geezer

I had the opposite experience.

Regulations are generally bad because they can be gamed. They produce a huge population of rent seeking parasites who work for the government to make regulation complex so only they can understand it, then move to private sector to help the business game the broken system they themselves created.

All you need to keep businesses honest is to let individuals/localities/states sue the hell out of the businesses if they are harmed by the business.

The only place regulations make sense is where harm is at a very large (country/planet) scale, where there is no coming back from, such as climate change.

agents are forced to throw all common sense out the window when handling people

It is not common sense but totally sensical. A grandma could have been threatened to strap it on her butt or her relative/friend gets it in the head.

People are and have never been squeamish about killing. They just don't like to witness gore in their own backyards while they are enjoying brunch with their families. Concentration camps eliminate the inconvenience of having your day ruined by unsightly executions by moving the fate of undesirables out of your sight.

And regarding Mongols, most of what you learn from history is greatly exaggerated. Mongols fought to conquer and the cheapest way to conquer is to intimidate the enemy. It was in their interest to spread terror through stories of murder and brutality and it was in the interest of their victims to spread the same stories to elicit sympathy.

If foreign students want to make American friends, they should be prepared to feel uncomfortable and also be willing to make others uncomfortable.

There is no easy way. You have to separate yourself from your comfort zone. That includes others from your home country as well as other international students. Live with an American roommate, go to every (American) party you are invited to. Say no to every (non-American) party you are invited to. Find an American gf/bf or keep trying. Join volunteering activities (food drives, blood drives, salvation army etc) to meet locals.

In a couple of years, you would have made yourself deeply uncomfortable on many occasions, annoyed some people, but by now you'll be talking and walking like an American.

This applies in general to immigrants who tend to huddle together because it is the easier thing to do. That is why in most cases, cultural assimilation takes atleast a generation.

Did you ever violate speed limit and not pay a fine?

I am guessing you did many times. If you had paid the fine, you'll be too broke to own a device to post this comment.

It also means you circumvented the process and you are a criminal. It takes one to know one.

There are illegal aliens in this country because this country let them come in. We let them in so they can pick fruits, landscape our lawns, babysit our children, all at a huge discount.

So yes, we all got financial benefits out of it. Now, suddenly turning around to punish people who we benefited from strikes as hypocritical, to put it politely.

If were are just enforcing the laws now, it would be only fair to write a big fat check to each deportee before sending them on their way.

I would disagree with Steven King here. Once you write down ideas, it allows you to reconsider them later in a different light, a difference context. I believe that is extremely valuable because it is crucial to analyze an idea from various perspectives before embarking on implementing it. Embarking on an idea not well thought out can be extremely expensive.

Its naive to believe that President Trump's _temporary_ ban on Muslim immigration will be the end of the story. It will just be the start of a nightmare. It took about 10 years for the gas chambers to fire up after Hitler came to power.

You're comparing a religion and political ideology where large parts of its 1600 000 000 followers think it's okay to kill apostate

People in civilized societies are judged based on their actions, not their beliefs.

If President Trumps ends up gassing 3-6 million Muslims in the United States, it wouldn't be any less worse than Hitler gassing 6 million Jews.

Homes prices had also always been trending up, until they didn't starting in 2008.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Allegations of harmful effects of smoking were also once crackpot ideas. So was lung cancer due to working in coal mines.

The point is that biological systems are complex. We don't understand them well. Its better to be safe than sorry.

Don't mess with complex systems we don't understand. Whether it is GMOS, global climate or administering antibiotics to animals.

It should be incumbent upon those tinkering with complex systems to provide proof of non-harm. Right now, its the other way around, where those who are harmed have to provide proof of harm.

We have less forest coverage than Japan.

Japan has forest coverage of 67%, which is very respectable. New Zealand has 31.87%. Next 3 countries after New Zealand are Germany, Canada and United States.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_ar...

So Heroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist attacks?

This is apropos for this thread

"The wealth of the 85 richest people equals that of half the world's population, says development charity Oxfam

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/wea...

I agree with the point that traders can easily quantify their value, but there is a more fundamental reason at play here. First, trading is a very scalable profession. The more you can bet, the more you can win (or lose). The fact is that how much a trader can bet has been increasing in leaps and bounds, especially during the last 30 years. That's owed partly to changing structure of the global economy and partly to changes in rules and regulation.

Consider, for example, the the repeal of Glass-Steagall act. Just by repeal of this one regulation, the bankers were able to bet many times more money, dramatically increasing short-term profits at the expense of making the system more fragile.

The Economist needs to understand the difference experiencing happiness and remembering happiness. Behavioral economists have done years of research differentiating the two. It makes no sense to talk about happiness otherwise.

The incomes in the range of 60k - 70k (in US) beyond which happiness plateaus out is valid in the context of experiencing happiness. Its fair to say that middle income people would be unhappy when they think about the fact that they are not millionaires/billionaires, but they are not thinking about that most of the time, and during that time, they are just as happy as millionaires/billionaires.

Generally speaking, we institutionalize the incompetent. We don't allow them to run around harming themselves and others, sign contracts, and the like.

We also rehabilitate them. Jailing someone for minor infraction does not qualify.

Agree. The two systems aren't equivalent. The U.S system is worse. You can't even bribe your way to what you want.

> It is totally rational for a woman to ask: "I'm willing to give up all this, what are you willing to do?"

Giving up sex with other women.

> The IQ of children is highly correlated with the IQ of parents

There is plenty of research to suggest that socio-economic (SES) status is the driving factor behind IQ, not genetics. An adopted child's IQ will tend to be higher if adopting parents have high SES

So where is the grudge against airlines charging for checked bags?

As were many others who weren't as lucky as Buffett

Lets just make cell phone battery reliable more reliable before replacing cash with cell phones.

Its important to keep in mind that while lobbyists are a major factor in corruption of the political system, one of the reasons they are there is that they politicians rely on them for providing technical expertise.

Probability is whatever you want it to be if you are allowed to pick the sample space of your choice.

How is it possible that someone with "decades of industry experience designing and implementing very complex systems" can't code their way out of a paper bag?

Also, if > 80% of the programmers can't code, who the hack has been employing them all these years?

So you want Vargas to suffer due to unjust and unfair laws because you have been suffering from the same unjust laws. I guess misery loves company!

Unjust to ordinary Americans as well as the immigrants, while favoring businesses. If there was a legal avenue to bring in enough individuals for farm work and other manual labor, there would be far fewer illegals living in the shadows and wages would be higher.