An excellent post, but I think you neglect some salient points about the retail price. Since it would have to consider the funds not contributed, it would have to be a substantial sum. Let's spitball and say $2,000 as the retail price (a little under $75 times 30 years in the home). That's a fairly large sum for a lot of families, and many may not be able to pay that. The firefighters have no way to assess their ability to pay the sum on the spot, so they'd have to take their word that they can afford the retail price.
So if the retail price is too high, then the firefighters may lose money since they may never collect the retail price for the service. So let's lower the price to something more generally affordable. Let's say $300 (that'd be 4 years of coverage). That's a lot more affordable price, but then there's a lot less incentive to ever pay. If the retail price is too low compared to the insurance price, people will just pay retail when they need it and never pay the insurance price. Again, the firefighters don't get paid.
I think the solution may be something like putting a lien on the house for the retail price to ensure repayment, but I don't know how lien's work or what the legal costs would be for collecting on liens.
But in the interest of public good, a fire that's allowed to burn out-of-control at one home could spread to another home, or to a forest, extending the initial threat from a single private residence to the general welfare of the public. If I were this man's neighbor, and the fire that the fire department let burn suddenly engulfed my house as well, I would be quite the irate citizen.
If you read the article, you would see that the firefighters did actually keep the flames from spreading to his neighbor's property, since the neighbor had paid the $75 fee. While I agree that it is a good idea to keep fires from spreading, in this case it was only spreading to private property that was already protected.
[Sigh, I know this is going to get modded 'flamebait' and 'troll', but it had to be said.]
Actually, studies show that 78% of Slashdot posts that mention the author's certainty their post will be modded 'flamebait' or 'troll' are modded to at least +4 in either the insightful or informative categories (the split is usually 3:1 insightful to informative). The percentage jumps above 94% when the author uses the phrase 'karma to burn'.
I created a Slashdot entry with the URL being slashdot.org. then I gave it the keyword "sd". Now I just hit sd and enter and Slashdot is pulled up immediately!
Or you could use a perhaps more appropriate keyword for slashdot:
And what the fuck funny can you say about Henry Waxman?
How about just the fact that Henry Waxman looks a lot like a mouse? Just check out his face, it very much resembles a rodent: http://www.henrywaxman.house.gov/
Shouldn't we call him Henry CheeseMan or something like that? The resemblance always makes me laugh.
Are you suggesting that we have a large number of large citizens because we largely have our large heads up our large asses? Because having our heads up our asses will certainly make us larger than those who do not.
Well, if you consider how Gmail actually has the potential to be a large part of its Apps for Business, it sure helps that they can now offer the ability to call a real phone from your computer. Plenty of companies that use Apps could also use this to make in-office calls and now calls to customers/vendors/partners in the real world. Selling their Apps perhaps has the best potential for a second stream of revenue aside from advertising, just like how Office is the 2nd stream to Microsoft's Windows OS.
Cig taxes tend not to go up because studies show that increasing the taxgenerally decreases revenue. Cities and states care more about the revenue than your health (and rather short-sighted in that sense) so they haven't increased the taxes to deal with the health problems they cause. The revenue often doesn't go to paying health costs anyway.
As an engineer, I would honestly rather upper management to be as far away as possible, that's how the real work gets done. Show me an engineer that wants a CEO breathing down their neck and I'll show you an average engineer that wants to brown nose with management. Also what is a CEO supposed to do? What in his background would leave you to believe that other than signing 20 BILLION dollars into escrow for repairs/claims that he would be more effective at the scene? I'm not a fan of big business, but people are just looking for a reason to crucify him. I don't go to BP, that's what I do to show my disapproval.
You could say something similar about a certain President with his "boot on the neck" of BP looking for "who's ass to kick".
Is this article essentially describing a way to re-open the analog hole that HDMI is looking to close? I mean, if you could show your Blu-Ray movie over HDMI, then capture the pixels and save them to your hard drive, haven't you just opened a new hole for people to record content?
Speaking as a happily married man, I did not date at all in high school, and only dated one woman in college -- the same woman I am married to now. I didn't need to make mistakes to find out what was best for me.
Experience is a good teacher. So I took the experience of others and applied it to my own life. Some of that experience came from having great parents in a very healthy relationship. Some of it came from friends dating. Some of it came from movies, TV, and society in general. But I didn't have to make my own mistakes to gain that "valuable practical experience." I was smart and reused some else's code (for an open-source analogy, if you will).
I didn't have to practice finding a marriage partner, since I already learned from others what I was looking for. I hope that my kids can do the same thing some day.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. --Wikipedia
Social Security takes the taxes we pay right now (the "subsequent investors") and gives it to the beneficiaries. My money doesn't sit in some trust fund while I work my life towards retirement. If that was how it worked, Social Security couldn't ever go bankrupt. As it is, my money is in some other Joe's pocket.
The ponzi scheme worked great when most people paid into it, but most minorities and women were excluded from being beneficiaries. Now that we have broadened the pool of beneficiaries, it's just a straight transfer of wealth and isn't building up any savings.
I fully expect not to get a single dime from Social Security by the time I retire, and I'm planning on it.
For the sake of simplicity, let's stick with 1 million students and $10,000 cost per student. That's in the range of costs you presented.
1,000,000 * $10,000 = $10,000,000,000.
That's $10 billion, not $100 billion. While the number of people it takes to generate that much money is still significant, it is far less than those needed to generate $100 billion.
You are absolutely right! A 4-year degree should not be the path everyone is forced to choose. For some, it will just be tens of thousands of dollars of debt with little reward (perhaps hundreds of thousands).
Some people only need a high school diploma.
Some people only need a trade school's training.
Some people only need a few certifications.
Some people only need an Associate's degree.
Some people only need an apprenticeship.
But society forgot all of that and made a 4-year degree the minimum standard for education. And what a debt-load we've created for many that have nothing to show for it.
China closed up after a handful of such voyages, essentially concluding that the rest of the world had little to offer as far as it could tell, and didn't want to be left open to another invasion a la the Mongols. They adapted to Western ideas and technologies more slowly than other societies, but they've been more prosperous than most empires for more years since the death of Christ than about anyone else.
If anything, China is just getting back to it's historical place as #1 in the world.
This government-run "non-profit" is not superior. Whether its K-12 or Higher Ed, private schools do it better. Sometimes they even do it cheaper. Look at the voucher program in Washington DC and all the good it has done for those who were able to take part of it -- then explain why Congress wants to end it. Why else does Obama send his kids to private school? Education for all is great -- but public schools are more broadly considered failing than succeeding, and that's why many parents would love the option to get their kids a better education in a private institution.
Firefighters
This local option currently works well as a government-run organization. It only works because no one has the incentive to allow fires to continue burning and destroying property. Insurance companies could maintain their own fire departments, who would ensure that homes insured by other companies don't catch their own on fire, while perhaps earning some compensation for their cooperation. And a company that lets a house burn down instead of helping will soon have no customers.
Police
Law enforcement and the use of force is the exclusive domain of government, and as such cannot have anyone else perform that task. It should not be in your list.
Social Security
This social safety net is definitely a "non-profit". Did you know that the original legislation excluded most women and minorities? It is a pyramid scheme that relies on continuous growth in the base and in the tax receipts, which we have not seen. It worked when we had lots of new baby boomers and a 16:1 ratio of people paying in to people taking out. That ratio is now closer to 3:1. I fully expect not to get a dime from Social Security when I retire, even though I pay my share like everyone else. I know for a fact I would get a much better return on my money than -100% from just a regular savings account.
Broadband
Where do you live that the government supplies you with a broadband internet connection? Unless you mean the free wifi at the local library, I'm not sure what you mean by the government's far superior non-profit broadband provider.
Public Utilities
These are not government run non-profits, but are highly regulated private entities in many cases. If they were government-owned, it would be a lot easier to pass our green initiatives and clean up our carbon footprints.
There are few things that I think the government does well: run our military, maintain order, and loosely regulate commerce (on federal/state/local scales). The Constitution is very specific in the ways that the Federal government promotes the general welfare and leaves the rest up to the states and the people. I'm much more worried about what the government can do if it chooses than what any company might do.
I had this explained to me yesterday by my wife. Apparently, we've been lied to all along -- the emphasis is not on color, but on water temperature. Some clothes and other articles require hot water. Her examples were boxers, towels, and the like. Cold water should be used for other clothing like shirts and jeans, unless they get very dirty. While there is some initial worry about colors running, that concern quickly fades (pun intended).
I understand that cold water helps keep colors from fading, but I'm not sure why you need hot water for towels and socks as if they were more dirty than other clothes. If I'm doing laundry, it all goes unsorted in cold water. But for her there must be some good reason, and she's not an idiot, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt... until I find a peer-reviewed journal on domestic economics that says otherwise.
For any geeks actually looking for a woman, please don't take this as the absolute truth. Every single woman is a different creature, just like each guy is different. Lumping you in with the jocks doesn't make sense, and neither does lumping all women into the shopaholic, irrational, must-have-my-way stereotype.
Example: My wife (yes, I'm married) is not a shopaholic. On the contrary, she is very frugal and financially prudent. She came from a family where money was never managed well and her mother borrowed from her kids without repaying. Penny-pinching is one thing we have in common. She is strong willed, but we both seek to serve each other and care more about the other person than ourselves. If something is important to both of us, we talk it out. If it's important to her but not to me, then there's no reason for me to disagree, and vice versa. She is passionate about music and education, but I'm not -- I'm into computers, gaming and the like, and she's not. But we have a fantastic relationship, and I wouldn't trade her for bachelorhood and a bag of chips.
Don't believe the part-whole fallacy. Take dancing lessons, and best of luck.
Ross Perot's "sucking sound" referred to NAFTA, so if these IMBers were moving to Mexico that would make sense.
Notice that US Employment rose steadily from 1950 through 2007 with a few bumps along the way, even as the unemployment rate has vascilated wildly throughout. Basically, the US has been able to add a steady number of jobs each year regardless of labor conditions. If we hadn't moved people offshore, we still wouldn't see a jump in US employment. The rate for adding jobs looks like it's roughly the same whether the unemployment rate is 2% or 12%. I just don't see a giant suck.
On a side note, Wolfram Alpha's search engine turned out to be very useful looking for facts like these.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not entirely true. HTC now advertises quite a few of its new handsets that feature Android.
But it is mostly true, as I usually see a new phone advertised with the carrier and not on its own.
An excellent post, but I think you neglect some salient points about the retail price. Since it would have to consider the funds not contributed, it would have to be a substantial sum. Let's spitball and say $2,000 as the retail price (a little under $75 times 30 years in the home). That's a fairly large sum for a lot of families, and many may not be able to pay that. The firefighters have no way to assess their ability to pay the sum on the spot, so they'd have to take their word that they can afford the retail price.
So if the retail price is too high, then the firefighters may lose money since they may never collect the retail price for the service. So let's lower the price to something more generally affordable. Let's say $300 (that'd be 4 years of coverage). That's a lot more affordable price, but then there's a lot less incentive to ever pay. If the retail price is too low compared to the insurance price, people will just pay retail when they need it and never pay the insurance price. Again, the firefighters don't get paid.
I think the solution may be something like putting a lien on the house for the retail price to ensure repayment, but I don't know how lien's work or what the legal costs would be for collecting on liens.
But in the interest of public good, a fire that's allowed to burn out-of-control at one home could spread to another home, or to a forest, extending the initial threat from a single private residence to the general welfare of the public. If I were this man's neighbor, and the fire that the fire department let burn suddenly engulfed my house as well, I would be quite the irate citizen.
If you read the article, you would see that the firefighters did actually keep the flames from spreading to his neighbor's property, since the neighbor had paid the $75 fee. While I agree that it is a good idea to keep fires from spreading, in this case it was only spreading to private property that was already protected.
[Sigh, I know this is going to get modded 'flamebait' and 'troll', but it had to be said.]
Actually, studies show that 78% of Slashdot posts that mention the author's certainty their post will be modded 'flamebait' or 'troll' are modded to at least +4 in either the insightful or informative categories (the split is usually 3:1 insightful to informative). The percentage jumps above 94% when the author uses the phrase 'karma to burn'.
I created a Slashdot entry with the URL being slashdot.org. then I gave it the keyword "sd". Now I just hit sd and enter and Slashdot is pulled up immediately!
Or you could use a perhaps more appropriate keyword for slashdot:
/.
Just sayin'.
And what the fuck funny can you say about Henry Waxman?
How about just the fact that Henry Waxman looks a lot like a mouse? Just check out his face, it very much resembles a rodent: http://www.henrywaxman.house.gov/
Shouldn't we call him Henry CheeseMan or something like that? The resemblance always makes me laugh.
Are you suggesting that we have a large number of large citizens because we largely have our large heads up our large asses? Because having our heads up our asses will certainly make us larger than those who do not.
Well, if you consider how Gmail actually has the potential to be a large part of its Apps for Business, it sure helps that they can now offer the ability to call a real phone from your computer. Plenty of companies that use Apps could also use this to make in-office calls and now calls to customers/vendors/partners in the real world. Selling their Apps perhaps has the best potential for a second stream of revenue aside from advertising, just like how Office is the 2nd stream to Microsoft's Windows OS.
Cig taxes tend not to go up because studies show that increasing the tax generally decreases revenue. Cities and states care more about the revenue than your health (and rather short-sighted in that sense) so they haven't increased the taxes to deal with the health problems they cause. The revenue often doesn't go to paying health costs anyway.
But then there's typically a good 30-40 year delay between actual achievement and Nobel prize.
This is true, though sometimes it takes even longer. In a recent case, it took Barack Obama 48 years to win a prize for being born.
As an engineer, I would honestly rather upper management to be as far away as possible, that's how the real work gets done. Show me an engineer that wants a CEO breathing down their neck and I'll show you an average engineer that wants to brown nose with management. Also what is a CEO supposed to do? What in his background would leave you to believe that other than signing 20 BILLION dollars into escrow for repairs/claims that he would be more effective at the scene? I'm not a fan of big business, but people are just looking for a reason to crucify him. I don't go to BP, that's what I do to show my disapproval.
You could say something similar about a certain President with his "boot on the neck" of BP looking for "who's ass to kick".
Is this article essentially describing a way to re-open the analog hole that HDMI is looking to close? I mean, if you could show your Blu-Ray movie over HDMI, then capture the pixels and save them to your hard drive, haven't you just opened a new hole for people to record content?
Speaking as a happily married man, I did not date at all in high school, and only dated one woman in college -- the same woman I am married to now. I didn't need to make mistakes to find out what was best for me.
Experience is a good teacher. So I took the experience of others and applied it to my own life. Some of that experience came from having great parents in a very healthy relationship. Some of it came from friends dating. Some of it came from movies, TV, and society in general. But I didn't have to make my own mistakes to gain that "valuable practical experience." I was smart and reused some else's code (for an open-source analogy, if you will).
I didn't have to practice finding a marriage partner, since I already learned from others what I was looking for. I hope that my kids can do the same thing some day.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. --Wikipedia
Social Security takes the taxes we pay right now (the "subsequent investors") and gives it to the beneficiaries. My money doesn't sit in some trust fund while I work my life towards retirement. If that was how it worked, Social Security couldn't ever go bankrupt. As it is, my money is in some other Joe's pocket.
The ponzi scheme worked great when most people paid into it, but most minorities and women were excluded from being beneficiaries. Now that we have broadened the pool of beneficiaries, it's just a straight transfer of wealth and isn't building up any savings.
I fully expect not to get a single dime from Social Security by the time I retire, and I'm planning on it.
once the people of the US find out what this bill entails they will defend it like they do Medicare and Social Security.
So the bill has been in the works for a year or so, and the American people still don't know what's in the bill? Are you really suggesting that?
Also, you might be surprised to find out how many people do not support the ponzi scheme that is Social Security, either in part or in whole.
Your math is off by one order of magnitude.
For the sake of simplicity, let's stick with 1 million students and $10,000 cost per student. That's in the range of costs you presented. 1,000,000 * $10,000 = $10,000,000,000. That's $10 billion, not $100 billion. While the number of people it takes to generate that much money is still significant, it is far less than those needed to generate $100 billion.
You are absolutely right! A 4-year degree should not be the path everyone is forced to choose. For some, it will just be tens of thousands of dollars of debt with little reward (perhaps hundreds of thousands).
Some people only need a high school diploma.
Some people only need a trade school's training.
Some people only need a few certifications.
Some people only need an Associate's degree.
Some people only need an apprenticeship.
But society forgot all of that and made a 4-year degree the minimum standard for education. And what a debt-load we've created for many that have nothing to show for it.
Actually, you should keep going back. In the centuries before their first European contact, China was one of the most modern and richest societies on Earth. While Europe floundered between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, China did quite well for itself. You may have heard of the treasure ships of , who traveled in fleets of hundreds of ships far larger than Columbus's Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria. His crew in the tens of thousands displayed their riches across the seas of South Asia (perhaps going as far as Iran and South Africa, though the historical record is speculative).
China closed up after a handful of such voyages, essentially concluding that the rest of the world had little to offer as far as it could tell, and didn't want to be left open to another invasion a la the Mongols. They adapted to Western ideas and technologies more slowly than other societies, but they've been more prosperous than most empires for more years since the death of Christ than about anyone else.
If anything, China is just getting back to it's historical place as #1 in the world.
Until these and other niggling incompatibilities are resolved, my wife will still be nagging me to install Office in Wine...
You sir a a very lucky man.
schools
This government-run "non-profit" is not superior. Whether its K-12 or Higher Ed, private schools do it better. Sometimes they even do it cheaper. Look at the voucher program in Washington DC and all the good it has done for those who were able to take part of it -- then explain why Congress wants to end it. Why else does Obama send his kids to private school? Education for all is great -- but public schools are more broadly considered failing than succeeding, and that's why many parents would love the option to get their kids a better education in a private institution.
Firefighters
This local option currently works well as a government-run organization. It only works because no one has the incentive to allow fires to continue burning and destroying property. Insurance companies could maintain their own fire departments, who would ensure that homes insured by other companies don't catch their own on fire, while perhaps earning some compensation for their cooperation. And a company that lets a house burn down instead of helping will soon have no customers.
Police
Law enforcement and the use of force is the exclusive domain of government, and as such cannot have anyone else perform that task. It should not be in your list.
Social Security
This social safety net is definitely a "non-profit". Did you know that the original legislation excluded most women and minorities? It is a pyramid scheme that relies on continuous growth in the base and in the tax receipts, which we have not seen. It worked when we had lots of new baby boomers and a 16:1 ratio of people paying in to people taking out. That ratio is now closer to 3:1. I fully expect not to get a dime from Social Security when I retire, even though I pay my share like everyone else. I know for a fact I would get a much better return on my money than -100% from just a regular savings account.
Broadband
Where do you live that the government supplies you with a broadband internet connection? Unless you mean the free wifi at the local library, I'm not sure what you mean by the government's far superior non-profit broadband provider.
Public Utilities
These are not government run non-profits, but are highly regulated private entities in many cases. If they were government-owned, it would be a lot easier to pass our green initiatives and clean up our carbon footprints.
There are few things that I think the government does well: run our military, maintain order, and loosely regulate commerce (on federal/state/local scales). The Constitution is very specific in the ways that the Federal government promotes the general welfare and leaves the rest up to the states and the people. I'm much more worried about what the government can do if it chooses than what any company might do.
I had this explained to me yesterday by my wife. Apparently, we've been lied to all along -- the emphasis is not on color, but on water temperature. Some clothes and other articles require hot water. Her examples were boxers, towels, and the like. Cold water should be used for other clothing like shirts and jeans, unless they get very dirty. While there is some initial worry about colors running, that concern quickly fades (pun intended).
I understand that cold water helps keep colors from fading, but I'm not sure why you need hot water for towels and socks as if they were more dirty than other clothes. If I'm doing laundry, it all goes unsorted in cold water. But for her there must be some good reason, and she's not an idiot, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt... until I find a peer-reviewed journal on domestic economics that says otherwise.
What, you want a newer joke? 24-year-old jokes ought to be good enough for anyone. (It's good enough for me!)
Only persons who can vote should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Can corporations vote? Nope - so no donations from them.
Then we ought not to tax corporations either. No taxation without representation!
Wow. That's just depressing.
For any geeks actually looking for a woman, please don't take this as the absolute truth. Every single woman is a different creature, just like each guy is different. Lumping you in with the jocks doesn't make sense, and neither does lumping all women into the shopaholic, irrational, must-have-my-way stereotype.
Example: My wife (yes, I'm married) is not a shopaholic. On the contrary, she is very frugal and financially prudent. She came from a family where money was never managed well and her mother borrowed from her kids without repaying. Penny-pinching is one thing we have in common. She is strong willed, but we both seek to serve each other and care more about the other person than ourselves. If something is important to both of us, we talk it out. If it's important to her but not to me, then there's no reason for me to disagree, and vice versa. She is passionate about music and education, but I'm not -- I'm into computers, gaming and the like, and she's not. But we have a fantastic relationship, and I wouldn't trade her for bachelorhood and a bag of chips.
Don't believe the part-whole fallacy. Take dancing lessons, and best of luck.
Ross Perot's "sucking sound" referred to NAFTA, so if these IMBers were moving to Mexico that would make sense.
Notice that US Employment rose steadily from 1950 through 2007 with a few bumps along the way, even as the unemployment rate has vascilated wildly throughout. Basically, the US has been able to add a steady number of jobs each year regardless of labor conditions. If we hadn't moved people offshore, we still wouldn't see a jump in US employment. The rate for adding jobs looks like it's roughly the same whether the unemployment rate is 2% or 12%. I just don't see a giant suck.
On a side note, Wolfram Alpha's search engine turned out to be very useful looking for facts like these.