"Non-profit" does not mean "gets to ignore financial issues".
Yes I understand that, sorry if I wasn't clear. Let me see if I can say it a different way:
The *goal* of a non-profit must be some non-financial value, in the ARC's case, saving lives. Yes, they need money to accomplish that, but that is only a means to an end. They should never value a means *over* the end that they claim they have. So they shouldn't try to make money off of something which is supposedly accomplishing their "real" goal.
That's why I brought up the NRA example. Being able to tell your Senator to vote against the puppy-killer bullet ban, is important for the NRA to achieve its objectives. So it doesn't make sense for them to put up artificial barriers to it. Similarly, if one goal of the ARC is to get an emergency kit into every home, it doesn't make sense for them to make it more expensive for people to do so. If they want to overcharge for ARC apparel, fine.
Another example might be that Gideon group charging for the Bibles they leave in hotel rooms.
I just have to say, there is so much... "wrong" about this case.
The red cross symbol has become synonymous with 'First Aid' in the public mind.
Yes, but you could say the same thing with respect to the Red Cross -- why should they be able to monpolize a symbol already generecided to mean "First Aid"?
What bothered me as well was the part about how the ARC uses the symbol "on fund-raising products such as home emergency kits." Um, hello? Isn't ARC a non-profit organization devoted to saving lives? Wouldn't "making sure everyone has a home emergency kit" fall under this? So why would they use that as a profit center, when the provision of the kits *itself* achieves the group's goals. If my point isn't clear, it would be like the NRA charging for access to the part of the site where you can learn how to contact your senator.
I figured they would restrict fundraising activities to e.g. selling non-vital items.
From what I know, legal tender laws don't ban alternate currencies. If you establish contracts and exchanges denominated in your personally-issued "new-dollar notes", they must be honored in those terms. When you think about it, all kinds of currency-ready notes are issued, and you could conceivably use those. Pokemon cards, for example. Does anyone worry that Nintendo will overprint them? Nope.
And even if what you're saying is true, I don't see the problem. If they "only" have to pay you the legal-tender market value of the new-dollar debt, then... er... take that legal tender and BUY the new-dollar notes! I mean, if they really did give you the equivalent...
The real reason alternate currencies don't spring up is that it's so damn hard to overcome the network effects of existing currency, as well as trust.
Modded to five? Oh, geez, people...
Dollars have a value because the supply is limited Yes, I know. My point is, while you technically answered his question, you weren't answering the part he was curious about, i.e., what *functional purpose* drives the value of money. It's like answering "Why rob banks?" with "because that's where the money is."
Look I agree debts can be useful, but there's no particular reason that money has to be based on it, or even on gold. I gave you the reason -- because if you use a commodity as money, a certain amount of that commodity must be held out of use, so it can be used as money. This carries an opportunity cost -- that commodity can't be used in production. With a "debt-based currency", people simply have the debts they'd have anyway, but no commodities have to be held out of use.
The only problem with unbacked currency is the government's propensity to roll the presses 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 52 weeks of the year.... The fractional reserve system multiplies the impact, Are you even reading my posts? Yes, the government inflates the currency. No, that's not a big deal now because all economic decisions already accurately factor this in! Does it hurt you if you're a saver? No, because interest rates cover the inflation. Does it hurt you if you're the poor, beleagured waitress? No. If money degrades, but your skills are as valuable, your wage will go up in nominal terms. If the employer doesn't raise her wage (it's mostly from tips that rise with inflating menu prices, but whatever), another would be glad to poach her. If no employer wants to raise her wages with inflation, yes, that sucks for her. I don't want to trivialize that. But what did the Fed have to do with that? The only way they can avoid raising her wage with inflation is if they value her labor less in real terms -- I don't see how you can pin that on the Fed.
Very true, very true. I was only trying to show how a 100% LD annual rate of return should not surprise anyone. And I didn't charge anything or pay any interest for use of my bank. Eventually, I would have started charging, but I had to establish trust first. I only got maybe five customers before I quit.
No you don't. If you did, you would have accepted my previous apology for not understanding your issue with the use of "price point". As I said, my "condescending lecture" was an attempt to helpfully answer your question. It didn't even occur to me that you might have a pet grievance against the use of "price point". In your case (again, you weren't the only one) I already explained the reason that you should have *known* that was an unhelpful explanation: because I said upfront, that I understand that there are some instances where it's appropriate. ("In almost all cases, it's completely unnecessary.") You, however, placed a higher priority on looking smart than actually, you know, reading my question.
And this is pretty much the crux of the issue. You started your tirade when "price point" was used correctly and in context. Yes, it was used in a way that didn't contradict anything else the poster said. However, the question I was asking was why it's inserted in a way that's unnecessary and only serves to complicate the discussion. That is, why say "price point", when "price" would have made the statement contain the same information?
Now if you want something useful to rant about "Price point" shows up a lot more than SKU. And my mission is not to "stamp it out", but to find out the mentality behind using it.
That's not quite right. Legal tender laws don't say "You must accept dollars while operating in the US." They just say, "If you declare that you accept 'US dollars' as payment, you must accept *these* notes." That is, you can't agree to accept dollars, and then not accept dollars. If you specify a contract that references gold, the law doesn't change that -- after all, how would contracts regarding gold mines operate?
"You are contractually obligated to dig one ton of gold from this mine." "Hahah! Invalid! I just have to give you US dollars!"
The reason most US prices are quoted in dollars is because that's what most people deal in. You can still require "tokens" for arcades, chips at gambling tables, Jack Cash at Jack-in-the-Box, etc.
Wow. That was like, what, a year ago now? Dude, you need to get over it. Holding a grudge is not good for your health. If you were the only person that did that, it would be a grudge. You're not.
And for the record, we were talking about price points in the issue you were referencing. As in "Nintendo should have gone with the $199 price point rather than the $249 price point." I accept that those are price points, as defined under the economic theory. That's not in dispute. What's in dispute is why people feel the need to say "price point" where "price" conveys the same information *in that context* -- i.e., a context where they're not relying on the economic theory behind price points. I think it's because they want to look smarter than they really are by making the terminology more complicated than it needs to be.
And so far, your only explanation is, "Hey, let me give you a condescending lecture about the theory of price points."
If you have a relevant response, I'd like to hear it. Otherwise, just agree, "Okay, 'price' was enough."
Um. Nope. The US dollar is worth something because it has a limited supply.
My snot has limited supply too, but it's not worth anything.
The GP was right for the question he was answering: why do the unbacked, limited-supply US dollars have value? Among other things, because you can pay taxes with them. I would add further, that so many debts are denominated in US dollars. This cascades into a sort of network effect: X people accept dollars, because they can pay debts with them, so MOST people accept dollars because they will be buying from someone, somehow connected to those X people.
And no, debt in and of it self is not morally objectionable. There's nothing wrong with businesses taking out loans for productive purposes for example. The reason a lot of economists like currency based this way is that you don't have to hold productive commodites (like gold, which can be used for hi-tech equipment) out of production, just so it can be used as money.
Your point about government inflating the currency is well-taken, but you're exaggerating its impact. As long as people know the approximate range by which it will expand the money supply, they will demand an interest rate on their lending that eliminates this effect. It's only the *ununsually excessive* expansions that can have distortionary effects, and people's expectations are pretty well adapted based on history.
Okay, I think I have some expertise on this, because I actually ran an SL "bank" (under a broad definition of "bank", but I called it a bank). I can tell you that 100% interest rate in SL is NOT "insane", and I can tell you how to "earn" that kind of interest without a Ponzi scheme.
First, some background: (as of '03 when I played) in SL, they make it so that they "recharge" your money to a certain level each week, sort of like welfare. The day of the week varies between people. So, if you store your money with a trusted party, it will look like you're poor and you'll get money despite not being poor. I believe at the time it was something like LD 7000 that they would recharge you to. My bank served the function of the trusted party: I'd hold their money (through a script) over their recharge day.
Oh, and yes, I was very open about this, and told admins I was doing it. They didn't care.
Now, this doesn't explain how exactly you'd employ someone's money to make more money (like the banks claimed). However, it shows how, using some tricks, you can start with e.g. LD 7000, and "earn" 7000 more each week... that's definitely more than a 100% yearly effective interest rate!
Yeah, kinda like how no one would ever say "price point" in cases where "price" would convey the same information. ("Sony's failing because they make the PS3's price point too high.") And when challenged on why they felt the need to say "price point", they would never go on a long, condescending diatribe about the economic theory of "price points", dodging the matter of why it was necessary to say it in *that instance*. And they would never feel smug and superior for doing so.
1) People also need food. So socialize farms? No, at most, if you want to ensure people have food, give them food vouchers. So at best, that justifies giving health care vouchers, not nationalizing health care. 2) *Some* kinds of health care are vital. Certainly not all of it is. 3) There is no private sector monopoly in health care. 4) If all you're concerned with is people being able to have the *vital* health care, we can have that today. Bare bones health care plans, that just cover catastrophic conditions, are pretty cheap. To the extent that people can't afford this, it has nothing to do with greed, and everything to do with the fact that such plans are banned, or people refuse to spend the pittance that it would cost. 5) The rules of the marketplace apply to the "pseudo-market" for food, which people must have. 6) Health care costs are accelerating because of a) increased malpractice insurance costs, b) third-party coverage of operations of questionable value, c) restrictions on training of doctors, d) resistance to modernization and transparency in health care practices, e) willingness to tolerate free emergency care with no attempt to collect the debt for people who refuse to buy insurance, f) insulation from costs for those purchasing through insurance, and g) a tax code that rewards an antiquated employer-based system. Please, try to find something deeper than "greed".
No, I think you're missing the point here. If your entire explanation for why health insurance[1] is a bad idea, is "OMG teh corporationzorz R tying to teh profit and if tehy could just not give you wut u pade 4 they wud get rich!", as was the case for the poster I was originally responding to, you don't understand the problem. Lots of businesses try to make a profit. Why do they suck less than health insurance? You have to be able to answer that to incorporate profit as part of your diagnosis.
[1] and health insurance is different from the purchase of an individual operation -- an important distinction you should take note of trotting out folk wisdom like, "heh heh, ye just can't negotiate when yer bleedin t'death"
No, it isn't. The point of retail outlets is that people don't want to go to each supplier individually to shop. By concentrating the goods at one location, each person has access to a greater variety.
This is why private retail stores are a bad thing- their job isn't to maximize product value, but to maximize profit. Ideally, they would want to make sure nothing you pay for leaves the store with you to make 100% of that money in profit. In other words, they want to make it a giant scam, taking your money but providing no goods. This doesn't stop the others from getting convenience, it just forces them to have to travel to suppliers themselves, or get no products at all. And since we live in a humane society where we don't let them die on the street, society as a whole pays higher sales taxes as we pay for them to take up welfare when things go completely wrong, rather than cheaper, more effective products we'd have if they'd get a job and pay for products with their own money.
So no, this is *not* a good thing. This is a perversion that will inflate the pockets of wealthy retail chains while bankrupting the lower and middle classes. This is why we need to get rid of privately owned retail stores and get government retail *now*. **** Congratulations! You just proved why nothing should be run for-profit!
Fine job of counter-villainizing, there. Because of course we ALL know that ALL environmentalists are either cohorts of Dr. Evil or his unwitting pawns. We also know that Prius owners generally commute long distances, and SUV owners generally live a few blocks from their places of work and shopping. I don't claim any sort of correlation like that. All I claim is that environmentalists have truly bizarre definitions of what constitutes offensive wastefulness. They'll take my "need to drive X miles" at face value, but not my "need to drive a large car". They'll take my "need to have thirty lights per room" at face value, but not my "need to have incandescents". It's the selectiveness that bothers me.
Now, you will say that, "But [based on my advanced calculations], the SUV *must* be wasteful." But you can't know that: waste is cost *per unit benefit*. Since you can't know how much benefit I place on being able to drive an SUV, you can't tell me it's "wasteful". WAIT WAIT WAIT, FINISH THE PARAGRAPH BEFORE YOUR KNEE-JERK RESPONSE You can say it's environmentally damaging, of course, but not the magnitude of that relative to the benefit. Attempts to ban products outright on the grounds that they are "wasteful" degrades into a whining contest where interest group X rooks congress into believing that they "really need" an exemption for such-and-such. That's why it makes much more sense to just *assess the cost* of the activity on the person doing it and let *them* decide if it's still worth it.
Actually, I like your proposal, and I can see some environmentalists disliking it, for the reasons you state. But in addition to the "environmentalist" reasons you state, you forgot the "conservative" reasons for disliking it... Yes, conservatives hate taxes, but at least then it would look like a serious attempt, based on economic understanding, to solve a serious crisis and not just "oooh!!!! Here's my latest excuse for wanting more regulation!"
And I think you misunderstand what corporations want too. It's not so much the level of taxes that bothers them (which is imputed out of factor prices anyway), but the *uncertainty* of the future legal environment. That's why they're more likely to invest in places with relatively high corporate taxes than e.g. a low-tax Latin American country with a ~10% chance of a revolution in any given year. If you passed a constitutional amendment that said, "each unit of pollutant will forever cost this [inflation indexed] amount, forever, until there are enough votes to repeal this amendment; and this is the only environmental legislation you will ever have to obey", they would love that because it allows them to plan long term, even and especially if you pick large values for these. What it takes in costs, it makes up for in risk reduction.
My fears are three-fold. Those apply to any solution. The reason I suggest a carbon tax is because it would be the most efficient... if your goal is truly to stop global warming, and not simply order people around.
You know what would also help with the problem? If people argued for action on global warming as if it weren't "just another excuse to get the laws we'd want anyway". Maybe if each offered solution didn't specifically target those environmentalists hate without regard to actual environmental damage?
There's a very simple solution: carbon tax + apply proceeds (in transparent process) to carbon sinks and to legitimate warming harm-abatement.
That allows everyone to adapt in the least inconvenient way for them. No bureaucracy to decide what uses you "really" need. No bizarre incentive structure that rewards people for being wasteful in the most efficient way possible.
The "problems" with such a proposal are:
-It doesn't require visible, vengeance-satisfying sacrifice. -Most conspicuous consumption would still happen because rich people would rather pay for the sink/abatement than quit driving the SUV. -It would snare the phonies who drive hybrids quite a lot, and not the hated SUV drivers who arrange their lives so that they don't have to drive very far. -Most adaptation people make wouldn't be visible and thus wouldn't show how much they "care". -Big evil corporations would figure out an efficient carbon sink method (since it's now profitable) and thus get a lot of money. -Any result that didn't equate with environmentalists' real goals would be derided as a failure of the system.
New galaxy? Why do people keep acting like this is something new? It's unbelievably old and out of date, and I don't know how it got on a *news* site. If the light from this eveny is just getting to us, it happened millions of years ago. Oh, I know, the old excuse, "well, it's new to *this* light cone". Kinda like how that '86 Chevy is a "new car"... to me.
I definitely agree that the law needs to be easily understandable, preferably by anyone with a ~6th grade education. Complexity of law is, after all, how lawyers get to make so much. But I wouldn't go so far as to say, as you do, that such a majestic improvement would "make the whole profession obsolete". In my view, that's like saying, "If all software were free and open source, tech support would be obsolete because you can just debug the code yourself." Even in an ideal system, there would be a lot of cases where it helps to have some experience arguing a position, or considering non-obvious implications.
I'd also like to add here that it's unfair to consider the current mess to be an indictment of patents as such. If a country adjudicated its physical property rights poorly, that wouldn't be an argument against property rights, would it?
What you say may be true, but I don't think it addresses the GP's point. Sure, nurse schools may want more males for various reasons. They may complain about the lack of males. But does the NY Times write stories about how horrible it is that "not enough" men are nurses? Do people become pariahs for saying, "Hey... you know, maybe men just don't want to be nurses as much." ?
Somehow, the lack of men there just doesn't seem to generate the outrage... That is the difference.
Wow, and people like you are the reason a lot of fields don't have more competent eyeballs looking at them.
Yes, if someone is new to the field, don't bombard them with specialized terminology, even if it is well-defined and widely used. Speak to be understood, and then introduce the proper terminology as appropriate. The "correct words" are the words *that accomplish your objective*.
I have to teach people, including older ones, how to use software all the time, and without fail I have them comfortably working with it in short time. It's *because* I don't expect them to come in with all sorts of specialized knowledge or figure it out on their own.
Your wife probably doesn't think it's better to use terms like "thing-a-me-bob"; it's just that she doesn't know the right term. She doesn't associate "snipping off the end" with "cropping", and would much prefer to use that latter when someone makes the connection for her.
The other, related problem, is that people convince themselves that what they're doing is more complicated than it really is...
I think it's important to differentiate stupidity-driven ("darwinian") from involuntary costs. For example, if you lose $X to phishing, or buying from a spammer, it's because you are an idiot and the loss was entirely avoidable. On the other hand, the best security expert in the world still has to expend resources to filter his spam. Avoiding the latter should have a higher priority than the former.
Slashdot Mirror
"Non-profit" does not mean "gets to ignore financial issues".
Yes I understand that, sorry if I wasn't clear. Let me see if I can say it a different way:
The *goal* of a non-profit must be some non-financial value, in the ARC's case, saving lives. Yes, they need money to accomplish that, but that is only a means to an end. They should never value a means *over* the end that they claim they have. So they shouldn't try to make money off of something which is supposedly accomplishing their "real" goal.
That's why I brought up the NRA example. Being able to tell your Senator to vote against the puppy-killer bullet ban, is important for the NRA to achieve its objectives. So it doesn't make sense for them to put up artificial barriers to it. Similarly, if one goal of the ARC is to get an emergency kit into every home, it doesn't make sense for them to make it more expensive for people to do so. If they want to overcharge for ARC apparel, fine.
Another example might be that Gideon group charging for the Bibles they leave in hotel rooms.
I just have to say, there is so much ... "wrong" about this case.
The red cross symbol has become synonymous with 'First Aid' in the public mind.
Yes, but you could say the same thing with respect to the Red Cross -- why should they be able to monpolize a symbol already generecided to mean "First Aid"?
What bothered me as well was the part about how the ARC uses the symbol "on fund-raising products such as home emergency kits." Um, hello? Isn't ARC a non-profit organization devoted to saving lives? Wouldn't "making sure everyone has a home emergency kit" fall under this? So why would they use that as a profit center, when the provision of the kits *itself* achieves the group's goals. If my point isn't clear, it would be like the NRA charging for access to the part of the site where you can learn how to contact your senator.
I figured they would restrict fundraising activities to e.g. selling non-vital items.
Hey! Not a bad ad hoc rationalization, as far as AHR's go.
From what I know, legal tender laws don't ban alternate currencies. If you establish contracts and exchanges denominated in your personally-issued "new-dollar notes", they must be honored in those terms. When you think about it, all kinds of currency-ready notes are issued, and you could conceivably use those. Pokemon cards, for example. Does anyone worry that Nintendo will overprint them? Nope.
... er ... take that legal tender and BUY the new-dollar notes! I mean, if they really did give you the equivalent...
And even if what you're saying is true, I don't see the problem. If they "only" have to pay you the legal-tender market value of the new-dollar debt, then
The real reason alternate currencies don't spring up is that it's so damn hard to overcome the network effects of existing currency, as well as trust.
The fractional reserve system multiplies the impact, Are you even reading my posts? Yes, the government inflates the currency. No, that's not a big deal now because all economic decisions already accurately factor this in! Does it hurt you if you're a saver? No, because interest rates cover the inflation. Does it hurt you if you're the poor, beleagured waitress? No. If money degrades, but your skills are as valuable, your wage will go up in nominal terms. If the employer doesn't raise her wage (it's mostly from tips that rise with inflating menu prices, but whatever), another would be glad to poach her. If no employer wants to raise her wages with inflation, yes, that sucks for her. I don't want to trivialize that. But what did the Fed have to do with that? The only way they can avoid raising her wage with inflation is if they value her labor less in real terms -- I don't see how you can pin that on the Fed.
Very true, very true. I was only trying to show how a 100% LD annual rate of return should not surprise anyone. And I didn't charge anything or pay any interest for use of my bank. Eventually, I would have started charging, but I had to establish trust first. I only got maybe five customers before I quit.
To learn, in other words. New concept, right?
That's not quite right. Legal tender laws don't say "You must accept dollars while operating in the US." They just say, "If you declare that you accept 'US dollars' as payment, you must accept *these* notes." That is, you can't agree to accept dollars, and then not accept dollars. If you specify a contract that references gold, the law doesn't change that -- after all, how would contracts regarding gold mines operate?
"You are contractually obligated to dig one ton of gold from this mine."
"Hahah! Invalid! I just have to give you US dollars!"
The reason most US prices are quoted in dollars is because that's what most people deal in. You can still require "tokens" for arcades, chips at gambling tables, Jack Cash at Jack-in-the-Box, etc.
And so far, your only explanation is, "Hey, let me give you a condescending lecture about the theory of price points."
If you have a relevant response, I'd like to hear it. Otherwise, just agree, "Okay, 'price' was enough."
Um. Nope. The US dollar is worth something because it has a limited supply.
My snot has limited supply too, but it's not worth anything.
The GP was right for the question he was answering: why do the unbacked, limited-supply US dollars have value? Among other things, because you can pay taxes with them. I would add further, that so many debts are denominated in US dollars. This cascades into a sort of network effect: X people accept dollars, because they can pay debts with them, so MOST people accept dollars because they will be buying from someone, somehow connected to those X people.
And no, debt in and of it self is not morally objectionable. There's nothing wrong with businesses taking out loans for productive purposes for example. The reason a lot of economists like currency based this way is that you don't have to hold productive commodites (like gold, which can be used for hi-tech equipment) out of production, just so it can be used as money.
Your point about government inflating the currency is well-taken, but you're exaggerating its impact. As long as people know the approximate range by which it will expand the money supply, they will demand an interest rate on their lending that eliminates this effect. It's only the *ununsually excessive* expansions that can have distortionary effects, and people's expectations are pretty well adapted based on history.
Okay, I think I have some expertise on this, because I actually ran an SL "bank" (under a broad definition of "bank", but I called it a bank). I can tell you that 100% interest rate in SL is NOT "insane", and I can tell you how to "earn" that kind of interest without a Ponzi scheme.
... that's definitely more than a 100% yearly effective interest rate!
First, some background: (as of '03 when I played) in SL, they make it so that they "recharge" your money to a certain level each week, sort of like welfare. The day of the week varies between people. So, if you store your money with a trusted party, it will look like you're poor and you'll get money despite not being poor. I believe at the time it was something like LD 7000 that they would recharge you to. My bank served the function of the trusted party: I'd hold their money (through a script) over their recharge day.
Oh, and yes, I was very open about this, and told admins I was doing it. They didn't care.
Now, this doesn't explain how exactly you'd employ someone's money to make more money (like the banks claimed). However, it shows how, using some tricks, you can start with e.g. LD 7000, and "earn" 7000 more each week
Yeah, kinda like how no one would ever say "price point" in cases where "price" would convey the same information. ("Sony's failing because they make the PS3's price point too high.") And when challenged on why they felt the need to say "price point", they would never go on a long, condescending diatribe about the economic theory of "price points", dodging the matter of why it was necessary to say it in *that instance*. And they would never feel smug and superior for doing so.
*sigh*
1) People also need food. So socialize farms? No, at most, if you want to ensure people have food, give them food vouchers. So at best, that justifies giving health care vouchers, not nationalizing health care.
2) *Some* kinds of health care are vital. Certainly not all of it is.
3) There is no private sector monopoly in health care.
4) If all you're concerned with is people being able to have the *vital* health care, we can have that today. Bare bones health care plans, that just cover catastrophic conditions, are pretty cheap. To the extent that people can't afford this, it has nothing to do with greed, and everything to do with the fact that such plans are banned, or people refuse to spend the pittance that it would cost.
5) The rules of the marketplace apply to the "pseudo-market" for food, which people must have.
6) Health care costs are accelerating because of a) increased malpractice insurance costs, b) third-party coverage of operations of questionable value, c) restrictions on training of doctors, d) resistance to modernization and transparency in health care practices, e) willingness to tolerate free emergency care with no attempt to collect the debt for people who refuse to buy insurance, f) insulation from costs for those purchasing through insurance, and g) a tax code that rewards an antiquated employer-based system. Please, try to find something deeper than "greed".
No, I think you're missing the point here. If your entire explanation for why health insurance[1] is a bad idea, is "OMG teh corporationzorz R tying to teh profit and if tehy could just not give you wut u pade 4 they wud get rich!", as was the case for the poster I was originally responding to, you don't understand the problem. Lots of businesses try to make a profit. Why do they suck less than health insurance? You have to be able to answer that to incorporate profit as part of your diagnosis.
[1] and health insurance is different from the purchase of an individual operation -- an important distinction you should take note of trotting out folk wisdom like, "heh heh, ye just can't negotiate when yer bleedin t'death"
No, it isn't. The point of retail outlets is that people don't want to go to each supplier individually to shop. By concentrating the goods at one location, each person has access to a greater variety.
This is why private retail stores are a bad thing- their job isn't to maximize product value, but to maximize profit. Ideally, they would want to make sure nothing you pay for leaves the store with you to make 100% of that money in profit. In other words, they want to make it a giant scam, taking your money but providing no goods. This doesn't stop the others from getting convenience, it just forces them to have to travel to suppliers themselves, or get no products at all. And since we live in a humane society where we don't let them die on the street, society as a whole pays higher sales taxes as we pay for them to take up welfare when things go completely wrong, rather than cheaper, more effective products we'd have if they'd get a job and pay for products with their own money.
So no, this is *not* a good thing. This is a perversion that will inflate the pockets of wealthy retail chains while bankrupting the lower and middle classes. This is why we need to get rid of privately owned retail stores and get government retail *now*.
****
Congratulations! You just proved why nothing should be run for-profit!
Now, you will say that, "But [based on my advanced calculations], the SUV *must* be wasteful." But you can't know that: waste is cost *per unit benefit*. Since you can't know how much benefit I place on being able to drive an SUV, you can't tell me it's "wasteful". WAIT WAIT WAIT, FINISH THE PARAGRAPH BEFORE YOUR KNEE-JERK RESPONSE You can say it's environmentally damaging, of course, but not the magnitude of that relative to the benefit. Attempts to ban products outright on the grounds that they are "wasteful" degrades into a whining contest where interest group X rooks congress into believing that they "really need" an exemption for such-and-such. That's why it makes much more sense to just *assess the cost* of the activity on the person doing it and let *them* decide if it's still worth it. Actually, I like your proposal, and I can see some environmentalists disliking it, for the reasons you state. But in addition to the "environmentalist" reasons you state, you forgot the "conservative" reasons for disliking it... Yes, conservatives hate taxes, but at least then it would look like a serious attempt, based on economic understanding, to solve a serious crisis and not just "oooh!!!! Here's my latest excuse for wanting more regulation!"
And I think you misunderstand what corporations want too. It's not so much the level of taxes that bothers them (which is imputed out of factor prices anyway), but the *uncertainty* of the future legal environment. That's why they're more likely to invest in places with relatively high corporate taxes than e.g. a low-tax Latin American country with a ~10% chance of a revolution in any given year. If you passed a constitutional amendment that said, "each unit of pollutant will forever cost this [inflation indexed] amount, forever, until there are enough votes to repeal this amendment; and this is the only environmental legislation you will ever have to obey", they would love that because it allows them to plan long term, even and especially if you pick large values for these. What it takes in costs, it makes up for in risk reduction. My fears are three-fold. Those apply to any solution. The reason I suggest a carbon tax is because it would be the most efficient
Will you take me at my word if I said a lot of people advocate banning incandescents for environmental reasons?
You know what would also help with the problem? If people argued for action on global warming as if it weren't "just another excuse to get the laws we'd want anyway". Maybe if each offered solution didn't specifically target those environmentalists hate without regard to actual environmental damage?
There's a very simple solution: carbon tax + apply proceeds (in transparent process) to carbon sinks and to legitimate warming harm-abatement.
That allows everyone to adapt in the least inconvenient way for them. No bureaucracy to decide what uses you "really" need. No bizarre incentive structure that rewards people for being wasteful in the most efficient way possible.
The "problems" with such a proposal are:
-It doesn't require visible, vengeance-satisfying sacrifice.
-Most conspicuous consumption would still happen because rich people would rather pay for the sink/abatement than quit driving the SUV.
-It would snare the phonies who drive hybrids quite a lot, and not the hated SUV drivers who arrange their lives so that they don't have to drive very far.
-Most adaptation people make wouldn't be visible and thus wouldn't show how much they "care".
-Big evil corporations would figure out an efficient carbon sink method (since it's now profitable) and thus get a lot of money.
-Any result that didn't equate with environmentalists' real goals would be derided as a failure of the system.
So, the idea doesn't get a lot of play.
New galaxy? Why do people keep acting like this is something new? It's unbelievably old and out of date, and I don't know how it got on a *news* site. If the light from this eveny is just getting to us, it happened millions of years ago. Oh, I know, the old excuse, "well, it's new to *this* light cone". Kinda like how that '86 Chevy is a "new car" ... to me.
I definitely agree that the law needs to be easily understandable, preferably by anyone with a ~6th grade education. Complexity of law is, after all, how lawyers get to make so much. But I wouldn't go so far as to say, as you do, that such a majestic improvement would "make the whole profession obsolete". In my view, that's like saying, "If all software were free and open source, tech support would be obsolete because you can just debug the code yourself." Even in an ideal system, there would be a lot of cases where it helps to have some experience arguing a position, or considering non-obvious implications.
I'd also like to add here that it's unfair to consider the current mess to be an indictment of patents as such. If a country adjudicated its physical property rights poorly, that wouldn't be an argument against property rights, would it?
"So what would you say the probability was, that Challenger would fly safely?"
"One hundred percent."
"!!!"
"... minus epsilon"
(What Do You Care What Other People Think?)
What you say may be true, but I don't think it addresses the GP's point. Sure, nurse schools may want more males for various reasons. They may complain about the lack of males. But does the NY Times write stories about how horrible it is that "not enough" men are nurses? Do people become pariahs for saying, "Hey ... you know, maybe men just don't want to be nurses as much." ?
Somehow, the lack of men there just doesn't seem to generate the outrage... That is the difference.
Wow, and people like you are the reason a lot of fields don't have more competent eyeballs looking at them.
Yes, if someone is new to the field, don't bombard them with specialized terminology, even if it is well-defined and widely used. Speak to be understood, and then introduce the proper terminology as appropriate. The "correct words" are the words *that accomplish your objective*.
I have to teach people, including older ones, how to use software all the time, and without fail I have them comfortably working with it in short time. It's *because* I don't expect them to come in with all sorts of specialized knowledge or figure it out on their own.
Your wife probably doesn't think it's better to use terms like "thing-a-me-bob"; it's just that she doesn't know the right term. She doesn't associate "snipping off the end" with "cropping", and would much prefer to use that latter when someone makes the connection for her.
The other, related problem, is that people convince themselves that what they're doing is more complicated than it really is...
If someone starts to think they're representing more than themselves, maybe they need to look at their own self-image.
You mean like those people who feel proud that *other* researchers at a university they used to attend, accomplished something great?
I think it's important to differentiate stupidity-driven ("darwinian") from involuntary costs. For example, if you lose $X to phishing, or buying from a spammer, it's because you are an idiot and the loss was entirely avoidable. On the other hand, the best security expert in the world still has to expend resources to filter his spam. Avoiding the latter should have a higher priority than the former.