> I know that, on the surface, it seems like no big deal that poor people get free medical care at the expense of big companies. The problem is that these big companies are starting to close their hospitals in poor areas - reducing the overall healthcare availability for poor people.
I understand that, and for me, it's simply another indicator that health care in the US shouldn't be left in the hands of the free market.
> Like I said, unfunded mandates are generally not good for anybody.
well, we can certainly agree on that.
> And the US healthcare system is not a "free market".
Nothing is a truly, completely free market, nor should it be.
> In any case, even if they did turn a 3.3 billion "profit" over 5 years, that amounts to less than 2% of their revenue
As a "nonprofit" they don't pay income taxes.
Anyway, my point wasn't that KP was somehow getting rich on suffering of the masses, it was simply to address your original comment:
> They [KP] fall into the "overpay the hospitals because the government underpays them, yet mandates treatment" camp, like the rest of us paying suckers.
Basically, I'm not interesting in hearing about how poor Kaiser-Permanente is being oppressed by The Man.
Agreement. I am generally a big proponent of free market stuff, but sometimes it just doesn't work so well, and I happen to think that health care in the US is one of those areas.
> 3. Lack of oversight. If shareholders don't demand an active board of directors, they're making the same mistake as voters who don't demand representatives who will hold hearings and issue subpoenas.
Well, that's true. But:
(a) increasing shareholder value and long-term performance are not necessarily linked. A good example of this was Maxxam/PalCo, where the shareholders realized that by cutting down every tree from every acre that Maxxam owned was a GREAT way to bump the stock value up for a few years. It was also a great way to totally screw the company over the long run, but no one cared about that, because they'd already sold off their interest in it and made a bundle. Which leads me to:
(b) the stockholders who don't pay attention aren't the ones who get screwed when they're lazy. It's the patients in the hospitals that they have shares in.
there's no such thing as a completely free market. your argument is the free-marketers equivalent to the communist saying "oh, but there's never been a -real- communist government, so just pointing at the litany of the failures of communism doesn't mean anything."
I really can't figure out why this is rated as "Interesting," unless it's 'interesting' because it betrays either such massive ignorance or equally massive intellectual dishonesty.
> Anything that can be made can be copied.
Sure, and at varying but nonzero distances from perfect. In the digital world, any copy is a perfect copy and is completely indistinguishable from the original.
One day when we can make molecule-by-molecule copies of physical objects, I'll listen to this kind of argument, but that day isn't coming any time soon.
> Actually they're just used for inventory.. the article mentions nothing of loss prevention.
Right. That other guy noted that. I am suitably abashed.
> I'm not saying that will happen, although I think someone will try, or that there's any legitimate risk of people being tracked using these things, but that's "how this is bad" in a nutshell.
And you could use a kitchen knife to kill someone. That doesn't make kitchen knives bad things. This seems like a completely legitimate use of RFID technology. It harms no one.
They're just using RFID to prevent shoplifting. Buy the item, take the tag off - beats the hell out of those giant plastic things you see now. Can someone explain to me how this is bad? I mean, for people who aren't shoplifing.
> iBCS is not an app, really -- as I understand it, this kind of thing would have to be in the kernel, right?
It allows you to run SCO binaries. It was a kernel module, then there was no support for a while, then an awful kernel patch which sort of worked.
> Microsoft seems to do a good job of backwards compatibility, and in fact a good job of everything, but only where it would cost them a significant amount of money by not doing a good job.
Well, yeah. But you can say this about pretty much any sufficiently large company. My only point is that the Linux kernel is not exactly something you want to hold up as an example of backwards compatibility.
>Also, soccer mom doesn't need kernel upgrades, or tweaked kernels, or upgrades to apps. She needs security patches, no more, no less. Apps can and should stay the way they are because Aoccer mom doesn't really want to "upgrade". She wants things to JustWork(tm),
Ok, great. Now what happens when the security patch -is- a kernel tweak?
> Free Software - and also commercial UNIX to a great degree - has the highest standards of backwards compatibility - far more rigorous than anything Microsoft has come up with.
uh, no. I've run into several programs that just didn't work on given kernels. iBCS springs readily to mind. However, I don't think I've ever found an windows app that didn't work at least adequately well on XP.
I like Linux just fine, but let's not be blind to it's faults.
> Something breaking between 1.x and 2.x is expected.
Well, right. But the point of the article was that MS doesn't do that. Programs that ran under win3.1 still run on XP. And that's very valuable behavior from a bidness standpoint.
> For all we know Gamestop did this on purpose to prevent customers from taking their business elsewhere even though they couldn't serve as many people as they would have liked to
That's -exactly- why they do it. Don't believe me? Try getting your money back for the preorder that they couldn't fill.
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> I know that, on the surface, it seems like no big deal that poor people get free medical care at the expense of big companies. The problem is that these big companies are starting to close their hospitals in poor areas - reducing the overall healthcare availability for poor people.
I understand that, and for me, it's simply another indicator that health care in the US shouldn't be left in the hands of the free market.
> Like I said, unfunded mandates are generally not good for anybody.
well, we can certainly agree on that.
> And the US healthcare system is not a "free market".
Nothing is a truly, completely free market, nor should it be.
> In any case, even if they did turn a 3.3 billion "profit" over 5 years, that amounts to less than 2% of their revenue
As a "nonprofit" they don't pay income taxes.
Anyway, my point wasn't that KP was somehow getting rich on suffering of the masses, it was simply to address your original comment:
> They [KP] fall into the "overpay the hospitals because the government underpays them, yet mandates treatment" camp, like the rest of us paying suckers.
Basically, I'm not interesting in hearing about how poor Kaiser-Permanente is being oppressed by The Man.
Well, as long as you're picking nits, I'd say that small tribes like that don't really constitute 'governments' in the way we like to use the word.
Agreement. I am generally a big proponent of free market stuff, but sometimes it just doesn't work so well, and I happen to think that health care in the US is one of those areas.
> 3. Lack of oversight. If shareholders don't demand an active board of directors, they're making the same mistake as voters who don't demand representatives who will hold hearings and issue subpoenas.
Well, that's true. But:
(a) increasing shareholder value and long-term performance are not necessarily linked. A good example of this was Maxxam/PalCo, where the shareholders realized that by cutting down every tree from every acre that Maxxam owned was a GREAT way to bump the stock value up for a few years. It was also a great way to totally screw the company over the long run, but no one cared about that, because they'd already sold off their interest in it and made a bundle. Which leads me to:
(b) the stockholders who don't pay attention aren't the ones who get screwed when they're lazy. It's the patients in the hospitals that they have shares in.
it wasn't an argument, it was an analogy.
yeah.
http://www.kaiserpapershawaii.org/kaiserwatch.htm
the world is a nutty place.
In a truly free market, incompetent doctors would put themselves out of business because all their patients would be dead - problem solved!
... and yet, somehow manage to pull in $3.3 billion in profits over the last 5 years!
Man, the free market [i]is[/i] efficient!
there's no such thing as a completely free market. your argument is the free-marketers equivalent to the communist saying "oh, but there's never been a -real- communist government, so just pointing at the litany of the failures of communism doesn't mean anything."
> It is a mixed system. The US Government (socialism) runs Medicaid, Medicare, VA.
> The private sector (capitalism) offers insurance.
And so KP is where in that spectrum?
what would you call it?
The free market is more efficient than some socialist government project. There must be some error in the article.
I really can't figure out why this is rated as "Interesting," unless it's 'interesting' because it betrays either such massive ignorance or equally massive intellectual dishonesty.
> Anything that can be made can be copied.
Sure, and at varying but nonzero distances from perfect. In the digital world, any copy is a perfect copy and is completely indistinguishable from the original.
One day when we can make molecule-by-molecule copies of physical objects, I'll listen to this kind of argument, but that day isn't coming any time soon.
> if the US government ever defaults we all will have bigger things to worry about than our investments.
Which is exactly why all my investments are in ammo, gasoline and canned beans.
> M&S have no right to know what I have bought
uh, am I missing something? The article states M&S is a department store. M&S has to know what you bought, because you bought it from them.
uh, in TFA? About 3/4 of the way down?
> Actually they're just used for inventory.. the article mentions nothing of loss prevention.
Right. That other guy noted that. I am suitably abashed.
> I'm not saying that will happen, although I think someone will try, or that there's any legitimate risk of people being tracked using these things, but that's "how this is bad" in a nutshell.
And you could use a kitchen knife to kill someone. That doesn't make kitchen knives bad things. This seems like a completely legitimate use of RFID technology. It harms no one.
> If you had bothered to RTFA instead of jerking your knee, you'd have read that they're using it for inventory control.
This is in fact true. Still, the point remains: how does this contribute to a surveillance society again?
They're just using RFID to prevent shoplifting. Buy the item, take the tag off - beats the hell out of those giant plastic things you see now. Can someone explain to me how this is bad? I mean, for people who aren't shoplifing.
> iBCS is not an app, really -- as I understand it, this kind of thing would have to be in the kernel, right?
It allows you to run SCO binaries. It was a kernel module, then there was no support for a while, then an awful kernel patch which sort of worked.
> Microsoft seems to do a good job of backwards compatibility, and in fact a good job of everything, but only where it would cost them a significant amount of money by not doing a good job.
Well, yeah. But you can say this about pretty much any sufficiently large company. My only point is that the Linux kernel is not exactly something you want to hold up as an example of backwards compatibility.
>Also, soccer mom doesn't need kernel upgrades, or tweaked kernels, or upgrades to apps. She needs security patches, no more, no less. Apps can and should stay the way they are because Aoccer mom doesn't really want to "upgrade". She wants things to JustWork(tm),
Ok, great. Now what happens when the security patch -is- a kernel tweak?
> Free Software - and also commercial UNIX to a great degree - has the highest standards of backwards compatibility - far more rigorous than anything Microsoft has come up with.
uh, no. I've run into several programs that just didn't work on given kernels. iBCS springs readily to mind. However, I don't think I've ever found an windows app that didn't work at least adequately well on XP.
I like Linux just fine, but let's not be blind to it's faults.
I'm sure they have their reasons. In my experience, large IT departments typically don't just upgrade 5000 machines for shits and giggles.
> Something breaking between 1.x and 2.x is expected.
Well, right. But the point of the article was that MS doesn't do that. Programs that ran under win3.1 still run on XP. And that's very valuable behavior from a bidness standpoint.
> For all we know Gamestop did this on purpose to prevent customers from taking their business elsewhere even though they couldn't serve as many people as they would have liked to
That's -exactly- why they do it. Don't believe me? Try getting your money back for the preorder that they couldn't fill.