At least the fool gave some facts. Got any to support your argument? I guess I don't see how being involved in those "major events" wasn't a policy decision. Which puts some doubt in the claim that "U.S. tried policies of isolation in the early 20th century". In addition, there were many policies pursued by President Wilson which were certainly not isolationist in nature. In my view, you are the one attempting to make things black and white; the GP is simply providing evidence to the contrary.
Now, the mood in the country is different from government policy. The American people may very well have been isolationist. But to describe a government which has troops spread all over the world to get involved in "major events" as pursuing policies of isolation, seems like quite a stretch of the meaning of isolation.
Here is a Wilson quote which illustrates an essential point:
"Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down...Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused". -- From Lecture at Columbia University (April 1907)
Whatever the mood in the country or the political wind of the time, one thing I think is true is that the U.S. has never pursued a truly isolationist economic policy. And that is really the point, the U.S. has a long history of using military power to support our economic interests. The U.S. is certainly not alone in that. What exactly is your evidence supporting the nothing that the U.S. tried isolationist policies and they failed? Lots of factors played into when the U.S. entered various wars, the issue is far from black and white.
As for foreign policy, he didn't notice the terrorism threat, but then again, neither did Carter, Reagan, or Bush I.
I disagree. Clinton was certainly working on getting Bin Laden. 9/11 did not happen because we were unaware of the threat. And I think to suggest that Carter and Reagan were unaware of the impact of Islamic radicalism is also ignoring history. They also had to balance this threat against that of the U.S.S.R., which had a bit more power at the time.
The friends and relatives of the current administration seem to be the ones who have trouble remembering that who our friends and enemies are. The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld connection were involved in Lebanon, trading arms for hostages, Iran/Contra, selling WMD to Iraq, going into Somolia (I don't remember if that was under the U.N. or not), going into Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc. Due to their headquarters in the Caymen Islands, Halliburton has done business with both Iraq and Iran while U.S. corporations were banned from doing so. Listen to some of Cheney's congressional testimony from the 90's where he lobbies for lifting trade restrictions on Iran, the contrast with his positions of today is quite interesting. The core of the Republican executive (I mean there has been a Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld in every Republican administration since Nixon), seems uniquely skilled at both helping and fighting those that threaten U.S. interests.
What I dislike most about Hillary is that she is a Clinton. Has there ever been a time in U.S. history where the highest office has been held by two families for over 25+ years? To me, something is very wrong if a democracy of 300+ million people is putting so much power into so few hands. It is as if "of the people, by the people" is talking about two different groups of people, now more than ever.
Clinton's staff DELETED ALL of their e-mail, and not a peep was made out of it. This was in response to an investigation about using the white house for fundraising.
I find that difficult to believe. I seem to remember lots of peeps being made when Clinton did just about anything. Google brings up references to the Clinton administration turning over 32+ million email messages. There were certainly problems. But, why do you think people weren't peeping about it then, when you are peeping about it now?
Well, couple this with the REALID Act. And with the fact that the government is already monitoring financial transactions. The only real difference is that using this system, your REALID becomes a key in their existing databases tracking all of your purchases.
So, you're correct. This really doesn't give the government any more data than they are looking at already. In the short term it just makes it easier for them to use the data they already have. But, in the long term I could see this as additional motivation to say, mandate contact-less REALID readers into the card processing infrastructure. Now that could give them information which they currently find difficult to gather, and they can shift much the cost of building their surveillance infrastructure onto private businesses. A widely distributed network of wireless readers would also add a lot of value to the RFIDs they're putting in the money and will be putting in the REALIDs.
Perhaps the Secretary of State was merely contracting out to a site that could handle the unusual volume that an election site would experience during a highly contested election.
Handle more volume than Ohio Supercomputer Center? Not likely.
I haven't been to Europe lately, so I no idea if French women wear skirts more often than other European women. But, I certainly see no shortage of sexually charged plumage in modern western society. What you are experiencing is diversity and freedom. If you are not finding enough of what you like, you are probably not looking in the right places.
I think the women you perceive as acting like men may be doing so precisely because they don't want to deal with attracted males. Increasingly since the 60's and 70's, young women have been free to consider other priorities. Given the ease with which most of them can attract males, it is not surprising that you might notice a lack of focus in that area.
Having babies and attracting males are two different things. There are many unattractive women who seem to have not trouble reproducing. I suspect tax policy, social spending, and economic opportunity have more to do with it.
Subsidized power? Not unless you're on wind or solar.
If you are in the U.S., it is highly likely that all of your power is subsidized on some form or another. For example, in the most recent energy package passed, the subsidies added for nuclear power and the subsidies added for oil and gas drilling were both greater than either for renewable electricity production or for alternative motor vehicle fuels. And this is nothing new, the Oil industry has received roughly half ($302 billion) of Federal energy incentives since 1950.
Given how subsidies are applied, it may be more reasonable to say that the profits of various sectors of the energy industry are subsidized, rather than saying that consumers in the U.S. benefit from subsidized energy. But wind and solar power are in no way unique in receiving government subsidies.
If there is no indication that providers are even looking down a non-neutral path
Actually, the whole thing started when SBC/AT&T specifically said they desire to tier the Internet. It is not difficult to understand the motivation of the telecoms if you look at how SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI managed to end up on top of the telecom reconsolidation frenzy.
Actually, at the time, Congress launched a three year investigation into the White House Travel Office firings. Clinton didn't really do "the same thing" in this instance. Nobody took issue with previous Bush U.S. Attorney firings, or with mass purges by previous Presidents. But when you only fire 8 people and 6 of them were involved in government corruption investigations, it seems likely that you will raise a few eyebrows. I have little doubt that the Republican Congress of the 90's would have jumped at the opportunity to investigate if Clinton had actually done "the same thing".
The "President's discretion" is supposed to serve the country and the Constitution. When it appears that the power of the President is being used to serve the interests of the President alone, his Party, or his friends, I believe the People (and therefore Congress) are justified in asking questions and seeking answers.
The only reason rain forest agriculture is currently unsustainable is because of the ease of slash and burn techniques and, frankly, laziness.
So in a word, economics.
The GP was responding to why Greenpeace would oppose ethanol production in Brazil. The GP did not make any claim that sustainable agriculture does not exist. Perhaps I missed it, but I did not see information in your links indicating that Brazil had adopted sustainable methods of agriculture for ethanol production. My guess is that in order to be efficient enough for fuel production, industrial methods are used. Not that industrial methods must be non-sustainable, but sustainablity will be prioritized behind profitablity and growth.
Some of that is simple inflation. (which isn't helped by minimum wage increases etc - watch for gas prices to jump again soonish. it'll have little if any relation to fuel cost, and more to do with paying the attendant that is working.)
Why exactly? Personally, I doubt that many employees in the fuel industry are making minimum wage. And I also doubt that labor costs are a very significant part of the costs of a retail fuel business. I'm not trying to argue against the general inflationary pressure caused by minimum wage increases. Simply, I see little reason to expect significant impact in the fuel sector in the "soonish" time frame, or that the impact will be noticeable compared to the "normal" fluctuations in the price of fuel. Fuel prices will go up in the near term, and the reason given will probably be increased demand due to improving weather.
No minimum wage bill has even made it to the President's desk yet, and you want to blame "soonish" price increases on them?
As I understand it, the money is actually printed by the U.S. Mint, part of the Department of the Treasury. It is ordered by and delivered to the Federal Reserve banks.
So the Democrats position was to shut down a majority of people that critisize them?
Yes, because K Street lobbying has certainly been "shut down" by registration. You also think that "a majority" of Democratic critics are getting paid +$25,000/quarter? Where do I sign up?
Things that are illegal for a monopoly are perfectly legit for a non-monopoly. It's a crazy law, but that's how it works. Microsoft broke no federal laws to *gain* their monopoly.
I don't know when their monopoly officially started, but they stole technology from STAC pretty early ('91-'92). As we all know, IP law applies to just fine to non-monopolies, and Microsoft certainly broke those laws. Last time I checked, patent law was federal law. So in short, history says you are incorrect.
So Ohio will start screwing everyone and say it's because of the gays - no, that won't backfire at all..
It is not always intentional. In 2004, Ohio was one of the states which passed an anti-gay marriage amendment. Today, the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments on whether or not the domestic violence laws still apply to non-married people in Ohio.
Backfire? Well, Ohio did just vote in a whole bunch of Democrats; lots of reasons for that though. I think in the end, the public will remain easily manipulated through fear, and people will continue to use fear to manipulate them.
My understanding is that the true nature and extent of this program is still top secret. All that has been released to the public is a couple of leaks and a bunch of denials/justifications from the government. Given the fact that before the leaks Bush was claiming that they were getting warrants for all their tapping, what is the rational basis for believing what they say now? If this program is still top secret, doesn't the Administration actually have a duty to lie about or obfuscate the true nature and extent of the program?
The program as you and the Administration describe it could easily fit within the existing FISA law. Which raises the question, why risk the political and legal fall-out of avoiding the FISA court if you don't have to? Why is the lame duck Congress trying to push through new legislation to authorize the program if the program could actually fit within the existing legal framework?
Try to explain to us, why an electronic voting machine would ever be safer, less tamper-proof or in any way superior to an equally expensive internet-based voting alternative ?
Because adding the Internet to the mix does nothing to solve the security issues. Adding the Internet to the mix simply increases the number of attack vectors and the cost. The number of Internet zombie machines should be a clear enough example of the difficulty in securing the Internet.
Today, internet banking is a wide-spread practice, and generally accepted as reasonably tamper-proof.
First, I don't think this is true. Anti-phishing features are getting built into browsers specifically to enhance the security of these types of web transactions. Google for "phishing cost estimate" and see just how "tamper-proof" Internet banking is these days. Can you name anything connected to the Internet which has proven to be "tamper-proof"? Secondly, bank transactions and anonymous voting transactions are fundamentally different. The requirement that the voter is authenticated and authorized, but that their transaction cannot be linked back to them is not an easy one to solve over the Internet.
The problem of tampering could be even further reduced by a single, nation-wide centralised "registered users" database, updated with birth/death and even criminal records.
How would a centralized voter database impact tampering at all? It may make some types of fraud more difficult, but the fraud just moves to the process of inputting and maintaining this data. Adding yet another database to the system rarely helps the overall accuracy of the information. Centralizing the data also creates opportunities for more massive fraud and abuse. Who gets what types of access to the one true voter database? Personally, I think the blue finger solution is a much more cost effective way to enforce the one person one vote rule.
If perfected, such a system could actually allow "the people" to take a part in all of the State's public decision-making processes, in real-time.
Assuming you are in the U.S., you have even bigger problems than perfecting such a system; you need to rewrite the Constitution. In a more general sense, direct democracy has its' own set of problems.
To me it seems that the voting process is best secured through simple means. The more the process can be witnessed and easily understood the better. Every part of the process which you move out of plain sight introduces another layer where tampering can occur. The more you centralize the process, the more you empower individuals to commit fraud. The more of the process you keep within view of "the people" the better.
hat NPRs testing methodology of measuring unknown devices an unknown distance away in traffic isn't what you'd call rigorous
Except for the fact that:
In June, Marsha MacBride, executive vice-president for legal and regulatory affairs at the NAB and former FCC chief of staff, cited NAB-sponsored research in a letter to Martin, asking him to examine both satellite radio players and MP3 players, some of whose FM modulator emission levels exceeded regulations by as much as
20,000%.
So, NPRs testing does not stand by itself. Both NPR and NAB are asking for an investigation of FM modulator emissions.
And that is why there are no private schools? That is why ITunes has been a failure? And, that must be why I can't seem to find a bottle of water anywhere? Also, what is this WinXP you speak of? Everyone I know uses FreeBSD.
Free services certainly impact the market, but you certainly can compete with them. The fact that there are private insurers and hospitals in Europe would seem to support that.
Slashdot Mirror
At least the fool gave some facts. Got any to support your argument? I guess I don't see how being involved in those "major events" wasn't a policy decision. Which puts some doubt in the claim that "U.S. tried policies of isolation in the early 20th century". In addition, there were many policies pursued by President Wilson which were certainly not isolationist in nature. In my view, you are the one attempting to make things black and white; the GP is simply providing evidence to the contrary.
Now, the mood in the country is different from government policy. The American people may very well have been isolationist. But to describe a government which has troops spread all over the world to get involved in "major events" as pursuing policies of isolation, seems like quite a stretch of the meaning of isolation.
Here is a Wilson quote which illustrates an essential point:
"Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down...Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused". -- From Lecture at Columbia University (April 1907)
Whatever the mood in the country or the political wind of the time, one thing I think is true is that the U.S. has never pursued a truly isolationist economic policy. And that is really the point, the U.S. has a long history of using military power to support our economic interests. The U.S. is certainly not alone in that. What exactly is your evidence supporting the nothing that the U.S. tried isolationist policies and they failed? Lots of factors played into when the U.S. entered various wars, the issue is far from black and white.
As for foreign policy, he didn't notice the terrorism threat, but then again, neither did Carter, Reagan, or Bush I.
I disagree. Clinton was certainly working on getting Bin Laden. 9/11 did not happen because we were unaware of the threat. And I think to suggest that Carter and Reagan were unaware of the impact of Islamic radicalism is also ignoring history. They also had to balance this threat against that of the U.S.S.R., which had a bit more power at the time.
The friends and relatives of the current administration seem to be the ones who have trouble remembering that who our friends and enemies are. The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld connection were involved in Lebanon, trading arms for hostages, Iran/Contra, selling WMD to Iraq, going into Somolia (I don't remember if that was under the U.N. or not), going into Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc. Due to their headquarters in the Caymen Islands, Halliburton has done business with both Iraq and Iran while U.S. corporations were banned from doing so. Listen to some of Cheney's congressional testimony from the 90's where he lobbies for lifting trade restrictions on Iran, the contrast with his positions of today is quite interesting. The core of the Republican executive (I mean there has been a Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld in every Republican administration since Nixon), seems uniquely skilled at both helping and fighting those that threaten U.S. interests.
What I dislike most about Hillary is that she is a Clinton. Has there ever been a time in U.S. history where the highest office has been held by two families for over 25+ years? To me, something is very wrong if a democracy of 300+ million people is putting so much power into so few hands. It is as if "of the people, by the people" is talking about two different groups of people, now more than ever.
Clinton's staff DELETED ALL of their e-mail, and not a peep was made out of it. This was in response to an investigation about using the white house for fundraising.
I find that difficult to believe. I seem to remember lots of peeps being made when Clinton did just about anything. Google brings up references to the Clinton administration turning over 32+ million email messages. There were certainly problems. But, why do you think people weren't peeping about it then, when you are peeping about it now?
Well, couple this with the REALID Act. And with the fact that the government is already monitoring financial transactions. The only real difference is that using this system, your REALID becomes a key in their existing databases tracking all of your purchases.
So, you're correct. This really doesn't give the government any more data than they are looking at already. In the short term it just makes it easier for them to use the data they already have. But, in the long term I could see this as additional motivation to say, mandate contact-less REALID readers into the card processing infrastructure. Now that could give them information which they currently find difficult to gather, and they can shift much the cost of building their surveillance infrastructure onto private businesses. A widely distributed network of wireless readers would also add a lot of value to the RFIDs they're putting in the money and will be putting in the REALIDs.
Perhaps the Secretary of State was merely contracting out to a site that could handle the unusual volume that an election site would experience during a highly contested election.
Handle more volume than Ohio Supercomputer Center? Not likely.
I haven't been to Europe lately, so I no idea if French women wear skirts more often than other European women. But, I certainly see no shortage of sexually charged plumage in modern western society. What you are experiencing is diversity and freedom. If you are not finding enough of what you like, you are probably not looking in the right places.
I think the women you perceive as acting like men may be doing so precisely because they don't want to deal with attracted males. Increasingly since the 60's and 70's, young women have been free to consider other priorities. Given the ease with which most of them can attract males, it is not surprising that you might notice a lack of focus in that area.
Having babies and attracting males are two different things. There are many unattractive women who seem to have not trouble reproducing. I suspect tax policy, social spending, and economic opportunity have more to do with it.
Subsidized power? Not unless you're on wind or solar.
If you are in the U.S., it is highly likely that all of your power is subsidized on some form or another. For example, in the most recent energy package passed, the subsidies added for nuclear power and the subsidies added for oil and gas drilling were both greater than either for renewable electricity production or for alternative motor vehicle fuels. And this is nothing new, the Oil industry has received roughly half ($302 billion) of Federal energy incentives since 1950.
Given how subsidies are applied, it may be more reasonable to say that the profits of various sectors of the energy industry are subsidized, rather than saying that consumers in the U.S. benefit from subsidized energy. But wind and solar power are in no way unique in receiving government subsidies.
We cannot impose our rules of conduct over other people.
Were you aiming for irony?
If there is no indication that providers are even looking down a non-neutral path
Actually, the whole thing started when SBC/AT&T specifically said they desire to tier the Internet. It is not difficult to understand the motivation of the telecoms if you look at how SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI managed to end up on top of the telecom reconsolidation frenzy.
Where were they when Clinton did the same thing?
Actually, at the time, Congress launched a three year investigation into the White House Travel Office firings. Clinton didn't really do "the same thing" in this instance. Nobody took issue with previous Bush U.S. Attorney firings, or with mass purges by previous Presidents. But when you only fire 8 people and 6 of them were involved in government corruption investigations, it seems likely that you will raise a few eyebrows. I have little doubt that the Republican Congress of the 90's would have jumped at the opportunity to investigate if Clinton had actually done "the same thing".
The "President's discretion" is supposed to serve the country and the Constitution. When it appears that the power of the President is being used to serve the interests of the President alone, his Party, or his friends, I believe the People (and therefore Congress) are justified in asking questions and seeking answers.
Based on the performance, they didn't seem all that picky.
Dershowitz on the other hand is a distinguished civil libertarian
Distinguished as a civil libertarian who justifies torture. I guess that would be a fairly distinguishing trait among civil libertarians.
The only reason rain forest agriculture is currently unsustainable is because of the ease of slash and burn techniques and, frankly, laziness.
So in a word, economics.
The GP was responding to why Greenpeace would oppose ethanol production in Brazil. The GP did not make any claim that sustainable agriculture does not exist. Perhaps I missed it, but I did not see information in your links indicating that Brazil had adopted sustainable methods of agriculture for ethanol production. My guess is that in order to be efficient enough for fuel production, industrial methods are used. Not that industrial methods must be non-sustainable, but sustainablity will be prioritized behind profitablity and growth.
Some of that is simple inflation. (which isn't helped by minimum wage increases etc - watch for gas prices to jump again soonish. it'll have little if any relation to fuel cost, and more to do with paying the attendant that is working.)
Why exactly? Personally, I doubt that many employees in the fuel industry are making minimum wage. And I also doubt that labor costs are a very significant part of the costs of a retail fuel business. I'm not trying to argue against the general inflationary pressure caused by minimum wage increases. Simply, I see little reason to expect significant impact in the fuel sector in the "soonish" time frame, or that the impact will be noticeable compared to the "normal" fluctuations in the price of fuel. Fuel prices will go up in the near term, and the reason given will probably be increased demand due to improving weather.
No minimum wage bill has even made it to the President's desk yet, and you want to blame "soonish" price increases on them?
And yet there is no shortage of people who will give predictions on the economy. And no shortage of people who will argue about them.
As I understand it, the money is actually printed by the U.S. Mint, part of the Department of the Treasury. It is ordered by and delivered to the Federal Reserve banks.
So the Democrats position was to shut down a majority of people that critisize them?
Yes, because K Street lobbying has certainly been "shut down" by registration. You also think that "a majority" of Democratic critics are getting paid +$25,000/quarter? Where do I sign up?
Things that are illegal for a monopoly are perfectly legit for a non-monopoly. It's a crazy law, but that's how it works. Microsoft broke no federal laws to *gain* their monopoly.
I don't know when their monopoly officially started, but they stole technology from STAC pretty early ('91-'92). As we all know, IP law applies to just fine to non-monopolies, and Microsoft certainly broke those laws. Last time I checked, patent law was federal law. So in short, history says you are incorrect.
No, Google only cares about your traffic. Browsers which support Google's functionality but never visit Google are of no use to Google.
So Ohio will start screwing everyone and say it's because of the gays - no, that won't backfire at all..
It is not always intentional. In 2004, Ohio was one of the states which passed an anti-gay marriage amendment. Today, the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments on whether or not the domestic violence laws still apply to non-married people in Ohio.
Backfire? Well, Ohio did just vote in a whole bunch of Democrats; lots of reasons for that though. I think in the end, the public will remain easily manipulated through fear, and people will continue to use fear to manipulate them.
And your opinion is based on?
My understanding is that the true nature and extent of this program is still top secret. All that has been released to the public is a couple of leaks and a bunch of denials/justifications from the government. Given the fact that before the leaks Bush was claiming that they were getting warrants for all their tapping, what is the rational basis for believing what they say now? If this program is still top secret, doesn't the Administration actually have a duty to lie about or obfuscate the true nature and extent of the program?
The program as you and the Administration describe it could easily fit within the existing FISA law. Which raises the question, why risk the political and legal fall-out of avoiding the FISA court if you don't have to? Why is the lame duck Congress trying to push through new legislation to authorize the program if the program could actually fit within the existing legal framework?
A crossbow as a home defense weapon? Now we know you're living in a fantasy world.
Hey, the Iceman said they "worked great."
Try to explain to us, why an electronic voting machine would ever be safer, less tamper-proof or in any way superior to an equally expensive internet-based voting alternative ?
Because adding the Internet to the mix does nothing to solve the security issues. Adding the Internet to the mix simply increases the number of attack vectors and the cost. The number of Internet zombie machines should be a clear enough example of the difficulty in securing the Internet.
Today, internet banking is a wide-spread practice, and generally accepted as reasonably tamper-proof.
First, I don't think this is true. Anti-phishing features are getting built into browsers specifically to enhance the security of these types of web transactions. Google for "phishing cost estimate" and see just how "tamper-proof" Internet banking is these days. Can you name anything connected to the Internet which has proven to be "tamper-proof"? Secondly, bank transactions and anonymous voting transactions are fundamentally different. The requirement that the voter is authenticated and authorized, but that their transaction cannot be linked back to them is not an easy one to solve over the Internet.
The problem of tampering could be even further reduced by a single, nation-wide centralised "registered users" database, updated with birth/death and even criminal records.
How would a centralized voter database impact tampering at all? It may make some types of fraud more difficult, but the fraud just moves to the process of inputting and maintaining this data. Adding yet another database to the system rarely helps the overall accuracy of the information. Centralizing the data also creates opportunities for more massive fraud and abuse. Who gets what types of access to the one true voter database? Personally, I think the blue finger solution is a much more cost effective way to enforce the one person one vote rule.
If perfected, such a system could actually allow "the people" to take a part in all of the State's public decision-making processes, in real-time.
Assuming you are in the U.S., you have even bigger problems than perfecting such a system; you need to rewrite the Constitution. In a more general sense, direct democracy has its' own set of problems.
To me it seems that the voting process is best secured through simple means. The more the process can be witnessed and easily understood the better. Every part of the process which you move out of plain sight introduces another layer where tampering can occur. The more you centralize the process, the more you empower individuals to commit fraud. The more of the process you keep within view of "the people" the better.
hat NPRs testing methodology of measuring unknown devices an unknown distance away in traffic isn't what you'd call rigorous
Except for the fact that:
In June, Marsha MacBride, executive vice-president for legal and regulatory affairs at the NAB and former FCC chief of staff, cited NAB-sponsored research in a letter to Martin, asking him to examine both satellite radio players and MP3 players, some of whose FM modulator emission levels exceeded regulations by as much as 20,000%.
So, NPRs testing does not stand by itself. Both NPR and NAB are asking for an investigation of FM modulator emissions.
You cannot compete with free stuff.
And that is why there are no private schools? That is why ITunes has been a failure? And, that must be why I can't seem to find a bottle of water anywhere? Also, what is this WinXP you speak of? Everyone I know uses FreeBSD.
Free services certainly impact the market, but you certainly can compete with them. The fact that there are private insurers and hospitals in Europe would seem to support that.