Every time I hear these types of things I think back 15 years to high school, and remember how much focus there was on English classes, and how little emphasis was on science. 4 years of English was mandatory. In middle school we had both an English class *and* a literature class. We spent a massive amount of my education on what basically amounted to the useless skill of literature interpretation.
Meanwhile, Physics was optional. Required science consisted of 1 year each of Chemistry and Biology (and we had to take a generic "Physical Science" class).
I had to take year after year of literature interpretation. I took 3 years of Spanish class. We had more AP history classes than anything else in our school. Yet, science was taught by coaches.
In my opinion, most jobs out there are science based. Yes, as a computer engineer I'm biased, but still--what is more likely to get me a job, physics skills or literature interpretation? So why is there so much focus on English and literature?
In my uninformed, bound to get flamed opinion, it's because most smart science people become scientists, while most smart english people become teachers. So your average high school english teacher might have been #1 in his/her class at an Ivy League college, but your Biology teach might be the volleyball coach. Which one is more likely to inspire a student to follow in their footsteps?
Not saying this to agree or disagree, but I was able to do an MS in computer engineering with no research (we had a non-thesis option). So there are other reasons to do it beyond just the research.
I notice you say Computer Engineering, not EE or CS. To me, this means you're probably interested in digital design or something similar. If so, definitely get the Master's degree.
I work in a microprocessor design group and we won't even interview someone without a master's degree anymore. 90% of what I learned in school that I apply to my job, I learned in grad school. Grad school teaches exactly what you need to know to do the job in our group, so we don't have to teach you much before you can get started working with us.
So it's not so much that you should do it for money as just the ability to get a job in the field you want. Plus in 1-2 years maybe the job market will be better.
"For example, in the case under review by the Supreme Court, it is currently considered illegal 'price-fixing' for a handbag manufacturer to contract with retailers to set a minimum sale price on handbags. But, at the moment, it is perfectly legal for a manufacturer with its own retail outlets, such as The Gap, to set a minimum sale price on its retail products. Why is one illegal and one not? Ultimately, because government judges and bureaucrats have said so.
Any time an article uses the word bureaucrat, you can generally discount its merit...anyway...
The reason one is illegal and one is not is because the manufacturer with its own retail outlets doesn't sell the items to the retail outlets, unlike a wholesaler. I'm sure there are some internal dollars that change hands, but all of the pricing is done at the point of sale. Not so with wholesalers--they make money selling to distributers, and if they want a higher price they can raise their wholesale price. The only reason they would set their prices at the point of sale is to favor one store over another (i.e. you want to sell your stuff at Wal-Mart but you want it to cost the same elsewhere so it doesn't look "cheap").
This *IS* about politics! This is COMPLETELY about whether or not you think the government should control the cost of medicine. Canada does, the US does not. Most liberals lean toward a socialist state where the government controls more business, and most conservatives lean toward a more independent state where the government is more hands off with business. Just because it's another government controlling the price of the medicine doesn't mean it's free market buying!
And you once again ignore R&D, which is the bulk of the cost of making a new drug. Just because they can sell it for more than they make it for does *not* insure profit on their end. The same is true for cars and microprocessors--the total price of car parts is well under the price of the car, and a microprocessor's cost is more than just a fraction of the cost of the silicon wafer.
I forgot...anyone on slashdot that's not an extreme liberal is obviously an idiot...
In all reality, what BOA is doing (unfortunately) isn't illegal. Which is why the only way to change it is to change the laws (congress).
As far as selling at a loss goes, it's not that simple. Drugs are relatively cheap to physically produce. That's why generics are so cheap. So it's not that they're selling at a loss in Canada, it's that they're not selling at a high enough price to recoup their R&D. Pulling out of that market would just make it worse. As far as it being a free market--it's not! Canada controls the prices. You can buy a DVD player from Canada because it's not price controlled. But even then, you can't buy a truckload of DVD players and bring them back. Free market buying only applies inside our borders, and even then there are things you can't buy in large quantity in other states (cigarettes) and bring back home.
Yes, I do disagree with what the government claims is the reason. I mean, it's a valid reason as well, and probably a bit easier to explain to the public.
* ignoring BofA bruhaha What is Bush supposed to do about this? This requires either investigation (Judicial) or law changes (Legislative). Bush can't write laws or judge anyone. He *could* hold a press conference I suppose, but we all know he's no good at those.
* signing the bankruptcy bill You can't tell me you think the old bankruptcy system was fair. Just about anybody could run up a bunch of debt then file for bankruptcy and not pay anyone. This was badly in need of restructuring. The law is in place so that you can rebuild your life if catastrophe happens, not so you can go crazy with 10 credit cards and buy everything you want.
* pushing ethanol fuel (big ethanol lobby) Big ethanol lobby? The purpose in this law was to boost production so that the price can come down eventually, and we can do what we've wanted to do for 50 years: have a secondary fuel source besides oil.
* against discount drugs from Canada I keep hearing this one, but it just doesn't make sense. Basically, Canada's government artificially limits the prices on drugs, and some people want that price control to apply in the U.S. If that's what they want they should just lobby for our own government to introduce price controls, which I also disagree with. This is capitalism. Money=motivation. If we artificially limit the amount of money that drug companies are "entitled" to make, we will limit their R&D budget and will essentially keep them from developing any more expensive drugs. The free market is a much better system for controlling this, although the insurance situation needs to be fixed to make this really work.
* crazy cronyism in Iraq (KBR, Halliburton) Okay I don't know much about Halliburton, but I'm guessing you don't either. I've heard that they are the only company that does what they do, whatever that is, so there's not really a choice in the matter when it comes to deciding who to hire. But regardless, the president is going to choose people he trusts, and he has experience with those people already, so it's natural for him to choose them.
Gotta disagree--the free 3 months of XM in my car got me hooked, and after I had it for a while my wife *had* to have it. We both have long commutes, and having the selection it offers is well worth the money to us. It's like cable tv--I'm not paying for commercial free so much as paying for selection.
XM has always had ads. The talk radio programs are sold to AM, FM, and XM stations, and as such have gaps for ads. There's no way around this other than pre-taping the shows (which I would actually prefer). As such, the talk stations have just as many ads as a regular station.
Clearchannel recently forced XM to put ads in their music stations as well, so some of the music stations have ads (although there are generally clone stations that do not).
The redundant stations are one of the things that makes the service great! Don't like a song? Switch stations without changing genres. Something you can't really do with FM. I have 6 presets set to the same genre and I shuffle through them constantly--they all play the same music but not at the same time.
5 hours? That's a standard commute to work, right?
Seriously, though, I regularly drive 5 hours to the beach just for a weekend. 5 hours in a car is no big deal to me. You get used to it. I can't stand sitting on a subway car for 30 minutes, but I'm sure I would get used to it if it were available where I live.
If I had mod points, I'd mod this up. I think it is a pretty good parallel to think of our states as European countries. All the more so since that's what the founding fathers originally intended--most of the governing was supposed to be done by the states, thus you could pick whichever kind of government you want and still be in the same country. Now, everybody seems to want things to be the same everywhere.
remove (or severely restrict) the ability to mod-chip the next-gen Xbox.
This has basically already been done. Everything coming out of the chip is encrypted, with IBM enterprise technology. If they did it themselves, they'd have to come up with their own way. Not saying they can't, but IBM has already proven theirs.
How many movie theaters are in your town? If I drive 30 minutes, I can get to about 12 movie theaters, so they have to compete with each other. As such, I've never had a problem with dirty bathrooms--most of the theaters are very very clean.
However, 1-7 still apply.
1) When I got a student discount on movies in college, and they were $5.50 each, I went to tens if not hundreds of them. Now I go maybe once every two months. I still see lots of movies I want to see, but it's harder to talk friends into going, and their reason is that $8.50 is too much to pay when they can buy it later for the cost of 2 tickets.
2) I think this is bound to happen. Witness how the huge blockbuster movies (King Kong) just aren't doing as well as they expect, while there are always a few surprise hits. A few more $200 million bombs and I think we'll see the risk takers less willing to cough up the cash.
3) Ushers. Movies need ushers.
4) I haven't had many problems with this.
5) The commercials are annoying but at least they're not in the middle of the movie. Just wait...
6) Eh. You're presuming that "good" and "popular" are opposites. I don't understand why this is true.
7) Like I said, never been an issue for me.
You should try rhapsody. You can use it for 25 streaming songs per month for free--no credit card or anything. You can run it as an app (like napster), or run a more limited version through a plug-in on a web page. I've used it for 4 years, and I still listen to it nearly every day.
There are plenty of publications telling you which is which.
I wasn't aware of any such publication back when I was applying for college. But regardless, I went to the only state school with a decent computer engineering program. I didn't really have much choice in the matter, unless I wanted huge student loans or a resume with a university nobody's ever heard of on it.
I think it's quite likely that what you call "bad teaching" is part of what makes a good research university good in the first place.
Please explain this one. How is bad teaching ever a good thing?
they knew their stuff inside out, they loved the subject, and "didn't like teaching" really meant that they hated having to spoon-feed and sugar-coat the subject for students who would otherwise complain about "bad teaching".
Yeah this wasn't my experience at all. In undergrad I had professors that found teaching the basics at the undergrad level beneath them, and in grad school I had professors that just simply couldn't teach, and were only there to do research. You can tell me a professor doesn't want to sugar coat, etc, but how do you explain one professor I had (in a 700 level class) that had two FULL pages of corrections on the overhead projector for a 5(?) page test? Unfortunately this wasn't all that out of the ordinary. I did have a couple of professors that were excited about what they were doing and (in grad school) taught us all about the newest and best that they were working on (I know way more than I will ever need to know about VLIW processors, since that's whay my prof was researching at the time), but they were the minority. To suggest that bad teaching is never the professor's fault is just arrogant.
they present it in a logical order, and relate insights into the subject that only come from years of experience?
If they had done that, then I wouldn't call them bad teachers!
Personally, I skipped the classes I wasn't getting anything out of. Yes, I made B's in most of these classes. The statistics show that I got lower grades in the classes I skipped. However, I would have made B's regardless because the lecture was useless and had absolutely zero impact on my understanding.
I really wish we could figure out a better way to hire college professors. Right now it seems like the ones that bring in the most corporate money are the most successful, even if they can't speak or write english, and have obvsiouly zero interest in teaching. The best teachers I had in college didn't have Phd's--they were associate professors that just taught. They got paid squat and were the first to go in a budget crunch. In grad school I needed tenured professors that knew the industry. Sophomore year I needed a good teacher who knew a little about circuits. Why is there no seperation?
Ugh. I was somewhat with you until you mentioned the war. However, I do know that blaming the republicans for something on slashdot gets you automatic mod points, so I can't fault you too much for it.
I agree that the oil companies *could* pump more oil out of the ground. However, it is in their best interests to keep oil production at that sweet spot where supply and demand produces the most profits for them. Again, this is true in any economic model for any commodity--there's a quantity/price that maximizes profits. OPEC varies oil production in order to hit this spot. Demand has soared lately with the development in countries like China, and that has moved the sweet spot forward a bit, but never be fooled--OPEC has *always* strived to maximize profitibility. This is not a new thing, even though gas prices have skyrockted the last 2 years.
I'm confused at your point about the war, though. You say we're fighting the war in order to win access to more oil. You also say we're in the pockets of the oil companies. Which is it? If we get access to more oil domestically (or in US territories), that's bad news for the international oil companies because supply goes up and price drops. If we're in the pockets of the oil companies then we should drop domestic production, which we're not doing.
As far as only benefitting the "rich oil investors", these are more people than you think. Everyone with a 401k or an IRA has access to commodity stock and the oil companies. My 401k is all in a large company index fund, so while I'm certainly not rich, I'm benefitting from the oil companies' profits, albeit on the small scale. I'm not saying I love the gas prices, but I also wasn't mailing them checks when gas was $0.98 and they were making pennies on the gallon, so I shouldn't get too upset with their success. If they're smart they'll turn that money into other, newer, profitable ventures--maybe even these elusive alternative energy sources that all of the conspiracy theorists seem to think already exist. If not, they'll burn through it like a 16 year old with Christmas money from Grandma and go under once the oil is gone with nothing to show for it. This is the USA. They have the freedom to do with their money as they please. It's the reason they incorporated here in the first place.
It's kind of like how the oil companies could afford to reduce the price of oil artificially, but they know that we are dependent on their oil(purposefully) so that we give them tons and tons of money at unfair prices to get our fix and as a result they become immensely, excessively, profitable. Sounds like a collusion in an oligopoly to me.
The government tried this in the 70's--they placed an artificial price control on gas. The result was gas shortages and huge lines at the few gas stations that did have gas. Oil prices are set the same way every other commodity's prices are set--supply and demand. If the price goes down, demand goes up, and if the supply doesn't change, then we run out of gas just like they did in the 70's.
Problem is the authorities taking a hands off approach to bullies, but zero tolerance to self defense.
I completely agree here. When I got beat up in middle school I was afraid to fight back, because the prospect of getting expelled was much scarier than that of getting punched. Every kid I knew who ever fought back got in as much trouble as the bully. My PE teacher knew I was getting beat up--his solution was to hold back the bully for about 10 sec to give me a head start while I ran as fast as I could from the PE field to an area with teachers. Every day for months. Some days he caught me, some days he didn't.
I had a good home life. Take a kid in my position and make his entire life a living hell, instead of just the hour during PE, and it's not too hard for me to understand why some kids lose it and kill people.
Luckily that particular bully that chased me every day failed 8th grade, so high school wasn't so traumatic for me. I wasn't as lucky as you though--I was 5'4" until I was 16. Didn't hit 5'11" until my senior year.
That's funny--I was just about to comment that while I hate the self-checkouts at Home Depot and Wal-Mart, where you put stuff directly into a bag, I like the self-checkouts at BJs and my local grocery store, where you put it on the conveyor belt. The weighing seems better with the conveyor belt--each item has a second or two to get settled, then it weighs it on the way to your bags.
It's not really a conspiracy as you suggest. In the 70's we switched to corn sweeteners to disconnect us from the world sugar market. Imagine if the price of Pepsi changed every day like gasoline does. Steady prices on staples like this are good for our economy, so that's why the change was made. If we could domestically produce coffee and oil, we would. And we'd be free from the push and pull of the world's biggest commodities markets.
That said, yeah the stuff is way worse for you than sugar.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time I hear these types of things I think back 15 years to high school, and remember how much focus there was on English classes, and how little emphasis was on science. 4 years of English was mandatory. In middle school we had both an English class *and* a literature class. We spent a massive amount of my education on what basically amounted to the useless skill of literature interpretation.
Meanwhile, Physics was optional. Required science consisted of 1 year each of Chemistry and Biology (and we had to take a generic "Physical Science" class).
I had to take year after year of literature interpretation. I took 3 years of Spanish class. We had more AP history classes than anything else in our school. Yet, science was taught by coaches.
In my opinion, most jobs out there are science based. Yes, as a computer engineer I'm biased, but still--what is more likely to get me a job, physics skills or literature interpretation? So why is there so much focus on English and literature?
In my uninformed, bound to get flamed opinion, it's because most smart science people become scientists, while most smart english people become teachers. So your average high school english teacher might have been #1 in his/her class at an Ivy League college, but your Biology teach might be the volleyball coach. Which one is more likely to inspire a student to follow in their footsteps?
There ya go. Tell me I'm wrong.
Not saying this to agree or disagree, but I was able to do an MS in computer engineering with no research (we had a non-thesis option). So there are other reasons to do it beyond just the research.
I notice you say Computer Engineering, not EE or CS. To me, this means you're probably interested in digital design or something similar. If so, definitely get the Master's degree.
I work in a microprocessor design group and we won't even interview someone without a master's degree anymore. 90% of what I learned in school that I apply to my job, I learned in grad school. Grad school teaches exactly what you need to know to do the job in our group, so we don't have to teach you much before you can get started working with us.
So it's not so much that you should do it for money as just the ability to get a job in the field you want. Plus in 1-2 years maybe the job market will be better.
"For example, in the case under review by the Supreme Court, it is currently considered illegal 'price-fixing' for a handbag manufacturer to contract with retailers to set a minimum sale price on handbags. But, at the moment, it is perfectly legal for a manufacturer with its own retail outlets, such as The Gap, to set a minimum sale price on its retail products. Why is one illegal and one not? Ultimately, because government judges and bureaucrats have said so.
Any time an article uses the word bureaucrat, you can generally discount its merit...anyway...
The reason one is illegal and one is not is because the manufacturer with its own retail outlets doesn't sell the items to the retail outlets, unlike a wholesaler. I'm sure there are some internal dollars that change hands, but all of the pricing is done at the point of sale. Not so with wholesalers--they make money selling to distributers, and if they want a higher price they can raise their wholesale price. The only reason they would set their prices at the point of sale is to favor one store over another (i.e. you want to sell your stuff at Wal-Mart but you want it to cost the same elsewhere so it doesn't look "cheap").
This *IS* about politics! This is COMPLETELY about whether or not you think the government should control the cost of medicine. Canada does, the US does not. Most liberals lean toward a socialist state where the government controls more business, and most conservatives lean toward a more independent state where the government is more hands off with business. Just because it's another government controlling the price of the medicine doesn't mean it's free market buying!
And you once again ignore R&D, which is the bulk of the cost of making a new drug. Just because they can sell it for more than they make it for does *not* insure profit on their end. The same is true for cars and microprocessors--the total price of car parts is well under the price of the car, and a microprocessor's cost is more than just a fraction of the cost of the silicon wafer.
I don't think you even understand the issues.
I forgot...anyone on slashdot that's not an extreme liberal is obviously an idiot...
In all reality, what BOA is doing (unfortunately) isn't illegal. Which is why the only way to change it is to change the laws (congress).
As far as selling at a loss goes, it's not that simple. Drugs are relatively cheap to physically produce. That's why generics are so cheap. So it's not that they're selling at a loss in Canada, it's that they're not selling at a high enough price to recoup their R&D. Pulling out of that market would just make it worse. As far as it being a free market--it's not! Canada controls the prices. You can buy a DVD player from Canada because it's not price controlled. But even then, you can't buy a truckload of DVD players and bring them back. Free market buying only applies inside our borders, and even then there are things you can't buy in large quantity in other states (cigarettes) and bring back home.
Yes, I do disagree with what the government claims is the reason. I mean, it's a valid reason as well, and probably a bit easier to explain to the public.
You've got to be kidding me...
* ignoring BofA bruhaha What is Bush supposed to do about this? This requires either investigation (Judicial) or law changes (Legislative). Bush can't write laws or judge anyone. He *could* hold a press conference I suppose, but we all know he's no good at those.
* signing the bankruptcy bill You can't tell me you think the old bankruptcy system was fair. Just about anybody could run up a bunch of debt then file for bankruptcy and not pay anyone. This was badly in need of restructuring. The law is in place so that you can rebuild your life if catastrophe happens, not so you can go crazy with 10 credit cards and buy everything you want.
* pushing ethanol fuel (big ethanol lobby) Big ethanol lobby? The purpose in this law was to boost production so that the price can come down eventually, and we can do what we've wanted to do for 50 years: have a secondary fuel source besides oil.
* against discount drugs from Canada I keep hearing this one, but it just doesn't make sense. Basically, Canada's government artificially limits the prices on drugs, and some people want that price control to apply in the U.S. If that's what they want they should just lobby for our own government to introduce price controls, which I also disagree with. This is capitalism. Money=motivation. If we artificially limit the amount of money that drug companies are "entitled" to make, we will limit their R&D budget and will essentially keep them from developing any more expensive drugs. The free market is a much better system for controlling this, although the insurance situation needs to be fixed to make this really work.
* crazy cronyism in Iraq (KBR, Halliburton) Okay I don't know much about Halliburton, but I'm guessing you don't either. I've heard that they are the only company that does what they do, whatever that is, so there's not really a choice in the matter when it comes to deciding who to hire. But regardless, the president is going to choose people he trusts, and he has experience with those people already, so it's natural for him to choose them.
here
or here
Gotta disagree--the free 3 months of XM in my car got me hooked, and after I had it for a while my wife *had* to have it. We both have long commutes, and having the selection it offers is well worth the money to us. It's like cable tv--I'm not paying for commercial free so much as paying for selection.
XM has always had ads. The talk radio programs are sold to AM, FM, and XM stations, and as such have gaps for ads. There's no way around this other than pre-taping the shows (which I would actually prefer). As such, the talk stations have just as many ads as a regular station.
Clearchannel recently forced XM to put ads in their music stations as well, so some of the music stations have ads (although there are generally clone stations that do not).
The redundant stations are one of the things that makes the service great! Don't like a song? Switch stations without changing genres. Something you can't really do with FM. I have 6 presets set to the same genre and I shuffle through them constantly--they all play the same music but not at the same time.
5 hours? That's a standard commute to work, right? Seriously, though, I regularly drive 5 hours to the beach just for a weekend. 5 hours in a car is no big deal to me. You get used to it. I can't stand sitting on a subway car for 30 minutes, but I'm sure I would get used to it if it were available where I live.
If I had mod points, I'd mod this up. I think it is a pretty good parallel to think of our states as European countries. All the more so since that's what the founding fathers originally intended--most of the governing was supposed to be done by the states, thus you could pick whichever kind of government you want and still be in the same country. Now, everybody seems to want things to be the same everywhere.
remove (or severely restrict) the ability to mod-chip the next-gen Xbox.
This has basically already been done. Everything coming out of the chip is encrypted, with IBM enterprise technology. If they did it themselves, they'd have to come up with their own way. Not saying they can't, but IBM has already proven theirs.
How many movie theaters are in your town? If I drive 30 minutes, I can get to about 12 movie theaters, so they have to compete with each other. As such, I've never had a problem with dirty bathrooms--most of the theaters are very very clean. However, 1-7 still apply. 1) When I got a student discount on movies in college, and they were $5.50 each, I went to tens if not hundreds of them. Now I go maybe once every two months. I still see lots of movies I want to see, but it's harder to talk friends into going, and their reason is that $8.50 is too much to pay when they can buy it later for the cost of 2 tickets. 2) I think this is bound to happen. Witness how the huge blockbuster movies (King Kong) just aren't doing as well as they expect, while there are always a few surprise hits. A few more $200 million bombs and I think we'll see the risk takers less willing to cough up the cash. 3) Ushers. Movies need ushers. 4) I haven't had many problems with this. 5) The commercials are annoying but at least they're not in the middle of the movie. Just wait... 6) Eh. You're presuming that "good" and "popular" are opposites. I don't understand why this is true. 7) Like I said, never been an issue for me.
You should try rhapsody. You can use it for 25 streaming songs per month for free--no credit card or anything. You can run it as an app (like napster), or run a more limited version through a plug-in on a web page. I've used it for 4 years, and I still listen to it nearly every day.
There are plenty of publications telling you which is which.
I wasn't aware of any such publication back when I was applying for college. But regardless, I went to the only state school with a decent computer engineering program. I didn't really have much choice in the matter, unless I wanted huge student loans or a resume with a university nobody's ever heard of on it.
I think it's quite likely that what you call "bad teaching" is part of what makes a good research university good in the first place.
Please explain this one. How is bad teaching ever a good thing?
they knew their stuff inside out, they loved the subject, and "didn't like teaching" really meant that they hated having to spoon-feed and sugar-coat the subject for students who would otherwise complain about "bad teaching".
Yeah this wasn't my experience at all. In undergrad I had professors that found teaching the basics at the undergrad level beneath them, and in grad school I had professors that just simply couldn't teach, and were only there to do research. You can tell me a professor doesn't want to sugar coat, etc, but how do you explain one professor I had (in a 700 level class) that had two FULL pages of corrections on the overhead projector for a 5(?) page test? Unfortunately this wasn't all that out of the ordinary. I did have a couple of professors that were excited about what they were doing and (in grad school) taught us all about the newest and best that they were working on (I know way more than I will ever need to know about VLIW processors, since that's whay my prof was researching at the time), but they were the minority. To suggest that bad teaching is never the professor's fault is just arrogant.
they present it in a logical order, and relate insights into the subject that only come from years of experience?
If they had done that, then I wouldn't call them bad teachers!
Personally, I skipped the classes I wasn't getting anything out of. Yes, I made B's in most of these classes. The statistics show that I got lower grades in the classes I skipped. However, I would have made B's regardless because the lecture was useless and had absolutely zero impact on my understanding.
I really wish we could figure out a better way to hire college professors. Right now it seems like the ones that bring in the most corporate money are the most successful, even if they can't speak or write english, and have obvsiouly zero interest in teaching. The best teachers I had in college didn't have Phd's--they were associate professors that just taught. They got paid squat and were the first to go in a budget crunch. In grad school I needed tenured professors that knew the industry. Sophomore year I needed a good teacher who knew a little about circuits. Why is there no seperation?
Ugh. I was somewhat with you until you mentioned the war. However, I do know that blaming the republicans for something on slashdot gets you automatic mod points, so I can't fault you too much for it.
I agree that the oil companies *could* pump more oil out of the ground. However, it is in their best interests to keep oil production at that sweet spot where supply and demand produces the most profits for them. Again, this is true in any economic model for any commodity--there's a quantity/price that maximizes profits. OPEC varies oil production in order to hit this spot. Demand has soared lately with the development in countries like China, and that has moved the sweet spot forward a bit, but never be fooled--OPEC has *always* strived to maximize profitibility. This is not a new thing, even though gas prices have skyrockted the last 2 years.
I'm confused at your point about the war, though. You say we're fighting the war in order to win access to more oil. You also say we're in the pockets of the oil companies. Which is it? If we get access to more oil domestically (or in US territories), that's bad news for the international oil companies because supply goes up and price drops. If we're in the pockets of the oil companies then we should drop domestic production, which we're not doing.
As far as only benefitting the "rich oil investors", these are more people than you think. Everyone with a 401k or an IRA has access to commodity stock and the oil companies. My 401k is all in a large company index fund, so while I'm certainly not rich, I'm benefitting from the oil companies' profits, albeit on the small scale. I'm not saying I love the gas prices, but I also wasn't mailing them checks when gas was $0.98 and they were making pennies on the gallon, so I shouldn't get too upset with their success. If they're smart they'll turn that money into other, newer, profitable ventures--maybe even these elusive alternative energy sources that all of the conspiracy theorists seem to think already exist. If not, they'll burn through it like a 16 year old with Christmas money from Grandma and go under once the oil is gone with nothing to show for it. This is the USA. They have the freedom to do with their money as they please. It's the reason they incorporated here in the first place.
It's kind of like how the oil companies could afford to reduce the price of oil artificially, but they know that we are dependent on their oil(purposefully) so that we give them tons and tons of money at unfair prices to get our fix and as a result they become immensely, excessively, profitable. Sounds like a collusion in an oligopoly to me.
The government tried this in the 70's--they placed an artificial price control on gas. The result was gas shortages and huge lines at the few gas stations that did have gas. Oil prices are set the same way every other commodity's prices are set--supply and demand. If the price goes down, demand goes up, and if the supply doesn't change, then we run out of gas just like they did in the 70's.
Problem is the authorities taking a hands off approach to bullies, but zero tolerance to self defense.
I completely agree here. When I got beat up in middle school I was afraid to fight back, because the prospect of getting expelled was much scarier than that of getting punched. Every kid I knew who ever fought back got in as much trouble as the bully. My PE teacher knew I was getting beat up--his solution was to hold back the bully for about 10 sec to give me a head start while I ran as fast as I could from the PE field to an area with teachers. Every day for months. Some days he caught me, some days he didn't.
I had a good home life. Take a kid in my position and make his entire life a living hell, instead of just the hour during PE, and it's not too hard for me to understand why some kids lose it and kill people.
Luckily that particular bully that chased me every day failed 8th grade, so high school wasn't so traumatic for me. I wasn't as lucky as you though--I was 5'4" until I was 16. Didn't hit 5'11" until my senior year.
That's funny--I was just about to comment that while I hate the self-checkouts at Home Depot and Wal-Mart, where you put stuff directly into a bag, I like the self-checkouts at BJs and my local grocery store, where you put it on the conveyor belt. The weighing seems better with the conveyor belt--each item has a second or two to get settled, then it weighs it on the way to your bags.
It's not really a conspiracy as you suggest. In the 70's we switched to corn sweeteners to disconnect us from the world sugar market. Imagine if the price of Pepsi changed every day like gasoline does. Steady prices on staples like this are good for our economy, so that's why the change was made. If we could domestically produce coffee and oil, we would. And we'd be free from the push and pull of the world's biggest commodities markets. That said, yeah the stuff is way worse for you than sugar.