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see e.g. here

Vickrey seems to be saying that the then-newly-elected Clinton administration is getting it all wrong, that it is failing to provide enough stimulus and the economy will suffer unless it changes its policies. But historically the Clinton years were very good ones economically. So did Clinton do what Vickrey said, or was Vickrey wrong?

To anybody who reads the parent: yes, those debt numbers sound impressive. However, ultimately they are just the necessary counter-part to giving the private sector the monetary assets that it desires. This was understood a long time ago, see e.g. here. More recently, Modern Monetary Theory economists have been pushing the same point. If you haven't yet, I recommend you set aside some time to read introductory explanations e.g. here and here and here.

The bottom line is this: targeting a specific size of the budget is bad policy. The budget will be whatever it has to be to match the behaviour of the private sector. Artificial austerity, as is being proposed these days, is coercion of the private sector to go against its natural behaviour, even when that natural behaviour is benign. In other words, austerity actually means an oppressive and draconian government. Deal with it.

Whether or not you like them, would you include The Rolling Stones in that description?

The Rolling Stones are from a different era, and different forces of control were in effect.

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr93.html

The first few installments of that series are quite eye-opening. Media plays the same games today, but does so differently. It's all about population control. In the Stones' case, it was about the secret services handling the creation and distribution of counter-culture thinking, corrupting it and keeping it powerless when it could instead have been a danger to the establishment.

so I just care about the quality of the end product - so yes, I probably am in the dark but then don't see a reason to be more informed, if I'm honest.

My thinking is that learning is fun and ignorance can kill you, so I see zero drawback, but whether or not to learn remains one of the most critically defining choices humans ever make in their lives.

-FL

I can believe it. Saw this site on how the shuttle's design was partially dependant on a horse's tailside...

From The Center for an Informed America.

...
For those who don't know, Mensa is, in its own words, "an international society in which the sole requirement for qualification for membership is a score at or above the 98th percentile on any of a number of standardized intelligence tests." It is, in other words, an organization that fancies itself to be a collection of the brightest minds from around the world -- who amuse themselves primarily by indulging in such intellectual pursuits as eating to grotesque excess.

Now I happen to have a, uhmm, 'friend' who is currently a member of this organization. He first joined the group several years ago, "out of curiosity," or so he claims. He was decidedly unimpressed with his limited exposure to the Mensa organization, and so he did not renew his membership beyond the first couple of years.

But early this year he decided to rejoin, primarily to see how the group's publications were dealing with the September 11 attacks and everything that has come in their wake: the steep rise in U.S. militarism; the vast erosion of civil liberties; the pursuit of reactionary social policies; and the exposure of the rampant corruption of corporate America.

And what my friend found was that the allegedly best and brightest minds in the country were operating comfortably within the parameters established by academia and the American media: the official story of what happened last September 11 is unquestioned, as is the fact that any real investigation into the events of that day has been officially blocked; unprovoked U.S. military actions are given the same superficial level of debate that can be heard on any cable news broadcast; the frontal assaults on civil liberties are either not discussed at all or are justified as a legitimate response to what supposedly happened last September, with, you know, maybe a few instances where the government has, with all good intentions, of course, maybe overstepped just a bit; the social agenda of Team Bush receives barely a mention; and the corporate scandals, and the direct connections of various members of the Bush cabal to those scandals, are apparently old news.

After reading such drivel for several months now (my 'friend' passes them on to me after he's read them, you see), I still wasn't prepared for what I was to find in the September 2002 issue of the Mensa Bulletin, the slick monthly publication of American Mensa. Featured in a new survey column therein were the results of the first query posed to members: "Who are your heroes?"

And who do you suppose ended up in the #1 position on that list? Who do the 'intellectually gifted' among us look up to as a hero? Who, above everyone else, does the Mensa community place on a pedestal? None other than George W. Bush, of course.
...

*buzzer* Wrong.

Sorry you fail at finace.

http://wfhummel.cnchost.com/banklending.html

Basically the bank lends money out of the money deposited in it. It has to keep a certain amount of liquid cash availible, but it can actually have less on hand cash then it has money in its accounts. This is done by having the banks borrow money from the FED. If you were to try your scheme you would quickly find yourself out luck when the Fed refused to loan you any more money and called in your debt plus interest.

Banking like anything else in a market economy a giant balancing act between supply and demand. The money "made out of thin air" is called profit. Its this wonderful concept of when you have something worth less to you than someone else is willing to pay you for it, both of you make money. Since the other guy would have paid more somewhere else and you would have taken less somewhere else.

In this case it is refered to as "interest on funds loaned". You make a loan in expectance of it being paid back with interest, and people loan you money expecting you to pay them back with interest.

At least you are right on your last point. To scam involves gaining money at someone else's expense. If everybody gains then there is no scam. Just as there is none here.

Check this out.

1) Know what your identity is first

2) Can you make a deal without compromising that? If so, make one.

3) No lawyer can ever control a piece of software when pitted against they who made the software.

p.s. dare to stamp out doggerel

the opposition is likely to use what I believe Bruce Schneier termed "Rubber Hose Cryptography"...

[Not 100%, e.g. CHMOD doesn't exist because they use ACLs so some ported scripts could fail but functionally it's about the same in the end, and easier for simpler things.]

Not something I'd recommend for the technical illiterate, but you don't have to be a Unix guru to do quite a lot, and you can always pick up more as you go. Sounds like you're well past the *nix-newbie phase so something like this would be a snap for you. Assuming you didn't have the college account; $25/mo is pretty good, but $0 has its appeal :-)

-- Howard