[General Battuta]

So it's ok for 10,000 people to make $500k a year, but if the person above them makes $1m because he made it possible for 2500 of that 10k to make 500k it's katie-bar-door time?

I don't recall making any such statement. Or saying anything about CEO salaries, or how many people make what. Don't put words in my mouth.

The problem is 1% of the nation's population controlling 80% of the wealth. That's an aristocracy.

[Liberator]

I didn't mean to imply that you yourself had said anything, just that that was the opinion that was being expressed in general.

[Nuclear1]

To compensate for this, you lighten the body of the car to the point to where survival is a questionable activity in the hypothetical collision.  

Bull****.

Bull****, bull****, bull****, bull****.

The Prius, Fusion, and Escape Hybrid all got outstanding safety ratings from the IIHS.  Cars that you'd think would be safe during a crash (trucks and SUVs) actually tend to get poor safety records, especially in side-impact scenarios.  The only reason you're safer in a truck or SUV is because most everything else on the road is much smaller, and if you're driving under 30mph or so, it's going to take a lot of force to cause a life-threatening injury to the driver of a 3/4-ton truck.  But if you're going 45+ in a truck...you've got a 3/4-ton battering ram with poor handling that's not only a threat to everyone else on the road, but to the driver who's likely to flip or get his door punched in by another car (where trucks tend to be poorly designed for safety).

So, short version:  a Prius is just as safe in a collision as a Malibu or a Camry, and in some cases is actually safer than an SUV.

I'll agree with you on the maintenance costs though.  Hybrid technology isn't where it should be, but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

Also, there is a company that sells things at a reduced price and makes up for it in volume, in almost every sector of the retail market, and has be enormously successful.  The name of this company is Wal-Mart, and it is currently the largest retailer in the world with millions of outlets worldwide and selling they're products on an average of 5% less than they're competition in whatever market they are in.

Because they treat their employees like **** and destroy small business' competition wherever they go.  No wonder they can cut costs.

[Mika]

actually treating them causes the resistant strains, if no one was treated there would be nothing for them to become resistant to.

No, I meant that if you don't treat it, there's a chance that the disease can also mutate in to a form where the current medication doesn't help any more without any antibiot influence. The less medication there is, the more people there are among which the mutation can happen. Yes I know it is not the usual way how resistant forms come to existence, but the point is it can happen - and to my knowledge has happened. I'm not sure though if I should call the result resistant form or simply evolution.

[Bobboau]

if you don't treat it there is nothing for the pathogen to adapt to, it could in theory become more (or more likely less) deadly, but there is no reason to think it would be at all likely that a bacteria/virus/parasite would become resistant to a treatment in the absence of said treatment. it 'can happen' in the same way a human 'can' in a single generation develop wings and fly, evolution does not work that way, you are wrong.

TL;RD
lrn2darwin

[karajorma]

Because it will hurt them more if they don't.  If one company could lower prices, steal market share from their competitors, and make up the lost per-unit revenue through volume, it would.  What part of "this is similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma" do you not understand? 

You are also aware that in many cases of Prisoner's Dilemma the prisoners cooperate? You're aware that many simulations of iterated Prisoners Dilemma result in a situation where both sides always cooperate because the recriminations that result from the first defection result in a lower overall score?

While the company that reduced it's prices might gain market share, that would last as long as it took the other companies to reduced their prices too. We're talking about a day at most for many products and a month or two for others. It's simply not enough time in most cases to make the kind of in-roads needed to offset the enormously reduced profits when the other companies also lower their prices and their customers defect back to whoever they were originally using. Starting a price war could very easily get everyone into a situation where they all cut their prices so heavily that all but one or two of them goes out of business.

[NGTM-1R]

In other words, this isn't the Prisoner's Dilemma.

It's the Pirates'.

[SpardaSon21]

Because it will hurt them more if they don't.  If one company could lower prices, steal market share from their competitors, and make up the lost per-unit revenue through volume, it would.  What part of "this is similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma" do you not understand?

You are also aware that in many cases of Prisoner's Dilemma the prisoners cooperate? You're aware that many simulations of iterated Prisoners Dilemma result in a situation where both sides always cooperate because the recriminations that result from the first defection result in a lower overall score?

While the company that reduced it's prices might gain market share, that would last as long as it took the other companies to reduced their prices too. We're talking about a day at most for many products and a month or two for others. It's simply not enough time in most cases to make the kind of in-roads needed to offset the enormously reduced profits when the other companies also lower their prices and their customers defect back to whoever they were originally using. Starting a price war could very easily get everyone into a situation where they all cut their prices so heavily that all but one or two of them goes out of business.

Okay.  So lowering the corporate tax rates may not have an effect on consumer costs.  That still doesn't mean the situation we have now where the consumers bear the corporate tax burden is fair.  How would you suggest we rectify this problem?

[Nuclear1]

1) Corporations maintain very high standard of living for its highest echelon of leadership.

2) Because they make lots of money, they make things cheaper for consumers.

3) Government raises taxes on highest echelon of leadership in corporation.  Leaders find it difficult to maintain as insanely high a standard of living as before (poor guys have to by a Corvette instead of a Maserati)

4) To compensate for lost pay due to taxes, corporations raise prices so leadership can afford Maserati.

5) People pay more. 

Tax the **** out of the corporations and let the people see how selfish they really are.  Target will reduce prices to attract Wal-Mart's disgruntled customers, then Wal-Mart will reduce again to compete with Target, as Wal-Mart leaders realize slightly-reduced massive paychecks are better than no paychecks at all.

[Bobboau]

I have no ideological objections to taxing corporations, though you don't want to kill them.

[Liberator]

4) To compensate for lost pay due to taxes, corporations raise prices so leadership can afford Maserati.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSeM2EVkDc

[IceFire]

if you don't treat it there is nothing for the pathogen to adapt to, it could in theory become more (or more likely less) deadly, but there is no reason to think it would be at all likely that a bacteria/virus/parasite would become resistant to a treatment in the absence of said treatment. it 'can happen' in the same way a human 'can' in a single generation develop wings and fly, evolution does not work that way, you are wrong.

TL;RD
lrn2darwin

The pathogen is still going to be mutating at a "normal" rate so it will change and will sometimes change quickly regardless of if a treatment is being administered.

[Ford Prefect]

4) To compensate for lost pay due to taxes, corporations raise prices so leadership can afford Maserati.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSeM2EVkDc

Ah yes-- in forming my present views on the issue of CEO compensation in the US, I completely neglected to account for this 22-second clip of Data laughing.

[General Battuta]

4) To compensate for lost pay due to taxes, corporations raise prices so leadership can afford Maserati.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSeM2EVkDc

Nuclear's actually right - see the Tax Burden explanation.

[Bobboau]

The pathogen is still going to be mutating at a "normal" rate so it will change and will sometimes change quickly regardless of if a treatment is being administered.

the only thing that would have a potential effect on would be vaccines, and they have a limited window of usefulness to begin with.
as far as antibiotics go it would not have an effect, because, as I've said, a microbe cannot adapt to something that it is not exposed to.

[Mars]

The pathogen is still going to be mutating at a "normal" rate so it will change and will sometimes change quickly regardless of if a treatment is being administered.

the only thing that would have a potential effect on would be vaccines, and they have a limited window of usefulness to begin with.
as far as antibiotics go it would not have an effect, because, as I've said, a microbe cannot adapt to something that it is not exposed to.

 While the pathogen exists, it's mutating. The only thing treatment does as far as that goes is isolate the strains that are immune, it does not MAKE anything immune.

[Nuclear1]

I have no ideological objections to taxing corporations, though you don't want to kill them.

No, of course not, but they can afford to bear the burden...the rest of us can't.   And it's frankly unfair they punish us for their taxes being raised.

4) To compensate for lost pay due to taxes, corporations raise prices so leadership can afford Maserati.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSeM2EVkDc

Dude, don't troll.

[Flipside]

Cleaned and unlocked for now, try to behave.

[mister J]

I guess I'll repost and slightly edit my stuff from the other thread:

that experiment does not address the origin of the resistant bacteria, it simply proves that resistant strains exist and are in the wild.

actually, what it does address is the fact that exposure to a treatment has nothing to do with whether resistance develops or not. It just happens that way at random.

It's kinda like how Lamarck and Darwin had differing opinions on how giraffes got longer necks. Darwin's idea, which is currently the one accepted today, is that Giraffes did not develop longer necks specifically because they needed to get to that higher foliage, it just happened that giraffes with longer necks had a better chance of survival. Those giraffes had little long necked babies and they flourished, having spread their advantageous phenotype to the next generation.

Just the same with bacteria. Bacteria did not suddenly adapt to antibiotics specifically because they were exposed to them, it just happened that bacteria existed that were resistant, having been born with a random mutation that makes them different, and had a better chance of survival. Those bacteria flourished through dividing or transferring their genetic info "horizontally*" and flourished, having spread their advantageous phenotype to generations in both their own and subsequent levels of the phylogenetic tree.

so to reiterate, in answering the question, "how do resistant strains exist?" Current evidence points to "it just happened at random." Given that  gazillions of any one species of bacteria are created at any moment, it's not hard to believe. Selective pressure (such as antibiotic use or misuse) just accelerates the process by making the environment favorable to certain bacterial types, forcing them to adapt, by (again) random mutation.

*basically, one bacteria shares genetic information (which can include resistance) to another without creating offspring, which helps a bacteria evolve.

that's pretty much all I have to say about it.

[General Battuta]

I think that's what Bobbau is saying. His argument is that the pre-existing mutation will not be selected for without antibiotics.