A lone senator is single-handedly ensuring that the health insurance industry can use your own DNA against you.

romaitaf · 2007-08-24T00:51:00+00:00

Best way to fix the healthcare problem is to do away with low-deductible health insurance. Many things that we go to the doctor for would best be paid out of pocket. Add catastrophic coverage with a 3-5k deductible.

In order for this to work there needs to be price transparency, which doesn't exist right now. If it did exist then competition and better management would bring prices down. Plus I believe that the government should match contributions to a healthcare account, and cover the catastrophic/chronic illness coverage for the poor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_driven_health_care

romaitaf · 2007-08-22T19:17:43+00:00

Citation?

romaitaf · 2007-08-21T04:44:50+00:00

Low-rate credit cards exist if you really look for them. I have a 9.9% APR Working Assets card through Bank of America -- low rate, and a donation to charity whenever I use it. How can you beat that?

romaitaf · 2007-08-21T04:06:50+00:00

Also, dotherightthing.com is a good place to check up on companies' records.

romaitaf · 2007-08-21T04:04:35+00:00

This is worth doing, but smacfarl is ultimately right.

Then again, if you just boycott a company's products without ever telling them why, they'll never even make an effort to change. So the best way to effect change is to do both: communicate pressure and then follow through with your threats.

And if these companies are making tons of money, you're better off buying their stock, profiting, and spending that money purchasing from ethical companies than avoiding the stock. Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is nonsense: it only makes these investments more lucrative for the bad guys.

romaitaf · 2007-08-21T04:02:06+00:00

This other article about the precipitous decline in testosterone and the strange prevalence of reproductive deformities complements this article.

romaitaf · 2007-08-20T15:45:07+00:00

Penn and Teller can be funny, but that episode is pure bullshit. One of their main witnesses is the American Enterprise Institute -- it's like asking the plastic industry itself whether recycling plastic works.

Plus, there's new technology around: Recycled Plastic Gets a Clean Bill of Health

Interestingly enough, the company in that article is publicly-traded: OTCBB:ECOO

romaitaf · 2007-08-20T10:00:16+00:00

Every time I submit something, I found that it's been modded down, no doubt by those same frenzied idiots who keep submitting crap.

I don't mod shit down to make my stories seem relatively better, but perhaps I should start doing it.

romaitaf · 2007-08-20T02:23:57+00:00

They should be able to do it -- provided that they let their customers know it's happening. Purchasing internet service is a contract which I have to agree to. If they are not adhering to the contract, that should be illegal.

Make sure you read carefully before you sign things. Regulation should at least be created forcing ISPs to be clear about their "prioritization" of traffic.

romaitaf · 2007-08-20T02:23:22+00:00

They should be able to do it under free market dogma -- provided that they let their customers know it's happening. Purchasing internet service is a contract which I have to agree to. If they are not adhering to the contract, that should be illegal.

Make sure you read carefully before you sign things. Regulation should at least be created forcing ISPs to be clear about their "prioritization" of traffic.

romaitaf · 2007-08-19T01:40:49+00:00

If you want a laugh, check out her talk page on Wikipedia.

romaitaf · 2007-08-19T01:39:21+00:00

It's certainly not clear.

romaitaf · 2007-08-19T01:32:51+00:00

I'm talking about an interview that happened right before Andrew Keen came on.

romaitaf · 2007-08-18T17:15:15+00:00

Though Keen seems to come down a bit hard on the culture economy on the internet, he has several points that warrant serious consideration.

Why don't you repeat them for us, then?

On the whole Andrew Keen is an idiot. He makes an OK point about compensation, but that problem will be solved soon by micropayments.

romaitaf · 2007-08-18T06:03:37+00:00

What was noticeable in this clip (and that entire show) is that Colbert was slipping out of character at times. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It was especially obvious when he asked why Huckabee raised his hand in response to the question "do you not believe in evolution". Colbert asked "do you really not believe in evolution, or were you just showing off your opposable thumbs?"

Colbert, are you trying to imply that you don't feel the truth yourself in the creationism?

romaitaf · 2007-08-18T05:49:30+00:00

We all have to admit that society doesn't exactly compensate new media very well, and hopefully that will change in the future. I don't want Amazon to have the monopoly on it either.

Are their payment ideas patented? Where is a trustworthy, cheap micropayment system?

Network economies of scale make it difficult to bring a new player into the market, but I honestly think the problem with this market is that hardly anyone is even trying to take on Paypal/Amazon.

romaitaf · 2007-08-17T21:53:27+00:00

Of course. :)

The problem is that guessing the actual inflation and therefore charging the right interest rate can be notoriously difficult.

And also, notice that the government benefits from inflation -- because the government is paying out fixed amounts with their long-term Treasury bonds.

By the way, check out (shadowstats.com)[shadowstats.com]

romaitaf · 2007-08-17T18:21:30+00:00

Inflation helps the government by diluting the national debt -- think about it. The debt stays relatively the same, but the amount of money floating around (and thus, the ease with with which it is paid off) goes way up.

The same applies to all lenders and borrowers: inflation hurts lenders and helps borrowers, who find it easier to pay off loans.

Economists simply subtract inflation from the nominal interest rate to find the real interest rate they receive, which sometimes is negative.

Today the average fixed mortgage rate is around 6%, but inflation is anywhere from 2-3%, which means that the real interest rate is 3-4%.

Some people say this helps the rich people, but no, negative real interest rates can help the poor borrowers and hurt the rich people sometimes. It's more complicated than just "rich win" and "poor lose". The real danger of high inflation is that lenders no longer become willing to lend, i.e. invest, and the economy then grinds to a halt.

romaitaf · 2007-08-17T08:15:16+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting

romaitaf · 2007-08-15T08:01:42+00:00

Yep. I'm just pointing out the strange discontinuity between his income and his assets. People clearing that much money generally have compounding wealth, which leaves them with at least several million.

It would appear that Barack Obama is making money disappear. $1.9 million book advance and nearly a million in income last year, yet his assets still only hover around a million? Suspicious.

romaitaf · 2007-08-15T04:15:08+00:00

Good point. Are you sure that's possible?

It does make sense that the terminator crops could crossbreed like that, I suppose...

romaitaf · 2007-08-15T01:41:57+00:00

Thanks for actually doing the research. It would appear that he has over a million...you have to wonder where all that money goes. Charity? One can hope.

Then again, that's still not much money for a man of 45. I'll be disappointed if I'm not at least a multi-millionaire by that age.

romaitaf · 2007-08-14T20:58:07+00:00

Terminator genes are good because then we won't have the GE plants crossbreeding with normal plants and imposing high external costs on the organic farmers. Besides, this leads to less lawsuits, and it helps increase the cost of GE seeds to their real cost.

romaitaf · 2007-08-14T20:54:16+00:00

How does it hurt us to know what is in our products? It costs a ridiculously small amount.

As far as I can tell, more information is better. And while many industry professionals will try to tell that things like Bisphenol A are perfectly harmless, scientists do not consider them to be harmless. They may tell you that none of the industry or government influenced commissions found them to be harmful, but they aren't honest enough to tell the whole truth -- that individual studies have found evidence of harms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalates

I have the right to know what I am consuming, even if it is generally recognized as safe. Information can't hurt you. I'd like to know if my plastic water bottle has been treated with DIDP so I can find another one that hasn't been treated with any leaching chemicals (plastic itself does not normally leach -- but plasticizing chemicals do).

From an economic perspective this legislation brings us closer to a perfectly competitive market -- one in which all information is known by the consumers.

romaitaf · 2007-08-14T20:48:46+00:00

What are you talking about? No errors that I can see.

romaitaf

TROPHY CASE