Even if the ethics on the advertiser's side could be solved, advertising as the core source of income for a business has it's own unenthical incentives imo. It ultimately boils down to more attention == more ads == more money. I'd argue we got an early preview of that effect when 24 hour news channels were coming into their own in the 90s and 00s, and the detrimental effect it had on the quality of programming and frankly truthfulness. The scale of the internet has only exacerbated those issues.
Unfortunately the industry is so large with so much money now that choosing a different business model is almost always leaving money on the table. And I don't have any ideas on how to fix that.
One thing to note, I have ADHD and have similar issues getting sleepy when understimulated no matter how much sleep I get at night. Getting up and moving around for stimulation helps.
I do personally wish the role of ad based monetization models were included in these conversations more often. With both traditional media and social media the conversation tends to blame ideology for their shortcomings but in reality it's just, as you noted, a bad incentive model. They aren't ideological, they're just maximizing the amount of your attention they can capture because that maximizes the amount of ad revenue they can bring in.
There are certain people in certain, specific, situations that have a strong enough ideological stance to make a decision based on that ideology, counter to the one they're incentivized to make. But the majority of the people in the majority of situations are going to make the incentivized choice. If you want to really change something, you have to change the incentives.
Ceding Crimea to Russia may just make things more difficult to be honest. There are many other parts of eastern Ukraine that are primarily ethnic Russians and I would think Russia, at least, would consider the ceding of Crimea as justification for their further involvement.
All that link states is that Russia is denying they have given an ultimatum. Ukrainian leaders still claim they have. Its all he said she said at this point...
A source in the Ukrainian defence ministry has told the Guardian’s Shaun Walker, in Crimea, that he has heard nothing about an ultimatum that has reportedly been posed to Ukrainian forces in the region to surrender before 3am GMT or face an assault.
UPDATE: The Russian defence ministry denies any such ultimatum.
Shaun writes:
He is not that senior but says he’s on a base right now and neither he nor the base commanders have heard anything of the sort. He said: “It’s probably another red herring to stir up trouble.”
> Is it really an "overreach" if the NSA can acquire the mobile phone records of Yemen "indiscriminately" and use the data to build social graphs for current and future (currently unknown) targets of interest?
Is it an overreach if the Yemeni government "indiscriminately" collects the mobile phone records of US citizens? Or, more realistically, China, Russia, UK, Germany, etc...? It seems to me, when you carry out that kind of surveillance (really any sort of wide reaching security/military tactics) you can only expect reciprocity. And at that point why even be bothered if the NSA can collect American data? Even if they cannot legally capture it on their own, they know exactly where they need to go to get it...
I guess my point really boils down to "Do unto others...".
Is it an overreach if the Yemeni government "indiscriminately" collects the mobile phone records of US citizens? Or, more realistically, China, Russia, UK, Germany, etc...?
By my thinking, no, not at all. It's life in the modern world of sovereign states and power politics. And of course one of the NSA's jobs is to make that kind of surveillance harder. (I'm less sanguine about the kinds of intelligence sharing operations with allies that are indeed end-runs around the Fourth Amendment.)
"An earlier version of a headline accompanying this article on the home page was incorrect. The health law is projected to result in a voluntary reduction in the work force equal to 2.5 million full-time workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office, not two million fewer jobs."
I think it would also be a glaring error to assume these are retirees. What evidence do you have that they are retirees and not 30 year olds that are purposely holding back productivity because of the incentive the government is now giving to not work?
Uh, what? The government isn't really giving an incentive at all. If I were young and didn't have a lifestyle that required a full-time salary, I certainly wouldn't be shackled to a full-time job just to keep insurance. I think that's the case for a ton of people.
You also have to consider the small business case. I can't tell you how many technology workers I know who have health issues and would otherwise be building a startup or working as a consultant, but before the ACA they could never dream of getting or keeping health insurance. I mean I'm a relatively healthy 20-something and was denied health insurance several times, and when I was approved, was paying ridiculous amounts per month because I was 10 pounds overweight.
Putting those prices back in line for most people and not tying health insurance to a full-time job is the whole point. I fail to see how this is government offering an incentive of any sort, unless that's what you meant and it was poorly phrased?
If I were young and didn't have a lifestyle that required a full-time salary, I certainly wouldn't be shackled to a full-time job just to keep insurance. I think that's the case for a ton of people.
So you are saying you might produce less as a result of subsidies given to you if you choose not to have a full time job? You are agreeing with 300bps.
What I'm saying is if, for example, my spouse and I could work enough to pay our bills without working full-time jobs I absolutely would. And that would not require taking advantage of a government subsidy. If I worked 10 hours a week as a consultant at $120/hour, that's over $60k, well out of the realm of any real "subsidy" from the government for insurance.
The government isn't really giving an incentive at all
This statement is incredibly naive and shows a complete lack of knowledge of economics. When the government gives incentives for making less money, then they are giving an incentive to make less money. It's that simple, but let me explain.
To get a bronze family plan on healthcare.gov, I was quoted $12,000 per year with a $12,700 deductible. Basically, I'd be paying $24,000 per year for healthcare.
That's the list price, which is what I have to pay if my wife and I make more than $96,000 per year (1/4 of the income goes toward healthcare). The cost goes down the less I make below $96,000. This is government giving me an incentive to make less money.
* This is government giving me an incentive to make less money.*
Or at least report less income. I bet a lot of people will move into the shadow economy, and get paid in cash. Instead of getting a W2 with 50k on it, I can work a part time job and report 20k, and do some off books work for 30k. I would qualify for the subsidy, and get a chunk of cash that I don't pay taxes on.
"[...] under Obama the average annual number of tax crime prosecutions sought by the Justice Department has been 1,568, versus 1,303 under Bush."
Doesn't sound like that's going to strike fear in the hearts of many. Plus I suspect detecting small fry like in byoung2's example is rather difficult.
If that's 100% of the people trying, then it should certainly strike fear in the hearts of those who might try. If it's 0.000001% of the people trying, then it shouldn't phase anyone. I have no idea what the statistics are, though given that there are only 300 million Americans we can put some extremely loose bounds on it (won't be less than one in 200 thousand, about, if my napkin tells the truth). I don't think those bounds are enough to do anything useful, though.
In "the trades", e.g. electrical and plumbing work, LOTS. Don't know about you, but my family pays in cash for that sort of work without asking any questions....
Elsewhere, well, look at e.g. Italy where I've read that the people don't view the central government as legitimate and evading taxes is said to be the national pastime. Read up on the tax police stopping cars in the industrial north and checking trunks.
Our current tax system is truly voluntary in a certain sense, and would seriously break down if we widely adopted such attitudes for whatever reasons.
That's a list of roles that does nothing to establish that they provide opportunities for $30k and nothing to estimate how many such positions are available.
I'm not arguing that cash jobs are rare or nonexistent. I'm wondering how prevalent "really good ones" actually are.
($30k being a real good cash job is just like my opinion, but whatever)
It would be very difficult to count the number of people doing these jobs for cash since they aren't reporting the income, but it isn't hard to imagine that these jobs could pay 30k if you combine some of the lower paying ones (e.g. $10/hour of gardening and day labor for 60 hours a week), or if you have skills that pay more (I did test prep tutoring for $60/hour in college).
That's a seriously narrow definition of "incentive." It's only an incentive if the amount they're offering you is more than the difference in income, which you and I both know it isn't.
And I have no clue what state you live in or your age obviously, but in Florida, which (previously) had some of the highest health care costs in the country, a family Bronze plan is only like $4k a year. I could get a Platinum plan with $0 deductible for about 30% than the price you're quoting. So, let's not act like those are normative numbers.
Incentive has a very specific meaning, and you don't understand what it means. If I offer you $1 to prance around like a monkey, then I've offered you an incentive to prance around like a monkey. It doesn't matter if you could make $2 slithering around like a snake. I've still given you an incentive to change your behavior, and many people will prefer the offer I am giving and thereby change their behavior.
And beyond that, you have no idea what you're talking about. I just put in my exact family situation into healthcare.gov for Broward County in FL and it is $987 per month with a $12,000 deductible for every Bronze plan. I'm guessing you're entering a ridiculously low income and taking the subsidies into account. Or you're looking at the catastrophic plans and thinking it's bronze, which it's not.
This will be my last response; you are an incredibly naive person and it is not my job to educate you.
I do get what you are saying, I just think it is a weak incentive. If you were making $96k would you forego part of your income in order to get a subsidy?
You need to look at the marginal cost on making that next dollar.
It's a big problem for our official poor, where there are wide ranges of income that cost them more in government benefits than they get in highly repressively taxed income.
And look at the results of supply side tax rate cuts, JFK's from 91%, Reagan's from 50% and 75% as I remember ("earned" and "unearned" (passive) income). Those had major effects, and while I'd gone to college a year before the latter's election I noticed how it changed my parent's economic behavior in ways that were good for the economy.
Again, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you w/r/t policies outside of the ACA, but weren't we talking about health insurance and a guy that makes $96k? In looking at the tables for Health Insurance Marketplace subsidies, I just don't see the major impact here.
Note the rise from 25% to nearly 50% in the ~ $65K to ~ $85K income range, after which it plateaus to around that $96K threshold; add Obamacare subsidy losses and we're absolutely guaranteed a significant impact, unless people's economic behavior has radically changed since the '80s. Which is of course what the CBO is saying, among many other dire things (0.5% GDP loss, 6-7 million losing their employer health coverage, around the same number uninsured (although a lower percentage because of population growth)).
Note also the > 100% rates around $25K to $45K, and the steep climb that starts around $15K. That's the big effect I was talking about, except we generally don't count people or families in most parts of the country making $45K as "poor".
But, yeah, exactly what's going to happen at that income range is yet to be seen, and at this moment neither of our impressions can be stated to be right or wrong.
Unfortunately the industry is so large with so much money now that choosing a different business model is almost always leaving money on the table. And I don't have any ideas on how to fix that.