> school.
According to the Wiki, the average age of a game player is now 30.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game#Popularit
But that masks the underlying issue here; even if it were that the age were low, *why* does buying computer games mean you *must* give an additional part of your income to support schools?
I see this as arbitrary.
That kid probably uses playgrounds, too, and walks down the street on the pavement. Do we also tax him for playgrounds and road maintenance? if not, *why not*, given we accept taxing for schools? on what basis would we object? and doesn't that kid also get helped if we pay some tax to keep the homeless off the streets?
And if that *kid* is benefitting in this way, well, what about adults, too? why not tax them, when they buy food, to help provide benefits to small grocery businesses, which keep going out of business.
You can make up an infinite array of causes which would "benefit" from being given money. The problem is that that money comes from tax and the more you tax, the more you hammer the economy *and* personal economic freedom until things are totally and utterly borked.
I mention personal economic freedom in particular here because if say half my income is taken in tax - which it is, as it happens - I am just as effectively prevented from buying a new house or car or holiday as if the State had restricted my *actual personal freedom* and passed laws banning me from buying a new house, car, or taking a holiday.
Economic freedom is as vital as personal freedom and taxation directly erodes economic freedom.
> > Not an explicit policy in this case, unless perhaps that people buying software
> > are wealthy and can afford to pay more?"
> Luxury taxes have been around a long, long time.
So have fraud, larceny, theft and religion. Being around for a long time doesn't make something valid and correct.
Speaking as free marketier, I abhor luxury taxes. They distort the economy, making it allocate the available capital less efficiently and so reducing the overall growth of wealth that is the key to making us all better off.
> > but there is an implicit policy - that tax can be placed on fairly arbitrary
> > transactions on the basis they raise revenue for "good causes", which is
> > appalling.
> I'm not a big fan of the concept myself, but 'appalling' is kind of melodramatic,
> don't you think?
Unfortunately no - consider the general case and the problems of definition; *who* decides exactly *what* is a "good cause"? and who decides what to tax? do we end up taxing in a way which minimizes the discouragement to industry, or do we end up taxing in ways which are politically acceptable? and how much do we end up taxing? what happens if the taxes keep increasing?
As Americans I'm sure have noticed, Congress spends the entire tax take *plus a little bit more*, which is why taxes keeping rising and the country is permanently in debt.
The notion that we can then throw even more taxes on the heap, for these dubious and almost certainly politically inspired "good causes", fills me with disgust for the corrupt and incompetent political process we are lumbered with.