This is were members can upload presentations and/or writings by Junto members.
On the Redistribution of Health
by Chip Cameron
What if the government had the ability to ‘redistribute’ your health (in the same manner it does your wealth) to those who are less healthy than you? If such a preposterous scenario were even possible there is little doubt that politicians would capitalize on such a phenomenal new vote procurement strategy claiming that everyone has a right to health.
Consider for a moment the amount of effort required to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Between daily exercise, good eating habits, and smart lifestyle choices; good health takes effort and discipline. If you have an above average fitness level you can appreciate the hours of exercise and food choices required to achieve even modest results.
How would your motivation change if your efforts, eating habits, and lifestyle choices were somehow ‘redistributed’ to someone who does not value health in the same manner that you do? Perhaps the next time you go to the gym you find every rep you do provides increasingly less benefit so that some obese smoker who drinks every night can get her ‘right’ to health. Or possibly you notice the more healthy food you consume, the fewer benefits — all so that some alcoholic drug user can be kept alive a little bit longer. All while both individuals openly talk about how unfair it is that you are healthy while they are not.
The cellular activity within our own bodies provides an excellent example of efficient allocation of resources and what happens when healthy cells are used to provide resources to unhealthy cells. The misallocation of resources at the cellular level ultimately results in the death of the organism through a variety of life-threatening diseases such as cancer and diabetes. If the cellular resources within our body were managed in the same manner that our government manages resources the human race would certainly be extinct.
While it is easy to recognize how detrimental redistributing health would be to human civilizations; this concept seems to be lost when discussing redistributing wealth. Both health and wealth are systems of resource allocation, and both are critical to the long-term survival of organisms, people, and civilizations.
Chip Cameron
NSA Spying Costing US Businesses Millions
by Matt Kraus
Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Apple among others are spending millions of dollars to protect themselves from who? China? This is still true but the newest threat is the US Government. The National Security Agency (NSA) is hacking “their systems without their knowledge or cooperation.” In response, companies are encrypting everything on their servers and in communications between their servers.
This is not a one-time cost but an ongoing cost. The NSA will continue attempts to crack systems of US companies and US companies will counter these attempts with new protections. Operational costs for US companies also go up. When it comes to software maintenance and development, it is more expensive to work on encrypted computer databases and communications.
The New York Times reports “What began as a public relations predicament for America’s technology companies has evolved into a moral and business crisis”. The foundation of their business at home and overseas is based on trust that private consumer information remains private. The NSA says it wasn’t spying on American citizens. Facebooks’ Mark Zuckerberg responds: ““Oh that’s really gonna help companies that are trying to serve people around the world”
– Anonymous
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/17/technology/company-data-requests.html
http://enki.co/Enki-Blog/the-nsa-has-hacked-google-s-cloud-and-how-to-protect-yourself.html