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this is an interesting issue because people tend to want their leaders to have empathy, but it can be argued that they would be better served by utilitarians.

Economics as a discipline isn't invalid, but you do have to take it with a huge pinch of salt especially at the macro level.

Here are a couple of facts that should make you think twice about macro-economic wisdom. One of the most basic tenets of science is to compare your theories against observable reality to see if they match, and if they don't, you come up with a better theory. But the theory of the deflationary spiral was not actually studied to see if it matched historical data until 2004, and then when it finally was analyzed, it was discovered that the theory was wrong. Should have been a pretty huge event, but no, Bernanke and his colleagues continue to act as if the study was simply never done.

If that theory is wrong, what other conventional wisdom might be wrong? Well, it turns out that economists have models of how the economy works. Of course they do. The state of the art in macro-economic modelling, widely used by central banks, are dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models (DSGE). Sounds sophisticated, right? Wrong. These models are so crude they do not include banks at all because the people who designed them thought that banks had no impact on economies. Worse still, as their name implies the models predict equilibrium rather than the boom/bust cycles that typify real economies. It might seem obvious to the man on the street that if your explanation of how the economy works ignores banks and predicts stability, then you have a pretty bad explanation ... but this is the quality of science on which central banks base their decisions.

Is it any wonder the world got so messed up? Maybe you should indeed exercise more skepticism towards the so-called "dismal science", and consider whether us Bitcoiners have got it right after all.

These guys are smoking dope, don't believe a word they say

Is that supposed to be funny or just plain ignorant?

1. The name of the country is Colombia, not Columbia.
2. Colombia isn't a big marijuana producer or consumer. Paraguay and Mexico are the big producers, and the biggest consumers (by population percentage) in America are the US and Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_cannabis_use_by_country
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/daily-chart-16

It seems that the IAEA has in all their reports strong indications that the nuclear program is peaceful.

and yet the IAEA has indeed issued a report owning to strong suspicions the program is not peaceful. From The Economist

The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), published a damning report detailing its concerns over the “possible military dimensions” of Iran's nuclear programme ... The IAEA's November report also indicated that Iran had probably already tested a sophisticated detonation system for an explosive device suitable for use as a ballistic-missile warhead (albeit the tests are likely to have taken place before 2004, when the weaponisation side of the programme was pursued more energetically than it is today). Informed by the IAEA's work and intelligence sources, estimates of Iran's potential timeline to nuclear weapons—if the country were to quit the NPT and throw everything into its programme—vary between just a couple of months for a single crude device and more than two years for an arsenal of three or four nuclear-tipped, solid-fuelled ballistic missiles.

Sorry, the assumption that pure democracy (or pure representative democracy) is better than a republic is completely at odds with the facts of modern psychology, brain science and marketing research. In a democracy we let the mass speak with their advertisement-besotted understanding of issues that are far too complex to fit into 30-second video bits. In a republic we let the mass pick representatives who then act in the best interests of the highly paid lobbyists (who are paid by rent-seekers (definition)) and activists (who spend time the rest of us cannot or will not). The rent-seekers and activists count on the fact that the losers in their transactions (the taxpayers) see small marginal costs while the focusing of those small marginal costs into the winners pockets becomes a very attractive cash flow (just think, if you could get a penny for each credit card transaction, you'd be able to retire, but which of the millions using credit cards would have the will and the incentive to fight back?). As for forming large coalitions (in a sort of fully realized "at -large", well just look at how well that is working in the countries that have the parliamentary systems. I think that Europe's inability to address their fiscal nightmare lines up quit nicely with the US inability to address their own fiscal problem. And reactions of people like Depardieu just serve to remind us that talent and money are mobile in ways that the run-of-the-mill rest are not. Any strongly formed effort to prevent rent-seeking will have to deal with that mobility or face turning their country into the next "place to be from." The real solution for the truly conscientious might be as simple as "dropping out" the way the hippies in the 60's wanted to, leaving the salarymen and wage-slaves to support the rent-seekers.

All those who scream meritocracy do not know any better, or the fact that the guy who coined the term meant it as a derogatory phrase for the scary future we're headed into.

Meritocracy sounds great on paper but is terrible in terms of social consequences. It allows entrenched elites to stay entrenched and over time, removed generational mobility. It's a term thrown around so casually in the US that people think of it as a positive trait. It's anything but.

welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars

is a very tired meme. The federal government spends most of its money on defense, interest, and income transfers, of which Social Security and Medicare are by far the largest. The red states get the defense dollars because the South has warm weather year-round and the West has cheap land for bombing ranges and secrecy. The red states get income transfers because, well, they're full of retirees (and, to a lesser extent, poor people).

If you want a properly indexed graph, check out this, which is the net flow of federal dollars as a percentage of each state's GDP over the past 20 years. Notice that the three mega-reds are West Virginia (poor whites), Mississippi (poor blacks), and New Mexico (poor Indians), and that there's a lot of red down the Eastern Seaboard, where the Northeast retirees go, and in the Mountain West, where the California retirees go.

Are you suggesting that means-testing Social Security and Medicare is on the table for the Democratic Party? Because I'd totally be on board with that. Hell, if the Democrats are going to become fiscally responsible, I'll become one. I'm tired of the Jesus freaks in the R column anyway.

I apologize for not linking to the article, but I am unable to find it.

Here it is.

b) This sort of tech is what most people will be driving a few years from now.

Maybe - there is quite a bit of work that needs to be done. I wish I could link directly to this chart - it's about 1/2 down in the article. It shows when electric cars will become viable based on battery and gas cost. Today gas is the clear leader. Batteries would have to drop in price by 50% or gas would have to be above $6 to make the economics work - which could happen in a few years - but I would not take a bet either way..

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21571117-search-better-ways-storing-electricity-hotting-up-batteries

And in the actual rebuttal, the reporter mentioned that:

1. The car displayed "Charging Complete", and its reported range estimate was sufficient to reach his destination
2. The detour in question was only two miles long
3. He may have gone above the speed limit for a mile or two, but that was probably before he stopped to charge at Newark. His problems came after that. And surely driving below the speed limit for 100 miles mitigates the excess energy usage caused by going above the speed limit for one mile.

This is an awful lot of hooplah about a software problem. If the car did say it was fully charged, obviously it was not.

All modern cars have software bugs, some worse than others. Even gasoline powered cars have them. A car like the Tesla is so new and has so few users that more bugs are likely to be discovered. That's what happens when you want a bleeding edge car. If you want something well tested and less likely to have significant bugs, buy last year's Prius.

We have 'zero proof' that building legal and technical mechanisms suitable for the suppression of a given flavor of content leads to the use of those mechanisms being used for the suppression of other flavors, sometimes including your 'actual speech' category? Srsly?

Mission creep is a well known phenomenon, and it's both easily historically observable that people's descriptions of political and social commentary they don't like frequently ends up tinged with the same vocabulary of condemnation as that used for porn('that's obscene' actually means that that includes some sordid fucking surprisingly infrequently).

On the architectural side, technical and legal mechanisms for efficient content takedowns are virtually content-agnostic. Blacklists, wordlist filters, DMCA takedown forms, any of those can be trivially re-targeted just by dropping some new parameters in to the configuration.

Lest this be dismissed as theoretical, observe the Russian experiment.

As for the babble about 'meaning' and 'the sacred', I'm just going to have to admit complete bafflement about what you are talking about.

How does arguing about the Federal subsidies of roads and highways counter the argument of subsidizing beaches?

Because the people of New Jersey are financing roads they will likely never drive on? New Jersey runs at a net loss to the Federal Government. More money goes to the feds than comes back. You may never set foot on a New Jersey beach, but in all likelihood I will never drive down a federal highway in Alabama. Both roads and beach projects stimulate economic development. Both are infrastructure improvements. People can live in the middle of goddamn nowhere and get Federally subsidized electricity and Federally subsidized telephone and Federally subsidized postal service. But God forbid we pile up $4 million worth of sand every 5 years on the shoreline of a town in the most population-dense state in the nation.

Anyway, beaches are required by Federal law to be accessible to the public, so it seems fair that some money should be granted towards that mandate. Most of those shore towns could afford to pump in the sand if you let them charge you an arm and a leg to visit the beach. And I'm not talking about the $20/season beach tag, either!

Car analogy: He had the massive brain, but not the emotional suspension to effectively harness the power to his benefit.

Valuing discipline is so important in life. No one is smart enough to flit from one task to another, leaving brilliant solutions in one's wake. 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration.

From what I've read, he was never really comfortable. Emotionally or physically.

Growing up is about finding out what you are, finding out about the world. He was such a prodigy and as a result, this soft, depressive, immature kid was thrust into the real world, the big stage, of hard, combative people. A world he had no opportunity to learn about. Many of us have made mistakes but were able to recover. He never had that chance. He stepped into something he, as an introverted young man, had no idea about. He was an introverted, depressive youth on the big stage. He never learned how to cage his internal tormentors. He followed hard men, Stallman and Lessig, into battle. And the battle he stumbled into crushed him.

An unfortunate confluence of circumstances. A tragedy.

From his obituary in The Economist:

"All this added to a weight that had oppressed him for many years. “Look up, not down,” he urged readers of his weblog; “Embrace your failings.” “Lean into the pain.” It was hard to take that advice himself. He kept getting ill, several illnesses at once. Migraines sliced into his scalp; his body burned. And he was sad most of the time, a sadness like streaks of pain running through him. Books, friends, philosophy, even blogs didn’t help. He just wanted to lie in bed and keep the lights off.

In 2002 he posted instructions for after his death (though I’m not dead yet! he added). To be in a grave would be all right, as long as he had access to oxygen and no dirt on top of him; and as long as all the contents of his hard drives were made publicly available, nothing deleted, nothing withheld, nothing secret, nothing charged for; all information out in the light of day, as everything should be."

It's not rubbish. It's reality.

Take the US Fish and Game code that says that is illegal to be in possession of any plant or animal life that is prohibited in any country. You'd never believe that such an open and sweeping law would ever be used, but it has been to arrest an innocent man and send him to prison for several years for a crime he didn't even commit. (It turns out the persons he bought his supplies from didn't properly fill out their paperwork.) Source.

Or, how about the grandmother in NY who took pictures of her grandchildren in the bathtub playing and ended up going to prison for making child porn (she had her film developed at a Walmart who reported her)?

You're incredibly naive and shortsighted (as well as delusional) if you don't realize how common the misuse of law is, and how creative prosecutors get when they try and shoe-horn otherwise innocuous actions into crimes so they can get another notch on their belt and look better when it comes time for re-election / promotion.

You commit 3 felonies every day.

This article is a poor, sensationalistic rewrite of a much more thoughtful one:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21569393-fears-innovation-slowing-are-exaggerated-governments-need-help-it-along-great

A sad day for the BBC.

about this

I have to undo some mod points, but this is so wrong I couldn't leave it unchallenged.

Great. You found ONE.

The problem is staggeringly large. For you to sacrifice your precious mod point to hand-waive the problem away is ridiculous.

From Investopedia:

Each year, billions of dollars are sent by migrant workers to their home countries, with some estimates putting the total value of remittances at more than $200 billion. For some countries, remittances make up a sizable portion of GDP.

The Economist: on these private transfers:

Since 1996 they have been worth more than all overseas-development aid, and for most of the past decade more than private debt and portfolio equity inflows. In 2011 remittances to poor countries totalled $372 billion, according to the World Bank (total remittances, including to the rich world, came to $501 billion). That is not far off the total amount of foreign direct investment that flowed to poor countries. Given that cash is ferried home stuffed into socks as well as by wire transfer, the real total could be 50% higher.

And, don't forget Wikipedia

Remittances are playing an increasingly large role in the economies of many countries, contributing to economic growth and to the livelihoods of less prosperous people (though generally not the poorest of the poor). According to World Bank estimates, remittances totaled US$414 billion in 2009, of which US$316 billion went to developing countries that involved 192 million migrant workers. For some individual recipient countries, remittances can be as high as a third of their GDP.... A majority of the remittances from the US have been directed to Asian countries like India (approx. 66 billion USD in 2011), China (approx. $57 billion USD)and Philippines (approx. 23 billion USD)

Next time, before you burn a whole mod point, do just a tad of research.

we have no such problem, the percentage of world's poor is shrinking

http://www.economist.com/node/21548963

technology and economic growth, bitch

Notice how you're calling him a criminal, when he hasn't been convicted of anything? Do you feel bad about that, or do you think this was a cut and dry case and he was clearly guilty of _______ (what was he charged with, anyway? breaking into the wiring closet, sure, but wire fraud? what the hell is that? how is downloading JSTOR articles wire fraud? please, enlighten me, since you seem to know he's guilty of that already.)

You make it sound like the easiest thing in the world, admitting guilt to a crime in exchange for not spending your life in jail.

Maybe someday you'll be past the grand jury, the prosecutor threatening you with 50 years for a crime you didn't commit, dangling a 1 year plea bargain in front of your greasy face.

And the people around you will say it's obvious, you should take the plea bargain.

And you'll say you're innocent, but they'll call you stupid for saying that, because if you keep saying that you'll go to trial with the mandatory minimums and the 50 years and the lawyer's costs, and FFS why don't you just admit to the crime you didn't commit and serve your 1 year of unjust prison?

Spend just a bit of time reading up on mandatory minimums and how they remove that small but important part of the criminal justice system:

the trial

and replace it with the simple test of (a) grand jury and (b) browbeating defendants.

Try

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21570742-how-mandatory-minimum-sentences-distort-plea-bargaining-thumb-scale

or

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-richman-cohen/medical-marijuana-montana_b_2095609.html

etc etc

You make it sound so neat and clean, giving up your right to a trial because you're being threatened with life in jail.

No, much of the national deficit actually cannot be laid at CA's doorstep. Those decisions get made in Washington, DC. California has always been a net contributor, being still the eighth largest world economy in spite of the recession. You must be thinking of those red states... http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union

*Certain* businesses flock to CA because the laws, business environment, and climate support their businesses well. Tech companies can find plenty of highly qualified staff because there are three public college systems, the local governments also help support the private ones, and employment/IP law favors job-hopping and entrepreneurship (making it possible for employees to leave disgruntled employers without fear of retribution). Ag companies like it here because you can farm year round, and CA ports are on the Pacific Rim. Manufacturers like it as well, but those who can't or won't avoid dumping pollutants into the water table (see ag) don't like CA, so they go to places like Louisiana instead.

Mexico couldn't keep CA. They were run by the Spanish at the time, and nobody wanted to deal with trying to maintain garrisons during a time of tall ships with months long voyages. That is why, when the US took over, they built the trans-continental railroad. Problem solved.

Californians pay more in federal taxes than they recieve from the federal goverment. The following map shows Federal Taxes minus spending on a state by state basis. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union
Texas and Minnesota both pay more taxes than they recieve. The biggest debtor state in the union is Virginia.

What PLA front are you talking about? Just because some US Congressman said that since the president of the company served in the PLA, therefore the company MUST be a PLA front do you actually believe it? It's like saying that any person that served in any military is just a tool for the rest of his life.

Why don't you educate a bit more about the issue before repeating words like a parrot. You can start with reputable sources like http://www.economist.com/node/18771640

I think you missed big chunk of recent history (while watching pr0n???) the bigger need is around Senkaku Islands - considering how nationalistic Chinese population got manipulated into (see this (and comments to this article) or this. If that is not enough Persian Gulf is bound to explode some time too. I think Baltic is not such a big trouble area at least not now but thegeneral idea is cool.

RIM is popular in Africa:
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21567977-its-devices-are-still-popular-there-africa-wont-save-rim-blackberry-babes

And for your amusement, check out this genius sketch from Ronnie Corbett, "My Blackberry is not Worlking" [Credit: BBC - thanks Beeb!]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

Straight from this week's The Economist, http://www.economist.com/news/business/21569398-how-did-lenovo-become-worlds-biggest-computer-company-guard-shack-global-giant

Lenovo is on a roll. It is number one in five of the seven biggest PC markets, including Japan and Germany. Its mobile division is poised to leapfrog Samsung to grab the top spot in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market. This week it made a splash at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with what PC World called “bullish bravado and a seemingly bottomless trunk” of enticing new products.

To focus on PCs, Mr Yang’s [CEO] predecessor sold Lenovo’s smartphone arm for $100m in 2008. Mr Yang bought it back for twice as much the next year. He believes that PCs and other devices will converge, so knowledge of one area will breed expertise in the other. He may be right. Smartphone sales are red hot in China, and Lenovo is now selling mobiles and tablets in several emerging markets

He also thinks Lenovo has a secret weapon. It has kept a lot of manufacturing in-house (why outsource to Foxconn when you already pay Chinese wages?). Mr Yang believes this in-house expertise gives his firm an edge in product development. But Lenovo must exploit that edge better than it has done so far if it is to compete with a technology powerhouse like Samsung and build a global brand anything like Apple’s.

Has anyone seen one of these Lenovo phone critters yet . . . ?

Well there was one about 11 years ago, but it was around 100 years since a politician was murdered and the biggest mass killing (14) in Switzerlands history

http://www.economist.com/node/807801

British parties are looking at Obama's operation very closely to see if they can improve their own using similar techniques. But they don't have nearly the same budgets for this kind of bespoke IT work and corporation-sized infrastructure, so are having trouble figuring out how to adapt any lessons from it.

I highly recommend this book: "Thinking About Crime" by James Q. Wilson, who lectured at Harvard for 26 years. He backs up his arguments with a lot of data and makes a compelling case.

One of his observations was that crime shot up during a period of declining poverty, during the 60s, which cast doubt on the popular notion that poverty is the primary driving factor of crime. He also discussed the notion that people do in fact respond to rewards and penalties, which supported the notion that punishment can deter. This seems rather obvious to most observers but was not accepted by the sociology/criminology "orthodoxy" the 1960s and 1970s.

...Let me google that for you: http://www.economist.com/node/12607051...

Well, I'm looking at the "Non Negotiable Bill of Lading" (small print at bottom of form) and at the top it says DHL Global Forwarding. The shipper is my bike dealer in Arizona and I'm in Buffalo NY. Date shipped is 12/10/12 (US date style, December 10, 2012). I signed for the carton on 12/21/2012. Special Instructions are "Residential Delivery".

As someone wise once said, you can't always believe what you read in the papers. Or maybe it's this one, "The reports of my death are slightly exaggerated"?

Burgeoning bourgeoisie: For the first time in history more than half the world is middle-class—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries. John Parker (interviewed here) reports. http://www.economist.com/node/13063298?story_id=13063298&source=hptextfeature

You could have provided a synopsis and link, I'd have believed you after checking the link.

They have a complex (even worse than their product assembly) ownership structure where most of the profits go to a nonprofit that gives away a few percent of income. Here is a quick overview.

These constructs in games are very similar to financial products, which are also logical constructs and virtual products:

1) "A financial product is about as conceptual as you can get,” says Wilson Ervin, a senior adviser at Credit Suisse. “You just need paper and ink.”-- The Economist magazine

2) "In an even more blunt description, Tourre calls the CDOs he produced "intellectual masturbation" and likens himself to Dr. Frankenstein.

"When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'well, what if we created a 'thing', which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?")" -- CNN / Money

Be wary of those who tout the financialization of society, as it results in a "house" which generates these logical constructs, which it then sells to people. They have value because people value them, like Petville pets or Farmville tractors. All of these things are neither goods, nor services, but logical constructs. They're inherently volatile. The financial world is built on logical constructs - currency is a logical construct, as are stocks and bonds. Currency is durable construct because it makes life easier for people versus barter. Stocks are volatile - "Shares of ownership in a company." Bonds are volatile - "Promises to pay."

Anyway, just wanted to point out the similarities.

Which is why Somalia and Afghanistan are the most prosperous nations in the world, while Norway and Canada are hopeless dystopian nightmares. Right?

Somalia is a big-government socialist dystopia, the only difference being that their government is fragmented. It is one kind of socialist state (Sharia law) built on the ruins of other socialist states (ex. the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party). The last time Somalia appeared on an Economic Freedom Index, it was ranked on the same level as Cuba! Afghanistan's situation was largely similar prior to the war.

Canada (#5) is ahead of the USA (#10) on the current Economic Freedom Index, while Norwaystan is #40. Norway has 40.2 percent of its economy directly controlled by government thugs, Canada 39.7%, and USA 38.9%.

Norway was one of the richest countries in the world before it added a welfare state, and since then it has mainly coasted on cultural and economic momentum (not to mention humongous per-capita gas reserves, marine extraction from the Norwegian Sea, which is twice the size of Texas, and other natural resources). Canada has many of the same capitalist virtues as the United States, with more per-capita resources, a more capitalist (open, merit-based) immigration policy, a more favorable economic history (no rural south), and much subsidy from USA in military defense, which allows it to afford a slightly bigger welfare state.

You have to study economics and look at the causal relationships of what makes countries rich or poor. You will find that countries stagnate in absence of economic freedom, although if they were rich to begin with their wealth will not disappear overnight. Greater free trade within the EU has satisfied the expectations for economic growth in those countries. Low fertility rates also help (in the short term) - much easier to make more money if one parent doesn't have to stay home with the kids. In spite of Norway being a hand-picked little representative for whole Europe, I doubt if many Americans would choose to live there - high prices, lower income, conformist culture, etc.

--libman

Step 0: Control media outlets and discredit all that are not under your power, Propaganda!!!
Why is this step 0? Because with the media intact and doing what it is required by society, none of the other crap would have happened, however the buck stops with the people, if the people aren't going to do anything about it then they get what they get.

Step 1: Create a crisis or allow one to happen.

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
-Rahm Emanuel

Create an enemy that will never go away (terrorist) and wage a war that will never end (terrorism) and define the enemy as "those without any rights" and can be held indefinitely (National Defense Authorization Act)

Step 2: Promise to protect the populace from said crisis/enemy by any means necessary, begin by restricting rights in the name of security.

Step 3: Implement a massive trillion dollar (data from The Economist) surveillance network HLS, TSA, NSA, DIA OMG, WTF, BBQ ), record all calls, maintain facial recognition database (thank you Facebook) fill the air with drones and the ground with cameras.
Monitor for dissent. (see: fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy below)

Step 4: Dis arm populace (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons)

Step 5: Tighten grip further via martial law or other "required security protocols", rename political protest groups as "terrorist" deregulate corporations, dismantle workers rights, remove environmental protections, and finally ammo up. (Department Of Homeland Security Is Buying 450 Million New Bullets)

Anyone not complying or protesting is a terrorist. (see step 1)

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/09/costs-homeland-security

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/12/fbi-treated-occupy-terrorist-group/60289/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-28/news/31247765_1_atk-rounds-bullet

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/27/5079151/california-gun-sales-increase.html

Idiocratic journalists don't even ask the first order correcting question let alone the second. The first is, how much is their spending per capita compared to ours (duh, about a factor of 4 or 5 there), and second, how much is their spending per engineer/scientist (or whatever subgroup that actually needs that spending). Again, duh, about a factor of 3.5-4? Of course, we ARE producing the worlds most educated baristas, busquers and bloggers.

Oops.. http://www.economist.com/node/21560523

Europe and Australia tend to be far more violent than the US, but the US murder rate is about 2x theirs. They beat, main, rape, and assault more, Americans kill more but have far less violence overall. Your quote is nonsense - dead from a knife or club is just as dead as dead from a gun.

Murder most foul
UK is violent crime capital of Europe

It’s not more engineering per say that is needed.

You have 2 trends. On one side there is a lot of energy expended into theoretical safeguards to appease the NIMBYs who – by definition – can never be appeased. On the other hand there engineers who, though the use of theory, think they can make safe proof designs.

The end results are very expensive bespoke nuclear power plants. Because of this customization, lessons learned at one plant can’t be translated to the next plat. What society needs is a frank discussion of what we want and the risks we are willing to take. Roll out a dozen plants and figure out what works and what does not – and apply those practical lessons (as well as any ideas that theory has) and build the next dozen.

The Economist did a good special report earlier this year. Here is the first of 6 articles.
http://www.economist.com/node/21549098

We passed 1e+07 operations per kWh in 1965.
We passed 1e+08 operations per kWh in 1971.
We passed 1e+09 operations per kWh in 1976.
We passed 1e+10 operations per kWh in 1981.
We passed 1e+11 operations per kWh in 1987.
We passed 1e+12 operations per kWh in 1992.
We passed 1e+13 operations per kWh in 1997.
We passed 1e+14 operations per kWh in 2001.
We passed 1e+15 operations per kWh in 2008.

citation and graph

Energy efficiency consistently doubles approximately every 1.6 years, so if we are at ~16 glops/watt right now, then we will blow past DARPA's target early in 2016... just a little over 3 years from now.

The U.S. is an odd place in many ways, on all sides: how the unions operate, how employers operate, and how labor law operates (which in turn influences those things).

In Germany's export-manufacturing sector, automation hasn't really made unions irrelevant. Nor has it in Denmark's. But unions there are a bit different, as is the overall political climate. In particular, large employer confederations and large union confederations negotiate more frequently, and on a more consensus-oriented basis.

Well, though it's not the best situation, it's not as big of a deal as it sounds, due to our gargantuan economy and stability. Our debt-to-GDP ratio compares quite favorably with most of the large economies of the EU, and with the EU itself.

Russia and China have much better debt-to-GDP, but they have significantly different economic models.

First because he said internet-reading educated russians in large cities. Educated people are a minority in most regions of the planet.
Second, corruption is rampart in Russia. Even if the people vote against Putin they can easily work around it. Last elections over there showed it:140% votes
As a guy who was born in Russia this corruption pisses the crap out of me.

Loan guarantees like the one A123 got totalled $90 billion in the "stimulus" bill passed in 2009.

Not quite. A123's loan guarantee (totaling only $17 million, with an "m") came from the Department Of Energy, not directly through the stimulus bill. The DoE has extended about $34 billion in loan guarantees (of which only a small amount is actually expected to be paid out). A thorough analysis of the program is quite an interesting read.

The best source I can find for the quoted $90 billion is the total cost ($88 billion) for "purchases of goods and services" which included a number of other programs as well as funding the DoE loan guarantees. Note that the entirety of A123's loan, had the guarantee been paid, is about 1% of the rounding error.

Government sticking its thumb on the scales of the economy is always a bad idea--whether it be bailing out banks or perpetual ethanol subsidies + ethanol mandates + import tariffs.

That's the whole point of government, though. As I've said before, humans suck. We're terribly biased and selfish. Left to our own devices, we'll kill each other over trivial matters, because we really don't care about anything beyond our local community. That's just how our brains have evolved. Sure, philosophically we can consider the notion of loving everybody and being nice, but that's not our instinct. We have to work for it.

That's where government comes in. Government is an abstraction that gives us an excuse to make policies based in philosophy, rather than just what we want at the time. If a politician thinks a big farming industry is really good in the long run, they'll support a subsidy, even if that means higher taxes right now. Since the policies are just abstract ideas to the politicians, rather than actual food disappearing from their dinner table, the politicians' human brains can make a less-biased decision based on the information they're given.

Of course, now it's that information that can be tainted by need and greed. Each politician thinks they're doing what's best, and voting for what will most help their constituents. This is why it's important to communicate with your representatives about issues you're knowledgeable about, and double-check your facts. Of course, since all humans are biased to believe that their opinions are objectively right, the burden's on you to provide enough proof to make a convincing argument.

For perspective, the tax breaks given to oil companies amounts to about $2.4 billion/year (in the form tax breaks which are similar to the same tax breaks that every other industry gets for investing in expansion). Loan guarantees like the one A123 got totalled $90 billion in the "stimulus" bill passed in 2009.

Where's this $90 billion number from? $88 billion over ten years was the total for titles II, IV, V, and VIII of the ARRA bill. Loan guarantees are only part of this.

Wikipedia puts the total green-energy loan guarantees at $6 billion. There might be some other loan guarantees hiding in other categories, but your total is suspect, and comparing an annual number to a ten-year number is deceptive regardless.

Maybe for phones – but smartphones are the future – and it does not look pretty for Nokia.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/09/daily-chart-6

Is any of that relevant? Look at the share of operating profits: two months ago iOS was still over 60%:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/09/daily-chart-6

I couldn't care less about where it was assembled. The parts are still made in China, which is where the quality is real labor comes from. I'll be impressed if they open up actual factories here in the US, and stop using Ireland to funnel cheaper tax rates.

I bet you the parts were actually made in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. If the iMac is anything like the iPad, China has little high tech industry to contribute to it, just cheap human labor. Those three countries make most of the parts and get more money than China out of the purchase price. China gets all the crap because its the last stop before sale and has its name on the product.

You would be (slightly) wrong. The quick and dirt version:
          The richer you are the more kids you have.
          The higher the cost of college the fewer kids you have.
          Recently, cost of college > rich.

Long version: http://www.economist.com/node/21561112

We on the left have had no economic effect but a steady erosion of the social safety net

The truth is that Federal entitlement spending has been continuously increasing, however the entitlements are not just going to poor people as much any more. Over half of all entitlement spending flows to the elderly and around 40% is spent on health care. Around 10% of entitlement spending goes to the richest fifth of Americans, 60% to the middle three-fifths, and only 30% to the poorest fifth (source).

Seriously folks, their behaviour is classed as antisocial for a reason, read the words - ANTI SOCIAL.

By Definition BAD FOR THE ENTIRE SOCIETY.

That is NOT the defintion of antisocial. It is not necessarily bad for society. There was an article in the Economist that describes a study that found that people with cold emotional detachment are exactly who should be running things.

This is especially apparent in military leaders. In the American Civil war, leaders like McClellan and Meade were known for their compassion and concern for the welfare of their troops. But hundreds of thousands died unnecessarily because they failed to push for a decisive victory early in the war. More emotionally detached generals like Grant and Stonewall Jackson were far more effective.

How many allied troops died in Normandy due to Monty's dithering? Meanwhile "blood and guts" Patton was encircling 40,000 Nazi troops at Falaise.