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While avoiding the "should this idea be implemented" question for a second, I'm wondering about the engineering issues here: is it more efficient to pay men for vasectomies or women for tied tubes.

Women are subject to meaningful rate limits. Ultimately the number of women determine the rate at which a population can reproduce.

A man can mate with many women, so eliminating a single man from the reproductive pool might have a significant impact. However, the women that man could impregnate might simply end up impregnated by someone else.

Not entirely sure how to model this.


When you get around to building a statistical model, make sure you take into account that vasecotomies cost about 1/4 as much to perform (e.g. $700 vs $2800, in the US), and have are something like 20x less likely to have complications (although complication rates are low for both).

source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19041435


It would be cheaper to do IUDs than tubal ligation for women. There was a bill that proposed this in Arkansas, but it was shot down for being coercive.

I think that the argument from "avoiding coercion" is silly. First, because that isn't what literal coercion means. But moreover, At federal minimum wage, that money only takes 350 hours to earn. Over 18 years, thats 20 hours a year. If someone doesn't value being a parent enough to work an extra 23 minutes a week, then it doesn't seem like that is a right they value particularly highly. Also, there are laws that, taken together, coerce parents into working more than 23 minutes a week to support and care for their children. If we aren't willing to get rid of laws against child neglect, why are we worried about coercion in this case?


While not a perfect analogue, my understanding has it that with strays spaying has a much greater effect on population than neutering, presumably for the reason you suggest.


Just pay subsidy to both.


I disagree.

The news sites have made the economic calculation that allowing access to traffic from content aggregators like Google (which is the price of being discoverable by Google) is worthwhile.

The idea that only sufficiently large aggregators/traffic sources should get a special pass seems preposterous; anyone trying to enforce would be engaged in downright anticompetitive behavior.

The cat is already dead, can we please open the box & acknowledge the source of the foul smell?


It doesn't seem like it would be too much work to automate the paywall workaround by automatically redirecting people through Google. Is there a reason this isn't being done? Seems like better UX.


Yes, it's tempting to try to automate the problem away, or at least reduce it through software. But see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179116.


I was just asking about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309120

I would love to know how to manipulate images/documents to make it so that photoshop won't open them and photocopiers won't copy them...


Just pop the EURion constellation in them somewhere (ideally a number of variations of it). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation


Would be funny to include http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation on websites, so you cannot make screenshots with Photoshop ;)


From the first paragraph of your link: "Research shows that the EURion constellation is used for color photocopiers and is likely not used for computer software."


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