You are missing some important details that add even further to the bigger idea of what is actually going on at these organizations.

Non-Profits can often have a board and investors that benefit greatly from profits as well, but to a government this distinction is awarded based on either donations to charity or proof that money spent is going to charitable good. Healthcare systems exploit this by totaling up all of the unpaid medical care that they have given out to poor and uninsured people who happen to show up at the emergency room to receive free care. These amounts are put on the books as "charitable good" that they give to the community when the fact of the matter is they are obligated by law and ethics to not turn away people in need of immediate medical care.

So that money they would have written off as a business loss anyway on the taxes they otherwise would still have to pay on the already handsome profits they turn year after. They meet this percentage of total revenue requirement for charitable good and they retain their privileged tax free status operating in pretty much exactly the same way as a for profit corporation.

The funny thing is that with ACA greatly increasing the amount of insured people on the market it will be harder and harder for them to use these dwindling operating losses as charitable good meaning they might actually be at risk of losing their Non-Profit status unless they are able to donate substantial sums of money to charitable organizations. Donation to charity can already be written off from their taxes anyway so they actually stand to lose money and make considerably less profits by serving more insured people and giving less free healthcare from their Emergency Rooms. A funny thing is American Healthcare.

I must say that while I don't consider myself sympathetic to Libertarian ideals, I find your thoughts, experiments and models very intriguing. Thank you for sharing this. As someone who is trapped in the corporate rigamarole for family and financial reasons I found your comparison of communistic centrally planned economies to corporate processes and organization and the shared dysfunctions to be enlightening.

I must also say that I agree with your assessments of the failings of our modern capitalist system and how governmental policies foster monopolies. A market based system with tougher anti-trust regulations could be a potential solution for this and one I would get behind.

On the whole however, it is not logic that makes me skeptical of this as a long term solution but my lack of faith in human nature that such a system could remain uncorrupted. Human nature is such that we present gradual entropy into such a system until it decays into corruption and dysfunction. While human beings as a class will present ignorance, greed, corruption and decay, it is certainly a safer and easier task to find a strong, intelligent, benevolent leader that can achieve all of the goals of the complex system.

Competent totalitarianism I feel is the best that human beings can hope to achieve in a world before post-scarcity. There are a number of such examples throughout history where centrally planned leadership when competent can be HIGHLY effective. Robert E. Lee and his outnumbered, outgunned army nearly winning a statistically unwinnable war. Alexander the Great, a near child, leading less than 50k phalanxes and conquering most of the known world. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt engineering and building a monumental tomb that stands to this day. The United States sending a group of men to the Moon and back.

If such an exceptional authoritarian figure had supreme power and wealth then they would be uncorruptable as there is nothing any of their subjects would have to offer them. They would be an exceptional statesmen or even an exceptional economist out of the passion of the craft. This I believe is the only hope for humanity since there is a statistical percentage if such a person were chosen at random from a pool of competent peoples to fill that role then there is a statistical liklihood that this person might be a huge success and advance humanity. Compare this to the statistical liklihood that a well regulated free market system will eventually erode into corruption, monopolistic control and entropy, 100% of the time according to human history. Only a neo-monarchy can save us.

That problem is easily enough solved. Outsource the development of automated driving software and you shift the liability onto the software vendor. Sure it is more expensive than doing it in house but this reasoning for pushing it to the vendors is the same that we have been seeing in many large corporate organizations in their quest to go 100% vendor supported even though the in-house development teams are far cheaper and tend to have better results.

A thousand times THIS.

My first and only experiences with MyOpenID was for authenticating to StackExchange, but it was quite possibly one of the buggiest and most unreliable services I ever had the displeasure to use. It was nearly a laugh but really a cry. I switched and never looked back. I certainly am not surprised nor am I crying a river over their demise.

You have a very optimistic view on the generous spirit and good nature of humanity. Few elderly would be taken of if there was no social security, most would die on the streets. Social problems will exacerbate and society will suffer.

At the same time you have an incredibly simplistic and pessimistic view on how social security is funded. Certainly more is paid out than what is put in, but the federal government will always have the ability to pay. They may have to print trillions of dollars out of thin air, or quantitatively ease liabilities off the balance sheet, but rest assured it will meet its obligations. Sure inflation will skyrocket, but then that is ultimately the universal tax on people and institutions not just on us but across the world. When the government doesn't have the tax income to pay its obligations then it has to create money which reduces the value of all money. So elderly will not die on the streets and we are a little poorer for it but it really is a necessary evil.

Fifty years of brain washing has people like you believing that you have no power, no voice, and no choices.

Quite the opposite mate.

History has only proved how little power the common really have. The real bane of the last 50 years was that in modern Neo-Conservativism they have managed to convince us that we have power, autonomy and most of all independence. What freedoms we do have are gifted to us.

The American revolution was a war of the rich versus the aristocrats. Most all wars in fact occur because of wealthy or aristocratic dueling factions. Two things are different today than were true back then, for one thing the rich and aristocratic are one in the same as the aristocrats and rich have all become the wealthy merchant class. The second thing is that the wealthy merchants don't feud and duel nearly as much as they used to which has the positive effect of 50 years of world peace not seen in any other time in humanity. The negative effect is that they have all banded together to consolidate their power against their only true enemy, the informed common man in an age of plentiful and cheap information, the only threat to their continued power.

The bottom line is that throughout all of human history there has always been the master and the slave. It is the way of things.

The dirty little secret though is that nobody can put a lien against your property for not paying your medical bills. Sure they can hire debt collectors to harass you, and possibly report you to the credit bureau, but they can't legally take your assets.

Most people start getting into trouble when they try to pay their medical bills at the expense of their mortgage or car payments. Then when you are forced to file bankruptcy the medical debts are realized. If you can service your other debts without any problems then you will never have any real problems with medical bills.

Tell me how governments are preventing the hire of apprentices? Companies are free to hire anybody they want to as long as they abide by labor laws so I am not sure what your complaint here is. Are you upset that the government enforces a minimum wage and that these apprentices would need to be paid a minimum wage? Surely if these apprentices brought any value to your organization at all then they would be equal in value to the cost of the guy making your burger at McDonalds or greeting you at Wal Mart. Any coder, no matter how inexperienced is a bargain at minimum wage.

Thanks for pointing that out, because roman_mir is Foe number 1 on my list. Doesn't surprise me though, for hundreds of years of Conservatism, it has always produced the exact opposite effect of what it claims to solve.

Not an organ, but a body part just the same. My wife was in an accident when she was in high school and already had a complete knee replacement as a result of injuries. It has been over 15 years since and her replacement is causing her loads of pain, and she suddenly developed an allergy to a medication that was helping her tremendously. She is looking at a second replacement next year and due to current medical science, it is only possible to ever have only two total knee replacements in ones lifetime. In 20 years she may not be able to walk anymore. I would do anything to give her back her natural knee so I don't have to see constant unending pain in her eyes anymore.

Possibly jumping into a bad situation on the other hand is everything. One of the worst mistakes of my life was leaving a job I was happy with for what I felt was a company that would have better career growth potential.

It was an epic mistake and the worst job I have ever had, bar none. It was the only time in my life where I seriously considered quitting without having another job lined up. I worked for a miserable psychopath. Sadistic selfish micro-managing boss doesn't even begin to describe him. I found myself waking up in the mornings to go to work and running straight for the bathroom to vomit from intense panic attacks just because I was so nervous about going into work that day.

Fortunately I found something else after only 3 months but I honestly don't regret the experience because I learned an extremely valuable lesson in what aspects make a good job, and what drawbacks are inconsequential or can simply be dealt with. There is no such thing as a perfect job or situation, and I realized how much I appreciate and love my current job despite its obvious drawbacks. I never would have appreciated this place without that experience. Unless you are 110% sure it is a good move, and you are sure that you no longer want to stay at your current job, then don't do it.

I take the bus, 5 minutes to the bus stop, 5 minute wait, 50 minute bus ride, 15 minute drive from parking lot to my home. Overall about 1hr 15 minutes. I live pretty far away from the city, but that affords me the kind of lifestyle that I want. I don't make that much but there are literally no jobs where I live so what little money I have buys me a LOT. I have an enormous home, close to fishing, camping, hiking and state parks, the schools are amazing because the inner city trash doesn't pollute them with ignorance and crime, and the taxes are orders of magnitude lower than what my friends pay to live within 10 minutes of downtown. I don't mind much the 50 minute bus ride because I either sleep or read, or listen to music, or just do whatever the hell I would normally do at home to unwind. All of this and the commuter bus fare is STILL far cheaper than the criminal parking garage rates and the gas+wear/tear on my car. I like Pittsburgh because I get the privacy and outdoor activities I enjoy, with the convenience of well paying CMU tech startups of downtown.

You are making a pretty big leap there because the law on derived works leaves it open for interpretation that any significant improvement on the original patent can be considered a seperate patent.

... he would have gotten a big promotion for increasing shareholder value!

When it comes to effective regulation it is a matter of quality over quantity. The United States has shit tons of meaningless, toothless regulations and others that actually serve to promote cartels and create barriers to entry. We still end up with the same problem and a nation that is about as close to Fascism as it ever was in our history.

So even without regulation we end up with the same problem. Money is power, power molds our government institutions and corrupts our democracies into a putrid facade of what it was intended to be.