Then garnish their wages $5/month or whatever for life. /9 you're basically admitting I'm subsidizing other people wrongly going to the er.

The "training" in this case takes literally 5 minutes if you are a slow reader.

Does someone in anaphylactic shock have 5 minutes for you to read the directions?

That leaves 2/3 of the budget for entitlements. Grandma doesn't really need her SS, she can come and live with you. By the way, her meds are expensive, you'll be wanting to pay for those as well. That's part of Medicare. In fact, the Blue Haired are now the Me Generation and they will demand you pay your fair share to support their Depends and other needs. Not a chance of cutting that back. Oh, we could privatize it. Sheesh, we can trust Wall Street to administer those funds without making off with the loot like they did in the last bubble.

Get rid of Social Security. (In reality -- phase it out.) POSSIBLY mandate a 401(k)-type system instead.

You don't need Wall Street to "administer" it to a huge degree. Let me invest it in an index fund or a Fidelity fund of my choosing (Fidelity has much lower fees).

Get rid of welfare, or at least turn it into workfare. (Cleaning streets, etc.)

Build your nirvana; your ideal state. If it works as you, of course, know it will then people will flock to your state; and other states will adopt your platform. Then we can have fools like me live in their foolish way in their states and you and everyone who knows better will live in a wonderful state where everything works just fine.

It's not QUITE that extreme, but last Wednesday's episode of the "Freakanomics" podcast, entitled "Ten Signs You Might Be a Libertarian", describes that. Attempts to get people to move to New Hampshire for libertarian ideals.

But what about the diseases/conditions that "matter"?

The thing is, there is no "fair market pricing" for a lot of health care. If you are in a car accident, you don't have the benefit of shopping around to different emergency rooms to find the best deal.

Yes, so then regulate ONLY actual emergency care, and charge a VERY VERY VERY high rate to those who bring their kids to the er because he has a cold.

Yeah, I want to trust my life to some random hack found on the net, without safety/effectiveness testing. (I mean for the "pen" part.)

It's idiots all the way down.

I don't know many people who like fruitcakes, but amongst my Chinese friends there is certainly a lot of disappointment if they can't get "moon cakes" around the appropriate time of year.

Though that doesn't actually mean that they LIKE it (for the taste, that is)... Maybe they're nostalgic for it.

Uhh, that term comes from gambling.. It's a well known term.

There are very few universally understood words or gestures in humans

I know you said "very few", but one I remembered hearing in an episode of the "60 second science" podcast is that "huh?" is apparently in every known spoken language.

From my point of view, it's a poor implementation. Essentially most people will now have to carry two items around with them - a phone and a dongle - rather than just the one, or else not be able to hook the phone up to a standard audio system.

[citation needed]

I admittedly don't have a citation EITHER, but I would strongly suspect that "most people" use the headphones that CAME WITH the device.. in this case, Lightning cable headphones. (I'm personally using $20 Bluetooth headphones..)

So it's just the Clever Hans effect?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

For spacex, it makes no sense to be insured: there are maybe two or three companies in the world that offer the services spacex offers, and the accidents aren't as rare for spacex either.

If they fail 1/5 of the time, but the insurance costs 1/6 of the cost of a launch, wouldn't the insurance be worth it? (..and yes, the insurance rate would thus likely adjust, but also, the failure rate would hopefully lessen too...)

BTW, I usually argue against insurance (and have vaguely thought about posting a bond instead of getting car insurance, which you can do.. but haven't run the #s to see if it was cheaper.. yes, I'm "gambling" that any accident wouldn't be my fault.. and I already only have the minimum insurance)... but it seems like it can make sense in some cases. One other case was treadmill repair. Even if you ignored the (seemingly inflated) funny money #s they put on the receipts, even one repair "paid for itself", by the people using their treadmills as clothes racks subsidizing me.

I hope you like it when you create something and others make money off of it, and you don't.

(Yes, even if all they did was post pictures of their cat, they "created" something that was popular, and other companies paid for rights to use it.)

How is this different from a human celebrity's likeness being their own (for commercial purposes, not for newsworthy purposes)?