You can probably find data if you look for it, but regardless of what the data show for the "average" bank or CU, there are going to be a whole lot of them that do not completely follow the trend. Thus if you shop around you can probably find both good and bad local banks and CUs in your region.
From a governance point of view something really pisses you off about the local CU, it is probably easier to get elected to the board than it would be for your local bank. The CU probably sends you a notice for date/time of the AGM even.
The big money isn't in consumer saving anyway, but selling them retarded financial instruments like `mortgages'.
Without a mortgage, how else is one supposed to buy a place to live?
Rather than spend $X per month on a mortgage one could I suppose spend $X/3 per month on the rental of a very small apartment, and save the $2X/3 each month until you had enough saved to buy something. Once you have that something bought you could save the now unused rent money and at some point in the future buy something bigger. If this type of thing is done for a few generations there might be some significant real-estate inheritances in the family.
But of course, the rate of inflation might decrease the effectiveness of savings, and many people don't want to live in a hovel while saving for the mansion. With interest rates being some low right now, the cost of borrowing can be pretty cheap.
Fundamentally though, the problem is that "the unwashed masses" in the US (and the rest of the "western world") want to have it all, now, and are not willing to live like a middle class family from the 1930s. If "everyone" lived like that, people would be happy to do so too, but since "everyone" now has 2 cars, 5 TVs and a huge empty house, anything less feels like you are losing the game.
I think a number of insurance companies started out as not-for-profit type associations, and then later turned into for-profit businesses. Similarly for many hospitals.
Both PC Financial and INGDirect offer "no fee" accounts that actually pay some interest and actually have no fees. We have been using PCF for more than 12 years now as our primary bank with quite high satisfaction - there are kiosks in most grocers across the country since all of them are pretty much owned by the one evil corporation Lowblaws, and CIBC ATMs are also available for all services with no fees.
Our local credit union choices are not as good as out in BC, where VanCity has gotten as large and ubiquitous as any of the major banks. Our US Credit Union account is still being used, but since our mortgage and investment company got purchased by Bank of America a while back, we now have a BoA chequing account.
Clearly then, places with capitol punishment and harsh prison systems have lower murder rates than those without. No wonder there are so many Scandinavians and Canadians moving to Texas.
Fear and punishment might give you a stiffy but they don't work. What we want is rehabilitated prisoners not people more angry and violent than when they went in.
Bullshit. Fear and punishment most certainly does work and works very well. Giving them an xbox360 isn't exactly punishment, perhaps if you understood what punishment is then you might understand why it works. No it doesn't work on everyone, and those that it doesnt' work on generally are not capable of rehabilitation. They do not understand the basic principle of cause and effect, you can't fix that by talking to them by the time they get to prison.
What evidence do you base this opinion on? Do places with high punishment systems have less crime than those that have more rehab focused ones? A quick search seems to indicate the opposite:
Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-based Approach M. Keith Chen, Yale University and Cowles Foundation, and Jesse M. Shapiro, University of Chicago and NBER We estimate the causal effect of prison conditions on recidivism rates by exploiting a discontinuity in the assignment of federal prisoners to security levels. Inmates housed in higher security levels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed in minimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime. Though small sample sizes limit the precision of our estimates, we argue that our findings may have important implications for prison policy, and that our methodology is likely to be applicable beyond the particular context we study.
People in America blame a lot of things for our high crime, guns, drugs, you name it. But I think it's the fact that our criminal system is so freakishly gentle to violent habitual lifestyle criminals.
Strange how the countries with lower crime rates seem also to have criminal systems that focus more on rehab than being harsh, eh?
Ranting, yes, I know. But we're talking about toys for criminals. I want to see every friggin able bodied criminal have to work 8 hours a day, just like the rest of us. And if you don't, you don't eat. Plain and simple.
I guess I have to ask - what is your ultimate goal? If you are looking to actually change people's future behaviour, the evidence seems to indicate that "harsher sentencing" does little good for those caught, and has little deterrent value for those contemplating a "life of crime". Is it just about making you feel better about how tough your life is?
Just like beating your kid, harsh punishment doesn't cause the recipient to say "Gosh, what I did was wrong, I should change my ways" - mostly it causes the recipient to say "Everyone treats me like shit, I'm going to get back at them and treat everyone else like shit the first chance I get - but next time I won't get caught."
The PRIMARY purpose of prison is punishment and separating someone from society so they don't pose a threat; a DETERRENT from committing crimes in the future. Rehabilitation is important, but is not the primary function of a prison, despite the fact it's important. However, allowing someone to play video games does NOTHING to rehabilitate them.
Other than fulfilling your sense of "justice" (or maybe "vengeance") why do you think punishment should be the primary purpose of prison? Do you have any evidence that less pleasant jails act as a more effective deterrent than more pleasant ones?
I would think that the primary purpose of the whole police/judicial system would be to minimize the harm that "miscreants" do to society at large. Thus the primary goal of the whole system should be prevention of crime. For the individual criminal incarcerated, society's primary interest would be to minimize repeat offense, but I suppose if there was evidence that mistreatment of prisoners had significant deterrent effect I guess that would be a consideration. However the opposite seems to be the case in what studies I could easily find. See for example from 2007
Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-based Approach M. Keith Chen, Yale University and Cowles Foundation, and Jesse M. Shapiro, University of Chicago and NBER
We estimate the causal effect of prison conditions on recidivism rates by exploiting a discontinuity in the assignment of federal prisoners to security levels. Inmates housed in higher security levels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed in minimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime. Though small sample sizes limit the precision of our estimates, we argue that our findings may have important implications for prison policy, and that our methodology is likely to be applicable beyond the particular
As a prostate cancer survivor who's alive thanks to 15 years of regular annual PSA blood tests - I am very much in favor of regular screenings. If I'd waited to display symptoms, I'd have been diagnosed @ stage 3 or 4 instead of stage 2. (Lower stage numbers, better long term odds.) Call me suspicious. Very, very suspicious. BTW THANKS! Dr. T & Dr. K
Do we understand enough about your particular type of prostate cancer to know with high confidence that it would in fact have lead to stage 3? Are you (due to personal or family history) an individual who would have into the pool of patients for which testing would have been warranted based on these types of studies? If five people were killed by unnecessarily aggressive treatment in order to save one life due to early detection, is that a good system to continue?
However, it is not at all clear that those detected at stage 1 are all the same types as those detected at stage 4. If a significant fraction of those detected at stage one would NEVER progress beyond stage one lets call them "type A", with the aggressive ones called "type B", then it is at least possible that "type A" has a 15% survival rate no matter what stage it is detected, and is responsible for much of the 12% death rate in the early detection pool, as well as the 85% death rate in the later detection pool. Treating the "type A" cancers early could provide no benefit - and since it is benign it makes it look like early detection increases survival rates even if it does not.
To be fair to the original poster, he did say "It is not at all clear that getting aggressive cancers early affects any change in outcome." Your data does not separate out the "aggressive" and "non-aggressive" cancers. Part of the problem is that it is not clear what (if anything) differentiates the different levels of cancer aggressiveness.
A new analysis of mammography concluded that while mammograms find cancer in 138,000 women each year, as many as 120,000 to 134,000 of those women either have cancers that are already lethal or have cancers that grow so slowly they do not need to be treated.
So what you're saying is that it is not worth being able to save the lives of between 4,000 and 18,0000 breast cancer patients each year? I wonder what those 4,000 to 18,000 breast cancer patients might want to tell you. I'll hazard a guess: fuck you asshole!
If you don't think that any medical system should do cost-benifit analysis, then you are a bit out of touch. I have not done the analysis (or read the article for that matter), but if the mammography of 138,000 women caused 120,000 unnecessary treatments, I would not be surprised to find that it caused a few thousand unnecessary deaths - we could ask what those patients might want to say - possibly they would be more polite than your cancer patients.
If the studies show that mammography does not increase lifespan, then regardless of how good it might make people feel to have "routine" mammograms done, it probably is worth considering not doing them absent other reasons for doing so.
ok, i'm no sign-waving norml guy, but this shit makes no sense.
it's not like marijiana is quantized.
My crop of brussels-sprouts this year are HUGE (yeah, each individual one). But that doesn't bother me, 'cos I'm not a complete fucking idiot - I just eat fewer of them.
Marijuana can have various amounts of active ingredients (THL maybe?). Breeders have been working to grow crops with higher levels, since that is what the market "wants". There is some logic in regulating the allowed levels, in a legalized situation. Currently I think that cigarettes have some regulation on the amount of tar and nicotine they can deliver.
I think the point is that the problem was the confidence level "should have been" a 7, but it was instead running at a 10. Now the confidence level "should be" something like 5 but instead it is running at -3. Thus there was "too much" then, and "not enough" now. We were lending to bad risks in the past (this is a problem), but now we are not lending to good risks (which is also a problem). We were spending and lending too much, but now we are spending and lending too little.
Regardless of your spurious claims about 'not calibrating models', the point remains that in any complex system multiple different models can be found that fit the small slice of time you use for accuracy testing, without fitting the unseen future data.
That is why you test your model against the previously unused data. Any useful model should be able to fit any reasonable subset of the data available, as well as all of the data. This of course does not guarantee that it will fit the future data, but it will help to eliminate many of the "bad" models.
Sigh, misleading thread name which makes basic error of confusing finance with economics. This may be news to some people but they are not the same - you only have to talk to a Financial Quant Analysts for around ten seconds before this becomes immediately apparent (they are basically statisticians)
Anyhow on the main points:
1) Lots of economists were pointing out the increased risks in the global economy prior to the financial crash, they were ignored all called 'doomsayers'. In part because it was in the interest of vested interests to do so, but also because it is now clear that actually some of those interests (e.g. the Banks) really didn't know what they were doing.
2) Nobody predicted exactly when it was going to happen because you can't predict the kind of confluence of several events which trigger that kind of crisis. Contrary to what some financial experts were saying this was not a one in a million event, as ultimately they lost sight of the difference between systematic and non-systematic risk.
3) In part this is because economics handles confidence effects poorly, a lot of models try to pin things down to fundamentals on the assumption that eventually they will act as an 'attractor' and drag the economy back on track.
4) Economics also handles financial markets poorly, partly because of the confidence issue (above) but also because of how wealth and confidence effects effect behaviour in asset markets.
e.g. you buy a house, if everyone buys houses their value starts going up due to scarcity, this makes homeowners more wealthy on paper, so they upgrade to a bigger house or spend their wealth on other things, add in speculation in the housing market and you can see how this cycle can go on and on. But, confidence effects can inflate this well beyond fundamental values which means if something serves to knock that confidence (say a recession) it can go into reverse. So this combination of factors acts like an amplifier in either direction, which is obviously not good for market stability, particularly when factors like confidence can shift very rapidly.
The main problem with most commentary on economics is that it comes from pundits or half experts who have an interest in taking a position one way or another (typically working back from the conclusion they want and choosing their model to get there).
I think our views of buying versus renting are slightly twisted by the mortgage interest deduction available on US taxes which subsidizes the cost of home ownership a bit. Additionally, the decision of buy-or-rent is not based on just dollars and cents. In more urban environments, detached family homes are less efficient, and ownership of apartments/condos have complications of dealing with community ownership issues. Not having to worry about paying for repairs and upkeep might make renting more attractive. Having "professional" management rather than "community" management of an apartment building could even be less expensive in some cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the last thing I remember, I was running for the door.
Regardless of outcome, a fucking grief counselor.
THAT I can get behind.
You can probably find data if you look for it, but regardless of what the data show for the "average" bank or CU, there are going to be a whole lot of them that do not completely follow the trend. Thus if you shop around you can probably find both good and bad local banks and CUs in your region.
From a governance point of view something really pisses you off about the local CU, it is probably easier to get elected to the board than it would be for your local bank. The CU probably sends you a notice for date/time of the AGM even.
The big money isn't in consumer saving anyway, but selling them retarded financial instruments like `mortgages'.
Without a mortgage, how else is one supposed to buy a place to live?
Rather than spend $X per month on a mortgage one could I suppose spend $X/3 per month on the rental of a very small apartment, and save the $2X/3 each month until you had enough saved to buy something. Once you have that something bought you could save the now unused rent money and at some point in the future buy something bigger. If this type of thing is done for a few generations there might be some significant real-estate inheritances in the family.
But of course, the rate of inflation might decrease the effectiveness of savings, and many people don't want to live in a hovel while saving for the mansion. With interest rates being some low right now, the cost of borrowing can be pretty cheap.
Fundamentally though, the problem is that "the unwashed masses" in the US (and the rest of the "western world") want to have it all, now, and are not willing to live like a middle class family from the 1930s. If "everyone" lived like that, people would be happy to do so too, but since "everyone" now has 2 cars, 5 TVs and a huge empty house, anything less feels like you are losing the game.
Can we have that model for health care please?
I think a number of insurance companies started out as not-for-profit type associations, and then later turned into for-profit businesses. Similarly for many hospitals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Cross_Blue_Shield_Association
There is some regulation preventing assets of charities ending up as part of a business, but they do not always work well.
Both PC Financial and INGDirect offer "no fee" accounts that actually pay some interest and actually have no fees. We have been using PCF for more than 12 years now as our primary bank with quite high satisfaction - there are kiosks in most grocers across the country since all of them are pretty much owned by the one evil corporation Lowblaws, and CIBC ATMs are also available for all services with no fees.
http://www.pcfinancial.ca/
http://www.ingdirect.ca/
Our local credit union choices are not as good as out in BC, where VanCity has gotten as large and ubiquitous as any of the major banks. Our US Credit Union account is still being used, but since our mortgage and investment company got purchased by Bank of America a while back, we now have a BoA chequing account.
Clearly then, places with capitol punishment and harsh prison systems have lower murder rates than those without. No wonder there are so many Scandinavians and Canadians moving to Texas.
Fear and punishment might give you a stiffy but they don't work. What we want is rehabilitated prisoners not people more angry and violent than when they went in.
Bullshit. Fear and punishment most certainly does work and works very well. Giving them an xbox360 isn't exactly punishment, perhaps if you understood what punishment is then you might understand why it works. No it doesn't work on everyone, and those that it doesnt' work on generally are not capable of rehabilitation. They do not understand the basic principle of cause and effect, you can't fix that by talking to them by the time they get to prison.
What evidence do you base this opinion on? Do places with high punishment systems have less crime than those that have more rehab focused ones? A quick search seems to indicate the opposite:
http://faculty.som.yale.edu/keithchen/papers/Final_ALER07.pdf
Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-based Approach
M. Keith Chen, Yale University and Cowles Foundation, and Jesse M. Shapiro, University of Chicago and NBER
We estimate the causal effect of prison conditions on recidivism rates by exploiting a discontinuity in the assignment of federal prisoners to security levels. Inmates housed in higher security levels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed in minimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime. Though small sample sizes limit the precision of our estimates, we argue that our findings may have important implications for prison policy, and that our methodology is likely to be applicable beyond the particular context we study.
People in America blame a lot of things for our high crime, guns, drugs, you name it. But I think it's the fact that our criminal system is so freakishly gentle to violent habitual lifestyle criminals.
Strange how the countries with lower crime rates seem also to have criminal systems that focus more on rehab than being harsh, eh?
Ranting, yes, I know. But we're talking about toys for criminals. I want to see every friggin able bodied criminal have to work 8 hours a day, just like the rest of us. And if you don't, you don't eat. Plain and simple.
I guess I have to ask - what is your ultimate goal? If you are looking to actually change people's future behaviour, the evidence seems to indicate that "harsher sentencing" does little good for those caught, and has little deterrent value for those contemplating a "life of crime". Is it just about making you feel better about how tough your life is?
Just like beating your kid, harsh punishment doesn't cause the recipient to say "Gosh, what I did was wrong, I should change my ways" - mostly it causes the recipient to say "Everyone treats me like shit, I'm going to get back at them and treat everyone else like shit the first chance I get - but next time I won't get caught."
The PRIMARY purpose of prison is punishment and separating someone from society so they don't pose a threat; a DETERRENT from committing crimes in the future. Rehabilitation is important, but is not the primary function of a prison, despite the fact it's important. However, allowing someone to play video games does NOTHING to rehabilitate them.
Other than fulfilling your sense of "justice" (or maybe "vengeance") why do you think punishment should be the primary purpose of prison? Do you have any evidence that less pleasant jails act as a more effective deterrent than more pleasant ones?
I would think that the primary purpose of the whole police/judicial system would be to minimize the harm that "miscreants" do to society at large. Thus the primary goal of the whole system should be prevention of crime. For the individual criminal incarcerated, society's primary interest would be to minimize repeat offense, but I suppose if there was evidence that mistreatment of prisoners had significant deterrent effect I guess that would be a consideration. However the opposite seems to be the case in what studies I could easily find. See for example from 2007
http://faculty.som.yale.edu/keithchen/papers/Final_ALER07.pdf
Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-based Approach
M. Keith Chen, Yale University and Cowles Foundation, and Jesse M. Shapiro, University of Chicago and NBER
We estimate the causal effect of prison conditions on recidivism rates by exploiting a discontinuity in the assignment of federal prisoners to security levels. Inmates housed in higher security levels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed in minimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime. Though small sample sizes limit the precision of our estimates, we argue that our findings may have important implications for prison policy, and that our methodology is likely to be applicable beyond the particular
Google is absolutely HORRIBLE at making APIs.
I don't know from APIs, but that was one of the main points of Googler Steve Yegge's rant last month:
https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/12/2043207/google-employee-accidentally-shares-rant-about-google
The main limit is that its maps are dogshit and usually rip offs of Google Maps' wrong maps.
I guess it depends on your needs and your region. OSM has some areas with phenomenal coverage - but also some areas that are almost completely bare.
Does openstreetmap.org have any limits on map access?
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
As a prostate cancer survivor who's alive thanks to 15 years of regular annual PSA blood tests - I am very much in favor of regular screenings. If I'd waited to display symptoms, I'd have been diagnosed @ stage 3 or 4 instead of stage 2. (Lower stage numbers, better long term odds.) Call me suspicious. Very, very suspicious. BTW THANKS! Dr. T & Dr. K
Do we understand enough about your particular type of prostate cancer to know with high confidence that it would in fact have lead to stage 3? Are you (due to personal or family history) an individual who would have into the pool of patients for which testing would have been warranted based on these types of studies? If five people were killed by unnecessarily aggressive treatment in order to save one life due to early detection, is that a good system to continue?
These are useful questions to rigorously study.
It is not at all clear that getting aggressive cancers early affects any change in outcome.
5 year breast cancer survival rates:
Detected at stage 1: 88%
Detected at stage 4: 15%
Source: http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/DetailedGuide/breast-cancer-survival-by-stage
You're right, dunno why we bother screening.
However, it is not at all clear that those detected at stage 1 are all the same types as those detected at stage 4. If a significant fraction of those detected at stage one would NEVER progress beyond stage one lets call them "type A", with the aggressive ones called "type B", then it is at least possible that "type A" has a 15% survival rate no matter what stage it is detected, and is responsible for much of the 12% death rate in the early detection pool, as well as the 85% death rate in the later detection pool. Treating the "type A" cancers early could provide no benefit - and since it is benign it makes it look like early detection increases survival rates even if it does not.
To be fair to the original poster, he did say "It is not at all clear that getting aggressive cancers early affects any change in outcome." Your data does not separate out the "aggressive" and "non-aggressive" cancers. Part of the problem is that it is not clear what (if anything) differentiates the different levels of cancer aggressiveness.
From TFA:
So what you're saying is that it is not worth being able to save the lives of between 4,000 and 18,0000 breast cancer patients each year? I wonder what those 4,000 to 18,000 breast cancer patients might want to tell you. I'll hazard a guess: fuck you asshole!
If you don't think that any medical system should do cost-benifit analysis, then you are a bit out of touch. I have not done the analysis (or read the article for that matter), but if the mammography of 138,000 women caused 120,000 unnecessary treatments, I would not be surprised to find that it caused a few thousand unnecessary deaths - we could ask what those patients might want to say - possibly they would be more polite than your cancer patients.
If the studies show that mammography does not increase lifespan, then regardless of how good it might make people feel to have "routine" mammograms done, it probably is worth considering not doing them absent other reasons for doing so.
a petition to take petitions seriously:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/actually-take-these-petitions-seriously-instead-just-using-them-excuse-pretend-you-are-listening/grQ9mNkN?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
I like that one.
not necessarily the stronger strains
ok, i'm no sign-waving norml guy, but this shit makes no sense.
it's not like marijiana is quantized.
My crop of brussels-sprouts this year are HUGE (yeah, each individual one). But that doesn't bother me, 'cos I'm not a complete fucking idiot - I just eat fewer of them.
Marijuana can have various amounts of active ingredients (THL maybe?). Breeders have been working to grow crops with higher levels, since that is what the market "wants". There is some logic in regulating the allowed levels, in a legalized situation. Currently I think that cigarettes have some regulation on the amount of tar and nicotine they can deliver.
Oh, I wasn't saying he was necessarily right, just that the statement was not necessarily insane.
I think the point is that the problem was the confidence level "should have been" a 7, but it was instead running at a 10. Now the confidence level "should be" something like 5 but instead it is running at -3. Thus there was "too much" then, and "not enough" now. We were lending to bad risks in the past (this is a problem), but now we are not lending to good risks (which is also a problem). We were spending and lending too much, but now we are spending and lending too little.
You'd be better to buy gold and put that under your mattress. Gold doesn't lose value from inflation.
No, it looses value (and gains) at the whim of the psychology of people you might want to sell it to.
Regardless of your spurious claims about 'not calibrating models', the point remains that in any complex system multiple different models can be found that fit the small slice of time you use for accuracy testing, without fitting the unseen future data.
That is why you test your model against the previously unused data. Any useful model should be able to fit any reasonable subset of the data available, as well as all of the data. This of course does not guarantee that it will fit the future data, but it will help to eliminate many of the "bad" models.
Sigh, misleading thread name which makes basic error of confusing finance with economics. This may be news to some people but they are not the same - you only have to talk to a Financial Quant Analysts for around ten seconds before this becomes immediately apparent (they are basically statisticians)
Anyhow on the main points:
1) Lots of economists were pointing out the increased risks in the global economy prior to the financial crash, they were ignored all called 'doomsayers'. In part because it was in the interest of vested interests to do so, but also because it is now clear that actually some of those interests (e.g. the Banks) really didn't know what they were doing.
2) Nobody predicted exactly when it was going to happen because you can't predict the kind of confluence of several events which trigger that kind of crisis. Contrary to what some financial experts were saying this was not a one in a million event, as ultimately they lost sight of the difference between systematic and non-systematic risk.
3) In part this is because economics handles confidence effects poorly, a lot of models try to pin things down to fundamentals on the assumption that eventually they will act as an 'attractor' and drag the economy back on track.
4) Economics also handles financial markets poorly, partly because of the confidence issue (above) but also because of how wealth and confidence effects effect behaviour in asset markets.
e.g. you buy a house, if everyone buys houses their value starts going up due to scarcity, this makes homeowners more wealthy on paper, so they upgrade to a bigger house or spend their wealth on other things, add in speculation in the housing market and you can see how this cycle can go on and on. But, confidence effects can inflate this well beyond fundamental values which means if something serves to knock that confidence (say a recession) it can go into reverse. So this combination of factors acts like an amplifier in either direction, which is obviously not good for market stability, particularly when factors like confidence can shift very rapidly.
The main problem with most commentary on economics is that it comes from pundits or half experts who have an interest in taking a position one way or another (typically working back from the conclusion they want and choosing their model to get there).
Very good points.
I think our views of buying versus renting are slightly twisted by the mortgage interest deduction available on US taxes which subsidizes the cost of home ownership a bit. Additionally, the decision of buy-or-rent is not based on just dollars and cents. In more urban environments, detached family homes are less efficient, and ownership of apartments/condos have complications of dealing with community ownership issues. Not having to worry about paying for repairs and upkeep might make renting more attractive. Having "professional" management rather than "community" management of an apartment building could even be less expensive in some cases.
Imagine sucking the entire world's ocean through a straw.
Not quite a straw, but today's xkcd seems to be pumping it all into Narnia through a wardrobe: http://xkcd.com/969/