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On February 09 2017 13:14 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 13:12 zlefin wrote:On February 09 2017 13:08 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 13:02 zlefin wrote:On February 09 2017 12:55 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:49 zlefin wrote:On February 09 2017 12:43 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:36 Sermokala wrote:On February 09 2017 12:33 Plansix wrote:
That is the real problem. Any reasonable law that is crafted will be smothered under the weight of NRA disinformation and straight up lies. It is disappointing and hopefully the public catches on. But until then, they will all get rich selling assault weapons on the boarder to Mexico. Any reasonable politician supporting a law should expect NRA disinformation and lies and be a politician and combat it. Its literally their only job to succeed at this sort of thing. You need to convince people to not believe the disinformation, which is problematic. Especially since the main selling point is "That school shooting won't happen in your area because we made you an action hero." There has to be overwhelming political will behind it. or switch to a form of government where disinforming the ill-informed and foolish isn't relevant to establishing policy. sadly people too much like the "idea" of democracy to get the buy-in necessary to seriously consider alternatives structures. Creating the government we currently have was a miracle and nearly imploded in national bankruptcy and military revolt. You need to look to Canada or some other small land to create the government of the future. it's not about size, it's about the internal issues. a country with significant unresolved internal issues is gonna be prone to future problems. Our delusion that pure rational thought and arguments will be persuasive to the voting population will always be our undoing. Voters fears and anxieties, not matter how irrational, must be addressed before they will support anything. Any form of government that rejects that concept or tries to dictate reality to its citizens will fail. the voters opinions would be rather less important if there wasn't voting. so that's a bit inapt and off-point. i never said to make it persuasive, the point is to remove voters from the equation while still getting good results (if achievable) therefore making their irrationality irrelevant. of course people will still irrationally revolt from time to time. I believe they will quite rationally destroy that government that they have no say in.
dude, you're obviously just ignoring the points I was making entirely, so not gonna bother talking with oyu more. please don't respond while failing to read what the other guy said.
it would not be rational to destroy a highly effective form of government with minimal corruption and sound policies that substantially improve your quality of life, economic situation, reduce crime, etc etc all teh goods stuffs.
the question of whether we could design one in the future is a mighty big if, but it was the one being talked about. and ignoring that premise when you talk makes your points utterly irrelevant.
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If you create utopia, it would be a very effective, efficient place to live.
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United States42689 Posts
On February 09 2017 09:11 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 09 2017 08:56 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 08:35 LegalLord wrote:
Profit is an utterly terrible predictor of public welfare, which is the deeper issue here. It is, for example, much more profitable to sell decades' worth of pills than to develop a one-off cure to a specific problem. We also get disgusting issues like the EpiPen matter.
I would honestly rather the issue of where to focus medical R&D efforts be decided by a committee of experts rather than by profit incentives. Decisions by committee are rarely looked upon positively but in this case it would make sense since it would support the proper incentive of improving public welfare. I just simply do not see how that could end up turning out well. As someone who worked in a medical devices lab, the current government grant process is...really abysmal. Honestly, I'd need a series of whitepapers describing a potential system to even begin to be convinced it would work moderately well. On February 09 2017 08:43 KwarK wrote:
Not at all. You can know ahead of time that you're going to be selling at different prices in different regions and allocate the overhead between them accordingly. Any time you have an increase in sales over the marginal cost you get an overall reduction in the overhead allocated to each unit, even if some units are sold at a loss given total cost including sunk costs. Like I said, this is counter-intuitive, but it's still true.
Imagine you have a car and you're planning a road trip that will cost $50 in gas. You've currently got two people who want to go to that destination and each of them value getting there at $20. $50 > 2*$20, trip cancelled, nobody goes. But you still have two empty seats in the car. If you can find another guy who values getting there at $10 then you should still give him a seat, despite the fact that $50/3 = $17 and $17 > $10. And now our road trip is on. Find a fourth guy who values getting there at $1 and he gets a seat too. As long as they can't sell each other tickets you're good to go.
Your argument is that the first two guys are subsidizing the other two. It's true from one perspective, they're paying a disproportionately large share of the gas. But your conclusion, that the guy with $10 and the guy with $1 are holding back the road trip, that's completely false. Until you let them chip in gas money for seats there was no road trip.
You can use this argument forwards as well as backwards. It doesn't matter whether you've already started the road trip or not. Even if you're still in the planning stage of the road trip you still factor in all four of them. Those extra $11 from the other two passengers are critical to the decision making process. You may be making a loss on them but the road trip isn't happening without them.
The profits from sales over marginal cost, even if they're losses when compared to total cost, are still relevant. And accountants know this, and they take them into account when deciding where to allocate R&D money. Collective buyers who use their purchasing power to negotiate rates between total cost and marginal cost can still be allocated R&D overhead and still increase the overall R&D budget available to a project. Dealing with those collective buyers makes R&D a better prospect, not a worse one, even if they must sell the drug at a loss. The point I'm making is that the $17 guys would be disappearing. In your analogy. If you're referring to the $20 guys, doesn't apply. We're talking about negotiated national monopolies. These are captive markets without the ability to trade with each other. The $20 a seat guys benefit, previously they were in a car with $40 of gas money from the two of them, now they've got $51 of gas money. More passengers bringing more gas money is always better (assuming you have room for them), even if the gas money they're bringing is below the total cost divided by the passengers. Gas money = R&D money. More customers buying over marginal cost = more R&D money. Collective bargainers that say "I'll bring another 50 passengers, but we're only paying $3 a seat" still increase the R&D budget and still fund research that wouldn't be possible without them. America is the $20 guy. Right now. That is what I've been saying.
Sure, but it's incorrect to think that the other guys are leeching off the $20. It's not a zero sum game. All of them contributed gas money. The idea that America pays for the R&D and everyone else freeloads isn't correct, any more than it is in the gas money example. The car gets further when it includes the lower paying passengers, even when they get their seats at below cost.
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On February 09 2017 13:24 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 09:11 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 09 2017 08:56 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 08:35 LegalLord wrote:
Profit is an utterly terrible predictor of public welfare, which is the deeper issue here. It is, for example, much more profitable to sell decades' worth of pills than to develop a one-off cure to a specific problem. We also get disgusting issues like the EpiPen matter.
I would honestly rather the issue of where to focus medical R&D efforts be decided by a committee of experts rather than by profit incentives. Decisions by committee are rarely looked upon positively but in this case it would make sense since it would support the proper incentive of improving public welfare. I just simply do not see how that could end up turning out well. As someone who worked in a medical devices lab, the current government grant process is...really abysmal. Honestly, I'd need a series of whitepapers describing a potential system to even begin to be convinced it would work moderately well. On February 09 2017 08:43 KwarK wrote:
Not at all. You can know ahead of time that you're going to be selling at different prices in different regions and allocate the overhead between them accordingly. Any time you have an increase in sales over the marginal cost you get an overall reduction in the overhead allocated to each unit, even if some units are sold at a loss given total cost including sunk costs. Like I said, this is counter-intuitive, but it's still true.
Imagine you have a car and you're planning a road trip that will cost $50 in gas. You've currently got two people who want to go to that destination and each of them value getting there at $20. $50 > 2*$20, trip cancelled, nobody goes. But you still have two empty seats in the car. If you can find another guy who values getting there at $10 then you should still give him a seat, despite the fact that $50/3 = $17 and $17 > $10. And now our road trip is on. Find a fourth guy who values getting there at $1 and he gets a seat too. As long as they can't sell each other tickets you're good to go.
Your argument is that the first two guys are subsidizing the other two. It's true from one perspective, they're paying a disproportionately large share of the gas. But your conclusion, that the guy with $10 and the guy with $1 are holding back the road trip, that's completely false. Until you let them chip in gas money for seats there was no road trip.
You can use this argument forwards as well as backwards. It doesn't matter whether you've already started the road trip or not. Even if you're still in the planning stage of the road trip you still factor in all four of them. Those extra $11 from the other two passengers are critical to the decision making process. You may be making a loss on them but the road trip isn't happening without them.
The profits from sales over marginal cost, even if they're losses when compared to total cost, are still relevant. And accountants know this, and they take them into account when deciding where to allocate R&D money. Collective buyers who use their purchasing power to negotiate rates between total cost and marginal cost can still be allocated R&D overhead and still increase the overall R&D budget available to a project. Dealing with those collective buyers makes R&D a better prospect, not a worse one, even if they must sell the drug at a loss. The point I'm making is that the $17 guys would be disappearing. In your analogy. If you're referring to the $20 guys, doesn't apply. We're talking about negotiated national monopolies. These are captive markets without the ability to trade with each other. The $20 a seat guys benefit, previously they were in a car with $40 of gas money from the two of them, now they've got $51 of gas money. More passengers bringing more gas money is always better (assuming you have room for them), even if the gas money they're bringing is below the total cost divided by the passengers. Gas money = R&D money. More customers buying over marginal cost = more R&D money. Collective bargainers that say "I'll bring another 50 passengers, but we're only paying $3 a seat" still increase the R&D budget and still fund research that wouldn't be possible without them. America is the $20 guy. Right now. That is what I've been saying. Sure, but it's incorrect to think that the other guys are leeching off the $20. It's not a zero sum game. All of them contributed gas money. The idea that America pays for the R&D and everyone else freeloads isn't correct, any more than it is in the gas money example. The car gets further when it includes the lower paying passengers, even when they get their seats at below cost.
I haven't followed this conversation too closely but I feel like there's somewhere for the counterpoint of a 600+lbs person (fuel efficiency/ride experience) wanting to get the middle seat for $3 needing to be accounted for.
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On February 09 2017 13:24 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 09:11 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 09 2017 08:56 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 08:35 LegalLord wrote:
Profit is an utterly terrible predictor of public welfare, which is the deeper issue here. It is, for example, much more profitable to sell decades' worth of pills than to develop a one-off cure to a specific problem. We also get disgusting issues like the EpiPen matter.
I would honestly rather the issue of where to focus medical R&D efforts be decided by a committee of experts rather than by profit incentives. Decisions by committee are rarely looked upon positively but in this case it would make sense since it would support the proper incentive of improving public welfare. I just simply do not see how that could end up turning out well. As someone who worked in a medical devices lab, the current government grant process is...really abysmal. Honestly, I'd need a series of whitepapers describing a potential system to even begin to be convinced it would work moderately well. On February 09 2017 08:43 KwarK wrote:
Not at all. You can know ahead of time that you're going to be selling at different prices in different regions and allocate the overhead between them accordingly. Any time you have an increase in sales over the marginal cost you get an overall reduction in the overhead allocated to each unit, even if some units are sold at a loss given total cost including sunk costs. Like I said, this is counter-intuitive, but it's still true.
Imagine you have a car and you're planning a road trip that will cost $50 in gas. You've currently got two people who want to go to that destination and each of them value getting there at $20. $50 > 2*$20, trip cancelled, nobody goes. But you still have two empty seats in the car. If you can find another guy who values getting there at $10 then you should still give him a seat, despite the fact that $50/3 = $17 and $17 > $10. And now our road trip is on. Find a fourth guy who values getting there at $1 and he gets a seat too. As long as they can't sell each other tickets you're good to go.
Your argument is that the first two guys are subsidizing the other two. It's true from one perspective, they're paying a disproportionately large share of the gas. But your conclusion, that the guy with $10 and the guy with $1 are holding back the road trip, that's completely false. Until you let them chip in gas money for seats there was no road trip.
You can use this argument forwards as well as backwards. It doesn't matter whether you've already started the road trip or not. Even if you're still in the planning stage of the road trip you still factor in all four of them. Those extra $11 from the other two passengers are critical to the decision making process. You may be making a loss on them but the road trip isn't happening without them.
The profits from sales over marginal cost, even if they're losses when compared to total cost, are still relevant. And accountants know this, and they take them into account when deciding where to allocate R&D money. Collective buyers who use their purchasing power to negotiate rates between total cost and marginal cost can still be allocated R&D overhead and still increase the overall R&D budget available to a project. Dealing with those collective buyers makes R&D a better prospect, not a worse one, even if they must sell the drug at a loss. The point I'm making is that the $17 guys would be disappearing. In your analogy. If you're referring to the $20 guys, doesn't apply. We're talking about negotiated national monopolies. These are captive markets without the ability to trade with each other. The $20 a seat guys benefit, previously they were in a car with $40 of gas money from the two of them, now they've got $51 of gas money. More passengers bringing more gas money is always better (assuming you have room for them), even if the gas money they're bringing is below the total cost divided by the passengers. Gas money = R&D money. More customers buying over marginal cost = more R&D money. Collective bargainers that say "I'll bring another 50 passengers, but we're only paying $3 a seat" still increase the R&D budget and still fund research that wouldn't be possible without them. America is the $20 guy. Right now. That is what I've been saying. Sure, but it's incorrect to think that the other guys are leeching off the $20. It's not a zero sum game. All of them contributed gas money. The idea that America pays for the R&D and everyone else freeloads isn't correct, any more than it is in the gas money example. The car gets further when it includes the lower paying passengers, even when they get their seats at below cost.
Its not merely about free loaders (which IMO morally there is a significant argument that governments are when they leverage monopoly and state power to pay lower than market prices), it's about the fact that a change to the American system to the $10 guy from being the $20 guy cancels the trip, and cancels almost every trip.
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United States42689 Posts
On February 09 2017 13:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 13:00 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:58 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 09 2017 12:52 Sermokala wrote:On February 09 2017 12:48 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:46 Sermokala wrote:On February 09 2017 12:43 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:36 Sermokala wrote:On February 09 2017 12:33 Plansix wrote:
That is the real problem. Any reasonable law that is crafted will be smothered under the weight of NRA disinformation and straight up lies. It is disappointing and hopefully the public catches on. But until then, they will all get rich selling assault weapons on the boarder to Mexico. Any reasonable politician supporting a law should expect NRA disinformation and lies and be a politician and combat it. Its literally their only job to succeed at this sort of thing. You need to convince people to not believe the disinformation, which is problematic. Especially since the main selling point is "That school shooting won't happen in your area because we made you an action hero." There has to be overwhelming political will behind it. Like the political will after a classroom full of kids gets shot up. You need to do the same thing that politicians do for every other thing that they do in their careers including getting elected. Otherwise they're just bad politicians and I'm sorry but this generation of democrats are just bad at their jobs. Sandy Hook was never going to be that. No gun control legislation was going to be passed while Obama was in office and McConnell was in control of the Senate. It sucks, but that thing never would have made it to the floor. It would have had a decent chance if it didn't make up words like "assault weapon" or try to make a government background check system up without telling people how it wasn't going to be a gun registry. The themes that people didn't like about national background checks came out pretty obvious to anyone paying attention. democrats simply didn't address any of them other then to say "oh no thats not true it just won't be" and thought it would work. This stuff is plainly obvious, which is why it only makes sense to me if they are terrible at their job, or they fail on purpose. I've had it drilled into my head here that we shouldn't presume foul-play where simple incompetence suffices, so I'll lean toward incompetent over intentionally bad. Never underestimate the ability of liberals to talk down to gun owners. It's a sport over here. This seems to be the summation of Democrats strategy, tell Republicans how dumb and make fun of how misinformed they are until they vote Democrat. Probably will see similar results to the universal background check, massive public support, but too incompetent to turn it into electoral wins.
On the contrary, I think Hillary's problem is she didn't talk down enough. If you compare the arguments made by Hillary and Trump on pretty much every issue Trump's stances are so dumbed down that they're borderline satire.
His plan for border security requires only a working knowledge of how a wall works and insists that the problem really is that simple. Pretty sure every idiot in America can figure out a wall.
His plan for eliminating ISIS requires only a working knowledge of what a surprise is, he insists that ISIS only succeed because the generals don't know about surprise and that once he replaces them with generals who have heard of surprise victory is inevitable. I've heard of surprise and surprise attacks and they always work.
His plan for eliminating the national debt is to pay it all back. That's literally the entire plan. He said it'd get done in 8 years. Makes sense.
His plan for balancing the budget was to lower taxes on everyone. Ain't nobody gonna argue with that. (he's raising them on low income working families with kids)
His plan for jobs was to steal them all back from the Chinese, who he said stole them all away from us. As a high school dropout that appeals to me because when Tommy stole my PS4 I had to steal it back and it worked.
His plan for paying for the wall was to just have someone else pay for it. Case fucking closed. His voters are familiar with the concept of someone else paying for their shit, that's his core demographic.
His plan for coal jobs was that they were killed by the liberals and their regulations and they'll totally come back. We need that coal to power our steam ships and our trains and if we break it up into small round lumps it'll totally flow down our new pipelines. Just take away all the regulations and it'll be 1900 all over again.
His plan for global warming was not to worry because the Chinese made that up. They're sneaky like that. Always doing surprise attacks. Like Pearl Harbor.
His plan for fighting terrorism? According to him the problem is not enough people say "radical Islamic terrorism". Pretty sure Trump will be able to say it so if he's right and it works then we're done here.
Trade deals? Trump says the reason that whatever it is that each voter is upset about has happened is because the guy negotiating the trade deal was an idiot. That'd make sense. I hate whatever it is that I'm upset about, the guy who did that probably was an idiot. We just need a smart guy. Problem solved.
Obamacare? All the bits you like, those will stay the same. All the bits you hate, gone. Done.
Cybersecurity? He says he has the best cyber with his ten year old son and that he couldn't even believe it. I don't know quite what he means by that but that cyber sounded pretty good so it's probably solved.
Race relations? Simply put the blacks back in their place the way it used to be. They've gotten so uppity these days.
I challenge anyone to find a single Trump policy that couldn't be explained to an eight year old using Trump's own words. One of the greatest problems Hillary faced this election was trying to insist that everything was a complicated issue and that highly educated professionals who had worked on it their entire lives were unable to agree on the best way forwards but that she would act in good faith to try and steer the ship the right way. Far too much faith in the voters. Trump's rhetoric assumed absolutely no critical thinking on the part of the voters, instead trusting that where critical thinking ought to be there was only a deeply ingrained suspicion of anyone who used long words.
I honestly think that if the Democratic party wants to be successful in toppling him they're going to have to really up the talking down to a whole new level. None of this "when they go low, we go high" shit. They need "when they say Mexico will pay for it, we say Mexico will pay for it but we'll say we never got the money and it'll be like that time you said your Amazon package didn't get there and got two dvd box sets and didn't have to pay for either". One up the other guy, but keep it simple.
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United States42689 Posts
On February 09 2017 13:37 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 13:24 KwarK wrote:On February 09 2017 09:11 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 09 2017 08:56 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 08:35 LegalLord wrote:
Profit is an utterly terrible predictor of public welfare, which is the deeper issue here. It is, for example, much more profitable to sell decades' worth of pills than to develop a one-off cure to a specific problem. We also get disgusting issues like the EpiPen matter.
I would honestly rather the issue of where to focus medical R&D efforts be decided by a committee of experts rather than by profit incentives. Decisions by committee are rarely looked upon positively but in this case it would make sense since it would support the proper incentive of improving public welfare. I just simply do not see how that could end up turning out well. As someone who worked in a medical devices lab, the current government grant process is...really abysmal. Honestly, I'd need a series of whitepapers describing a potential system to even begin to be convinced it would work moderately well. On February 09 2017 08:43 KwarK wrote:
Not at all. You can know ahead of time that you're going to be selling at different prices in different regions and allocate the overhead between them accordingly. Any time you have an increase in sales over the marginal cost you get an overall reduction in the overhead allocated to each unit, even if some units are sold at a loss given total cost including sunk costs. Like I said, this is counter-intuitive, but it's still true.
Imagine you have a car and you're planning a road trip that will cost $50 in gas. You've currently got two people who want to go to that destination and each of them value getting there at $20. $50 > 2*$20, trip cancelled, nobody goes. But you still have two empty seats in the car. If you can find another guy who values getting there at $10 then you should still give him a seat, despite the fact that $50/3 = $17 and $17 > $10. And now our road trip is on. Find a fourth guy who values getting there at $1 and he gets a seat too. As long as they can't sell each other tickets you're good to go.
Your argument is that the first two guys are subsidizing the other two. It's true from one perspective, they're paying a disproportionately large share of the gas. But your conclusion, that the guy with $10 and the guy with $1 are holding back the road trip, that's completely false. Until you let them chip in gas money for seats there was no road trip.
You can use this argument forwards as well as backwards. It doesn't matter whether you've already started the road trip or not. Even if you're still in the planning stage of the road trip you still factor in all four of them. Those extra $11 from the other two passengers are critical to the decision making process. You may be making a loss on them but the road trip isn't happening without them.
The profits from sales over marginal cost, even if they're losses when compared to total cost, are still relevant. And accountants know this, and they take them into account when deciding where to allocate R&D money. Collective buyers who use their purchasing power to negotiate rates between total cost and marginal cost can still be allocated R&D overhead and still increase the overall R&D budget available to a project. Dealing with those collective buyers makes R&D a better prospect, not a worse one, even if they must sell the drug at a loss. The point I'm making is that the $17 guys would be disappearing. In your analogy. If you're referring to the $20 guys, doesn't apply. We're talking about negotiated national monopolies. These are captive markets without the ability to trade with each other. The $20 a seat guys benefit, previously they were in a car with $40 of gas money from the two of them, now they've got $51 of gas money. More passengers bringing more gas money is always better (assuming you have room for them), even if the gas money they're bringing is below the total cost divided by the passengers. Gas money = R&D money. More customers buying over marginal cost = more R&D money. Collective bargainers that say "I'll bring another 50 passengers, but we're only paying $3 a seat" still increase the R&D budget and still fund research that wouldn't be possible without them. America is the $20 guy. Right now. That is what I've been saying. Sure, but it's incorrect to think that the other guys are leeching off the $20. It's not a zero sum game. All of them contributed gas money. The idea that America pays for the R&D and everyone else freeloads isn't correct, any more than it is in the gas money example. The car gets further when it includes the lower paying passengers, even when they get their seats at below cost. I haven't followed this conversation too closely but I feel like there's somewhere for the counterpoint of a 600+lbs person (fuel efficiency/ride experience) wanting to get the middle seat for $3 needing to be accounted for.
We were talking in terms of price offered over marginal cost. In the case of the 600lb guy the marginal cost would be higher but the principle remains.
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kwark -> minor wording quibble.
they don't need to "talk down" they need to "talk simpler" or something like that.
"talking down" comes with an air of superiority and condescension, or at least it can be perceived that way.
i'm reminded of the slogan bill clinton adopted "KISS" - keep it simple stupid. i'll look that up some maybe.
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On February 09 2017 13:52 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 13:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 09 2017 13:00 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:58 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 09 2017 12:52 Sermokala wrote:On February 09 2017 12:48 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:46 Sermokala wrote:On February 09 2017 12:43 Plansix wrote:On February 09 2017 12:36 Sermokala wrote:On February 09 2017 12:33 Plansix wrote:
That is the real problem. Any reasonable law that is crafted will be smothered under the weight of NRA disinformation and straight up lies. It is disappointing and hopefully the public catches on. But until then, they will all get rich selling assault weapons on the boarder to Mexico. Any reasonable politician supporting a law should expect NRA disinformation and lies and be a politician and combat it. Its literally their only job to succeed at this sort of thing. You need to convince people to not believe the disinformation, which is problematic. Especially since the main selling point is "That school shooting won't happen in your area because we made you an action hero." There has to be overwhelming political will behind it. Like the political will after a classroom full of kids gets shot up. You need to do the same thing that politicians do for every other thing that they do in their careers including getting elected. Otherwise they're just bad politicians and I'm sorry but this generation of democrats are just bad at their jobs. Sandy Hook was never going to be that. No gun control legislation was going to be passed while Obama was in office and McConnell was in control of the Senate. It sucks, but that thing never would have made it to the floor. It would have had a decent chance if it didn't make up words like "assault weapon" or try to make a government background check system up without telling people how it wasn't going to be a gun registry. The themes that people didn't like about national background checks came out pretty obvious to anyone paying attention. democrats simply didn't address any of them other then to say "oh no thats not true it just won't be" and thought it would work. This stuff is plainly obvious, which is why it only makes sense to me if they are terrible at their job, or they fail on purpose. I've had it drilled into my head here that we shouldn't presume foul-play where simple incompetence suffices, so I'll lean toward incompetent over intentionally bad. Never underestimate the ability of liberals to talk down to gun owners. It's a sport over here. This seems to be the summation of Democrats strategy, tell Republicans how dumb and make fun of how misinformed they are until they vote Democrat. Probably will see similar results to the universal background check, massive public support, but too incompetent to turn it into electoral wins. On the contrary, I think Hillary's problem is she didn't talk down enough. If you compare the arguments made by Hillary and Trump on pretty much every issue Trump's stances are so dumbed down that they're borderline satire. His plan for border security requires only a working knowledge of how a wall works and insists that the problem really is that simple. Pretty sure every idiot in America can figure out a wall. His plan for eliminating ISIS requires only a working knowledge of what a surprise is, he insists that ISIS only succeed because the generals don't know about surprise and that once he replaces them with generals who have heard of surprise victory is inevitable. I've heard of surprise and surprise attacks and they always work. His plan for eliminating the national debt is to pay it all back. That's literally the entire plan. He said it'd get done in 8 years. Makes sense. His plan for balancing the budget was to lower taxes on everyone. Ain't nobody gonna argue with that. (he's raising them on low income working families with kids) His plan for jobs was to steal them all back from the Chinese, who he said stole them all away from us. As a high school dropout that appeals to me because when Tommy stole my PS4 I had to steal it back and it worked. His plan for paying for the wall was to just have someone else pay for it. Case fucking closed. His voters are familiar with the concept of someone else paying for their shit, that's his core demographic. His plan for coal jobs was that they were killed by the liberals and their regulations and they'll totally come back. We need that coal to power our steam ships and our trains and if we break it up into small round lumps it'll totally flow down our new pipelines. Just take away all the regulations and it'll be 1900 all over again. His plan for global warming was not to worry because the Chinese made that up. They're sneaky like that. Always doing surprise attacks. Like Pearl Harbor. His plan for fighting terrorism? According to him the problem is not enough people say "radical Islamic terrorism". Pretty sure Trump will be able to say it so if he's right and it works then we're done here. Trade deals? Trump says the reason that whatever it is that each voter is upset about has happened is because the guy negotiating the trade deal was an idiot. That'd make sense. I hate whatever it is that I'm upset about, the guy who did that probably was an idiot. We just need a smart guy. Problem solved. Obamacare? All the bits you like, those will stay the same. All the bits you hate, gone. Done. Cybersecurity? He says he has the best cyber with his ten year old son and that he couldn't even believe it. I don't know quite what he means by that but that cyber sounded pretty good so it's probably solved. Race relations? Simply put the blacks back in their place the way it used to be. They've gotten so uppity these days. I challenge anyone to find a single Trump policy that couldn't be explained to an eight year old using Trump's own words. One of the greatest problems Hillary faced this election was trying to insist that everything was a complicated issue and that highly educated professionals who had worked on it their entire lives were unable to agree on the best way forwards but that she would act in good faith to try and steer the ship the right way. Far too much faith in the voters. Trump's rhetoric assumed absolutely no critical thinking on the part of the voters, instead trusting that where critical thinking ought to be there was only a deeply ingrained suspicion of anyone who used long words. I honestly think that if the Democratic party wants to be successful in toppling him they're going to have to really up the talking down to a whole new level. None of this "when they go low, we go high" shit. They need "when they say Mexico will pay for it, we say Mexico will pay for it but we'll say we never got the money and it'll be like that time you said your Amazon package didn't get there and got two dvd box sets and didn't have to pay for either". One up the other guy, but keep it simple.
His plan for global warming was not to worry because the Chinese made that up. They're sneaky like that. Always doing surprise attacks. Like Pearl Harbor.
roflmao. I think you're right, though I think we're not quite on the same page with the words we're using. Whatever we call it I think just saying whatever to win would be better than trying to convince Republicans that they vote that way because they are idiots (even if it's absolutely true for places like Owsley County)
It's not my preferred strategy, but it's one of many that are better than what Democrats are doing.
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United States42689 Posts
On February 09 2017 13:57 zlefin wrote:
kwark -> minor wording quibble.
they don't need to "talk down" they need to "talk simpler" or something like that.
"talking down" comes with an air of superiority and condescension, or at least it can be perceived that way.
i'm reminded of the slogan bill clinton adopted "KISS" - keep it simple stupid. i'll look that up some maybe.
The American public are apparently incapable of taking offense from someone treating them like they're idiots. It's when people treat them like they're smart that they get mad.
When you say
"yeah, the answer is totally that thing you said it was that time you got drunk with your coworker and bitched about foreigners, that's totally a legitimate solution and you should totally be in charge of our foreign policy, there's no way that'll end badly"
people think they're being listened to.
When you say
"look, this is a really complex issue and the smartest minds in the country have been working on it for decades, you might not understand why we got here but please trust that we're all working very hard to make life better for people like you"
people think "that city dyke thinks I too dumb to run the country just because I have to say the words when I read".
I no longer believe America is capable of being condescended.
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On February 09 2017 14:02 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 13:57 zlefin wrote:
kwark -> minor wording quibble.
they don't need to "talk down" they need to "talk simpler" or something like that.
"talking down" comes with an air of superiority and condescension, or at least it can be perceived that way.
i'm reminded of the slogan bill clinton adopted "KISS" - keep it simple stupid. i'll look that up some maybe. The American public are apparently incapable of taking offense from someone treating them like they're idiots. It's when people treat them like they're smart that they get mad. When you say "yeah, the answer is totally that thing you said it was that time you got drunk with your coworker and bitched about foreigners, that's totally a legitimate solution and you should totally be in charge of our foreign policy, there's no way that'll end badly" people think they're being listened to. When you say "look, this is a really complex issue and the smartest minds in the country have been working on it for decades, you might not understand why we got here but please trust that we're all working very hard to make life better for people like you" people think "that city dyke thinks I too dumb to run the country just because I have to say the words when I read". I no longer believe America is capable of being condescended.
while I give little credence to the capability of the american people, I don't think your examples support your thesis well. it seems more like they go the other way.
in that the first example is treating someone like they're smart (even though they aren't)
and the second is treating them like they couldn't understand the topic well enough (which they can't)
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United States42689 Posts
On February 09 2017 13:52 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 13:24 KwarK wrote:On February 09 2017 09:11 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 09 2017 08:56 cLutZ wrote:On February 09 2017 08:35 LegalLord wrote:
Profit is an utterly terrible predictor of public welfare, which is the deeper issue here. It is, for example, much more profitable to sell decades' worth of pills than to develop a one-off cure to a specific problem. We also get disgusting issues like the EpiPen matter.
I would honestly rather the issue of where to focus medical R&D efforts be decided by a committee of experts rather than by profit incentives. Decisions by committee are rarely looked upon positively but in this case it would make sense since it would support the proper incentive of improving public welfare. I just simply do not see how that could end up turning out well. As someone who worked in a medical devices lab, the current government grant process is...really abysmal. Honestly, I'd need a series of whitepapers describing a potential system to even begin to be convinced it would work moderately well. On February 09 2017 08:43 KwarK wrote:
Not at all. You can know ahead of time that you're going to be selling at different prices in different regions and allocate the overhead between them accordingly. Any time you have an increase in sales over the marginal cost you get an overall reduction in the overhead allocated to each unit, even if some units are sold at a loss given total cost including sunk costs. Like I said, this is counter-intuitive, but it's still true.
Imagine you have a car and you're planning a road trip that will cost $50 in gas. You've currently got two people who want to go to that destination and each of them value getting there at $20. $50 > 2*$20, trip cancelled, nobody goes. But you still have two empty seats in the car. If you can find another guy who values getting there at $10 then you should still give him a seat, despite the fact that $50/3 = $17 and $17 > $10. And now our road trip is on. Find a fourth guy who values getting there at $1 and he gets a seat too. As long as they can't sell each other tickets you're good to go.
Your argument is that the first two guys are subsidizing the other two. It's true from one perspective, they're paying a disproportionately large share of the gas. But your conclusion, that the guy with $10 and the guy with $1 are holding back the road trip, that's completely false. Until you let them chip in gas money for seats there was no road trip.
You can use this argument forwards as well as backwards. It doesn't matter whether you've already started the road trip or not. Even if you're still in the planning stage of the road trip you still factor in all four of them. Those extra $11 from the other two passengers are critical to the decision making process. You may be making a loss on them but the road trip isn't happening without them.
The profits from sales over marginal cost, even if they're losses when compared to total cost, are still relevant. And accountants know this, and they take them into account when deciding where to allocate R&D money. Collective buyers who use their purchasing power to negotiate rates between total cost and marginal cost can still be allocated R&D overhead and still increase the overall R&D budget available to a project. Dealing with those collective buyers makes R&D a better prospect, not a worse one, even if they must sell the drug at a loss. The point I'm making is that the $17 guys would be disappearing. In your analogy. If you're referring to the $20 guys, doesn't apply. We're talking about negotiated national monopolies. These are captive markets without the ability to trade with each other. The $20 a seat guys benefit, previously they were in a car with $40 of gas money from the two of them, now they've got $51 of gas money. More passengers bringing more gas money is always better (assuming you have room for them), even if the gas money they're bringing is below the total cost divided by the passengers. Gas money = R&D money. More customers buying over marginal cost = more R&D money. Collective bargainers that say "I'll bring another 50 passengers, but we're only paying $3 a seat" still increase the R&D budget and still fund research that wouldn't be possible without them. America is the $20 guy. Right now. That is what I've been saying. Sure, but it's incorrect to think that the other guys are leeching off the $20. It's not a zero sum game. All of them contributed gas money. The idea that America pays for the R&D and everyone else freeloads isn't correct, any more than it is in the gas money example. The car gets further when it includes the lower paying passengers, even when they get their seats at below cost. Its not merely about free loaders (which IMO morally there is a significant argument that governments are when they leverage monopoly and state power to pay lower than market prices), it's about the fact that a change to the American system to the $10 guy from being the $20 guy cancels the trip, and cancels almost every trip.
Your argument assumes that the current level of R&D investment is ideal and that any lower than the current would be devastating. But the current level is entirely arbitrary. It'd be no more true than someone in a hypothetical universe where the US spent $10,000 per capita on healthcare saying that a reduction to the levels in our universe would end progress.
It also assumes that the current allocation is desirable. The US insurance system artificially inflates the number of people able to overpay for a drug while the large uninsured population artificially reduces the number of people able to underpay for a drug (ie buy a drug for less than the value it offers them). Drugs that are not encouraged by the value for money driven state buyers in Europe are researched anyway due to the American market (with significant burden also shared by the Europeans as previously discussed because marginal cost =/= cost) but that comes at a cost of a reduced American market for drugs which present good value for money but which cannot be afforded by everyone for whom they would be worthwhile.
It'd be just as true to say that the large numbers of guaranteed consumers offered by the public systems incentivise the research of cheap effective drugs for the American with insurance. In the car analogy, because there are so many Europeans pooling gas for the trip the cost per individual is crazy low, even though far fewer Americans on average can afford that cost.
If America were to take a public option the incentives offered by the market for R&D would change, but it would not necessarily be worse.
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I am making a value judgement, and I already think that, while overall medical spending in the US and EU is too high, the spending also directed way too much towards the routine and not R&D. This is because all of the systems encourage a kind of "factory" model for care, and obviously the EU systems are heavily focused on providing a baseline level of care that is standardized (basically the opposite of a normal market with high-cost first entries for the elite that trickle down to become standard ala cell phones).
That is actually a main feature of socialist healthcare systems. They are probably ideal if you think we are at or near the end of medical innovation, but if you don't they actually will make life expectancy for the world, long term, worse off.
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On February 09 2017 14:29 cLutZ wrote:
I am making a value judgement, and I already think that, while overall medical spending in the US and EU is too high, the spending also directed way too much towards the routine and not R&D. This is because all of the systems encourage a kind of "factory" model for care, and obviously the EU systems are heavily focused on providing a baseline level of care that is standardized (basically the opposite of a normal market with high-cost first entries for the elite that trickle down to become standard ala cell phones).
That is actually a main feature of socialist healthcare systems. They are probably ideal if you think we are at or near the end of medical innovation, but if you don't they actually will make life expectancy for the world, long term, worse off.
Which paints a completely inaccurate picture of the US being the sole source of medical innovation at present time. Hard to find R&D expenditure numbers that are solely isolated to medicine and healthcare, but the US' percentage contribution of total GDP to medical research seems about on par with other 1st world nations...including countries with "socialist healthcare".
The US is by far the largest contributor, but that isn't because of ideology or capitalist practices, it's just total national finance.
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On February 09 2017 14:45 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2017 14:29 cLutZ wrote:
I am making a value judgement, and I already think that, while overall medical spending in the US and EU is too high, the spending also directed way too much towards the routine and not R&D. This is because all of the systems encourage a kind of "factory" model for care, and obviously the EU systems are heavily focused on providing a baseline level of care that is standardized (basically the opposite of a normal market with high-cost first entries for the elite that trickle down to become standard ala cell phones).
That is actually a main feature of socialist healthcare systems. They are probably ideal if you think we are at or near the end of medical innovation, but if you don't they actually will make life expectancy for the world, long term, worse off. Which paints a completely inaccurate picture of the US being the sole source of medical innovation at present time. Hard to find R&D expenditure numbers that are solely isolated to medicine and healthcare, but the US' percentage contribution of total GDP to medical research seems about on par with other 1st world nations...including countries with "socialist healthcare". The US is by far the largest contributor, but that isn't because of ideology or capitalist practices, it's just total national finance.
No. It greatly exceeds our national finance. Beware, linkstorm follows.
40% of drug company revenues and the overwhelming majority of their profits come from the U.S. market. [We are not 40% of even 1st world consumers]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hava-volterra/we-should-stop-subsidizin_b_999339.html
Ex-FDA President Similar Sentiments ("Even firms that are technically European are moving their most essential operations to the United States.
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Speeches/ucm053614.htm
Pfizer
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-europe-idUSBRE82C04J20120313
"The American government could use its size, or use the law, to bargain down health care prices, as many European governments have done. In the short run, this would save money but in the longer run it would cost lives."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/business/05scene.html?_r=0
Howard Dean, for the lulz
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/opinion/impose-price-controls-on-drugs.html?_r=0
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woahh, woahhhhh, look at KwarK letting it all out after days of abstinence.
you can call the ones that voted for Trump however you want but to me it boils down to this:
- during the last Bush rule, people became smart enough to vote for Obama;
- then again they voted for Obama keeping up the smart momentum;
- all of a sudden, during Obama's last term, they all became <insert your demeaning appellative here> and voted Trump.
how in hell can you not take responsibility for that dumb-down?; i find that unbelievable. it happened during your watch.
if Trump voters are how you imply they are then you made them that way(but what's funnier is that by your logic, Trump will make americans smart again because they'll vote dem. in 4 to 8 years; i mean, what the hell does that say about your side?).
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The people that gave Obama the office just didn't show up.
Hillary was a terrible candidate so she couldn't gather enough support from her own base, therefore Trump won. End of Story.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
People are idiots when they vote for the "wrong" candidate. That's all there is to it. That Trump is "so bad" and the other party failed to convince people as such is a result of crying wolf one too many times on political opponents, and having the arrogance to think that people would rally behind someone as electable as Hillary.
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The Trump administration is considering a bold and controversial vision for the U.S. space program that calls for a "rapid and affordable" return to the moon by 2020, the construction of privately operated space stations and the redirection of NASA's mission to "the large-scale economic development of space," according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO.
The proposed strategy, whose potential for igniting a new industry appeals to Trump’s business background and job-creation pledges, is influencing the White House’s search for leaders to run the space agency. And it is setting off a struggle for supremacy between traditional aerospace contractors and the tech billionaires who have put big money into private space ventures.
"It is a big fight," said former Republican Rep. Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, who drafted the Trump campaign's space policy and remains involved in the deliberations. "There are billions of dollars at stake. It has come to a head now when it has become clear to the space community that the real innovative work is being done outside of NASA."
The early indications are that private rocket firms like Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and their supporters have a clear upper hand in what Trump's transition advisers portrayed as a race between "Old Space" and "New Space," according to emails among key players inside the administration. Trump has met with Bezos and Musk, while tech investor Peter Thiel, a close confidant, has lobbied the president to look at using NASA to help grow the private space industry.
Charles Miller, a former NASA official who served on Trump's NASA transition team after running a commercial space cargo firm, is pushing for the White House to nominate a deputy administrator who foremost "shares the same goal/overall vision of transforming NASA by leveraging commercial space partnerships," according to a Jan. 23 communication. That deputy would run the space program’s day-to-day operations.
Trump has yet to name a NASA director, but the documents confirm that Rep. Jim Bridenstine, a Republican from Oklahoma and former Navy pilot who ran the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, is a top contender.
"Fingers crossed," Miller writes of Bridenstine’s candidacy, according to a one email.
he White House and Miller did not respond to requests for comment.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another commercial space evangelist with close ties to Trump, is also pushing the White House to embark on a major effort to privatize U.S. space efforts.
"A good part of the Trump administration would like a lot more aggressive, risk-taking, competitive entrepreneurial approach to space," Gingrich said in an interview. "A smaller but still powerful faction represents Boeing and the expensive old contractors who have soaked up money with minimum results.
"No NASA program dominated by bureaucrats could take the risks, accept the failures and create a learning curve comparable to an entrepreneurial approach," he added. "Just think of the Wright brothers’ 500 failures in five summers at $1 per failure. Ask how long NASA would have taken and how much it would have cost."
The more ambitious administration vision could include new moon landings that "see private American astronauts, on private space ships, circling the Moon by 2020; and private lunar landers staking out de facto 'property rights' for American on the Moon, by 2020 as well," according to a summary of an "agency action plan" that the transition drew up for NASA late last month.
Source
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I guess creating jobs is easy if you stick billions of dollars of government money into it. I applaud investing in NASA. I don't think there is much commercially viable about going to the moon, unless it's experimental and a setup for learning how to do asteroid mining. A few billionaire tourists wanting to go to Trump Hotel in the Mare Tranquilitatis (probably renamed to Mare Trumparifficus) won't cover the costs any time soon.
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EPT
