*quality *engineering to make this work. I'm guessing this is 3d printed.
*promote

On a less positive note, it's going to be a problem when my amphibious brethren aren't there to eat the bugs and provide a few links in the food chain. I hope they get a grasp on Chytrid soon, we have enough problems with habitat depletion as it is. I'm often surprised the mass extinction of an entire CLASS of life doesn't get more attention. It's a pretty big deal (but I am biased).

See, this is why it needs to be shown the rise in joules, and a total energy rise in the entire planetary system, not just some arbitrary surface temperature rise....because people like you (no insult intended here) genuinely see the small relative figure and think...eh its no big deal.

Its a huge deal.

We are losing gigantic chunks of the otherwise permanent ice shelf in south and north arctic areas.

With those gone, we have otherwise what would have been massive mirrors, which reflect light...now acting as big old heating blankets (the water is effectively a black body to sunlight, absorbs it like no other..).

That right there is called a positive feedback loop. You start with something small, and within no time (geologically speaking), its in runaway growth.

The frozen tundra in greenland is home to enormous pockets of trapped methane....not for much longer. (source: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n1/abs/ngeo2305.html)

Methane's impact on global warming (i.e. energy RETENTION within our planetary weather system) is 25 times greater than an equivalent amount of C02. (source: http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html).

Further to this video, when you heat up the ocean systems beyond a certain threshold, the natrual pumping systems which circulate warm surface water to the deeper parts of the ocean for cooling, just flat out stop working. (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19895974), leading to the slow heat-death of a vast swath of temperatue sensitive biomes....which, when they are active and growing healthily, actually contribute to c02 depletion (carbon based lifeforms 'use up' carbon to be 'made').

...I could go on, but you see....even just a cursory glance at some of the 'smaller' impacts is pretty compelling enough to consider the phrase 'no big deal' a bit of a misnomer.

Do your research....it is catastrophic, and it is likely to happen in your lifetime (if you are under 30 atm).

Your grandchildren and great grandchildren will be living in a drastically different global environment.

No biggie though, cause we got electric cars coming online in the next 30 years or so

For a Venus Flytrap

The process continues until all that's left of the insect is its hard exoskeleton. (Unlike humans and other vertebrates, who have an internal rigid skeleton made out of calcified bone tissue, insects and arachnids use a more flexible, external exoskeleton to both protect and form the framework for their bodies.) Once the nutrients are depleted from the acidic bath, the plant reabsorbs the digestive fluid. This serves as a signal to reopen the trap, and the remains of the insect are usually either washed away in the rain or blown away by the wind.
See more @ http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/venus-flytrap4.htm

Also before and after video http://youtu.be/pFGoZMld_Gs

You can demonstrate the effect of carbon dioxide on climate as easily as dropping a ball from your hand? People know that balls will drop because the see it for themselves, not because a former physicist and his dog say so.

In actual fact, the earth has not warmed in nearly 20 years, and the climate models do not help to explain this. They are useless for explaining or predicting changes on the scale of decades, and it's crazy to expect them to somehow predict changes much further in the future.

Warmism, from the start, has been based on obfuscation, concealment of data, dodgy statistics, and overcomplicated computer models that add very little to insight into the real physical phenomena.

Remember the hockey stick? That went the way of Carl Sagan's nuclear winter, which ought to provide a cautionary tale for Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Your child's future will have many problems, one of them being depletion of the fossil fuel supplies that we have come to rely upon for sustenance. Climate will change, as it always has, and some of that change will be caused by CO2.
Climate science could be helpful; it's a pity that it has been distorted into a completely political exercise, and a shame for science generally, which stands to lose a great deal of public trust.

the impending disaster is overpopulation and it's byproducts - CO2 emissions, waste, and resource depletion.

Infant mortality efforts need to be a package deal with contraceptive efforts.

APFSDS - Armour Piercing, Fin Stabilized, Discarding Sabot. The American Abrams tankers used to call them 'Silver Bullets' back in the early nineties; maybe they still do. They were made largely out of natural or depleted uranium and they combusted slightly when shot through the air, leaving a faint glowing silvery trail behind. You could see it best at night obviously.

I think that you will find enriched uranium is not plutonium. Also, depleted uranium can't be used to make nuclear weapons explode, so I don't know exactly why you bring it up. To be clear, all nuclear nations main weapons plutonium has been made in a very specific way, a way that is inconstant with power generation. It is exactly because power generation reactor are so costly that they are relatively poor weapons materials creators, the method in which uranium needs to be removed from the neutron flux requires you to shut it down often. It is better to get a small, non-power generation reactor and crank out the plutonium. This is what India did with a small test heavy water reactor (CIRUS reactor). You need a reactor you can quickly turn on and off (and uranium extracted), then chemically reprocess the uranium, let it cool down, then put it back into the reactor. This laborious method is why power generation reactors are poor candidates for weapons material generation and why the current generation of weapons have not been made this way.

IAEA safeguards are important to make sure enrichment centers aren't diverting enriched uranium, sure. Plutonium should also have some safeguards as well, so don't take my words for a lack of concern or action on a world stage, I just believe for most, their concerns are blown way out of proportion to the actual risk.

But to reiterate, the relatively complex process to make weapons ready plutonium is why powered reactors aren't used in for weapons material for any of the worlds nuclear weapons nations, nor have any of the non-nuclear nations which have nuclear power and participate in NPT and IAEA systems been implicated in such actions. If Amory Lovins is the one forming your opinion on this, I would suggest a different source. It is like asking the CATO institute their opinion on climate change. I would consult the IAEA or some respectable international organization known for objective science rather than an anti-nuclear advocate. I, actually, fell for the same supposed expert (Amory Lovins) and was fairly anti-nuclear myself as a result. While there surely is some overlap between weapons technology and reactors, they are separate enough that safeguards can be highly effective. The existence of many nuclear powered states without nuclear weapons gives credence to their abilities. Only those countries who decide not to participate in NPT and IAEA systems have been the players known to developing weapons, most notably North Korea.

IAEA Safeguards: Stemming the Spread of Nuclear Weapons

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Factsheets/English/S1_Safeguards.pdf

I think he is pessimistic is because energy use is also in growth, usually from coal. When you similarly look at CO2 emissions over the past decade, they aren't going down...every year is a new record. Even in IEA's 450 Scenario, "oil, coal and natural gas — remain the dominant energy sources in 2035"...this is a problem.

I can't find a notable environmental group that endorsees nuclear at all. Like the public, most environmental NGOs don't really make a distinction in reactor types. Nuclear is nuclear is nuclear. From friends of the earth to greenpeace, they are all pretty proudly anti-nuclear, with only local chapters of FoE even remotely interested in revisiting their views.

At any rate, I hope you aren't finding me to be combative or argumentative, I am not the best communicator of controversial issues. But I think climate issues are forcing us into a pretty thick walled box which will be hard to breakout of even in the most optimistic technological factors, which is why even if every single concern people have about nuclear is completely justified, waste, weapons, ect, we would most likely still need to build lots and lots of nuclear to even hope to address climate issues...they are that challenging.

Reactors don't produce weapons grade plutonium? Then where is weapons grade plutonium made? I think you'll find that it's made in exactly the same reactors as there is no real distinction between a reactor used for power generation and weapons generation other than in name.

"Uranium ore contains only about 0.7% of the fissile isotope U235. In order to be suitable for use as a nuclear fuel for generating electricity it must be processed (by separation) to contain about 3% of U235 (this form is called Low Enriched Uranium - LEU). Weapons grade uranium has to be enriched to 90% of U235 (Highly Enriched Uranium or HEU), which can be done using the same enrichment equipment. There are about 38 working enrichment facilities in 16 countries"
http://www.cnduk.org/get-involved/parliamentary/item/579-the-links-between-nuclear-power-and-nuclear-weapons

The point is that continuation of current tech makes it a lot more economical to produce weapons tech, whether that be weapons grade plutonium or depleted uranium (DU). Reactors can cost upwards of ten billion dollars to build, why would a weapons manufacturer want to pay for one of those out of their own pocket when they can have the taxpayer's pay for nuclear power plants that can produce what they need?

"Every known route to bombs involves either nuclear power or materials and technology which are available, which exist in commerce, as a direct and essential consequence of nuclear power"
- Dr. Amory Lovins (from NEIS)

In terms of renewables:, the 'new' renewables only account for about 3% of total energy use, so if that's what he meant then he's not far off. Stats from IEA, however, state that wind has had an average growth rate of 25% over the past five years, while solar has averaged an annual growth rate of over 50% in the same period. So their impact is increasing fairly rapidly. So I'm not sure why he's so pessimistic about them when the IEA is not.

Have environmental groups specifically spoken out against the type of nuclear reactors he is talking about? Which ones?

@bcglorf
there are a few things i dont understand about your position.i hope you can clear them up for me.

1.you state that there is conclusive evidence that it was the assad regime that executed the use of chemical weapons and that only russia and the syrian government are stating otherwise.
could you supply this evidence for us?
because as far as i can tell the only entity providing evidence is isreal and i have to admit being skeptical of their claims.they have been wrong before and often.

2.now lets address the hypothetical that it IS assads regime that is responsible for the chemical attacks.
how does this give the united states the right to unilaterally use military force?
where is the diplomatic option?
why are we not even attempting to bring the players on the ground in syria to the negotiating table?
sanctions?embargoes?
why are we jumping right over steps 3 and 4 and diving into bombings?
how is killing innocent civilians considered "humanitarian"?

3.if the reasoning that we are being given is that a syrian intervention is based on "humanitarian" grounds and that the assad regime has perpetrated "crimes against humanity" (which is possible).where is the united states deriving this moral authority?
when we consider that the united states itself used:phosphorous and depleted uranium in iraq,which IS indeed considered a war crime.
in fact the united states has pretty much broken international law in every conflict since 1950 in regards to war crimes.
so where is our supposed moral authority?

4.if we dismiss the questionable intelligence in regards to chemical weapons in syria AND we ignore the utter hypocrisy in using banned weaponry and we focus on JUST the crimes against humanity defense for intervention.that somehow the united states is doing all this for "humanitarian" reasons.
then we must ask the question:
"if the united states is such a beacon of moral purity and is the defender of the weak and helpless that it will strike at any sovereign nation that dares to kill its own citizens.why is it that the united states turned a blind eye in other countries that perpetrated almost mass genocide against its own people"?

what makes syria more special than the millions of human beings who were allowed to be murdered and slaughtered by its own government while the united states sat back and did nothing,and many times supplied the very weaponry USED to murder those people?

the hypocrisy is staggering.

the implication is that the united states is NOT interested in a stable syria but exactly the opposite.
maybe this thought is troubling for americans but i submit that if that is the case then they have not been paying attention.

*edit-as for your "iraq is the way it is due to saddam hussein" assertion.
really?reeeaaaally?
you do realize the united states armed saddam.we didnt pull the trigger when he went after the iranians and the kurds but we supplied the gun.
you do realize that we never left iraq after the first gulf war.
are you aware that even as reprehensible and venal saddam was,iraq had running water,hospitals,schools.even with the continued bombings and sanctions iraq had a functioning government?

are we to believe ,by your assertion,that iraq is in the state it is right now due to saddam hussein and america bears ZERO responsibility?
we have occupied iraq for TEN YEARS.saddam was executed 7 yrs ago.
the united states has failed on an epic scale in regards to iraq.

remember that whole "we will be greeted as liberators"
"the oil we confiscate will pay for the war"
maybe i am reading your commentary wrong but i cant wrap my head around your assertion.
it just does not hold up under the simplest of scrutiny.

Hey @enoch,

> dude,
> i totally appreciate the time you took to respond.

Sure, not a problem. It's a complex issue, and requires the time to consider and understand the details.

> "for a free market to exist there also has to be absolute liberty.-
> adam smith we have neither.
> IF we did,i would not be against a free market system.
> at least not in totality."

Uh-oh, I hope this isn't a "lesser of two evils" argument.. That is, "since we cannot have a free market lets go for full-blown socialism because it is supposedly better than fascism." It's a false choice and not one I think any true humanitarian would be willing to entertain.

> "should EVERYTHING be subject to a free market? police?
> firefighters? roads?"

In short, yes. Aversion to socialism is based on reality, in contrast to what you're saying. Socialism is failure. Central planning inevitably fails. Central planners do not have the required knowledge to plan an economy. You need economic calculation and economic calculation is impossible to achieve in a socialist "economy."

> "to me health should be a basic part of civilized society,by your
> arguments you disagree. ok..we both have that right."

Are you trying to conflate "socialized healthcare" with health? Let's not confuse the facts with personal attacks. You seem to be saying, "if you are against socialism you are against health." That makes no sense. None.
I might as well say, "If you are against free markets you are against health."

> "my argument is that some things should be a basic for civilized
> society. in my opinion health care is one of them."

In no way did I ever say that I am against healthcare. So what are you talking about?

> "for a free market to exist there also has to be absolute liberty.-
> adam smith we have neither."

You cannot have a free market without liberty any more than you can have liberty without liberty. This is obvious, so?

> "IF we did,i would not be against a free market system.
> at least not in totality."

So, if we had a free market, you wouldn't be "against" a free market? Hmm.

> "the reason why i dont feel a free market is the way to go is
> mainly due to the fact that politics and corporations have merged
> into one giant behemoth (plutocracy)."

That's fine, but this is not a matter of "feeling" but a matter of economic reality and empirical evidence and deductive truth.

> "i never really understood americans aversion to "socialism""

Perhaps some economic education will clarify things. Understanding economic calculation, for example, might be a good place to start.

> "i deal with the very people that could NEVER afford you."

You're wrong. For one thing, while I do work at a significant fee for my primary clients, I do a significant amount of pro bono work, as a choice, and because I, like you, believe that health care is a human right. And that's a key point you need to understand. You seem to believe that, if the state doesn't take care of people, then no one will, and so we need to steal money from people in the form of taxes, under the auspices of "helping the poor," when in fact, the bureaucrats ensure that only a portion (if any) of those taxes actually arrive with their intended recipients while those who would willingly help those people themselves are deprived of the resources to do so, by depleting their income with said taxes. It's an unnecessary middleman, and faulty logic. The fact that people have, do, and will continue to care about people is the fundamental fact the needs to be understood. As a "man of faith," I would hope that you have enough faith in other people that they would care about and for others (even without being coerced by the government to do so, by force).

Furthermore, we have to apply the free market in toto, not half-assed. You can't have a Keynesian corporatists and an over-regulated system and expect that people will be be able to afford healthcare. The fact is that in a free market, the number of people who cannot afford my services would actually decrease considerably, because many more options would arise for those who still couldn't afford me would but need my services.

> "in a free market there will be losers.the one who always lose.
> the poor,the homeless,the mentally ill."

The free market has ways of dealing with all of these. And yes some win, some lose. But in a socialist system, everyone loses (except for maybe the rulers and their lackeys). This seems, again, to be coming from a place of fear, a sense of helplessness without the government. But alas, nothing contributes to poverty, homelessness, and mental illness more than government does. Fact.

> "the free market is still profit driven and the poor will have it no
> better,possibly worse in such a system."

So, what is your proof that the poor will have it worse? How do you know? Or is this what you "feel" would be the case?

> "the reason why i suggested medicare is because it is already in
> place."

So was slavery when the South decided they wanted to keep it.

> "two things would happen if this country went the medicare route:
> 1.health insurance industry would obsolete.
> 2.the pharmaceutical industry would find itself having to negotiate
> drug prices"

1. Yes, the government would have a monopoly on health coverage, and by extension all of healthcare. Economic calculation at this point becomes utterly impossible. Chaos follows. And healthcare quality and service plummets. I have research studies to support this if you're interested.

2. Why not nationalize pharmaceuticals while you are at it?

> "i may be a man of faith but i am a humanist at heart.for-profit
> health care will still have similar results as our current because
> the poor and working poor population is growing."

Without appealing to moral superiority, allow me to assure you that there is nothing -- not one thing -- that is moral or ethical about allowing the government coerce, aggress, commit violence, and violate individual's inalienable rights to self-ownership and property rights, as you proposing with such socialist "solutions." In my humble opinion, a true man of faith would not stand for such things, but would stand against them.

> "the poor and working poor population is growing."

Indeed we do, and we all have inflation, cronyism, Lord Keynes' bogus economic "system" and government's meddling to thank for this.

> "i am all for an actual free market but some things should be done
> collectively."

By "collectively," I assume you mean "by central authorities," yes? Because the free market is, in fact, collective. But there is nothing "collective" about central planning. Except for the fact that the "collective" is mandated to obey the dictates of the central planners.

> "its not only the right thing to so but the human thing to do."

1. Whatever your "feelings" are about it, there is an economic reality to deal with. Such a sentiment misses the point, and will result in hurting more people than it helps.

2. There is nothing "human" (or humane) in aggression, coercion, and violations of sovereignty, all of which underpins an implementation of a socialized system.

"The right thing to do" is to respect self-ownership and property rights. Doing anything else will eventually backfire. "People are not chessmen you move on a board at your whim."

Any one who is serious about contributing to solving and/or ameliorating the issues of poverty, homelessness, and/or mental illness and many of the other symptoms of our social detritus, needs to develop real, sustainable free market solutions to these. Otherwise, their efforts will be in vain (even if -- or perhaps especially if -- they are adopted by government for implementation). Anything else will not improve any of these but will only serve to make matters worse.

Going back to the basics, free market competition will always provide better goods/services at lower prices than the monopolies (fostered and engendered by the lack of economic calculations due to governmental intervention and regulations). Healthcare is no exception to this. Why would it be? Furthermore, why believe that the central planners/kleptocrats aren't profit-driven? Why believe that a "government" monopoly doesn't suffer from a lack of economic calculation? And what's wrong with being profit-driven, however you may individually define "profit?" Do you/I/we not act for what you/I/we consider the best? (Having faith is not a part-time job.)

Do you not act to achieve desired goals?

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you haven't fully thought things through. But as I'm sure you know, "It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost."

> "thats my 2 cents anyways.i could probably ramble on for a few
> hours but i dont want to bore you. always a pleasure my friend.
> namaste"

It's not boring, but does take a bit of time to consider and understand all of the details. It's complex, and certainly a challenge to navigate your way through the morass of rhetoric, conditioning, and cultural misdirection that is pervasive in our society, especially when considering what passes for "news" and "facts." This is particularly true with regards to the economy, which is heavily politicized, despite being a rational science that can be understood if one takes the time to learn about its mechanism.

Since you signed off with "namaste," perhaps it would be worth reminding you that the first principle of yoga is "ahimsa para dharma" : non-violence is the highest duty.

Perhaps videosift isn't the best medium in which to educate people on non-violence and economics, but alas, it can be entertaining and, possibly have have some positive effect at some point.

Hope this helps.

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

@kulpims - Yes, the physics of it suggest that even shooting fairly heavy depleted uranium shells at very high velocities at a fairly high rate of fire can't really put much of a dent in the momentum of a *very* heavy plane moving at a pretty high velocity.

Still, the pilot at the time told me in person (and some research I've done since then also suggests it may be true) that angling the gun off of perfectly straight alignment was deemed necessary due to shear forces that would require fairly dramatic pilot correction when firing the weapon.

Definitely nothing like dramatically slowing the airspeed of the plane, but I still found it impressive that the recoil of the gun became a design challenge even in such a large aircraft.

Always on DRM usually refers to requiring a constant (or near constant) connection.

Steam checks in when you boot, and when you try to load a game. If it does anything in between I've *never* been booted from a non-multiplayer game due to my internet connection once I'm in (some companies will throw on more DRM on top of Steam when you buy their game, but I've avoided most draconian DRM's). With steam if your internet's down you can play offline, up to a month I believe..?

That's the big difference - with true always on you're far more at the mercy of the server's status(es). You're good (to as much extent as you can be) with games like WoW that had huge production budgets, and now take on huge profit.

Smaller houses, releasing a game with what they believe is the minimum hardware to get by with (because they always expect their user base to begin to wane after the initial purchasing rush)... you get this ^

EA's got a habit of retiring servers the moment the profit from sales seems depleted, so you have that looming somewhere in the future if this is a game you end up cherishing.

ego depletion ?
Well perhaps after day 1 they just get comfortable with each other. Maybe even annoyed, Stress and Pressure. I've worked in groups for getting projects done and it sorta is the same routine.
All nice / high hopes -> laziness, bitter, and stress as the deadline gets near.
(granted I'm just a uni grad)

some people are just not leaders / no work ethic.

@renatojj Apologies for the late reply, have been running for work and it doesnt look like that will stop

True that some countries may have less cooperation, though is that dependent on the economic system used or something else? For instance, East Germany had 100% employment and a very active economy, more so then west Germany in some regards. It was ofc run top down with little choice and politically biased, but I am not sure if that lessons the amount of economic transactions, ie cooperation. I guess it comes down to what you define as cooperation.

BTW "those criticisms of the depletion of finite natural resources consists of the economic Law of Diminishing Returns, opportunity cost, and scarcity in economics" -- I never understood what they mean with that. Even if the resource cost goes up strongly due to scarcity it doesnt mean that that resource can be replaced by something else, or that the higher cost (than the original cost of the scarce resource) of the replacement can be born by its consumers.

Now you say something very interesting: I agree with you that capitalism isnt always about ever-increasing competitiveness, in practice. In cases where you have competition, you get ever-increasing competitiveness. (This is in theory what all capitalism strives for) In cases where you do not have competition you dont. That is exactly what we are talking about. Free market philosophy assumes there is always near perfect competition right? How else would the market balance itself if there is no competition? Would you agree that free markets only work where there is competition?

Lets see when we have competition:

"competition is proportional to the difference between supply and demand" That doesnt sound right. If there is large demand and little supply (the difference is big), there is little competition as all suppliers will overcharge like hell as they will be able to sell anything they can manufacturer anyway. If there is large supply and little demand there can be competition, though usually this results in companies leaving the market until you have: If the supply and demand are about equal, you SOMETIMES have competition that keeps things in balance. Or you can have a monopoly for whatever reason and that market has again little to no competition. In other words, in no single scenario is competition guaranteed. Actually, there is good reason to assume markets move to monopolies naturally in all cases. In a market that is turning from early adopters to mass market, there is always focus on economies of scale. Companies need to get bigger to make sure they have the lowest cost price (best competitive edge) and to keep their shareholders happy as they demand growth to make their investments worth more. Bigger companies means fewer companies on the long run, as the market is always limited. This means companies will take over other companies until only a handful remain. Voila. Actually, if it werent for (anti-free market) anti-monopoly rules lots of markets would only have 1 company left. That company would be so big it would be impossible for a new entry to push them out of the market or even get a foothold unless the market itself crumbles because a newer range of products exist that make the old one obsolete. Again, without rules governing economies, things just go bust.

Which was what happened in the derivatives market. It was a completely deregulated market that was exploding itself as there were no rules governing it. When it did explode (ie when the free market failed) there were 2 options left: Let all banks fail or bail them out. Think of the consequences of following your recommendation: If 1 bank fails, it will pull the others down with it as they are all strongly interconnected. As banks are key in the economical world, the entire system would collapse. The amount of devastation would be huge, would probably kill the entire system. Now, you can argue that would be good for us, as we could build a fully new system. But before we would get there, there would be years if not decades of nightmares.
I agree with you that the fall of the derivatives market should never have happened in the first place which is exactly the reason to not follow free markets.

Above clarifies a bit my way of thinking: for many of these markets (be it banks or utilities or employment) the consequences of letting that market fail are just too big. If you have the guts to follow free markets to the end, it might work (isnt proven though) but you come to a point where you destabilize your country in such a manner that things like revolts and all kind of nastiness are highly possible and even likely. That is not progress, that is barbarianism.

You mention yourself that there are practically no free markets anywhere. You say that is because they havent been tried. I say that they have been tried again and again but never last.