Depends on what you mean by qualified.

If you're looking for the kid whose actual talent level is top 1%, then a valedictorian from a school with few AP classes, whose SAT score is low because he had to spend his off-hours working at his dad's gas station is a really good bet. Especially if he got a 95th percentile on the test. You know he didn't spend 20 hours a week with an SAT coach. He's probably actually a lot better then 95th percentile.

OTOH a rich tiger daughter, whose mother insisted she take 8 AP classes, was not allowed to do any extracurricular activities that don't add mondo points to the student-selection algorithm (ie: classical violin rather then rock guitar), and got 96th percentile. You know she did spend 20 hours a week with an SAT coach. Let's just say she's probably not gonna do better then 96th percentile in real life.

But any criteria solely for accepting applicants based on points, GPA, test scores, etc. is gonna result in her getting in 100% of the time.

So who is this mysterious third "private party"?

If it's a for-profit entity you've just sold the water on the Colorado river to a bunch of shareholders, which not good.

If it's a non-profit it has to be one with a Federal charter, because it's operating in multiple states. It's got a remit that includes law enforcement actions because it's deciding who gets to use river water. Many, many hated Federal Agencies are not that different in structure then this. For example, there would be very little difference between this and the FCC.

The series doesn't stop there. By book nine ("Ashes of Victory") he's advanced them to WW2-style carrier combat. He's also added some things that have very little modern real life analogue (pod-laying dreadnoughts, for example).

But a big part of the series appeal is to folks who are interested in military history. I sincerely doubt that anyone else has based an entire Star Empire on references to a mid-18th century monarch of a country that does not currently exist, yet he turned Frederick the Great of Prussia into the Andaman Empire. And the background even made some sense.

Bullshit. Let's say you set up this system and there's a drought year. There's less water then has been sold on the private market.

The Court in Utah can't have jurisdiction over a theft that took place in Colorado, and can't force a Colorado rancher to appear. The Judge in Colorado is subject to retention elections. He isn't gonna rule farmer Bob is evil for taking his full allocation.

But even that's assuming a Federal rule of some sort. Why? Because to sue for property rights you have to establish standing, that means you have to show that there's a very concrete dispute between you (and only you) and your opponent (and only him). If you;re one of 300 farmers in Utah with a cut of the river, and one of 200 farmers in Colorado is taking more of his cut then he should, that's a harm shared by 300 farmers in Utah and everyone downstream of that guy in Colorado. Under current private property law you do not have the right to sue. So no, under state private property law you cannot deal with water rights on the Colorado River.

There needs to be a Federal rule (probably a statute), disputes need to be resolvable in Federal Court, and the Federal Marshal's service has to enforce the rulings.

The only SciFi franchise I'm familiar with that has sensibly designed ships is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. This is because it's a book series (so there's no graphic artist trying to make the good guy ships a beautiful white fleet with wings like birds, and the bad guy ships industrial contraptions that are some hideous shade of orange), but it's mostly because he specifically designed the physics of his universe around the military tactics he wanted.

Just because it's a nice place to live doesn't mean it's not insane. Uruguay manages to have all of Argentina's advantages without the BS exchange rate mechanisms, frequent fights with foreign businesses, etc.

As for social mobility, you're taking a very middle class view of both opportunity and poverty. The working class of Mexico did not have a lot of opportunities to work for a maquiladora prior to NAFTA. Now they've got those opportunities. The ones who don't want to do that can just do what their parents did, but make more money at it because you've got customers from the maquiladoras. Yeah Mexico's poverty rate is astronomical (45.5% according to google), but it's dropping (it was above 46% last year) because you have economic growth. Argentina's is lower, but is virtually impossible to quantify because government statistics are not trustworthy. It's probably above 20%.

Basically what's happened is that in about 1900 the Argentines had a great thing. They were rich. They had no troublesome ethnic or racial minorities (much of Mexico's impoverished 45.5% are descendants of what America would call Native Americans) to complicate their economic situation. And they've managed to maintain that. Meanwhile most of their neighbors, and even many countries that were desperately poor in 1913 (Italy is the most often mentioned, but all of Eastern and Central Europe was poorer then Argentina then, and France and Germany were both comparable to Argentina in per capita terms) have managed to catch up.

Genuine Argentinian government logic: perfectly coherent, but not connected with reality in any way whatsoever.

Italy was poorer then Argentina per capita back when started this strategy. They blame their current economic problems mostly on their inability to go back to it now that they're in the Euro. It's a very good strategy. In the short term exporters get rich, but it's not like it's hard to become an exporter, or get a job with an exporter.

Note that if everyone is on vacation abroad, they're spending their money abroad, not keeping it within Argentina. It's possible the government's measures are keeping more money at home then would be leaving otherwise, but from your posts and the posts of various other people who live there/stayed there on vacation/etc. I'd have to say it seems much more likely that governmental policy is driving people to hoard their cash until they can sneak it out of the country, and the government puts up with it because they want to win re-election. I suspect an Argentina with a normalish economy (ie: no recent expropriations of major foreign companies, enough foreign friends that the Vulture Funds could be dealt with, etc.) would not have this issue.

The funny part is you think you're disagreeing with my point.

I said nothing about how the Feds manage the water. It could be a bureaucratic process. It could be private property rights.

If it's private property rights that means a Court. The only Court that can adjudicate when a rancher from Colorado is screwing as rancher from Utah by taking too much water is the 10th Circuit.

So their job is to balance the Federal government, potentially by rebelling, but they don't need an Air Force?

What's your head like? It sounds like a very nice place where things are so much simpler then real life.

No they aren't.

In 1789 we had a minuscule military. Congress confirmed every officer in it at actual hearings. This meant that the guy who commanded a ship was answerable to both Congress and the President. Today we have 310 million people. Even if we went to a tiny military we'd have thousands of officers, and Congress just isn't designed to keep track of 1,000 Second Lieutenants. They can still do shit like refuse to confirm the promotion of Kirk Lippold to Captain, but it's no longer a way for them to meaningfully control the military on a day-to-day basis.

That would actually be the point.

Look at this from an engineering point of view. The problem is Greece has debts it can't pay off. The reason it can't pay it off is the economy is too damn small, not growing fast enough, and lenders are convinced they won;t be paid back if they send in more checks. If you have a mini €110 Billion bailout (at 5.5% interest) then the Greek government has to fire slightly fewer people then if there were no bailout, but it can't create business tax incentives/build infrastructure/buy domestically produced tanks/or any of the other things governments can do to make the economic pie actually grow. None of the problem has been solved and you'll just have to spend €150 Billion (at 3.5%, except the €100 Billion write-down in debt from the last bailout) more next year.

Which will still not be enough to allow the Greek government to spend new money on shit that might grow the economy, so a few years after that you have to deal with Syriza. Which means that a) you have not solved the problem, b) you're not getting paid back on the €260 Billion you gave them, €160 Billion at 3.5% and c) you're really truly not getting paid back on the €100 Billion gift.

OTOH, let's say you started at €200 Billion. You didn't charge interest, or you charge 1%. Maybe you're feeling really generous payments don't start until there are signs of growth. You insist the Greeks make major changes to their economy (for example, reducing pensions and replacing their easily bribable tax enforcement guys with real tax enforcement guys). They use the extra money to grow their economy. Which, BTW, is logically equivalent to saying "they spent the money."

Now you have solved the original problem, you are getting paid back on all of it, and nobody has to worry about the end of the Euro. You have not caused a banking collapse in Cyprus, you do not have to deal with Syriza, there is a 0% chance Putin can turn your entire left flank simply by courting the Turks and telling the Greeks "you realize if you just stopped paying those guys I'd protect you, right?," etc. etc. etc.

Which included 7 Billion quid from the Brits, altho the Irish only seem to have used £3.2 billion. Additionally the UK's attempts to stabilize it's own banks have resulted in £14bn going to their Irish subsidiaries.

The Eurozone has badly fucked up this situation by trying to nickel-and-dime these bailouts. For Greece they needed to do €200-250 Billion Euros at nominal (as in zero or 1%) interest back in 2010. They insisted on much less (€110 billion) at 5.5%. Then they acted surprised that a year later they needed to arrange that €100 billion (aka: almost all the money from the first bailout) needed to be written off and the interest rate reduced on the rest. But they're still charging interest (altho 3.5% is slightly less fucking stupid then 5.5% was). And they'll probably have to do a third bailout.

But Ireland, which didn't get nickel-and-dimed by a bunch of self-righteous Germans, is gonna be fine.

That was always the intent in certain areas. In currency, defense, and foreign affairs in particular the Feds were supposed to completely dominate everything so that an ambitious Governor of South Carolina couldn't trade Charleston to the King for a Ducal coronet.

In economics the problem is that so many states really aren't viable economic units. You can't have anybody but the Feds decide how to divide up the Colorado River. State-based regulation of air pollution would be even stupider. Every corn farmer is sending his product to Chicago, and that just doesn't work if Nebraska has different rules then Kansas. Militarily there's no way Kansas could have a well-armed militia. They'd need an Air Force, and they can't afford it.

Life happened, and a lot of the Founders limits on Federal power (and Presidential power) just stopped being particularly meaningful.

What angle could a geek post on Venezuela?

Argentina has a large enough middle class that a cashless system based on geek-related crypto-currencies is possible. They've all got smartphones.

Venezuela's problem is that you have a) oil wealth, b) a relatively small number of whitish middle-class people with the money for a smartphone, and c) a bunch of really poor, less whitish, working class folks with very little understanding of economics. Without a very good method of dividing up the country's wealth, you ended up with the working class saying "fuck it," and using their superior numbers to legislate income equality. This has led to massive economic problems, which will only be solved permanently if the guy who replaces Maduro can convince the whitish folks from b) to pay more in taxes then they did pre-Chavez, and the slightly-less-whitish folks from c) to accept less in government benefits then they did under Chavez.

Which explains why the black market exchange rate is so bad.

To go on a trip you need dollars or euros, which means high demand for those currencies. Since there's very little reason for a non-Argentinean to buy Pesos (except, perhaps, trips to Buenas Aires) there's low demand for pesos.

Which means that it will take a lot of pesos to convince a dollar-owner to give up his dollar, and quite a few people will pay his price.

You're hilarious.

This is Argentina we're talking about. There is no such thing as either "savings" or an "interest rate."

You spend whatever you get because the last time you put your money in a bank it got confiscated, and if you have a big pile of bills on the floor the tax man might notice.

Pardon me, but I'm not sure the definition of desperate is the same for an Argentinean as it is for the rest of us. In the US, or most of Latin America, having a legally mandated exchange rate much different from the actual market-based rate would count as a major problem.

The Argentine attitude seems to be "The legal exchange rate is different from the market-based one? It must be Tuesday."

In theory the smart governmental policy at this point would be to float the Peso and kill the official exchange rate. The inflation would mean that your exports got cheaper in dollar terms (ie: if it costs you 100 pesos to make something, at 9 pesos for a dollar you need to get $11 US to break even; at 15 you're breaking even at $7), which would help the economy.

But as far as I can tell the people of Argentina have specifically designed their economy so that, with a significant amount of scrambling, everyone can be roughly as prosperous today as their ancestors were in 1905. Which is not that bad (Argentina was pretty rich in 1905), but also means that a) you've missed out on a century of economic growth, and b) you're doing so much scrambling you're surprised anyone else thinks you should not be scrambling.

I suspect when a Bitcoiner says "cashless" he means that there's no government-currency involved at all. So a cell phone transaction involving your bank account would be cash.

This is why I try to avoid economic discussions with bitcoiners.