They might be a minority, but there's still enough of them so as to pose a threat to education in the US. Or have you not noticed all the "Intelligent" Design proponents that have been having success watering down the science curriculum.
Has anyone actually adopted it in their curriculum and started teaching it?
Freedom of speech along with all the 24 hour news networks can make reality seem a little more warped from what it actually is...
Could could you remind me exactly when this country, or for that matter, any other were not xenophobic gits?
Exactly. Everyone does that. It's human nature to ascribe more weight to those that have more in common with you.
But, that doesn't stop those that like to bash Americans for it. I'm not saying that's not an issue. I just think it's funny that FIFA has to run commercials during soccer matches to remind people to not be racists while euros continue to talk shit about the US. I'm pretty sure FIFA's primary audience there isn't Americans.
Even a real conservative like James Madison, a Founder, wanted a national, government-run university. In 1815 he called for such a university before Congress, saying that it would be "a nursery of enlightened preceptors."
Everyone that learns what the "system" teaches them would be considered enlightened by those in the system.
Sure, we want people to be educated. And, it would be nice to be able to trust a government to do that. But, we know that government education in North Korea isn't exactly the best in the world. The question is, in a system where all are educated by the system, how can you tell when you should trust what you're being told? How do you know when you've moved from Madison's dream to Kim Jong Il's?
Sure, you can tell a difference now. But, you didn't come up in that system (I'm assuming). You were lucky enough to have leaders that argue. But, since the leaders are arguing, the system is always a compromise. That's fine if it's a discussion about algebra or geometry being taught first. When it's evolution vs "intelligent design" it gets to being a bit sub-optimal with respect to outcomes. Of course, that's the standard problem with political solutions. Anything created is a compromise... all too often with small-minded people.
Just in the past two weeks I've heard "conservative" voices in the media talking about how "college isn't for everyone"...
If you don't believe that college isn't for everyone, you don't understand the problem with our educational system. It's the one-size-fits-all system that is the problem. We tell kids that they have to go to college to be successful, and what happens when I kid realizes he doesn't have what it takes to make it through college? Since they can't make it the only way they've been told that works, they just give up on learning anything.
Equality is an illusion. It only exists in mathematics. People have different aptitudes and interests. If we only give them one option, many will be left out.
Yes it's a complex system, but that doesn't mean we have to understand every last detail before we take action. We've known for over a hundred years that CO2 is transparent to visible light and absorbs infrared. Therefore, adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause warming (allowing sunlight in, but reducing the amount of heat radiated back to space). The only scientific question left is how much warming, where and when. The most natural (and safest) assumption is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will change climate. "We should wait until we perfectly understand this insanely complex system" is not a rational response.
People can differ over whether they think climate change will be a bad thing, or whether they should have to pay to prevent bad things from happening to other people or the natural environment, but there is no question we are causing climate change. People who argue otherwise are blinding themselves for their own convenience.
And, in the end, it doesn't even matter.
It will take so much coordinated individual and political activity to actually do anything purported to be a "solution" to the "problem" that we're virtually certain to find out what is actually going to happen when we don't act to change things. Scream all you like. Kyoto is dead, as is any other similar type of agreement.
Until people actually see Manhattan underwater, apathy is going to be the answer to climate change. And, I'm not sure that it'll be much different then, either.
Have a nice day!
I'm afraid it's not the regulation. After all, how would environmental regulations actually contribute to rising CEO salaries? No, it was the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 that started the CEO wage spiral. You see back when a CEO paid 70% of his wages in taxes there was little reason to pay him more than the minimum to get the CEO up to that tax bracket. Paying the CEO $1 million dollars isn't much better than paying him $500,000, if he's only going to get to keep $150,000 of that extra $500,000. The lower the top income tax rate gets the more incentive there is for CEOs to demand higher salaries because they get to keep more of it. Because most boards and investors believe in the magic bullet, the CEOs tend to get huge wage increases at the expense of the rank and file employees because the CEO is perceived to have more impact on the company's bottom line. Most boards believe if they pay more for a CEO, they get a better quality CEO despite the evidence that the relationship between pay and quality rarely holds true.
So, it's the regulation?
You can call it what you like, but government rules that affect the market (which is what you are saying happened) are effectively the same thing. Whatever the rules happen to be, you can guarantee the guys at the top will milk it for what it's worth. And, you can guarantee that the more involved the government is, the more it's going to be worth.
But oooh, that free market fueled cheap shit at Wal-Mart is just so tantalizing! How can you not buy it?
Exactly. Many people aren't in IT or other similarly well-paid job. Every cent makes a difference in their lives.
Of course, it's always easy for those of us living comfortably to argue for changes that would drive the prices up because we can afford to make more "responsible" choices for our environment. The extra few bucks here and there won't really affect our lives in a significant way. Screw the little guys.
Of course, we can always force the big companies to pay their workers more. They'd never be able to avoid that by going somewhere else without wage rules.
I don't have time to market my book: I am involved in other things that are more important.
I understand the common understanding of what the term "marketing" means is promotion. However, marketing is more than just promotion. Product development, from determining the features of the product (including it's name) to what products is competes against and how to price the product, is also part of marketing. Logistics of product delivery is a marketing function in the technical sense.
So, you may not be promoting your book. But, if you've developed it and have it available for sale, you are marketing it.
I think if Nasa was only allowed to carry projects from start to finish... and not successive radical change in direction mid projects... lots more cool stuff could come out. The problem, every time a new administration comes out big buzz words are introduced to completely change the direction, forcing many times redevelopment of the wheel.
You can say that about anything the government does. It's the consequence of choosing a political entity to do things. Every time the power shifts, a new set of cronies have to be rewarded and the original purpose for getting involved is lost as "we the people" get tired of keeping an eye on what they're actually up to.
I'm not saying large, private organizations are much better. But, you do tend to see less directional churn than in politics. That tends to happen when everyone doesn't get an equal say. Democracy is nice, but it's terribly inefficient. Thus, NASA will never produce what an organization with those sort of resources could without the political influence.
The simple solution is to repeal NAFTA and restore our tariffs. "Protectionism" is only an ugly word until you realize that protectionism was actually one of the two pillars of the US economy in the 19th century (the gold standard being the other) and the growth we saw in the 19th century was substantially higher than what we saw in the 20th century. Even the value of the dollar itself went up 50% between 1800 and 1900.
What exactly were we protecting ourselves from in the 19th century?
You're comparing the rapid economic growth of the industrial revolution to the growth of the established economy we have today. All emerging economies grow at a rapid pace that declines as the economy matures. Of course, you're going to grow at insane rates when you shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy.
So, no real world competition (how long did it take UPS to ship from China in the 19th century?) plus a rapid shift from farming to industrial production is what caused the growth. Protectionism didn't even come into play, because whether it was practiced or not would have given virtually the same result.
And, I'm not sure how it really matters to not allow companies to produce overseas. American manufacturing produces more today than ever. It's still the US's largest industry. The jobs aren't there because of technological and productivity improvements, not overseas production.
The Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 is the big one, but it requires a Justice Department willing to use it.
The FED also had the power to back the Bank of the United States to keep it from failing, but it didn't. And, then we ended up with runs on banks at the Great Depression. So, what good is giving government power when it never uses it when or in the way that it should?
We can have the best laws there could be, but government also has to execute. The record seems to indicate that's a big part of the problem. So, it doesn't matter if we've got the law right. That's just the beginning. And, the end seems to always be big companies with more power and politicians getting their share of the pie.
The main thing is to not just throw up our hands and say, "Oh well, big business is just going to continue to do what they're doing so we might as well just go along with it." Instead, we need to be aware of which candidates, which bills in congress, are going to make it worse and which will make it better. Then, we do what people have been doing for centuries: get up in the politicians' faces and let them know we support them if they do right or will work to defeat them if they do wrong. If a bunch of half-bright crackers with teabags stapled to their meshback caps can scare the shit out of the Republican Party, my guess is that the rest of us can also bring a little pressure to bear.
I'm not throwing up my hands and giving up. I'm just taking an honest look at the history of government regulation. The record is full of examples of government gaining more regulatory power and big business benefiting disproportionately. I honestly am not aware of any situation where that hasn't been the case.
But, we still have a quasi-religious fervor when it comes to praying for the government to protect us. Never mind that corporations are a creation of government. Never mind that the industries we complain about and have the most problems with are the most regulated. Never mind that government involvement always ends up being the tool of the corporations instead of the little guys.
And, I'd love to think that politicians could be kept in check, but the facts don't seem to bear that out. Over 90% of incumbents are reelected to congress. And, people for the most part are too apathetic to pay attention enough to make good choices. Other than the occasional temper tantrum, voters only care about the appearance of something happening.
Government doesn't get held accountable.
Do you have an example of anything that is regulated "correctly"?
Admittedly there aren't many successful cases to point you towards. However I would say that mobile phones in the UK are a good example.
I'm not that knowledgeable about UK regulations (other than the occasional horror story that pops up around here periodically), so I can't speak to that specifically. You did touch primarily on the choice aspects of it, though, highlighting the network portability. Is the entire gamut of mobile regulation in the UK without issue?
But, to go back to your first sentence, what does that say about the nature of regulation? It seems that the inevitable conclusion is we can have things regulated or not regulated and big business is going to take advantage of it regardless. So, the real question is whether we're better off with the government being involved in market decisions or not. And, bearing in mind that the entire existence of corporations is due to government involvement in the market, it would appear that if the government gets completely out of the way, we no longer have the threat of big corporations taking advantage of people. We just have people that can be held liable if they violate someone's rights, rather than a non-person entity that just has to pay tribute to it's government creator.
This means that the argument that a lack of regulation is the same as a free system is a flat-out lie. It necessarily implies that corporations will never engage in monopolistic rent-seeking, which is clearly false.
You do realize that corporations are a creation of government, right? So, unless the government totally gets out of the market, meaning no more such thing as the artificial, government created entities called corporations, you are absolutely correct. We need more regulation because the government has already been too involved. But, where does that end? How much control would you like to give to someone so that they can take care of the problems that they keep creating with the control you give them?
Name an industry that you have problems with that isn't regulated. Why is it the industries that people continuously complain about are the one's that are the most regulated? Is that just a coincidence?
In any case the answer is "NO!" Vital resources should be regulated by the government because the government, for all its flaws, is ultimately answerable to the people and private companies have shown again and again they put their profits first and do great harm to society in pursuit of that, whether it be by dumping poison in our nation's rivers, gouging individuals using monopolies, Misusing money put into banks with risky investments, or leveraging resources to influence politics for profit.
What evidence to you have that the government is ultimately answerable to the people and not their corporate donors? And, even with regulation all of those things have happened. So, what exactly are we getting with all this "regulation"?
A better question isn't if the government should regulate things, but "Why are we still letting private companies and foreign nations" influence our politics through campaign contributions, lobbying, and political adverts when the vast majority of individuals thing it should be illegal?"
Could the answer be that the government also has self-interest? Could it be that by capping individual donations and allowing corporations unlimited donations the government doesn't have to worry about individuals? Could it be that the assumption that the government can be accountable to individuals is virtually baseless in reality?
There is no such thing as total deregulation--the choice is about who gets to regulate and how much say you and I get in it.
So, you think big companies colluding with the government gives us more say? Name an example of a regulated industry where that has happened.
In an environment of "the customer is always right," the market can be trusted to deliver exactly what is in the customers' best interests without any form of outside interference. In an environment of telco monopolies, multi-year contracts, terms which the provider can change at will, and more; it becomes necessary to restrict what providers can and cannot do because the customers are left powerless other than as voters who tell the government what they want.
But, the telcos are already heavily regulated. Why do we still have problems?
Name an industry that you have problems with that isn't regulated. Why is it the industries that people continuously complain about are the one's that are the most regulated? Is that just a coincidence?
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?
