But, what's this?! Juliet sees that Romeo has a high propensity for Down Syndrome (or any other "disease" - take your pick). Well, this isn't good.
So, instead, Juliet decides to get a divorce and go on her merry way.
Why do you hate Darwin?
Seriously, what's wrong with a little unnatural selection? Let the 'purestrain' people breed with eachother, and the rest of us can interbreed. How else are we going to get speciation within a 100 generations so that we can have sustainable populations of dwarves, gnomes, elves, and trolls?
Because really, that's what we should be aiming for.
**please check the settings on your sarcasometer if your blood vessels are straining to burst free from your neck and forehead after reading this post**
The original poster in reference to the article's worst case scenario.
I was the original poster. And I did not mention giving up rights.
You propose taxing others so that your right to property is not violated through taxation. That right is universal. Forcing someone - anyone - to give up some amount of their productivity is an immoral violation of their rights as a rational being.
Are you deliberately misunderstanding? When a smoker smokes, they are costing me money because we have a public safety net that subsidizes their treatment for illnesses caused by smoking. Rather than have *me* and *you* and everyone else pay for it, why don't they have to pay for it? And on the plus side, the tax is a disincentive to smoke, and therefore we would see a reduction in smoking and a corresponding reduction on the drain it has on the economy. Everyone wins, except for the idiots who continue to smoke despite all the negative effects (health, wallet, etc).
That is valid. However, we are rapidly facing a situation where the burden of health care is, quite simply, going to hobble our economy. The answer, I think, is very complex, and must include incentives for healthy behavior (as opposed to punishment for unhealthy behavior -- two sides of the same coin), a tiered healthcare system, and the assignment of cost to the people who make the costly decisions.
If our healthcare system does not work economically, we are screwed. I do not want people, six generations from now, paying for my decisions. And yet that is exactly what we have now. Without factoring in the economics, we cannot make a system that is equitable and affordable.
You think? Hmmm. How about someone in government realizes that AIDS costs the public treasury a huge amount of money, so they start penalizing a gay lifestyle?
Overruled, unconstitutional. How about instead we do not punish everyone for the actions of an inconsiderate few who decide that having unprotected sex or using septic needles is ok? I do believe in the need and utility for a public safety net... but I cannot condone allowing people to have no negative repercussions for behavior that costs society as a whole.
Or being unmarried, which shortens up your life?
And, interestingly enough, reduces your burden on society.
Or amusing yourself rock-climbing or bicycle racing, which are more dangerous than going to the gym and riding a stationary bicycle to nowhere?
Yes, that's right. I should not have to bear the cost of some jackass adrenaline junkie who takes ridiculous risks. Let him get insurance, and if he doesn't want to, too bad. There is no reason the public at large should be penalized for his poor decision-making.
More plausibly, how about someone in government thinks that lifestyle X is bad for you, and starts handing out tax penalties and rebates accordingly -- but he's wrong. Not like we've ever had any health fads that turned out to be nonsense, right? And no government bureaucrat would dream of making decisions when he doesn't really have enough information to make a good one, right?
Now you're talking about poor implementations, not whether it's a bad idea in theory. Please note that (a) a decision like that is not made by an individual (b) safeguards would be built in and (c) it's not about lifestyles, it's about specific decisions.
As long as you are on the enforcement end, and not on the end being forced to give up all of your rights as a rational being, everything will always look win-win.
Who said anything about being forced to give up rights?
How about this -- if you smoke, you pay a cigarette tax that is put into a fund to be used only for medical care. That way, you don't trample on my right to be secure in my property, when I get taxed more to pay for your care when you are suffering from lung cancer, heart disease, or any of the other illnesses smoking causes.
Sorry to double-reply, I hit submit before I was finished.
I don't think any of the things you mentioned should be banned. I do believe, however, that allowing people to externalize the costs of their behavior (whether they are smokers, polluters, poachers, or anything else) means that people take actions that are highly inefficient and detrimental from a societal point of view. If we want people to make decisions that benefit themselves, while not unduly causing harm or costing others, we need to make sure that the decision-maker bears the costs.
Ex. (though hamstrung in the US) Polluters face fines if they pollute illegally. This, in theory, should tip the decision-making process in favor of not pollutiing. If you do not fine polluters, or make them bear the cost of recovery, then they will always pollute. Note, however, that bad publicity is one cost they should factor into the decision.
Sure, not all actors within a system are rational -- but we can make an impact on behaviors harmful to society by making people pay for the harm they do to others, instead of having the public at large pay.
You miss the point. The point is that when making everyday decisions about lifestyle, people get to externalize some of the cost. If we make them bear the cost, they will be less likely to make decisions that are more expensive for society as a whole.
Just like corpoate pollution -- when the cost is externalized (because someone else bears the brunt of ecological damage and cleanup), it makes sense for companies to pollute. When they need to bear the cost of pollution (or at least account for the cost, via fines or what-have-you) then there is incentive to pollute less.
The point is that any kind of rational decision-making based upon economic ideas is skewed heavily by whether the decision-maker, or the public at large, or someone else entirely, bears the costs of the decision.
Anonymized Google Health data is mined by Pleasantville public health officials to chart wellness patterns and develop health policy. Government commissions use the stats as the basis for regulating smoking, trans-fats, sugar and alcohol. Households with strong wellness metrics are eligible for tax rebates.
Sounds like a good idea to me. People with unhealthy lifestyles cost communities and bigger units (states, federal govt) a lot of money in emergency services, medicare costs, etc. I welcome the idea that those with healthy lifestyles shouldn't be subsidizing those with unhealthy lifestyles. Plus, there is then an obvious economic incentive to become healthier.
[lights come up] crowd goes wild, then quiets down How many people own our first album? crowd cheers loudly How many people own 'Kill 'em All'? Crowd goes nuts and erupts They're the same fucking album, assholes!
I was going to make the same point you did, but would have added in some snark:
From the 'ask slashdot' question:
...and I want advice from those of you who are experts...
*crickets*
You must be new here.
If you want experts, go to a forum where fewer than 90% of the commenters are armchair experts or hobbyists (myself included for many topics on slashdot).
There are also millions of Americans who will not vote for Obama due to race.
These are the people I was referring to in my post -- those for whom the set of possible presidents only includes whites. As more minorities are considered for high office, then the idea of one actually (*gasp*) being elected doesn't seem unthinkable. This is a multigenerational process.
The reason I feel this is important is that, from a national perspective, it is ridiculously stupid to limit the set of potential leaders to one race (&gender).
People who vote based on actual issues... fantastic. You, however, are not one of the people I'm concerned about... I'm concerned about those for whom the issues mean nothing compared to a triviality such as skin color.
IOW, I may disagree with you politically, but I think it's great that you vote based on issues, and I value the input you make into the political process.
They have data service provider status, which is essentially very similar.
All the benefits (no requirement to monitor throughput, etc) without any of the drawbacks? I'll read up on data sevice provider status, since I am not familiar with it -- thanks for the tip.
Anyway, last I looked, BT stood for British Telecom. Different set of laws, and an overall regulatory climate that is not going to be at all favorable to BT.Parent to my post was referring to the US, which is why I brought it up.
It occurs to me that, at least in the US, an ISP that does ad injection *may* be losing its common-carrier status by changing the information that they convey from a Web site to the subscriber.
Newsflash: ISPs do not have common carrier status.
This means that whatever safeguards you associate with common carriers, are not enforceable wrt ISPs. A lot of the big ISPs are very happy with the current situation, since they basically get the benefits of common carriers, without the drawbacks (such as not be allowed to throttle certain users).
In fact it can't print any structures that won't retain their shapes when melted to, say 5 degrees below their melting point.
A little difficult to parse, but what I'm getting from this sentence is:
It can only print structures that retain their shape at (melting point - 5 degrees).
So the problem is not that it can't print Gundam models... the problem is that Gundam models are not made from the right material.
Solution: make your Gundam models from a material that holds its shape at t(m) - 5.
The most complex stuff it would be able to print is a gothic castle (the ones with tiny windows), and you'd have to put the roofs on top of them afterwards.
So print out your layers, then glue them together. (Some assembly required is part of most models anyway...)
The one corner case is calls that cross the border. US customs could claim that such calls might be used to smuggle illegal information into or out of the USA.
That is a very scary statement, because of two words: illegal information.
Information should never, ever be illegal. The act of divulging classified information, that can be illegal... but knowledge of particular information is not, and should never be, a crime.
/This may just be a semantics thing... but I really hope you didn't intend to consider that information itself could be illegal.
I attended HS in NJ in the late 80s-early 90s (I don't know if that qualifies me as an 'older' slashdotter, however). I completed all the maths and AP sciences available at my HS by my junior year -- but the school district paid my tuition at the local community college to take DiffEqs and Organic Chem at night.
It was difficult balancing the demands of school, work, sports, other activities, and night school on top of everything... but graduating high school with over 60 college credits was worth it.
I think this kind of arrangement, when possible, is ideal. High School resources are not wasted on a slim portion of the student population, and advanced classes are made available to those who are capable.
I think that it should be possible to accelerate many more students in this way, but I do not think there is any incentive to do so for the schools -- allocating resources to the best sudents hampers the school's ability to meet NCLB and state requirements for the lowest percentiles.
However, the counterpoint is that attitudes such as yours result in stagnation. There can be no change if those who would support change abandon their causes.
Even if Obama loses, the attention his campaign has been getting (and will get) will make it that much easier for the next candidate to break through the bigotry.
I think you might misunderstand... it's not that I don't think the past needs to be addressed, it's just that it has no bearing on discussing the solution. The dishonesty problem needs to be fixed, and there needs to be corrective (and maybe punitive:)) action taken, but the topic was introduced as a red herring in response to my OP in the thread.
That would be known as a "tpyo." I meant to type "scarce", not "scare", which anyone with half a brain would realize from context.
When you're quoting someone, typos are inexcusable, since you are attributing the typo to the person you are quoting. Context has nothing to do with it.
Ooh... dodge the point that eviscerates your bullshit. Dodge it good and don't ever address it!
Eviscerates my point? Did you even read my post?! My point was to identify why this solution works. You raised a red herring, which was the problems inherent in the previous/current situation, and how they came about.
What you fail to realize is that those problems are due to usage being handled poorly (by undisclosed caps, for instance) due to limitations on bandwidth.
Funny. Now it looks like you don't understand basic economics - the difference between a company dishonestly failing to fulfill their contractual agreement and a "solution that is impossible." It is certainly possible for the companies to fulfill their agreements, but what they are doing is dishonestly trying to change the rules and cheat on their contractual responsibilities instead.
Again, you are getting bogged down in the current problem, without bothering to think about a future solution. The solution being posed, of tiered service and/or metered usage, has absolutely fuckall to do with your red herring. Like I said, I was discussing a solution to the limited badnwidth problem -- I don't want to discuss the dishonesty problem, as it is a separate issue and has nothing to do with my original post.
Funny. As it stands, every ISP out there should be on the hook for breach of contract as it is. The only thing stopping it is not their inability to do so, but that they are more willing to lawyer up and try to evade their contractual responsibility than they are to actually act honestly.
The ISP's have never honored their contracts. I say make them honor their contracts first, as required by the law, THEN we can talk about other things.
Perhaps you fail to understand that is is impossible for ISPs to honor all their contracts. In whatever sugarplum fairy world you live in, maybe they can make resources appear out of thin air. But the simple fact of the matter is that they were stupid, they made mistakes, they also willfully misled people, and now they are in a position where it is simply impossible for them to honor all their contracts. Otherwise they go out of business, or due to usage far above what was originally forecast, everyone's traffic gets caught in the snarl. You need to learn when to cut your losses and get the best deal you can get, because that's how the real world works.
Actually, most people have no effing clue what bandwidth really is. You prove how clueless you are by calling it a "scare good."
WTF is a
"scare good"? Do yourself a favor and don't call someone clueless about the use of economic terms unless you yourself have an understanding of economic terms. Bandwidth has a finite limit, thus is a scarce good.
Bandwidth is not a commodity as such. Unlike most commodities, it cannot be stored for future use. It is entirely a function of the momentary capability of the attached routing system. It's much like telephone systems in that regard; there are only a certain amount of circuits ("lines") that a particular neighborhood or area can have active at a given time.
I did not call it a commodity good, I called it a scarce good. And regardles of your statement here, nothing about what I wrote changes.
And here is where it gets stupid. If you sell someone "X GB/month", then people will STILL get fucked over when they try to use the "bandwidth" (actually, absurd data capacity) they bought during a time when others are doing the same. Tiered plans are in place NOW for most providers, and the companies are lying to us about what they sold anyways - the "up to X kbits/second" tier usually isn't even doing as well as the next tier below.
Dishonesty is a separate issue, which I purposely chose not to address, and I won't get bogged down with here. I don't care about blame for past problems, what I was addressing is a solution to the current problem and the future problem of insufficient bandwidth. Suffice it to say that imperfect information causes havok in economic models, and a requirement for a solution to the bandwidth usage problem will require honesty by all actors.
And this says nothing of the off-period times when most sane people are at work or asleep. You're charging people the same price for the "scarce" times (similar to the daytime cell rates) as for the rates when the routers are just sitting more or less idle.
Which is easily addressed by different rates for peak and off-peak usage, just like electric companies do simply and effectively.
This is where the crackheads in corporate accounting offices and management start drooling - they can set up a complicated pricing scheme that the normal consumer barely understands, and get away with tagging in all sorts of hidden fees. I for one think the companies should be held responsible for upgrading their network and fulfilling the service they contracted for rather than trying to wiggle out of it after they overbooked.
And this is where someone uneducated in economics tries to force a solution that is impossible and does not give a good result. Again, I really don't care about what has happened in the past (though it does need to be resolved -- and I happen to agree with you that contracts should be honored, but not in perpetua). What is important is that we have a system that works -- today, and in the future. As for hidden fees, etc, the answer is legislation, since we are dealing with effective monopolies. But again, that's an entirely different discussion.
Looking backwards keeps you from moving forward, and until you understand that, there's really no point in us having a discussion, since we're writing about two entirely different things.
Setting a cap up is a grab to try to stick people with extra fees, nothing more.
I disagree completely. Setting up a tiered service system is good for all of us. Now, before you fly off the handle, let me explain.
We know that our infratructure will not be able to handle predicted loads in the near future[1].
We know that there are some users whose usage patterns are far higher than most users.
Currently, there is a one-size-fits-all model in most areas, where it is expected that all users can get the access they want. Unfortunately, those users who use a huge amount of bandwidth are preventing other users from getting good service at peak times.
The fact of the matter is that bandwidth is a scarce good (in an economic sense; we have quite a lot of it actually, but not enough to serve everyone at high usage).
So how de we ensure that bandwidth can be apportioned fairly across users? We can make sure that people pay for the bandwidth they use, by metered sale or by tiered pricing.
Pricing in this manner causes usage of bandwidth to be reduced, but also allows those that need a lot of bandwidth to get it -- if they pay for it.
As for the typical user not knowing how much bandwidth they are using -- that's an information problem that is solveable. Just because the average user doesn't have the tools available now, doesn't mean that as tiered pricing expands, the tools will not become commonplace. We went through this with cell phones ages ago. It's now very easy for any cell phone user to check and see how many minutes they have remaining.
In short, wait and see how this plays out. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised in the long run -- those who need lots of bandwidth will be able to pay for it; the rest of us will not be hampered by the high-volume users.
[1] I don't want to get into why our bandwidth capacity sucks, than an entirely different topic. But it's important to note that regardless of whose fault it is, we need to deal with current conditions, and we need to plan for future conditions (where demand for bandwidth will far exceed supply at current prices).
Slashdot Mirror
Referring to linux as your POS is probably a bad idea.
Referring to Vista as your POS, well, that's understood.
Seriously, what's wrong with a little unnatural selection? Let the 'purestrain' people breed with eachother, and the rest of us can interbreed. How else are we going to get speciation within a 100 generations so that we can have sustainable populations of dwarves, gnomes, elves, and trolls?
Because really, that's what we should be aiming for.
**please check the settings on your sarcasometer if your blood vessels are straining to burst free from your neck and forehead after reading this post**
Are you deliberately misunderstanding? When a smoker smokes, they are costing me money because we have a public safety net that subsidizes their treatment for illnesses caused by smoking. Rather than have *me* and *you* and everyone else pay for it, why don't they have to pay for it? And on the plus side, the tax is a disincentive to smoke, and therefore we would see a reduction in smoking and a corresponding reduction on the drain it has on the economy. Everyone wins, except for the idiots who continue to smoke despite all the negative effects (health, wallet, etc).
That is valid. However, we are rapidly facing a situation where the burden of health care is, quite simply, going to hobble our economy. The answer, I think, is very complex, and must include incentives for healthy behavior (as opposed to punishment for unhealthy behavior -- two sides of the same coin), a tiered healthcare system, and the assignment of cost to the people who make the costly decisions.
If our healthcare system does not work economically, we are screwed. I do not want people, six generations from now, paying for my decisions. And yet that is exactly what we have now. Without factoring in the economics, we cannot make a system that is equitable and affordable.
Yes, that's right. I should not have to bear the cost of some jackass adrenaline junkie who takes ridiculous risks. Let him get insurance, and if he doesn't want to, too bad. There is no reason the public at large should be penalized for his poor decision-making.
Now you're talking about poor implementations, not whether it's a bad idea in theory. Please note that (a) a decision like that is not made by an individual (b) safeguards would be built in and (c) it's not about lifestyles, it's about specific decisions.
How about this -- if you smoke, you pay a cigarette tax that is put into a fund to be used only for medical care. That way, you don't trample on my right to be secure in my property, when I get taxed more to pay for your care when you are suffering from lung cancer, heart disease, or any of the other illnesses smoking causes.
Sorry to double-reply, I hit submit before I was finished.
I don't think any of the things you mentioned should be banned. I do believe, however, that allowing people to externalize the costs of their behavior (whether they are smokers, polluters, poachers, or anything else) means that people take actions that are highly inefficient and detrimental from a societal point of view. If we want people to make decisions that benefit themselves, while not unduly causing harm or costing others, we need to make sure that the decision-maker bears the costs.
Ex. (though hamstrung in the US) Polluters face fines if they pollute illegally. This, in theory, should tip the decision-making process in favor of not pollutiing. If you do not fine polluters, or make them bear the cost of recovery, then they will always pollute. Note, however, that bad publicity is one cost they should factor into the decision.
Sure, not all actors within a system are rational -- but we can make an impact on behaviors harmful to society by making people pay for the harm they do to others, instead of having the public at large pay.
You miss the point. The point is that when making everyday decisions about lifestyle, people get to externalize some of the cost. If we make them bear the cost, they will be less likely to make decisions that are more expensive for society as a whole.
Just like corpoate pollution -- when the cost is externalized (because someone else bears the brunt of ecological damage and cleanup), it makes sense for companies to pollute. When they need to bear the cost of pollution (or at least account for the cost, via fines or what-have-you) then there is incentive to pollute less.
The point is that any kind of rational decision-making based upon economic ideas is skewed heavily by whether the decision-maker, or the public at large, or someone else entirely, bears the costs of the decision.
Seems like a win-win to me.
Heh, reminds me of a great exchange from James:
[lights come up]
crowd goes wild, then quiets down
How many people own our first album?
crowd cheers loudly
How many people own 'Kill 'em All'?
Crowd goes nuts and erupts
They're the same fucking album, assholes!
From the 'ask slashdot' question:*crickets*
You must be new here.
If you want experts, go to a forum where fewer than 90% of the commenters are armchair experts or hobbyists (myself included for many topics on slashdot).
There are also millions of Americans who will not vote for Obama due to race.
These are the people I was referring to in my post -- those for whom the set of possible presidents only includes whites. As more minorities are considered for high office, then the idea of one actually (*gasp*) being elected doesn't seem unthinkable. This is a multigenerational process.
The reason I feel this is important is that, from a national perspective, it is ridiculously stupid to limit the set of potential leaders to one race (&gender).
People who vote based on actual issues... fantastic. You, however, are not one of the people I'm concerned about... I'm concerned about those for whom the issues mean nothing compared to a triviality such as skin color.
IOW, I may disagree with you politically, but I think it's great that you vote based on issues, and I value the input you make into the political process.
Vista:XP::Coke II:Coke Classic
I think maybe MS spent far too much cash on development of Vista for it to just be a marketing ploy, but sometimes I wonder.
This means that whatever safeguards you associate with common carriers, are not enforceable wrt ISPs. A lot of the big ISPs are very happy with the current situation, since they basically get the benefits of common carriers, without the drawbacks (such as not be allowed to throttle certain users).
It can only print structures that retain their shape at (melting point - 5 degrees).
So the problem is not that it can't print Gundam models... the problem is that Gundam models are not made from the right material.
Solution: make your Gundam models from a material that holds its shape at t(m) - 5.
So print out your layers, then glue them together. (Some assembly required is part of most models anyway...)
Articulating parts is another story.
Information should never, ever be illegal. The act of divulging classified information, that can be illegal... but knowledge of particular information is not, and should never be, a crime.
/This may just be a semantics thing... but I really hope you didn't intend to consider that information itself could be illegal.
I attended HS in NJ in the late 80s-early 90s (I don't know if that qualifies me as an 'older' slashdotter, however). I completed all the maths and AP sciences available at my HS by my junior year -- but the school district paid my tuition at the local community college to take DiffEqs and Organic Chem at night.
It was difficult balancing the demands of school, work, sports, other activities, and night school on top of everything... but graduating high school with over 60 college credits was worth it.
I think this kind of arrangement, when possible, is ideal. High School resources are not wasted on a slim portion of the student population, and advanced classes are made available to those who are capable.
I think that it should be possible to accelerate many more students in this way, but I do not think there is any incentive to do so for the schools -- allocating resources to the best sudents hampers the school's ability to meet NCLB and state requirements for the lowest percentiles.
sigh... read the OP I was responding too. He suggested supporting !Obama because of the race issue.
You make a valid point.
However, the counterpoint is that attitudes such as yours result in stagnation. There can be no change if those who would support change abandon their causes.
Even if Obama loses, the attention his campaign has been getting (and will get) will make it that much easier for the next candidate to break through the bigotry.
I think you might misunderstand... it's not that I don't think the past needs to be addressed, it's just that it has no bearing on discussing the solution. The dishonesty problem needs to be fixed, and there needs to be corrective (and maybe punitive :)) action taken, but the topic was introduced as a red herring in response to my OP in the thread.
Eviscerates my point? Did you even read my post?! My point was to identify why this solution works. You raised a red herring, which was the problems inherent in the previous/current situation, and how they came about.
What you fail to realize is that those problems are due to usage being handled poorly (by undisclosed caps, for instance) due to limitations on bandwidth.
Again, you are getting bogged down in the current problem, without bothering to think about a future solution. The solution being posed, of tiered service and/or metered usage, has absolutely fuckall to do with your red herring. Like I said, I was discussing a solution to the limited badnwidth problem -- I don't want to discuss the dishonesty problem, as it is a separate issue and has nothing to do with my original post.
Perhaps you fail to understand that is is impossible for ISPs to honor all their contracts. In whatever sugarplum fairy world you live in, maybe they can make resources appear out of thin air. But the simple fact of the matter is that they were stupid, they made mistakes, they also willfully misled people, and now they are in a position where it is simply impossible for them to honor all their contracts. Otherwise they go out of business, or due to usage far above what was originally forecast, everyone's traffic gets caught in the snarl. You need to learn when to cut your losses and get the best deal you can get, because that's how the real world works.
I did not call it a commodity good, I called it a scarce good. And regardles of your statement here, nothing about what I wrote changes.
Dishonesty is a separate issue, which I purposely chose not to address, and I won't get bogged down with here. I don't care about blame for past problems, what I was addressing is a solution to the current problem and the future problem of insufficient bandwidth. Suffice it to say that imperfect information causes havok in economic models, and a requirement for a solution to the bandwidth usage problem will require honesty by all actors.Which is easily addressed by different rates for peak and off-peak usage, just like electric companies do simply and effectively.And this is where someone uneducated in economics tries to force a solution that is impossible and does not give a good result. Again, I really don't care about what has happened in the past (though it does need to be resolved -- and I happen to agree with you that contracts should be honored, but not in perpetua). What is important is that we have a system that works -- today, and in the future. As for hidden fees, etc, the answer is legislation, since we are dealing with effective monopolies. But again, that's an entirely different discussion.
Looking backwards keeps you from moving forward, and until you understand that, there's really no point in us having a discussion, since we're writing about two entirely different things.
We know that our infratructure will not be able to handle predicted loads in the near future[1].
We know that there are some users whose usage patterns are far higher than most users.
Currently, there is a one-size-fits-all model in most areas, where it is expected that all users can get the access they want. Unfortunately, those users who use a huge amount of bandwidth are preventing other users from getting good service at peak times.
The fact of the matter is that bandwidth is a scarce good (in an economic sense; we have quite a lot of it actually, but not enough to serve everyone at high usage).
So how de we ensure that bandwidth can be apportioned fairly across users? We can make sure that people pay for the bandwidth they use, by metered sale or by tiered pricing.
Pricing in this manner causes usage of bandwidth to be reduced, but also allows those that need a lot of bandwidth to get it -- if they pay for it.
As for the typical user not knowing how much bandwidth they are using -- that's an information problem that is solveable. Just because the average user doesn't have the tools available now, doesn't mean that as tiered pricing expands, the tools will not become commonplace. We went through this with cell phones ages ago. It's now very easy for any cell phone user to check and see how many minutes they have remaining.
In short, wait and see how this plays out. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised in the long run -- those who need lots of bandwidth will be able to pay for it; the rest of us will not be hampered by the high-volume users.
[1] I don't want to get into why our bandwidth capacity sucks, than an entirely different topic. But it's important to note that regardless of whose fault it is, we need to deal with current conditions, and we need to plan for future conditions (where demand for bandwidth will far exceed supply at current prices).