And here this post is modded +5 Informative but somewhere else it's modded +5 Funny

Sounds like jury duty. Which was (and still is) one of the best technologies to fight tyranny.

The Nazi's what understood quite well? (check your possessive apostrophe)

I'll let someone else make the appropriate joke about a grammar nazi comment about real Nazis. So to feel like I contributed something serious to the discussion, I'll simply add that, whatever they understood about SIGINT, the Nazis were pwned by the English-speaking world too.

I agree that the first order effects should assume that the system generally works, but it is also important to consider second order effects of the inevitable failures that will occur, and whether the consequences of those failures are acceptable.

However, even the secondary effects of a loser pays system aren't too bad. It would add some Type I error for a (hopefully much larger) reduction in Type II error, which probably makes the system a little better overall.

The aqueduct?

Slight correction - it's a 2.4L engine...to run the fuel pump.

This is why I do not like kickstarter-like equity investments. Kickstarter and Indiegogo should give away free shirts that say "I was an initial investor in a billion dollar company and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." If somebody puts their hard earned money at risk, they should reap the equity-like rewards. Then they can use the proceeds to buy whatever thing the entrepreneurs are selling.

The USPS is a bad comparison to make. The USPS pension fund is a public pension fund, whereas social security (OASDI) and Medicare are social insurance programs. There are good reasons why the accounting for these should be different. In fact, the issue that you point out with the USPS pension fund arose when they forced a public pension plan (the USPS) to check for actuarial balance similar to a social insurance program (the 75 year long-term actuarial balance), instead of the simple employer accounting basis under GASB 68 (which is similar to the FAS 87/88 standard for private firms)

I am not arguing that PAYG is the *worst* accounting for social insurance programs, and in fact I don't think that. There are many good reasons why PAYG with some sort of short term/long term checks of actuarial balance *can* be appropriate measures for the health of a social insurance plan. However, OP said OASDI and Medicare are in SURPLUS, full stop, and I think that greatly oversimplifies the issues involved.

Disclaimer: I am an actuary, but no longer in active practice.

Only by a very limited definition of surplus, used by what is called pay-as-you-go accounting. Under accrual accounting ("generally accepted accounting principles"), which the government does not have to follow, SS and Medicare did not run surpluses. The difference is this: under pay as you go, as long as the cash that you pay to beneficiaries during the year is less than the cash taken in by the taxes taken in during the year, you are balanced. However, under accrual accounting, the things that must be balanced are not the cash flows, but rather, the promised benefits and the promised taxes.

As an example, If you get a $1000 paycheck at the end of the week, and you spend $900, then you have $100 at the end of the week, and under any definition you had a surplus. But if you get a $1000 paycheck, and you spend $1050, you did not run a surplus (and probably depleted some of your bank account). Lastly, if you get a $1000 paycheck, then you spend $1050, and you borrow $150 from a friend, you have $100 cash left over at the end of the week. But because you have promised $150 to your friend, which is more than the $100 cash you have left over, you have not run a surplus. That is the situation SS and Medicare have found themselves in - sound from a pay as you go basis, but not promising to tax enough/promising too many benefits to be sound on an accrual basis

Agreed. Between Django's built in admin interface and mysql editors like adminer you can do an awful lot without any code at all. And a web interface has the advantages that it 1) is easy to run dev/production environments, 2) is easy to make changes and ensure that everyone is using them, 3) runs on obsolete equipment (anything that can run a browser), 4) mobile/tablet ready, and 5) scalable.

But also important, while other people are arguing that spreadsheets and access and the like could be run better by non-technical people, I think it is more accurate to say those could be run poorly by non technical people. If the business needs require db storage and a proper GUI, then the project will always need someone who can run a db and gui, not "someone who knows some excel." Maybe you even give somebody the opportunity to develop some DBA skills, or a little python, and you have probably done as much good for that person as the charity itself.

Lastly, in our day jobs, we spend enough time doing things we don't want to do, the way we don't want to do it, because the people who sign our check want it this way. You are volunteering your time and expertise, and if you think the right way to do it ("right" from a technical or moral/ethical perspective) is to not use MS products then that's how you do it. If somebody else thinks spreadsheets and vba are the way to do it then they should get in contact with your charity and do it themselves.

Wish I had mod points today. Best comment I've read in a while

What if a country's "actual problem" is that the head of the country wants the land, money, resources, or extermination of a neighbor? It seems like these have been much more common reasons for war throughout history than perceived threats or misunderstandings

tl;dr
Higher demand services can end up costing less than low demand services for high fixed cost, low marginal cost services with competition. You see dynamic is what you see in the airlines all the time. It's why popular trips (e.g. NYC to florida) are much cheaper than less popular trips (e.g. Cincinnati to Houston)

Correct, there is no person saying "we need to reduce are revenue because we are making too much profit", but in the long run they *do* converge. Other companies will move in to undercut the incumbents if there is too much of a difference between revenue and costs (high profit), thus driving costs up and revenues down for both; hence the production costs and what consumers pay will have a relationship (namely they will get closer and reduce profit). I alluded to why in my earlier post but maybe I did not explain myself enough.

Making up numbers, if ESPN costs $5 billion per year to produce, and revenue maximizing pricing occurs at 50 million households at $200/year. So ESPN makes $10bn in revenue, for $5bn profit.

Big Media Company (BMC) looks at this and wants to make that kind of profit. So they build a studio, hire some people who know how to produce news, sports, and look good in front of a camera, and for $5bn, creates a network that looks a lot like ESPN. They charge, say, $175/month, and can attract maybe 40 million households, for $7bn in earnings and 2bn profits. ESPN maybe has 15 million subscribers (some people are big enough fans and will subscribe to both) still at $200/yr, and makes $3bn revenue and therefore has a loss of $2bn.

ESPN has to make a decision of whether they want to undercut this new rival. Let's say they do, and price at $150 next year. Maybe they get 45 million households, for earnings of $6.75bn and $1.75 profits. This price war goes back and forth until one of these companies drops out, probably at a cost of something like $80/month, with 60mm subscribers. Basically, the price war ends when even if one of them got all of the subscribers, it would leave a modest profit. If costs were only $3bn, the price war could continue until they were charging even less, say $50/month, with 65 million subscribers.

I think we are talking about a short run/long run difference. In the short run, where everything is a fixed cost and variable costs are almost 0 (infinite supply as you say) you are right; the a la carte price will be a simple revenue maximizing price of what the market will bear. But in the long run, where even the production costs are variable (e.g. Disney could choose to shut down ESPN), the average long term cost to all consumers who subscribe has to be at least equal to the costs of having the station exist, so the cost to each individual is lower the more people there are to distribute those overhead costs with. If the station can't cover its overhead in the long run then it will not exist.

Your intuition about a gameshow rerun channel being cheap is right, but not because of the low demand for it. Rather, it will be cheap because the overhead will be cheap. Of course, if demand was so low that it couldn't even cover that small overhead then it wouldn't be a station for long. For example, if there was a station that tried to appeal to the niche (American) audience for, say, cricket and formula 1, it probably could not survive because the costs would be high (since they would have to pay the worldwide price for acquiring the content), but the number of people who would be interested would be small, so the cost to each individual would have to be high.

However, if a popular channel like ESPN tried to raise its price very high, then competitors would quickly be drawn in (e.g. Fox Sports Channel, local/regional sports channels) to bring those prices down to the long-run marginal cost of acquiring its content (or some fairly close substitute).

The funny thing about a la carte is that it works the opposite of the way most people who think about it believe it will work. A channel has very high fixed costs and overhead so it is likely that that the more demand there is for a station, the cheaper it will be per person, and the fewer people who want to watch a station, the more expensive it will be. So a high demand station like ESPN will probably be very reasonably priced, despite having a high cost to produce.