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Western technology is what caused western birthrates.

You have the whole thing backwards.

Wrong punchy.
Education lowers birthrates. Not western tech. You can feed, cure, and entertain to your hearts content, but it is teaching people, particularly girls and women, that causes them not to pop out 20 babies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence
http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2011/highlights13
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/07/from_the_cuttin_2.html

This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity.

I only take issue with this one statement.

Hopefully that charity is not in the form of free food. That way leads to more poverty, suffering and starvation [1].

(There's also a whole argument on how population will always rise to a limiting cap and how education and Women's rights is creating a cap lower than breeding-until-we-starve or war-ourselves-out. I'd rather focus on the free food fallacy.)

How? Once farmers can afford a better future for themselves and their children then can afford some labor saving devices, those huge populations to till the soil disappear. They can't when their livelihood is undermined by 'charity.'

Let's use the out of date first/second/third world country model, since it fits closest to the breakdown in your argument [2].

It is not the relatively wealthy people living in cities who are staving, but the poor farmers who cannot farm competitively with free food given in terms of 'charity.'

Compared to every other labor-intensive industry, farming sucks:

• needs a lot of land
• needs lots of water (often of drinking quality)
• high future risk
• mandatory large labor pool with neither the free time to improve themselves when in demand or income at all when not in demand.
• the product (food) ships poorly and spoils readily when stored

Even in the "first world" the farmers are heavily subsidized to protect their non-competitive industry [3].

The only real reason to farm (or ranch) is that you cannot get food any other way. (Queue meme about "Star Trek replicators and the post-farming society.")

The only African countries with first-world type wages have barred these 'charity' food dumps and have protectionism for their farmers. Food is expensive there, but then people are not starving due to collapsed local farming industry. (This excludes countries like the Republic of Congo which has incredible wage disparity and a Petroleum based economy.) The old story of an American farmer's child going to the big city to make their fortune seems to work in Africa as well.

The key to bringing a "third world" country out of the third world is to first not destroy its indigenous markets [4]. Then the population curve works out like other industrialized nations as farming efficiency improves and farming becomes a marginalized industry. (Unless you somehow think Africans are different from all other people.)

Dumping McDonald's leftovers onto people never solved anyone's problems yesterday and it won't start solving them tomorrow either [5].

How about scholarships to improve the education of ex-farmers and get them out of what is a dead-end career so they can feed their families?

1. 1. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba547
2. 2. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm
3. 3. http://www.cfact.org/a/2134/Commonsense-wisdom-from-African-farmers
4. 4. http://econlib.org/library/Enc/AgriculturalSubsidyPrograms.html
5. 5. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/it-just-aint-so/ending-farm-subsidies-wouldnt-help-the-third-world-it-just-aint-so/

1. You may be able to do the same work, but in another country. I know a math major about your age who worked at a nuclear power plant and was sent to China last year to work as a consultant on a new nuclear plant being placed into operation. He's a black guy, not Asian. You often have to move within the US as a career develops, so why stop at the boarder. 2. For perspective and possible insight go to http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml and listen to any of the podcasts that look interesting. All of the speakers are specialists and experts on topics related to economic matters and no topics are dry or uninteresting. And speaking about perspective is what this TED Talk is about, which may also help: http://bit.ly/LDbj8M 3. Buy a copy of "What Color Is Your Parachute" at http://amzn.to/OfdaAs or check a copy out of the library. That book has been around and reissued/revised for at least 20 years. It can help you learn about yourself and perhaps create a new job, even in your present organization. Perhaps you can get $1 million or two from Kickstarter.org! Someone here mentioned folks fighting over the same piece of pie which reminds me of a comment about finding a way to grow the pie larger. 4. More perspective and ideas may come from a reading of "Reflections on Bullough's Pond" at http://amzn.to/LTNpZl . It offers insights and explanations about New England's economic development over the last 400 years that apply today and may offer ideas about your organization and career. 5. Further into left field is this: the Conversations Network is looking for editors of podcasts it offers for free via the internet. It pays a nominal amount for each description submitted and at any given time there are about 100 podcasts in need of being so described. What's neat is that it makes you describe the interesting work of a variety of people, so you have to do some creative thinking, some creative writing, and use your internet skills while learning about work in other fields. This is a non-profit organization, so a career with it won't be your goal. However, the exercise might be useful. Other members of your family, etc. might also be interested. Here's the link with information about how to apply -- a small exercise in job hunting, too: http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/websiteEditorApplication/ Good Luck.

Skipping over the B.S., if you want actual scientific debate on global warming, here's a good summary of the discussion with links to pieces on both sides.

Sorta like a pencil, taking it to the extreme.

There is no such thing as gouging. There is only "price rises or falls to market-clearing levels."

First of all, if supply drops to 75%, the market price will of course be affected. And it will affect everybody selling whether they were specifically affected by the floods or not. It's a market price on a commodity product.

The effect is to shift the supply curve (on a P-S plot) temporarily to the right - at current prices, the supply is 75% of what it previously. This curve might be pretty flat in the short term, too. The demand curve is unchanged, of course, but the market price absent price controls (which would only result in shortage anyhow), moves to a new position - it is the intersection of the demand curve and supply curves.

You may be making the mistake I have seen many make in comments about this event that the price should rise 33%, making the total revenue the same as it was previously. This would only be the case in the event that the demand curve is linear and has an elasticity (slope) of -1. The linear assumption is ok for small perturbations (and, indeed, is what I used in the above paragraphs) and first year economics courses, but even with that assumption demand elasticity depends on many factors. It is folly to assume that it will be any specific value without actually doing research into the particular industry.

A brief rise in price isn't gouging. It's the market finding the new price, and is justified by the conditions. There are two things you might have been buying in the aftermath of the flooding - 1) a hard drive and 2) a hard drive right now. If you need #2, then you'll certainly be willing to pay more than someone who just needs #1 and can afford to wait for the price to spike and drop.

Except that buying local can increase your carbon footprint. Basically, for things not involving expensive inputs (e.g. produce), the price of a commodity correlates pretty well with the energy expenditure required to produce it. There is a reason local produce tends to be more expensive--it is less efficient.

Again the government is coming in and choosing winners and losers. Why can't I focus on cold fusion? Why can't I focus on geothermal? What research does the DOE have that tells it that solar is where we should be concentrating our research? (none) But then there is no metric for this decision other than "Obama like solar" which is about as vapid as any other "green program" I've seen come out of the DOE. I wonder if it ever occurred to the well meaning busy-bodies in the government that the professionals in their respective industries might just know a little bit more than they do? And why 6? Why not 3? Shit why not 1? I mean, if there's no real metric for the demand other than "it would be cheaper" why not demand it be a lot cheaper?

While were at it why don't we demand that all cars get 1000mpg? Oh it can't be done with existing technology you say? You're just thinking inside the box! If you think outside the box then you'll see it's a reasonable demand. I'm not sure what box they're referring to, maybe it has to do with the social security lock box. Oh I get it. Think outside the box! Pff - I wasn't thinking outside the box!. I now understand!: .75 on every dollar contributed to social security is immediately borrowed by the government and .25 goes to current recipients, so: Think about all of your money we're taking outside of the social security lock box and spending it stupid ass bull shit!

Required reading:
I, Pencil: My Family Tree
The Law by Frederick Bastiat

Many of you are completely missing the point, compounded by anyone criticizing Ron Paul's economics by saying it's "stupid" has utterly no understanding of economics. Net, We in the US have two choices: take a good deal of pain now (slash government expenditures - and departments), or take apocalyptic pain later. That really is the basis of the choice. I'm going to go through this pretty fast, so try to keep up.

This is the best presentation I've found that really characterizes where the US and world economy is right now. One of the worlds smartest hedge fund managers giving you a real education of the state of the world. It's really a brilliant video: Kyle Bass @ AmeriCatalyst 2010 | 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWgtzwqWh60

The economics are sound despite the 3rd grade level retorts I've read on this thread. There is clear empirical data demonstrating that the money multiplier effect from government spending and lack thereof (expenditure cuts) that support Ron Paul's plan -support data follows:
"The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," by Christina Romer and David Romer. Working Paper version.
"An empirical characterization of the dynamic effects of changes in government spending and taxes on output", by Olivier Blanchard and Roberto Perotti. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002. Online version dated July 1999.
"What are the Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks?" by Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2009. Earlier Working Paper version (no charge).
Here's a higher level view for those that don't want to get into the minutiae of the data and want a MTV education of economics: Watch this:Fear the Boom and Bust then this: Fight of the Century
Then the tired argument that Ron Paul wants a gold standard is just not right: Go look at his campaign page then read this: A Free-Market Monetary System http://mises.org/daily/3204
It's really surprising really, because technology and Internet people like us should really be the most capable of understanding the Austrian economic ideas. It's a complex self organizing system like the Internet. Hayek's absolutely beautiful essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society" captures it perfectly: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html

The only problem with your analogy is that there are literally thousands of private banks to choose from. If you don't like the service at BoA than go elsewhere, I used to be a BoA customer until they lost a few deposits, now I use another bank. As far as the DMV goes, I think 20 minutes is great, for the government, for private sector, that's an F+. The people who work for the DMV know you can't go anywhere else so there is no incentive to please you, they serve you at their leisure, and it shows. If a private business treated its customers like the DMV does it either has the monopoly on some product, like the DMV, or is hemorrhaging customers and won't stay in business long.

All commerce is created to please the needs of the customer, when the needs of the customer are ignored than the business will loose its customers to competing businesses and eventually change or fold. Everyone makes up their own mind, the bank that offers the best services at the lowest cost (i.e.: the most efficient) will gain the most new customers. BoA has a lot of old customers and is loosing more than it is gaining. Other banks and credit unions are gaining more than they are loosing. BoA sees this trend and they will either change their tune or go out of business like so many other businesses before them. Can you say the same for the DMV?

Read this short essay,I, Pencil: My Family Tree on economics. And of course read The Law by Frederick Bastiat for a real lesson if you haven't done so already.

You seem to be talking about people sitting on wealth. What you fail to mention is how much they were taxed when they gained that wealth in the first place. Not only was it a higher amount than what "poor people" pay, but a higher percentage than what poor people pay. Warren Buffett is not honorable by any means, and his recent article was very misleading, and in a variety of ways. First of all, there are very few people who get the majority of their income from capital gains and dividends. Warren Buffet's *income* is taxed at the highest possible rate. The reason he claims his effective tax rate is so low is because he gets most of his money from capital gains and dividends, which he claims are taxed at 15%. The problem with this claim (and we already shouldn't be talking about this as a widespread problem since so few people get the bulk of their money this way) is that it isn't just 15%. Capital gains taxes and dividends taxes are a second tax placed on money that was already taxed at the 35% corporate income tax rate. Warren Buffett's actual tax rate is between 40% and 50%. (and I really don't want to get into a discussion about capital gains being or not being double taxation. It is. Your stock going up in value is where you made your gain, not when you sold it, and for simplicity's sake you are only taxed on it when you cash out. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CapitalGainsTaxes.html - ctrl+f "double taxation" ).

Educate yourself. Try google. You will apparently not listen to anything I say. Someone smarter than both of us wrote this: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CapitalGainsTaxes.html . Ctrl + f "double taxation."

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SupplySideEconomics.html

Want another? Most claim this -- many will argue about degree.

Well, good. It was stupid and useless. And Apple played right into their hands so they could have an inflammatory news story to promote their "back to hunter-gatherer lifestyle" agenda.

Maybe next time they can create one called Pencil Story.

the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding!

And it goes on to say "only god could create a pencil" because no man could create a pencil by himself because it is too complex a task, mining zinc, milling wood, logistics etc.. It's not an endorsement of god or theism or whatever you think it's about. Maybe if you took of the anti-religion/communist zealot hat for a while, quit acting like a sophomoric boob and read the essay you might actually learn something.

the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding!

And it goes on to say "only god could create a pencil" because no man could create a pencil by himself because it is too complex a task, mining zinc, milling wood, logistics etc.. It's not an endorsement of god or theism or whatever you think it's about. Maybe if you took of the anti-religion/communist zealot hat for a while, quit acting like a sophomoric boob and read the essay you might actually learn something.

I'm a huge Apple hatter. If I ever bought an Apple product I would burst into hypocritical flames. But this is a really good idea. I have a lot of clients that a have tons of old hardware that they can't get rid of because of the cost involved in doing so. Now Apple will cover that cost, and make a little money by stripping the precious metals off the techo-trash. This is a great example of the free market's Invisible Hand. Bravo Apple, well done.

"hatter"? Didn't realize that Apple sold headgear. Oh, I get it...

Don't you folks have a local electronics recycling drive? Even here in rural Alaska we get a shipping container and on two weekends in the spring, people can stuff it full of old electronic junk. It then gets sent to Seattle to one of the (supposedly) higher quality recyclers that don't send it to China to have 12 year olds burn the circuit boards for metals.

It's basically a break even deal, the few dollars they get from the recycler pays for the shipping container. I would expect that any city or town big enough to have a recycling program would have such a system in place.

I'm a huge Apple hatter. If I ever bought an Apple product I would burst into hypocritical flames. But this is a really good idea. I have a lot of clients that a have tons of old hardware that they can't get rid of because of the cost involved in doing so. Now Apple will cover that cost, and make a little money by stripping the precious metals off the techo-trash. This is a great example of the free market's Invisible Hand. Bravo Apple, well done.

And what would the driver for that be?

I'm glad you asked!

Your need is the driver . Believe it or not, your doctor is trying to serve please you. Adding value added services like portable records do this. And draw your business away from doctors who don't implement this technology. If a doctor not implementing the technology loses too many patients they either a) implement the technology or b) go out of business. Both courses are totally natural and not compelled through the use of force.

How many countless times have you heard private industry boasting technological improvements to ease your life? Do you deny this constant drone of technological improvements being advertised by service providers vying for your business?

Your need is the driver . That same thing that causes all private industry to improve! Read the (very short) essay I, Pencil: My Family Tree I posted earlier, it explains these interactions in detail.

What sort of strange world do you live in where you trust your life with someone who you don't trust with the money you pay them?

This reminds me of what Frederick Bastiat (1801-1850) said of the subject Socialism. Below is a link to his complete book "The Law" (in HTML format) and the specific part it this article reminded me of. The UK government in this situation is (attempting) to fulfill a need of society by commissioning the construction of a piece of 'public infrastructure' that the government deemed the society needed. A rather costly venture to be sure. But from whom did the government take this money? It takes it from the people who would have otherwise been implementing what was really needed, and who eventually did with what little the government left them.

The natural course of things, what Leonard E. Read called "the invisible hand", would have created the fully digital medical system that the government legislators commanded through the threat of violence (pay your taxes or else!) that an unnatural (Sc. useless, uncalled for) system be created. The end result, as so many other government ventures end, was a mess so epic that only the forceful hand of government could compel otherwise intelligent individuals to such total folly.

From The Law by Frederick Bastiat.

The Vicious Circle of Socialism

We shall never escape from this circle: the idea of passive mankind, and the power of the law being used by a great man to propel the people.

Once on this incline, will society enjoy some liberty? (Certainly.) And what is liberty, Mr. Louis Blanc?

Once and for all, liberty is not only a mere granted right; it is also the power granted to a person to use and to develop his faculties under a reign of justice and under the protection of the law.

And this is no pointless distinction; its meaning is deep and its consequences are difficult to estimate. For once it is agreed that a person, to be truly free, must have the power to use and develop his faculties, then it follows that every person has a claim on society for such education as will permit him to develop himself. It also follows that every person has a claim on society for tools of production, without which human activity cannot be fully effective. Now by what action can society give to every person the necessary education and the necessary tools of production, if not by the action of the state?

Thus, again, liberty is power. Of what does this power consist? (Of being educated and of being given the tools of production.) Who is to give the education and the tools of production? (Society, which owes them to everyone.) By what action is society to give tools of production to those who do not own them? (Why, by the action of the state.) And from whom will the state take them?

Let the reader answer that question. Let him also notice the direction in which this is taking us.

Once again, this proves anything that needs to get done, gets done, privately (doctors implementing their own electronic database) without the need of government. The government's version is more costly, inadequate, corrupt, full of nepotism and fraud. The private system does what needs to be done without the heavy hand of government, better, cheaper, faster. And all without the threat of force.

This reminds me a lot of the essay I, Pencil: My Family Tree. Anything that needs to be done can be done better in the hands of private free individuals.

I use Google Reader to gather data from any rss feed of interest and also download weekly about 60 podcasts from various sources each week using the Feedreader aggregator. I have to plug, in particular, podcasts (or videocasts) from This Week in Virology, This Week in Parasitism, and This Week in Microbiology, all available via a starting point of www.twiv.tv . (If you think Parasitism is not interesting, listen to TWIP 22.) The Naked Scientist based in Britain offers a nice weekly collection of news gathered from that area. The Australian Broadcasting Network at www.abc.net.au/radio/ offers podcasts about technology oriented towards that part of the world. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp and the BBC also offer podcasts which include new developments in all areas, but don't allow you to specialize in one area, such as medicine or computers. Futures in Biotech ( http://twit.tv/FIB ) has produced some terrific interviews in that area and Leo Laporte and his This Week in Technology does a few podcasts that offer more than his usual troubleshooting genre. http://www.podnutz.com/ is strictly computers, but three podcasts in particular are of interest as trendsetting. They are 274, 302 and 316. They deal with the development and growth of Lisa Hendrickson's career. She's a female computer troubleshooter who is rapidly building a large business that repairs computers remotely and worth watching and learning from as an example of how to grow a new business in the US. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute produces podcasts and videocasts about advancing technology Do a search for NIH Videocasts for presentations by this organization. Econtalk may not be strictly technical, but has outstanding interviews about developments and history that disproves that idea that economics are dry and boring. I've been saving a list of Best Podcasts for over a year and they number now about 90, but amount to over 2GB, so are not readily posted. I also have the addresses of podcasts that are plugged into the Feedreader aggregator that I'll try to add here in case that's of interest if the moderator agrees to include them. Several of these were worth noting, too, like NY Times Tech Talk and RadioLab: http://rss.conversationsnetwork.org/ppq/56641.xml http://podcast.seti.org/index.xml http://www.rtve.es/podcast/radio-5/asunto-del-dia-en-r5/SASUNTO.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/booksandideaspodcast http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/clickon/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cyberspeak http://feeds.feedburner.com/diffusionradio http://www.econlib.org/library/EconTalk.xml http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510030 http://feeds.feedburner.com/GlobalChallenges http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/healthc/rss.xml http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/HHMI_Lectures.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laneur.xml http://www.materialstoday.com/rss/podcasts/ http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/techtalk.xml http://dow

There's a connection here to rational ignorance. Rational ignorance is when you don't bother to understand and complain about the sugar quota, because it's only costing you a few dollars per year, whereas informing yourself and complaining about it would cost a lot more.

From George Will on America, Politics, and Baseball

It's the old point about the law that governs Washington is the law that concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. That's why we have sugar quotas; 308 million Americans eat sugar; a few thousand Americans grow sugar. We have sugar quotas. Why? Concentrated benefits, dispersed costs. Probably told this story on EconTalk before, but when I mentioned my distress over that fact to a Congressional staffer, he said--and I think I used hundreds of people grow sugar--he said: Well, it's more like a dozen. Even more depressing.

From An Interview with Milton Friedman

Very little. Because it's not in the self-interest of the recipients to figure it out. What housewife is going to spend the time to save the extra moneyâ"maybe it's $5.00 or $10.00 a year she pays extra on sugar? It doesn't pay to try to figure out. What you're dealing with is rational ignorance. The rational part is what I want to emphasize. It's not ignorance that is avoidable because it's rational to be ignorant.

The problem with this is that the sugar families note that hardly anyone is actively complaining and use this to argue "well, no one complains, so it's all right".

In the courts, the flow of money is tangible, whereas pervasive resentment masked by rational ignorance is not. JSTOR will attempt to use this to their advantage. The only way to drive a wedge into this equation is to make both sides tangible.

Once again, you fail to read the link I, Pencil which details how this happens in a massive society. That you make arguments that are resolved in "I, Pencil" with perfect clarity proves to me you didn't read it.

But we wouldn't have those profits without a functioning government.

This is demonstrably false. If I lived on an island with 10 other people, a government would not be necessary, yet we would profit from our labors, therefore your logic is invalid. Please read the link in my post I, Pencil as it further elucidates this point in a more practical and verbose way.

A little is lost on where the tax money came from. A homeless man buying booze. A retired man on a fixed income paying more for his food. People who really cannot afford to give a cent. Taxation in the name of government tampering with the free market is the most insidious device yet conceived by the mind of man.

Forever will these well meaning busy bodies toil in the name of our betterment, because they do so free of guilt, thinking honestly that the strong arm of government is the way to prosperity. How can it be that the wants and desires of the few people elected to office know better than the many individuals and industry from whom they take? How can you tell me you have a better idea for .30 cents on every dollar I make? Look at what the government does with your money! They treat is as if it was theirs to burn! They call steeling less from us a "tax expenditure".

Just think about what that means for a second. Tax expenditure.

For a tax break to be a tax expenditure all profit must first belong to the government. What form of government are we running here? We do not serve at the behest of these temporary politicians. They serve at our will, and we can dismiss any of them any time we desire, and do so in a lawful and peaceful manner. As Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America(1835) said, and I'm paraphrasing: "The difference between the American and European democracies is that in Europe the government cedes a portion of its power to the people while in America the people cedes a portion of its power to the government. " For too long have we imported the top down aristocratic style of rule from Europe. We are a free people and we demand freedom! Government is a necessary evil, the problem, not the solution.

The free market does not need a government solution. Read I, Pencil My Family Tree: written from the point of view of a pencil detailing the process involved in its construction. It talks about the hundreds of processes required for the creation of the simple pencil, and the lack of government control and the harmony created in the absence of such control. The author talks about the "Invisible Hand". This is the invisible force that guides you to get a job, or get a better job, or buy a car, or a candy bar. Basically the desires of society. The government cannot know your desires and cannot want to fulfill them more than you yourself want to. All the government can do is take away from your desires, guide them in new directions you never wanted to go, all the while claiming to do so because they "know better than you" and with the threat of violence if you don't comply. This is a fetter on the invisible hand that can and should be removed!

A free economy is a prosperous one. A happy free people is a prosperous one. The strong arm of government cannot force people to be prosperous and happy, it is the greatest folly that can befall man, destruction in the name of prosperity.

Anyone who understands logarithmic expansion understands the impact of raising a child successfully will most likely far outweigh anything you will do in your lifetime

What does that even mean? The impact to who? Positive or negative impact? Having a child certainly has a powerful positive impact on that child's life. That doesn't mean it has a positive impact on yours.

Here is the first non-religious result in a google search for Children and happiness http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/11/the_effect_of_c.html (There is a newsweek article there but it has no data).

This study has been retracted. You can read the erratum. I'll paste it here for convenience:

After publication of the paper âoeChildren and Life Satisfactionâ I have uncovered an important coding mistake in the dataset. Several observations of the life satisfaction measure were unintentionally assigned the wrong value in the construction of the panel.

After correcting the problem, the main results of the paper no longer hold. The effect of children on the life satisfaction of married individuals is small, often negative, and never statistically significant. I ask all readers to disregard the results of this paper and deeply apologize for this unfortunate mistake. I have asked the journal to withdraw the paper but, being too late for that, an erratum was the only alternative.

If you really need references, go through the references that Angeles claimed to disprove. They are right.

Some people are excessively self centered, having children exposes that self centered nature. For the folk that already understand that they aren't the center of the universe, parenting is a joy.

Or some people are so self centered that they believe the world really needs another little them. Those of us who aren't self-centered are happy to see our genes die with us.

evolutionarily speaking we have had a couple million years to have it hardwired into ourselves to procreate. This alone suggests that deep happiness should be found in successfully parenting progeny..

Actually, it suggests that deep happiness should be found in having lots of sex. This is one of the reasons that actually having children tends to decrease happiness.

Being a childless couple that Fosters, I can say firsthand that I have experience with many different families and the negative side. Some people are excessively self centered, having children exposes that self centered nature. For the folk that already understand that they aren't the center of the universe, parenting is a joy. Not having children allows the selfish to continue in their ignorant world, maybe that makes them happier, but evolutionarily speaking we have had a couple million years to have it hardwired into ourselves to procreate. This alone suggests that deep happiness should be found in successfully parenting progeny..

I think my rant was a bit unclear, and the accusations are without merit. To summarise, in a gold based system, there's no way to "amplify" phisical gold. The amount of high powered money/MB in the system is thus fixed. The same is true for bitcoin, and not true for fiat currencies.

I'm not saying that banking is impossible with gold (it's how it has originated), or that fractional reserve banking and thus bank runs are not possible. Since there's no central bank to enforce or even verify minimal reserves, there's nothing to stop an infinite expansion. It's however plausible that, assuming a completely unregulated market, that consumers will demand 3rd party auditing for the private banks, and a mutual insurance scheme equivalent to FDIC. This will thus force the banks to maintain minimal reserves and require sound collaterals, which will clearly curb the infinite credit expansion.

Yeah, gambling and prostitution brought in lots of dough but the biggest moneymaker was the sale of liquor. Prohibition was the greatest thing that ever happened for us.

From Interview with Al Capone – Public Enemy #1

I understand that it's currently popular to be seen to be engaged in charity, CSR and the like, but consider the benefits to society that Jobs has already provided just by pursuing a profit.

I don't need to be a fanboy to appreciate that Steve Jobs, by doing what he does extremely well, has provided employment for thousands of people and an improved standard of living for millions. I understand that it "looks good," to do charity, but is it really necessary so long as an individuals actions lead to a benefit to society?

This article speaks more of national service than charity, but I still believe it is a good read and we should all remember that in a free society, a person who participates in the market serves his or her countrymen in an immensely powerful way.

Please have a quick read, I think it's important to remember: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2011/Seagrenservice.html

First of all, love your sig line, and it's likely prophetic. Also, fair point on the Canadian regulation being from an extra-governmental authority.

My point isn't that net neutrality == the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine is just one example of what you get when Washington starts seeing itself as being in charge of "communications." Besides, it's not like you can't find people advocating for some sort of mechanism to "balance" or "improve" (by fiat) the political discourse on the `net. The more real threat, though, is that we'll see policing over IP infringement and obscenity (especially regarding its availability to minors).

When it comes to regulating any industry, once you let that camel's nose into the tent, it tends to work its way further in. "Preserving competition" turns into subtle (or not-so-subtle) price controls, and propping up failing competitors. Hell, the FCC is already considering a price control scheme in the wireless sector (not that it's clear it has the authority to impose this). An item on the linked meeting agenda is:

TITLE: Reexamination of Roaming Obligations of Commercial Mobile Radio Service Providers and Other Providers of Mobile Data Services (WT Docket No. 05-265) SUMMARY: The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order that adopts a rule requiring facilities-based providers of commercial mobile data services to offer data roaming arrangements to other such providers on commercially reasonable terms and conditions, subject to certain limitations.

Price controls have repeatedly been shown to create scarcity and raise entry barriers for would-be competitors. You mentioned airline regulation earlier, and that's a great example: We used to treat airline routes as a commons, and the Civil Aeronautics Board actually controlled routes, airfares, and even entry into the marketplace by new airlines. Since deregulation, airfare prices have fallen over 40% in real terms. Safety and convenience have increased dramatically as well (ok, except for all the TSA BS on the convenience score). Death risk during air travel has dropped dramatically since 1978, partially because the increased market has caused airlines to turn their fleets over faster, resulting in newer average aircraft ages.

In short, past experience suggests that a rich, unrestrained market with low entry barriers is the best way to foster rising quality and falling prices. If the government really wants to ensure quality service, it could invest in large, common, shared wiring routes (shielded digital pipelines) that could be leased by anyone with no discrimination whatsoever in price or access. Municipalities could connect to them on the condition that there was no grant of monopoly or preferential access to any service provider. Our power grid needs expansion (especially if we expect electric cars to gain market share), the backbones could sure use it, and if sufficiently built out it could do a lot to break up the oligopoly that would let ISPs get away with consumer-hostile forms of throttling in the first place.

Some good reading on the subject: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MinimumWages.html

I thought this economical system was supposed to transform individual greed into overall progress, but the more I look into it, the more broken it appears to me...

That's the general idea: by optimizing your own benefit, the optimal societal benefit arises as an emergent phenomenon. You may want to think of the economy as a large distributed algorithm. What it computes is prices and an allocation of resources which (supposedly) optimizes how well off the economic agents are.

The problem is that the system is self-contained---money can not only buy you resources you either want for their own sake ("consumer goods") or which you use to transform other resources into consumer goods ("capital"), money can also buy you changes to the system ("brib^Wlobbying").

The latter part is, as I understand it, much of what Public Choice Theory is about---how a collection of people make collective decisions. In USA, this tends to happen by the campaign contribution mechanism---the extent to which your opinion is considered is the degree to which you contribute to politicians' campaigns.

The more I look into this kind of issues, the harder it becomes to not consider them like a bug in the capitalist/free trade system.

It is in every agent's rational self-interest to rig the game in that agent's favor. Internet service providers being given local monopolies seems to fit this. Media industry influencing the FCC seems to fit it as well.

In the case of Copyrights, the idea is actually to overcome a shortcoming in free trade capitalism: if there's tremendously high fixed costs to creating a song (or book, or piece of software, or [...]) but copying the first instance is practically free and is possible by everybody who holds an instance, the agent which produces the first copy will have a barrier to entry, in that he will have to pay costs the others won't. The rational response is to provide less of the good in question than what is socially beneficial.

The remedy is the granting of a temporary monopoly, such that the maker will have monopoly rent as an incentive to create, and society will eventually be able to consume the creation in the "right" amount once the price closes in on the cost of the one additional copy.

For a more in-depth analysis, see Liebowitz: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IntellectualProperty.html

I think currently, special interests (MPAA, RIAA, BSA) has overstated the public benefit of more new stuff vs. the public benefit of being able to use the old stuff for free---i.e. at the electricity and bandwidth cost of copying (which is close to 0 but is still positive).

That's the longwinded way of saying "I agree, copyrights are a bug [but they don't have to be]." See also Michele Boldrin's Against Intellectual Property (http://www.micheleboldrin.com/research/aim.html) and his conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/05/boldrin_on_inte.html)

Hope this helps :-)

You realize that wages also decreased during that time period, right?

Average weekly wages in 1800: $16

Average weekly wages in 1900: $7

Another source for 1900 weekly wages, this one claiming around $9.26 weekly.

I am not sure if you are referring to Bastiat's Broken Window Example.. http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html Basically, in the 1800's it was argued that burning Paris to the ground would benefit the economy because all of the people who would be employed by rebuilding the city. Bastiat gave a simple example to show the fundamental problem with ideas like that. If you are forced to part with your money to pay for something that was broken (drm, scratched xbox 360 disk, smashed window), then you buy something again, have less money but the same amount of goods. If you did not have to replace the object, then you would buy something else and have two goods instead of one.

You can find a remark about specialization in "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith

http://econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN1.html#B.I,%20Ch.1,%20Of%20the%20Division%20of%20Labor

Its about the division of labour, but essentially he describes the same thing. It is just logical to continue on with this specialization thing if it is so great.

Superfreakapwned! Reading that much into the Genovese story is a bit of an over-reach. Even for slashdot. See this link for part of the explanation: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/11/superfreakonomi_1.html

Then you either haven't been looking very hard or have no fucking clue of what life was like 100 years ago.

The government "gets involved" with the quality of your food (FDA), worker safety (OSHA), air travel (NTSB), highway safety (NHTSA), building codes (varies by State), law enforcement and an endless number of other sectors of society.

Whenever I hear "the government ruins everything" I know that I'm hearing ideology, not reality.

No one in their right minds can say that the government doesn't do all of the things you mentioned. I think most people against larger government think that they do a poor job and tend to become overzealous. Any honest small governement advocate will also admit that there will be consequences to deregulation, but that those consequences will ultimately be less dire in totality than a large government would inflict on its populace.

Consider all the people who die needlessly every year purely because of FDA bureaucracy. Often times Europe and other developed countries will have drugs for many years before the FDA gets around to approving a drug. What is the FDA's excuse in these cases?

Finally, I doubt there are very many people who would claim that security is not a legitimate function of government.

If you haven't already, you might consider checking out That which is unseen by Frederick Bastiat for a counterpoint to government intervention.

Someone beat you to it.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basSoph3.html

I have never seen an economist or "libertarian" give a convincing argument against protectionist tariffs

Bastiat did a pretty good job in my opinion:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basSoph1.html

I strongly doubt you actually built your own radio - anyone with sufficient ability to do so would also realize that such a task would very quickly be not remotely worth the effort. See Leonard Read's I, Pencil for the classic case regarding that.

And more apropos, few could claim to have contributed as much to OSS, and to understand it as deeply, as Linus Torvalds. And yet, even he - though obviously quite capable - prefers distros that make things simple and do most of the things for him.

Install your own radio? Sure, simple enough. Take an LCD, a circuit board, and a bunch of circuit components and create a useful and functional radio? Man, why the hell would you? Would be fun, yeah - but fun for something sitting on your desk. For something that is in your car and that you actually want to take cds, give them back when you want (and without scratches), handles the special nature of dual-signal FM to create stereo, etc? To do that by yourself, the best-case scenario would put you exponentially higher in cost for the same features. Worst case, same exponential cost - with fewer features.

Did I mention no one is stopping you from unlocking your iPhone?

Here is an interesting piece about corporations and their incentives to protect their reputations.

It is not about IT (it is about insurance companies in Nazi Germany), but provides a very good insight nonetheless.

You got that backwards, we have a government owned by car companies, and pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, etc.

Oh and it's called Fascism.

A computer? Amercians can't even manufacture a pencil.

The value of those shoes can't be destroyed by the government printing presses.

Yes, but their illiquidity makes them a poor medium of trade.

I don't understand your comment implying parent has no economic understanding. It sounds like his understanding of economics is what is driving his issue with paper currency.

I'm sure you're right, on both counts.

The OP is flat-out wrong regarding the constitution. The word "gold" appears exactly once, prohibiting the states from coining their own money. It's left to congress to "coin money and regulate the value thereof", full stop. Simple words, not scare tactics.

It's impossible to explain even a tiny part of one Econ 101 lecture in a /. comment. Reference material isn't hard to find for anyone interested enough to want to learn.

The value of money, like anything else, is subject to supply and demand. As the economy grows — through population and productivity — the money supply has to growth with it. If it doesn't, the value of money increases, which by definition is deflation. (Even gold bugs have to agree with that proposition because they're always the ones talking about the opposite: "debasing" the money i.e. inflation.)

Deflation is a whole subject its own. The basic problem is that banking stops because interest rates are (again, by definition) negative, and no one will deposit money in an account that pays negative rates. It also means your mortgage payments effectively increase, because the bank has the money and you're selling your crops (or earning your wage) at ever-decreasing rates.

The basic problem with the so-called gold standard is that there's only so much gold. The gold supply can't grow with the economy, forcing deflation and its attendant deleterious effects. That effect is more pronounced the faster the economy grows. In the 19th century the US economy experienced high growth — through both immigration and productivity growth as a function of the Industrial Revolution — and in fact suffered four depressions (culminating of course in the Great Depression early in the 20th). These were all in part attributable to the inability (and lack of understanding for the need) to increase the money supply.

But don't take my word for it. We haven't had a depression since 1937. Living standards have improved, measurably, in many ways. The system has flaws, sure, but it works. By contrast, no country has a gold standard today. That doesn't mean it's untested; it was tested by many countries over many years, including by the US. And was found not to work! A simple, obvious, plain fact the gold bugs choose to ignore.

I like Singapore's system, and would prefer to start there. We already have people using Flex Spending Accounts, and could gradually shift there over a 3-5 year period. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/singapores_heal.html
http://takingnote.tcf.org/2008/07/health-care-in.html

Singapore uses medical savings accounts and spends less than 5% of GDP. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/01/singapores_heal.html

-Cause stagnation via protectionist policies, then wait for other nations to pass us by on their way to a higher standard of livin and eocnomic vitality?

[Citation Needed]

Citations:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Protectionism.html
For you Austrian school folks (God, I can't believe I'm linking to Mises to support my position): http://mises.org/rothbard/protectionism.asp
For the interventionists, a counterpiece by Krugman, saying protectionism has a place... provided that other means fail: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/protectionism-and-stimulus-wonkish/
Another piece:http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/archive/2007/20070126-Fri.html

In the news, another danger of protectionism (as was seen in the great depression): http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/world/world/general/wto-fears-protectionism-domino-effect/1449424.aspx

The risk is that we adopt protectionist policies, and other nations adopt them against us -- but not with eachother. Thus we get left behind in the expansionary economies the other nations will go through. This is the problem that Krugman misses... protectionism globally will reduce the impact of economic problems in each country on the whole, only if the protectionism is directed to all trading partners. If the EU, for example, raises protective barriers agains the US, but not the rest of the world, we've got problems. Please note that this is in re: protective trade restrictions; subsidies (like the stimulus package) are another form of protectionism, that by nature are partner-agnostic, and I think this form of protectionism is what Krugman refers to.

However, we're discussing labor protectionism, which is a slightly different beast.

The relevant question is not how common the test is.

You're right about that not being the relevant question. The relevant question is:

Why is this included in an ECONOMIC STIMULUS PLAN?

Fiscal policy is the use of government spending and taxation to influence the economy. When the government decides on the goods and services it purchases, the transfer payments it distributes, or the taxes it collects, it is engaging in fiscal policy.

So the relevant question to you would be: Why not?

They're influencing the economy in a scientifically sound way. That was part of all those promises Obama made, to bring science back. Your economy will go much better if people use reason, rather than irrational beliefs, to heal.