Phi for All

I'm asking YOU because a) you made the claim, and b) Mr Gore is not a member here. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just hadn't heard that Haiti was all my fault.

Energy, health (which includes clean drinking water and breathable air) and education seem to be some of the best investments we could ever make, and are so vital to our modern life that it seems incredibly sensible to keep control of them in the hands of the People (real People, We, the People, not Corporate Persons). iNow, you mention housing. Are you talking about a minimum standard for housing to alleviate homelessness?

What evidence do you have that supports an anthropogenic source for megaquakes?

This is a very good point. What if the teacher puts hot water inside, measures the temperature, then puts the thermos in a refrigerator for a while to see how well it retains heat in a less than room temperature environment (this also reduces the time he would need to test the whole class, a clever thing teachers are known to do)? Perhaps a reflective layer of tinfoil closest to the bottle, a layer (or double layer) of toilet paper, tinfoil, toilet paper, tinfoil, toilet paper and tinfoil (the outer layer of tinfoil can also act as a radiant barrier against cold, right?).

And the TV we watch seems geared towards fear, which keeps us indoors even more. 24/7 news seemed like such a good idea, but I think it's had quite a bit of negative impact as well. I can see accessible community preserves being a good investment. I'm not sure our current trend towards bigger houses with more stuff in them so we never have to leave is headed in a healthy direction. The more we isolate ourselves, the less we interact in physical ways. It seems to run counter to the social strengths that helped our species get this far so quickly.

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! Moderator Note If you're going to call someone a liar on this forum, you need to back that up with evidence or retract the statement and apologize. Intellectual integrity demands no less. Please address this issue before moving on to something else, and be careful with accusations in the future.

Spacesuits worn by astronauts have multiple "sandwiched" layers. Perhaps you could use multiple tinfoil layers sandwiching something (plastic wrap? paper?) that keeps the metal layers from touching each other to reduce heat transfer.

This is for everyone in every country. I'd like to discuss the best use of government tax revenues. Personally, I think there are some areas where people in a society can get the best benefits for their money by pooling it via taxes. As I've mentioned before, things like medical insurance, prisons and education don't fit the standard business models. Maintaining a growing customer base for prisons is antithetical to what you want prisons for. I think welfare is a great investment in your citizens. Too often, people only look at the smaller percentage of people who abuse welfare systems, and fail to see the greater percentage of people who truly need them, so we end up not wanting to help anyone. Welfare helps in many unseen ways as well, like reducing the reasons people turn to crime. Scientific research is something that almost never fails to benefit everyone in a society. Public roads, parks, libraries and community centers are all great investments as well. Subsidies can help business get a start in a new sector but there has to be a cutoff point where the subsidies stop. It's crazy to spend taxpayer dollars to make profitable businesses even more profitable ad infinitum. Certainly not a comprehensive list but I wanted to start with some areas that have been discussed lately.

I think Google is a great example of a company that's breaking with corporate trends of the past fifty years or so. Not only in the way they empower their employees, but also the way they approach their business dealings. Small profits per deal attract an enormous amount of clients. You don't have to gouge your customers when everybody wants to use you.

Oh, I don't think it undermines free market concepts either, nor does it preclude the quest for profit. I think this new paradigm simply incorporates more of the people who make up the businesses, and empowers them in a way they aren't being empowered in standard corporations. Let's face it, when we have a vested interest that goes beyond protecting a job by working so the company is successful, when we actually have a quantifiable reason to reach down and do our absolute best, people are motivated in ways standard employers only dream of.

You were the one who brought up not modeling any one country's system. Pre-existing conditions are an important sticking point with many people, so what's your problem with the introduction of some discussion on it?

Are you kidding me? Bush gutted most of the environmental agencies and reduced their effectiveness in protecting us from polluters. Obama hasn't been able to take much ground back after a very effective GOP campaign to equate further regulations with job loss. But somehow, less regulation did NOT increase jobs like the GOP said it would. Score one for the corporations, they get to save money, dump more junk on us and increase our health risks. Oh, sorry, you don't give a shit about people's health, I forgot. Freedom to pollute, freedom to be polluted, I get it. This whole social movement, as you put it, is citizens being vigilant about freedom being taken away. I know you equate anything to do with the government with loss of freedom and general badliness, but some of us still think our democracy is better when it's not tampered with by people who just want more of our money. We pay taxes and we want them used for better things than making rich businesses richer. Contrary to what Reagan thought, IT HASN'T BEEN TRICKLING DOWN.

Bad argument, Slippery Slope fallacy. Just because it could be stretched doesn't mean it would be. And there is ample evidence that lack of pollution regulation leads to unacceptable levels of pollution. Vigilance to avoid going down that slippery slope is one of the responsibilities of freedom, imo. Environmental pollution is just the kind of thing I want government intervention for. Especially when polluters are fouling my children's future for some extra money. Finding more profit elsewhere is preferable to the known dangers of environmental negligence, so where's the government tyranny in that?

Part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 would protect you from being rejected for a pre-existing condition. Prior to that (or if it's overturned), you'd either be denied coverage, be charged higher premiums or have a waiting period before your coverage kicks in. Waiting periods are typically six to eighteen months. Just another reason why healthcare doesn't fit the for-profit business model, imo. How much more difficult and costly is it going to be to treat you after letting your condition go untreated during the waiting period?

It's still on-topic. I responded to John's question about how well choice works. If the Swiss system is being chosen strictly because it offers more choices, I wanted to show how choice is often used to make people think something is better when it really isn't. The top two best selling ice cream flavors at Baskin-Robbins are still vanilla and chocolate. You just pay more for all of it because they have to stock all 31 flavors in every store all the time.

Speaking from my personal encounters, my hypothesis is that men and women are equally rational, but they're focused differently. Stemming from our pre-civilized hunter/gatherer roles, I think men are focused tactically to find game and hunt it down. Women, in their much broader role of gatherers, tend to be focused more strategically, watching for everything all at once. There is evidence that we still have some of those hunter/gatherer genes in us today. One study suggests that women can see more shades of red than men, and they have fewer instances of color blindness. This would have been of great use looking for berries and other indicators of edible and poisonous plants. Men's logic tends to be more tactically oriented. "See a fire, put it out." Women are perfectly rational but within a broader strategic framework. "Perhaps it would be better in the long run to let the forest burn." Maybe the extra emotions come from having to explain their logic to men who don't get it and just want to put the fire out, but I think the emotions come from worrying about everything simultaneously all the time.

Choice is a marketer's panacea. If I have only one version of my product, no matter how efficient it is at what it does or how well it's priced, your decision on whether to buy is always yes or no. But if I give you an array of versions (which increases costs and therefore price), you're much more likely to choose one of them. Your decision on whether to buy is almost automatically yes, followed by your secondary decision of which version to choose. It works really well for the seller, and the buyer is happier at the point of purchase and feels empowered because he got to choose. But much of the time, choice can actually make us unhappier in the long run. Here's a very eye-opening TED talk about The Paradox of Choice.

I'm going to comment a bit (or rather, in bits) on freedom before I actually attempt to personally define it. I think various "freedom" concepts get pushed on us by those with special interests. "Free market" actually has little to do with American freedom, for instance. Businesses can prosper AND be well-regulated at the same time. Many sectors are are but too many aren't. The concept of freedom gets used to lend patriotic emotion where it can often be detrimental, overriding common sense and rational discourse. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the guy who turned "propaganda" into "public relations", devised a campaign to double the consumption of cigarettes for the American Tobacco Company. He got women to defy social norms and take up smoking as a sign of feminist liberation, calling each little Lucky Strike a "Torch of Freedom". Freedom should include being free to do what you want to your own body and anything within your own body (including potential life). As long as you're willing to pay the consequences for your personal actions, that seems like a basic part of being free. But I hate that we can't have freedom from manipulation. We get played even when we're sure we can't be played.

We have ample recourse for punitive measures when corporations break the law but we're not using them. Part of the responsibility that corporations are shirking is built into their state and federal charters, to act ethically with regard to their business dealings. This is, to a large degree, the fault of this corporate personhood movement that gives them the power to flout the law and escape indictment. We know who caused our current financial crisis; why aren't these people on trial? Corporations may be started by a few people, but it's everyone who works there that builds the company (to use your own words). Even though employees are compensated, without them the corporation goes nowhere. Both are needed but you seem to argue that only the starters matter (even though many major corporations change their C-level executives completely every 5-10 years). Owners, executives and shareholders reap many benefits already and always will, but in order to stop what's been happening to our economy, our manufacturing base, our economic stability, we need to have employees more vested in corporate success. In order for that to happen, the focus needs to broaden beyond just the bottom line. And in order for THAT to happen, we need to end this spiral that's creating such a gulf between the ephemeral, short-sighted, money-moving people at the top whose personal investments are protected by charter and the people at the bottom who want stability, longevity, loyalty and integrity in exchange for their commitment and hard work. As normal People, their investments aren't protected by charter and they stand to lose the most when the beans don't add up this quarter.

Perhaps I'll come at it from a cost-effectiveness point of view, with the idea that it's unethical to spend taxpayer dollars on something that's known to cause waste. There are four separate branches of the military in the US who each have command and administrative departments who all vie for every dollar appropriated by Congress. This represents an immense expenditure that would be unnecessary if our military was a single Defense Force. And if you don't think there's a detrimental rivalry between branches at the Pentagon level, you're living in a politically imaginative fairy tale. Further, there is a hideous amount of waste in hardware as well. The A-10 Thunderbolt is a great example. Originally an Air Force asset assigned for use in close air support of ground troops, it's been so successful that the Army wants its own squadrons under its own command. They love the plane but don't like the way the Air Force drives it. They have to furnish reams of reports costing millions of dollars in order to get something that a cohesive Defense Force would've been able to assign based solely on strategic mission requirements.

! Moderator Note Last warning before suspension.

The real tipping point was when Steven Hawkins requested the ban himself via private message. Best idea yet, Steve.

Absolutely. Labor unions helped set the standards other businesses had to meet to compete with. And corporations have been instrumental in allowing economic growth for many to remain separate from personal finances. But there are different pressures now and society has changed in one direction where unions and corporations have changed in others. Both are working for the betterment of a few while society needs betterment for many. We can all flourish but we need to stop doing so at the expense of each other. Old paradigms aren't blueprints anymore, they're just old. Where near-instantaneous rebuttal is at least possible. Hey! No need for that.

Symington pushed hard to make the Air Force separate from the Army, and then saw first hand what it did to morale structure and cohesiveness. He spent the latter part of his life trying to correct his error (and JFK agreed with him, and made Symington his first pick as VP). I can't imagine how converting four separate branches of military into a single defensive force would create any kind of "pansy". If anything, it would eliminate having kids follow their parent's footsteps into what may be an inappropriate branch of service for them. How many grunts lost their lives (and possibly those of fellow grunts) because taking a much better suited assignment in the Navy wouldn't have been sanctioned by their families? How ethical is it to expect someone to take a job they may not be suited for because of tradition? Because if you're not a swabby, you're a moral derelict, right?