Metroid Prime on the Gamecube already supported progressive scan if you have the component cables (either for the GCN or Wii). Simply wonderful. I hope they improve the graphics just incrementally on what was one of the best looking games of the generation, too. Too bad hardly anyone ever used the graphics processor to its full potential.
Of course, the fact it is one of the best adventures of all time helps.
You misunderstand the meaning of "free" then start bashing your own misunderstanding. How is it free market capitalism if there is a legal monopoly granted on the technology, keeping *out* cooperations and businesses? Freedom favors no person over another. If a company can produce a proprietary technology, good for them. If someone else can reverse engineer it, good for them too. But this legal monopoly (patents, DMCA, etc) is anything but free, which is a system biased against smaller bases.
How is that different then the current situation where public schools ask for more and more and more money? If we must have government funded schools, I at least think we should allow people to have more choice in which ones to go to.
Are you kidding? Illegal immigrants are a burden more then an asset. Any tax revenue they make is dwarfed by medical care, schooling, law enforcement, and other costs, as opposed to a legalized worker or citizen doing the same job.
The next step is legislation that PRECLUDES companies from disabling purchased products, IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. Simply put, command-destruct/self-destruct functions should be illegal in ANY product. Legislation wouldn't be needed if everyone KNEW what these asshole companies do, but that is not going to happen since they(the manufacturers/sellers) will ALWAYS try to hide the fact of "limited ownership" until after purchase(and even after)
Yes, let's support the nanny state! Why should it be illegal for me to purchase this, or for me to produce this, because you may personally disagree with it? If the remote disable is one way to lower the cost of my next laptop (and one with cellular Internet to boot), I might go for it. If one of us doesn't hold to our end of the contract (if they cut off my service), that is what the government is there to protect.
Monopoly means I have near exclusive control over an entire market, product, or service. Private property is the solution to the fact that resources are limited, so we independently produce resources and exchange for different ones. Given this, is exclusive control over one thing I own a monopoly? I think not. Government has to allocate and grant a monopoly for IP. Government merely protects private property, it has no (or should not have any) role in its allocation or ownership. If granted is the key word, then private property is not a monopoly. If you consider government protection of private property to be enforcing a monopoly, then I would consider that correct (though it differs from the intended meaning of "monopoly").
Who says government has the power to rule over the people? The people themselves, since most recognize government as the ruler for better or worse. Same thing for private property (more or less), government just protects this right.
What? In politics maybe, but not the libertariansI know. Private property is the solution to limited resources, and modern intellectual property is not limited in any sense.
Marriage isn't a legal status by definition, only by the force of law. It is strictly a tradition/recognition which government should not be involved in, it has long been exclusively the realm of religious institutions. Usually we regulate something because (allegedly) we need to protect a group of people. Who are we protecting by regulating marriage? There is nothing you shouldn't be able to do with contract law already (like your will), and anything else that absolutely must concern government (taxes perhaps, as a convenience) should be based on domestic partnership, marriage is separate and strictly up to individuals and religions.
Why shouldn't the rich pay more taxes than the poor?
Haven't you ever heard of Robin Hood? You do realize he was one of the good guys, right?
Robin Hood established justice where it didn't exist, such as the illegitimate gains from corrupt officials. He certianly didn't endorse welfare if that is what you mean.
And of course the rich should pay more taxes then the poor, a specific percentage minus a handful deductions (set on something similar to the CPI perhaps) for necessities.
With Bush, we reduced taxes on the rich. Did their money trickle down? Not so much. Instead, they used it to inflate a huge stock market bubble. Now, everyday Americans see their retirement savings cut in half.
Seems like not taxing the rich was a huge mistake.
(The same mistake was made before the Crash of '29 and the Great Depression, though other mistakes were made too.)
What time historically have tax cuts preceded a bubble? Never? How could have the government spent the money better then the people they took it from? A classic example of the broken window fallacy. A tax cut representing a 10% increase in wages can no way, by itself, fund a bubble that pushes house, energy, and consumer goods up to three times their normal value. Where do people get the money to pump up these bubbles, do you think? Saying tax cuts alone causes bubbles is absurd. Where does the money for these bubbles come from then? Credit. What have nearly all the artificial bubbles in history have in common? A policy of easy credit. In 2001 for about a year interest rates were lower then inflation on the CPI. During the great depression, you could purchase stocks on credit, on the presumed future value of the stock!
There was no one thing that caused this, Greenspan and Burnanke are to blame for low intrest rates, and denying there was ever a bubble, even after the fact. Bush is to blame for wanting a policy of easy credit. PELOSI AND THE DO-NOTHINGS have their fair share of ridiculous acts aimed at getting credit out to people who didn't deserve it (the CRA). We had a trade deficit for years just waiting to come back and bite us. Bush finally catalyzed what was already inevitable with the deregulation and tax cuts. But by no means was any one policy responsible for this all, it is an accumulation of many things over the years.
Who are the only countries having a problem right now? Why is it the UK is having problems? They didn't cut taxes. Like all the countries that have problems right now, they do have a central bank, and like most countries cut interest rates to "stimulate" - which is exactly what happened, more then they imagined (they just forgot about the inevitable bust that must follow). The same thing happened during the great depression too, countries without a central bank, or on an independent currency like silver, were least affected.
And if you think taxes alone can solve our budget, you may want to check out Hauser's Law
I have servers named after dead scientists, Curie, Einstein, Darwin, Franklin, Newton. Development machines are dead philosophers, Jefferson, Voltaire, Nietzsche (the Windows machine).
I think I would name them after Middle-earth characters if I had to do it over again though.
I curse more when I use git than when I use Windoz (and those are the only times I curse). Git's design is really that bad (from a user perspective).
That isn't even true anymore...
Git is fully distributed (with no "authoritative" source), but it doesn't give you any tools understand/manage the distribution of files. If you have a work group with more than a few people, you are constantly asking what repo (and what access method to it), what branch, and what (bombastically long) revision. It's fine for 1-2 people, but then any version control system is fine for a small enough group.
Huh? You just throw up the.git directory and it is accessible. I have NEVER had to deal with branches or "bombastically long" revision numbers (which you can shorten to 6-10 characters by the way) when merging, pulling, or cloning.
The documentation helps little. When you do "git help merge", you don't @#$@# care that this is the front end to multiple merge methods. You just want the stupid thing to work. If it's a special case, then you'll look for an advanced technique; but you are stuck reading through all this crap trying to figure out what really matters. No offense to the people working on git docs. It used to be awful, now it just sucks. The problem is more in the user interface design than the docs.
You are making it WAY too hard. "git merge frombranchname" is all you need to merge frombranchname into your HEAD. I have never had to deal with merge strategies.
There are over 100 git commands, and a command can do radically different things depending the the switches and target syntax. It's more confusing than any other revision control system that I have worked with.
You don't use (and are not supposed to use) 90% of them, most all of them are the "plumbing" commands that are only used by "porcelain" frontends, like Git itself.
I use git because I have to, not because I want to (like Windoz). After using it for months, I still routinely get stuck trying to figure out the right mix of commands, arguments, and target syntax needed to get common things done.
Git can do some (nice) things that subversion can't, but it creates so many problems that you haven't gained anything.
I've heard good things about mecurial and bazaar. I wouldn't recommend git to anyone I liked (but it's perfect for perl:-).
There are only a handful of commands you need, git-status, branch, merge, remote, add, commit, gc, and maybe log Git changes much of the ways version control systems do, it can be very hard to "un-learn" other systems, especially SVN. Linus said, "I actually credit that to some degree for why Git is so much better than everything else, it is because my brain did not rot from years and years of thinking CVS did something sane".
You can only clone the x most recent commits with the --depth option, but it limits what you can do with the repository.
It is possible to rewrite history, delete a file with bad data, or remove a password, etc, using git-filter-branch. It is going to change your commit names, but it can be pulled anyways, git-rebase has some of the details on how to do that. You just have to force a pull if you don't have any local commits, worst case you have to deal with it the same way you do a rebase. (Or maybe you just run the command yourself.)
Put it this way, keeping the history in one place is _always_ asking for trouble down the line.
Savings is also a form of investment though, and much more important at that because it allows capital formation, which in turn produces wealth, and is re-loaned out to people, for more capital formation. In addition, inflation usually means someone else is winning at the expense of the value of the money, like the big banks. The Federal Reserve is highly valued by the banks because of its inflationary ability.
Then as an economist you should know money by definition means it is a widely accepted medium of exchange, such as gold or silver (historically) or the US Dollar (in the USA). I don't quite understand what you mean.
Also, patents do the best social benefit when the idea is not patented so anyone can use the idea. Patents are supposed to encourage innovation before the idea is thought of, not so much monopolize it after the fact (it is only an incentive), as is what happened in this article. The university has every right (right through law) to patent things it makes itself (as in, develop itself), it makes no sense if it developed independently.
First of all, the US already spends more money per person then any other industrialized nation in the world. It comes as no surprise our system is the most regulated in the world. There are so many broken regulations it is hard to know where to begin. Health insurance is legally tied to your employer, which is so stupid it needs no explanation. Part of the reason is the simple concept of health insurance, it covers everything, when insurance was never meant to. Imagine oil insurance for your car, it makes no sense. Also, hospitals often do not publicize prices, since patients are rarely the ones paying for the treatment, which is why something like a test or pain medication only costs $10 at a local walk in office (that usually do not accept insurance), can end up costing you out of pocket $200 at a standard hospital. Yes, the system is broken. We broke it for ourselves by piling on more and more laws to fix problems caused by the previous broken ones. Never mind that all this is unconstitutional. (But of course, no one cares anymore, go ahead, name one thing the states are allowed to do that the federal government is not these days.) Why don't the states provide healthcare? Surely one of the fifty states could have created a working system by now (and many have tried). It surely isn't the size, we have bigger states (and politically liberal ones at that) bigger then most European countries.
At the time, no one suspected that the states would, in time, become the main oppressors of freedom.
Very nice, but one thing to keep in mind: One of the biggest arguments in favor of the Constitution was because the states were abusing their powers. Money was being printed, traveling between states was difficult because of restrictions and tariffs, states would not recognize each other's decisions (criminal or otherwise). These all happen to be privileges denied to states or requirements of the states because of that.
Nice try. Do me a favor, go get a copy of The Federalist Papers, read them through a few times, then get back to me. Read through The Anti-Federalist Papers for extra credit.
I will save you some time, if government has to grant you a right, say, to education, or food, then it isn't a human right. The Declaration of Independence is a bit shorter of a read and has some nice insight too.
"To promote the general welfare" doesn't appear as a power of any of the three branches of the Federal government. It is a statment of intention, and you should really read into what it meant (try the The Federalist Papers). I am pretty sure that "general welfare" would never translate to "compulsory, federally mandated, community service". Even if so, mandating people to perform community service (or the draft for that matter) would be a violation of one's rights under a number of amendments to it.
States are not simply free to opt out of federal law as established by the Supremacy Clause, unless specifically allowed.
As for roads, states would work together just like they do for natural disasters, criminal justice (extradition, running license plates, and such), and... roads.
Why would we need regulation? Regulation would end up preventing more peering agreements then helping existing ones over fear of making contracts like this unenforceable. What we should be asking is, did they break their contract, between themselves or with their customers?
We should also be asking what is going wrong on the engineering side if traffic is failing to be routed around it?
I would disagree on inflation being a fair tax, it discourages savings and hurts people on fixed incomes. Also, consider where the money is being inflated from: The banks down. The money is created by the Fed, and it hits the richest people first, giving them an unfair advantage over the working classes. Meanwhile, the working classes see an increase in prices because of more demand on the market (the exact same thing as the value of the money going down, since prices are just an exchange ratio), but no increase in their wages. The inflation tax disproportionately hurts anyone who depends on the value of the money--the lower class, people on fixed incomes, the retired, and those saving to invest in capital, among others.
Inflation of a backed currency is (kind of) fairer because it actually costs money to produce (you have to do productive work that is valued by the market), and is sold on the market, not handed out (but yes, that doesn't mean it can't be damaging, because of the 1600s new world explorers, Europe saw inflation rates on gold currency of 100-200%).
It should be noted too, that is the argument that was used to take us off the gold standard- the use as a money was supposedly propping up it's value, and it's non monetary use was estimated at something like a tenth of the value. However, the prices never fell when we went off of it. Point is, there is no proper supply of money, so long as it remains fairly static. As for industrial uses of gold, that is what helps it keep it's value, and I don't think the industry would be affected as much as one might think, prices would adjust accordingly to reflect the new supply. We might not see much of a change in relative gold prices in the long term.
I should have noted, I am not all out for a gold standard, but we, the US (and other countries) really need to make it a legal tender for government debts, and drop all related taxes on it (and silver, and platinum, and most all valuable metals for that matter). If this crisis makes the money go the way of Zimbabwe (this is the first real crisis we have had on a fiat currency), we need competitive alternatives.
Just search Google for New Zealand Subsidies, here is one article. As for controlling prices, that is part of the function of speculators who help keep the prices stable. I don't know as much about farming subsidies in particular (this CAP?) my guess is that the supply is elastic enough that rising prices could be fairly quickly satisfied on the free global market. Also an interesting, maybe relevant article
Finally, as a side note, when special interests prosper, I think it means that there are not enough representatives for the population. Few representatives = less votes to buy = less money needed to get your way.
General Welfare means protect the negative liberties - courts, police, fire for example. And even if it did mean positive liberties (education, social security, etc), there is the tenth amendment in the Constitution, and no where does the constitution allow the federal government to become involved in health care (or education, police, or social security).
Please read the Federalist Papers before trying to discuss what the founding fathers intended.
Insurance period is what destroyed the industry. Instead of charging the minimum, hospitals want to milk the insurance companies for all they can legally charge, and no insurance program is going to change that. Hospitals used to charge the minimum, when health care wasn't legally tied to your job and when costs weren't regulated. The free market is problematic with regard to its remarkable ability at masking the true problems and regurgitating a bunch of weird symptoms.
If we all paid into a big pool that we used for all medical expenses (the current system for most people) it will still allow people to spend money for stuff we don't need (since you are not spending your own money), raising the net costs. Insurance is supposed to protect you against the unlikely situation, not pay for everyday expenses! The current system is fairly repressive. There was a neat article on (and I can not find the link) one hospital offering surgery insurance, in which all procedures, drugs, follow ups, and other surgeries not planned before hand would be covered. This, naturally, brought down costs and prices.
I like to point out the US has the most regulated healthcare system in the world. Europe is allowed to import and trade drugs, why can't we? Why do we need FDA approval if Canadian approval is good enough for doctors to prescribe it?
The trick isn't how much socialism vs free market do we need. The trick is deciding when we nationalise/regulate an industry because it is just to darn important and when do nationalise/regulate an industry because it is in everyone (or "almost everyones") best interest to do so? And of course how many people is enough to be "almost everyone". Under what circumstances do we interfere with the market? The grey areas are things like higher education, hospitals and health insurance, collective resources like sources of water or the electromagnetic spectrum. The banking system is another important area to consider, the entire idea that money has the ability to deliver value is based on a quasi nationalisation of part of the banking industry.
Nearly every time we have had to make a decision like that, we got it wrong. Space exploration is probably the closest we have ever gotten to a good decision for major government funding (but that isn't a nationalized industry, so bad example). Banking is among the worst to nationalize. Controlling the people's money is too strong and tempting of a power for a government agency to hold. If the intent is to protect the money, lots of good that has done, ever since we went off the gold (bullion) standard we have seen inflation skyrocket (losing ~16% of it's value over the last 8 years).
When it comes to international trade and protectionism the situation is an order of magnitude more complicated. Agricultural subsidies and tarrifs in the West effectively guarantee that no less developed nation will have a market for anything bar speciality export crops. Our own companies monopsony power guarentees that they wont get a fair price (a price determined by a free market) for what they produce anyway. But agricultural subsidies are part of the reason why we don't have famines. The West overproduces food so that during lean years we don't starve. Without these subsidies there would be no reason to do this (and where government cant afford these subsidies or corruption prevents them working effectively we see this).
In short, neither presidential candidate has demonstrated to me that they have a good in depth understanding of the problems of deciding how to structure an economy and what to do about international trade. All I can say is that McCain seems to be an ideologue who has found his panacea in the free market. At least Obama seems to have a open mind.
The West overproduces food so that during lean years we don't starve. Without these subsidies there would be no reason to do this (and where government cant afford these subsidies or corruption prevents them working effectively we see this).
Really? New Zealand seems to live without them just fine.
Granted, twin-island New Zealand is only the size of Colorado with a population of 4 million, and represents a mere thimbleful of the world's agriculture. But the evidence is there, its farmers say: Since the government's momentous decision to abolish all 30 agricultural subsidies, their productivity has grown, farming's share of gross domestic product has risen as has the rural population, and family farms have survived and are thriving.
Subsidies only help big companies that know how to lawyer up and fill out long grant applications.
Slashdot Mirror
Metroid Prime on the Gamecube already supported progressive scan if you have the component cables (either for the GCN or Wii). Simply wonderful. I hope they improve the graphics just incrementally on what was one of the best looking games of the generation, too. Too bad hardly anyone ever used the graphics processor to its full potential.
Of course, the fact it is one of the best adventures of all time helps.
You misunderstand the meaning of "free" then start bashing your own misunderstanding. How is it free market capitalism if there is a legal monopoly granted on the technology, keeping *out* cooperations and businesses? Freedom favors no person over another. If a company can produce a proprietary technology, good for them. If someone else can reverse engineer it, good for them too. But this legal monopoly (patents, DMCA, etc) is anything but free, which is a system biased against smaller bases.
How is that different then the current situation where public schools ask for more and more and more money? If we must have government funded schools, I at least think we should allow people to have more choice in which ones to go to.
Are you kidding? Illegal immigrants are a burden more then an asset. Any tax revenue they make is dwarfed by medical care, schooling, law enforcement, and other costs, as opposed to a legalized worker or citizen doing the same job.
The next step is legislation that PRECLUDES companies from disabling purchased products, IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. Simply put, command-destruct/self-destruct functions should be illegal in ANY product. Legislation wouldn't be needed if everyone KNEW what these asshole companies do, but that is not going to happen since they(the manufacturers/sellers) will ALWAYS try to hide the fact of "limited ownership" until after purchase(and even after)
Yes, let's support the nanny state! Why should it be illegal for me to purchase this, or for me to produce this, because you may personally disagree with it? If the remote disable is one way to lower the cost of my next laptop (and one with cellular Internet to boot), I might go for it. If one of us doesn't hold to our end of the contract (if they cut off my service), that is what the government is there to protect.
Monopoly means I have near exclusive control over an entire market, product, or service. Private property is the solution to the fact that resources are limited, so we independently produce resources and exchange for different ones. Given this, is exclusive control over one thing I own a monopoly? I think not.
Government has to allocate and grant a monopoly for IP. Government merely protects private property, it has no (or should not have any) role in its allocation or ownership. If granted is the key word, then private property is not a monopoly. If you consider government protection of private property to be enforcing a monopoly, then I would consider that correct (though it differs from the intended meaning of "monopoly").
Who says government has the power to rule over the people? The people themselves, since most recognize government as the ruler for better or worse. Same thing for private property (more or less), government just protects this right.
What? In politics maybe, but not the libertarians I know.
Private property is the solution to limited resources, and modern intellectual property is not limited in any sense.
Marriage isn't a legal status by definition, only by the force of law. It is strictly a tradition/recognition which government should not be involved in, it has long been exclusively the realm of religious institutions. Usually we regulate something because (allegedly) we need to protect a group of people. Who are we protecting by regulating marriage? There is nothing you shouldn't be able to do with contract law already (like your will), and anything else that absolutely must concern government (taxes perhaps, as a convenience) should be based on domestic partnership, marriage is separate and strictly up to individuals and religions.
Why shouldn't the rich pay more taxes than the poor?
Haven't you ever heard of Robin Hood? You do realize he was one of the good guys, right?
Robin Hood established justice where it didn't exist, such as the illegitimate gains from corrupt officials. He certianly didn't endorse welfare if that is what you mean.
And of course the rich should pay more taxes then the poor, a specific percentage minus a handful deductions (set on something similar to the CPI perhaps) for necessities.
With Bush, we reduced taxes on the rich. Did their money trickle down? Not so much. Instead, they used it to inflate a huge stock market bubble. Now, everyday Americans see their retirement savings cut in half.
Seems like not taxing the rich was a huge mistake.
(The same mistake was made before the Crash of '29 and the Great Depression, though other mistakes were made too.)
What time historically have tax cuts preceded a bubble? Never? How could have the government spent the money better then the people they took it from? A classic example of the broken window fallacy. A tax cut representing a 10% increase in wages can no way, by itself, fund a bubble that pushes house, energy, and consumer goods up to three times their normal value. Where do people get the money to pump up these bubbles, do you think? Saying tax cuts alone causes bubbles is absurd. Where does the money for these bubbles come from then? Credit. What have nearly all the artificial bubbles in history have in common? A policy of easy credit. In 2001 for about a year interest rates were lower then inflation on the CPI. During the great depression, you could purchase stocks on credit, on the presumed future value of the stock!
There was no one thing that caused this, Greenspan and Burnanke are to blame for low intrest rates, and denying there was ever a bubble, even after the fact. Bush is to blame for wanting a policy of easy credit. PELOSI AND THE DO-NOTHINGS have their fair share of ridiculous acts aimed at getting credit out to people who didn't deserve it (the CRA). We had a trade deficit for years just waiting to come back and bite us. Bush finally catalyzed what was already inevitable with the deregulation and tax cuts. But by no means was any one policy responsible for this all, it is an accumulation of many things over the years.
Who are the only countries having a problem right now? Why is it the UK is having problems? They didn't cut taxes. Like all the countries that have problems right now, they do have a central bank, and like most countries cut interest rates to "stimulate" - which is exactly what happened, more then they imagined (they just forgot about the inevitable bust that must follow). The same thing happened during the great depression too, countries without a central bank, or on an independent currency like silver, were least affected.
And if you think taxes alone can solve our budget, you may want to check out Hauser's Law
I have servers named after dead scientists, Curie, Einstein, Darwin, Franklin, Newton.
Development machines are dead philosophers, Jefferson, Voltaire, Nietzsche (the Windows machine).
I think I would name them after Middle-earth characters if I had to do it over again though.
I curse more when I use git than when I use Windoz (and those are the only times I curse). Git's design is really that bad (from a user perspective).
That isn't even true anymore...
Git is fully distributed (with no "authoritative" source), but it doesn't give you any tools understand/manage the distribution of files. If you have a work group with more than a few people, you are constantly asking what repo (and what access method to it), what branch, and what (bombastically long) revision. It's fine for 1-2 people, but then any version control system is fine for a small enough group.
Huh? You just throw up the .git directory and it is accessible. I have NEVER had to deal with branches or "bombastically long" revision numbers (which you can shorten to 6-10 characters by the way) when merging, pulling, or cloning.
The documentation helps little. When you do "git help merge", you don't @#$@# care that this is the front end to multiple merge methods. You just want the stupid thing to work. If it's a special case, then you'll look for an advanced technique; but you are stuck reading through all this crap trying to figure out what really matters. No offense to the people working on git docs. It used to be awful, now it just sucks. The problem is more in the user interface design than the docs.
You are making it WAY too hard. "git merge frombranchname" is all you need to merge frombranchname into your HEAD. I have never had to deal with merge strategies.
There are over 100 git commands, and a command can do radically different things depending the the switches and target syntax. It's more confusing than any other revision control system that I have worked with.
You don't use (and are not supposed to use) 90% of them, most all of them are the "plumbing" commands that are only used by "porcelain" frontends, like Git itself.
I use git because I have to, not because I want to (like Windoz). After using it for months, I still routinely get stuck trying to figure out the right mix of commands, arguments, and target syntax needed to get common things done.
Git can do some (nice) things that subversion can't, but it creates so many problems that you haven't gained anything.
I've heard good things about mecurial and bazaar. I wouldn't recommend git to anyone I liked (but it's perfect for perl :-).
There are only a handful of commands you need, git-status, branch, merge, remote, add, commit, gc, and maybe log
Git changes much of the ways version control systems do, it can be very hard to "un-learn" other systems, especially SVN. Linus said, "I actually credit that to some degree for why Git is so much better than everything else, it is because my brain did not rot from years and years of thinking CVS did something sane".
You can only clone the x most recent commits with the --depth option, but it limits what you can do with the repository.
It is possible to rewrite history, delete a file with bad data, or remove a password, etc, using git-filter-branch. It is going to change your commit names, but it can be pulled anyways, git-rebase has some of the details on how to do that. You just have to force a pull if you don't have any local commits, worst case you have to deal with it the same way you do a rebase. (Or maybe you just run the command yourself.)
Put it this way, keeping the history in one place is _always_ asking for trouble down the line.
Savings is also a form of investment though, and much more important at that because it allows capital formation, which in turn produces wealth, and is re-loaned out to people, for more capital formation. In addition, inflation usually means someone else is winning at the expense of the value of the money, like the big banks. The Federal Reserve is highly valued by the banks because of its inflationary ability.
Then as an economist you should know money by definition means it is a widely accepted medium of exchange, such as gold or silver (historically) or the US Dollar (in the USA). I don't quite understand what you mean.
Also, patents do the best social benefit when the idea is not patented so anyone can use the idea. Patents are supposed to encourage innovation before the idea is thought of, not so much monopolize it after the fact (it is only an incentive), as is what happened in this article. The university has every right (right through law) to patent things it makes itself (as in, develop itself), it makes no sense if it developed independently.
http://www.google.com/search?q=red+light+camera+accident+statistics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_light_camera
You're welcome.
First of all, the US already spends more money per person then any other industrialized nation in the world. It comes as no surprise our system is the most regulated in the world. There are so many broken regulations it is hard to know where to begin. Health insurance is legally tied to your employer, which is so stupid it needs no explanation.
Part of the reason is the simple concept of health insurance, it covers everything, when insurance was never meant to. Imagine oil insurance for your car, it makes no sense. Also, hospitals often do not publicize prices, since patients are rarely the ones paying for the treatment, which is why something like a test or pain medication only costs $10 at a local walk in office (that usually do not accept insurance), can end up costing you out of pocket $200 at a standard hospital.
Yes, the system is broken. We broke it for ourselves by piling on more and more laws to fix problems caused by the previous broken ones.
Never mind that all this is unconstitutional. (But of course, no one cares anymore, go ahead, name one thing the states are allowed to do that the federal government is not these days.) Why don't the states provide healthcare? Surely one of the fifty states could have created a working system by now (and many have tried). It surely isn't the size, we have bigger states (and politically liberal ones at that) bigger then most European countries.
At the time, no one suspected that the states would, in time, become the main oppressors of freedom.
Very nice, but one thing to keep in mind: One of the biggest arguments in favor of the Constitution was because the states were abusing their powers. Money was being printed, traveling between states was difficult because of restrictions and tariffs, states would not recognize each other's decisions (criminal or otherwise). These all happen to be privileges denied to states or requirements of the states because of that.
Nice try.
Do me a favor, go get a copy of The Federalist Papers, read them through a few times, then get back to me. Read through The Anti-Federalist Papers for extra credit.
I will save you some time, if government has to grant you a right, say, to education, or food, then it isn't a human right. The Declaration of Independence is a bit shorter of a read and has some nice insight too.
"To promote the general welfare" doesn't appear as a power of any of the three branches of the Federal government. It is a statment of intention, and you should really read into what it meant (try the The Federalist Papers). I am pretty sure that "general welfare" would never translate to "compulsory, federally mandated, community service". Even if so, mandating people to perform community service (or the draft for that matter) would be a violation of one's rights under a number of amendments to it.
States are not simply free to opt out of federal law as established by the Supremacy Clause, unless specifically allowed.
As for roads, states would work together just like they do for natural disasters, criminal justice (extradition, running license plates, and such), and... roads.
Why would we need regulation? Regulation would end up preventing more peering agreements then helping existing ones over fear of making contracts like this unenforceable. What we should be asking is, did they break their contract, between themselves or with their customers?
We should also be asking what is going wrong on the engineering side if traffic is failing to be routed around it?
I would disagree on inflation being a fair tax, it discourages savings and hurts people on fixed incomes. Also, consider where the money is being inflated from: The banks down. The money is created by the Fed, and it hits the richest people first, giving them an unfair advantage over the working classes. Meanwhile, the working classes see an increase in prices because of more demand on the market (the exact same thing as the value of the money going down, since prices are just an exchange ratio), but no increase in their wages. The inflation tax disproportionately hurts anyone who depends on the value of the money--the lower class, people on fixed incomes, the retired, and those saving to invest in capital, among others.
Inflation of a backed currency is (kind of) fairer because it actually costs money to produce (you have to do productive work that is valued by the market), and is sold on the market, not handed out (but yes, that doesn't mean it can't be damaging, because of the 1600s new world explorers, Europe saw inflation rates on gold currency of 100-200%).
It should be noted too, that is the argument that was used to take us off the gold standard- the use as a money was supposedly propping up it's value, and it's non monetary use was estimated at something like a tenth of the value. However, the prices never fell when we went off of it. Point is, there is no proper supply of money, so long as it remains fairly static. As for industrial uses of gold, that is what helps it keep it's value, and I don't think the industry would be affected as much as one might think, prices would adjust accordingly to reflect the new supply. We might not see much of a change in relative gold prices in the long term.
I should have noted, I am not all out for a gold standard, but we, the US (and other countries) really need to make it a legal tender for government debts, and drop all related taxes on it (and silver, and platinum, and most all valuable metals for that matter). If this crisis makes the money go the way of Zimbabwe (this is the first real crisis we have had on a fiat currency), we need competitive alternatives.
Just search Google for New Zealand Subsidies, here is one article.
As for controlling prices, that is part of the function of speculators who help keep the prices stable. I don't know as much about farming subsidies in particular (this CAP?) my guess is that the supply is elastic enough that rising prices could be fairly quickly satisfied on the free global market.
Also an interesting, maybe relevant article
Finally, as a side note, when special interests prosper, I think it means that there are not enough representatives for the population. Few representatives = less votes to buy = less money needed to get your way.
General Welfare means protect the negative liberties - courts, police, fire for example. And even if it did mean positive liberties (education, social security, etc), there is the tenth amendment in the Constitution, and no where does the constitution allow the federal government to become involved in health care (or education, police, or social security).
Please read the Federalist Papers before trying to discuss what the founding fathers intended.
Insurance period is what destroyed the industry. Instead of charging the minimum, hospitals want to milk the insurance companies for all they can legally charge, and no insurance program is going to change that. Hospitals used to charge the minimum, when health care wasn't legally tied to your job and when costs weren't regulated. The free market is problematic with regard to its remarkable ability at masking the true problems and regurgitating a bunch of weird symptoms.
If we all paid into a big pool that we used for all medical expenses (the current system for most people) it will still allow people to spend money for stuff we don't need (since you are not spending your own money), raising the net costs. Insurance is supposed to protect you against the unlikely situation, not pay for everyday expenses! The current system is fairly repressive. There was a neat article on (and I can not find the link) one hospital offering surgery insurance, in which all procedures, drugs, follow ups, and other surgeries not planned before hand would be covered. This, naturally, brought down costs and prices.
I like to point out the US has the most regulated healthcare system in the world. Europe is allowed to import and trade drugs, why can't we? Why do we need FDA approval if Canadian approval is good enough for doctors to prescribe it?
The trick isn't how much socialism vs free market do we need. The trick is deciding when we nationalise/regulate an industry because it is just to darn important and when do nationalise/regulate an industry because it is in everyone (or "almost everyones") best interest to do so? And of course how many people is enough to be "almost everyone". Under what circumstances do we interfere with the market? The grey areas are things like higher education, hospitals and health insurance, collective resources like sources of water or the electromagnetic spectrum. The banking system is another important area to consider, the entire idea that money has the ability to deliver value is based on a quasi nationalisation of part of the banking industry.
Nearly every time we have had to make a decision like that, we got it wrong. Space exploration is probably the closest we have ever gotten to a good decision for major government funding (but that isn't a nationalized industry, so bad example).
Banking is among the worst to nationalize. Controlling the people's money is too strong and tempting of a power for a government agency to hold. If the intent is to protect the money, lots of good that has done, ever since we went off the gold (bullion) standard we have seen inflation skyrocket (losing ~16% of it's value over the last 8 years).
When it comes to international trade and protectionism the situation is an order of magnitude more complicated. Agricultural subsidies and tarrifs in the West effectively guarantee that no less developed nation will have a market for anything bar speciality export crops. Our own companies monopsony power guarentees that they wont get a fair price (a price determined by a free market) for what they produce anyway. But agricultural subsidies are part of the reason why we don't have famines. The West overproduces food so that during lean years we don't starve. Without these subsidies there would be no reason to do this (and where government cant afford these subsidies or corruption prevents them working effectively we see this).
In short, neither presidential candidate has demonstrated to me that they have a good in depth understanding of the problems of deciding how to structure an economy and what to do about international trade. All I can say is that McCain seems to be an ideologue who has found his panacea in the free market. At least Obama seems to have a open mind.
The West overproduces food so that during lean years we don't starve. Without these subsidies there would be no reason to do this (and where government cant afford these subsidies or corruption prevents them working effectively we see this).
Really?
New Zealand seems to live without them just fine.
Granted, twin-island New Zealand is only the size of Colorado with a population of 4 million, and represents a mere thimbleful of the world's agriculture. But the evidence is there, its farmers say: Since the government's momentous decision to abolish all 30 agricultural subsidies, their productivity has grown, farming's share of gross domestic product has risen as has the rural population, and family farms have survived and are thriving.
Subsidies only help big companies that know how to lawyer up and fill out long grant applications.