On Jan 6, 2008 5:06 PM, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Everybody has some characteristic that is unprofitable for the > corporatocracy. Be very careful about providing the power to > discriminate based upon it. > > -a
I consider this a serious puzzle. Why should people _not_ be charged prices that is some sense correlate with the cost of delivering whatever service it is they are buying? We obviously have two alternative measures here. One measure says per person another per pound. The amortization of costs can be more or less directly charged to those people who create the costs. There are some costs that scale per person and some per pound. Most of us can come up with arguments for each approach. And as Andrew points out "per pound" is simply one of many possible variables that could be brought into consideration. In his case, per shoulder width inch, might be appropriate, especially if we designed variable width seats and used some kind of optimizing program to pack the plane. One person, one vote ... or on healthcare issues a vote inversely proportional to BMI. Not likely but an interesting possibility. Should those who do _not_ smoke pay for those who do? etc. Andrew raises a huge set of puzzles that we all need to think about. I do not accept the notion that the answers are obvious. Why shouldn't grocery stores simply charge a flat rate for everyone for a week's food then let er rip? This clearly has become popular for phone services. What else might a flat rate work for? Why, for instance, should Puerto Ricans have no foreign policy or currency being essentially a colony of the USA and at the same time no right to vote for President and no representation in the Congress of the USA? These puzzles go on and on, BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
