JayB

Yes - the only things standing between us and our future as the next Somalia are a gaggle of tariffs and the subsidies we slosh on corn ethanol, high fructose corn syrup, and the Davis Bacon act.

BTW Carl, What is it about the state of affairs that results when the distribution of production and rewards are determined only by people deciding for themselves what to buy, from whom, and at what price that you dislike so intensely?

Ahh, the regressive chimes in "I got mine, fuck you" as normal Rather pathetic to see someone gleefully wishing Americas competitiveness down the shitter in the name of efficiency; but then your screed against GM earlier (and your rather obvious ignorance of the shape of the American auto market and it's competitors in 1970) shows again religion triumphs fact in 2010 America. Better than squandering hundreds of billions of dollars of direct subsidies or foregone consumption or investment propping up grotesquely inefficient private businesses that could only survive by stifling competition. I could care less whether something is made by unionized employees or a the members of a communist vegan yoga commune - as long as no one is forced to buy their stuff or financially penalized for not buying their stuff. The irony here is that its the very fact that their "friends" were able to "protect" the big three from effective competition for so long that rendered them so vulnerable in so many ways once the Japanese managed to get their cars into the market. There has never been anything stopping anyone who is a cheerleader for the Big Three from tangibly supporting by purchasing one of their vehicles. On the west coast, more than anywhere else in the country, that's rare event. In fact, the more someone out here is in favor of protectionism and handouts for GM, etc, the less likely they are to actually own a car made by them. I don't think we disagree on the AMA, etc all that much but are you talking about ending public support for all tertiary education, including subsidized loans, making all student loan interest non-deductible, or just training expenses for MD's, dentists, and attorneys? What about accountants, engineers, etc? Just trying to figure out if this is a general argument against subsidizing all professional training or just for MDs'.

You are clueless. How many miles of fiber-optics do you need to lay down before you have a market large enough to make a buck? Are you going to start in your neighborhood like a boat builder would? How many parallel communication networks do you want to force real competition? is that really the way you define "efficiency"? Tell us. How many miles of fiber optic cable do you need to lay down before you have a market large enough to make a buck? How many variables is that contingent on, exactly? Do tell. I have no idea how many parallel communications networks are necessary to create real competition. My best guess is that the number is larger than one. Again - tell us what the optimal number of competitors is and what set of variables influence the number over time. While you're at it - how about the average price per gig under the optimal pricing scheme. Along similar lines - how many bicycle manufacturers are necessary to create optimal competition? How about dental sealant wholesalers? Brands of ice cream? How many independent farmers growing the same crop? Clearly if we organized them into a single national collective.....

It'd be much better to fire all unionized ferry workers and replace them with equally capable people who are willing to do the same jobs at a much lower cost. that is blatantly false. Paying employees non-living wages isn't sustainable. We can now see all around us the results of 30 years pushing for the bottom labor costs: communities falling apart, middle class disappearing, etc .. Who's manning the commercial fishing fleet, amigo? How about the cruise-ships? Are the risks and complexities associated with either less demanding than driving a ferry back and forth across the Puget Sound? How do they manage to staff their fleets?

There's no more effective means of creating an oligopoly that stifles competition than bribing the government to rig the game on behalf of a few well connected players. You are not answering to the fact that Telecoms have a huge entry cost to do business, which as I said already once, make these not really amenable to market competition, i.e. they are natural monopolies. Until you learn to answer to the point there is little reason to try engaging you in a rational discussion. Ignoring what you can't answer isn't good enough. There is a huge cost of entry in *any* capital intensive industry. What specifically makes entering the telecom business more daunting than starting a company that makes supertankers or delivers cell phone service?

1) If I couldn't wave a magic wand and immediately fire all unionized ferry employees and replace them, then I'd give the folks who aren't doing any useful work the option of taking unpaid leave or vacation time. Alternatively, I'd allow any unionized ferry workers who wanted to share the pain with their brethren to show their solidarity by donating shifts to them to offset the lost pay. Or they could quit and try their luck in the private sector. Efficient use of taxpayer money > a guaranteed income for ferry workers. 2. Yes, and no reason to stop at medicine.

It'd be much better to fire all unionized ferry workers and replace them with equally capable people who are willing to do the same jobs at a much lower cost. But that's only if you think that the ferry service should have...providing ferry services as efficiently as possible with the public money it spends as its central aim. If that priority is commingled with providing a comfortable living to as many unionized workers as possible at the public's expense, then the way things are currently being run is fine. Ditto for Metro, etc. Why staff with part-time employees on a regular time basis when you can stuff senior employee's schedules with enough OT in the last three years to give them a permanent boost to their publicly financed pensions.

No argument regarding rural issues. But you haven't addressed the market failure in U.S. cities where it is easier to provide access. And your assumption that high speed internet is only applicable to entertainment and not commerce and academics is false. The issue is why are we paying such high rates for lousy service in the US compared to the rest of the world where there is comprehensive planning, and lo and behold, solvent communications companies making a profit. My claim wasn't that the internet has value for entertainment only, but that whatever people value it for - they should bear the cost of providing it for themselves. I met a radiologist in Wyoming who makes a lot of money reading x-rays remotely a few years ago. Evidently that takes quite a bit of bandwith. I'm not sure how much the guy made, but it was probably enough make it worth his while to set it up on his own dime. Which is the essential point. If there's a high economic value associated with having a superfast internet connection at place X, as opposed to an imaginary one, then the people who stand to make money at place X will fork over the cost. Which is why I suspect that data transmission to and from, say, oil platforms isn't an issue awaiting public resolution. I'd be astonished to learn that there's no amount of money sufficient to secure superfast internet to either a private home or a business that wants it and is prepared to pay for it. I'm sure that there are plenty of homeowners and business that would much prefer to transfer the cost of generating the broadband capacity they'd like to exploit onto someone else, but that's not quite the same thing.

These guys don't have enough to do at the moment. Let's send them out to the King County's rural hinterlands with a spool of fiber-optic cable.... http://www.kirotv.com/news/25320520/detail.html

Much of this can be attributed to other countries actually developing and implementing a national plan - what a concept. Yea, yea, we have a lot of land area here but even when you do a city by city comparision the results are the same. Similar to the hodge-podge cell tower system and standards we have here, compared to other countries where cell towers are on one standard and you don't have seperate phone companies planting their own and duplicative towers. It's not clear to me what compelling national interest is served by insuring that everyone, everywhere has super-high speed broadband connections. What are the concrete benefits of such a plan, and what are the costs, and why should the public foot the bill from them instead of the people who are sad because it takes an extra 10 minutes to stream the Youtube video that their Aunt Judy forwarded to them? The whole concept reminds me of the "Underpants Gnome" episode of South Park. "Stage 1 = steal underpants. Stage 2: . Stage 3 = Profits!" Moreover - why should city dwellers be forced to subsidize the extension of broadband services to rural or suburban households? Rural households already pay far less per square foot of housing, have lower tax assessments, benefit from massive transport subsidies, etc, etc, etc. If you want the rural life - fine. Sounds appealing to me in many ways - but be prepared to pay extra for some things in exchange for the big yard, like broadband. Buy a dish and quit whining or STFU and relocate. No free lunch.

There's no more effective means of creating an oligopoly that stifles competition than bribing the government to rig the game on behalf of a few well connected players.

Yes - the same entrenched public-private cartel that objected to the use of answering machines on the grounds that users were adding a "foreign device," to the line, that insured long distance rates remained prohibitively expensive, mandated that customers lease phones directly from them, etc, etc, etc, for decades was on track to radically improve and transform telecommunications technology while exponentially reducing costs. Haha.

Local cable companies operate as government sanctioned cartels within Local Franchising Areas - no? The reason they can offer you crappy service at high prices year after year and stay in business is because regulations insure that they're largely exempted from effective competition , not because there's too much of it. Whenever you have someone in the private sector making notoriously crappy products or providing bad service year in and year out that mysteriously stays in business and/or preserves their market share, you've almost always got a private business using the government to insulate themselves from competition. Exhibit A: GM, Ford, and Chrysler - all of which should have been wiped off of the map 40 years ago, and would have if it weren't for the fact that they were able to hide behind a dense thicket of tarriffs, subsidies, and other impediments to competition.

Regressive Alert! Regressive Alert! This time they've infiltrated the union ranks!!!!!!!! "Bachtel IS a liar. That is hardly a matter of interpretation. He lies in this article, and he's lied elsewhere about other things. The man is flat-out dishonest. In this particular instance - the one I cited - he claims that he in contract negotiations is looking for "every conceivable efficiency". This is flat out false. A lie. Union leadership specifically is fighting against allowing part-time Operators to work beyond certain limitations that create an artificial demand for overtime. The audit has called for such efficiencies, and the union (past and present) continues to fight for artificial demand for overtime, primarly for more senior full-time bus drivers. To claim that he has assigned people to find "every conceivable inefficiency" is a bald-faced lie. He is interested in keeping at least some aspects of work assignments INEFFICIENT, in order to pad the wages of senior full-time operators even when part-time Operators are willing, available, and capable of filling hours at straight time. This isn't something that's a matter of opinion or open to interpretation - it's established fact. I'd be happy to cite the specific contract language and audit recommendations (and in fact have done so on my own blog) to back that up if you like. Regrettably, Bachtel's ineptitude - and dishonesty - cloud the legitimate points that he makes, and harm the entire membership while aiding our opponents in helping turn public opinion against Operators during this vital contract negotiation period. — jeffw66seattle" http://crosscut.com/2010/10/05/metro-transit/20229/Metro-drivers--wages-have-barely-kept-up-with-inflation/

so....your prediction is drugs and madness will be out of style soon? No - but hopefully droning, nasal, atonal pseudo-folk will be long dead and subject to a trillion nested fatwas condemning anyone who resurrects it to a thousand eternities of everlasting torment at the hands of Slayer bootlegs played on a gajillion-Watt stage amp....

Could be wrong. Never got the whole Dylan thing either, and there's still evidently plenty of people listening to his music. I think most of his audience will be gone, via death by aging, in 20 years but who knows...

Definitely simpler. Whether or that also means better largely comes down to a political value judgment, which probably depends on whether you think that the state has a legitimate and compelling interest in putting out fires in structures that the owners don't consider worth paying to protect - at least beyond what's necessary to try to save whoever might be trapped in them. Given the current state of affairs, I'd be happy to compromise with a required fee that's proportionate to the value of the structure being protected and the cost/complexity of responding to an actual fire in it.

I don't like Diego Maradona's poltics, but it's clear that the man could play soccer. I can understand why people paid attention to him at the time, way back when, but I think his appeal is mostly sentimental at this point and his readership dwindle at roughly the same pace as his original readership dies off. Ditto for Ginsberg, et al. "I'm with you Carl, on the clearance rack at Half-Price books..."

Don't have anything in particular against the guy but never understood the adulation. To each his own...

As long as you don't have to buy what they're selling as a condition of existing, and the same statutes that apply to breach of contract in other domains apply - I am a big fan of insurance, when it's actually only insurance and not just a pre-payment mechanism for funding some kind of routine consumption. Cheap way to protect against black-swan(ish) events.

This is where the libertarian argument gets silly. Having a simple requirement to get vaccinated elimates the lawyer feeding frenzy. Don't like it? Too bad, so sad - you're out voted in a civilized society. Regarding WA pensions, we're not so bad actually: "First and foremost, all of Washington's ongoing pension systems are healthy and well funded, in fact they are among the best funded pension systems in the country," Treasurer Jim McIntire said in a statement. "But funding for two pension plans that were closed in 1977 - PERS1 and TRS 1 - pose large issues that can no longer be avoided...Over time, it has been easy for lawmakers of both parties to postpone payments to these funds in the face of tough budget decisions. We now face the consequences of those past deferrals." The ones that face issues are about 77% funded and something will need to change there - but not so much given that the folks receiving these benefits are dying off. The system for current employees is different and solvent for the foreseeable future. Your argument regarding some benefits has more merit. I hope so - good news if it's true, but most pension systems around the country are still basing their projections on consistent returns of ~8% or more, which many people think is quite optimistic, and will leave taxpayers on the hook for the difference. I am about as rabidly pro-vaccine as they come, but still think that the practical and philosophical arguments for persuading people to vaccinate voluntarily are much stronger than those behind forcible vaccinations. I'd be fine with a status quo where no one is forced to vaccinate, but they're required if you want to attend public schools, join the army, etc. I think that's basically what we have now, although anti-vaccine folks have proven adept at exploiting religious exemptions that I'd like to see eliminated. Whether or not people who's intentionally un-vaccinated kids contract preventable diseases and die should be subject to the same criminal penalties that apply when they intentionally withhold medical care is an interesting question. I think the answer is no, since the failure to prevent isn't the same as the failure to treat, but that question seems to come up in these discussions every now and then.

Also happening in real time. I'm not in favor of forced vaccination for a variety of practical and philosophical reasons, but I am in favor of allowing people to bring civil suits against unvaccinated people who transmit whatever disease they're the vector for when they transmit the disease to infants, the immunosuppresed, or any other people who either can't be vaccinated or can't be effectively protected by vaccines as a result of another medical condition.

It's clear that the "victim" in this story could have paid the $75, but didn't. He was counting on other people to foot the bill for fire services for him. Who, exactly, is the sociopath here?

Perhaps, some day JayB will go after someone other than the few workers on the gravy train, but I am not holding my breath. It's not like there are not more important fish to fry but his insistence on focusing on the piddling stuff shows that libertarianism is a convenient fig leaf for corporatists. If unfunded liabilities to the tune of ~$3 trillion that will crowd out funding for parks, social services, etc, etc, etc is piddling then...sure. This is happening in real time in WA.