"That's a scary notion, when you consider that the USA has by far the largest military in the world, and that the overall actions of the USA are mostly driven by American public opinion."
I would like to add that the overall actions of the military are certainly NOT driven by public opinion, but rather by corporate greed. Just look at all of the defense contracts Haliburton was awarded in Iraq. It only took 4 years for the administration to admit that this was a problem and finally announce that other engineering firms can bid...you know, after they've made their ridiculous levels of profit and lined the pockets of Cheney and his cronies for 4 years, enough was enough!
Disagree? How about the buddy system of Bush administration and the big business of our Healthcare system? It appears that there is a correlation between riduculous oil price rises and healthcare cost rises. Coincidence? I don't think so.
"Yes, tiny little countries in Europe have experimented with legalization and government control of some very powerful, addicting drugs - I am not sure that this model would translate well in the US."
You must be referring to The Netherlands. They have the highest population density of any country in Europe. When I lived there in 2000 the Dutch population was around 15 million. Not exactly a tiny little country, at least in terms of population. FYI Germany (I believe) is the largest, population-wise, at ~90 million inhabitants according to my Dutch friends.
I witnessed first hand the benefits of their legal system, especially concerning police and violence. In the town of Doetinchem where I was living for 4 months, I learned that they only have 4 policeman cruising - D-chem is in the neighborhood of 100,000 residents! There is minimal violence, especially from guns (practically no one owns firearms). And even though cannabis and some of the more dangerous drugs (like heroin) are legalized, I learned that only about 10% (can someone verify?) of the Dutch population uses cannabis. Hardly a hot bed of druggies, even though people are free to use. I would be very suprised if Americans' TRUE usage stats are lower, especially for cannabis use.
I was only there a short time, but in those 4 months I became convinced that a similar system would be wonderful for the US, especially in terms of reducing the cost of maintaining huge police forces and the far more vast cost of keeping drug offenders locked up. Of course, that's assuming we also reduce the number of American firearms considerably if we are going to try and match the Dutch method for keeping the peace.
Oh yeah, and the herb was WAY better (and cheaper to boot), too!:-)
"OTOH, this is the industry that brought us the disaster that is CSS, so there is hope that they fcked it up again and some russian hacker finds an easily crackable loophole once the system is out in the wild."
Or Finnish hacker, as in the case of CSS.
"The most amazing thing about the electrical grid is that it works at all. And indeed most of the time it works well when compared to, say, Iraq. But although it works in routine cases, it does not work in even moderately exceptional cases, such as peak demand for air conditioning. And it certainly does not work to address problems like the California power crisis of several years ago."
Actually the grid is not to blame when considering peak usage outages, it's more likely to be a result of lack of power production. And the California comment is completely off base, considering the truth behind those "outtages". Check out the documentary "The Smartest Guys in The Room" about the Enron scandal, and you will learn that it was actually b.s. "maintenance shutdowns" initiated by Enron energy traders that caused the California blackouts during that summer a few years ago. (2002?) Can someone tell me how many people died as a result of this sickening scenario? Did some elderly succumb during the rolling brown-outs?
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"That's a scary notion, when you consider that the USA has by far the largest military in the world, and that the overall actions of the USA are mostly driven by American public opinion." I would like to add that the overall actions of the military are certainly NOT driven by public opinion, but rather by corporate greed. Just look at all of the defense contracts Haliburton was awarded in Iraq. It only took 4 years for the administration to admit that this was a problem and finally announce that other engineering firms can bid...you know, after they've made their ridiculous levels of profit and lined the pockets of Cheney and his cronies for 4 years, enough was enough! Disagree? How about the buddy system of Bush administration and the big business of our Healthcare system? It appears that there is a correlation between riduculous oil price rises and healthcare cost rises. Coincidence? I don't think so.
"Yes, tiny little countries in Europe have experimented with legalization and government control of some very powerful, addicting drugs - I am not sure that this model would translate well in the US." You must be referring to The Netherlands. They have the highest population density of any country in Europe. When I lived there in 2000 the Dutch population was around 15 million. Not exactly a tiny little country, at least in terms of population. FYI Germany (I believe) is the largest, population-wise, at ~90 million inhabitants according to my Dutch friends. I witnessed first hand the benefits of their legal system, especially concerning police and violence. In the town of Doetinchem where I was living for 4 months, I learned that they only have 4 policeman cruising - D-chem is in the neighborhood of 100,000 residents! There is minimal violence, especially from guns (practically no one owns firearms). And even though cannabis and some of the more dangerous drugs (like heroin) are legalized, I learned that only about 10% (can someone verify?) of the Dutch population uses cannabis. Hardly a hot bed of druggies, even though people are free to use. I would be very suprised if Americans' TRUE usage stats are lower, especially for cannabis use. I was only there a short time, but in those 4 months I became convinced that a similar system would be wonderful for the US, especially in terms of reducing the cost of maintaining huge police forces and the far more vast cost of keeping drug offenders locked up. Of course, that's assuming we also reduce the number of American firearms considerably if we are going to try and match the Dutch method for keeping the peace. Oh yeah, and the herb was WAY better (and cheaper to boot), too! :-)
"OTOH, this is the industry that brought us the disaster that is CSS, so there is hope that they fcked it up again and some russian hacker finds an easily crackable loophole once the system is out in the wild." Or Finnish hacker, as in the case of CSS.
"The most amazing thing about the electrical grid is that it works at all. And indeed most of the time it works well when compared to, say, Iraq. But although it works in routine cases, it does not work in even moderately exceptional cases, such as peak demand for air conditioning. And it certainly does not work to address problems like the California power crisis of several years ago."
Actually the grid is not to blame when considering peak usage outages, it's more likely to be a result of lack of power production. And the California comment is completely off base, considering the truth behind those "outtages". Check out the documentary "The Smartest Guys in The Room" about the Enron scandal, and you will learn that it was actually b.s. "maintenance shutdowns" initiated by Enron energy traders that caused the California blackouts during that summer a few years ago. (2002?)
Can someone tell me how many people died as a result of this sickening scenario? Did some elderly succumb during the rolling brown-outs?