Drug companies do not make particularly high profits. They take great risks and have great failures (for example, when a drug shows deadly side effects in the late stage of trials and therefore is denied FDA approval after having spent 100's of millions of dollars in R&D and trials). In exchange, they have to have great successes - and those of us in the U.S. pay a disproportionate share of these. I doubt that many pharmaceutical companies routinely sell products at a "loss" (i.e., less than the cost of manufacture) overseas - but if not for the hope of recovering R&D costs from the U.S. market, some drugs just wouldn't exist and would hence be unavailable at any price to anyone.
Which is more ethical? On the one hand, to have policies (such as price controls) which result in a useful drug never having been developed. On the other hand, to have policies that result in the drug being developed but being very expensive until it falls out of patent protection? In the former case, people will still be dying unnecessarily twenty years down the road; in the latter case, twenty years down the road, the (generic version of the) drug will likely be very affordable and available to many.
Perhaps you would prefer to go back to the time when you had to save 50% of the value of a home in order to get a mortgage on it?
And, how's relaxation by Freddie and Fannie and banks on rules for granting mortgages working out?
Seriously, a down payment of 50% might be about right -- as it's likely that the value of housing will drop almost 40% from the peak and anyone who bought at the peak with less than about 40% down is likely to let the bank foreclose (esp in a non-recourse state) - which can easily decline into a downward spiral of excess housing inventory and tight credit even in the absence of the CDO mess.
We also make the ridiculous decision to spend 100's of thousands of dollars to "save" tiny preemies (who are much more likely to have long-term deficiencies - incurring yet more costs to society). Yet, the same fetus could have, instead, been legally aborted for no medical reason whatsoever.
As a taxpayer, I'm confused why I should spend a penny to save a (living expelled) fetus's life when the government also allows the mother to kill it freely and legally for any (or even no) reason. If the "baby" has a "right" to health care at my expense, certainly it also has a right to not be killed by another party on a whim.
This is another inconsistency we need to resolve - and socialized medicine will make it more critical to do so.
(BTW, I'm generally against government bans on abortion -- but I don't find a constitutional "right" to abortion and believe, as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided).
Health insurance isn't like that. People practically can't walk away from their health insurers, don't have another option.
They can often switch insurance companies. Those that have coverage under an employer group plan can (and do) complain to their employer management if the insurance company is screwing them - sometimes this gets the problem fixed, sometimes if the employer has enough complaints (i.e., dissatisfied employees), the employer will switch insurers (after all, most employers want happy employees).
Do the allowable legal costs scale with case complexity or just the "value" of the claim(s)? For example, consider two wrongful death cases where everyone agrees in both cases that the "value" of the death is $1M...
In the first case, the death arose from a automobile collision in an intersection and there are two eye witnesses -- one says the plaintiff clearly entered the intersection long after their light was red, the other says the defendant clearly entered the intersection long after their light was red. There are no cameras, there are no skid marks (neither party hit the brakes at all), etc. This case hinges almost entirely on how credible the judge/jury finds each witness (of course there is some technical work required regarding things like lighting/angle of view of each witness etc.).
In the second case, a building collapsed on the defendant. The fault may lie with one or more of many parties (including the architect, the structural engineer, the contractor, multiple subcontractors, the building inspector, the manufacturers and/or suppliers of one or more of the building materials, and the building management and maintenance staff) and each party tries to shift blame to other party(ies). Proving one's case (or defending oneself) requires extensive witness depositions, expert analysis, and expert witnesses.
Since the second case is so much more complex, although of no more "value" than the first, are higher legal fees awarded in the second case? If not, it would seem that the lawyers in the first case would get overpaid or the lawyers in the second case would get underpaid -- making it difficult to ever find lawyers pursue a complex case.
Wouldn't removing the cites make it difficult or impossible to review the paper well? If the paper claims "The increase in splorto has been associated with a decline in blorflette[1]", but the reviewer can't tell what [1] refers to, how can the reviewer know for sure that the author is interpreting [1] correctly in this context (perhaps [1] actually only examined blue splorto, not yellow splorto) - esp. if it's not an obscure source.
I've wondered about the viability of an alternative blended version of "loser pays". Under such a scheme, the losing party would reimburse the winning party for their actual expenses but only up to the amount that the losing party spent. This may require fairly continuous disclosure of expenses by both parties to reduce "gaming the system".
A scheme like this would allow either side to limit their exposure to legal expenses associated with the case -- it would never be more than twice what they themselves had spent. This could tend to equalize spending by both sides (since every dollar you spend more than the other guy will be unreimbursed and will, at worst, cost you two dollars if you end up losing).
Administration of this by the courts could be complex but manageable. Without safeguards and monitoring, it would be in the interests of the losing party to claim they spent nothing on their case so a way to curb this tendency would be needed. Possibly, each party would be required to file a record of itemized expenses each week with the court. The court would retain this information and tell all parties what the total for each party was (but not the itemized information). The itemized information would be available after the case is decided and any party can petition the court about violations of the rules. For example, if the loser could convince the court that the winner had delayed recording some expenses, those expenses would not be reimbursable. Conversely, if the losing party hadn't recorded all their expenses once they became less confident in winning, the court could add those to the loser's expenses (as well as maybe give the loser a weekend in jail for contempt).
however, after a certain point (IIRC 3 years, but talk to a professional about this) the I.R.S. will no longer consider your efforts a business.
I'm fairly sure that an effort that loses money for more than three years can still be considered a business rather than a hobby (else, some airlines would be hobbies!). However, I think the burden of proving it's not a hobby shifts strongly to the taxpayer after (IIRC) three years of no profits. Obviously airlines meet this test trivially (who, in their right mind, would have anything to do with an airline as a hobby -- it must be a business!) -- a purported brothel that is losing money but claims a lot of recruiting expenses (including paid interviews) might have a somewhat harder time!
Disclaimer: IANAL either, but when did that ever stop anyone on/.?
Generally I agree with you, but... I also think that desire to better oneself (and/or family) even at some expense or opportunity loss to another person (and/or their family) is not counter to being "basically good in nature" - it's just part of evolution.
Doing that would require near real time (i.e., within a week or two) updates of all financial transactions being sent to the IRS - including medical payments (since some expenses for qualified procedures are deductible in some situations).
Thanks, but no thanks - the Feds already know enough about me:(
For the next 20-30 years there will definitely be a lot of evolution, but after that I expect cars will basically be unchanging
Ah... that's the difference in our viewpoints. I don't buy that premise. it's easier to see how cars might change in the next 20-30 years (more fly by wire, less mechanical things, perhaps automated driving assists or even nearly completely automated) and harder to speculate how cars might change 40-50 years from now. But, I'm pretty sure (barring a new Dark Ages) they will still be changing rapidly (unless the entire mode of transportation went the way of horses and carriages -- but then all those 50 year old "upgradeable" cars won't have seemed like all that good an idea anyway).
That's a lot of "upgrading" to keep a car to reasonably current standards (comfort, safety, economy, security etc...). Such upgrading, while possible, is very expensive in terms of labor. It is also complicated by the continued evolution of the base platform so the implementation of a feature on the 2040 model will be different than that required to upgrade the 2030 model which will be different than that required to upgrade the 2020 model as originally shipped which will be different than that required to upgrade the 2020 model as subsequently upgraded to the 2030 level.
It's always going to be a bit like upgrading a computer. Yes, in theory, you could reuse your old ST506 drive, but (surprise) you probably can't find a motherboard that has integrated support for it and a Core 2 Quad just because there's no market for it (and, what good is a 5GB drive anyway).
Cars that were made to last 100 years really wouldn't be very popular even when they were 50 years old... Battery technology will change (or perhaps be replaced with ultra capacitors) to provide faster charging, styles will change, dings and dents (and worse) will have taken their toll, upholstery and paint will have faded and worn, features will be added (and deleted as they become obsolete).
Seriously, except as an collector item, how interested would you be in driving a 1960 base model car without air conditioning, power steering, power brakes, power windows, FM radio, tape player (even an 8-track!), map lights, place to stick your cell phone, clock, antilock brakes, airbags, seatbelts, shoulder belts, good handling, disk brakes, split/redundant brake system, etc?
Don't forget it was the Leftist Judges on the Supreme court appointed by Clinton, etc that gave us eminent domain laws that say they can tear down your house to build a shopping mall.
I assume you're referring to Kelo. As much as I disagree with this ruling, it's worth noting that three of the five Justices in the majority were nominated by Republican presidents (Stevens/Ford, Kennedy/Reagan, Souter/Bush-41) and only two by Clinton (Ginsburg and Breyer). It is true that all four dissenting Justices were nominated by Republicans (O'Connor/Reagan, Rehnquist/Reagan, Scalia/Reagan, Thomas/Bush-41) - but both Reagan and Bush-41 also had one of the Justices they nominated side with the majority.
Unfortunately, coercion can be quite subtle. For example, a husband may expect his wife to vote a particular way. If there's no way to tell which way she voted, she's free to vote however she wants. If there's a way to tell, even if it's not likely to be used, it's more likely she will just vote however hubby wants.
"Cash buyers" of votes would only pay after the close of the election upon the voter showing from now committed history that they voted as requested. Agreed, a web site makes it easier to sell your vote multiple times, but it's unlikely that anyone except candidate X's organization would pay a voter to vote for candidate X -- and obviously candidate X's organization would keep track of who they had/had not already entered into a contract with.
I'm more concerned about the subtle coercion than the vote buying since the latter can be more effectively prosecuted.
a person could go login securely to a web site to cast their votes, and can look at their current and prior votes for verification
Without additional checks and balances, this is a bad idea because it facilitates vote-selling and coercion. Admittedly, these are also problems with absentee ballots, but why make the problem worse?
However, with some checks and balances, it's fairly easy to provide a way that an individual voluntarily cooperating with election and law enforcement officials could verify that their vote was counted as cast and prove what their vote actually was if it was miscounted. I think though that this verification step would have to be done in central locations with very strong physical and electronic security and privacy safeguards. A voter could make a decision to reveal their actual vote, if they found it miscounted, to officials for investigation (or, having found it miscounted, could decide to retain their privacy and not have it investigated but go and whine on FreeRepublic or DailyKos, depending on if they are right or left wingnuts, how their votes were supposedly miscounted -- but they wouldn't have much credence if they were unwilling to help identify the problem!)
I'm not sure "civil war" (groups of citizens against other groups of citizens - of course, supported by their respective local governments) is the right model. I think the Founding Fathers were more interested in making sure another "revolutionary war" (citizens against rouge government) could be launched successfully.
Outside of that minor quibble, I agree with your sentiments completely. If the populace is not armed, it's comparatively easy for the military to take control under a rouge government's orders -- about all the populace can do is meekly be herded and live in fear. By allowing the populace to be armed, even with vastly inferior arms as compared to the government, the military must approach each "situation" with lethal force as there may be a bunch of folks in the neighborhood with high powered hunting rifles. While many "follow orders" military personnel would probably accept "herding" defenseless citizens, when they have to blow the brains out of yet another person who looks and believes a lot like their mother, father, brother, sister, neighbor, pastor etc, they are much more likely to at least refuse to follow orders and, hopefully, switch sides.
You don't have to be able to beat your own military, you just have to make them kill you to make them turn from the evil side. And, of course, existing civilian arms only need to stave off the government for a few months -- the people who designed/built/best understand the government's weapons are largely US civilians, many of whom would decide their allegiances are not to some bland oath they took to a "government by name" but to the cause of freedom and democracy. These civilians know the weak spots of the government weapons and also know how to build weapons.
The horribly scary thing about your response is that you were in HS in the late 90's while I was there in the mid 70's before you were born. Yet, the decline apparently remains evident even over a much shorter timeframe. From my personal experience, the false "self esteem" crap (as I recall it was referred to as something like "damaging the student's psyche" back "in the day") has been around in "progressive" areas for many more years than some may realize. Sigh...
I could elaborate, but the risk of exposing my human identity to some web crawler some day 20 years from now is too great:( However, suffice to say, the most "progressive" of areas started this self esteem crap in the early 60's and almost led to what would have likely been my complete failure as a productive member of society today (perhaps I would have been a really smart criminal who probably would have eventually gotten caught due to using some new technology on a cold case). Fortunately, a parental unit detected this problem early, dealt with it, and managed to "reset" my environment early in middle school (at substantial expense that, I now realize, was quite a sacrifice).
I fear our (USA's) only hope at this point is to allow unlimited legal immigration to anyone with a higher degree from an "accredited" (not sure how to determine that list, but that's probably easy) educational institution in a "strategic" field (such as math, physics, computer science, chemistry) and continue to exploit the traditional "brain drain" that has helped the USA in the past. It's rude, but we can either compete with incompetent "high self esteem" individuals or attract qualified individuals from elsewhere (our gain, their loss). My impression is that offspring of educated first and second generation immigrants don't much go for this "false self-esteem" crap and deal well with it at home by setting expectations from the home rather than relying on the busted public school system to do so. Unfortunately, the USA is at an important cusp -- if we continue to practice protectionist immigration policies, within twenty or thirty years we will cease to be a place smart educated people want to immigrate to and since we have poisoned our multigenerational American base with "self esteem" and "competition is bad" crap, I fear we are facing the demise of America as the world power. (Although, since I don't have kids, what do I care - all the kids of today's politically correct soccer moms will bear the cost of their parent's stupidity around the time I'm dying of old age).
It's fairly clear that much of the problems with good science/math education in the US comes from outside, in the form of the religious objections to certain parts of the subject matter. This affects not just biology teachers, but all science teachers, as science in general is suspect to "people of faith".
This may be true in some sections of the country, but I know that in some major urban areas where "faith" really doesn't seem to influence teaching, most public education still is weak and the teachers' union still fight change. I'm talking about areas where evolution was/is taught (correctly IMHO), without question and without controversy, as fact and where creationism (and variants) isn't even mentioned (and this has been the situation in these areas for at least 40 years).
For example of "union obstructionism", it seems most public school teachers consistently resist standardized testing. They claim it makes them "teach to the tests". I agree that this is true to some extent because, for example, the California HS exit exams are way too easy to pass so it sets the bar too low for the teachers. And, I would entertain arguments that the tests need to be improved to better test the skills they are purported to test. Also, the tests may need fixing -- I've found some ambiguous questions on sample tests - in one case the question was so poorly stated that I could make a very reasonable and equally valid argument for several of the offered answers and the response of a teacher I know was "oh, that doesn't matter -- anyone who gets that wrong by picking one of the 'correct but unacceptable' answers would have done well enough on the rest of the test anyway to pass it anyway" (wtf?). If the tests are too easy, not testing the skills they purport to, or inappropriately ambiguous, teachers should be calling for the tests to be fixed not eliminated. If you teach the material properly and the tests test the material properly, there's no reason to "teach to the tests" - just teach the material and the test will take care of itself. I think the real fear of teachers is that they may be evaluated based on how much their students' test scores improve - you know, sort of like part of my evaluation is based on how my code performs.
However, I agree that teachers unions are far from the sole problem. Often, public school administrators are complete do-nothing bureaucrats and too many parents fail to raise their kids to work hard, respect authority, and to understand the value of an education -- all of which makes public school teacher's job very difficult in many areas.
Competitiveness for the sake of competitiveness has been deemphasized in most public schools except, perhaps, in athletic programs. When I was in school (for the record, this was a while ago - I walked to school uphill both ways in the snow dragging the stone tablets I had chiseled my homework answers onto -- life was rough back then, try convincing your teacher that "the dog ate my stone tablet"), we got crisp numeric scores in math/science classes and in some cases the scores of each test were posted for all to see.
Among the top students in a subject, this created a desire to study/work/drive a bit harder even when a "A" was guaranteed - the real goal was the top cumulative score and the top score on every test. Just as I worked much harder in weight lifting to top the best weight or come out at the top of the tennis ladder (okay, I admit, being a geek, I limited my universe to just my PE classes rather than the whole school on these), I worked much harder to try to earn a 100% instead of 95% on science tests than I worked to get the first 95% -- partially because of the competitive nature of the environment. Sure, in the end, it turned out computers seemed more interesting to me than chemistry, physics, biology, or pure math -- but I've never regretted learning more than just that which I needed to (however, as you may note, I musta slept through the English class about run on sentences and the beauty of brevity).
Also, team work in math classes was virtually unheard from first grade on - now it seems quite common in middle schools. I believe this reduces individual responsibility and accountability.
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Drug companies do not make particularly high profits. They take great risks and have great failures (for example, when a drug shows deadly side effects in the late stage of trials and therefore is denied FDA approval after having spent 100's of millions of dollars in R&D and trials). In exchange, they have to have great successes - and those of us in the U.S. pay a disproportionate share of these. I doubt that many pharmaceutical companies routinely sell products at a "loss" (i.e., less than the cost of manufacture) overseas - but if not for the hope of recovering R&D costs from the U.S. market, some drugs just wouldn't exist and would hence be unavailable at any price to anyone.
Which is more ethical? On the one hand, to have policies (such as price controls) which result in a useful drug never having been developed. On the other hand, to have policies that result in the drug being developed but being very expensive until it falls out of patent protection? In the former case, people will still be dying unnecessarily twenty years down the road; in the latter case, twenty years down the road, the (generic version of the) drug will likely be very affordable and available to many.
And, how's relaxation by Freddie and Fannie and banks on rules for granting mortgages working out?
Seriously, a down payment of 50% might be about right -- as it's likely that the value of housing will drop almost 40% from the peak and anyone who bought at the peak with less than about 40% down is likely to let the bank foreclose (esp in a non-recourse state) - which can easily decline into a downward spiral of excess housing inventory and tight credit even in the absence of the CDO mess.
We also make the ridiculous decision to spend 100's of thousands of dollars to "save" tiny preemies (who are much more likely to have long-term deficiencies - incurring yet more costs to society). Yet, the same fetus could have, instead, been legally aborted for no medical reason whatsoever.
As a taxpayer, I'm confused why I should spend a penny to save a (living expelled) fetus's life when the government also allows the mother to kill it freely and legally for any (or even no) reason. If the "baby" has a "right" to health care at my expense, certainly it also has a right to not be killed by another party on a whim.
This is another inconsistency we need to resolve - and socialized medicine will make it more critical to do so.
(BTW, I'm generally against government bans on abortion -- but I don't find a constitutional "right" to abortion and believe, as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided).
They can often switch insurance companies. Those that have coverage under an employer group plan can (and do) complain to their employer management if the insurance company is screwing them - sometimes this gets the problem fixed, sometimes if the employer has enough complaints (i.e., dissatisfied employees), the employer will switch insurers (after all, most employers want happy employees).
That's pretty neat.
Do the allowable legal costs scale with case complexity or just the "value" of the claim(s)? For example, consider two wrongful death cases where everyone agrees in both cases that the "value" of the death is $1M...
In the first case, the death arose from a automobile collision in an intersection and there are two eye witnesses -- one says the plaintiff clearly entered the intersection long after their light was red, the other says the defendant clearly entered the intersection long after their light was red. There are no cameras, there are no skid marks (neither party hit the brakes at all), etc. This case hinges almost entirely on how credible the judge/jury finds each witness (of course there is some technical work required regarding things like lighting/angle of view of each witness etc.).
In the second case, a building collapsed on the defendant. The fault may lie with one or more of many parties (including the architect, the structural engineer, the contractor, multiple subcontractors, the building inspector, the manufacturers and/or suppliers of one or more of the building materials, and the building management and maintenance staff) and each party tries to shift blame to other party(ies). Proving one's case (or defending oneself) requires extensive witness depositions, expert analysis, and expert witnesses.
Since the second case is so much more complex, although of no more "value" than the first, are higher legal fees awarded in the second case? If not, it would seem that the lawyers in the first case would get overpaid or the lawyers in the second case would get underpaid -- making it difficult to ever find lawyers pursue a complex case.
Wouldn't removing the cites make it difficult or impossible to review the paper well? If the paper claims "The increase in splorto has been associated with a decline in blorflette[1]", but the reviewer can't tell what [1] refers to, how can the reviewer know for sure that the author is interpreting [1] correctly in this context (perhaps [1] actually only examined blue splorto, not yellow splorto) - esp. if it's not an obscure source.
I've wondered about the viability of an alternative blended version of "loser pays". Under such a scheme, the losing party would reimburse the winning party for their actual expenses but only up to the amount that the losing party spent. This may require fairly continuous disclosure of expenses by both parties to reduce "gaming the system".
A scheme like this would allow either side to limit their exposure to legal expenses associated with the case -- it would never be more than twice what they themselves had spent. This could tend to equalize spending by both sides (since every dollar you spend more than the other guy will be unreimbursed and will, at worst, cost you two dollars if you end up losing).
Administration of this by the courts could be complex but manageable. Without safeguards and monitoring, it would be in the interests of the losing party to claim they spent nothing on their case so a way to curb this tendency would be needed. Possibly, each party would be required to file a record of itemized expenses each week with the court. The court would retain this information and tell all parties what the total for each party was (but not the itemized information). The itemized information would be available after the case is decided and any party can petition the court about violations of the rules. For example, if the loser could convince the court that the winner had delayed recording some expenses, those expenses would not be reimbursable. Conversely, if the losing party hadn't recorded all their expenses once they became less confident in winning, the court could add those to the loser's expenses (as well as maybe give the loser a weekend in jail for contempt).
I'm fairly sure that an effort that loses money for more than three years can still be considered a business rather than a hobby (else, some airlines would be hobbies!). However, I think the burden of proving it's not a hobby shifts strongly to the taxpayer after (IIRC) three years of no profits. Obviously airlines meet this test trivially (who, in their right mind, would have anything to do with an airline as a hobby -- it must be a business!) -- a purported brothel that is losing money but claims a lot of recruiting expenses (including paid interviews) might have a somewhat harder time!
/.?
Disclaimer: IANAL either, but when did that ever stop anyone on
Generally I agree with you, but... I also think that desire to better oneself (and/or family) even at some expense or opportunity loss to another person (and/or their family) is not counter to being "basically good in nature" - it's just part of evolution.
Doing that would require near real time (i.e., within a week or two) updates of all financial transactions being sent to the IRS - including medical payments (since some expenses for qualified procedures are deductible in some situations).
:(
Thanks, but no thanks - the Feds already know enough about me
Ah... that's the difference in our viewpoints. I don't buy that premise. it's easier to see how cars might change in the next 20-30 years (more fly by wire, less mechanical things, perhaps automated driving assists or even nearly completely automated) and harder to speculate how cars might change 40-50 years from now. But, I'm pretty sure (barring a new Dark Ages) they will still be changing rapidly (unless the entire mode of transportation went the way of horses and carriages -- but then all those 50 year old "upgradeable" cars won't have seemed like all that good an idea anyway).
:)
Let me guess - you're under 30?
That's a lot of "upgrading" to keep a car to reasonably current standards (comfort, safety, economy, security etc...). Such upgrading, while possible, is very expensive in terms of labor. It is also complicated by the continued evolution of the base platform so the implementation of a feature on the 2040 model will be different than that required to upgrade the 2030 model which will be different than that required to upgrade the 2020 model as originally shipped which will be different than that required to upgrade the 2020 model as subsequently upgraded to the 2030 level.
It's always going to be a bit like upgrading a computer. Yes, in theory, you could reuse your old ST506 drive, but (surprise) you probably can't find a motherboard that has integrated support for it and a Core 2 Quad just because there's no market for it (and, what good is a 5GB drive anyway).
Cars that were made to last 100 years really wouldn't be very popular even when they were 50 years old... Battery technology will change (or perhaps be replaced with ultra capacitors) to provide faster charging, styles will change, dings and dents (and worse) will have taken their toll, upholstery and paint will have faded and worn, features will be added (and deleted as they become obsolete).
Seriously, except as an collector item, how interested would you be in driving a 1960 base model car without air conditioning, power steering, power brakes, power windows, FM radio, tape player (even an 8-track!), map lights, place to stick your cell phone, clock, antilock brakes, airbags, seatbelts, shoulder belts, good handling, disk brakes, split/redundant brake system, etc?
Ah, like WebVan?
I assume you're referring to Kelo. As much as I disagree with this ruling, it's worth noting that three of the five Justices in the majority were nominated by Republican presidents (Stevens/Ford, Kennedy/Reagan, Souter/Bush-41) and only two by Clinton (Ginsburg and Breyer). It is true that all four dissenting Justices were nominated by Republicans (O'Connor/Reagan, Rehnquist/Reagan, Scalia/Reagan, Thomas/Bush-41) - but both Reagan and Bush-41 also had one of the Justices they nominated side with the majority.
Unfortunately, coercion can be quite subtle. For example, a husband may expect his wife to vote a particular way. If there's no way to tell which way she voted, she's free to vote however she wants. If there's a way to tell, even if it's not likely to be used, it's more likely she will just vote however hubby wants.
"Cash buyers" of votes would only pay after the close of the election upon the voter showing from now committed history that they voted as requested. Agreed, a web site makes it easier to sell your vote multiple times, but it's unlikely that anyone except candidate X's organization would pay a voter to vote for candidate X -- and obviously candidate X's organization would keep track of who they had/had not already entered into a contract with.
I'm more concerned about the subtle coercion than the vote buying since the latter can be more effectively prosecuted.
Without additional checks and balances, this is a bad idea because it facilitates vote-selling and coercion. Admittedly, these are also problems with absentee ballots, but why make the problem worse?
However, with some checks and balances, it's fairly easy to provide a way that an individual voluntarily cooperating with election and law enforcement officials could verify that their vote was counted as cast and prove what their vote actually was if it was miscounted. I think though that this verification step would have to be done in central locations with very strong physical and electronic security and privacy safeguards. A voter could make a decision to reveal their actual vote, if they found it miscounted, to officials for investigation (or, having found it miscounted, could decide to retain their privacy and not have it investigated but go and whine on FreeRepublic or DailyKos, depending on if they are right or left wingnuts, how their votes were supposedly miscounted -- but they wouldn't have much credence if they were unwilling to help identify the problem!)
And I award you the "best of typo response".
Now I will mull over how my left index finger and the right index finger fired in the wrong order.
I'm not sure "civil war" (groups of citizens against other groups of citizens - of course, supported by their respective local governments) is the right model. I think the Founding Fathers were more interested in making sure another "revolutionary war" (citizens against rouge government) could be launched successfully.
Outside of that minor quibble, I agree with your sentiments completely. If the populace is not armed, it's comparatively easy for the military to take control under a rouge government's orders -- about all the populace can do is meekly be herded and live in fear. By allowing the populace to be armed, even with vastly inferior arms as compared to the government, the military must approach each "situation" with lethal force as there may be a bunch of folks in the neighborhood with high powered hunting rifles. While many "follow orders" military personnel would probably accept "herding" defenseless citizens, when they have to blow the brains out of yet another person who looks and believes a lot like their mother, father, brother, sister, neighbor, pastor etc, they are much more likely to at least refuse to follow orders and, hopefully, switch sides.
You don't have to be able to beat your own military, you just have to make them kill you to make them turn from the evil side. And, of course, existing civilian arms only need to stave off the government for a few months -- the people who designed/built/best understand the government's weapons are largely US civilians, many of whom would decide their allegiances are not to some bland oath they took to a "government by name" but to the cause of freedom and democracy. These civilians know the weak spots of the government weapons and also know how to build weapons.
Agreed again!!!
:( However, suffice to say, the most "progressive" of areas started this self esteem crap in the early 60's and almost led to what would have likely been my complete failure as a productive member of society today (perhaps I would have been a really smart criminal who probably would have eventually gotten caught due to using some new technology on a cold case). Fortunately, a parental unit detected this problem early, dealt with it, and managed to "reset" my environment early in middle school (at substantial expense that, I now realize, was quite a sacrifice).
The horribly scary thing about your response is that you were in HS in the late 90's while I was there in the mid 70's before you were born. Yet, the decline apparently remains evident even over a much shorter timeframe. From my personal experience, the false "self esteem" crap (as I recall it was referred to as something like "damaging the student's psyche" back "in the day") has been around in "progressive" areas for many more years than some may realize. Sigh...
I could elaborate, but the risk of exposing my human identity to some web crawler some day 20 years from now is too great
I fear our (USA's) only hope at this point is to allow unlimited legal immigration to anyone with a higher degree from an "accredited" (not sure how to determine that list, but that's probably easy) educational institution in a "strategic" field (such as math, physics, computer science, chemistry) and continue to exploit the traditional "brain drain" that has helped the USA in the past. It's rude, but we can either compete with incompetent "high self esteem" individuals or attract qualified individuals from elsewhere (our gain, their loss). My impression is that offspring of educated first and second generation immigrants don't much go for this "false self-esteem" crap and deal well with it at home by setting expectations from the home rather than relying on the busted public school system to do so. Unfortunately, the USA is at an important cusp -- if we continue to practice protectionist immigration policies, within twenty or thirty years we will cease to be a place smart educated people want to immigrate to and since we have poisoned our multigenerational American base with "self esteem" and "competition is bad" crap, I fear we are facing the demise of America as the world power. (Although, since I don't have kids, what do I care - all the kids of today's politically correct soccer moms will bear the cost of their parent's stupidity around the time I'm dying of old age).
This may be true in some sections of the country, but I know that in some major urban areas where "faith" really doesn't seem to influence teaching, most public education still is weak and the teachers' union still fight change. I'm talking about areas where evolution was/is taught (correctly IMHO), without question and without controversy, as fact and where creationism (and variants) isn't even mentioned (and this has been the situation in these areas for at least 40 years).
For example of "union obstructionism", it seems most public school teachers consistently resist standardized testing. They claim it makes them "teach to the tests". I agree that this is true to some extent because, for example, the California HS exit exams are way too easy to pass so it sets the bar too low for the teachers. And, I would entertain arguments that the tests need to be improved to better test the skills they are purported to test. Also, the tests may need fixing -- I've found some ambiguous questions on sample tests - in one case the question was so poorly stated that I could make a very reasonable and equally valid argument for several of the offered answers and the response of a teacher I know was "oh, that doesn't matter -- anyone who gets that wrong by picking one of the 'correct but unacceptable' answers would have done well enough on the rest of the test anyway to pass it anyway" (wtf?). If the tests are too easy, not testing the skills they purport to, or inappropriately ambiguous, teachers should be calling for the tests to be fixed not eliminated. If you teach the material properly and the tests test the material properly, there's no reason to "teach to the tests" - just teach the material and the test will take care of itself. I think the real fear of teachers is that they may be evaluated based on how much their students' test scores improve - you know, sort of like part of my evaluation is based on how my code performs.
However, I agree that teachers unions are far from the sole problem. Often, public school administrators are complete do-nothing bureaucrats and too many parents fail to raise their kids to work hard, respect authority, and to understand the value of an education -- all of which makes public school teacher's job very difficult in many areas.
Now, get off my lawn.
Agreed!!!
Competitiveness for the sake of competitiveness has been deemphasized in most public schools except, perhaps, in athletic programs. When I was in school (for the record, this was a while ago - I walked to school uphill both ways in the snow dragging the stone tablets I had chiseled my homework answers onto -- life was rough back then, try convincing your teacher that "the dog ate my stone tablet"), we got crisp numeric scores in math/science classes and in some cases the scores of each test were posted for all to see.
Among the top students in a subject, this created a desire to study/work/drive a bit harder even when a "A" was guaranteed - the real goal was the top cumulative score and the top score on every test. Just as I worked much harder in weight lifting to top the best weight or come out at the top of the tennis ladder (okay, I admit, being a geek, I limited my universe to just my PE classes rather than the whole school on these), I worked much harder to try to earn a 100% instead of 95% on science tests than I worked to get the first 95% -- partially because of the competitive nature of the environment. Sure, in the end, it turned out computers seemed more interesting to me than chemistry, physics, biology, or pure math -- but I've never regretted learning more than just that which I needed to (however, as you may note, I musta slept through the English class about run on sentences and the beauty of brevity).
Also, team work in math classes was virtually unheard from first grade on - now it seems quite common in middle schools. I believe this reduces individual responsibility and accountability.
True - but that's using the term "professional" rather loosely.
Hmm..., you don't suppose Yahoo might have backups? Naw, a little company like Yahoo probably never thought to do that.
I don't know from where you post, but in the USA very few (actually, I can't think of any) professions have a legal salary cap.