"are worthy of tax payer money": As far as I know, most of these ayurvedic/homeopathy institutes (both for education as well as treatment) do not receive public funding.

The Indian government shamelessly squanders tax money on both Ayurveda and homeopathy. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/no-extra-fund-for-ayurvedi... check this link. Some quacks in the Indian state of gujrat were denied additional funding. On a side note, gujrat is also the state where state sponsored ethnic cleansing happened not so long ago! To be fair, I'd rather they use tax payer money to fund quackery than kill some of the tax payers!

USSR was different where everyone was eligible or provided with the same whereas the poster talks about providing some basic livelihood to all and allowing those who can earn more to continue to earn more and live better.

'where everyone was eligible or provided with the same'

Provided with the same...what? Certainly not housing, food, imported goods, freedom to travel, etc...

Those all varied dramatically with your station and connections.

Except for the ones who were killed off.

A similar model is being followed in Europe where the unemployed, disabled, recent mothers and the poorer people are provided some sort of basic support by the state. The higher earning people have extra cash to live more comfortably.

Unfortunately you have to support not only people who are just going through some tough times, but those who just want to leech off society. Plus those people who go out and have kids, then waste the money they are given to feed them on crap so their child is either starving or lives off a terrible diet.

It's really not an easy problem to solve. Ideally everyone should be guaranteed that they get enough food and a place to live, with anything extra being their own responsibility. But this is hard to implement in practice.

I think this is an irrational fear. I don't think that leeching lies in human nature. People naturally want to take part in society as long as they are healthy. Just think about what you would do if you wouldn't have to work. Would you stay in bed all day? I would most certainly write programs to help other people, just as I do now.

Have you ever run any kind of business where you are giving away something for free? People will eventually take more and more until you go out of business.

"I don't think that leeching lies in human nature"

I think many thousands of years of human history proves this statement false. Leeching is one of the core components of human nature. Businesses (or governments) that take this into account will be successful. The ones that don't will fail miserably.

True, there are leaches too. But the goal to ensure that everyone has a basic level of living standard is in the direction of what the OP talks about. Note that this is different from the systems implemented in USSR where everyone was provided the same, regardless of their skills or efforts.

It is not true that "everyone was provided the same, regardless of their skills or efforts" in actually existing socialist countries like the USSR. Some data for example on GDR(German text, but the numbers should be ok): http://doku.iab.de/mittab/1990/1990_4_mittab_stephan_wiedema...

I am talking about the model and not how it was implemented. Hypothetically speaking there is a difference between the three models: a) provide the same to all, b) Let everyone fend for themselves, and c) Provide a basic livelihood to all and allow the ones capable of earning more to do so.

Agreed.

Good government must manage the leech/liar problem. Such people should not be enabled.

You were voted out. Like me for other comments above. These are idiots who dont have substantive arguments. When they lose their jobs. Retirement. Etc. Serves em well.

How does such a model work for tasks where you need to perform long term planning? Similar to national elections, such a model could result in policies being changed every time a new manager is in place.

That's exactly the point that irked me. Would she find it ok, if it was done to her in say Europe.

Being healthy requires the combination of a good diet, adequate clothing that suits the weather and exercise.

The reason for Facebook's popularity is its simpleness. Now that it is popular, it can experiment with additional features such as groups and more intimate group settings. Orkut, on the other hand attempted to do it the other way around. I am not sure how does it work now, but 2-3 years back, when one adds a friend, he is expected to rate the closeness in a scale of 1-5. This was to improve friend of friend suggestions as well as who is allowed to see what. The problem with this approach was that it was confusing for the users. This might be a stumbling block for new applications that try to foster a private group structure. But I do agree with Dave that there is a need for such applications.

In the context of this study, does riding a bicycle in the normal seated position count as sitting?

What about sitting on an exercise ball? Have read quite a few articles in HN about the benefit of doing so.