An American served a year in prison for copyright conduct that is legal in EU
blogs.harvard.edu
blogs.harvard.edu
Illegal to sell a car with a modified odometer - but you can screw with yours all you want. Wait, I think that is already illegal.
Illegal to fly an aircraft in the NAS with unauthorized modifications to the transponder. Wait, that is already illegal. :)
It's as if the problem was people rolling back odometers and instead of passing a law against rolling back odometers they passed a law against making any modifications whatsoever to a vehicle that has an odometer.
There is already a law against copyright infringement. What is the DMCA anti-circumvention law adding to that other than to prohibit things that aren't copyright infringement?
Countries have different laws. You can be convicted in most EU states of saying things which are protected speech in the US. Or for getting an abortion.
But this law is an example of the primacy of corporate activity over human rights.
It also creates unnecessary confusion since it implies an American was jailed in Europe for something that's legal in Europe. For the reason you give - countries have different laws - there's no reason to mention Europe otherwise.
> You can be convicted in most EU states [...] for getting an abortion.
I'd love to know where you got this from.
1> In most EU states, some speech which is protected in the USA is illegal (e.g. pro-nazi statements which are understandably forbidden in certain countries).
2> Another example of something legal in the USA is abortion, while some countries in Europe are more restrictive (Malta 100%, Andorra, Italy, Ireland and Poland almost so, usw).
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/appeal-indiana-woman-convicted-ha...
Or try driving with a legally owned gun through a few USA states and see...
Stay away from the coasts and it would go pretty well.
What really happened here is that he got royally screwed at sentencing. Criminal History Category I, at effectively the base sentencing level for criminal DMCA infringement, and they decided to make an example out of him.
Guess who's filling the prisons all these years laters?
"More than half (53%) of state prisoners were serving sentences for violent offenses in 2014 (the most recent year for which offense data are available), compared to 19% for property offenses and less than 16% for drug crimes."
Also to parent's point:
"Almost 7% of state prisoners (91,300 inmates) and 18% of federal prisoners (34,900) were held in private prison facilities in 2015"
The evil corporate private prisons trapping the poor pot smokers to extract money from them is a nice fairy tale. The reality is more complicated and forces us to grapple with the fact that there are some pretty bad people out there, and we're apparently OK with treating them inhumanely when we seek retribution.
This is probably what's getting you downvoted. This seems like an extreme claim that runs contrary to common knowledge but is presented without any evidence.
Do you have a source for that? According to Wikipedia ISIS started out in Jordan as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and merged with several other groups before rebranding itself as ISI in Iraq and later ISIL/ISIS/Daesh. Its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did end up in prison early in his "career" (1992) but that was in Jordan, not in the US, and he already had founded a terrorist group at that time.
Considering al-Zarqawi is generally considered the leader/founder of ISIS and never saw a US prison, your claim seems odd.
The US incarceration rate is ridiculous and you know it. Even if the share of violent offenses seems plausible, that still means either there's something very wrong with the US that's turning too many people into violent criminals, or there's something very wrong with the US that's getting too many people convicted for violent crimes.
It's a lot more complex than just "poor pot smokers" getting sent to prison, though. The War on Drugs alone causes a lot of collateral damage that's feeding into the prison system. Bails, plea bargains, entrapment, ... there's a lot of problems with the US criminal justice system from an outside perspective.
There are enough private prisons in the US for there to be a private prison industry and a lobby. That lobby has obvious incentives to help shape legislation in a way that lands more people in prison. It's impossible to say what role that lobby has had so far exactly but it seems a safe bet that politicians are paying attention.
If I were in prison, I’d rather work in a chain gang than be stuck indoors 24x7. I havn’t seen a chain gang in 30 years. They don’t use chains anymore, rather a dude with a shotgun.
A secure unit takes:
> Individuals with mental disorder or neuro-development disorder who are liable to be detained under the Mental Health Act (1983) and whose risk of harm to others and risk of escape from hospital cannot be managed safely within other mental health settings, require care and treatment within a secure mental health service.
> Individuals will typically have complex mental disorders, with co-morbid difficulties of substance misuse and/or personality disorder, which are linked to offending or seriously irresponsible behaviour. Consequently most individuals are involved with the criminal justice system, the courts and prison system and many have Ministry of Justice restrictions imposed
Those people vote. That's why practically everything is an insane fine with jail time at the judges discretion
Jailbreaking the Wii lead an American guy to prison, while it would have been legal in Europe, according to the EUCJ.
Same as in the US, but ultimately the EJC is Europe's Supreme Court, if it decides to take a case and rule, its rulings supersede local decisions.
A EU court ruled that it is not illegal to provide a mod chip for the Wii because of “how often [the] devices are in fact used in order to allow unauthorised copies … and how often that equipment is used for purposes which do not infringe copyright[.]“ (from the article).
The US court meanwhile ignored the question whether they could have legitimate purpose at all and just saw it as “a device to circumvent copyright“.
What is interesting here is not that two countries have different laws, it is that an “international“ law is interpreted completely different for an almost identical case by two countries and thus punished completely differently.
There're a series of excellent EdX courses on International Law by the Université Catholique de Louvain if you're interested.
https://www.edx.org/micromasters/louvainx-international-law
Don't use endonyms like Den Haag or Torino for The Hague or Turin for developed countries. Use the traditional exonyms.
The court mostly deals with disputes between states — which is not the case here as a USian was imprisoned by the US following US interpretation of treaty rules — and the US would have to allow its jurisdiction for this case which I wouldn't see happen normally, and even less so under the current jingoistic administration.
Just about any felony is associated with a maximum sentence that is roughly 10 times higher in the US than in Europe. The US justice system is all about retribution, this is so ingrained in the US psyche that ssemingly normal people who think they are humane and have good moral compass will make "don't drop the soap jokes" and basically accept prison rape as normal way of dealing with felons, provided they dislike the crime enough. Even US judges occasionally state in public that they hope that the defendant will die in prison.
People in Europe tend to be more civil in such matters.
Edit: "That is what plea bargaining is. It is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system." Scott & Stuntz, Plea Bargaining as Contract, 101 Yale L. J. 1909, 1912 (1992). " Quoted in Missouri v Frye before the Supreme Court(https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=169296831339244...)
Perhaps, when so many people are doing something illegal that your criminal justice system can't take the strain it is time to consider what is illegal? Plea bargains on the other hand seem to be working around justice.
A small introduction: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-uni...
Make the penalties for everything unreasonably harsh you escalate what criminals are willing to do to avoid their people going to jail. They're more likely to carry weapons and murder witnesses and the whole works. Which allows the police to justify more SWAT teams and military hardware and surveillance gear that all come from private for-profit corporations.
Arms dealers love an arms race.
I don't know of any other country that has elections for judges!
Surely doctors should be experts in medicene, and judges should be experts on law. If you're elected you are an expert in being elected.
Judicial elections in general also bring in unwelcome outside influences to the process (monetary campaign backing, campaigning along party lines despite the fact judges are supposed to be politically independent) and the best judges may not be the best politicians/campaigners.
Taxpayers foot the bill either way.
Find yourself locked up in Macomb Co, MI? You will receive a bill for $60/day for your incarceration as you are released.
Florida State Prison? Be prepared for a "cost of incarceration lien" to be levied by the state at the rate of $50/day for often multi-year sentences.
Such fees are authorized (though not always enforced) in 43 states.
So the analogy is not at all broken.
1. http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/18/news/economy/prison-fees-inm...
2. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34705968
3. https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/paying-your-time-how-...
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Really?
Cruel and unusual?
I would be careful to generalize here. It's often not the people that are reluctant to demand retribution, but criminal justice systems that are insulated against populism. For example, there's currently a pretty sickening case of serial gang rape being reported on in Germany and there's plenty of popular outrage [1], including some people wishing for the death penalty and for body parts getting hacked off (and the suspects appear to be ethnic Germans, so it's not anti-migrant hysteria). But in the end, the criminal justice system is unlikely to be affected by that outrage, largely because of Germany's career judiciary (both prosecutors and judges).
[1] The outrage is understandable; the crimes make me feel ill, too. But the desire for retribution is still way outside what the penal code or the constitution would permit.
If someone in the UK was arrested for having a gun would we write about a “British man serving time for something that’s legal in the US”?
Fuck them for sending some poor guy to prison for modifying hardware he owned. Almost makes you want to pirate their games in protest.
Furthermore, "Europe" as an organisation could mean the European Union, The Council of Europe or even minor entities like the European Broadcasting Union depending on the context.
If Cyprus can claim to be a European country, then so can Turkey.
This is an area where China is clearly the freer country.
This applies to other types of theft too. Would you say that a country where people can legally steal food away from each other is freer than a country where this is not the case?
If you could've gotten a free copy of a Harry Potter book the day after it went on sale, would you have paid for it? Do you think there would've been any sequels if this was happening?
Yeah, actually. In fact, that's basically what I did (for some of the sequels, not the first book). I don't get why everyone thinks that nobody is willing to pay creators. Kickstarter, Patreon, etc are living proof that people want to pay.
We really need to wake up to the fact that distribution for media is basically a solved problem. We don't need gateways who continue to creat artificial barriers just so that their dying industry can try and stay alive.
That was a long time ago and I am now on my fourth country of residence. Now the espousing of "freedom" some Americans often express when discussing living in Europe vs the US is sort of baffling when there are so many examples of Americans being the opposite of free. This is one example of greater restrictions on their lives which Americans are forced to accept. It seems like freedom in the US is crippled at so many turns, either by corporations or lack of government support when you really need it in a bad financial situation. You're not free to expect your health to be taken care of no matter what your financial situation; you're not free from living in often astonishing debt just to to get a higher education; you're not free to feel any sort of real sense of job security when an employer can fire you at will with little protection; you're not free to make a mistake, maybe like this one, without facing overblown charges and/or prison sentences; etc...Living in the US now just seems like it would be so stressful.
Europe has its problems, but having lived in both places I know where I personally feel more "free".
In fact, I actually moved because I wanted to do unpaid programming work for my company to prove I was ready for a software engineering role. The US office said it would be illegal, but the European office said it would be legal there, so I got a transfer (and shortly after, the promotion I was after).
Not everything is as easy as HNers in SV make it seem.
My perception is (and reality coukd very well be completely different), that they have a lot of personal freedom enabled by the money they have. A type of freedom that would not be possible in Europe even with that kind of money.
Okay, I still don't think I'm getting it. Going out on a limb, I'd say that poor people in the United States have incredibly more opportunity by almost any measure than the bulk of people on earth.
Happy to consider where I may be wrong -- what am I missing?
For instance, can a poor person get rich in America? If so, is this easier/harder than other places? Once rich, can they start a space program if they wish? Is this easier/harder than other countries?
If the point is that when poor, you don't have the "opportunity" to start a space program, I agree :). I also think it's an odd way to define opportunity, and I'm not sure it indicates anything negative about America.
Anyway, I expect that this is tangential to your actual point, so I don't mean to to drag us too far down a pedantic side street :).
What sort of freedom do you mean?
I think universal healthcare, affordable higher education and social security are basic necessities and it's insane that the US doesn't have them.
But that's not freedom, that's socialism. It's like saying that US citizens are not free to travel because airplane tickets are expensive.
Freedom means that you get a choice, even if that choice is going to screw yourself later in life - for instance not buying health insurance. All those things you mention are paid by your taxes - someone is literally taking money away from you to pay for something you might not need - thats hardly freedom.
In this sense the US is the freest country to live in, though not necessarily the best one.
Your use of freedom and socialism as opposing ideas, rather than as two separate axes, suggests that you might be making this assumption.
Socialism seems opposed to freedom because it requires a greater scope of government power, and therefore, a greater suppression of individual and collective liberty, than capitalism. Of course, not everyone agrees with even those broad definitions of socialism or capitalism (in the American libertarian sense of capitalism, anyway.)
In other words, in the US the view tends to be that "the government which governs best, governs least."
[1] http://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-RIQ-438/images/Democracy_Index_2... - Factors used for "civil liberties" rating start on page 73.
Edit: Accidentally linked 2007 instead of 2017 PDF, fixed.
Second, there's that temporary millionaire thing going on. If you're wealthy, the US is one of the best places in the world to be. You get to have your cake and eat it (healthcare, for example, is less of a concern). The legal system favors you, you can buy your way into media and politics. People see the freedom on the upper end and don't associate that with major limitations on the lower.
Whether or not they're technically accurate is irrelevant - it's still what many Americans believe. Reasonable people can disagree with it but it's simply untrue that "literally no one" agrees with it.
Thus the point of the government was to protect the citizens from coercion by being an entity that could step in on the side of the lesser party.
Every society beyond a certain size in the history of world has done this so making this statement is not relevant unless your point is that no society can be deemed free or that "freeness" is sliding scale dependent upon taxation rate. No one I've ever talked to has ever really thought this so I'm guessing you don't either.
Overall taxation levels in the U.S. are 40% – 50 % lower than in the Scandinavian countries. Generally people in those countries don't need to worry about food, shelter, healthcare. No matter what poor choices they make in life these things will be provided.
In the U.S. a single illness can bankrupt a family and leave them in penury. A person does have to worry about the what if scenarios. This burden of worry is precisely the way in which we are not free. It's the lack of real security.
There's a balance that the Scandinavian countries seemed to have found. They tax higher than we do. They invest in their people and in their society's well being. They tend to be happier. They tend to be healthier. They don't have to worry about being bankrupt because they got cancer. They are freer than we are as a result. Those countries, simply put, are much better places to live than the U.S.
There are cities in America with public healthcare, and then there are cities that don't. There are cities that value greenways, public transportation, and diverse cultures, there are cities that value your freedom of transportation (i.e. a car) over everything. There are cities that have great public shelters and food kitchens and then there are cities where everyone opens their door and every place of worship tends to be a food kitchen, and then there are, of course, cities that don't do much of either. And while there isn't an explicit "free" education, there are hundreds of universities that will fully subsidize your cost of education (Harvard being one prominent example).
> Generally people in those countries don't need to worry about food, shelter, healthcare. No matter what poor choices they make in life these things will be provided.
This purported truthism is categorically false however, when your nation suffers an influx of new immigration, refugees, etc, such as what America has experienced most of it's existence. . Then all of a sudden, the money in the public coffers starts to run dry -- Greece is a great example -- the government almost went broke (well, I should say, went more broke) footing the bills for all the refugees streaming into the country. I am not saying that this is a bad thing -- good on them and bless them for that -- but at the end of the day, people's attitudes and perceptions on their perfect little "my government takes care of us" story gets changed when all of a sudden your government no longer has the means to take care of everyone. And since Europe is much closer to many of the conflicts happening in the world ATM, many countries in the Eurozone are seeing first hand the effect of this.
Could you expand on this? I was unaware of any cities in the US with public healthcare.
There are also several free clinics in KC and STL.
In my area, there's two "tiers" of healthcare. Urgent Care for 99% of everything worth getting help for, and emergency rooms for a crisis. Most people I know in this town can't afford primary care physicians. I've never heard anyone talk about going to a free clinic, so I can't speak to their quality.
Eh, as a EMS provider, there's a very different logic in play there. In my County's Medic One system, the transport is free, the rationale being that it's already been paid for by property taxes levied specifically to have these services available, and that people believed then being charged for use of the service would be "double-dipping".
While I wouldn't discount the importance of said service, I would dispute that it forms any meaningful form of "public healthcare" (even the private ambulances in the county charge $600+$16/mile, not cheap, but dwarfed the minute you cross the threshold into that ER).
There are no places in the U.S. that provide universal healthcare. There are no places in the U.S. in which public universities don't charge a lot in comparison to the OECD countries. There are no places in the U.S. that guarantee adequate food, or shelter. There are private organizations that do provide food and shelter but relying on the kindness of others is not a guarantee.
The per capita GDP level in the U.S. is sufficiently high to provide universal healthcare, free higher education, basic shelter, and food needs. This is indisputable. Mentioning immigration is a red herring since the influx of immigrants to the U.S. has not brought down the per capita GDP enough to claim that these things are unaffordable.
( * )Although I grant that those that argue for this usually lean to the conservative side of the political spectrum, for example David Goodhart: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/feb/24/race.eu)
... story gets changed when all of a sudden your government no longer has the means to take care of everyone.
Since the per capita GDP of the U.S. is not declining so much to immigration then mentioning immigration is not relevant. It's a red herring. I can only guess as to the reason why jimmy1 made such an irrelevant point but I can't prove that my guess is correct. Thus I'll settle for just pointing out that it's a red herring and an argumentative fallacy.
But also your argument here is flawed (U.S immigration doesn't affect U.S GDP negatively, so that should apply everywhere), because it doesn't take into account that the immigrants arriving to southern Europe and the ones coming to the U.S. are vastly different groups of people. I would assume that immigration to the U.S to a large extent consists of people wishing to work towards the "American Dream". Many of them have had to secure a job in advance to get a entry permit and so on. While the people arriving in Southern Europe are a random bunch of people, typically from economically unadvanced regions - refugees fleeing wars, economical immigrants etc.
My 50+ relatives that are there right now experiencing it would say otherwise, but who knows they could all be wrong.
Populism and anti-globalist sentiment is on the rise in Europe on a whole due to immigration concerns.
Portland had an area inside the city where this was the case, but it looks like it was canceled. :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareless_Square
> a city where higher education is 100% free.
GA has been offering almost free to completely free college with lottery money for a long time to residents.
http://www.gpb.org/blogs/georgia-at-work/2017/05/22/want-fre...
Washington D.C. meets your criteria on most but education. My brother and his wife all had their children at no expense. The Metro is one of the cleanest public transportation systems in America. It's one of the most walkable and beautiful cities I have ever been to.
Everyone in poverty who do not have enough money to pay for healthcare or have any type of social services or pay for education .. ..theyre free to do what then?
Eu has more "freedom" in that everyone has access to these things.
"Money is coined freedom" -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
> Eu has more "freedom" in that everyone has access to these things.
Agreed. Which is why I think that Europeans area also "richer" (the above works both ways, IMHO).
The "freedom" in the US is very much a freedom of the rich and powerful to do whatever they want unhindered. Which looks a lot like tyranny to everyone affected. Certainly employees are much more free in Europe, because they can't be fired on a whim. For example, had James Damore been a Google Employee in Munich, he'd almost certainly still have his job, or a very fat compensation payment.
It seems insane to me that people would want government to do healthcare. Every interaction I have with US government is terrible. IRS, SEC, DMV, ... Might as well get comcast to do it.
Health is a global issue. There should be global solutions.
It's not government DOING healthcare, it's still private doctors doing it, just it being free at the point of delivery via a government administered single-payer system.
The reason many government services in the U.S. don't work is because they get defunded to curtail their effectiveness and then scapegoated.
To someone from the EU, it seems barbaric to want to profit off of someone getting sick. You wouldn't want private armies, would you?
I know the "free market" argument is that the providers would innovate etc. but in reality they would just jack up prices where possible. Healthcare shouldn't be for profit, just like prisons, it only encourages bad incentives.
Like many systems, the Canadian system is a single-payer system. Each province (read state) decides what procedures will/will not be covered (essentially "the policy"). A doctor submits claims and gets paid (roughly... some provinces have caps). Doctors do not call the gov't to get pre-approval/approval for any course of treatment. Your doctor decides you need an MRI... it's covered. Need that appendix out... it's covered. Need a blood test... it's covered. Need to pop a baby out... its covered.
Think of it as an insurance system that just works the vast majority of the time.
Note that there are treatments/procedures that aren't covered and you'd have to pay out of pocket for them (the only one I've ever been made aware of was a special drug/thingy that improved the odds of a spinal fusion working... $5K a pop and you'd likely need 2). There are even some less common blood tests that aren't covered (no clue what... just something I heard). So... it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
BUT... it's way way better than the US system.
Also... it keeps people out of court. No one gets sued to cover someone's medical expenses (you broke my kids arm). And it keeps malpractice costs down (no need for the malpractice insurance to cover future medical expenses).
In general it just makes Canadians nicer people :)
> and social security are basic necessities and it's
> insane that the US doesn't have them.
> But that's not freedom, that's socialism.
You are confusing "freedom" with "anarchy", because freedoms tend to interfere with each other. I think we can agree that I do not lead a free life if I am in constant fear for my safety. So we create laws to restrict the freedom of the strong and police departments to enforce those laws. And you do not get a choice in the matter, not just not to adhere to those laws, but also to be protected by those laws.
And you might even be called on to participate, against your will (jury duty, the draft).
All this is not just compatible with "freedom", not in opposition to it, but arguably required for actual freedom. Actual freedom is not the same as "nobody can tell me what I can or cannot do [stomps feet]", and a bit more complicated.
Now liberal democracies differ on exactly where they draw the line, but I think the evidence is pretty strong that things like (a) worker's rights (b) universal healthcare (however delivered) and (c) at least sort-of free education enhance overall freedom. Whereas for example the right to bear arms, while sounding nice from the [stomp your feet] POV, is actually detrimental.
Who said that freedom is in conflict with socialism? Socialism takes care of some foundational requirements, so you have more freedom in your movement.
(Social democracy to be more correct, we're not talking about socialism in the Eastern European circa 1960s sense, but about something most of the civilized world enjoys, from Western and Nordic Europe to Japan and Australia).
It's like saying that US citizens are not free to travel because airplane tickets are expensive.
Well, there is a thing as things being "prohibitively expensive". And if some private interests take the public for suckers and keep tickets expensive, then, yeah, those people are not "free to fly" as much as other people are.
Even more so, if it's not tickets but something everybody should enjoy, like healthcare, but some huge interests, like big Pharma and insurance companies, artificially inflate costs using all the tricks of the "free market" and laugh all the way to the bank.
>Freedom means that you get a choice, even if that choice is going to screw yourself later in life - for instance not buying health insurance.
No, freedom means you have basic stuff like "healthcare covered, so you are free to pursue your interests -- not some rigged BS choice, between huge health conglomerates and people who can't afford bread every day.
Strangely, no one extends the "freedom" you described to other basics, like safety, rule of law, and so on. Because in that case, the free-er places would be Western Sahara, or some such country without an official government, where you're "free" to do whatever, as long as you can do it.
America is less free than "socialist" in your example. As an American you're free not to buy health insurance. However, if you don't purchase health insurance you have to pay a tax penalty to the government for the same amount as a health insurance premium. On top of that, the $400 a month "health insurance" you are required to purchase only covers health care costs after the first $8,000 you spend out of pocket.
It's different, but I'd still say it's a form of freedom - the government frees you from having to take care of certain things, even if you are unable to do so yourself. There are more axes to freedom that just freedom FROM the government IMO.
Edit: Now that I'm thinking about this, another example struck me. When I was living in the US, several friends of mine there spent some time (a couple of nights) in jail for very minor offenses. In Europe, I haven't met anyone personally that has spent even a second in jail. It's only personal statistics, but I'm under the impression it's much easier to get imprisoned or bullied by a cop in the US than it is in western Europe.
And most people seem to find it totally OK for a corporation to silence any speech they want to.
That aside, there is an important difference between corporations and the government: corporations do not typically have the power to imprison or kill people, and when corporations want to impose a penalty they must ask the government to do it on their behalf. GoDaddy can refuse to provide service to nazis, but cannot do anything about nazis choosing some other registrar. A government can imprison people for running a nazi forum, even if the nazis set up their own registrar and maintain their own hosting.
And corporations do a lot of censoring of their employees. Most of what passed as "corporate policy" at my last US-based employer here in Berlin was so blatantly illegal in Germany it was laughable.
I quite like Australia.
/s
The whole handling / political point scoring of the NBN is sad and I'm trying not to think about it.
If Australian internet turns out to still suck, them I don't think it'll be because of the technology. :)
I only know the situation through Dave Jones of EEVBlog fame discussing how _ridiculous_ your setup is over there. Genuinely made me appreciate BT! I have FTTC here in England, I get 70/15 more often than not. It's only a wee bit of copper but I'm with you. Something very pleasing with a glass rod shining internet in to your home isn't there.
I'm very, very strongly of the belief that providing fibre internet everywhere and to everyone would be a great benefit to our country, especially long term.
Labor came up with a solution, and of course the opposition can't let us have good things so they sought to destroy it when taking power.
Sure most might be just Netflix, but then with all that capacity you also get all those who can work remotely with no restrictions, kids/adult education, remote health, the list just goes on and on. Fibre is the infrastructure needed for a digital future.
Instead for political piss fighting reasons we're getting a much watered down solution at not that much reduced price. I know heaps of people in NBN, and follow the news: There's been so much waste in generating new specs, acquiring HFC that's now not being used, buying copper network and what not. F* politics.
The guys have been doing the curb pits in our area (mainly houses/town houses) for weeks now, coming back quite a few times to the same ones and instead of making the pits I can't help but wonder what the time difference would be to go into each premise.
I'm convinced that in a decade or two, all the FTTN plans will be upgraded to FTTC or FTTP anyway. Which will blow costs out way past the original.
Regarding healthcare, you'll always get treatment and worst case you declare bankruptcy. Typically though, a hospital will work with you. That use to be my old job, writting off payments that people with concern couldn't pay.
Small victories I when you have to worry about literally all of nature trying to kill you ;)
Seems to an uneducated outsider such as I, that it seems freedom is taken to such an extent, freedom to suffer is an except-able norm as part of the deal. It's a Wild West mentality that still seems to strongly prevail.
So you can be enslaved to 2000 things, debt, bosses, ugly laws, big corps, banks, health costs, etc., and just lie there and take it, but you are doing it on your own, as a "free" man.
To those of us who value freedom in the sense you belittle, the extreme alternative to what you proposed is being enslaved to one single thing, the size of those 2000 things you relied on plus another 5000 things that you don't but some other people do.
And how is that working out for you?
Well, I'm forced to pay healthcare for 3-4 people from my salary. I pay an absurdly high price for electricity due to the corruption that blossoms under a government monopoly. I also pay for the most expensive gasoline in the entire continent thanks to that. A car is a luxury that costs double what it does in the US due to taxes (used to cost even more, until the Chinese came in with their cars and forced manufacturers to compete by lowering their cut). And don't come at me with public transportation; you absolutely cannot rely on our buses to be on time and taxis are absolute crap for the most part in price and quality. Thankfully Uber arrived and managed to get the government as far away as possible, which helped a lot. Then there's a whole industry dedicated to eliminating as much import tax as possible since big gov wants big tariffs which is also pushed by merchants that call it out as unfair competition because big gov taxes the shit out of local merchants and so on and so on.
So yeah, not working out great.
The only thing I'll say is it might be nice when the gov't steps in and does a bunch of stuff, but when it starts to go wrong or isn't what you need, it sucks when that's your only option.
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/human-freedom-i...