It's made from cotton, which is sustainable, while polymers are made from fossil fuels. So, nah, I don't think it's time we stopped ;)

I don't know the detailed numbers, but it may be it did actually save money in Canada because the Canadian dollar bill was of poorer quality/value. The US dollar bill can stay in circulation considerably longer than any other bill in the world.

All true, but we also have the best dollar bill in the world. That is, it holds up for far longer than any other, long enough that even though each bill is more expensive to print it is more valuable than others in the world. From the Planet Money story:

"As to the question of why it made sense for other countries to switch from small denomination bills to coins, the answer seems to be: Their bills did not last nearly as long as U.S. bills. The Federal Reserve says typical lifetimes of bills from those countries were just three to six months."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150976150/should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill

I can't remember for certain, but my sense was that they were taking into account the value of the coin based on the use of similarly valued coins in other nations. Can anyone comment on this?

Frankly I'd love to see dollar coins more in circulation, and I do use them whenever I can get my hands on them, but it seems like I'm not very representative. Regardless of how people would react or adapt to the dollar coin if made more available, I've just been dumbfounded at the utter lack of effort to actually get the coin out there. I listened to all of the Planet Money episodes about the dollar coins, particularly those piling up in government warehouses, and I couldn't help wondering where the signs were in banks to let people know they could ask for dollar coins. More than half the time when I request them at the bank someone has to go looking for them, and at least a quarter of the time they can't find any, or any more than a dozen or so. I mean, maybe people don't like the coins, but it's silly to use the argument that no one is asking for them to say they're unpopular if most people are simply unaware of them.

I'm surprised no one posted this sooner. Mod parent up informative! This is a vital part of the conversation. And I even like having some dollar coins around.

Fair enough. I certainly wouldn't argue that it is purely an insurance program, but it clearly does provide a form of insurance. It seems to me that it is the insurance aspect that has provided the basis for the argument not to privatize the program.

It's insurance against not having saved up enough for retirement, or for living longer than your savings could cover. This could be because you never made enough to save enough, you had bad luck (like a market downturn, investment gone bad, etc), or just poor judgement. That doesn't mean it is not a pay-as-you-go retirement plan as well, but there is certainly a very large insurance component. One might argue that we should then be means testing, which might be worthwhile, but others argue against it for strategic reasons as it could reduce the program's support.

While I would not completely rule out your scenario, let me go into more detail about why I see it as being far less likely. While an extremist Christian with sufficient support within the military (as opposed to some other type of extremist who probably does not have such a power base) may support the structure of our government, such a person/group might be spurred to action by a liberal administration that has held power for long enough and/or holds sufficient majorities in Congress. I would imagine these extremists acting in the interest of "restoring the Christian nation to the ideals of the Christian founders" or something like that.

On the other hand you have those in the military who have a better grasp on the Constitution and our nation's history and ideals. At some point in the future our government may degrade the system and its adherence to the Constitution sufficiently to provoke a coup of the sort you'd like to see. However we are nowhere near such a scenario because many people still believe that we can fix the government through traditional means (elections and political pressure). Moreover, there is great risk in a coup and so it would only be undertaken by such people in the scenario in which it is fully clear that traditional means will fail AND the current administration is clearly surpassing its Constitutional authority in an irreversible manner.

A coup would result in a standoff between parts of the military and in a divided nation could lead to serious bloodshed and martial law. The unknowns of such a scenario are so great that responsible individuals would be much less likely to make such an attempt compared with those of a more extremist attitude.

Ocean exploration is just as important as space exploration, arguably more so. I'm certainly an advocate of space exploration, but I think the idea of naming a class of research vessels after the man is both a great way to honor him and to recognize his passion for exploration of all sorts, not just space.

Except that those who might conceivably commit a coup are NOT the ones you'd want running things. There are a lot of great people in our military, but there are some really scary people too (I'm specifically thinking of the far right "Christians" like Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley), and the good people would not be the ones to get involved in a coup. Be careful what you wish for.

Mod parent up, even with the ad hominem, and GP waaaaaaay down (overrated). The whole "America is not and was never a democracy" line is tired and stupid. Yes, we know America is not a pure democracy, but it follows democratic ideals and is a democratic republic. And you well know that when someone says "a democracy" that's what they mean. EVERYONE KNOWS THIS!

Yeah, they would. More than likely some in the US government and intelligence services want revenge and more importantly (in their minds) to warn others against doing anything similar in the future. They don't need to extradite him to the US to do this. All they need to do is put some pressure on the Swedes to convict him of something and send him to jail. It's not likely that the US would actually put Assange on trial, give him more exposure to the general public, and make him even more of a martyr. My take is that they're trying to smear him without getting their hands dirty and drawing more attention to the issue (including the details of the leaks and the problems that led to the leak) from those not already paying attention.

You are sorely mistaken. Solar is a far more promising solution to our problems. We have many proven methods of harnessing solar power whereas we have zero ways currently of harnessing fusion. Solar research has been producing regular technological advances while fusion has been and still is "30 years away". The sun provides way more than enough energy for our planet provided we have the technology to take advantage of it, and the way the technology has been advancing I think there is every reason to believe that it will be one of the primary solutions. Best of all, solar will be a distributed and democratizing source of power that you'll be able to put on your car, home, or even your shirt. Some regions will still benefit most from wind, geothermal, or some other source such as tidal, and maybe someday fusion will enter the mix (particularly on any interstellar craft), but that's a looooong way away compared to what we're looking for in the next 30-50 years.

It's hard to tell when someone is just expressing a cynical sentiment and when someone is being completely serious. I do take issue though when people suggest that statistics are lies, largely because I think many people get to thinking that all statistics are meaningless. Statistics are meaningful when properly applied. Statistics are complicated and there are many models because the world is complicated. Different tests are better in different situations, depending on for instance how much you want to trade off power (the likelihood of detecting a real effect) for precision (avoiding false positives), whether you have a large or small sample size, or whether you think there might be interactions between variables. Now it might be the case that someone isn't sure which test to use. Assuming they can't figure out the answer, they can run multiple tests, but if they do then they should control for that by adjusting the p-values of each test accordingly. Ultimately though scientists are human, and they will have competing interests to be honest and to cheat. The key is the process, including forms of peer review, and hopefully some day a venue for publishing negative results, such that there is less pressure to cheat. Profit will always push the needle the other direction though.

Granted Bigby seems to be making that mistake, but I think that when most people say "lobbyist" they really mean "corporate lobbyist". Some people may not understand the difference, and special interests are a problem in any system of government, but corporate special interests are a special problem because corporations (or the associations that represent them) represent only peoples' commercial and financial interests. There is a legal firewall between those interests and all other interests (e.g. environmental, social, civil/human rights).

Non-corporate special interests may be less influential in a direct democracy, but I would certainly disagree with Bigby's claim that lobbyists/special interests are in general the worst problem. That is an incredibly poor generalization.