And that's not rationing? If you have money, you can get it. If you don't, die. That's pretty severe rationing in my book.

That must be why the CIA ranks the US 51st in life expectancy, well behind almost every European nation.....

There is rationing here in the US along economic lines. Try getting medications or medical care with no insurance and see how well that works for you.

Yes, this.

It was actually pretty funny. Our team had cultivated our clients and we were quite profitable. We got bought by this other company with the bonus plan. Pretty much all of us quit within a year.

At bonus time, one of our more outspoken engineers opened his bonus envelope, marched into the manager's office, slapped it on his desk, and yelled: "What am I supposed to do with this? Take my wife to McDonalds?" I hadn't laughed that hard since.

I worked for a company that based your annual bonus on the amount of overtime you put in. Not productive, mind you, just hours. At the end of the year, they would tally up the hours you worked, and those with the most hours at their desk got the biggest bonuses.

Being new to this, I asked my boss: "If I do everything right, and my project never needs rework, and my clients are happy, and all my projects are profitable, and I go home on time every day, will I get a bonus?" "No."

"If I screw up, my projects are late and over budget, and I'm working a lot of hours because my clients are pissed at the low quality of work I do, and my projects constantly lose money because I'm an idiot, will I get a bonus?" "Yes."

True to form, my bonus for the year was $50, in spite of being one of the most profitable employees in the organization. I left shortly thereafter.

Yeah, that. Really, if you have to ask a bunch of strangers on the internet for advice I'd wonder about your skills. Unless you want to see if there's some cool tech that maybe you missed.

My sister and her husband are full-time sailors, right now somewhere in the south pacific. They went through a lot of gear testing and research before building their boat. They have picked out pretty much everything themselves; I would not trust gear on a voyage like that that i have not personally test.

Me, I backpack, and do the same thing. Everything in my pack has been tested under controlled conditions, I carry backups (map + compass to back up the GPS), backup stove if the primary fails, etc.

Not only do you have to have the right gear, you also have to know how to use it when tired, stressed, in the dark and in adverse weather.

Now if you're asking about unnecessary gear (entertainment, etc) then I can understand. But basic survival gear?

was in leaving a job I loved to take a job that sucked but paid a lot more. 2 years of that job almost killed me.

Now on the other hand, if you're really serious, take a handful of people in the new company out to lunch. Buy them pizza, and talk to them. About life, interests, girlfriends, families, and see if they're a good fit. Don't talk to your bosses, talk to your peers in the new company, and the people who would work for you. That's the people who can help you make the decision.

They're also very calorie dense; each MRE is about 2,000 calories. They're made for rangers toting 80# rucks 12 hours a day, not wannabes sitting in the living room.

MREs are OK for a few days, but after that they will mess with your internal plumbing too they are so loaded with preservatives.

You're much better off buying the semi-instant rice, noodles, and potatos at the grocery store, and paying attention to the nutrition information.

unreel a fiber optic cable to a surface station, much like a human climber with a rope. Not at all difficult.

I wonder about that.

Imagine the black eye to teh USADA if they lay out all their evidence, and it amounts to hearsay with no real proof, and the UCI thumbs its nose at them.

Lance retains his victories, pretty much clears his reputation, USADA looks like a bunch of wankers, and Lance still has his life.

The guy never gives up. There's a backstory to this that's not being told.

If each claim had to be accompanied by a $500 bond, to be forfeited in case the clam was false, the abuses would stop. The amount is irrelevant; the work required to post the bond would eliminate robo-claiming. It's illegal to robosign mortgages now; how about making it illegal to robosign all legal claims?

You gotta wonder about the stability of the whole banking/investment/trading when a single bug can jack a major exchange around....

The problem is this:

The *IAA and their friends have set up a thicket of rules that result in a legal, purchased copy being *less* valuable to me as a customer than a "stolen" copy. Further, they have made complying with the rules almost impossible. If I play my radio where others can hear it, that's a "public performance" and I need a license. If I play music in my class, I need a different license for that. If I want to complie a playlist (ie copy tracks off a cd and make my own cd) I need a license for that too. Ech of these licenses is sold by a different entity, and the process for getting one takes weeks.

So "stealing" is much, much easier, and *everyone* does it. I mean *everyone*. Even Grandma Moses.

So if the *IAA were to simplify their rules, and actaully ask their customers what adds value, they might survive.

But the result of their stupidity is that there is now an entire generation that has grown up pirating music, and sees nothing wrong with it, in fact, there is value added to a pirated product. It can be freely shared, it doesn't have DRM, it doens't have those FBI warngins, it can be played anywhere in the world. That's makes it more valuable than a restricted product.

So let's privatize all infrastructure; water, sewer, electricity, roads, comm.... Roads? If you live in a rural area, chances are your "share" of the road in front of your house cost more than you will make in a lifetime. Care to pony up?

Also, most rural areas in the US get tons and tons and tons of Federal subsidies for almost everything. Look at the budget allocations.

Because "free market" is a lousy way to provide essential services. If you do, then only high profit neighborhoods will have affordable power. Most rural communities are heavily subsidized by their denser neighbors.

If this was a free market, then utilities would pull out of poor and low profit neighborhoods.

I know; I work for a utility. We have neighborhoods where we will never, ever, "make a profit", because we had to sink so much into the infrastructure that at our normal rates we will never make our investment back.

On the whole we're "profitable" - as profitable as a public corporation can be. But we could be raking in the big bucks if we were private and allowed to abandon "poorly performing" or "unprofitable" neighborhoods.

So your "free market" would take us back to the days when the rich had power, clean water, sewer, and internet, and the poor lived in squalor and filth.