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Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4408
Buried on page 25 of the 2019 budget proposal for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), under the heading "Fundamental Measurement, Quantum Science, and Measurement Dissemination", there's a short entry that has caused plenty of debate and even a fair deal of anger among those in the amateur radio scene:
NIST will discontinue the dissemination of the U.S. time and frequency via the NIST radio stations in Hawaii and Ft. Collins, CO. These radio stations transmit signals that are used to synchronize consumer electronic products like wall clocks, clock radios, and wristwatches, and may be used in other applications like appliances, cameras, and irrigation controllers.
The NIST stations in Hawaii and Colorado are the home of WWV, WWVH, and WWVB. The oldest of these stations, WWV, has been broadcasting in some form or another since 1920; making it the longest continually operating radio station in the United States. Yet in order to save approximately $6.3 million, these time and frequency standard stations are potentially on the chopping block.
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/08/20/what-will-you-do-if-wwvb-goes-silent/
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 27 2018, @06:23PM (8 children)
Privatize the fire department.
It can be paid by fire insurance. Sort of like healthcare.
Oh, we can't start fighting the fire yet. Your policy doesn't kick in until at least 1/6 of your home is destroyed.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Monday August 27 2018, @07:26PM
Read a history book. First fire departments WERE created by the insurance industry. If you sell enough premiums in an area it pays to build a fire station to reduce claims so they did. Eventually the government took it over. Did cost / benefit improve or decline? Once you can answer that you can decide whether government should continue running them or explore other options. I remember when the ambulance company around here ran subscription drives. Members got close to free use, anyone else would of course be served but you got a hefty bill and most health insurance balked at covering it. Think most insurance just covers ambulance service now because there aren't membership drives anymore. But they aren't government agencies either so there is your example of private emergency services in action in $current_year.
Remember, just because government should not do something does not mean it should not be done. We used to have a wide ranging set of interlocking charities helping the poor and unfortunate. Mutual aid societies, churches, charitable foundations and trusts, etc. Now all that has been almost entirely replaced with a vast set of interlocking government agencies even when the final end point is a "private" charity in a "public / private partnership" where a private entity hands out government money. Did things improve? Has the poverty rate moved? Which is sort of a trick question since the official metric used to measure poverty incorporates a mechanism to assure a fairly unchanging percentage of the population will officially be "in poverty" regardless of presence of lack of material want that would impair health or the basics of living. Talk about job insurance. When obesity is the number one health issue for "the poorest" it is obvious we solved any actual problem that can be solved by throwing money at it generations ago. What is left is a self licking ice cream cone called the "poverty industry."
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:59AM (6 children)
Volunteer fire depts. often work on a subscription basis: either you pay the fee that keeps the dept. running (mainly paying for equipment maintenance), or when your house catches fire, they let it burn (to whatever degree doesn't endanger other property) -- because otherwise pretty soon everyone is a freeloader.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 28 2018, @12:55PM (5 children)
Interesting.
It sounds like insurance. Or a protection racket. But maybe I'm being redundant.
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:08PM (4 children)
Yeah, same principle, just done on a purely voluntary basis. It's not like they go around setting fires in houses that don't pay up.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 28 2018, @02:17PM (1 child)
That is a good thing.
But doing so would strongly encourage everyone to pay up.
Insurance companies still haven't picked up on this technique to increase revenue.
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 28 2018, @04:19PM
Good point.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday August 28 2018, @06:55PM (1 child)
Not as a general practice, no. Of course, there are individual criminals in any group.
There have actually been quite a few known cases where people who were firefighters or associated in some way engage in essentially random arson. John Leonard Orr, for instance, was an arson investigator and former fire captain who was tried and convited of serial arson. Currently serving a life sentence.
All the examples I can think of were associated with public departments though, not volunteers. Not that it couldn't happen; in fact I bet it has, I just can't think of an example off the top of my head.
But yes, that's clearly criminal behavior that's not tolerated when it's detected.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 28 2018, @08:09PM
Well, yeah, there will always be a few nuts who descend from professed altruism into criminal behavior....
...and I don't doubt that in the days of private protection rackets that preceded state-run police, the occasional staged robbery encouraged everyone to pay up.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.