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Comment Loans (Score 1) 457

This sort of incentive should be introduced through loan programs rather than direct subsidy. The government should not be tinkering with tuition prices directly as that should be decided by cost and demand. Rather, the government should look at its loan programs as an investment. The types of degree programs that the Florida government wants to push are a good investment so they should work to make it easier to get loans for those, at the expense of loans provided to students that are less likely to help the economy and may also have difficulty paying their loans back later.

Comment Re:Bad Risk Assessment (Score 1) 1025

I think it is bad risk assessment at it's core (very few people really understand risk assesment anyway), combined with misinformation, but what really drives intellegent people remain anti-vac, even after being presented with the facts, is emotion and subconsious fear of accountability when it comes to something bad happening to their children. Given two possible outcomes: A. They decide to vaccinate and their child becomes severely ill due to an allergic reaction, they will blame themselves. B. They do not vacinnate and their child becomes severely ill from a disease they could have been vaccinated for, they don't see that as being as much their fault. Even if A is significantly less likely than B and harm to their child is equal, it is still seen as a significantly worse outcome and risk because it will have happend as a direct result of something they chose to do. Probably most anti-vax beliefs go back to poor understanding and/or missinformation, but among intellegent educated people who are anti-vax (and i've talked to several such people) the main cause always comes down to a cowardly (though perhaps subconsious) avoidance of accountability.

Comment Handling Arbitrage (Score 2) 443

HFT exists soley to exploit arbitrage. There is no benifit to this, these trades would happen a split second later anyway. HFT is just jumping in the middle of them to take its cut without contributing anything. So instead of trying to come up with ways to discourage this activity such as a trasaction tax, maybe it would be better to just have the exchange resolve these arbitrage situations automatically either to the benifit of the bid or ask or splitting the difference.

Comment Re:Same problem here in the US (Score 1) 626

I've been toying with this exact idea for a while now. If cap gains and income taxes were increased for it to be revenue neutral, this would raise the same amount of money and actually reduce unproductive allocation of resources (corporations spend an awful lot of money just to reduce their federal tax burden). Corporations will move around to dodge taxes much more readily than their shareholders. It's the corporations that create jobs, not the shareholders. Let the shareholders shoulder the tax burden. If corporations react to this by reinvesting the money internally (hiring, research, expansion) instead of paying it out to the shareholders, oh darn. I'm a little worried about unintended consequences such as small business getting crushed.

Comment Tragedy of the Commons (Score 1) 209

I lean libertarian, but where hard core right wing libertarians get off course on the subject of environmentalism is that nobody can 'own' the atmosphere. Thus if it is not protected via laws and regulations, it is sure to fall victim to the tragedy of the commons. Further, it is shared between countries making it an even bigger problem that cannot be solved or even mitigated by the market.

Comment CFLs (Score 1) 990

I have converted to mostly CFLs in my house over the years. I only buy the instant on ones. I usually stock up when they are on a good sale, so I get them at a decent price. About a year ago, i started collecting the burnt out ones in a drawer in my garage to be disposed of properly all at once, saving time. So far I have only collected 2 burnt out CFLs. I have found that putting a CFL in an inclosed light fixture with an incandecent will shorten it's life substantially.

Comment $3,000,000,000 (Score 1) 248

Keeping the samples around in case they are needed to produce vacines seems like a reasonal policy to me. But 3 billion dollars seems like an awful lot of money to spend preparing for an unlikely scenario, one of perhaps thousands of unlikely scenarios.

Comment Weeding out the talent (Score 1) 997

I worked for a small upstart software company where they decided to mandate that everyone work half day Saturdays. Over time most of the best developers left, including myself. I honestly don't know how well they are doing now, I'm not sure why companies sometimes feel compelled to drive away anyone who has the skills to get a job elsewhere.

Comment Prosperity (Score 1) 604

Environmentalism is a byproduct of prosperity. If people were living at a sustenance level they would not care about the environment at all. There is a nearly direct coloration between prosperity and economic freedom. A more socialist type system (less economic freedom) will tend to lead to less prosperity which will eventually lead to less concern for environmental stewardship. A balance must be found as regulation is certainly needed to keep the BPs of the world under control, but sway to far the other direction and you end up with far worse.
Idle

Iron Baby 139

When Iron Baby wants O's, Iron Baby gets O's.

Comment Boycott? (Score 1) 359

If we factor the devastation of the gulf into every gallon of gasoline purchased from BP gas stations, it suddenly becomes worth driving down the street and even paying more to buy from someone else. Someone could also do some research to determine what refineries buy oil from BP and what gas stations get gas from those refineries. I'm envisioning a Google maps app to help distribute this info in a useful fashion. Granted most likely other oil companies are not being much more responsible than BP, but this could be an opportunity to effect the market and make safety and environmental stewardship more economically appealing to those in the industry.

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