"It's interesting to note that Noah's Ark, as described in the Bible..."
It's interesting to note that being the Bible a fiction work, it can include vessels as big as planets, people older than entire empires or magicians capable of the most marvelous miracles with no problems.
"People are irrational and do things against their own interests. Why do you think this would not be true for CEOs of shipping businesses?"
Because of two reasons: 1) CEOs are, almost by definition, psycopaths, so rational above average and not too inclined to go against their own interests while not minding go against others'. 2) Due to the way corporations are constructed nowadays, a CEO can very well work for his own interest by working against the company he manages' ones.
"You're an idiot. Evidence abounds of the efficiency of free markets versus planned economies."
Why, then, every single company in the world, from a mom-and-pop shop to the biggest transnational conglomerate, choose to work themselves under planned economy principles instead of free market ones?
"Please don't type "features" as if you actually would prefer to live without them"
You can bet there're a lot of "features", exactly the ones I put between quotation marks, I really prefer to live without. I really would live without the "this release is no further supported, so your issue gets automatically closed", the "this is not the last release, so I won't take the time to test if your bug request is of any merit: go with the last version" or the "yes, I know I'm developing a library others may depend upon but I don't give a damn about API stability nor breaking it between two extra-version changes", or "I'm much smarter than all that came before me, so I'll reinvent the wheel -poorly, and claim 'as-is by-desing' and 'you don't know what you are asking for' when confronted".
"Yeah, damn these people who get up in the morning and put effort into not being perfect."
Don't think they put effort into not being perfect, but you can bet they damn look like they did -I face them daily.
"I made this original post and no... my group alone (one of many in the corp involved in security) has a $5 mil yearly budget for roughly 20 people"
So just your team (one in many, as you say) could be "exchanged" by an "average security incident" yearly and your company still would be a 20% ahead. Hard to believe the way your company is targeting "security" is an effective one.
"Try and fix ALL of those and you'll never put another feature in your program again"
If that's your approach to software quality, then so be it: the world will be a much better place without your "features".
Now, think on NOT introducing all these bugs to start with and focus on correct them as soon as you are aware of those that go through, so you don't end up needed days upon days to correct them and, all of a sudden, all your software stack will be more solid and you will be able to start adding new features again.
What you do is just rationalizing your utterly wrong priorities. Of course you, sadly, are not alone on this.
"They've come up with a much better solution. Their security is just so bad that they never notice that they've been hacked"
And the company is still in business? Then they most probably just followed the strategy that brought them the best bang for the buck. Why they should do anything different? Heck, why anybody should expect anything different?
For the most part all this security this, security that is just money thrown to theater for no benefit and a lot of money wasted in the way, both for the security-whatever itself, and the inefficiencies and costs of opportunity involved.
"I worked for a major retailer who was burned badly in the recent past"
Like... 4$ million? If it is less, that's not even average, according to the (hard to believe) article's summary.
"They've spent an astronomical amount of money creating a breach-response monitoring center and other safeguards to prevent such a thing from happening again."
Given that there will be big recurring costs coming along, there's any relationship between the damage from the event and the cost of the response? Or is it that a high executive ego's got too hurt and, well, since it's only corporate money, better big than nothing -and it probably will increase his bonus, on top of that!
"I am an immigrant. I came from China. I will say this --- Close down the border"
Not too surprising. In basically any human endevour there's the sociopath come saying "I already got mine, now you can change the rules so no others can!"
"a statistical fact that black males between ages of 14-17 are 10 times more likely to commit a homicide then Whites and Hispanic's Combines."
Even when other attributes are considered? in a multifactor analysis is skin color the one showing the highest prominence? Are Bel Air black teenagers more or less likely to commit violent crimes than white teenagers from a depressed Detroit neighborhood?
Correlation is not causation, do you remember?
"facts are facts"
Yeah, sure, there's no way the way you look at facts can have nothing to do with your view of things.
"Why do offices run on Microsoft networking and Active Directory when Novell's product line predated both? How did Microsoft become the #1 word processor vendor when everybody already had WordPerfect?"
Because Novell was overly complex for the personal computer environment of the time (but, alas, the very moment Novell was an enemy no more, Microsoft launched the very same product Novell had for years: AD) and because Microsoft , while being an awful software company, has been a magnificent marketing company.
"What do you suppose their boards of directors would think of an excuse like that?"
They would think "we are not a damn IT company, we are a damn money-making company: if our buyers were unable to appreciate our products why did we insist in selling the best product instead of making sure we could sell our product?". Larry Ellison is another one that perfectly understood what was happening when he said he preferred a bad product with good marketing to a good product with bad marketing any day of the week. And I also remember an early interview to Bob Young stating that they should aim to sell their products to the bean counters, not the tech guys.
"It barely takes any business acumen and barely any understanding of IT..."
Yes: with barely any business and IT acumen and understanding comes Microsoft to be the biggest software company in the world after few decades. With deep business and IT acumen and understanding, on the other hand, things would have been completely different.
"Competent *nix admins are not a dime a dozen and they are not as cheap as competent Windows admins"
See? there you have an insight about "deep" business acumen: putting costs above productivity.
" You know how I know that you have no real understanding of IT?"
There are A LOT of business using Microsoft products left and right.
Still, the parent poster has nailed it: "No one with any real understanding of IT would be using Microsoft products for anything serious anyway." (I would say "at all" instead).
The fact that it is the biggest software company in the world says a lot about the dismaying state of IT in general.
"So you are disincentivizing people from slightly increasing their income if they want to improve some of the things they are getting for free."
Maybe. But it also means you can expend all of it in other things that are *not* provided for free. Maybe things are not exactly the same they are now. Maybe people won't save for a slightly better home but a quite more expensive car, or a more thorough education for their children, or to support their favorite artist, or to stablish their own business. So then what? The world exactly as it is now you have already experienced; the new one is somehow different? Maybe, but the question is: is it better? is it more sustainable?
"Aside from that, if education is free, there is again no case for not educating the children."
*Basic* education is free. You don't even need to guess: most of Europe has basic education for free and that means two things: on the good part, people can save for higher education, maybe on a prestigious foreign university -and do make use of that advantage; on the bad one, there's a constant tension from the powers that be to destroy the for free education (to profit themselves), on one hand, and to inflation it (to move what it's considered "basic" upwards and put at least part of it in the realm of their business). The "greed" part is out of the realm of this discussion but the benefits of the good part are obvious in Northern Europe results.
"About controls about what people spend money on - that is one of the biggest reasons for the basic income - it's simpler and may be cheaper"
There are two kinds of solutions for complex problems: simple -and wrong, and complex. Basic income has yet to demonstrate how can avoid inflation -and making the State to put money in the hands of the people and then produce the basic goods and services so they are bought back with the money previously gifted seems not only risky but overly complex to end up with the same result than just giving the goods and services for free. Here, simpler is better. I have in fact, a good example in my own country and it doesn't even come from a democracy but a dictatorship: starting in the late fifties, under Franco's dictatorship, started a hugh program of "cheap" homes (for a multiplicity of factors, some or them somehow nice, some of them not so clean): they were not enterily for free because, maybe like you, Franco thought that they needed to mean a strong effort for the buyer -to appreciate it, but still under their affordability limits. The were urban flats, three or four rooms, around 500sqf, later grown up to slightly under 1000sqf. One way or the other, this was in wide use till no less than the late 80s, 15 to 20 years after Franco's dead. This of course meant that there were basically no private offerings for flats on these conditions since they'd overly outprice them, but there are two things to note: despite being a fascist regime with its natural corruption, those flats were in general of good enough quality -to the point that most of them are still occupied two generations later, and that didn't stop a flourishing business of "high quality" homes, either flats (mostly) or houses at 2x or 3x the entry price for those that could afford them. In the end that means, that it might well end up that private initiative could work *even* on "government controlled markets" (albeit with some differences), and that the world is bigger than USA and it probably would pay having a look at the wider world because a lot of "impossible" things, like free education and healthcare (so that means you would need to add "just" food and shelter on top of that for the full program), have not only already been tried elsewhere but shown both their defects and virtues to learn from them.
"Sure there could be a parallel private system, but it would have to compete with a system which doesn't care about profit margins at all."
Oh, the horror! A healthcare system whose main worriness is the well being of citizenship instead of their profit margins.
OK: I see you are either a troll or deeply stupid, but still, I'll lose some two minutes on you:
"who gets to decide what food you are allowed in your body?"
Me.
"who has the authority to decide what you put in your body and to stop you eating or imbibing what you want? "
Me.
"you have not thought about this at all, have you? "
Yes, I did. Even to the point to ask myself the right questions, something you didn't. It's not about what I'm allowed to eat -I'll decide that (within my economical range). It's about what the government will provide for free -you can take it or not. And what the government will provide for free is -again, my own decision, by proxy of my employed representatives -the government.
"You also throw out a strawman conflating Government-provided subsistence with regulation of minimum production quality."
It was you the one asking for the confiability of government-produced food. My answer is that I already consider the government to be good enough to set what the minimal production quality is, which is more than I expect from the private initiative, so why not?
"The principal role of any Government is internal and external security."
That's *your* opinion. And certainly you are entitled to it. Luckily we live in a democracy, so I *also* am entitled to my own opinions, in this case, that the Government is just my employed representative and, as such, its principal role is whatever I damn decide to be.
"The problem is that the entire X suddenly has to come from your income"
And how is this exactly a problem instead of, you see, a fact? Either you are "lucky", have a nice job and then can save a lot (you don't have to pay for rent, or food, or healthcare, or your children's education) or you are in the "mass" without job except for some free-lancing now and then, so you couldn't afford a better home anyway but, at least you have something basic.
"You also don't get the chance to downgrade your appartment"
This is about "basic income": if you could significantly downgrade it, it wouldn't be so "basic", would it?
"- live in a tent to save money for something else."
Don't think about the old standards within the new ones. Why would you want to go below "poverty" (by your local standards)? Certainly not in order to provide the basics for you or your family -remember those are already covered.
"Inflation wouldn't be that much of a factor"
Probably not, provided everything is properly tuned. That's why I said yours is an idea worth spending time on -but it's added complexity and more chances for corruption for little benefit (IMHO). Nevertheless, I might be wrong, and yours is certainly much better than the "basic income and that is -it magically must work!" that most voices air around here.
"If I understand your last comment correctly, you're worried that the basic income will be mis-spent? It's up to each person"
No, it isn't. Once the government is involved -which is you, me, everybody, the individual certainly loses part of his individual freedom for the benefit of the commonality: *I* am putting my fair share to the system, *I* can and should request checks and balances in place to insure my investment -both to the government and my fellow citizens. Your "they can decide to starve to afford to buy the latest iPhone" doesn't work in practice once that you put dependencies into place: you may decide to starve for the new iphone but then, who pays the medical bills that will result? who pays for your starved or uneducated children? Since that's going to be me, I should have a saying on the expenditure (through my proxy, the government). Once the basics are covered you are free to expend all the money you can get (minus taxes) in the best way you can think of anyway.
"The goal is to give everyone a chance of a normal life, not to force them into it."
While I understand your point, that goes to a dangerous slippery slope: at the very least, if you can opt-out, others can -namely, those than can pay for it in excess. A practical example comes again from the Spanish public healthcare system: as I said, on top of the "free" service you can contract whatever you want -nice on paper, isn't it? But then, what happens is 1) that private companies only cover the cheapest -and more visible, parts of the system (where profits margins are higher) and the expensive treatments and procedures come back to the public system which starts to be more expensive per capita, and 2) hey! I'm paying for my own healthcare (which point one above shows to be untrue, but still that's the perception), why I should pay for others'? The system should allow for an opt-out!" which, again, would take out of the system those that can pay in excess, would abuse the system (emergencies are emergencies: you are not going to look if the one on the stretcher belongs to the system or is an opter-out; or, while you could afford it you didn't pay into the system but now that you are unlucky went unemployed and near bankrupcy, you come back and want your full rights) and makes overall more expensive (you now need to add bureaucracy to deal with the new complexities). Of all these problems, the more dangerous is the one about perceptions "hey, I'm paying twice!" because it's the one that can end up destroying the system from within. Add that to the fact that, statistically, we people are bad at long term planning and you can say "not my case" and it could even be true, but that's about big numbers and statistics: individual freedom must be contemplated at the highest priority, but not at any rate.
"The government should not be a surrogate parent to a childish citizenry."
No. It should work at its command. But if I was rich enough, I'd let my butler take care of the petty details of my household, like making sure my pantry is well provisioned, so no wonder I'd very much prefer government (remember: my employee) to take care of putting a dish on my table.
"Would you like to eat food produced by the Government?"
Why not? Bad food kills you. Letting a rabid enemy through your frontiers also kills you. Still you think a standing army is a worthy effort for your government but providing basic food and shelter is not?
On the other hand, please pay attention to that funny word I wrote: "basic". You still are free to buy from free market anything you want and can afford. What I'm saying is for government to provide potatoes, not for the government to forbide anyone else to produce and sell their own ones.
"you don't think the Free Market of voluntary win-win exchange gives you enough variety of inexpensive food?"
It's not a matter of thinking but just looking at facts. We shouldn't need an FDA if things were the way you seem to think. After all there's no win-win in poisoning people, right? Still that's exactly what happens without government overseeing that industry.
" it becomes very expensive to, for example, get a slightyl bigger appartment - you suddenly have to cover the whole cost instead of getting it for free."
That doesn't make it more expensive. If it costed X, it still costs X. Now, it's up to you to decide if you want to pay X or you are well enough with whats provided.
It isn't novelty either: right now you already have the choice (in many EU countries) to get "free" healthcare (paid by taxes) or pay for your own on top of that. Spain is such an example. And given that Spain has one of the highest life expectancies of the world and its healthcare system regarded as one of the best too, it looks to be not such a bad solution. Pity it gives less money to the elite, so no wonder they are doing all possible to dismantle it.
"Why not have it done this way: everyone gets a certain basic income. To ensure that it's sufficent to live on, the government also has to provide basic services that cost that basic amount."
Because of two things: 1) inflation. 2) no security the money will be expended anywhere else but basic shelter or food. But nevertheless, an option worth thinking about more.
"There are other nations besides the United States. If you actually raised taxes in the US by the amounts required, you'd have massive capital flight to other nations."
Truly so. But there's also other means to acomplish an strategy beyond a single action (i.e. taxing). If what you say were an objective truth all and by itself, how can you explain that having a marginal top tax of a whoopy 94% back after WW2 didn't make fortunes flee away to other countries? Companies still want to sell their shiny high profit margin products in the USA and the fact is that they still would want to do it at a lower profit margin because it still would be higher than elsewhere, so there you have your opportunity window to work upon.
As a companion, maybe things like TTIP should be more about making sure corporations don't find tax heavens nor slavery-level workforces no matter where they dig their den and less about making sure they can suck the most out of globalization.
"Throughout the history of these ideologies that's precisely what it's done."
Yet you explicitly dismiss how Europe went out of WW2 disaster by means of a strong public sector.
"You're missing some important facts"
You too. The first one being I was explicitly talking about the 1950 to 1975 period so whatever it's happening now is of low value to this thread.
"Germany has a very strong private sector,"
Which grew after WW2 under the coverage of a very strong public sector that allowed for that.
"Spain doesn't and indeed without EU handouts Spain would be completely bankrupt."
Except current situation was a precondition to enter the EU back in the eighties -and that Spain was in a position to enter the EU was because of the developmental impact of a strong public sector along the previous two decades. Spain had to dismantle their public housing policies, sell out all their publicly owned companies, and abandon or lose weight in sectors where it could be competitive against other European countries (heavy industry, minery, wheat, milk, wine and fisheries among others). No wonder that if you force to dismantle what it's currently working and push money towards flourishing corruption end result is strong dependency.
But the fact stays that a strong public sector worked fine all along the time it was honestly tried, both in Northern and Southern Europe.
"you assume that companies will just accept a lower level of profit."
Freely? Of course not freely. Of course they fight nail and teeth for that not to happen. What I say is that they *can* absorb it, so they can't do it is not an argument. And they certainly do, or else you'd see corporations closing doors instead of corporations reporting increased profits quarter after quarter.
"a net profit margin of only 5.5%, which isn't very interesting to investors."
Given that bonds are below 5.5%, such a profit margin is still a decent one. Of course I'd move my money wherever I can get a 6.5% instead, but that's beyond the point since the point is that you can take out 1% all across the board (i.e. by taxing) and money would still be invested because it still would make sense.
"Can you give us an example of societies with strong state-owned companies for basic services that have existed in the past, where the few did not have wealth flushed towards their pocket"
Of course yes: The whole damn Europe from 1950 to 1975. Please pay attention on what were the basis for, say, the German miracle or the Spanish miracle. Go please look who owned telcos, energy, roads, heavy industry... in Europe all along that period of strong growth and general social embetterment.
Strong government ability to produce goods and services doesn't necessarily mean USSR and kilometric queues to buy toilette paper.
"One caveat I do have, personally, is that people should not get extra money just for having children."
Your caveat begs for the general matter: why did governments provided extra money for children? It was certainly not out of their big heart. It was because more children meant more productive hands -which is not the case anymore. So you have two things going here: 1) it's good for government (our employees in a democratic society) to provide solutions for our current situation. 2) situations change, so we need to stay alert to all things government do to continously re-estate if they are still valid or not and make it act accordingly (remember: they are still our employees).
Slashdot Mirror
"It's interesting to note that Noah's Ark, as described in the Bible..."
It's interesting to note that being the Bible a fiction work, it can include vessels as big as planets, people older than entire empires or magicians capable of the most marvelous miracles with no problems.
Caligula, on the other hand, did build his ship.
"People are irrational and do things against their own interests. Why do you think this would not be true for CEOs of shipping businesses?"
Because of two reasons:
1) CEOs are, almost by definition, psycopaths, so rational above average and not too inclined to go against their own interests while not minding go against others'.
2) Due to the way corporations are constructed nowadays, a CEO can very well work for his own interest by working against the company he manages' ones.
"You're an idiot. Evidence abounds of the efficiency of free markets versus planned economies."
Why, then, every single company in the world, from a mom-and-pop shop to the biggest transnational conglomerate, choose to work themselves under planned economy principles instead of free market ones?
"Please don't type "features" as if you actually would prefer to live without them"
You can bet there're a lot of "features", exactly the ones I put between quotation marks, I really prefer to live without. I really would live without the "this release is no further supported, so your issue gets automatically closed", the "this is not the last release, so I won't take the time to test if your bug request is of any merit: go with the last version" or the "yes, I know I'm developing a library others may depend upon but I don't give a damn about API stability nor breaking it between two extra-version changes", or "I'm much smarter than all that came before me, so I'll reinvent the wheel -poorly, and claim 'as-is by-desing' and 'you don't know what you are asking for' when confronted".
"Yeah, damn these people who get up in the morning and put effort into not being perfect."
Don't think they put effort into not being perfect, but you can bet they damn look like they did -I face them daily.
"I made this original post and no... my group alone (one of many in the corp involved in security) has a $5 mil yearly budget for roughly 20 people"
So just your team (one in many, as you say) could be "exchanged" by an "average security incident" yearly and your company still would be a 20% ahead. Hard to believe the way your company is targeting "security" is an effective one.
"Try and fix ALL of those and you'll never put another feature in your program again"
If that's your approach to software quality, then so be it: the world will be a much better place without your "features".
Now, think on NOT introducing all these bugs to start with and focus on correct them as soon as you are aware of those that go through, so you don't end up needed days upon days to correct them and, all of a sudden, all your software stack will be more solid and you will be able to start adding new features again.
What you do is just rationalizing your utterly wrong priorities. Of course you, sadly, are not alone on this.
"They've come up with a much better solution. Their security is just so bad that they never notice that they've been hacked"
And the company is still in business? Then they most probably just followed the strategy that brought them the best bang for the buck. Why they should do anything different? Heck, why anybody should expect anything different?
For the most part all this security this, security that is just money thrown to theater for no benefit and a lot of money wasted in the way, both for the security-whatever itself, and the inefficiencies and costs of opportunity involved.
"I worked for a major retailer who was burned badly in the recent past"
Like... 4$ million? If it is less, that's not even average, according to the (hard to believe) article's summary.
"They've spent an astronomical amount of money creating a breach-response monitoring center and other safeguards to prevent such a thing from happening again."
Given that there will be big recurring costs coming along, there's any relationship between the damage from the event and the cost of the response? Or is it that a high executive ego's got too hurt and, well, since it's only corporate money, better big than nothing -and it probably will increase his bonus, on top of that!
"I am an immigrant. I came from China.
I will say this --- Close down the border"
Not too surprising. In basically any human endevour there's the sociopath come saying "I already got mine, now you can change the rules so no others can!"
"a statistical fact that black males between ages of 14-17 are 10 times more likely to commit a homicide then Whites and Hispanic's Combines."
Even when other attributes are considered? in a multifactor analysis is skin color the one showing the highest prominence? Are Bel Air black teenagers more or less likely to commit violent crimes than white teenagers from a depressed Detroit neighborhood?
Correlation is not causation, do you remember?
"facts are facts"
Yeah, sure, there's no way the way you look at facts can have nothing to do with your view of things.
"Why do offices run on Microsoft networking and Active Directory when Novell's product line predated both? How did Microsoft become the #1 word processor vendor when everybody already had WordPerfect?"
Because Novell was overly complex for the personal computer environment of the time (but, alas, the very moment Novell was an enemy no more, Microsoft launched the very same product Novell had for years: AD) and because Microsoft , while being an awful software company, has been a magnificent marketing company.
"What do you suppose their boards of directors would think of an excuse like that?"
They would think "we are not a damn IT company, we are a damn money-making company: if our buyers were unable to appreciate our products why did we insist in selling the best product instead of making sure we could sell our product?". Larry Ellison is another one that perfectly understood what was happening when he said he preferred a bad product with good marketing to a good product with bad marketing any day of the week. And I also remember an early interview to Bob Young stating that they should aim to sell their products to the bean counters, not the tech guys.
"It barely takes any business acumen and barely any understanding of IT..."
Yes: with barely any business and IT acumen and understanding comes Microsoft to be the biggest software company in the world after few decades. With deep business and IT acumen and understanding, on the other hand, things would have been completely different.
"Competent *nix admins are not a dime a dozen and they are not as cheap as competent Windows admins"
See? there you have an insight about "deep" business acumen: putting costs above productivity.
" You know how I know that you have no real understanding of IT?"
There are A LOT of business using Microsoft products left and right.
Still, the parent poster has nailed it: "No one with any real understanding of IT would be using Microsoft products for anything serious anyway." (I would say "at all" instead).
The fact that it is the biggest software company in the world says a lot about the dismaying state of IT in general.
"So you are disincentivizing people from slightly increasing their income if they want to improve some of the things they are getting for free."
Maybe. But it also means you can expend all of it in other things that are *not* provided for free. Maybe things are not exactly the same they are now. Maybe people won't save for a slightly better home but a quite more expensive car, or a more thorough education for their children, or to support their favorite artist, or to stablish their own business. So then what? The world exactly as it is now you have already experienced; the new one is somehow different? Maybe, but the question is: is it better? is it more sustainable?
"Aside from that, if education is free, there is again no case for not educating the children."
*Basic* education is free. You don't even need to guess: most of Europe has basic education for free and that means two things: on the good part, people can save for higher education, maybe on a prestigious foreign university -and do make use of that advantage; on the bad one, there's a constant tension from the powers that be to destroy the for free education (to profit themselves), on one hand, and to inflation it (to move what it's considered "basic" upwards and put at least part of it in the realm of their business). The "greed" part is out of the realm of this discussion but the benefits of the good part are obvious in Northern Europe results.
"About controls about what people spend money on - that is one of the biggest reasons for the basic income - it's simpler and may be cheaper"
There are two kinds of solutions for complex problems: simple -and wrong, and complex. Basic income has yet to demonstrate how can avoid inflation -and making the State to put money in the hands of the people and then produce the basic goods and services so they are bought back with the money previously gifted seems not only risky but overly complex to end up with the same result than just giving the goods and services for free. Here, simpler is better. I have in fact, a good example in my own country and it doesn't even come from a democracy but a dictatorship: starting in the late fifties, under Franco's dictatorship, started a hugh program of "cheap" homes (for a multiplicity of factors, some or them somehow nice, some of them not so clean): they were not enterily for free because, maybe like you, Franco thought that they needed to mean a strong effort for the buyer -to appreciate it, but still under their affordability limits. The were urban flats, three or four rooms, around 500sqf, later grown up to slightly under 1000sqf. One way or the other, this was in wide use till no less than the late 80s, 15 to 20 years after Franco's dead. This of course meant that there were basically no private offerings for flats on these conditions since they'd overly outprice them, but there are two things to note: despite being a fascist regime with its natural corruption, those flats were in general of good enough quality -to the point that most of them are still occupied two generations later, and that didn't stop a flourishing business of "high quality" homes, either flats (mostly) or houses at 2x or 3x the entry price for those that could afford them. In the end that means, that it might well end up that private initiative could work *even* on "government controlled markets" (albeit with some differences), and that the world is bigger than USA and it probably would pay having a look at the wider world because a lot of "impossible" things, like free education and healthcare (so that means you would need to add "just" food and shelter on top of that for the full program), have not only already been tried elsewhere but shown both their defects and virtues to learn from them.
"Sure there could be a parallel private system, but it would have to compete with a system which doesn't care about profit margins at all."
Oh, the horror! A healthcare system whose main worriness is the well being of citizenship instead of their profit margins.
OK: I see you are either a troll or deeply stupid, but still, I'll lose some two minutes on you:
"who gets to decide what food you are allowed in your body?"
Me.
"who has the authority to decide what you put in your body and to stop you eating or imbibing what you want? "
Me.
"you have not thought about this at all, have you? "
Yes, I did. Even to the point to ask myself the right questions, something you didn't. It's not about what I'm allowed to eat -I'll decide that (within my economical range). It's about what the government will provide for free -you can take it or not. And what the government will provide for free is -again, my own decision, by proxy of my employed representatives -the government.
"You also throw out a strawman conflating Government-provided subsistence with regulation of minimum production quality."
It was you the one asking for the confiability of government-produced food. My answer is that I already consider the government to be good enough to set what the minimal production quality is, which is more than I expect from the private initiative, so why not?
"The principal role of any Government is internal and external security."
That's *your* opinion. And certainly you are entitled to it. Luckily we live in a democracy, so I *also* am entitled to my own opinions, in this case, that the Government is just my employed representative and, as such, its principal role is whatever I damn decide to be.
"The problem is that the entire X suddenly has to come from your income"
And how is this exactly a problem instead of, you see, a fact? Either you are "lucky", have a nice job and then can save a lot (you don't have to pay for rent, or food, or healthcare, or your children's education) or you are in the "mass" without job except for some free-lancing now and then, so you couldn't afford a better home anyway but, at least you have something basic.
"You also don't get the chance to downgrade your appartment"
This is about "basic income": if you could significantly downgrade it, it wouldn't be so "basic", would it?
"- live in a tent to save money for something else."
Don't think about the old standards within the new ones. Why would you want to go below "poverty" (by your local standards)? Certainly not in order to provide the basics for you or your family -remember those are already covered.
"Inflation wouldn't be that much of a factor"
Probably not, provided everything is properly tuned. That's why I said yours is an idea worth spending time on -but it's added complexity and more chances for corruption for little benefit (IMHO). Nevertheless, I might be wrong, and yours is certainly much better than the "basic income and that is -it magically must work!" that most voices air around here.
"If I understand your last comment correctly, you're worried that the basic income will be mis-spent? It's up to each person"
No, it isn't. Once the government is involved -which is you, me, everybody, the individual certainly loses part of his individual freedom for the benefit of the commonality: *I* am putting my fair share to the system, *I* can and should request checks and balances in place to insure my investment -both to the government and my fellow citizens. Your "they can decide to starve to afford to buy the latest iPhone" doesn't work in practice once that you put dependencies into place: you may decide to starve for the new iphone but then, who pays the medical bills that will result? who pays for your starved or uneducated children? Since that's going to be me, I should have a saying on the expenditure (through my proxy, the government). Once the basics are covered you are free to expend all the money you can get (minus taxes) in the best way you can think of anyway.
"The goal is to give everyone a chance of a normal life, not to force them into it."
While I understand your point, that goes to a dangerous slippery slope: at the very least, if you can opt-out, others can -namely, those than can pay for it in excess. A practical example comes again from the Spanish public healthcare system: as I said, on top of the "free" service you can contract whatever you want -nice on paper, isn't it? But then, what happens is 1) that private companies only cover the cheapest -and more visible, parts of the system (where profits margins are higher) and the expensive treatments and procedures come back to the public system which starts to be more expensive per capita, and 2) hey! I'm paying for my own healthcare (which point one above shows to be untrue, but still that's the perception), why I should pay for others'? The system should allow for an opt-out!" which, again, would take out of the system those that can pay in excess, would abuse the system (emergencies are emergencies: you are not going to look if the one on the stretcher belongs to the system or is an opter-out; or, while you could afford it you didn't pay into the system but now that you are unlucky went unemployed and near bankrupcy, you come back and want your full rights) and makes overall more expensive (you now need to add bureaucracy to deal with the new complexities). Of all these problems, the more dangerous is the one about perceptions "hey, I'm paying twice!" because it's the one that can end up destroying the system from within. Add that to the fact that, statistically, we people are bad at long term planning and you can say "not my case" and it could even be true, but that's about big numbers and statistics: individual freedom must be contemplated at the highest priority, but not at any rate.
"The government should not be a surrogate parent to a childish citizenry."
No. It should work at its command. But if I was rich enough, I'd let my butler take care of the petty details of my household, like making sure my pantry is well provisioned, so no wonder I'd very much prefer government (remember: my employee) to take care of putting a dish on my table.
"Simply saying "we'll pay for whatever you want" removes any personal responsibility from the equation."
Are you kidding? If not, that's the stupidest strawman I've ever seen.
"Would you like to eat food produced by the Government?"
Why not? Bad food kills you. Letting a rabid enemy through your frontiers also kills you. Still you think a standing army is a worthy effort for your government but providing basic food and shelter is not?
On the other hand, please pay attention to that funny word I wrote: "basic". You still are free to buy from free market anything you want and can afford. What I'm saying is for government to provide potatoes, not for the government to forbide anyone else to produce and sell their own ones.
"you don't think the Free Market of voluntary win-win exchange gives you enough variety of inexpensive food?"
It's not a matter of thinking but just looking at facts. We shouldn't need an FDA if things were the way you seem to think. After all there's no win-win in poisoning people, right? Still that's exactly what happens without government overseeing that industry.
" it becomes very expensive to, for example, get a slightyl bigger appartment - you suddenly have to cover the whole cost instead of getting it for free."
That doesn't make it more expensive. If it costed X, it still costs X. Now, it's up to you to decide if you want to pay X or you are well enough with whats provided.
It isn't novelty either: right now you already have the choice (in many EU countries) to get "free" healthcare (paid by taxes) or pay for your own on top of that. Spain is such an example. And given that Spain has one of the highest life expectancies of the world and its healthcare system regarded as one of the best too, it looks to be not such a bad solution. Pity it gives less money to the elite, so no wonder they are doing all possible to dismantle it.
"Why not have it done this way: everyone gets a certain basic income. To ensure that it's sufficent to live on, the government also has to provide basic services that cost that basic amount."
Because of two things: 1) inflation. 2) no security the money will be expended anywhere else but basic shelter or food. But nevertheless, an option worth thinking about more.
"There are other nations besides the United States. If you actually raised taxes in the US by the amounts required, you'd have massive capital flight to other nations."
Truly so. But there's also other means to acomplish an strategy beyond a single action (i.e. taxing). If what you say were an objective truth all and by itself, how can you explain that having a marginal top tax of a whoopy 94% back after WW2 didn't make fortunes flee away to other countries? Companies still want to sell their shiny high profit margin products in the USA and the fact is that they still would want to do it at a lower profit margin because it still would be higher than elsewhere, so there you have your opportunity window to work upon.
As a companion, maybe things like TTIP should be more about making sure corporations don't find tax heavens nor slavery-level workforces no matter where they dig their den and less about making sure they can suck the most out of globalization.
"Throughout the history of these ideologies that's precisely what it's done."
Yet you explicitly dismiss how Europe went out of WW2 disaster by means of a strong public sector.
"You're missing some important facts"
You too. The first one being I was explicitly talking about the 1950 to 1975 period so whatever it's happening now is of low value to this thread.
"Germany has a very strong private sector,"
Which grew after WW2 under the coverage of a very strong public sector that allowed for that.
"Spain doesn't and indeed without EU handouts Spain would be completely bankrupt."
Except current situation was a precondition to enter the EU back in the eighties -and that Spain was in a position to enter the EU was because of the developmental impact of a strong public sector along the previous two decades. Spain had to dismantle their public housing policies, sell out all their publicly owned companies, and abandon or lose weight in sectors where it could be competitive against other European countries (heavy industry, minery, wheat, milk, wine and fisheries among others). No wonder that if you force to dismantle what it's currently working and push money towards flourishing corruption end result is strong dependency.
But the fact stays that a strong public sector worked fine all along the time it was honestly tried, both in Northern and Southern Europe.
"you assume that companies will just accept a lower level of profit."
Freely? Of course not freely. Of course they fight nail and teeth for that not to happen. What I say is that they *can* absorb it, so they can't do it is not an argument. And they certainly do, or else you'd see corporations closing doors instead of corporations reporting increased profits quarter after quarter.
"a net profit margin of only 5.5%, which isn't very interesting to investors."
Given that bonds are below 5.5%, such a profit margin is still a decent one. Of course I'd move my money wherever I can get a 6.5% instead, but that's beyond the point since the point is that you can take out 1% all across the board (i.e. by taxing) and money would still be invested because it still would make sense.
"Can you give us an example of societies with strong state-owned companies for basic services that have existed in the past, where the few did not have wealth flushed towards their pocket"
Of course yes: The whole damn Europe from 1950 to 1975. Please pay attention on what were the basis for, say, the German miracle or the Spanish miracle. Go please look who owned telcos, energy, roads, heavy industry... in Europe all along that period of strong growth and general social embetterment.
Strong government ability to produce goods and services doesn't necessarily mean USSR and kilometric queues to buy toilette paper.
"One caveat I do have, personally, is that people should not get extra money just for having children."
Your caveat begs for the general matter: why did governments provided extra money for children? It was certainly not out of their big heart. It was because more children meant more productive hands -which is not the case anymore. So you have two things going here: 1) it's good for government (our employees in a democratic society) to provide solutions for our current situation. 2) situations change, so we need to stay alert to all things government do to continously re-estate if they are still valid or not and make it act accordingly (remember: they are still our employees).