Ah, good point. Why is "Dei" before "Gratia" though? My Latin sucks balls.
I think what I was looking for was "Deo volente". Congess provides the benefits Deo volente -- they do their best to find a place in the budget, but there's no guarantee they'll come through.
Sometimes whipping out a Latin phrase backfires:-(
AC? What are you, 14, inexperienced, or unable to follow an argument?
Let's slow this down so that even you can understand it:
The GP was justifying massive government programs on the basis that, hey, we each go through bad times, so we help each other out. Okay? See where he's going? He's talking about having government programs as a kind of mutual insurances, i.e., if you oppose them, hey, you're going to get the short end of the stick one day and then you'll wish you had joined it. Still following? Still following? Gotta keep you ADD types focused because of your short attention span.
Okay, so then my first pithy response was to remind him that (actual) insurance is already there for this precise purpose -- his whole rant neglected the existence of insurance.
Then I pointed out the flawed premise behind his "we have to work together"/"we're all interconnected" bit by pointing out just how ridiculous it is. Any forced transfer from him to me could conceiveably be shown to spill some nebulous benefit onto him. This forces him to HEY STOP, LISTEN, NOW'S NOT THE TIME TO DRAW CARTOONS this forces him to rethink that whole angle. Yes, there may be some benefits, but you know, it's probably small. Hey! That might be why those evil, nasty, atomistic individualists "want every man for himself" -- because they see these supposed benefits as nebulous and flimsy, and we'd all be better off if we left each other own and had to see the true costs of our decisions! WOW!!! ZOWWY ZOWWY ZOWWY! *flashing lights*
Damn! Since this forces him to rethink his premises and the haste with which he mumbles some nebulous connection between people and a "we all benefit" assertion, maybe now he can see why others view his proposals as riduculous.
But that flew right by you, didn't it? All you saw was that "hey! He used the term 'TV' in the same context as disaster aid. OMG!!!!! He thinks suffering a disaster is 'like' (whatever that means) not having a TV! How DARE he! How dare he trivialize this topic! Let's focus on that and totally ignore his dismantling of the premise!"
Chugga chugga chugga chugga CHOOO CHOOO!!!!!!! Clue train has left the station, and it's missing one passenger.
Blogs are good at connecting to people that are hard to reach. Many of these people otherwise would not have found the press release. By repeating the contained information, they reach these viewers. So yes, the blog still servers a purpose -- by connecting those with a message, to those who may be interested in that message.
We are Americans, E Pluribus Unum. Helping Californians helps me. If I help pay to fix earthquake damage in California, they help pay to fix tornado damage here. That way neither of our economies is overly strained. And that benefits us all.
I agree, insurance doesn't exist.
Oh hey, can you buy me a TV? That helps society, right? I get better entertainment, and can better entertain friends, and hey, we're all connected, right? That means some of these benefits are going to spill over onto you! You support that, rigth? Cause we gotta help each other, man. Don't be one of these rugged individualists who only looks out for himself.
From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org] "Although the water supply has reached prewar levels in some provinces, ageing and poorly maintained equipment combined with looting and vandalism leaves the drinking water system substandard."
Wow, I *really* trust Wikipedia to give an even-handed account of the Iraq war. It's not like they're dominated by the left or anything. (Note -- I'm not saying I support the war, but basing your claims off a source that's going to constantly be steamrolled with questionable facts by left-wingers is laughable.)
Cutting veterans' benefits is probably the best way to save taxpayer money on the budget. I mean, the veterans already provided their military service, right? So if we were to cut their benefits, what are they going to to do? Take back their service? Sorry, you can't (causally) do that. In contrast, if you cut education spending, education suffers, if you cut satellite spending, satellites suffer, etc. On top of that, these benefits are paid based on previous promises. But Congress never agreed to pay these benefits, so taxpayers never consented to this future expenditure. Everyone going into the armed forces knows that all veterans' benefits are provided Gloria Deus, by the grace of God. Congress is under no obligation to pay any of it.
It's called "know your customer" regulations. If you do anything outside your normal, sheeplike existence, that's now a license for the government to harass you. So they freeze your bank account? Ah, no big deal to them. I'm tired of being treated like a sheep.
In addition to the objections of the others, the water condensing out of a steam power plant is definitely not "fresh water" that you can drink... I wouldn't. The water used in steam power plants has to have quite a few additives to get it to actually work. It's a lot more complicated than the Rankine cycle you may have learned about in a thermodynamics class. A friend who worked at such a plant told me that the additives they add to the water (which get recycled so they don't have to pay all each time the water goes through) cost around $50/gallon. Once the stuff condenses, it's not going to be pure, clean water, but going to have the additives. That boiled water is 100% pure is an oversimplification from chemistry class.
Stem cells are a legiitmate taxpayer issue. Think about it this way: when a state allocates money specifically for stem cells, it's saying "you found something even more promising? Sorry, you can't use this money for that." If you want your tax money to be put to the highest best use, you should want to remove these politically driven constraints. The best research should be funded, period. There's nothing wrong with raising cain over these public-private partnerships -- at least then, they can say "I told you so" when a year from now you're bitching about how all the money really did was to pump up the stock price of some guy's huge biotech corporation.
Aww, poor MoveOn.org. Losing money because their contributors are mainly AOLers... nah, sorry, can't come up with any sympathy.
And besides, I don't quite see what MoveOn has to fear. You can still email AOLers, it's just that your email will be treated like any other; i.e., it won't be singled out as a special, certified-non-spam email. If they can reach people now, they'd still be able to under the "tax".
That seems like a ridiculously short time based on the needs of current notebook computers, and the capacity of fuel cells. They can convert ~70% of the fuel energy into electricity. And the hydrocarbons used as fuel are VERY energy dense!
Um... first, learn what a strawman is. Please. If you can't cite precisely how the argument I attacked differs from the argument presented, it's not a strawman. "Strawman" is not a generic catch-all term for "flawed argument", k? If you think the planet could warm in some places and cool in others, my argument directly applies, and it's not a strawman. I know, you were just being careless, but it really hinders communication.
Second, no, the earth can't, unless you implement planet-scale insulation. The heat in the hotter areas must bleed through to the cooler areas. Laws of thermodynamics, kid. Now, if you focus solely on a system in its transient state, then you can simultaneously cool one part and heat another, but you can't keep that up indefinitely.
Hey Peak Oil nutbag, if you're so absolutely sure there's going to be an oil crisis and you know exactly when it's going to happen, why haven't you bought oil futures dated then?
No no no, you have it reversed. Deserts will be eliminated by global cooling, the coasts will simultaneously be flooded due to global warming, and the mountains will be the only places above sea level. (Like most doomsayers, I'm going to hope you don't notice how I'm claiming the planet will warm and cool at the sime time in violation of the laws of entropy and heat conduction.)
When you try to divide policies between "pro-consumer" and "pro-business", you sacrifice a lot of understanding of the underlying dynamics. Mandating that businesses provide something customers like is "pro-consumer"? Really? Always? What if you mandated that all ISP's also clean your house? Oh, sure, those greedy Republicans want to pass legislation that would permit ISP's to get out of cleaning your house, but the real "pro-consumer" legislators are going to stop this. Are price controls "pro-consumer" even though they've caused shortages or worsening quality in almost every case? After all, opposing them means letting those greedy businesses charge whatever they want. Bad!
People oppose what you deem "pro-consumer" laws, not because, like you seem to think, they don't like consumers, but because they honestly believe it will not help the consumer. Shocking I know. Here's some free advice: those who don't know their opponents' arguments, don't understand their own.
The assumption that the grandparent advocates communism is as bad as the assumptions you accuse it of making.
What do you call an economy in which all goods are provided at no cost and with no expectation of direct compensation therefor? I was pointing out the errors in extrapolation to non-profit production of all services.
Anyway, those who run the country these days do indeed seem to be of the opinion that anything that isn't privately owned is bad.
Cool, which government services did they privatize? Oh, that's right: none. How much has government intervention in the economy contracted under the Bush administration? Negative a lot. (That's an increase.) Doesn't sound like a shift to a free market, privately run economy. And what does private ownership have to do with this? "Private" does not necessarily mean "for-profit" -- in fact, it usually doesn't. Open source projects *are* privately run; they merely don't assert copyright or patent control over the source code. I'd love for the rest of the economy to be run like an open source project -- you only have to get involved to the extent you want to.
Let's run through the economist/current administration disconnect:
Minimum wage: economists hate, government loves. High marginal tax rates: economists hate, government loves. Complicated tax code: economists hate, government loves. Well defined property rights: economists love, government hates. Free markets in the production of goods and services: economists love, government hates.
Er, kind of an overstatement there, kid. "Modern economics" does not hold as a "foundation" that "people won't do anything unless they're paid". In fact, that pretty directly contradicts "modern economics", which extensively uses marginal analysis. Marginal analysis would consider every kind of incentive to perform actions, and only add you can get "marginal cases" to offer support by paying them. Ask yourself -- why isn't there "open source" food production beating out for-profit food enterprises? Or for TV's, engineering work, etc.? Could it be that OSS can be distributed to everyone at little cost and without sacrificing the original? Claiming that F/OSS is proof of a more general argument that *all* production can be sustained by people offering work for free is an extrapolation well beyond that justified by the evidence. If it were true, communist organizations would be far more successful than they currently are.
And as for "modern economics" "running the country"... I wish. Pretty much every economist cringes at pretty much every government policy, and only change their minds after going on the payroll. Check out economists supporting the minimum wage only *after* joining up with Clinton.
Actaully I agree with you for the most part. I'm thinking of scientific research in general terms here. As far as i know, NASA does not do everything in house, it diverts enourmous mounts of work to the private sector. For example, consider the moonlanders were made by Grumman not NASA. They were working for NASA. So your point about money going to NASA vs the private sector is not valid since there is no clear distinction between the two.
Correct, it's possible to flip around your definitions and confuse the issue. I don't deny that. The public/private sector is not a meaningless distinction though. In the private sector, people desiring a service must put their own money into it, and any exchange is a demonstration of the buyer's and seller's preference. In the public sector the "buyer" (taxpayer) never actually makes a decision to purchase something, so what is produced may or may not (most likely not) have anything to do with his desires, and without the pressure to make a profit, effeciency drops in priority. You do not eliminate this by contracting out the work to the "private" sector. When you do so, the *end* buyer (taxpayer) never revealed a preference for it, and they're being monitored by people (government) under no pressure to produce a return. That the contractor is nominally part of the private sector doesn't change any of that. It's still diversion of resources from their highest best use. No showcase of benefits could prove anything because they say nothing about the unseen -- what would have been produced in the absence of such an intervention.
You candy bar analogy is also not valid. I would consider it more like me asking you to invest money in my company and doing a PR campaign to show what you get back for that money ie make a good product and advertise it so that more people will throw money at you.
And I don't see how that contradicts the analogy. In both cases, you "gave" (taxes here, folks) money to me. In both cases, I put it to a use. In both cases, I produced a benefit for you. In both cases, the benefit was worth far less than what you could have otherwise gotten with the same money. In both cases, you're advising that I advertise this "benefit".
What? I thought I tagged you as a friend because you had a clue what you were talking about. NASA doesn't produce these innovations out of thin air. It diverts huge amounts of investment from the private sector to do so. It's like taking a hundred dollars from you, giving you a candy bar, and then having you suggest that I do a PR campaign highlighting the good I do in distributing candy bars to people. The choice is not "NASA spinoffs vs. no NASA spinoffs"; it's "NASA spinoffs vs. wealth produced in the absence of diversions of productive capacity to NASA". I thought you were the last person I'd have to explain that to.
While you're joking, this raises some serious issues. Now that NASA is helping police solve crimes, it's going to be even easier for the police to violate people's rights. NASA is supposed to be an organization for the advancement of scientific knowledge and achievement, not to help gumshoes break a case. With another weapon in the government's arsenal, except more and worse violations of civil liberties. Hope your feet aren't the wrong size! *bam!*
You said it yourself, they don't know why you're doing it. I think the effect would be much more effective, if you were to hurl a bucket of paint on them
Yeah, and then, before they get home... smear all their walls with poop.
This idea is the kind of thing only an egghead trying to justify his expensive research would even propose. The "invention" works like this. You carry a "key". They key activates a knocking sequence. A reader listens for the knocking sequence, checks for a match, and opens if there is one. I've got a brilliant idea:
CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN.
Why not just eliminate the potential for intercepting a knock by having the key directly access the reader. OH!!! That's right. Because that technology already exists, and proposing its use won't get you on the front page of slashdot. Never mind that it's actually more useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, good point. Why is "Dei" before "Gratia" though? My Latin sucks balls.
:-(
I think what I was looking for was "Deo volente". Congess provides the benefits Deo volente -- they do their best to find a place in the budget, but there's no guarantee they'll come through.
Sometimes whipping out a Latin phrase backfires
AC? What are you, 14, inexperienced, or unable to follow an argument?
Let's slow this down so that even you can understand it:
The GP was justifying massive government programs on the basis that, hey, we each go through bad times, so we help each other out. Okay? See where he's going? He's talking about having government programs as a kind of mutual insurances, i.e., if you oppose them, hey, you're going to get the short end of the stick one day and then you'll wish you had joined it. Still following? Still following? Gotta keep you ADD types focused because of your short attention span.
Okay, so then my first pithy response was to remind him that (actual) insurance is already there for this precise purpose -- his whole rant neglected the existence of insurance.
Then I pointed out the flawed premise behind his "we have to work together"/"we're all interconnected" bit by pointing out just how ridiculous it is. Any forced transfer from him to me could conceiveably be shown to spill some nebulous benefit onto him. This forces him to HEY STOP, LISTEN, NOW'S NOT THE TIME TO DRAW CARTOONS this forces him to rethink that whole angle. Yes, there may be some benefits, but you know, it's probably small. Hey! That might be why those evil, nasty, atomistic individualists "want every man for himself" -- because they see these supposed benefits as nebulous and flimsy, and we'd all be better off if we left each other own and had to see the true costs of our decisions! WOW!!! ZOWWY ZOWWY ZOWWY! *flashing lights*
Damn! Since this forces him to rethink his premises and the haste with which he mumbles some nebulous connection between people and a "we all benefit" assertion, maybe now he can see why others view his proposals as riduculous.
But that flew right by you, didn't it? All you saw was that "hey! He used the term 'TV' in the same context as disaster aid. OMG!!!!! He thinks suffering a disaster is 'like' (whatever that means) not having a TV! How DARE he! How dare he trivialize this topic! Let's focus on that and totally ignore his dismantling of the premise!"
Chugga chugga chugga chugga CHOOO CHOOO!!!!!!! Clue train has left the station, and it's missing one passenger.
You're still an idiot.
Blogs are good at connecting to people that are hard to reach. Many of these people otherwise would not have found the press release. By repeating the contained information, they reach these viewers. So yes, the blog still servers a purpose -- by connecting those with a message, to those who may be interested in that message.
We are Americans, E Pluribus Unum. Helping Californians helps me. If I help pay to fix earthquake damage in California, they help pay to fix tornado damage here. That way neither of our economies is overly strained. And that benefits us all.
I agree, insurance doesn't exist.
Oh hey, can you buy me a TV? That helps society, right? I get better entertainment, and can better entertain friends, and hey, we're all connected, right? That means some of these benefits are going to spill over onto you! You support that, rigth? Cause we gotta help each other, man. Don't be one of these rugged individualists who only looks out for himself.
You're an idiot.
From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org] "Although the water supply has reached prewar levels in some provinces, ageing and poorly maintained equipment combined with looting and vandalism leaves the drinking water system substandard."
Wow, I *really* trust Wikipedia to give an even-handed account of the Iraq war. It's not like they're dominated by the left or anything. (Note -- I'm not saying I support the war, but basing your claims off a source that's going to constantly be steamrolled with questionable facts by left-wingers is laughable.)
Cutting veterans' benefits is probably the best way to save taxpayer money on the budget. I mean, the veterans already provided their military service, right? So if we were to cut their benefits, what are they going to to do? Take back their service? Sorry, you can't (causally) do that. In contrast, if you cut education spending, education suffers, if you cut satellite spending, satellites suffer, etc. On top of that, these benefits are paid based on previous promises. But Congress never agreed to pay these benefits, so taxpayers never consented to this future expenditure. Everyone going into the armed forces knows that all veterans' benefits are provided Gloria Deus, by the grace of God. Congress is under no obligation to pay any of it.
It's called "know your customer" regulations. If you do anything outside your normal, sheeplike existence, that's now a license for the government to harass you. So they freeze your bank account? Ah, no big deal to them. I'm tired of being treated like a sheep.
In addition to the objections of the others, the water condensing out of a steam power plant is definitely not "fresh water" that you can drink ... I wouldn't. The water used in steam power plants has to have quite a few additives to get it to actually work. It's a lot more complicated than the Rankine cycle you may have learned about in a thermodynamics class. A friend who worked at such a plant told me that the additives they add to the water (which get recycled so they don't have to pay all each time the water goes through) cost around $50/gallon. Once the stuff condenses, it's not going to be pure, clean water, but going to have the additives. That boiled water is 100% pure is an oversimplification from chemistry class.
Try to avoid typing in italics.
Stem cells are a legiitmate taxpayer issue. Think about it this way: when a state allocates money specifically for stem cells, it's saying "you found something even more promising? Sorry, you can't use this money for that." If you want your tax money to be put to the highest best use, you should want to remove these politically driven constraints. The best research should be funded, period. There's nothing wrong with raising cain over these public-private partnerships -- at least then, they can say "I told you so" when a year from now you're bitching about how all the money really did was to pump up the stock price of some guy's huge biotech corporation.
Aww, poor MoveOn.org. Losing money because their contributors are mainly AOLers... nah, sorry, can't come up with any sympathy.
And besides, I don't quite see what MoveOn has to fear. You can still email AOLers, it's just that your email will be treated like any other; i.e., it won't be singled out as a special, certified-non-spam email. If they can reach people now, they'd still be able to under the "tax".
While you're at it, you can explain why it constitutes a tax. If you don't want special certification, you don't pay it.
That seems like a ridiculously short time based on the needs of current notebook computers, and the capacity of fuel cells. They can convert ~70% of the fuel energy into electricity. And the hydrocarbons used as fuel are VERY energy dense!
Um ... first, learn what a strawman is. Please. If you can't cite precisely how the argument I attacked differs from the argument presented, it's not a strawman. "Strawman" is not a generic catch-all term for "flawed argument", k? If you think the planet could warm in some places and cool in others, my argument directly applies, and it's not a strawman. I know, you were just being careless, but it really hinders communication.
Second, no, the earth can't, unless you implement planet-scale insulation. The heat in the hotter areas must bleed through to the cooler areas. Laws of thermodynamics, kid. Now, if you focus solely on a system in its transient state, then you can simultaneously cool one part and heat another, but you can't keep that up indefinitely.
Don't worry; these guys are easy to handle.
Hey Peak Oil nutbag, if you're so absolutely sure there's going to be an oil crisis and you know exactly when it's going to happen, why haven't you bought oil futures dated then?
Okay, done, y'all can ignore him now.
No no no, you have it reversed. Deserts will be eliminated by global cooling, the coasts will simultaneously be flooded due to global warming, and the mountains will be the only places above sea level. (Like most doomsayers, I'm going to hope you don't notice how I'm claiming the planet will warm and cool at the sime time in violation of the laws of entropy and heat conduction.)
When you try to divide policies between "pro-consumer" and "pro-business", you sacrifice a lot of understanding of the underlying dynamics. Mandating that businesses provide something customers like is "pro-consumer"? Really? Always? What if you mandated that all ISP's also clean your house? Oh, sure, those greedy Republicans want to pass legislation that would permit ISP's to get out of cleaning your house, but the real "pro-consumer" legislators are going to stop this. Are price controls "pro-consumer" even though they've caused shortages or worsening quality in almost every case? After all, opposing them means letting those greedy businesses charge whatever they want. Bad!
People oppose what you deem "pro-consumer" laws, not because, like you seem to think, they don't like consumers, but because they honestly believe it will not help the consumer. Shocking I know. Here's some free advice: those who don't know their opponents' arguments, don't understand their own.
They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.
They *can* allow for controls. I haven't seen a study proving something useful to legislators that, which even attempts a remotely useful control.
The assumption that the grandparent advocates communism is as bad as the assumptions you accuse it of making.
What do you call an economy in which all goods are provided at no cost and with no expectation of direct compensation therefor? I was pointing out the errors in extrapolation to non-profit production of all services.
Anyway, those who run the country these days do indeed seem to be of the opinion that anything that isn't privately owned is bad.
Cool, which government services did they privatize? Oh, that's right: none. How much has government intervention in the economy contracted under the Bush administration? Negative a lot. (That's an increase.) Doesn't sound like a shift to a free market, privately run economy. And what does private ownership have to do with this? "Private" does not necessarily mean "for-profit" -- in fact, it usually doesn't. Open source projects *are* privately run; they merely don't assert copyright or patent control over the source code. I'd love for the rest of the economy to be run like an open source project -- you only have to get involved to the extent you want to.
Let's run through the economist/current administration disconnect:
Minimum wage: economists hate, government loves.
High marginal tax rates: economists hate, government loves.
Complicated tax code: economists hate, government loves.
Well defined property rights: economists love, government hates.
Free markets in the production of goods and services: economists love, government hates.
Take another hit off that bong.
And as for "modern economics" "running the country"... I wish. Pretty much every economist cringes at pretty much every government policy, and only change their minds after going on the payroll. Check out economists supporting the minimum wage only *after* joining up with Clinton.
Actaully I agree with you for the most part. I'm thinking of scientific research in general terms here. As far as i know, NASA does not do everything in house, it diverts enourmous mounts of work to the private sector. For example, consider the moonlanders were made by Grumman not NASA. They were working for NASA. So your point about money going to NASA vs the private sector is not valid since there is no clear distinction between the two.
Correct, it's possible to flip around your definitions and confuse the issue. I don't deny that. The public/private sector is not a meaningless distinction though. In the private sector, people desiring a service must put their own money into it, and any exchange is a demonstration of the buyer's and seller's preference. In the public sector the "buyer" (taxpayer) never actually makes a decision to purchase something, so what is produced may or may not (most likely not) have anything to do with his desires, and without the pressure to make a profit, effeciency drops in priority. You do not eliminate this by contracting out the work to the "private" sector. When you do so, the *end* buyer (taxpayer) never revealed a preference for it, and they're being monitored by people (government) under no pressure to produce a return. That the contractor is nominally part of the private sector doesn't change any of that. It's still diversion of resources from their highest best use. No showcase of benefits could prove anything because they say nothing about the unseen -- what would have been produced in the absence of such an intervention.
You candy bar analogy is also not valid. I would consider it more like me asking you to invest money in my company and doing a PR campaign to show what you get back for that money ie make a good product and advertise it so that more people will throw money at you.
And I don't see how that contradicts the analogy. In both cases, you "gave" (taxes here, folks) money to me. In both cases, I put it to a use. In both cases, I produced a benefit for you. In both cases, the benefit was worth far less than what you could have otherwise gotten with the same money. In both cases, you're advising that I advertise this "benefit".
What? I thought I tagged you as a friend because you had a clue what you were talking about. NASA doesn't produce these innovations out of thin air. It diverts huge amounts of investment from the private sector to do so. It's like taking a hundred dollars from you, giving you a candy bar, and then having you suggest that I do a PR campaign highlighting the good I do in distributing candy bars to people. The choice is not "NASA spinoffs vs. no NASA spinoffs"; it's "NASA spinoffs vs. wealth produced in the absence of diversions of productive capacity to NASA". I thought you were the last person I'd have to explain that to.
While you're joking, this raises some serious issues. Now that NASA is helping police solve crimes, it's going to be even easier for the police to violate people's rights. NASA is supposed to be an organization for the advancement of scientific knowledge and achievement, not to help gumshoes break a case. With another weapon in the government's arsenal, except more and worse violations of civil liberties. Hope your feet aren't the wrong size! *bam!*
You said it yourself, they don't know why you're doing it. I think the effect would be much more effective, if you were to hurl a bucket of paint on them
Yeah, and then, before they get home... smear all their walls with poop.
This idea is the kind of thing only an egghead trying to justify his expensive research would even propose. The "invention" works like this. You carry a "key". They key activates a knocking sequence. A reader listens for the knocking sequence, checks for a match, and opens if there is one. I've got a brilliant idea:
CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN.
Why not just eliminate the potential for intercepting a knock by having the key directly access the reader. OH!!! That's right. Because that technology already exists, and proposing its use won't get you on the front page of slashdot. Never mind that it's actually more useful.