[geeks] Ping...

[David Cantrell]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 04:14:20PM -0500, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> But there are lots of potential problems here.  Like, what if the
> government standard shoe sizings are stupid.  It's not like government
> standards haven't been stupid in the past.  Look at ATM, for instance.

ATM is an industry standard.  Compare to GSM, which, whilst it is beginning
to show its age, has been extremely good for both industry and consumers
(and remember, good for industry does NOT necessarily mean good for
consumers).  GSM is effectively government mandated.  The EU banged industry
heads together until they came up with a common standard instead of the
broken-ness in the US resulting from conflicting standards.  Those
conflicting standards certainly haven't helped consumers.

> The only thing we need standards for are things are are likely to be
> cheated on.  Like the amount of gas you actually are buying.  To this
> extend, maybe a government decree of what a megabyte is would be usefull
> so we actually get the harddrive we think we are getting, and the ram we
> expect (although it usually not screwy like harddrives).

So then you end up with the broken rubbish like what the original poster
(sorry, I forget who) had with shoe sizes.

> Also, exactly how do we have a two party system?  I know that in effect
> we have a two party system, but how is the government reinforcing it?

AIUI, there are local electoral regulations which make it Hard for minor
parties to get onto ballot papers.  Of course, those local regulations
vary from place to place - which is a very strong argument against a
federal structure, as it means that people in some areas have their wishes
better represented than in others.  Not that I'm saying that a federal
structure is a bad thing - I would be in favour of a compromise between
the overly strong central government we have and the overly independent
local government that you have.  As I've said before on this subject, look
at Switzerland.

This local variation is another reason, I suspect, why sane taxation
wouldn't work.  The last comparison I read came up with something like
27,000 different tax jurisdictions in the US - that's the various
combinations of federal, state, county and town taxes.  Here, there is only
national taxation and a much simpler local taxation.

-- 
David Cantrell