dpatru

This article does not explain why anti-vaxxers are winning, but it demonstrates why. It repeats tired establishment arguments that the diseases that vaccine protect against are dangerous, but does not address or even acknowledge the legitimate concerns of parents who have seen first hand, or have heard from trusted sources, serious adverse reactions to vaccinations. Loud denials by the medical establishment along with efforts to use state power to compel vaccinations, legal immunity for vaccine makers, and brutal retaliation against doctors who question the orthodoxy do much to help the anti-vaccination movement.

Regarding sugar, read about the "white rice diet" used for many years at Duke University to cure diabetes. The diet consists of white rice, table sugar, and fruit. https://www.drmcdougall.com/2013/12/31/walter-kempner-md-fou...

I recently found Dr John McDougal on YouTube who has the solution to obesity based on history, current societies, and science. There seem to be two rules: 1) Base your diet around starchy vegetables (potato, wheat, oats, rice, corn, etc). 2) avoid fats, especially refined fats, and protein. 3) salt and sugar are not health foods, but are allowed to help you stick with rules 1 and 2. People, and societies, that eat like this are thin and healthy.

From a 2006 study [1]: Using only data from FARS to assess child restraint system effectiveness in reducing risk for death in passenger vehicle crashes implicitly assumes that surviving children in fatal accidents have restraint practices that are similar to those of children in other serious crashes that do not result in fatalities. If child restraint systems are highly effective in reducing risk for death relative to seat belts, children in crashes who survived because they were restrained in a child restraint system rather than a seat belt will not be included in the FARS database unless someone else in the crash died. This will lead to a potential underrepresentation of child restraint system use among surviving children and a consequent underestimation of the effectiveness of child restraint systems in reducing risk for fatal injury if only FARS data are used.

[1] Effectiveness of Child Safety Seats vs Seat Belts in Reducing Risk for Death in Children in Passenger Vehicle Crashes http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=20506...

The fallacy here is to aggregate the people. Democracy has been compared to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Proposals to cut government will fail when more than 50℅ figure they are net beneficiaries. This does not mean the system is just or that the lambs approve of their exploitation.

Binary?

> What's the alternative, and how would you implement it?

I can think of two basic reasons for the existence of government: 1) The idealistic (naive?) view of government is that it exists because some problems in society are best solved by coercion rather than cooperation. Businesses and charities, when they solve problems, lessen the need for government.

2) Bastiat's more cynical view of government was that it "is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." Moral instruction and wealth, evenly distributed, would seem to lessen the need for this type of government.

I think that teaching your children how to make money while they are still young is one of the most valuable things you can do for them. This, along with the ability to learn independently, will allow them to avoid a lot of misery for the rest of their lives.

There are many people who are doomed to stressful lives living paycheck to paycheck because early in life they didn't learn a lucrative trade and they didn't learn how to learn. Once you are out of school and have a job and maybe a family, just the day-to-day demands of living can drain most of your energy and time.

The article assumes that the defendants are guilty. It should assume that they are innocent and ask why prosecutors are trying people they can't prove are guilty.

Facebook offers free services to ordinary people to help them stay in touch with their friends. It also offers a paid services to businesses to help them communicate to actual and potential customers. Anyone who uses Facebook can stop at any time. People use Facebook by choice.

In contrast, governments are violent organizations specialize in coercion. Governments extract their revenue by force or threat of force and use their revenue to fund institutions and projects that people would not pay for voluntarily. Governments maintain power by direct force (police and military), by deceit and misinformation (control of the money supply, compulsory education), by monopolizing necessary institutions and services (dispute resolution, security), and by appealing to people's greed and envy. It is nearly impossible to opt out of government services, especially in the sense of not paying for them (taxes).

In terms of providing social value, Facebook employees far surpass any government's employees. In just a few years Facebook has revolutionized how people connect with each other, whereas governments have, in general, barely been able to maintain the accomplishments of previous generations. This despite the fact that government generally force people to pay about one fifth of their labor, whereas Facebook offers its services for free. Governments should wither and die in favor of more socially beneficial organizations like Facebook.

Expecting regular commuters to continue paying is like a dating site expecting married couples to continue paying. Focus instead on helping irregular travelers find rides or minibus entrepreneurs find paying passengers.

Please state your disagreement.

> But how will you reduce the government under the current system? Isn't campaign finance reform a necessary step?

You reduce government by advocating for it. You promote ideas and candidates that will cut government income, control, and spending. The problem is that Government is too big and too powerful. Merely trying to make government function better, without intentionally cutting it, is like trying to make a severely obese man more comfortable by treating his diabetes, high blood pressure, joint problems, etc, but not restricting his caloric intake: it just makes the problem worse.

In computer science, a common way to solve complex problems is just to reduce their size. You sort a big list by splitting it and recursively sorting the smaller lists. You could make the problems of the US government much more manageable by simply abolishing the Federal government and making the fifty states independent. There would still be problems with government, but the problems would be an order of magnitude smaller. Repeat this process until government is truly local.

Market economics is the aggregate of the deals that people make when they are not coerced. It's what results when both drivers and passengers are free to choose their best options. Regulation that disrupts this, by preventing drivers from offering services (through a medalion system) or prevents passengers from paying for services (by capping fares) make people worse off than they otherwise would be.

BATNA = Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement

MOOC don't have to replace all colleges to be wildly successful. It is enough if they become known as the best place for self-motivated, bright people to get an education. When that happens, MOOC will be the new college. That is, completion of a course of study from a MOOC provider like Udacity will be a strong signal to employers that a student is quality.

At that point, the question employers will be asking traditional students is: why didn't you do your education online where it is faster, of better quality, and much cheaper? The fact that a person needs the hand-holding and extrinsic motivation of a traditional college is not a plus.

Greenspun did a good job of characterizing (even summarizing) the information that you can find in the book. I learned new things from reading his review. Since I didn't read the book, this was more valuable to me than a "discussion".

> Slavery is immoral because it takes away freedom of movement . . .

Here's a counter-example: the difference between a freeman farmer and a slave farmer is not that they don't have freedome of movement, but that the freeman has the right to sell the harvest to whom he wants while the slave does not.

It sounds like the definition of slavery as lack of freedom of movement was dreamed up by some law professor in order to avoid having to characterize the income tax as a form of slavery.

> The gap between rich and poor is ever widening,

The "gap" between the rich and poor is a function of possible productivity. As it becomes possible for people to do more, there will be more of a spread between people who do nothing and people who max out their potential. When all farmers worked farmed by hand, the "gap" between the lazy and the industrious was a few bushels of food. But now that there are tractors and financing available, the top farmers produce maybe thousands of times more than the little farmers.

The situation is similar in every field, especially those involving mass distributions. An interesting youtube video can get millions of times more views than an ordinary video. Is this a problem? Should we force people to watch uninteresting videos, or cap the interesting videos to reduce the viewing gap?

I don't see why increased productivity should be a concern, especially since being productive today generally means imparting benefits to large numbers of people. Larry Page is very rich, but he got that way by helping everybody with an internet connection to find useful information.

> . . . the middle class is eroding away, yet all the while production has been increasing. Wages are being driven down artificially low.

I don't understand what you mean by "artificially low" wages. Wages are generally set by supply and demand. As long as people are free to choose alternatives, they are not working for artificially low wages. An example of people with artificially low wages are prisoners who must take the work offered to them by prison officials. But the majority of people are not in prison.

> you actually seem okay with slavery

I'm all for stamping out slavery where it is committed by one person against another. No one should take away another's right to contract. But where a person voluntarily degrades himself, I see that as his choice, not mine.

> the right to freedom of movement is actually a far more fundamental and clear cut human right than the right to form contracts and do trade.

I agree that freedom of movement is a fundamental right. I'm not sure if it's more important that the right to contract or trade. I think it's less fundamental because there are a few situations where you could legitimately not have freedom of movement (while traveling in an airplane or trespassing), but I can think of very few situations where you wouldn't have the right to contract. (You might have contracted away your right to make future contracts for a limited time and subject-matter.)

> employers will gladly take advantage of people's need to feel productive, while setting them all against each other to drive wages as low as the most desperate person to work will accept.

By this logic, all wages should be at the minimum wage, because without government setting a lower bound, employers would just keep setting employees against each other and thus drive wages lower. Why then do some people earn more than the minimum wage? Do they work for companies that do not try select the most profitable workers?

Don't employers also have to compete with each other for the best workers?

Don't workers too have the opportunity to choose among competing employers?

> Such as, the freedom to contract yourself into slavery?

People choose to enslave themselves all the time, just not to employers. The most common slave-masters today are alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and other vices.

> I am somewhat concerned about the other people in my community who don't [have theirs].

If you're concerned about people in your community who are poor, why do you oppose letting them make employment contracts which will make them better off? The minimum wage makes it illegal for them to contract for jobs that they are actually qualified for, i.e., very low-paying jobs.

Very low-paying jobs are for employment what remedial courses are for college education. Eliminating remedial courses in college which would mean that people with very low levels of education could not get started with college. The minimum wage, by eliminating low-paying jobs, prevents low-skilled people from getting started with employment.

> As for the people that got theirs but are content to say "fuck you Jack" to those that don't, they're not the kind of people I want to share my community, or country, with.

Not only are you against allowing people to contract, you also want to deport people who exercise their right to speak. This is not a cheap shot. When you are willing to violate a basic human right like the freedom to contract, you're likely morally blind enough to be willing to violate other human rights.

The choice of violating the right to contract and trade or letting someone starve is a false one. In fact, a major cause (though not the only cause) of poverty is restrictions on contracts and trade, mostly by governments. There are examples of this everywhere. The article mentioned taxis. Driving a car safely is a basic skill that many otherwise unskilled people can do. Taxis should be very cheap, plentiful, and temporary job for people who need something to do while they work on doing something more useful. Instead, government restricts the supply of taxis making taxis expensive and relatively scarce. This hurts people who need transportation, it hurts people who would like to provide transportation but cannot, and it hurts people who could be doing something more useful for society but don't because they are earning more than they should as taxi drivers.

It's fine to want to earn more money as long as you don't do this by taking away other people's freedoms. No one has the right to use force on others for their own ends. No one has the right to take away other people's right to contract in order to maintain an above-market price. So for example: the minimum wage takes away the rights of employers and would-be employees to contract at low wages in order to allow some workers to charge above-market wages. Taxi medallions take away the rights of passengers and drivers to contract for cheap fares in order to allow taxi companies to charge above-market fares. Not only are such laws economically wasteful, but they are immoral in the same sense that slavery is immoral: they take away one's freedom to contract.

Why can't timing be handled external to the scrambling or descrambling operations? Look at the time, do the crypto, then check the time and sleep as necessary so that this particular operation takes about as much time as the worse-case. Something like:

  cryptofunc x = do
    begintime <- gettime
    result <- purecryptofunc x
    endtime <- gettime
    sleep (worstcase - (endtime - begintime))
    return result

Modified to also record the elapsed times:

  # from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7411120
  export NOW_FORMAT='%F %T'
  export NOW_FORMAT2='+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
  export NOW_FILE="$HOME/.now"
  now() {
    if [ -e $NOW_FILE ] &&
       last_line=$(tail -n1 $NOW_FILE | cut -d " " -f 1,2) &&
       time0=$(date -j -f "$NOW_FORMAT" "$(tail -n1 $NOW_FILE)" "+%s") && 
       time1=$(date -j "+%s")
    then echo "ET $(( $time1 - $time0 ))" >> $NOW_FILE
    fi
    echo $(date +"$NOW_FORMAT") - "$@" >> $NOW_FILE
    tail $HOME/.now # show the last few lines
  }

Britain held journalist Glen Greenwald's partner on terrorism grounds, suspecting he was carrying Snowden files. http://www.advocate.com/politics/media/2013/11/03/british-go...

Asserting that the speaker shouldn't make arguments because he's not "a grand political philosopher" and that his comments are a "low brow form of idealogical dribble" does not contribute to a good discussion. It's ironic that this is how you attempt to raise the level of discussion.

My comment was in response to the suggestion that government was popular because it solved people's problems and that therefore libertarianism or anarchism is unworkable. "Yep, the world really is that simple - abolish government and things will get better. It's a shame so many people don't realize how easy it is to fix all of their problems."

My response was that government does solve problems, just in an illegitimate way. Government solves people's problems by giving them benefits that they would not otherwise have, at least not without a lot of work.

The situation is like slavery of pre 1860s in the southern United States. Slavery was obviously wrong, but it survived because it "solved problems" for its constituents.

In both cases eliminating the injustice would result in making the lives of many of the system's beneficiaries worse off. Specifically, in this case, people are willing to accept the rule of evil people like those portrayed in House of Cards because it makes their personal lives more pleasant than it would be otherwise.

> It's a shame so many people don't realize how easy it is to fix all of their problems.

Libertarianism maintains that government is not supposed to solve all your problems. That is the job of the free market: voluntary associations and mutually-beneficial transactions. Government's role is to secure the liberties that underlie the free market.

When politicians offer to "solve" people's problems, they are usually offering to steal for their constituents. "Don't have enough money for healthcare, retirement, food, housing, education, [insert your particular problem here]? Vote for me and I'll take it from your countrymen by force of government and give it to you." Voters for such politicians are thieves by proxy. It's a shame that people resort to thievery to solve their problems. But it's not a mystery as to why abolishing such a system would be unpopular.

> Deflation, by providing a risk free return for sitting on currency, leads to a slowdown in the real economy by reducing both output (reduced consumption) and productivity (reduced investment).

1. Money does not have to be fiat money to be inflationary. The government could achieve the same end in a fairer, more controlled manner without deceit simply by issuing a wealth tax, or a currency tax. However this would reveal the robbery too plainly and thus be unpopular. Inflation is an easier way that relies on deceit, sophistry, and obfuscation.

2. The people who benefit the most from inflation are people in government (who can fund themselves without taxing the populace) and banks/borrowers (who can create money to lend without the explicit cooperation of savers.) Neither group engenders sympathy.

3. Saving is a good thing and we need more of it. Many of society's problems can be directly traced to a lack of savings: pensions for the aged need to be provided because people do not save enough during their working years; health care must be provided because people do not save enough to be able to pay for it themselves; and investments must be funded by government because the savings are not available privately. Inflation discourages savings.

4. The wording "risk-free return for sitting on currency" is deceptive, implying that people who can have a risk free return won't work. This is not true and is best illustrated by computer technology which has been undergoing deflation since its inception decades ago. One can simply wait five years and likely be able to obtain today's hot, expensive technology for very little, likely for free. Yet despite this risk-free return for sitting on currency, people still choose to spend on technology they know is depreciating.

5. Contrary to the deception promulgated by those who profit from inflation and by the people who are deceived by them, a deflationary currency would encourage saving and sound investment while discouraging speculation and irresponsibility. For example, rather than allowing venture capitalists to fund risky new ventures with their own money, our inflation-funded government officials use public money to fund politically-connected companies like Solyndra. In a hard-money world, government would be a lot smaller, more focused on providing the services the public actually agrees to pay for, while the general populace would be more responsible and future-oriented, knowing that their savings now will determine their retirement.

For more on this, see the writings of Murry Rothbard, e.g. http://mises.org/daily/1829.

> This article seems to glorify the idea of people keeping money out of the banking system to avoid banks making money off interest spreads.

The problem with banks is not that they make money off of interest spreads. The problem is that banks are an integral part of the fiat money system that allows the creation of new money too easily. (Banks create money by lending out money held in demand deposits. For example, if I deposit $10 in my checking account and the banks lends out $5 of it, then I still have my full $10 to spend while the borrower has $5 of new money. This is called fractional reserve banking.)

Bitcoin, because it is fixed in quantity, cannot be used in a fractional reserve system.

> But our economy actually relies on capital being available through banks.

Our economy relies on investment which can be defined as resources directed towards creating value in the future rather than in the present. By aggregating the resources of many individual savers and making them available as business loans, banks facilitate investment. They could continue to do this with bitcoin.

> How would people having all their wealth in bitcoin be any different than people keeping cash under the mattress ...?

Banks are better than mattresses because they are more secure and they make transactions easier. You can't wire money from your mattress or write a check against a mattress account.

Bitcoin is more like a bank account than a mattress in this regard.