Nobody "pushes" to your email box. Your email box periodically "pulls" from the mail server. Feel free to program your email box so that it only pulls emails that fit your criteria.
That is the only part of the process that you own.
ANY age is tragic when YOU are the one doing the dying.
Only to someone who hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that we shall all die eventually.
I want to be around long enough to spend some time with my future grandkids, do certain things, and see certain places. Any time I get beyond that is a bonus and my funeral will be celebration of a well-lived life. You're in for a disappoint if you expect any more than that.
I predict the next law will be one mandating that any health insurance policy cover certain sorts of conditions, specifically to prevent the above. The collection of patches to the insurance system will grow and grow, until it finally becomes untenable and something major changes.
That's already been happening for decades. Every state has hundreds of regulations that force insurers to tailor policies in certain ways and every year they add more.
The problem with the whols system is that the market appears to have failed. You can't simply pay a little bit more to find an insurer who won't tell you, go ahead and die!
Your right about the status quo, but be careful about where you place the blame. Every state has a ton of regulations that force insurers to do this or that. Each regulation, taken solely by itself, sounds good and makes sense, but the unseen effect is that insurance companies become very limited in what kind of policies they can offer. Consumer choice goes down and prices go up.
Your unjustified assumptions: 1) The disease in question is fatal 2) The fatality occurs at such a young age that it would generally be considered tragic 3) There would be no public or private entities dedicated to helping those people
In short, reliable genetic information could go a looong way to providing society with a better allocation of resources and we could still offer a safety net when we deem it appropriate. If government has a proper role, it's as a laser. When we use it as a sledgehammer, it inevitably causes large inefficiencies and net decrease in the overall standard of living.
Yes, but it still comes back to voluntary marketplace interactions. If I'm paranoid about what a company might do with my information, I can scrutinize all of my vendors' privacy policies and only do business with those that vow not to sell my information.
That's not to say that the free market is very good at protecting privacy (it only takes one "mistake" to let the cat out of the bag), but there's still a big difference between a business that wants to learn about me to increase its profits than a government that wants to learn about me to coerce me.
Maybe in addition to a terrorist watch list we should have a not-a-terrorist-don't-watch list. Just a thought.
This is a great idea. Let's get crazy and run with it for a second.
The "not-a-terrorist-don't-watch list" should have everyone on it by default. We'll give it a better name too. How 'bout the "presumption of innocence"? Then we'll define a way that someone can be moved from one list to another. (it should probably have some independent oversight and citizen involvement, dontcha think?) We could call that "due process".
To wit - if Amazon is allowed to know what sort of books I buy, doesn't that make it, in a way, more powerful than the government?
No, the data Amazon collects results primarily from my voluntary interactions with it. Thus, if Amazon abuses my trust, I can sever my relationship with it.
The government, on the other hand, retrieves this data without my consent and has the power to coerce me.
There's a big difference between those two scenarios.
Your reasoning argues for a competitive process; hear me out.
The founder of the competition may set any terms it is legally authorized to set. These terms will contain, among other things, what, if any, rights the winner has to the IP. If the total reward package is sufficient, someone will pursue it hard enough to accomplish it. If not, the founder will end up reconsidering its offer.
Thus, even if you wish to reserve the IP for the public domain, you can still take advantage of competitive forces by sweetening the other terms of the competition.
Your method might work for things like the article's new methods for ethanol--$X million and flattering press might be enough
That is, after all, today's topic.
But for more radical ideas (think of practical solar-powered cars), you'll likely need grants to get the people most interested in those innovations the money to work toward those innovations.
If the reward is high enough, you could compel someone to develop the most useless of devices. You are correct, though, that you can greatly reduce your out-of-treasury expense by bundling any valuable IP along with the cash, and obviously that doesn't apply to research that is far from having marketable applications.
Your calculations neglect several factors, one of which you mentioned yourself.
1) The reward in your scenario is not merely the $1 million. It is $1 million + the value of the media coverage + the value of the IP.
2) In the grant scenario, you're assuming omniscience on the part of the grantor. $1 million spent will only yield $1 million in research if:
- The grantor spends $0 determining the best organization
- The grantor is 100% successful
3) You're also assuming the rules of the grant and enforcement of those rules are sufficient to maximize the expenditure of the grant funds after they've been awarded.
4) The grant process also contains a risk factor for the applicants, though it is admittedly less.
5) The risk premium demanded by competitors is unlikely to be near enough to compensate for the actual risk, as noted by our good friend Adam Smith, "The chance of gain is by every man more or less overvalued and the chance of loss is by most men undervalued and by scarce any man...valued more than it is worth."
By the time you've factored everything in (especially #2), a meritocratic approach is at least as attractive as a grant.
Ok, assuming the federal should be funding this sort of research*, why pay out grants? We should take advantage of the natural benefits of competition; pay $X to the organization that reaches a specific milestone.
*I don't see why it should be. The energy market is so large, there seems like more than enough incentive for innovation.
So you'd like to have powerful state assemblies dictating one-size-fits-all laws that don't really work for 49% of the state's population?
Yes, fine granularity is good.
If the population of the country is evenly split between benefitting from Option A and Option B, the best you can hope to do with federal legislation is 50% satisfaction. If the people are randomly distributed throughout the country, state legislation will also yield a 50% satisfaction rate. If, however, the people aren't distributed randomly you can greatly exceed 50% by having each state make intelligent choices about the desires of its residents.
Yes, it's also possible for the satisfaction to fall well below 50%, but if a state chooses that poorly, they're getting what they deserve.
At the risk of sounding greedy, how come no one has extended it to handle construction detours?
With the wild temperature swings between seasons in Michigan, our roads are always being repaired. I can't imagine it would be too hard to scrape the projects from MDOT and tell Google to route around them.
Spoofing is not lying about your identity. It's lying about the number you're calling from. There's a subtle, but important difference. Two quick examples of spoofing in an ethical way:
- Telecommuters: I'm working from home, but I don't want to hand out my home phone number to any client with callerid. I could spoof the callerid to display the company's primary phone number.
- I want to conserve my cell minutes. I might decide to spoof the callerid to display my home number instead. Then I can freely use my cell whenever it's convenient and still only give out the number to people I trust to use it responsibly.
In neither case, and I'm sure you can think of more, am I lying about my identity. I'll readily admit who I am and who I'm working for, but that doesn't mean the receiver needs to know which line I called from.
As the bill admits, there are legitimate uses of this practice. By giving congress (and eventually the judiciary) the authority to determine what is or isn't a legitimate practice, you're putting a lot of faith in a lot of people who, quite frankly, haven't earned it.
We have enough experience to understand what CallerID fraud costs us and it has been negligible. Our crystal ball sucks, so we have absolutely no idea what this legislation might cost (I use the term very broadly: dollars, freedom, innovation, etc) us. Why go out of our way to take unnecessary risks?
5. It was specifically written to exempt these uses
...because governments tend to be very good at predicting and allowing for all of the possible "legitimate" uses.
2. See number 1. The question is whether the money spent on this law is worth the societal good of making it easier to prosecute scammers.
No, use apples and apples. The societal good must outweigh the societal cost, not merely the dollar cost. Societal costs include:
- The additional liability of every single person and business subject to the law - The opportunity cost of inventors who might be able to devise beneficial uses of a banned practice. - The general deterioration of faith and understanding of the government due to the addition of yet another unnecessary law. (Yes, I can say for a fact that it is unnecessary because, well, we've survived without it for quite some time)
I'm sure you can think of a few more hidden costs if you take a couple minutes.
Your first point is a little too simple. Having an extra $200 is good, but the intangibles need to be weighed too. Many brands benefit from exclusivity. If the price drops too much, you lose that and just have to spend more money building the brand.
Your second point is misguided. If a dealer really wants to demand that every buyer take these classes (which certainly isn't fair to those who don't need them), they need only write that into the dealer agreement. An even better approach would be to insist that the dealer be capable of providing such lessons and strongly recommend (even to the point of making the buyer sign a waiver if he declines) that he take the classes.
That would accomplish the goal without dictating how the dealers compete. In theory, this would allow the dealers with the best marketing plan to rise to the top.
Your refrainment from speeding, stealing, or selling drugs is every day life or, to paraphrase you, just showing up.
xplenumx specifically said "acting responsibility in a difficult situation." In this society, we regular criticize those who, when push comes to shove, make the wrong choices and we commend those who make the right choices. xplenumx pointed out that the ACLU already does the former and would gain credibility if it also got involved in the latter.
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Nobody "pushes" to your email box. Your email box periodically "pulls" from the mail server. Feel free to program your email box so that it only pulls emails that fit your criteria.
That is the only part of the process that you own.
Like most MS security holes, the problem isn't that features are available, it's that they're turned on by default.
...it's weak idiot-proofing. Strong idiot-proofing makes it so the problem is never even encountered.
Only to someone who hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that we shall all die eventually.
I want to be around long enough to spend some time with my future grandkids, do certain things, and see certain places. Any time I get beyond that is a bonus and my funeral will be celebration of a well-lived life. You're in for a disappoint if you expect any more than that.
That's already been happening for decades. Every state has hundreds of regulations that force insurers to tailor policies in certain ways and every year they add more.
You're right about the inevitable effect, though.
A "protection racket" is bad because it's "selling" protection from itself.
Insurance companies, as flawed as they may be, are providing protection from a very real threat.
Your right about the status quo, but be careful about where you place the blame. Every state has a ton of regulations that force insurers to do this or that. Each regulation, taken solely by itself, sounds good and makes sense, but the unseen effect is that insurance companies become very limited in what kind of policies they can offer. Consumer choice goes down and prices go up.
Your unjustified assumptions:
1) The disease in question is fatal
2) The fatality occurs at such a young age that it would generally be considered tragic
3) There would be no public or private entities dedicated to helping those people
In short, reliable genetic information could go a looong way to providing society with a better allocation of resources and we could still offer a safety net when we deem it appropriate. If government has a proper role, it's as a laser. When we use it as a sledgehammer, it inevitably causes large inefficiencies and net decrease in the overall standard of living.
It would be more properly stated as "The hijackers devised a plan that exploited the standard training."
Sure, our "standard response" has changed, but I'm sure it can be exploited too.
Yes, but it still comes back to voluntary marketplace interactions. If I'm paranoid about what a company might do with my information, I can scrutinize all of my vendors' privacy policies and only do business with those that vow not to sell my information.
That's not to say that the free market is very good at protecting privacy (it only takes one "mistake" to let the cat out of the bag), but there's still a big difference between a business that wants to learn about me to increase its profits than a government that wants to learn about me to coerce me.
This is a great idea. Let's get crazy and run with it for a second.
The "not-a-terrorist-don't-watch list" should have everyone on it by default. We'll give it a better name too. How 'bout the "presumption of innocence"? Then we'll define a way that someone can be moved from one list to another. (it should probably have some independent oversight and citizen involvement, dontcha think?) We could call that "due process".
No, the data Amazon collects results primarily from my voluntary interactions with it. Thus, if Amazon abuses my trust, I can sever my relationship with it.
The government, on the other hand, retrieves this data without my consent and has the power to coerce me.
There's a big difference between those two scenarios.
...always cherry-picking from the constitution. The sixth amendment clearly states "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy...."
This is war, not a "criminal prosecution". We can just lock 'em up until the war is over.
(No, I didn't actually mean a word of that. F@#$ this administration.)
Your reasoning argues for a competitive process; hear me out.
The founder of the competition may set any terms it is legally authorized to set. These terms will contain, among other things, what, if any, rights the winner has to the IP. If the total reward package is sufficient, someone will pursue it hard enough to accomplish it. If not, the founder will end up reconsidering its offer.
Thus, even if you wish to reserve the IP for the public domain, you can still take advantage of competitive forces by sweetening the other terms of the competition.
That is, after all, today's topic.
If the reward is high enough, you could compel someone to develop the most useless of devices. You are correct, though, that you can greatly reduce your out-of-treasury expense by bundling any valuable IP along with the cash, and obviously that doesn't apply to research that is far from having marketable applications.
Your calculations neglect several factors, one of which you mentioned yourself.
1) The reward in your scenario is not merely the $1 million. It is $1 million + the value of the media coverage + the value of the IP.
2) In the grant scenario, you're assuming omniscience on the part of the grantor. $1 million spent will only yield $1 million in research if:
- The grantor spends $0 determining the best organization
- The grantor is 100% successful
3) You're also assuming the rules of the grant and enforcement of those rules are sufficient to maximize the expenditure of the grant funds after they've been awarded.
4) The grant process also contains a risk factor for the applicants, though it is admittedly less.
5) The risk premium demanded by competitors is unlikely to be near enough to compensate for the actual risk, as noted by our good friend Adam Smith, "The chance of gain is by every man more or less overvalued and the chance of loss is by most men undervalued and by scarce any man...valued more than it is worth."
By the time you've factored everything in (especially #2), a meritocratic approach is at least as attractive as a grant.
Ok, assuming the federal should be funding this sort of research*, why pay out grants? We should take advantage of the natural benefits of competition; pay $X to the organization that reaches a specific milestone.
*I don't see why it should be. The energy market is so large, there seems like more than enough incentive for innovation.
Of course, everyone has an agenda and of course, you need to be skeptical of everything you hear.
How the heck does that make facts overrated?? It makes them hard to find, but that makes it more important to find them, not less.
At the risk of sounding greedy, how come no one has extended it to handle construction detours?
With the wild temperature swings between seasons in Michigan, our roads are always being repaired. I can't imagine it would be too hard to scrape the projects from MDOT and tell Google to route around them.
Spoofing is not lying about your identity. It's lying about the number you're calling from. There's a subtle, but important difference. Two quick examples of spoofing in an ethical way: - Telecommuters: I'm working from home, but I don't want to hand out my home phone number to any client with callerid. I could spoof the callerid to display the company's primary phone number. - I want to conserve my cell minutes. I might decide to spoof the callerid to display my home number instead. Then I can freely use my cell whenever it's convenient and still only give out the number to people I trust to use it responsibly. In neither case, and I'm sure you can think of more, am I lying about my identity. I'll readily admit who I am and who I'm working for, but that doesn't mean the receiver needs to know which line I called from.
As the bill admits, there are legitimate uses of this practice. By giving congress (and eventually the judiciary) the authority to determine what is or isn't a legitimate practice, you're putting a lot of faith in a lot of people who, quite frankly, haven't earned it.
We have enough experience to understand what CallerID fraud costs us and it has been negligible. Our crystal ball sucks, so we have absolutely no idea what this legislation might cost (I use the term very broadly: dollars, freedom, innovation, etc) us. Why go out of our way to take unnecessary risks?
No, use apples and apples. The societal good must outweigh the societal cost, not merely the dollar cost. Societal costs include:
- The additional liability of every single person and business subject to the law
- The opportunity cost of inventors who might be able to devise beneficial uses of a banned practice.
- The general deterioration of faith and understanding of the government due to the addition of yet another unnecessary law. (Yes, I can say for a fact that it is unnecessary because, well, we've survived without it for quite some time)
I'm sure you can think of a few more hidden costs if you take a couple minutes.
Your first point is a little too simple. Having an extra $200 is good, but the intangibles need to be weighed too. Many brands benefit from exclusivity. If the price drops too much, you lose that and just have to spend more money building the brand. Your second point is misguided. If a dealer really wants to demand that every buyer take these classes (which certainly isn't fair to those who don't need them), they need only write that into the dealer agreement. An even better approach would be to insist that the dealer be capable of providing such lessons and strongly recommend (even to the point of making the buyer sign a waiver if he declines) that he take the classes. That would accomplish the goal without dictating how the dealers compete. In theory, this would allow the dealers with the best marketing plan to rise to the top.
Your refrainment from speeding, stealing, or selling drugs is every day life or, to paraphrase you, just showing up. xplenumx specifically said "acting responsibility in a difficult situation." In this society, we regular criticize those who, when push comes to shove, make the wrong choices and we commend those who make the right choices. xplenumx pointed out that the ACLU already does the former and would gain credibility if it also got involved in the latter.