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Comment Re: inflation (Score 1) 168

Many Americans educated in Germany will stay and add to the workforce.

Not when they already have US citizenship and can apply for jobs in the US. Pay is far, far, better in the US than it is in Europe. You'd be crazy to take a lower paying job, away from family, in a foreign country, just because that's where you got your degree.

Comment Cost of R&D (Score 1) 176

But the jarring price difference underscores just how out of whack drug prices have become in the U.S.

The jarring price difference come from the cost of R&D. The drug company is trying to recover all the money it spent developing the drug, getting it through human trials, and covering it's ass in case they get sued for missing a side effect. Mr. Oliff is just play for the cost of the raw materials. Pharmaceuticals are like software. Getting a high quality product without bugs / side-effects is hard. Making copies of the finished product is easy.

Comment Re:How about Re-Criminalizing Crime? (Score 2, Insightful) 168

San Francisco gets a lot of conservative hate for a place so close to being an anarcho-capitalist experiment.

San Francisco gets a lot of conservative hate because it's the proving ground for many left wing policies. It's a high tax city, in a high tax state, with possibly the most left wing population in the country. And what do they have so show for all those taxes and left wing government programs? Not much.

That San Francisco has the same violent crime rates as Orlando Florida and Mobile Alabama in itself isn't noteworthy. What makes it noteworthy is that the left keeps pushing for similar policies across the country when the results show those policies just don't work. With the amount time, money, and effort being spent San Francisco it should be an exceptionally nice place to live. But it isn't. It's still no better off than Nashville, Orlando, Mobile, or a dozen other cities that, by comparison, have done little solve problems like crime and homelessness.

If Wallgreens wants to have a store on every block in the Tenderloin, then they will have to pay security guards enough to intervene and stop thefts in progress (stop relying on public resources—police—to run your business).

For decades the left has been saying we need to pay more tax so a bigger better government can solve these problems. And here you are saying "stop relying on public resources" to solve exactly those problems. If San Francisco was a business you'd be suing them for bait and switch.

Comment Re:Absolutely stupid (Score 1) 91

The people aren't paying the insurance is paying for it. And at that price it makes sense whether your insurance is public or private. The current treatment costs $6.4M because they needs transfusions every two to five weeks for the rest of their life. So this will not only give people a better quality of live. But it will save their insurance company / government money as well.

Comment Re:non-compete (Score 2) 52

And this is different from the capitalist system ... in what way exactly?

Capitalist systems grow by increasing productivity, increasing profits by being more efficient. That's why GDP per capita continues to climb.

Communist / command economies aren't driven by profits. So there is no inherent push to be more efficient. And the economy stagnates.

Comment Re: The powers that be... (Score 1, Redundant) 200

Can you cite a single example of a movie that did anything like you describe?

There was a scene that was about 1 minute long where they discussed being non-binary and preferred pronouns. Out of four seasons of material.

You asked for "a single example" and you got several examples. Now you're complaining that one of those examples only make up a small part of the show.

Stop trying to move the goals posts.

Comment Re: Can't be so. (Score 0) 21

They are using their operating system to sell hardware.

An operation system is only as valuable as the ecosystem of applications that support it. Without apps it has no value. Just ask Nokia and Microsoft. People aren't buying iPhones for the operating system. They're buying them for access to Apple's walled garden. And it's that walled garden that sets it apart from all the Android competition. Apple has a reputation for being very strict about what it allows on it's app store, and for putting a heavy focus on user experience. Whereas the Android app store is rife with garbage apps. And Windows Phone app store never took off, which is what killed that platform. Apple's iron fisted approach to the combination of hardware and software (both OS and apps) is it's selling feature. Not the OS, not the hardware.

The question you should be asking is why the United States government hasn't taken action against Apple. Not doing so is, itself, arguably a form of protectionism.

But the US is not the exception here. Only occasionally do we hear about these kinds of lawsuits happening in Canada, or Australia, or South Korea, or Japan, or Taiwan. The EU in contrast is making headlines every month with some new case targeted at large tech companies. If we saw the same thing happening in other industries like automotive or ship building then we could pass it off as the EU just being lawsuit happy. But we don't see that happening. It quite clear that the EU has targeted the tech sector specifically. And the fact that this is a sector the EU has tried bitterly to compete in without success is not an accident.

Comment Re: Can't be so. (Score 1, Interesting) 21

What's happening is that the EU is treating this as two seperate markets. The first market is the hardware for phones, the second market is the software that goes on them. The argument is that Apple are using their clout in the hardware market to give them an unfair edge in the software market.

Which is wrong. The appeal of Apple products is their walled garden, and the tight integration of software and hardware that comes from that. If the iPhone was running Android and had to compete solely on the quality of it's hardware, it would not be nearly so successful. The same would be true if Apple laptops were running Windows, they'd sell but nearly as well. Hardware wise there isn't really anything special about iPhones, iPads, or MacBooks.

The EU has it backwards. Apple isn't using it's hardware to sell software. It's using it's software to sell hardware. That's a big part of the reason Apple doesn't sell or license macOS or iOS separate from it's hardware.

But ultimately this antitrust case isn't really about any of that. What's really about is protectionism. The EU has struggled to compete in the tech sector and has made a concerted effort these last few year to go after a mostly foreign industry for the benefit of their domestic businesses. This case is just one piece of that larger effort.

Comment Re:Why didn't they do this first? (Score 2) 66

I'm genuinely surprised they didn't get all this underway before they built starbase texas.

In order to properly file their application with the FAA they needed be close to finishing the design of their vehicle. But to do that they had to build and test several prototypes. To build and test those prototypes they first had to build starbase.

If they had filed before building starbase the FAA would have come back questions about the vehicle that couldn't be answered. And the application would have been rejected.

Comment Re:Wasn't his intent the opposite? (Score 1) 138

Of course you can only assume that because you have an axe to grind.

I assume because you weren't clear on what you were referring to. The fact that you are pouting suggests my assumption was correct.

Also reality isn't really the thing these days for the right.

The battle between left and right was decided 30 years ago. The USSR went bankrupt and imploded. China and Eastern Europe abandoned socialism for capitalism, enabling their people to climb out of poverty. The Democrats had to move to the centre with Clinton's "third way'. The Labour party reinvented itself saying "we're all Thatcherites now". We know right doesn't have a problem with reality, because they've been right all along.

Comment Re:Wasn't his intent the opposite? (Score 1) 138

Many people on the right appear to want the government to force companies to use their private property to carry said right winger's speech and for free too. It's also steeped in hypocrisy: the government is evil and all regulation is bad unless it's something which affects me personally in which case the government should step in and make private property for the public good.

I can only assume that you are referring to calls to repeal S230. In which case I would point out that the key word there is repeal. Repealing a law mean less government not more. It would be the government stepping out rather than stepping in. Which is the opposite of what you are claiming.

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