All I see are Chinese bureaucrats developing a middle class that they'll eventually suppress by force.
Couple of interesting points, first, the current middle class in china probably contains a majority of bureaucrats, are they going to suppress themselves? Second, middle classes are much harder to suppress than lower classes unless you can find some way to other them (ethnicity is the unusual tool, but that won't work in homogeneous China).
China isn't likely to turn around in a coup. It's the capitalism that's leaking out of Hong Kong is going to continue to slowly change it over time. At least until they run into the demographic wall of their own making.
If it is necessary to norm IQ population to which it's being given, the there are two possibilities: Either, the IQ of someone in China is equivalent to the IQ of someone in the US, or IQ tests are culturally biased.
It's disingenuous to equate the political and the economic history of the US. Politically the US has been around for 200 years. Economically, the founders wouldn't be able to recognize the place.
Economically, the US has roughly been through the following half dozen of so systems.
*Colonial (1500-1775) *Northern proto-Industrial (1776- ~1880) *Southern agrarian (1600- ~1910) *Western expansion (boom/bust gold rushes, ghost towns etc. 1800-1880) *Gilded age and it's associated bust (1880-1940) *Post WWII expansion (1945-1973) *The "modern" service based economy (1973-present)
We've done everything from almost complete laissez faire during the gilded age to damn near a control economy during WWII. The reason we've survived as a political entity is because we've been flexible... something China seems to be getting right so far.
Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.
Authoritarian governments always collapse under their own weight either when the despot gets too greedy, when they lose their grip on the nobles, or in a succession crisis. Even if China can navigate those waters (and I'm not optimistic) they've still got demographic problems that will make the US's Social Security Trust fund look like exemplary foresight.
Locked down hardware is the only advantage of consoles.
The primary reason the PC game market is on the long slow decline is "minimum system requirements" and the upgrade treadmill that goes with it. I know that my Xbox 360 will play every Xbox game just as well as yours. I don't have to worry about frame rates or graphic cards. I plug it in, and I know I can play every game designed for the system.
Of course EOE didn't end racism. Nothing will never end racism. However, what civil rights legislation did was make it unacceptable to be a public racist in a number of important areas (most notably voting, employment, and housing). Consequently when people started being fined or thrown in jail for blatantly being gigantic bigots, bigotry decreased.
Were other social factors important? Absolutely. Would the US's race relations be worse without the important civil rights acts of the '60s? Undeniably. For evidence look no further than the Jim Crow era, in spite of being nominally free, there were no legal consequences to discrimination, and the nadir of american race relations followed.
As a white middle class male, I have probably been negatively impacted by affirmative action, especially in college admissions processes. On the other hand, statistically speaking I make 10 cents more per dollar than women of my own race, and about 22 cents more per dollar than minorities for the same job. So yeah, regardless of what I've suffered, I'm still coming out ahead... and I'd rather not.
Technically, you're right, it is possible that copyright could be broadly re-purposed to stifle political dissent. But to do so would be incredibly unwieldy. First, you'd need to assign the copyright of all "controversial" speech to a friendly agent, then they'd need to sue each speaker and overturn the fair use doctrine, which allows me to reproduce a few bars of a politically powerful, but copyrighted song in another work for the purpose of commentary. Then they'd have to impose tough enough sanctions for this to be effective.
All in all, it's too complicated. Even if the the UK had convinced the guy who owned the copyright to "don't tread on me" to sue, there's no way he's going to track down all the flag makers.
In reality, the government has much better tools it could re-purpose to stifle dissent. Hell, just yesterday, SCOTUS found that giving "material aid," including advice (read:speech) to foreign terrorist groups is not constitutionally protected. I would think that it would be easier to define reading controversial material to be giving "material aid" than to try to extend copyright to do the same thing.
If a duly elected democratic government used it's taxing authority... I and the rest of the civilized world accept that every day not only without protest, but gladly.
Spare me the libertarian blah blah how large does a mob have to be for theft to be justifiable. If you don't want to pay taxes to an entity with a monopoly on the use of force move to Somalia.
The FTC issues reports In the FY2008 report they tout:
One of the Commission’s notable challenges was against the consummated merger of Polypore International and Microporous Products in which the Commission asserted that the February 2008 acquisition reduced competition and raised prices in the markets for multiple types of battery separator film used in the power supplies of various vehicles and in battery backup generators. The Commission also challenged and effectively blocked the proposed merger of Inova Health System Foundation and Prince William Health System, which would have substantially harmed competition in the Northern Virginia market for general acute care inpatient hospital services.
I'm not sure if those are "mega mergers" but they're doing more than zero...
I'm willing to concede that unlimited data is a bad business model and VZW was looking for a reason to get out of it. However, regulators ought to come in and look at the prices for data. I'm not expert enough to know but $10/GB could be reasonable, or it could be price-fixing.. but someone ought to figure out which.
Preaching to the choir here, but while they're at it they ought to look at SMS message prices. There is no way all the carriers settled on the ludicrously high $0.25/message without implicitly or explicitly colluding.
The problem isn't with their constituents in general, it's with a very vocal minority that has decided that shouting down their representatives is more effective than dialog.
I agree that politicians need to find more creative ways to interact with their constituents (i.e. not form letters, spam emails, and town halls), but there's no easy solution when you can't get a word in edgewise at any reasonably sized public event. Then again, no one promised that being a politician would be easy.
To an extent, you're unfortunately right. However, liberals tend to try to target their tax increases to the upper class, there is inevitably some spillover onto the middle class.
Conservatives, OTOH, are the rich and the middle class teaming up to stick it to the poor, and there is inevitably some spillover onto the middle class.
The US's defense spending is ~$800 billion dollars. Cut that by 80% and the $400 to $500 billion deficit goes away.
I'm not saying that this is a reasonable proposal, and I'm well aware that the combined medicare/social security spending is about 200% of defense spending, but his math does work out.
When the state supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional to issue any speeding tickets on uncontrolled roads, Montana instituted maximum 75 mph statutory speed limits on all roads.
Most of the nations highway infrastructure, especially the bits that go over really dangerous terrain like mountains, was built before anyone cared about automobile safety.
I was going to post something about dead man's curve in Cleveland before you beat me to it.
What's good is that they're pretty good at letting you know that it's coming, but what's bad is that there isn't another advisory speed limit in the state that means what it says.
These are parolees, you don't need probable cause. All you have to do is show up whenever there's an alert. If you can't show up whenever there's an alert you need to reassess your priorities.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't think I'm sending those p3nis enlargement emails to everyone, do you?
Optional is a funny word when we're talking about things like college (or job) applications. Compare:
Include an (optional) essay describing why you want to attend Stanford.
Include an (optional) DNA sample.
Might a potential applicant think that their admission prospects are affected by whether or not they include their DNA?
Which is why I became an engineer.
Nah... not if it's within operating parameters. Lets just call it ... natural process variation.
Only if it's installed in a, MG
Actually scratch that. If it's installed in a MG the bulb isn't working anyway.
Couple of interesting points, first, the current middle class in china probably contains a majority of bureaucrats, are they going to suppress themselves?
Second, middle classes are much harder to suppress than lower classes unless you can find some way to other them (ethnicity is the unusual tool, but that won't work in homogeneous China).
China isn't likely to turn around in a coup. It's the capitalism that's leaking out of Hong Kong is going to continue to slowly change it over time. At least until they run into the demographic wall of their own making.
If it is necessary to norm IQ population to which it's being given, the there are two possibilities: Either, the IQ of someone in China is equivalent to the IQ of someone in the US, or IQ tests are culturally biased.
It's disingenuous to equate the political and the economic history of the US. Politically the US has been around for 200 years. Economically, the founders wouldn't be able to recognize the place.
Economically, the US has roughly been through the following half dozen of so systems.
*Colonial (1500-1775)
*Northern proto-Industrial (1776- ~1880)
*Southern agrarian (1600- ~1910)
*Western expansion (boom/bust gold rushes, ghost towns etc. 1800-1880)
*Gilded age and it's associated bust (1880-1940)
*Post WWII expansion (1945-1973)
*The "modern" service based economy (1973-present)
We've done everything from almost complete laissez faire during the gilded age to damn near a control economy during WWII. The reason we've survived as a political entity is because we've been flexible ... something China seems to be getting right so far.
Authoritarian governments always collapse under their own weight either when the despot gets too greedy, when they lose their grip on the nobles, or in a succession crisis. Even if China can navigate those waters (and I'm not optimistic) they've still got demographic problems that will make the US's Social Security Trust fund look like exemplary foresight.
Locked down hardware is the only advantage of consoles.
The primary reason the PC game market is on the long slow decline is "minimum system requirements" and the upgrade treadmill that goes with it. I know that my Xbox 360 will play every Xbox game just as well as yours. I don't have to worry about frame rates or graphic cards. I plug it in, and I know I can play every game designed for the system.
Of course EOE didn't end racism. Nothing will never end racism. However, what civil rights legislation did was make it unacceptable to be a public racist in a number of important areas (most notably voting, employment, and housing). Consequently when people started being fined or thrown in jail for blatantly being gigantic bigots, bigotry decreased.
Were other social factors important? Absolutely. Would the US's race relations be worse without the important civil rights acts of the '60s? Undeniably. For evidence look no further than the Jim Crow era, in spite of being nominally free, there were no legal consequences to discrimination, and the nadir of american race relations followed.
As a white middle class male, I have probably been negatively impacted by affirmative action, especially in college admissions processes. On the other hand, statistically speaking I make 10 cents more per dollar than women of my own race, and about 22 cents more per dollar than minorities for the same job. So yeah, regardless of what I've suffered, I'm still coming out ahead ... and I'd rather not.
You're looking too hard for slippery slopes.
Technically, you're right, it is possible that copyright could be broadly re-purposed to stifle political dissent. But to do so would be incredibly unwieldy. First, you'd need to assign the copyright of all "controversial" speech to a friendly agent, then they'd need to sue each speaker and overturn the fair use doctrine, which allows me to reproduce a few bars of a politically powerful, but copyrighted song in another work for the purpose of commentary. Then they'd have to impose tough enough sanctions for this to be effective.
All in all, it's too complicated. Even if the the UK had convinced the guy who owned the copyright to "don't tread on me" to sue, there's no way he's going to track down all the flag makers.
In reality, the government has much better tools it could re-purpose to stifle dissent. Hell, just yesterday, SCOTUS found that giving "material aid," including advice (read:speech) to foreign terrorist groups is not constitutionally protected. I would think that it would be easier to define reading controversial material to be giving "material aid" than to try to extend copyright to do the same thing.
If you took from me ... No.
If a duly elected democratic government used it's taxing authority ... I and the rest of the civilized world accept that every day not only without protest, but gladly.
Spare me the libertarian blah blah how large does a mob have to be for theft to be justifiable. If you don't want to pay taxes to an entity with a monopoly on the use of force move to Somalia.
The FTC issues reports
In the FY2008 report they tout:
I'm not sure if those are "mega mergers" but they're doing more than zero...
Wouldn't it be nice if there were some sort of index that would measure that and let us know?
(FWIW, last month taken as a whole, price changes favored the consumer by 0.2%)
Agreed, and I think you nailed it.
I'm willing to concede that unlimited data is a bad business model and VZW was looking for a reason to get out of it. However, regulators ought to come in and look at the prices for data. I'm not expert enough to know but $10/GB could be reasonable, or it could be price-fixing .. but someone ought to figure out which.
Preaching to the choir here, but while they're at it they ought to look at SMS message prices. There is no way all the carriers settled on the ludicrously high $0.25/message without implicitly or explicitly colluding.
The problem isn't with their constituents in general, it's with a very vocal minority that has decided that shouting down their representatives is more effective than dialog.
I agree that politicians need to find more creative ways to interact with their constituents (i.e. not form letters, spam emails, and town halls), but there's no easy solution when you can't get a word in edgewise at any reasonably sized public event. Then again, no one promised that being a politician would be easy.
This is Utah. The population is more likely to throw him a party for executing someone than throw a shoe.
To an extent, you're unfortunately right. However, liberals tend to try to target their tax increases to the upper class, there is inevitably some spillover onto the middle class.
Conservatives, OTOH, are the rich and the middle class teaming up to stick it to the poor, and there is inevitably some spillover onto the middle class.
Or, you know, national defense, public spaces, public roads, or responding to pesky things like 150 million gallons of crude oil in a public waterway.
The US's defense spending is ~$800 billion dollars. Cut that by 80% and the $400 to $500 billion deficit goes away.
I'm not saying that this is a reasonable proposal, and I'm well aware that the combined medicare/social security spending is about 200% of defense spending, but his math does work out.
When the state supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional to issue any speeding tickets on uncontrolled roads, Montana instituted maximum 75 mph statutory speed limits on all roads.
wiki link
Another part of the problem is that when we decided we needed speed limits, traveling 80mph in anything but the newest Porsche was truly reckless.
Automobile technology has increased a ton ... yet, if we're lucky, we've gone from max 55mph to 65 mph speed limits.
Roads built today are built that way.
Most of the nations highway infrastructure, especially the bits that go over really dangerous terrain like mountains, was built before anyone cared about automobile safety.
I was going to post something about dead man's curve in Cleveland before you beat me to it.
What's good is that they're pretty good at letting you know that it's coming, but what's bad is that there isn't another advisory speed limit in the state that means what it says.
These are parolees, you don't need probable cause. All you have to do is show up whenever there's an alert. If you can't show up whenever there's an alert you need to reassess your priorities.