It used to be that airliners broke up in the sky because of small cracks in the window frames. So we fixed that. It used to be that aircraft crashed because of outward opening doors. So we fixed that. Aircraft used to fall out of the sky from urine corrosion, so we fixed that with encapsulated plastic lavatories. The list goes on and on. And we fixed them all. So what are we left with? According to Steve Coast that just leaves the weird events like disappearing 777s, freak storms and pilots flying into mountains. Engineers have been hammering away at the remaining problems by creating more and more rules. [ Ed note: Link is to a playboy.com article. ]
"As illustration, we created rules to make sure people can't get into cockpits to kill the pilots and fly the plane into buildings. That looked like a good rule. But, it's created the downside that pilots can now lock out their colleagues and fly it into a mountain instead. This is a clean and understandable example of why adding more layers, and more rules, to a problem doesn't always work," says Coast. "The worry should be we end up with so many rules we become sclerotic like Italy or France. We effectively end up with some kind of Napoleonic law – everything is illegal unless specifically made legal."
According to Coast the primary way we as a society deal with the mess of over-regulation is by creating rule-free zones. It's essentially illegal for you to build anything physical these days from a toothbrush (FDA regulates that) to a skyscraper, but there's zero restriction on creating a website. Hence, that's where all the value is today. To paraphrase Peter Thiel, new technology is probably so fertile and productive simply because there are so few rules. "If you are starting a computer-software company, that costs maybe $100,000," says Thiel. But "to get a new drug through the FDA, maybe on the order of a billion dollars or so."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday October 09 2015, @07:40PM
Governments tend to be lazy, and creating rules takes time away from getting bribes or riding the mistress. The rules exist because someone got badly hurt or someone needed to preserve their advantage.
That doesn't mean all the rules are good, it only means that not having them is either a sign of immaturity (and therefore huge potential growth), or harmlessness.
People rush into rules-free zones to enjoy their benefits before "some idiot" ruins them for everyone else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @08:17PM
Ashleymadison.com is said to have left at least three dead:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/08/technology/ashley-madison-suicide/ [cnn.com]
http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/24/policeman-kills-himself-after-being-exposed-in-ashley-madison-leak-5358396/ [metro.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday October 09 2015, @08:30PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 09 2015, @08:46PM
So... less than escalators, then.
There are probably quite a few more suicides linked to Facebook posts (and not just from excessive facepalming), but I'm pretty sure even the CIA hasn't figured out how to directly physically harm the average website visitor. Between that and the fact that visiting sites is either free or covered under usual Credit Card terms, you don't need nearly as much regulation as real life.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @07:46PM
Tell that to the creators of Megaupload, Grooveshark, etc. Oh god oh god is the subject line covered by Fair Use? I'd better pay some lawyers to find out for me, or restrictions might bite my shiny metal ass. Oh No, Not Again. I mean, Oops I Did It Again. Crap crap crap
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday October 09 2015, @08:22PM
Yeah, that's the most inane pathologically neoliberal interpretation of why that's (only sorta) true.
The much more simple reality can be derived from the phrase "Mature Marketplace"
Cars are regulated to hell and back, but Tesla made a huge splash because they're doing something new. The internet, particularly websites, are now in the mature market too, and you'd be a fool to think you can make money from the web without some otherwise novel idea paired with what you build.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @08:26PM
There's zero restriction[*] on creating a website that's hosted in Transnistria.
[*] although I wouldn't recommend criticizing Russia too loudly from there
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Francis on Friday October 09 2015, @07:48PM
We expect more order in the universe now, or at least our corner of it. So, we tend to pay more attention to weird things than we used to. Just like how people don't normally die of old age any more, now it's heart attack, stroke, respiratory arrest and so forth.
We also have much more capacity to store information than we used to. There was probably always a lot of strange things happening, but previously, we didn't have the resources or means to collect evidence and investigate things. It was much more convenient to chalk it up as ghosts or some deity and just get back to life as usual.
But, now we mostly expect that there will be some sort of an answer, even if it's not available. Planes go missing for a reason, even if the reason is never learned.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday October 09 2015, @10:02PM
It used to be expected that people would get killed every now and then. Now even soldiers expect safety.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:40PM
I don't know about soldiers, but when I was a 24 year old sailor, I was ten feet tall, bulletproof, and smarter than the average enemy. I was just indestructable. Hell, I could have been Superman, if I just had the costume. This "safety" thing was the furthest thing from my mind.
Then, I hit ~30, and became human.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday October 10 2015, @12:31AM
Not sure that is exactly right, I don't think we pay more attention to the weird stuff, I think the weird stuff is often all there is left.
We have solved a lot of problems, in science, medicine, engineering, etc. etc. We have mostly solved the easy problems, the simple problems, the obvious problems, because those are what we can solve. Corollary: what is left are the hard, complex and not-obvious problems. Failure still happens, because Murphy and the "universe invents a better fool", but it is weirder and more complex.
The problems left usually have complex non-obvious hard solutions, which means the solutions are more likely to have complex unforseen side effects, attempting to fix causes failure somewhere else, weird, complex failure, because we have already fixed the simple stuff....
...and so life gets weirder.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday October 09 2015, @07:54PM
Which is why I have been saying the way out is deregulation if we want to jump start the economy.
We can't raise taxes because we are deep on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve so it would only reduce the economy so much that revenue would drop instead of increase. Even most Democrats admit this, that tax increases for the purpose of revenue are off the table. Some still want to raise em anyway for re-distributive purposes but that is entirely different.
We can't cut taxes either. Not in the current political climate. Sure it would, in theory, raise revenue but the politics of cutting taxes with deficits of hundreds of billions per year as far out as the projections go isn't going to fly.
We can't raise government spending and stimulate our way out. Not that it really works that way but politics says it does. Again, we are already running such deficits that big new spending programs ain't gonna fly.
We can't cut a lot of spending either. Go look at the budget and you will see. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the military and interest on the dept eat pretty much every dollar coming in. Talk waste, fraud and abuse all ya want, doesn't matter. And with the economy in the terlit good luck telling the welfare class to "get a job."
What we could do is promise to eliminate half of the page count in the regulations over a five year period. Set up an exchange where agencies could trade vs budget. Ok EPA, you insist every last page is ultra important; how much budget will you trade with the Commerce Dept to have them find more pages to eliminate? Plus, if the machinery were locked into a battle to preserve pages of existing regs, to rewrite them shorter and clearer, etc. they wouldn't have time to make new regs for that five years. It just might encourage industry to build, hire and expand here. Especially of combined with a freeze on spending and a promise that any new revenues from economic growth will be split evenly between deficit reduction and tax cuts to try and get a feedback loop going.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Friday October 09 2015, @08:07PM
When you have a public space that is full of trash, you can ignore it, pay someone to remove it, or organize a clean up. I feel like your last paragraph is somewhat like organizing a clean up... and I like that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @09:07PM
Bureaucracies work to perpetuate themselves. I don't see how jmorris' plan accounts for that.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday October 09 2015, @09:50PM
I believe jmorris suggests to create a Federal Bureau of Bureaucracy that 1) requires each department of the government to publish all laws and regulations, and 2) subtracts from each department's budget a proportional amount determined by the page count of a department's published laws and regulations. Now, instead of the general bureaucracy looking for more ways to regulate the public, they will change their focus on regulating the regulations.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @10:42PM
I believe jmorris suggests to create a Federal Bureau of Bureaucracy that 1) requires each department of the government to publish all laws and regulations, and 2) subtracts from each department's budget a proportional amount determined by the page count of a department's published laws and regulations. Now, instead of the general bureaucracy looking for more ways to regulate the public, they will change their focus on regulating the regulations. [emphasis added]
Absolutely. Let's start with the FAA. What's with this whole "airworthiness certification" bullshit? If I can get it onto the runway, I should be able to charge passengers to ride in it. Then there are these ridiculous rules about pilot certification. Forcing airlines to hire people with *hundreds* of hours of flight time is killing the economy. And don't even get me started with air traffic control! What a load of crap that is.
Then there's the FDA. Who made a bunch of government bureaucrats the boss of the pharmaceutical industry? They don't know jack about anything. Just get rid of if all and let the market decide what drugs are worthwhile.
And the FTC needs to go too. Who do they think they are? Setting up regulations to tell the job creators how they're not allowed to defraud their customers or sell whatever products they want. What do a bunch of mentally challenged government stooges know about product safety? Nothing. The market needs to decide. They should take a page from the SEC and hire from the industry to make sure they don't do anything to interfere with the free market.
And then there's that debacle over at DHS. It's ridiculous that our protectors can't take whatever steps they feel appropriate whenever they decide its' necessary. If there's a potential threat, it's cavity searches for everyone at the airport or Times Square or the Washington Mall. Regulation is not just killing the economy, it threatens the lives of every single American. And speaking of such things, what's with all this regulation keeping the brave men and women of the border patrol from doing what's necessary to keep us safe?
And HHS just needs to go. In its entirety. The government has no place providing health insurance (Medicare, Medicaid block grants, etc.). The market will provide for all. And Obamacare is just a whole set of ridiculous regulations. How can the insurance companies provide low-cost insurance to poor folks if there are regulations on what services must be covered?
Then there's bankruptcy law. Which is supposed to give the job creators the ability to keep creating jobs, but is so often used just to defraud those poor folks at the credit card companies. That needs to stop right away. Corporate bankruptcy is necessary to the free market. Personal bankruptcy just steals money from those who need and deserve it most -- the job creators.
And all this regulation around government contracts is so over the top. Congress holds the purse strings, so any oversight must come from them. All those tightwad bean counters over at the department of defense are destroying our economy. Thankfully, intelligence and black projects can be run in an intelligent (market-based) way.
While we're at it, eliminating regulation relieves us of the need to police the bureaucracies themselves, so let's get rid of government Inspector General offices while we're at it. Allow a free market to decide what's right and wrong. Government regulation is Marxism, pure and simple.
If we want to put America back on the right track, all this government regulation insanity has to be rolled back to let us get back to work.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday October 09 2015, @08:46PM
Serious question: Why do you think that? And if we are on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve, where do you think the peak that would put us on the "right" side is? And why do you think it looks like this [wikipedia.org] (a smooth parabolic-like curve) rather than this [netdna-ssl.com] (a "techno-snarl" according to this version's creator Martin Gardner)?
Economists who have tried to answer the question of where the peak is have come up with a peak of around 65-70% [epi.org]. Current top marginal tax rates in the US just a bit under 40% and effective tax rate on the richest Americans is about 30%, which would suggest that we could in fact increase revenue by increasing taxes. Empirical evidence seems to match this: When George W Bush cut taxes "temporarily" in 2001 revenue dropped, when they went back up in 2013 revenue went back up - which is exactly what basic math, simple common sense, and current economics expected would happen. So that would place the burden of proof on those who would claim otherwise to come up with a good reason why that doesn't work.
The real reason raising taxes is seen as out of the question is not that it won't generate revenue, but because the people who fund the campaigns of a significant majority of politicians in Washington DC don't want to pay higher taxes. In particular, all Republicans in Congress know that if they vote to raise taxes, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform is guaranteed to ensure that they have a well-funded primary challenger. That has absolutely nothing to do with economic theory, and everything to do with political corruption.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @09:07PM
What your napkin analysis of the results of tax shifts misses (or ignores) is that there's friction in the system, and the economy isn't a closed system.
For instance, shifts in taxation rates will, in the short term, shift revenue just the way it says. However in the long term the economic actors rebalance their behaviour. Hence all those diabolical corporations finding ways of reducing their tax bills and pushing their work to friendlier regimes.
Another complicating factor is that while it's all very well to point out that the top marginal rate is 40% on a federal level, that completely ignores the activities of the states and local authorities. States can levy income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and more - and as a rule they do. Lots.
As for funding competing politicians, that's not corruption. That's political activities. Or do you think that all politicians should wander around in loincloths like Gandhi?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:18PM
Dammit - I hit "insightful" on the mod thingy - then I noticed that you're already +5.
Yeah, that Norquist pledge shows us one thing for certain. Everyone who signed that pledge has betrayed his constituency. Of course, they aren't the only ones to have done so. Damned near everyone in Washington has done as much.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:21PM
Yegads! I replied to you - I thought - but I replied to AC instead. I'll post it again . . .
Dammit - I hit "insightful" on the mod thingy - then I noticed that you're already +5.
Yeah, that Norquist pledge shows us one thing for certain. Everyone who signed that pledge has betrayed his constituency. Of course, they aren't the only ones to have done so. Damned near everyone in Washington has done as much.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday October 10 2015, @06:37PM
Economists who have tried to answer the question of where the peak is have come up with a peak of around 65-70%.
That is so obviously insane that only socialist economists could say something like that with a straight face. You can have rates that high but only with so many deductions that you have a planned socialist economy because nobody will ever actually pay a rate that high. Once taxes become the single largest expense in a transaction (and usually long before) tax avoidance becomes more important than profits. Which is why you see so much malinvestment in high tax areas. High capital gains, inheritance and general 'wealth' taxes are worse, since they lead to wealth preservation becoming the goal instead of productive economic activity.
Ronald Reagan used to tell stories from when the U.S. had a 90% income tax rate. Nobody paid it because they sheltered and used every one of the loopholes in the thick books of tax regs their accountants made good money to read and when all measures had failed and they were about to finally be subject to the highest brackets their accountants would warn them and they would simply stop booking income until the next year even if it meant they stopped working entirely. If that is the sort of bizarro world you want to live in, I suggest you get the Hell out and pick one of the existing socialist hellholes to enjoy and leave Americans a viable economy so we can still carry the 'White Man's Burden' and keep feeding the world living in systems you seem to approve of.
Forget top marginal tax rate and look at percentage of GDP wasted on government. Yes some things the government does are required but from an economic view it is all overhead and mostly waste. About 1/5 of our economy goes into the FedGov and little comes back out in a form that has a positive economic benefit. More still goes into ratholes in the State and local governments. Meaning we are already at a point where increasing the government rakeoff will lead to enough tax avoidance and general reduction in economic activity that GDP is almost certain to reduce fast enough to reduce the dollars taken in by trying to seize a larger percentage of the pie.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @08:59PM
The problem is that those many regulations are on the books because industry has shown that it cannot and will not be trusted if left to their own. You don't just pull out stuff like "You can dump heavy metals into a water supply source"; that stuff is there because companies were dumping heavy metals into water supply sources. Are you old enough to remember the pre-Clean Air Act days? Remember Cleveland or Pittsburgh in the 60s and early 70s? Rivers catching on fire? Look at China now, with its industries growing and expanding into urban areas. Remember that they had to shut down all the factories around Beijing for two weeks before the Olympics? That's why you have all these regulations, then some loophole gets exploited then that needs to be closed.
This is why you can't just willy-nilly start eliminating the framework that is currently there. Yes, it is complicated and convoluted, and there is probably no easy way to simplify it.
The other part of major deregulation is that, ultimately, we all end up getting screwed. Deregulate the banking industry and they'll take down the economy. Deregulate the airline or telecommunications industries, and you end up in the monopolistic messes we're in now.
I would love to hear of ways to simplify the system that doesn't ultimately depend upon things like invisible hands or promises of good behavior.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday October 10 2015, @03:44AM
This is why you can't just willy-nilly start eliminating the framework that is currently there. Yes, it is complicated and convoluted, and there is probably no easy way to simplify it.
The problem right now is not that we are eliminating this framework willy nilly, but rather that we're adding to it willy nilly faster than anyone can read the regulations. I see no way that an slow process like the sort you advocate can keep up with this flood of law and regulation. Indiscriminate butchery is called for. If we really end up needing regulation of the things you complain of, then we can add it back. But if the regulation itself is so complex and onerous that it prevents itself from being implemented, then that can't be fixed by adding more regulation. I think that is already the case, such as with the recent case of auto manufacturers whose cars pollute more in the real world than they do on a test stand.
I would love to hear of ways to simplify the system that doesn't ultimately depend upon things like invisible hands or promises of good behavior.
Let us note that such things are often significantly better than the current approaches. After all, the invisible hand works which is more than you can say of a significant fraction of the US government. And promises of good behavior by private entities are no less substantial and trustworthy than corresponding promises by government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 10 2015, @04:20AM
After all, the invisible hand works which is more than you can say of a significant fraction of the US government.
Say what you want about the US government, but we know it exists and is capable of action. There is not a single example that you can point to where you can say "here the Invisible hand has done work". At best The Hand is a useful fiction used for conveying basic economic concepts, but to suggest that it is a real force is neoliberal fantasy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 10 2015, @12:14PM
Say what you want about the US government, but we know it exists and is capable of action.
Which is one of the primary drivers behind deregulation - because acting is often worse than not acting.
There is not a single example that you can point to where you can say "here the Invisible hand has done work".
The obvious counterexample being the world's food supply.
At best The Hand is a useful fiction used for conveying basic economic concepts, but to suggest that it is a real force is neoliberal fantasy.
It's a rhetorical flourish describing real world emergent phenomena in markets.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday October 10 2015, @04:54AM
Adding more rules increases the costs of compliance and enforcement. If these costs are higher than any potential value to society that they can provide, the rules should probably be scrapped.
A rule like "thou shalt not poison the water supply" is easy to justify. But plenty of other rules are redundant, or they don't solve the problem they were intended to address, create perverse incentives, exist only to damage/benefit political adversaries/allies, are obsolete, or conflict with other rules.
An example of something that has high costs due to complexity would be the tax code. The tax code is not widely praised for its fairness, nor does it raise more revenue than that which could be raised by a vastly simpler tax code with adjusted rates.
Even if we assume that most of the regulations we currently have in place are effective and serve a necessary purpose, there is an improvement that could be made by making them more accessible and organized, instead of the legalese spaghetti code that legislators themselves often can't be bothered to read.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday October 10 2015, @06:44PM
I proposed removing half of the page count, not the elimination of all regulation. Try debating the point raised instead of the strawmen living only in your imagination.
The basic problem is there are always good reasons (or at least excuses) to add regulations. Successful careers can be made regulating. But there isn't even a mechanism to prune them and without one they grow without bound in exactly the same way anything else will if there is no pressure against unlimited growth. Eventually it reaches toxic levels and kills the host.
So there needs to be a force pushing back. When a new regulation is proposed the argument should not be "Should we regulate this bad thing?" That question seems to answer itself with a "Yes". The question should always be required to be formulated, "We should divert regulatory resources from this thing that isn't that important anymore to this new thing that is a problem." Make regulation a roughly fixed resource where the debate must be how best to allocate a scarce product.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Saturday October 10 2015, @04:11AM
On a similar note, if I were to run for President, I would only have 2 campaign promises:
1. To veto any legislation I can't read and understand. As the POTUS doesn't have much free time, I'd better be able to read and understand it in an hour without lawyers. All laws must have an expiration date of no more than 10 years. Everything else I veto.
2. Once in office, I won't campaign for re-election. I have more important things to do like vetoing crappy legislation. As the POTUS, I figure I'll make it to the ballot, and if I don't, 2nd terms suck anyway.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:32PM
What we could do is promise to eliminate half of the page count in the regulations over a five year period. Set up an exchange where agencies could trade vs budget. Ok EPA, you insist every last page is ultra important; how much budget will you trade with the Commerce Dept to have them find more pages to eliminate? Plus, if the machinery were locked into a battle to preserve pages of existing regs, to rewrite them shorter and clearer, etc. they wouldn't have time to make new regs for that five years. It just might encourage industry to build, hire and expand here. Especially of combined with a freeze on spending and a promise that any new revenues from economic growth will be split evenly between deficit reduction and tax cuts to try and get a feedback loop going.
That's fine, simplification would be great. Five hundred pages (just picking a number for an example) on allowable limits of arsenic in waste water? That can be reduced to a single line: No arsenic in waste water.
On the other hand, I doubt you will find a single local project or business startup stalled by Federal regulations. Invariably, when something is held up, it is because the owners are bargaining for a better tax deal or, if it is actually regulations holding it back, it is city, county or state regulations. Each one of those parties tends to want their particular itch scratched.
Power plants or extractive industries blocked by environmental regulations? Well, too bad. Taxpayers are sick of being stuck with the bill for cleanup after these messes and sick (literally) from the toxins spewed from them. Let the ones that directly benefit pay the cost, if consumers have to pay more down the line they are paying a true cost, not something subsidized by dumping external costs on whoever is unlucky enough to have them land in their lap.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:33PM
We CAN indeed raise taxes. The only thing stopping us raising taxes, is the fact that politicians have sold out to the real ruling class.
I can't even understand why the ultra-wealthy won't consent to higher taxes. It's not like the money they already have will be subject to those higher taxes. It is only INCOME which will be taxed. Someone who has billions of dollars worth of liquid and/or non-liquid assets will retain all of those assets. His INCOME may be reduced by higher taxes, but so what? It's not like a Bill Gates could ever spend all the money he has already.
If I had so much money that I could never spend it all, why the hell would I care that gubbermint wants to tax future income?
One of the crazy things about people who fight higher taxes, is that they all ASSume that anyone making more than 100 grand per year will be equally affected. Mere millionaires will hardly be affected by any plan I've ever seen. One of my former bosses is worth about 3 million. He grosses a couple million a year. I don't know what he nets exactly, but it's probably a half million. He's not the super wealthy that is going to pay higher taxes. Or, if his taxes go up, it's going to be a negligible amount.
Those CEO's who make a couple hundred million, AND get hundred million bonuses are the bottom of the ladder of the super wealthy. And, yes, they CAN pay taxes. I mean, real taxes. 1/3 of their money goes to support gubbermint, just like 1/3 of MY money goes to gubbermint. (that's federal, state, social security, school, real estate, sales taxes - everything added together)
I NEED my money, just to stay afloat, and government takes 1/3 of it. Those rich bastards don't even need their money - the banking CEO's have admitted as much. A number of them have openly stated that at some point, the money is meaningless, it's the game that matters.
Let them pay taxes. FFS, why not?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by acp_sn on Friday October 09 2015, @07:57PM
the only real law is that if you inconvenience someone with more power than you have then they will use that power to hurt you
that is pretty much what power is, the ability inflict harm on another person with the threat of greater harm should the victim retaliate
I don't know how you would go about building a society where no human has power over another human but that should be the "endgame" of civilization
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @08:01PM
Keep climbing that power ladder, ambitious human.
(Score: 1) by Frost on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:31PM
I don't know how you would go about building a society where no human has power over another human but that should be the "endgame" of civilization.
"Endgame"... That sounds so... final. Like the final solution to the human problem. No human will have power over another, once there are no humans. Utopia eternal!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @07:59PM
The September 11, 2001 terrorist attack largely solved itself. Before that date, that assumption was that any hijackers would inconvenience you, but you would otherwise be fine if you complied. Passengers figured out that they had to fight bask during the actual attack. That is why the fourth plane crashed into a corn field, rather than the capitol building or the white-house. Many people born after that date are not even aware that 4 planes were hijacked that day.
In subsequent years, terrorists such as the underwear and shoe bombers were subdued by passengers, rather than caught by the increased security measures. The enhanced security is too busy looking for water bottles to catch actual handguns (for example).
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @08:03PM
Gold star! You win an INTERNET for REPEATING a MEME.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Friday October 09 2015, @08:08PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 09 2015, @09:04PM
Pick up a free newspaper and look around in it. You'll see ads for medical trials. They may pay volunteers up to $1500 in some cases. Of course, the experiments still have to meet ethics standards.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @10:14PM
It would be more productive but I wouldn't agree that it'd be more humane. Medical advances would come a lot quicker if we could ignore people's human rights and violate others' self-sovereignty just because, but who determines who gets kidnapped, tortured, and experimented upon? (obviously it would be poor people) And once you start setting that precedent, saying its acceptable to violate others' human rights for the "greater good", just who decides what counts as the "greater good"? A despot would claim that ensuring his family's survival would be for the "greater good", bigots would claim that committing genocide on everyone who isn't the same as them would be for the "greater good", etc. Its a despicable road and we already know where it leads, and that it doesn't lead anywhere we want to be. The ends do not justify the means.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 10 2015, @12:19PM
And once you start setting that precedent, saying its acceptable to violate others' human rights for the "greater good", just who decides what counts as the "greater good"? A despot would claim that ensuring his family's survival would be for the "greater good", bigots would claim that committing genocide on everyone who isn't the same as them would be for the "greater good", etc. Its a despicable road and we already know where it leads, and that it doesn't lead anywhere we want to be. The ends do not justify the means.
It'd do well to remember that ethics is an end in itself of dubious value, here, with the means being a somewhat premature death of seven billion people and counting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 10 2015, @04:38PM
What do you consider "premature"? Anything before 120 years? Dying at all? Average lifespan has been increasing for a long time due to discoveries in medicine and other areas, but there's no guarantee that its even possible to make everyone live to 120 because we don't even know why some people live that long, and if its due to things like exercise, diet, and avoiding substances which harm one's body like alcohol and tobacco, ie personal choices, then no amount of medical advances will matter, some people will continue smoking and drinking themselves to an early death, unless you're proposing continuing prohibition indefinitely "for their own good". If its due to winning the genetics lottery, what, forced genetic modification? All the knowledge and advances in the world don't matter unless you're planning for everyone to be slaves. The idea that dying of natural causes earlier than another person's naturally-caused death is "premature" is ridiculous.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 10 2015, @10:25PM
What do you consider "premature"?
None of us know. But I think a better approach could probably double human lifespan in a human lifespan.
Average lifespan has been increasing for a long time due to discoveries in medicine and other areas, but there's no guarantee that its even possible to make everyone live to 120 because we don't even know why some people live that long, and if its due to things like exercise, diet, and avoiding substances which harm one's body like alcohol and tobacco, ie personal choices, then no amount of medical advances will matter, some people will continue smoking and drinking themselves to an early death, unless you're proposing continuing prohibition indefinitely "for their own good".
This is an example of thinking that might be obsoleted in a century or two. Diet, exercise, and those modestly negative lifestyle choices probably are things that we could engineer the human body to do without such an active effort from us (and without such little gain for the effort involved!).
If its due to winning the genetics lottery, what, forced genetic modification?
Or unforced genetic modification.
All the knowledge and advances in the world don't matter unless you're planning for everyone to be slaves.
You're free to revert to a traditional primate lifestyle with all the non-slavery you think you'll be able to get with that. But if we're going to have all this knowledge and all these advances anyway, then let's use them in a timely manner rather than being idiots about it.
The idea that dying of natural causes earlier than another person's naturally-caused death is "premature" is ridiculous.
You're not even wrong. I think eventually we could naturally live to millions of years rather than less than a century - which is a hell of a lot of lifespan to throw away. But it'll take profound medical and engineering developments to get to that point. Further, current aging is horrible and a huge drain of our resources. Premature death is a real problem here and one which we could change profoundly. Further, hindering medical developments is not a one time thing, but a process that will continue indefinitely, unless we do something about it, now or later.
And as I noted earlier, when we place such huge hurdles in the way of ethical research, then that creates a huge incentive to do unethical research. This is a huge trap of modern medical ethics and regulation that has yet to be addressed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by JavaDevGuy on Friday October 09 2015, @08:33PM
The comparison of rules for the physical engineered world and the majority of software is flawed. A crashing website will not kill anyone, a crashing plane will. If you investigate the world of software the situations in which software can cause such mayhem is far more tightly controlled than some one hacking together a website. The costs of creating safety critical software are much higher as a result. Frankly I'm glad there are rules in these situations.
I do agree that in other none safety critical situations their is an industry based on spurious health and safety rulings fuled by a ambulence chasing mentality. I'd focus on that as an area for clearing out rules not the areas where rules are valid.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Non Sequor on Friday October 09 2015, @08:51PM
For every problem relative to a given turing complete language with a given set of predefined subroutines, there is a minimum program size needed to solve the problem. For sufficiently complex problems, this minimum only varies from language to language by a translation constant (including implementation of subroutines). Relaxing or tightening the criteria for solutions lowers or increases the minimum.
Algorithms, heuristics, rules, strategies, institutional structures, and traditions are all bound by this. Improvements can be developed by building frameworks that help with more than one problem at once. Focusing on one problem at a time may or may not result in aggregate improvements after interaction with other problems.
At the limit, you're trading computation, entailing use of energy, for a given reduction in the variance of outcomes. That trade off will always exist and always result in difficult decisions so long as energy available is insufficient to achieve all desired outcomes.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 09 2015, @09:59PM
This seems to just be pushing the tired and repeatedly proven wrong idea that deregulating everything will solve all of society's woes. Its ridiculous and its been proven wrong over and over and over again. It also tries to push the obvious bullshit of "innovation happens in newer areas because they're unregulated", when in reality there's lots of innovation in new areas because there's lots of low-hanging fruit just begging to be picked. Mature areas like drug development are a bitch to get into because all the obvious stuff is already done - to develop a new drug, you have to find a something that hasn't already been made for a specific target effect - good luck doing that since all the obvious stuff was made long ago. The first one in a market will rule that market until somebody figures out how to do it better, because they're first - they're picking the lowest-hanging fruits - not because they started when there were less rules and regulations.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Dunbal on Friday October 09 2015, @10:59PM
some kind of Napoleonic law – everything is illegal unless specifically made legal.
That's not Napoleonic law at all.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Corelli's A on Saturday October 10 2015, @05:17AM
Indeed. From a recent article by Andrew Roberts in the Smithsonian Magazine:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 10 2015, @07:06AM
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday October 10 2015, @04:37AM
And that is exactly why 99% of websites suck. No regulation == no quality.
Now, I'm not saying that we should regulate website, but that regulations exist for good reasons.
Should all planes have locking cockpits? Debatable. Should food manufacturers be banned form putting poisons into their food? Not as debatable.
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(Score: 1) by Tokolosh on Saturday October 10 2015, @02:58PM
The accumulation of cruft and barnacles until a tipping point is reached and the whole edifice collapses, is well-documented. It has happened before, and it will happen again. This is not wild-eyed stuff, but is the subject of scholarly research.
I found this book by Joseph Tainter very interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X [amazon.com]
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday October 10 2015, @07:07PM
It is happening right now, I'm baffled so many people (everywhere) don't realize it.
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