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On February 06 2012 13:35 Ldawg wrote:
The one thing that is encouraging about the current state of American politics (this may sound strange) is that so many people are realizing there are no substantial differences between the two political parties. They may talk differently, and have different ideas, but the truth is big business owns both horses in this political race. Too many Americans are blindly loyal to a policitcal party, and soley blame the other party while the politicians continue their corruption, stupidity and greed.
One of the biggest reasons I support Ron Paul. He votes according to his beliefs, and doesn't talk to lobbyists.
Our political system is so broken and corrupt that I vote for those who I know aren't bought and paid for, although sadly there aren't many to choose from.
On a separate note, I never understood why people are allowed to give unlimited amount of money to candidate's PACs in the name of free speech. Sure, everyone has one vote, but doesn't this give hugely disproportionate weight to a certain few individuals?
Well part of the problem is it isn't just freedom of speech, but freedom of the press. Ie If I have a $100billion I can buy some newspapers/radio or TV stations/billboards and have them say whatever political message I want. (the editorial boards of all major newspapers endorse candidates)
So why can't 1 million people all give $100,000 each to an organization that does the same thing?
The problem is that speech costs money.
The second biggest problem is that people are influenced by the Amount of speech they hear, not just its content.
Both of those are things that aren't going to change
So the only solution to the money-> political speech is
1. the government bans political speech on media (want to hear the state of the Union address, go to Washington D.C. but you can't tweet about it)
or
2. the government only allows 'approved political speech' on media (The incumbents can get their message out, but not the challenger... or only the approved challengers)
Both of those merely means that the government chooses the political speech rather than the corporations/unions/rich individuals.
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On February 07 2012 01:00 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2012 05:45 Kiarip wrote:On February 06 2012 05:37 SerpentFlame wrote:On February 05 2012 15:29 Khelben wrote:
republican/democrat....there's no difference. The people making all the decisions aren't in politics... If you think there's no difference between Republican and Democrat, check out what sources people by party affiliation get their money from, by percentage. If you think there's no difference between bad and worse, you're terribly mistaken. more like worse and worse. They all get their money from special interests. And all special interests want the same thing, an advantage in the market without having to report to the consumers. "Special interests" represent a lot of different things. And not all corporations or special interest groups agree on what they want, nor is what they want necessarily bad. It's because of special interests that we have a chance to enact a reasonable immigration policy. It's because of them that local science and hands-on museums get money from the government. It's become a nebulous "enemy" that politicians use to score political points.
Special interests are called special for a reason. They're never the interests of a consumer, because the consumer would prefer that the company money was spent on improving the product to compete in the market, rather on lobbying to be able to avoid competing in the market.
I don't even know what one would call a "reasonable immigration policy," but I'm pretty sure that museums and stuff run on entrance fees and donations (not all donations are given by special interests, but a lot are you're right, but that's different than giving money to someone to support their campaign so that they can legislate how you wan them to.)
As for the last line, yes politicians like to call each other out on them, but then every single politician has some kind of special interest support, so they usually only do it when a certain type of interests is villainized (like Romney calling Gingrich out on him lobbying for Fannie and Freddie,) or when the other guy isn't there to respond (like everyone jumping on Obama.)
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Is Romney basically guaranteed the Republican representative at this point?
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On February 07 2012 02:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Is Romney basically guaranteed the Republican representative at this point?
Nothing is a guarantee. He's likely to win the primary elections, but the way the system works, once the delegation happens, all the delegates can nominate whom they please (at the risk of pissing off all the voters if they don't nominate the winner of the primaries). They don't have to nominate anybody they don't want to, it is ultimately their choice, not the voters.
Romney could sweep up the rest of the primaries, and then at the Convention, the delegates could all conspire to nominate Jeb Bush.
Just saying, nothing is a guarantee. Things like that have happened before, the 1968 Democrat Convention being a strong example. But, yeah, Romney probably will be the 2012 presidential contender. He's very.... milquetoast.
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On February 07 2012 03:04 Leporello wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2012 02:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Is Romney basically guaranteed the Republican representative at this point? Nothing is a guarantee. He's likely to win the primary elections, but the way the system works, once the delegation happens, all the delegates can nominate whom they please (at the risk of pissing off all the voters if they don't nominate the winner of the primaries). They don't have to nominate anybody they don't want to, it is ultimately their choice, not the voters. Romney could sweep up the rest of the primaries, and then at the Convention, the delegates could all conspire to nominate Jeb Bush. Just saying, nothing is a guarantee. Things like that have happened before, the 1968 Democrat Convention being a strong example. But, yeah, Romney probably will be the 2012 presidential contender. He's very.... milquetoast.
He's a disaster of a candidate in the current american political environment I'd say. Both on a personal and policy level. Romney captures exactly everything that people perceive to be wrong with corporate america, can't form more then a decent sentence if he hasn't prepared it on a flash card, can't debate at all, seems like a robot and generally out of touch with 'everyday' america. And that's before he has even entered the real 'national debate', primaries are largely for people that are interested in politics in the first place.
He'll win for sure, but that's just because of how dire the rest of the field is. Gingrich has so much negative personal baggage that he won't win anything ever again, Santorum scares most of America with fringe social values and Paul is Paul. I can't see Romney ever winning a general vs Obama, especially with some economic momentum in the US.
Incumbency is a massive benefit in the American political system (fundraising, name-reckognition, combining campaign and policies) and not to be underestimated, which is why I think the republican field is as weak as it is. It would have been interesting to see someone like Christie run, but I'm guessing he's waiting his turn in 2016.
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On February 07 2012 03:31 Derez wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2012 03:04 Leporello wrote:On February 07 2012 02:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Is Romney basically guaranteed the Republican representative at this point? Nothing is a guarantee. He's likely to win the primary elections, but the way the system works, once the delegation happens, all the delegates can nominate whom they please (at the risk of pissing off all the voters if they don't nominate the winner of the primaries). They don't have to nominate anybody they don't want to, it is ultimately their choice, not the voters. Romney could sweep up the rest of the primaries, and then at the Convention, the delegates could all conspire to nominate Jeb Bush. Just saying, nothing is a guarantee. Things like that have happened before, the 1968 Democrat Convention being a strong example. But, yeah, Romney probably will be the 2012 presidential contender. He's very.... milquetoast. He's a disaster of a candidate in the current american political environment I'd say. Both on a personal and policy level. Romney captures exactly everything that people perceive to be wrong with corporate america, can't form more then a decent sentence if he hasn't prepared it on a flash card, can't debate at all, seems like a robot and generally out of touch with 'everyday' america. And that's before he has even entered the real 'national debate', primaries are largely for people that are interested in politics in the first place. He'll win for sure, but that's just because of how dire the rest of the field is. Gingrich has so much negative personal baggage that he won't win anything ever again, Santorum scares most of America with fringe social values and Paul is Paul. I can't see Romney ever winning a general vs Obama, especially with some economic momentum in the US. Incumbency is a massive benefit in the American political system (fundraising, name-reckognition, combining campaign and policies) and not to be underestimated, which is why I think the republican field is as weak as it is. It would have been interesting to see someone like Christie run, but I'm guessing he's waiting his turn in 2016.
Yep... I've already been thinking about 2016 for awhile, the 2012 race is somewhat boring but the presidential debates should at least make it interesting, albeit briefly.
I'd like to see Jeb Bush run in 2016, he'd get my vote unless maybe Hillary ran, in which case I'd have to flip a quarter to decide. Anyone who is unfamiliar with Jeb Bush should take my word he's not the moron apple from the family tree his brother was, in fact he's about 10x as sane as younger bro. Not even the fire breathing Oliver Stone in the movie W. was willing to take a jab at Jeb in it.
Other plausible R candidates; Daniels, Thune, Perry (hey I said plausible, he's gonna try again probably), Walker, Christie, Patraeus.
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On February 07 2012 03:36 forgottendreams wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2012 03:31 Derez wrote:On February 07 2012 03:04 Leporello wrote:On February 07 2012 02:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Is Romney basically guaranteed the Republican representative at this point? Nothing is a guarantee. He's likely to win the primary elections, but the way the system works, once the delegation happens, all the delegates can nominate whom they please (at the risk of pissing off all the voters if they don't nominate the winner of the primaries). They don't have to nominate anybody they don't want to, it is ultimately their choice, not the voters. Romney could sweep up the rest of the primaries, and then at the Convention, the delegates could all conspire to nominate Jeb Bush. Just saying, nothing is a guarantee. Things like that have happened before, the 1968 Democrat Convention being a strong example. But, yeah, Romney probably will be the 2012 presidential contender. He's very.... milquetoast. He's a disaster of a candidate in the current american political environment I'd say. Both on a personal and policy level. Romney captures exactly everything that people perceive to be wrong with corporate america, can't form more then a decent sentence if he hasn't prepared it on a flash card, can't debate at all, seems like a robot and generally out of touch with 'everyday' america. And that's before he has even entered the real 'national debate', primaries are largely for people that are interested in politics in the first place. He'll win for sure, but that's just because of how dire the rest of the field is. Gingrich has so much negative personal baggage that he won't win anything ever again, Santorum scares most of America with fringe social values and Paul is Paul. I can't see Romney ever winning a general vs Obama, especially with some economic momentum in the US. Incumbency is a massive benefit in the American political system (fundraising, name-reckognition, combining campaign and policies) and not to be underestimated, which is why I think the republican field is as weak as it is. It would have been interesting to see someone like Christie run, but I'm guessing he's waiting his turn in 2016. Yep... I've already been thinking about 2016 for awhile, the 2012 race is somewhat boring but the presidential debates should at least make it interesting, albeit briefly. I'd like to see Jeb Bush run in 2016, he'd get my vote unless maybe Hillary ran, in which case I'd have to flip a quarter to decide. Anyone who is unfamiliar with Jeb Bush should take my word he's not the moron apple from the family tree his brother was, in fact he's about 10x as sane as younger bro.
Jeb Bush wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal back in December that I really enjoyed. Here's a link to it: Jeb Bush - Capitalism & The Right to Rise
If he were to run in 2016, people would automatically associate him with his brother unfortunately.
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On February 04 2012 08:59 Falling wrote:
You know, I was just thinking the other day. Every political thread seems to bring out the Libertarian/ Austrian Economics people and usually a thread will keep cycling back to their points. But whatever happened to a good old Marxist critique on capitalism? Is Marxism that dead in the water that they don't exist on forums anymore? Or do they just keep their heads down and let us Capitalists duke it out? Many good reasons were mentioned, but I would like to add that people subscribing to extremist left are not as often gaming types. They also actually do something to bring on their ideas and thus do not have that much time to spend on the internet. From the hard-core communists I know they are actually active in different movements and do stuff. Libertarians I know like to talk, but otherwise they do nothing. It seems to nicely and ironically reflect on their philosophies. Since libertarians are so keen on self-interest, they do not really create groups that do things for free too easily  And actually trying to change the society takes a lot of volunteering.
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On February 04 2012 09:40 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 08:40 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 07:30 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 07:19 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 06:46 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 05:47 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 05:35 Kiarip wrote:On February 03 2012 10:37 aksfjh wrote:
With the exception of housing, which is widely under debate at this moment, the programs you list do things cheaper than the private sector. Education tuitions rose because state budgets have refused to increase funding based on demand for nearly a decade. Military costs went through the roof because we turned to the private sector to help fight the war, instead of sticking to tradition and conscripting. My argument is that when private sector is forced to the compete with the government the prices go up disproportionately to the quality. So all my examples basically on point. I'm talking about costs both private and public. Government drove up the price of education with easy credit, housing with easy credit, medicine with guarantees and subsidies, and military with contracts. These types of economies don't work, you either need to have the whole thing nationalized or privatized without government incentives, and when you're dealing with a situation of individual customers private sector tends to be better, while for something like the military, you obviously want that fully nationalized, but the point is that when you have the two compete you get basically the worst possible situation. I might agree with you on this partially. But I would add that private sector tends to do better only if the customer has at least some ability to actually judge the service at least somewhat objectively. Healthcare is one of those where that is not true and consequences of error are often fatal. Education also but for somewhat different reasons. The first part is definitely true. However you underestimate the effiency of the free market. When its difficult for the consumer to understand how the industry works, they have a need. The market can satisfy that need, and new companies will (probably) specialize in explaining how the health care industry works, and how they minizimze their costs in relation to their needs. However when government is in involved in the market, consumers tend to feel "safe". Like believing that government will fix their problems, and hence their isn't a strong enough demand for private companies to deliever a product that makes it easy to judge the services of the health care sector. Operation of healthcare industry is the easier part to explain. The medicine is the hard part. Those meta-companies will be as useless to the consumers as the original ones. And as all private companies in a market where consumer is not able to judge the product even after he used it, they will just be ripping everyone and most successful will be the ones with best PR department that provide least service, but make it look good. It is easily seen in the privatized parts of the healthcare sector all over the world. Of course you can take a hardcore libertarian stance, that the consumers get what they wanted, no matter if they got totally ripped off compared to the "forced choice" of public system. But if you think that displayed preference is always equal to the real preference I do not think we have any common basis to continue without getting into an even bigger tangent. People complain all the time about healthcare system, so no, people are not complacent, but their complaints are mostly totally wrong and just highlighting my point. If those meta-companies doesn't work they go bankrupt. Why wouldn't they work? They will do everything in their power to make the market easy to understand and analyze for their consumers, because that is their product. And if they are to make money some people have to buy their product. Oh they will make money, and people will buy their products, but not because those companies will offer anything worthwhile, but because people are gullible and have extremely limited ability to judge those products. How do you know if you need CT, you ask the company and they will tell you exactly that what will maximize their profit, which is rarely linked to what is necessary to maximize your health benefit. Why can they do so ? Because in areas where products if they are faulty do not leave much space for punishing bad providers by changing preference (you cannot move to another provider if you are dead) and where quality of the product cannot actually be reasonably judged at all by the customer, because even unsuccessful treatment might be the best possible product, how do you leave market forces any leverage to work. Market forces will work as they always do to maximize "market efficiency", but unlike in many other areas that goal is not at all aligned with the goal of providing good medical care, because the feedback loop from customers to providers is highly unstable and unreliable. That was what I was saying that if you consider displayed preference as real preference that is the only way you can make the claim that the system works. Which in this case means that when scared patient buys snake oil from a dealer his displayed preference was to buy a snake oil. You can say since he showed preference for snake oil, market works, as it delivered him exactly what he wanted. Of course I would say that his actual preference was to get healthy, but was too stupid, uneducated, desperate, poor and that transformed his actual preference into buying snake oil instead of buying 1 dollar cheaper antibiotics in the store 10m away. Of course not all people are terminally stupid so the system would not be completely hellish nightmare, but most people are not equipped to make rational decision about most of the medical field, not only because of lack of knowledge but also because of lack of criteria to judge the product in the first place. In the end system would somewhat work, but would be completely inferior to the standard public system in use today. Other things to consider are that moral hazard is much less than in other areas, because of the nature of the offered service. People prefer not to undertake most of the offered services unless they really need to, especially not the most expensive ones. So what happens when a company displays bad behaviour to their customers to maximise short-term profits? Do you think thats a viable long-term strategy? And btw the revenues of the "meta-companies" aren't related to whether the consumers are paying the hospitals. (unless they are being paid by the health care companies and thats obv. not a viable long term business model). And why can't the services be judged? Patients can tell about their experiences (how they were treated). Maybe they do not know if they are getting the correct medicin. But that just creates a demand for the health care instituions to have someone (independed private company) to control that what they are doing is correct. Will that cost them a bit of money. Sure it might, but its probably nessacary. Why? Imagine this: You are going to have an operation. You have to options: 1) Get an operation at hospital A for 10.000$. You have no information of this hospital. 2) Get an operation at Hospital B for 11.000$. Hospital has great reviews from customers and the independent companies that has reviewed them give them great grades. What will you choose? This obv. depends on your subjective preferences (obv. the example isn't realistic, as you most likely would have paid by insurance, but the point is still there). So you might argue, what if he company that is supposed to review them get paid by the Hospital. Obivously they have to hide this for the public. Corruption is a threat in any kind of society. But is the likehood of this happening in the free market higher than in the world controlled by government? Most likely not. Because on such an important area there could very well be another company that "regulated these "control-companies", and they would use ressources to investigate if this was happening. And if it indeed was happening, the control"-company would lose all its customers pretty quickly. Hence this would be a extremely risky for the control-company. So you need to remember that the market is aware of all these concerns and they have a solution for them . Maybe the solutions that I represented above aren't the ones the market will choose. I don't know, but the market regulations is much more efficient than the government regulation.
Your scenario about meta-meta-company controlling meta-companies nicely illustrates the failing of your line of thinking. People actually working do not have time to investigate all the information necessary to make a good decision based on the meta- and meta-meta- companies. And since people do not have the time to make proper research (and they don't because in libertopia you would have to make such a research for nearly every one of 10000 aspects of your life) companies will find it much easier to make money by PR and collusion than by providing good service. Lack of informed consumers is the bane of all market working as intended. And informed consumers are not really possible in healthcare.
But I would agree that with people being well informed(unrealistic assumption already) you could using self-regulation achieve what you are describing and maybe even match the utility of public healthcare. Problem is that all those meta- companies and meta-meta-companies you will have such incredible overhead that the market system will have much bigger cost.
Also market is not aware of anything It is an optimization tool with some strengths and some weaknesses.
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On February 05 2012 02:45 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Red_b, you and I are simply never going to agree. You preach the values of selflessness, and I support the complete opposite, rational and ethical egoism. It's no surprise that we're going to disagree on the governing of people then.
Anyway I'm genuinely curious about a few things. You mentioned that you rely primarily on the support of your parents still: Do you think your views will remain the same when you are self sufficient and providing for your own family? It's easy to underestimate how much going into the "real world" might affect one's views. In my case, I completely changed when I started having to provide for my girlfriend and I during the 2009 economic downturn.
From my experience, as people get older they move from extremes to the center, so young people are often idealistic libertarians or communists and as time moves on they move to the center. This phenomenon is getting less and less prominent with time and my hypothesis is that as people in first world countries face less and less actual problems, ironically thanks to being sheltered by modern states that protects them form cradle to the grave rather efficiently compared to any time in the past, they are not taught the hard lessons necessary to understand the wisdom of moderation.
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On February 07 2012 01:02 Krikkitone wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2012 13:35 Ldawg wrote:
The one thing that is encouraging about the current state of American politics (this may sound strange) is that so many people are realizing there are no substantial differences between the two political parties. They may talk differently, and have different ideas, but the truth is big business owns both horses in this political race. Too many Americans are blindly loyal to a policitcal party, and soley blame the other party while the politicians continue their corruption, stupidity and greed.
One of the biggest reasons I support Ron Paul. He votes according to his beliefs, and doesn't talk to lobbyists.
Our political system is so broken and corrupt that I vote for those who I know aren't bought and paid for, although sadly there aren't many to choose from.
On a separate note, I never understood why people are allowed to give unlimited amount of money to candidate's PACs in the name of free speech. Sure, everyone has one vote, but doesn't this give hugely disproportionate weight to a certain few individuals? Well part of the problem is it isn't just freedom of speech, but freedom of the press. Ie If I have a $100billion I can buy some newspapers/radio or TV stations/billboards and have them say whatever political message I want. (the editorial boards of all major newspapers endorse candidates) So why can't 1 million people all give $100,000 each to an organization that does the same thing? The problem is that speech costs money. The second biggest problem is that people are influenced by the Amount of speech they hear, not just its content. Both of those are things that aren't going to change So the only solution to the money-> political speech is 1. the government bans political speech on media (want to hear the state of the Union address, go to Washington D.C. but you can't tweet about it) or 2. the government only allows 'approved political speech' on media (The incumbents can get their message out, but not the challenger... or only the approved challengers) Both of those merely means that the government chooses the political speech rather than the corporations/unions/rich individuals.
There's always the other option of declaring "speech" only as spoken or written words. Assembly is already protected with its own language. It may take an amendment to do, but it just might be worth it.
Granted, you'd still have press bias, but that's a little more docile and obvious. After that is done, the only thing left would be to limit campaigning time, mandate advertising, and/or limit campaign finance.
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On February 05 2012 03:46 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 03:26 Stratos_speAr wrote:On February 05 2012 02:51 Rabbet wrote:On February 05 2012 02:45 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
Red_b, you and I are simply never going to agree. You preach the values of selflessness, and I support the complete opposite, rational and ethical egoism. It's no surprise that we're going to disagree on the governing of people then.
Anyway I'm genuinely curious about a few things. You mentioned that you rely primarily on the support of your parents still: Do you think your views will remain the same when you are self sufficient and providing for your own family? It's easy to underestimate how much going into the "real world" might affect one's views. In my case, I completely changed when I started having to provide for my girlfriend and I during the 2009 economic downturn. With out a doubt people grow up a lot when they leave the cocoon of the family unit, it is no different for political and social views. I would have been the one arguing against conservatism when I was still living with my mom and dad, but life experience changes you. This helps explain Red_b's mentality. That "growing up" goes both ways. I was a staunch (fiscal) conservative until I went out and experienced life. Then I realized how naive and foolish fiscal conservative ideals can sound. And don't even get me started on social conservatives. Social conservatism in America often just boils down to racism, homophobia, and religious brainwashing. It's absolutely sickening. I actually find it kind of amusing that you think that more people start to "come to their senses" and think on a more conservative line when they get real world experience when I've found that the overwhelming majority of conservatives I've met are either completely sheltered students that have never had to work a day in their life or those that have been well off their entire life and have rarely (if ever) had to struggle, either fiscally or against social adversity. Of course, we know that this isn't actually true and that there are plenty from the lower classes that are both liberal and conservative, so how about you stop being such a condescending prick? Scandinavian model seems to be working? Any sources for that? If the only reason prices are relatively low is becaus waiting lists are long and the quality mediocore, then thats not really a good argument for scandi health care. It's already been repeatedly mentioned about how long waiting lists and crappy care are both myths with very little actual basis. Stop mentioning them. Government can't estimate demand, so how come waiting lists are a joke? Where has it been "proven" its a myth?
Government can estimate demand the same way as any big company does, especially in healthcare. Waiting lists do not have anything to do with demand as evidence by the fact that they do not get longer as time goes, unless funding is cut. They are actually very well tailored to demand, unlike standard consumer demand you can predict medical demand pretty well based on epidemiological data. Waiting lists are result of optimizing resource use.
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On February 05 2012 05:00 Rabbet wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 04:20 red_b wrote:
FWIW I did live on my own for a while.
I paid for my own Master's degree. Now I work part time and it is unnecessary for me to have my own place as I telecommute. Being at home allows me to save a fair bit of money. And I doubt that my opinion on self sacrifice will change as it is a deep rooted part of my relationship with God and Im sure you know how people are about that sort of thing.
At any rate my opinions on economics come from 5 years of studying it including a graduate degree in economics at a tier 1 university. Call me naive if you like, but as far as I can tell my positions come from my own analysis of econometric data (esp. labor economics) and yours comes from the limited, anecdotal experience of one person. you may be able to convince yourself that that makes you more knowledgeable on the matter than I but I suspect that will not hold much sway with others.
People should leave their mom and dad's house when they are capable of doing so. It is not natural for grown children to be living off their parents. Did you ever find a reference to god in any of your text books or lectures on economics?
Living in parent's house is not necessarily living off them if you put enough money/work into the shared pool. But living completely independently is modern custom and is not really that natural.
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On February 07 2012 06:05 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 05:00 Rabbet wrote:On February 05 2012 04:20 red_b wrote:
FWIW I did live on my own for a while.
I paid for my own Master's degree. Now I work part time and it is unnecessary for me to have my own place as I telecommute. Being at home allows me to save a fair bit of money. And I doubt that my opinion on self sacrifice will change as it is a deep rooted part of my relationship with God and Im sure you know how people are about that sort of thing.
At any rate my opinions on economics come from 5 years of studying it including a graduate degree in economics at a tier 1 university. Call me naive if you like, but as far as I can tell my positions come from my own analysis of econometric data (esp. labor economics) and yours comes from the limited, anecdotal experience of one person. you may be able to convince yourself that that makes you more knowledgeable on the matter than I but I suspect that will not hold much sway with others.
People should leave their mom and dad's house when they are capable of doing so. It is not natural for grown children to be living off their parents. Did you ever find a reference to god in any of your text books or lectures on economics? Living in parent's house is not necessarily living off them if you put enough money/work into the shared pool. But living completely independently is modern custom and is not really that natural.
Indeed. In many other cultures, many generations will live in the same house their entire lives. This isn't because they're mooching, but because it's a more efficient way of living. Having 1 person doing the laundry and cleaning for 6-8 people makes much more sense than 2-4 people doing it for the same number of people. In the meantime, more people can work or provide other useful services to the house.
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On February 07 2012 01:02 Krikkitone wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2012 13:35 Ldawg wrote:
The one thing that is encouraging about the current state of American politics (this may sound strange) is that so many people are realizing there are no substantial differences between the two political parties. They may talk differently, and have different ideas, but the truth is big business owns both horses in this political race. Too many Americans are blindly loyal to a policitcal party, and soley blame the other party while the politicians continue their corruption, stupidity and greed.
One of the biggest reasons I support Ron Paul. He votes according to his beliefs, and doesn't talk to lobbyists.
Our political system is so broken and corrupt that I vote for those who I know aren't bought and paid for, although sadly there aren't many to choose from.
On a separate note, I never understood why people are allowed to give unlimited amount of money to candidate's PACs in the name of free speech. Sure, everyone has one vote, but doesn't this give hugely disproportionate weight to a certain few individuals? Well part of the problem is it isn't just freedom of speech, but freedom of the press. Ie If I have a $100billion I can buy some newspapers/radio or TV stations/billboards and have them say whatever political message I want. (the editorial boards of all major newspapers endorse candidates) So why can't 1 million people all give $100,000 each to an organization that does the same thing? The problem is that speech costs money. The second biggest problem is that people are influenced by the Amount of speech they hear, not just its content. Both of those are things that aren't going to change So the only solution to the money-> political speech is 1. the government bans political speech on media (want to hear the state of the Union address, go to Washington D.C. but you can't tweet about it) or 2. the government only allows 'approved political speech' on media (The incumbents can get their message out, but not the challenger... or only the approved challengers) Both of those merely means that the government chooses the political speech rather than the corporations/unions/rich individuals.
Now while I don't live in America I think the reason why the system is so corrupt is because the television shows can say whatever the fuck they want. In the UK TV shows are not allowed to have political bias one way or an other as that is where most people get their news, and probably where they would hear about political stuff too.
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Mitt Romney’s campaign is publicly arguing that the methodology of a WaPo/ABC poll tainted its finding that his national numbers are tanking. However, polling experts who talked to TPM say that the survey is in line with a broad set of evidence that Romney’s general election appeal is declining — even if the poll’s approach is less than ideal.
The poll in question couldn’t have looked much worse for Romney’s presidential hopes. While it indicated he was still strong in the primary, his national numbers showed a rapid fall with Obama leading him 51-45 among registered voters. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse says these top line numbers should be disregarded because the question came after a series of queries referencing various recent stories surrounding Romney, including whether voters think his wealth is a positive or negative, whether they think he did more to create or cut jobs at Bain Capital, whether they feel his 14% tax rate is fair, and whether his Mormon religion affects their views of his candidacy.
“The poll introduced specific negative information about Governor Romney immediately prior to asking the ballot match-up against President Obama,” Newhouse wrote. “While I certainly understand the difficulty of designing a questionnaire to learn as much information as possible about a campaign, and the compromises that sometimes have to be made, the questionnaire design used by the Post/ABC Poll in this case is seriously flawed.”
Jon Cohen, director of polling for the Washington Post, told TPM in an e-mail that he felt the results held up.
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Romney is going to be a nightmare for the Republicans in the general. Republican primary voter numbers are down substantially. A sign that the base isn't excited/like this canidate. Not as much of a free-win as Gingrich would be, but should end up being damn close. Even more so as the unemployment numbers continue to drop as we get closer to the election.
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On February 07 2012 05:49 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 09:40 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 08:40 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 07:30 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 07:19 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 06:46 Hider wrote:On February 04 2012 05:47 mcc wrote:On February 04 2012 05:35 Kiarip wrote:On February 03 2012 10:37 aksfjh wrote:
With the exception of housing, which is widely under debate at this moment, the programs you list do things cheaper than the private sector. Education tuitions rose because state budgets have refused to increase funding based on demand for nearly a decade. Military costs went through the roof because we turned to the private sector to help fight the war, instead of sticking to tradition and conscripting. My argument is that when private sector is forced to the compete with the government the prices go up disproportionately to the quality. So all my examples basically on point. I'm talking about costs both private and public. Government drove up the price of education with easy credit, housing with easy credit, medicine with guarantees and subsidies, and military with contracts. These types of economies don't work, you either need to have the whole thing nationalized or privatized without government incentives, and when you're dealing with a situation of individual customers private sector tends to be better, while for something like the military, you obviously want that fully nationalized, but the point is that when you have the two compete you get basically the worst possible situation. I might agree with you on this partially. But I would add that private sector tends to do better only if the customer has at least some ability to actually judge the service at least somewhat objectively. Healthcare is one of those where that is not true and consequences of error are often fatal. Education also but for somewhat different reasons. The first part is definitely true. However you underestimate the effiency of the free market. When its difficult for the consumer to understand how the industry works, they have a need. The market can satisfy that need, and new companies will (probably) specialize in explaining how the health care industry works, and how they minizimze their costs in relation to their needs. However when government is in involved in the market, consumers tend to feel "safe". Like believing that government will fix their problems, and hence their isn't a strong enough demand for private companies to deliever a product that makes it easy to judge the services of the health care sector. Operation of healthcare industry is the easier part to explain. The medicine is the hard part. Those meta-companies will be as useless to the consumers as the original ones. And as all private companies in a market where consumer is not able to judge the product even after he used it, they will just be ripping everyone and most successful will be the ones with best PR department that provide least service, but make it look good. It is easily seen in the privatized parts of the healthcare sector all over the world. Of course you can take a hardcore libertarian stance, that the consumers get what they wanted, no matter if they got totally ripped off compared to the "forced choice" of public system. But if you think that displayed preference is always equal to the real preference I do not think we have any common basis to continue without getting into an even bigger tangent. People complain all the time about healthcare system, so no, people are not complacent, but their complaints are mostly totally wrong and just highlighting my point. If those meta-companies doesn't work they go bankrupt. Why wouldn't they work? They will do everything in their power to make the market easy to understand and analyze for their consumers, because that is their product. And if they are to make money some people have to buy their product. Oh they will make money, and people will buy their products, but not because those companies will offer anything worthwhile, but because people are gullible and have extremely limited ability to judge those products. How do you know if you need CT, you ask the company and they will tell you exactly that what will maximize their profit, which is rarely linked to what is necessary to maximize your health benefit. Why can they do so ? Because in areas where products if they are faulty do not leave much space for punishing bad providers by changing preference (you cannot move to another provider if you are dead) and where quality of the product cannot actually be reasonably judged at all by the customer, because even unsuccessful treatment might be the best possible product, how do you leave market forces any leverage to work. Market forces will work as they always do to maximize "market efficiency", but unlike in many other areas that goal is not at all aligned with the goal of providing good medical care, because the feedback loop from customers to providers is highly unstable and unreliable. That was what I was saying that if you consider displayed preference as real preference that is the only way you can make the claim that the system works. Which in this case means that when scared patient buys snake oil from a dealer his displayed preference was to buy a snake oil. You can say since he showed preference for snake oil, market works, as it delivered him exactly what he wanted. Of course I would say that his actual preference was to get healthy, but was too stupid, uneducated, desperate, poor and that transformed his actual preference into buying snake oil instead of buying 1 dollar cheaper antibiotics in the store 10m away. Of course not all people are terminally stupid so the system would not be completely hellish nightmare, but most people are not equipped to make rational decision about most of the medical field, not only because of lack of knowledge but also because of lack of criteria to judge the product in the first place. In the end system would somewhat work, but would be completely inferior to the standard public system in use today. Other things to consider are that moral hazard is much less than in other areas, because of the nature of the offered service. People prefer not to undertake most of the offered services unless they really need to, especially not the most expensive ones. So what happens when a company displays bad behaviour to their customers to maximise short-term profits? Do you think thats a viable long-term strategy? And btw the revenues of the "meta-companies" aren't related to whether the consumers are paying the hospitals. (unless they are being paid by the health care companies and thats obv. not a viable long term business model). And why can't the services be judged? Patients can tell about their experiences (how they were treated). Maybe they do not know if they are getting the correct medicin. But that just creates a demand for the health care instituions to have someone (independed private company) to control that what they are doing is correct. Will that cost them a bit of money. Sure it might, but its probably nessacary. Why? Imagine this: You are going to have an operation. You have to options: 1) Get an operation at hospital A for 10.000$. You have no information of this hospital. 2) Get an operation at Hospital B for 11.000$. Hospital has great reviews from customers and the independent companies that has reviewed them give them great grades. What will you choose? This obv. depends on your subjective preferences (obv. the example isn't realistic, as you most likely would have paid by insurance, but the point is still there). So you might argue, what if he company that is supposed to review them get paid by the Hospital. Obivously they have to hide this for the public. Corruption is a threat in any kind of society. But is the likehood of this happening in the free market higher than in the world controlled by government? Most likely not. Because on such an important area there could very well be another company that "regulated these "control-companies", and they would use ressources to investigate if this was happening. And if it indeed was happening, the control"-company would lose all its customers pretty quickly. Hence this would be a extremely risky for the control-company. So you need to remember that the market is aware of all these concerns and they have a solution for them . Maybe the solutions that I represented above aren't the ones the market will choose. I don't know, but the market regulations is much more efficient than the government regulation. Your scenario about meta-meta-company controlling meta-companies nicely illustrates the failing of your line of thinking. People actually working do not have time to investigate all the information necessary to make a good decision based on the meta- and meta-meta- companies. And since people do not have the time to make proper research (and they don't because in libertopia you would have to make such a research for nearly every one of 10000 aspects of your life) companies will find it much easier to make money by PR and collusion than by providing good service. Lack of informed consumers is the bane of all market working as intended. And informed consumers are not really possible in healthcare. But I would agree that with people being well informed(unrealistic assumption already) you could using self-regulation achieve what you are describing and maybe even match the utility of public healthcare. Problem is that all those meta- companies and meta-meta-companies you will have such incredible overhead that the market system will have much bigger cost. Also market is not aware of anything It is an optimization tool with some strengths and some weaknesses.
Only thing consumers need to do is to shop around. They do not need to udnerstand the products they are buying. They just need to read the review by the "meta-companies". Again im not the one having a lack of understanding. The market is actually efficient. When there is a problem the market can fix it. If consumers can not understand X - The market will create a solution. It also does that as long as there is money in it.
Companies that are bad at making solutions do not profit.
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On February 07 2012 07:17 On_Slaught wrote:
Romney is going to be a nightmare for the Republicans in the general. Republican primary voter numbers are down substantially. A sign that the base isn't excited/like this canidate. Not as much of a free-win as Gingrich would be, but should end up being damn close. Even more so as the unemployment numbers continue to drop as we get closer to the election.
The general election was going to be Obama favored assuming he didn't do anything too scandalous. That's how incumbency works. Now that the GOP primary has gotten the candidates so dirty, both by slinging mud and being hit by it, it's going to rather hard to beat Obama come November.
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EPT
