Of course you'd also have to assume you know all possible effects of this lie throughout time and a moral belief system that puts those effects over any others that the lie might produce.
Of course, this is completely false because it is completely impossible. You don't try to figure out every single consequence of all your actions, and you don't worry about infinite regressions.
"Atheist countries"? ACs are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with their lies. The closest you can get to an "atheist country" is France and maybe a few of the scandinavian countries. And they're actually nice and friendly... unless of course you pull the "asshole American" routine on them, in which case they will toss you out pretty quickly.
After all, everyone knows that war is dead last in terms of efficient, effective ways of solving international disputes, just as interpersonal violence is the least effective and inefficient way of solving private disputes.
I take it you haven't been introduced to certain members of Homo homo sapiens, who will do whatever the hell they want, until someone physically stops them. They're the sociopaths, serial killers and assorted anti-social people who will happily skin their mother if they can make a buck off of it, save the world, or get their jollies off. At that point, physical violence is the most efficient way of solving the dispute.
With regard to the "Iranian bomb": Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons.
Ahem?
We know this from a very simple piece of evidence: they don't have them.
Oooohhh.... the "I can't see it, therefore it will never exist" approach. They've been trying as hard as hell to get a nuke, but have been thwarted repeatedly by various people. See for example the bombing of the Ossiriak reactor, or, you know... Stuxnet.
It took barely four years to build them from scratch the first time, with much of the basic technology being invented along the way, by a nation with far fewer technological advantages than those enjoyed by modern Iranians simply by virtue of being modern.
Odds are that there was a lot of help given by the US. Up to and including the total lack of bombing research reactors and assassination of senior researchers. Makes it significantly easier. Furthermore, nukes are a 40s technology. Any country with 40s technology can build one. The trick is the manufacturing of it, which is pretty obvious and sensitive to sabotage and lack of raw materials.
The attempt of Iran to get a nuke is very, very real. Real enough that Iran is willing to sacrifice its economical future to keep its "research" and "science" reactors.
Precisely - SWAT teams are police called into action when it is unlikely that the suspect is going to surrender peacefully. They are fully equipped and prepared to shoot to kill. IE there is some information that so-and-so did something bad, and is waving a gun around, possibly with a hostage. What does the police do? Call in the SWAT team, who can and have killed people without a trial. Generally it was because they were being shot at.
How different is this really from what we're doing to people like al-Awlaki? Instead of sending in a SWAT team, we just send in a drone. Presumably, we could ask him to come down to the station, but since we're pretty sure how that's going to turn out (either with dead messengers, or a general finger to the messengers), we figure we cut short the charade and just shoot him.
I don't really see the problem. Unless you think that Americans somehow deserve more protection than some random schmoe on the street, in which case I would recommend all non-Americans to immediately leave the country, because they are clearly second-class citizens and can be killed for not much reason at all.
He probably confused Anwar Al-Awlaki with a minor.
What I find hilarious is that people like CPU6502 have no problem with villagers in a random village being shot, because the Taliban showed their faces. They don't have a problem with people rotting in Gitmo, or being sent to various secret CIA prisons or even foreign governments for "interrogation". But god forbid that under Obama's watch, someone holding an American passport gets killed in a drone strike, and then all hell breaks lose.
You know people, you need to make up your mind: either we're at war with Al-Qaeda, AQ operatives and their supporters and allies, and we shoot them on sight. Or we consider AQ and Co to be thugs, and we send the police after them all. But you can't have it be a war against some people, and a police action against others.
For the record, I prefer police actions. But then again, SWAT teams exist for a reason. And they frequently shoot first as well.
That's all habit though. The only reason it looks like behind-the-scenes footage and day-time soaps is because for some reason, those don't add grainy filters and low-frame rates. Day-time soaps all add some kind of vaseline effect, but that might just be my memory of them....
Give it some time. I have one of those new-fangled interpolation tvs, and I've pretty much gotten used to the effect. If anything, I keep thinking "BBC nature documentary! W00t!"
You do understand that doing these things benefits the US as well, right? Right?
By "powers that be," Irefer to Obama, Bush, Clinton
Yeah.... I mean, I always knew Bush was a secret plant of the Illuminati to fight for globalism! I'm glad you figured it out as well. I mean, I'm sure Bush in there wasn't an insurance against someone calling you a single-neuron republican, or something like that.
when individualism and nationalism should take precedence
Private security weren't dicks usually because they were answerable to the airport authority for that airport, and they are want happy customers.
Is that why Mall cops are always so friendly and helpful? Well, they are, if you are white and rich, or hot and female. But if you are poor, young and a minority... yeah, not so much.
Oh... an AC who shows that he actually doesn't know what the fallacy of appeal to authority actual covers. Flail some more, moron. I should sell you some barrier islands in the Carolinas.
At least you're starting to show your work. Your entire first paragraph, until the last sentence, is actually correct. Two issues still: the 7% increase in albedo is not a unanimous fact. See here for quite a few papers discussing the evolution of albedo, the accuracy of the Earthlight project, etc: http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/papers-on-the-albedo-of-the-earth/. Secondly, the calculation has been met with great skepticism, precisely because the 2C drop in temperature hasn't been observed. This means that changes in albedo have a very limited impact on the global temperature. Finally, Grey-body calculations are fine, but they are far more complex than you let on. For one, what's the impact of dealing with irradition onto a sphere, instead of onto an ideal black-body cavity with an albedo factor applied to it? Hint: it involves integration.
As for the other assertions, obviously we look at different graphs for sea ice -- the SH is over the 30 year mean and has been for a rather long time.
Sea ice is a rather minor aspect of the ice in the SH, as well as utterly uninteresting when it comes to rising sea levels. Furthermore, you are conflating ice area and ice volume. See here for some very accurate measurements that indicate that ice volume is decreasing: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoca-ais022806.php Now that you're 0 for 2, you want to try again?
If you google a bit, you can actually see the variation year by year over the last decade or more, all on one graph.
Yes, it's well known. It's the one I linked. I'm glad you don't even read the replies. It's a great way to stay ignorant and look like a fool.
Oh, and while you're worrying about explaining how you can tell what is a linear trend and what is cyclic in the absence of any sort of serious baseline for data or workable theory,
Ok, now I KNOW that you didn't read anything I linked to. Want to retry that AFTER looking at the graph in my reply? Or are you talking about the slight uptick that came from the Earthlight project, and that no one was able to replicate in their DIRECT measurements of albedo?
But either way the physics of both is perfectly clear, and any halfway decent climate model that includes the measured albedo as a parameter should be showing strong cooling.
The models do include measured albedo, you meandering, cherry-picking, misleading nimrod, and neither the data, nor the models indicate much cooling. Merely a bit of a pause after a record high in 1998, with a slight upward trend if you start your trend at 1999.
But they're not, even though this is bone-simple physics even more fundamental (and prior to) the GHE. I wonder why?
If you would read anything I've linked to, did any sort of research with the goal of understanding your question, rather than confirming your existing bias, you'd know that everyone has been asking the same question, came to the conclusion that the physics model is far too simple to be used as the only controlling factor, and decided that there's got to be more to the current data than what can be inferred merely from water vapor and albedo.
If you want me to take you seriously, you might want to start linking your sources. Because so far, you are batting a big fat 0, and coming across as someone who is mistaking expertise in one area for expertise in a completely different one - and making a total ass out of himself in the process.
Wow, linking to primary resources is now a troll post. Nice going, America. And yes, odds are that the troll post comes from a conservative/republican American. They could also come from a caveman, but I repeat myself.
NOW feel free to waste your mod points on flamebait.
Your post is missing these things, AC: 1) Citation 2) Relevancy
It is therefore guilty of the following logical fallacies: appeal to authority (look it up, it's more subtle than you think) and strawman. Since that is all your post consists of, you have actually contributed only noise to the discussion. Congratulations. Keep at it, AC.
The more I read about all this the more I don't trust the scientists
Yes, because listening to people who a) have no extended knowledge of the subject, b) have extensive bias, c) make money off of arguing against the scientific consensus is a much better alternative.
I mean, if you are REALLY interested in finding out the truth, you could do the research yourself. Let me know when your paper passes peer review. If you do manage to overturn the consensus, you'd be a hero on the scale of Galileo.
which corresponds to a roughly 2 C temperature drop due to reduced net insolation "off the top" as it were.
Total lack of data for that statement. I'm willing to check out any support you have, but just as a warning, a 2 C change due to change in bond albedo is basically impossible just based on the temperature data we have.
looking out the window at the water in Beaufort NC, where the tidal levels haven't significantly changed for years).
Yes, because eye-balling a waterline trumps actual measurements taken over the course of decades, and where significant seems to mean something completely different to you than to oceanographers - or anyone working with oceans.
Yes, you've indeed admirably proven your position with sources that are peer-reviewed, based on multiple and independent data sets, and you have demonstrated a strong understanding of basic physics, scientific principles and research methodology./sarcasm
I think you - and the spammer - don't know that the links in comments are no-follow links. In other words, search engines ignore them when it comes to counting inbound links to a site.
Still means someone has to waste modpoints on that crap.
Finally. This is the only way that the RIAA/MPAA will change its ways: when other massive corporations start to fight back in court. Triple bonus to Comcast for calling this what it is: a shakedown organized through the legal system. I normally hate Comcast with a passion, but I will cheer them on in this fight. Bring out the popcorn!
If you can develop a statistical test that discriminates between them with a high degree of accuracy, then the labels are meaningful.
And this is where you're missing the point - again. The problem is that even the high degree of accuracy is irrelevant. If it is not 1:1, it should not be used as a meaningful identifier for anything other than exactly what the markers mean - various genetic predispositions and statistical probability of family origins. The re-ordering of arbitrary social groupings based on equally arbitrary, but completely different characteristics has been a plain disaster every time it was attempted.
Let me repeat this, just to be clear: you're trying to apply statistical models to concepts that are both personal AND arbitrary AND have strong social implications. This is not a PC reaction to the notion that race might mean something. This is the scientific understanding that genetic markers and race are two wholly independent concepts, and the historical understanding of what happens when the two are improperly mixed.
Quite frankly, your urge to scientifically measure race via genetic markers is far more disturbing than the fact that geneticists can tell who your ancestors are by looking at 4 clusters of genes.
Statistical methods have enough power to determine what race a person is with, IIRC, around 13 markers checked.
Sort of. Statistical methods are very good at assigning groupings, by definition. They're also very good at helping you win bets, develop a broad strategy and operate at a large scale. They can't guarantee that person A is race X - by definition.
And it's there that this idea of genetic race identification falls apart. The racial identity is a social construct, and to associate it with genetic markers makes it a counterproductive undertaking.
Because at some point the ROI isn't there. It's a common problem actually. Everybody knows how to make things redundant - triply, quadruply, etc. The problem is that no one is willing to pay for that kind of redundancy. The business doesn't, the clients don't, and you sure as hell aren't paying for it out of your own pocket. So you rely on failover mechanisms that are generally doubly redundant, or at least that rely on a large number of inexpensive machines. On top of that, you craft as clever a process as you can.
And then you discover that there is a cascade effect you didn't consider, or that you did consider but didn't have the money to build for. And that's when things go to hell..
Did I say it was "good for a country"? Did I say it was good for anyone?
Did I say you were? If you want to go down the reading comprehension route, you might want to check yours. I was specifically mentioning the fact that your argument has already been proposed before, in the exact context that you put it in. It was shot predictably shot down.
How do you know that? That's only true if my health care expenses are above average.
No, it is true if your expenses are above what you pay. Furthermore, since you're arguing lifelong expenses over current ones, it is true that most of the healthcare cost comes from old people. By shooting you now, I prevent you from incurring costs when you get old. Long-term thinking, remember?
where most people tend to ignore what senior citizens think,
I don't think you're following current voting and campaign spending trends.
Your assumptions or conclusions about my beliefs and greater agenda (beyond the fact that we should have reasonable and logical facts in support of a policy agenda) are your own...
Fair enough. I'll remove my assumptions about your leanings, and instead focus on the fact that your long-term thinking isn't nearly long-term enough to properly account for cost and benefit of people being able to live longer lives. Not to mention that it opens the can of worms of discussing "what is old enough?"
A) You suck at statistics. Just because it had an effect on you doesn't mean it had an effect on anyone else. B) You're engaging in worthless meme-parroting. Sometimes, correlation indicates causation. And often, people have checked for it. C) Econ 101 says you're wrong. If a price goes up, demand goes down, except in the case of fully inelastic products, in which case it craters after much higher prices than usual. D) Practice says you're wrong. Here's a random link I pulled from 30 seconds of googling: http://news.yahoo.com/cigarette-tax-hikes-curb-smoking-pregnancy-study-130406524.html
Gah. It's crap like this that makes me think humanity is doomed, and we should just get it over with now.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course you'd also have to assume you know all possible effects of this lie throughout time and a moral belief system that puts those effects over any others that the lie might produce.
Of course, this is completely false because it is completely impossible. You don't try to figure out every single consequence of all your actions, and you don't worry about infinite regressions.
"Atheist countries"? ACs are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with their lies. The closest you can get to an "atheist country" is France and maybe a few of the scandinavian countries. And they're actually nice and friendly... unless of course you pull the "asshole American" routine on them, in which case they will toss you out pretty quickly.
Talk to Lawrence Lessig, it's his next big project: http://wiki.lessig.org/index.php/Corruption
After all, everyone knows that war is dead last in terms of efficient, effective ways of solving international disputes, just as interpersonal violence is the least effective and inefficient way of solving private disputes.
I take it you haven't been introduced to certain members of Homo homo sapiens, who will do whatever the hell they want, until someone physically stops them. They're the sociopaths, serial killers and assorted anti-social people who will happily skin their mother if they can make a buck off of it, save the world, or get their jollies off. At that point, physical violence is the most efficient way of solving the dispute.
With regard to the "Iranian bomb": Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons.
Ahem?
We know this from a very simple piece of evidence: they don't have them.
Oooohhh.... the "I can't see it, therefore it will never exist" approach. They've been trying as hard as hell to get a nuke, but have been thwarted repeatedly by various people. See for example the bombing of the Ossiriak reactor, or, you know... Stuxnet.
It took barely four years to build them from scratch the first time, with much of the basic technology being invented along the way, by a nation with far fewer technological advantages than those enjoyed by modern Iranians simply by virtue of being modern.
Odds are that there was a lot of help given by the US. Up to and including the total lack of bombing research reactors and assassination of senior researchers. Makes it significantly easier. Furthermore, nukes are a 40s technology. Any country with 40s technology can build one. The trick is the manufacturing of it, which is pretty obvious and sensitive to sabotage and lack of raw materials.
The attempt of Iran to get a nuke is very, very real. Real enough that Iran is willing to sacrifice its economical future to keep its "research" and "science" reactors.
Precisely - SWAT teams are police called into action when it is unlikely that the suspect is going to surrender peacefully. They are fully equipped and prepared to shoot to kill. IE there is some information that so-and-so did something bad, and is waving a gun around, possibly with a hostage. What does the police do? Call in the SWAT team, who can and have killed people without a trial. Generally it was because they were being shot at.
How different is this really from what we're doing to people like al-Awlaki? Instead of sending in a SWAT team, we just send in a drone. Presumably, we could ask him to come down to the station, but since we're pretty sure how that's going to turn out (either with dead messengers, or a general finger to the messengers), we figure we cut short the charade and just shoot him.
I don't really see the problem. Unless you think that Americans somehow deserve more protection than some random schmoe on the street, in which case I would recommend all non-Americans to immediately leave the country, because they are clearly second-class citizens and can be killed for not much reason at all.
He probably confused Anwar Al-Awlaki with a minor.
What I find hilarious is that people like CPU6502 have no problem with villagers in a random village being shot, because the Taliban showed their faces. They don't have a problem with people rotting in Gitmo, or being sent to various secret CIA prisons or even foreign governments for "interrogation". But god forbid that under Obama's watch, someone holding an American passport gets killed in a drone strike, and then all hell breaks lose.
You know people, you need to make up your mind: either we're at war with Al-Qaeda, AQ operatives and their supporters and allies, and we shoot them on sight. Or we consider AQ and Co to be thugs, and we send the police after them all. But you can't have it be a war against some people, and a police action against others.
For the record, I prefer police actions. But then again, SWAT teams exist for a reason. And they frequently shoot first as well.
That's all habit though. The only reason it looks like behind-the-scenes footage and day-time soaps is because for some reason, those don't add grainy filters and low-frame rates. Day-time soaps all add some kind of vaseline effect, but that might just be my memory of them....
Give it some time. I have one of those new-fangled interpolation tvs, and I've pretty much gotten used to the effect. If anything, I keep thinking "BBC nature documentary! W00t!"
You do understand that doing these things benefits the US as well, right? Right?
By "powers that be," Irefer to Obama, Bush, Clinton
Yeah.... I mean, I always knew Bush was a secret plant of the Illuminati to fight for globalism! I'm glad you figured it out as well. I mean, I'm sure Bush in there wasn't an insurance against someone calling you a single-neuron republican, or something like that.
when individualism and nationalism should take precedence
Because we all know that worked out so well.
International law provides a foothold for the politicians of the world to take it over in a gobal socialist revolution,
Yes, I'm sure Mitt Romney is a socialist plant. I mean, we know already that Obama is, but Romney will surely turn into one as well. Just you wait.
to enslave the masses more than we already are.
Yep, everyone who disagrees with you is a slave, a sheeple and unfit to comment on anything.
And people wonder why I'm losing faith in humanity and democracy.
Private security weren't dicks usually because they were answerable to the airport authority for that airport, and they are want happy customers.
Is that why Mall cops are always so friendly and helpful? Well, they are, if you are white and rich, or hot and female. But if you are poor, young and a minority... yeah, not so much.
Oh... an AC who shows that he actually doesn't know what the fallacy of appeal to authority actual covers. Flail some more, moron. I should sell you some barrier islands in the Carolinas.
At least you're starting to show your work. Your entire first paragraph, until the last sentence, is actually correct. Two issues still: the 7% increase in albedo is not a unanimous fact. See here for quite a few papers discussing the evolution of albedo, the accuracy of the Earthlight project, etc: http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/papers-on-the-albedo-of-the-earth/. Secondly, the calculation has been met with great skepticism, precisely because the 2C drop in temperature hasn't been observed. This means that changes in albedo have a very limited impact on the global temperature. Finally, Grey-body calculations are fine, but they are far more complex than you let on. For one, what's the impact of dealing with irradition onto a sphere, instead of onto an ideal black-body cavity with an albedo factor applied to it? Hint: it involves integration.
You're still completely lacking in citations. Here, let me help you a bit with a paper actually discussing the impact of bond albedo and solar cycles on future insolation: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/download/14754/10140 They don't discuss the
As for the other assertions, obviously we look at different graphs for sea ice -- the SH is over the 30 year mean and has been for a rather long time.
Sea ice is a rather minor aspect of the ice in the SH, as well as utterly uninteresting when it comes to rising sea levels. Furthermore, you are conflating ice area and ice volume. See here for some very accurate measurements that indicate that ice volume is decreasing: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoca-ais022806.php Now that you're 0 for 2, you want to try again?
If you google a bit, you can actually see the variation year by year over the last decade or more, all on one graph.
Yes, it's well known. It's the one I linked. I'm glad you don't even read the replies. It's a great way to stay ignorant and look like a fool.
Oh, and while you're worrying about explaining how you can tell what is a linear trend and what is cyclic in the absence of any sort of serious baseline for data or workable theory,
Ok, now I KNOW that you didn't read anything I linked to. Want to retry that AFTER looking at the graph in my reply? Or are you talking about the slight uptick that came from the Earthlight project, and that no one was able to replicate in their DIRECT measurements of albedo?
But either way the physics of both is perfectly clear, and any halfway decent climate model that includes the measured albedo as a parameter should be showing strong cooling.
The models do include measured albedo, you meandering, cherry-picking, misleading nimrod, and neither the data, nor the models indicate much cooling. Merely a bit of a pause after a record high in 1998, with a slight upward trend if you start your trend at 1999.
But they're not, even though this is bone-simple physics even more fundamental (and prior to) the GHE. I wonder why?
If you would read anything I've linked to, did any sort of research with the goal of understanding your question, rather than confirming your existing bias, you'd know that everyone has been asking the same question, came to the conclusion that the physics model is far too simple to be used as the only controlling factor, and decided that there's got to be more to the current data than what can be inferred merely from water vapor and albedo.
If you want me to take you seriously, you might want to start linking your sources. Because so far, you are batting a big fat 0, and coming across as someone who is mistaking expertise in one area for expertise in a completely different one - and making a total ass out of himself in the process.
you'll have to actually come up with something concrete and based on REAL science.
Is that something like a real Scotsman?
Wow, linking to primary resources is now a troll post. Nice going, America. And yes, odds are that the troll post comes from a conservative/republican American. They could also come from a caveman, but I repeat myself.
NOW feel free to waste your mod points on flamebait.
Your post is missing these things, AC:
1) Citation
2) Relevancy
It is therefore guilty of the following logical fallacies: appeal to authority (look it up, it's more subtle than you think) and strawman. Since that is all your post consists of, you have actually contributed only noise to the discussion. Congratulations. Keep at it, AC.
The more I read about all this the more I don't trust the scientists
Yes, because listening to people who a) have no extended knowledge of the subject, b) have extensive bias, c) make money off of arguing against the scientific consensus is a much better alternative.
I mean, if you are REALLY interested in finding out the truth, you could do the research yourself. Let me know when your paper passes peer review. If you do manage to overturn the consensus, you'd be a hero on the scale of Galileo.
Though to be honest, I'm not holding my breath.
and even the NH ice coverage is within a fingernail's width of the thirty year mean.
Wrong.
When (no matter what) the sea level isn't going to suddenly jump ten centimeters in a decade (where at most 1-2 cm is a lot more likely)
Strawman
the measured bond albedo of the Earth has increased by 7% over the last fifteen years,
Mistaking cycles for linear trends
which corresponds to a roughly 2 C temperature drop due to reduced net insolation "off the top" as it were.
Total lack of data for that statement. I'm willing to check out any support you have, but just as a warning, a 2 C change due to change in bond albedo is basically impossible just based on the temperature data we have.
looking out the window at the water in Beaufort NC, where the tidal levels haven't significantly changed for years).
Yes, because eye-balling a waterline trumps actual measurements taken over the course of decades, and where significant seems to mean something completely different to you than to oceanographers - or anyone working with oceans.
Yes, you've indeed admirably proven your position with sources that are peer-reviewed, based on multiple and independent data sets, and you have demonstrated a strong understanding of basic physics, scientific principles and research methodology. /sarcasm
I think you - and the spammer - don't know that the links in comments are no-follow links. In other words, search engines ignore them when it comes to counting inbound links to a site.
Still means someone has to waste modpoints on that crap.
That's the best part. A large conglomerate is about to start a nasty internal lawyer fight. Can't wait to see how that is going to pan out.
Finally. This is the only way that the RIAA/MPAA will change its ways: when other massive corporations start to fight back in court. Triple bonus to Comcast for calling this what it is: a shakedown organized through the legal system. I normally hate Comcast with a passion, but I will cheer them on in this fight. Bring out the popcorn!
Awesome. Couldn't have said it any better. This ought to be a reference any time someone brings up the gold standard.
If you can develop a statistical test that discriminates between them with a high degree of accuracy, then the labels are meaningful.
And this is where you're missing the point - again. The problem is that even the high degree of accuracy is irrelevant. If it is not 1:1, it should not be used as a meaningful identifier for anything other than exactly what the markers mean - various genetic predispositions and statistical probability of family origins. The re-ordering of arbitrary social groupings based on equally arbitrary, but completely different characteristics has been a plain disaster every time it was attempted.
Let me repeat this, just to be clear: you're trying to apply statistical models to concepts that are both personal AND arbitrary AND have strong social implications. This is not a PC reaction to the notion that race might mean something. This is the scientific understanding that genetic markers and race are two wholly independent concepts, and the historical understanding of what happens when the two are improperly mixed.
Quite frankly, your urge to scientifically measure race via genetic markers is far more disturbing than the fact that geneticists can tell who your ancestors are by looking at 4 clusters of genes.
Statistical methods have enough power to determine what race a person is with, IIRC, around 13 markers checked.
Sort of. Statistical methods are very good at assigning groupings, by definition. They're also very good at helping you win bets, develop a broad strategy and operate at a large scale. They can't guarantee that person A is race X - by definition.
And it's there that this idea of genetic race identification falls apart. The racial identity is a social construct, and to associate it with genetic markers makes it a counterproductive undertaking.
Because at some point the ROI isn't there. It's a common problem actually. Everybody knows how to make things redundant - triply, quadruply, etc. The problem is that no one is willing to pay for that kind of redundancy. The business doesn't, the clients don't, and you sure as hell aren't paying for it out of your own pocket. So you rely on failover mechanisms that are generally doubly redundant, or at least that rely on a large number of inexpensive machines. On top of that, you craft as clever a process as you can.
And then you discover that there is a cascade effect you didn't consider, or that you did consider but didn't have the money to build for. And that's when things go to hell..
Did I say it was "good for a country"? Did I say it was good for anyone?
Did I say you were? If you want to go down the reading comprehension route, you might want to check yours. I was specifically mentioning the fact that your argument has already been proposed before, in the exact context that you put it in. It was shot predictably shot down.
How do you know that? That's only true if my health care expenses are above average.
No, it is true if your expenses are above what you pay. Furthermore, since you're arguing lifelong expenses over current ones, it is true that most of the healthcare cost comes from old people. By shooting you now, I prevent you from incurring costs when you get old. Long-term thinking, remember?
where most people tend to ignore what senior citizens think,
I don't think you're following current voting and campaign spending trends.
Your assumptions or conclusions about my beliefs and greater agenda (beyond the fact that we should have reasonable and logical facts in support of a policy agenda) are your own...
Fair enough. I'll remove my assumptions about your leanings, and instead focus on the fact that your long-term thinking isn't nearly long-term enough to properly account for cost and benefit of people being able to live longer lives. Not to mention that it opens the can of worms of discussing "what is old enough?"
A) You suck at statistics. Just because it had an effect on you doesn't mean it had an effect on anyone else.
B) You're engaging in worthless meme-parroting. Sometimes, correlation indicates causation. And often, people have checked for it.
C) Econ 101 says you're wrong. If a price goes up, demand goes down, except in the case of fully inelastic products, in which case it craters after much higher prices than usual.
D) Practice says you're wrong. Here's a random link I pulled from 30 seconds of googling: http://news.yahoo.com/cigarette-tax-hikes-curb-smoking-pregnancy-study-130406524.html
Gah. It's crap like this that makes me think humanity is doomed, and we should just get it over with now.