being assholes is the america way
Now, now; that's a feature of humanity that's spread quite evenly throughout all societies. Yes, it's the American way, but it's also the British way and the Italian way and the Iranian way and the Chinese way and the Tahitian way and
Americans have no particularly valid claim on assholeness (assholicity? assholitude?). Look around yourself, and if you don't see any, it's probably because it's you.
Over here in the US, the fascist conservatives equate anything not as fascist as them to be socialists.
Actually, here in the US not one person in a million can tell you anything at all about what fascism stood for. The term is now just one of a growing list of political insult terms with no actual content.
Of course, the fraction of Americans who can actually define socialism or liberalism or any other -ism isn't much larger than one in a million. Such terms are really just the modern equivalent of tribal names. You're expected to hate anyone with a label different from yours, but you're not expected to actually know the meaning of any of the labels. Once you understand this situation, American political rhetoric becomes much more comprehensible.
Ridiculous? As a pilot I don't want people's toys flying around in my airspace. Hit a plane and there's a real chance you'll kill someone.
If you're a pilot who's "airspace" includes a volume in which a fireworks display is scheduled, please informs us of that fact, because I don't think I'd ever want to be a passenger in a plane controlled by a pilot like you. The possibility that your plane might hit a drone would be the least of my worries.
Read about the new ridiculous rules the FAA imposed about drones...
Until some moron flys one into the path of a commercial airliner, small plane, or helicopter, and people die - than it's "why isn't the FAA doing something about this?"
Rules won't stop someone from doing that because it's obviously intended to try to hurt someone. I say try because in a battle between a jet engine with the power to push 400 tons of steel into the sky VS a drone I'm going to put my money on the jet engine lasting long enough for them to turn around and land again.
Wait; there were jet aircraft flying through the fireworks display's volume? How did the drone miss getting a picture of that? That'd have been really fun to watch, especially when the fireworks started hitting the airplane.
(Given that there was a fireworks display going on in that airspace at the time, I'm kinda doubtful that there were any pilots in the area who weren't well aware of them. And I also sorta doubt that there were any children running around under the fireworks. That's usually strongly discouraged at fireworks displays, and this one was over water.
Is the presumption then that natural market forces (ie, not regulations from governmental forces) will prevent the employers from either colluding against employees or from buying each other out?
The presumption is that due to differing currencies between markets, with such small governments, there will be natural monopolies or oligarchies of single industrymen and maybe an apprentice or two. And that the control will be social- you are not likely to cheat a neighbor that you have to continue to live with.
The last part, which I put in bold, seems overly optimistic to me. I'm not sure that social pressure was ever a solid deterrent for cheating one's neighbors.
Now whether separate currencies will help to suppress it is another matter. I'm not sure though how a large country such as the US, which presently has one currency, could realistically split up into a large number of city-states where each has their own. The division of the country does not seem that outlandish but the division of the currency seems like a big problem.
It would seem that you would eventually end up with markets where > 90% of the population is involved in food production or trades that exist to aid in the same. To me that seems to operate counter to the types of gains in efficiency that we have tended to celebrate in the past century or so.
Yes, and that's the point. Efficiency reduces the number of jobs available drastically, and centralizes ownership of first level maslow industries such as food, shelter, clothing. This is a great thing for the few centralized aristocrats, but a negative thing for consumers and workers.
I'm not sure that the loss of efficiency is a net gain for many people. While it would put a lot of people to work would it not also leave a lot of people to find themselves in jobs with no demand? If everyone is producing food, shelter, and clothing, then what happens to the demand for computer programmers (for example)? To me it seems that you are calling for a deterioration of society as we know it (I don't mean simply by reduction of that one job that I specified but others as well).
what happens if no insurance companies want to offer a plan that does that?
The solution that Alito cited that was in place for religious non-profit and church organizations was for the insurance company to be required to pay for the drugs out of their own pockets and establish a separate pool of money for doing so, that the religious institutions would not pay into. The government considered this to be acceptable because the drugs are cheaper than pregnancy care so the insurance company would save money.
I would think that the insurance companies would object to that as it interferes with their right to unlimited profit. Forcing insurance companies to pay for something is clearly "Un-American" as we have learned since 2001 (and possibly earlier). Even if it comes under the guise of helping the insurance companies to "save money" they could save even more money by not paying for it at all and forcing the customers to pay for it instead.
However I would think that the insurance companies would even more so object to this curious new mandatory bifurcation of services. The SCOTUS apparently is now requiring the insurance companies to offer twice as many plans as they intended to offer - one version of each plan that covers contraception and one version of each that does not. This also may well make a larger billing nightmare for providers who have to know when to send a full bill to an insurance plan and when not to. And once other religious groups find other services that they object to (Ginsburg mentioned amongst other objections to blood transfusions, antidepressants, and pork-derived products that some religions hold as being critical) the problem becomes even bigger.
Once insurance cards mention one's religious affiliation as a result I would see other problems arising.
"No matter where you go, there you are..." -- Buckaroo Banzai
