>Is there a academic study of the heuristic of choosing between option A versus option B?
I don't know of a paper on that specific question, but for example, Gary Becker got his Nobel prize because he applied economics to a wide range of human behavior including crime and punishment. Here is a famous paper of his on crime:
>...There were plenty of anti-federalists around during this time. They got to air their complaints and opinions. Nobody listened to them because the articles of confederation, and the loose, weak federal government it built was just that useless and broken.
Nobody listened to them? I think most historians would agree that they were instrumental in getting the bill of rights added to the constitution. For example:
>...Anti-Federalists in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York, three crucial states, made ratification of the Constitution contingent on a Bill of Rights. In Massachusetts, arguments between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists erupted in a physical brawl between Elbridge Gerry and Francis Dana. Sensing that Anti-Federalist sentiment would sink ratification efforts, James Madison reluctantly agreed to draft a list of rights that the new federal government could not encroach.
>...You can take a patent and build that thing in your house. The government can’t stop you, neither the inventor. It’s when you try to sell it that they can come after you.
I don't think that is correct. The patent act states:
>...Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Note where it says "makes, uses". In practice, it is highly unlikely that someone would know about the infringement if it was just done for personal use, but that doesn't mean it isn't infringement.
As a general defense, the research exemption is only applicable where you can reasonably claim you are using a patented invention for research purposes. But if it looks like the reason you are infringing on the patent is that you want to use the patent, but don't want to pay for the rights, that is not going to work. Even if your intentions are not commercial, making or using a patented invention is still infringement. Like I said before, it is highly unlikely that someone would know about the infringement if it was just done for personal use, but that doesn't mean it isn't infringement.
>...The way that the modern Supreme Court (starting with its extremely conservative turn around 2005 with the replacement of O'Connor with Alito) has treated Qualified Immunity is that the constitutional violation (in this case, the violation of her 4th Amendment rights) needs to have been clearly found in previous cases in this particular circuit (or by the Supreme Court itself).
The modern over-expansion of QI actually started in 1982:
>The modern test for qualified immunity was established in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982).
Since then, while several justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Sotomayor ) have sometimes dissented and criticized the over expansion of QI, the overall court doesn't seem to want to touch it.
It's a series of cases, from 1967's Pierson v. Ray, through Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) to Pearson v. Callahan (2009) that made QI so insidious. (Each of those cases was 8-1 or 9-0, incidentally. The Supreme Court gets the respect it deserves.) The current status quo where QI protects against any consequences to police brutality or monetary damages to violations of civil rights is largely a result of Pearson v. Callahan, which is what I was referring to.
>"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
That quote is from Ronald Wright. It appears to be a paraphrase from this Steinbeck quote. In the actual quote you can see Steinbeck is not trying to criticize the poor, but rather champagne socialists:
>...Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.
A big problem with US air traffic control is that you have the regulator regulating themselves. The USA is one of the few countries where the regulator also provides the ATC service. In comparison to Canada, the US government run air traffic control is noticeably less productive and more expensive.
The first proposal to break out the regulation of air traffic control with the provision of the air traffic control was done by the Clinton administration. Support since then has been bipartisan and opposition has also been from members of both parties for various reasons. (I read somewhere that one of the biggest long time opponents of breaking out the air traffic control has been the associations of owners of private jets as they currently pay about 1% of the cost of ATC, but are closer to 10% of the flights in major airports. In reality, owners of private jets can likely afford to pay a more proportional percentage of the costs they impose on the system.)
Somewhat related, there is also the famous quote by Teddy Roosevelt:
>...“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
>...In 1989, just a few months after he completed his second term as president, Reagan underwent surgery to drain a subdural hematoma caused by a fall from a horse in Mexico. Such brain injury can increase the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease or perhaps even cause it.
Where are you getting this NATO target of 5% of GDP?
>...In 2006, NATO Defence Ministers agreed to commit a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defence spending to continue to ensure the Alliance's military readiness.
>...The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, is almost equal to that of the United States. However, non-US Allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defence.
I don't know of a paper on that specific question, but for example, Gary Becker got his Nobel prize because he applied economics to a wide range of human behavior including crime and punishment. Here is a famous paper of his on crime:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c3625/c3625.pdf
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