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Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

statescoop.com

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Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#91

Post by sokoloff »

robocat wrote: post #68
sokoloff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. The amount of wasteful greedy/hoarding behavior that is induced by free and is curbed by charging even $20 is quite high. Charging 50% of the going resale rate is probably enough to prevent hoarding and substantially curb resale. That might be slightly too much for the aims of the program, in which case adjust as needed, realizing that you're trading off one outcome for another.

"user pays" prevents the benefit from occurring. For example in New Zealand (public healthcare) there used to be a $5 copay for prescribed medication (by government healthcare doctors). There is now no copay ($0) because 3% of people would not get the medicine because of cost. This was particularly true for low-income families, Māori, Pacific peoples, and disabled New Zealanders. That said, our conservative party wan…

This doesn't preclude giving the people who might not "buy" one $50 to spend on whatever the hell they want and then having one of the things on offer be a $200 Chromebook with a $50 price tag on it.

The problem of "someone has no money" should be addressed by giving them money not a Chromebook. If a $200 Chromebook isn't worth $50 to them, I'd rather they keep the $50 and buy something that is worth $50 to them.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#92

Post by shortrounddev2 »

explaininjs wrote: post #51
mhb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> jobs program Bastiat would like a word.

133,000 free laptops, but some employees is where he interjects?

I believe you could do more good for the same price if you just gave people cash instead of implementing an administrative system to manage distributing laptops. Just give people money and they can buy what they need

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#93

Post by type0 »

nolist_policy wrote: post #89
type0 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Red Star OS is also Linux distro.

ChromeOS is not worse than Windows 11, which would be the alternative here. Ironically enough ChromeOS has no Ads in the OS itself compared to Windows.

depends on who you ask, MS is practically mandating online account, maybe it's better if it doesn't sign in to it by default when browsing in Edge (have no idea how it does things)

No irony here, Chrome has plenty of ads in the browser and that's why they're rolling out Manifest V3

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#94

Post by shortrounddev2 »

explaininjs wrote: post #90
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state could administer other tasks it's good at more effectively if it didn't need to spend human resources on such a program. >jobs program so is the point to help the poor, or is it to pay government workers to do unnecessary work?

You repeat yourself. In all seriousness, it’s amusing to see how many people in this thread want to apply capitalist principles to a welfare program. The two are opposite - the goal here is to lose as much capital as possible.

I'm not arguing for "capitalist principles" (if there were such a thing).

The goal with welfare is to do as much good as possible. I contend that by managing administrative bloat, you lose money which could otherwise be given directly to people and do more good. The goal should be to spend money as efficiently as possible, not to spend less money

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#95

Post by array-species »

As a tax paying Marylander I believe this is a reasonable economic choice for the state.

Especially Baltimore City which is receiving ~20k of these. The city does ongoing incremental social damage control, this is a part of it. The bottom 15% of people detract from the economy so thinking about it as service cost reduction rather than netting from it. The allocation rate for Baltimore City is something like 3.5% (!) while the rest of the state is like 2% and under.

It is about getting another couple percent of the people on the internet. Some approximate thread of literacy and ability to type and click is huge. The laptop modality is important to have over touch keys only.

There are many who don't have the wherewithal to get themselves online but it's a life changer for them to just have the basics.

As for vendor, Google is the lesser evil than alternatives by a wide margin. Top concerns are AdWords tricking poor into buying junk which is a part of the greater plan anyways; cyclical chronic marginalization with a slight upward trajectory. Gmail account creation is sorta evil. But where else is their email going to live? Hard to imagine a solution other than adverts and gov. surveillance being the cost center recoup. Google is way good at warehouse scale computing for web services (internally, GCP sucks).

Even crazier is that Maryland is already a top state for personal compute [1].

1. https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/a...

edit: grammar

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#96

Post by prepend »

thatwasunusual wrote: post #24
prepend wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it’s cheaper to administer cash outflows. Maybe the state can buy the books for $200 but they have to manage inventory, hire staff, etc etc. So it’s probably cheaper to just cut checks to people for $300 even though the cost per unit is higher.

How can you be assured that those money are used on those ChromeBooks?

The same way you assure chromebooks aren’t ebayed.

Basically a percentage will be wasted.

But you give the money to parents who need a computer and trust them to get a computer.

Not everyone will do the right thing, but I think it’s more efficient, and less wastage, to just hand out money than to hand out chromebooks.

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#97

Post by [deleted] »

sokoloff wrote: post #91
robocat wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"user pays" prevents the benefit from occurring. For example in New Zealand (public healthcare) there used to be a $5 copay for prescribed medication (by government healthcare doctors). There is now no copay ($0) because 3% of people would not get the medicine because of cost. This was particularly true for low-income families, Māori, Pacific peoples, and disabled New Zealanders. That said, our conservative party wan…

This doesn't preclude giving the people who might not "buy" one $50 to spend on whatever the hell they want and then having one of the things on offer be a $200 Chromebook with a $50 price tag on it. The problem of "someone has no money" should be addressed by giving them money not a Chromebook. If a $200 Chromebook isn't worth $50 to them, I'd rather they keep the $50 and buy something that is worth $50 to them.

[deleted]

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#99

Post by explaininjs »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #94
explaininjs wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You repeat yourself. In all seriousness, it’s amusing to see how many people in this thread want to apply capitalist principles to a welfare program. The two are opposite - the goal here is to lose as much capital as possible.

I'm not arguing for "capitalist principles" (if there were such a thing). The goal with welfare is to do as much good as possible. I contend that by managing administrative bloat, you lose money which could otherwise be given directly to people and do more good. The goal should be to spend money as efficiently as possible, not to spend less money

The administration people are a key part of the welfare program. The bloat is the jobs is the welfare. The welfare is the jobs is the bloat.

Same goes for healthcare, the TSA (gvmt in general), much of realty… the list goes on. Basically anywhere you look around and wonder what the hell so many workers are standing around for.

Employment is the number one mechanism of promoting welfare. (and the only one with lasting impact)

Re: Maryland will hand out 133k Chromebooks to the public

#100

Post by bhpm »

nolist_policy wrote: post #89
type0 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Red Star OS is also Linux distro.

ChromeOS is not worse than Windows 11, which would be the alternative here. Ironically enough ChromeOS has no Ads in the OS itself compared to Windows.

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