Slashdot Mirror

my definition

You are welcome to create your definitions for anything, but you should not be making parallels with the commonly accepted definition of the same term. An "economic terrorist" is no more of a "terrorist", than a guinea pig is a pig.

They dwarf all competitors, and can exert fine-grained control over the market itself by choking suppliers via big-money contracts with overreaching non-compete restrictions. Once you start selling to Walmart, you become their bitch and they effectively wind up controlling your bottom line.

As long as the following is true (and it is):

1. Nobody is forced to shop there;
2. Nobody is forced to supply them (with goods or labor)

there is nothing particularly outrageous about them.

To me, that's all sorts of wrong. It's the classic theme of a parasite growing so needy, it bleeds the host to death.

Are you seriously calling a retailer "a parasite" (of one degree of "neediness" or another)? Presumably then, "the host" is the manufacturer? Wow... Do you like buying your DVD-players and toothbrushes in bulk? 'Cause if you don't, the "parasites" all provide extremely useful service to you...

Let me tell you the real reason you hate them Wal-Mart, even though Target, Kmart, etc are doing (or trying to do) the exact same thing... Unlike others, Wal-Mart actively fights unions (you know, the racketeers miraculously exempt from anti-trust laws). Unions, understandably, hate them with passion and organize all sorts of campaigns against them. That last link says:

Those results are music to the ears of WakeUpWalMart.com, the outfit that commissioned the Zogby poll, as well as to other powerful critics arrayed against the company. Another group, Wal-Mart Watch, has backing from the United Food and Commercial Workers--which claims 1.4m members--as well as the Teamsters Union, the Sierra Club, the 1.8m-strong Service Employees International Union and some 400 other organisations across the United States. Their lobbying efforts and public campaigning are being trumpeted by a number of political groups such as MoveOn.org, which likes to assail Republicans and capitalism. Many of these groups have been lambasting Wal-Mart for years, claiming that its relentless competitiveness and sheer clout have had a damaging effect on America's workers, small firms and neighbourhoods.

Now, I doubt, you'd have the personal integrity and honesty to admit to being a union sheeple, so I'll just leave this "debate" at that. So long...

my definition

You are welcome to create your definitions for anything, but you should not be making parallels with the commonly accepted definition of the same term. An "economic terrorist" is no more of a "terrorist", than a guinea pig is a pig.

They dwarf all competitors, and can exert fine-grained control over the market itself by choking suppliers via big-money contracts with overreaching non-compete restrictions. Once you start selling to Walmart, you become their bitch and they effectively wind up controlling your bottom line.

As long as the following is true (and it is):

1. Nobody is forced to shop there;
2. Nobody is forced to supply them (with goods or labor)

there is nothing particularly outrageous about them.

To me, that's all sorts of wrong. It's the classic theme of a parasite growing so needy, it bleeds the host to death.

Are you seriously calling a retailer "a parasite" (of one degree of "neediness" or another)? Presumably then, "the host" is the manufacturer? Wow... Do you like buying your DVD-players and toothbrushes in bulk? 'Cause if you don't, the "parasites" all provide extremely useful service to you...

Let me tell you the real reason you hate them Wal-Mart, even though Target, Kmart, etc are doing (or trying to do) the exact same thing... Unlike others, Wal-Mart actively fights unions (you know, the racketeers miraculously exempt from anti-trust laws). Unions, understandably, hate them with passion and organize all sorts of campaigns against them. That last link says:

Those results are music to the ears of WakeUpWalMart.com, the outfit that commissioned the Zogby poll, as well as to other powerful critics arrayed against the company. Another group, Wal-Mart Watch, has backing from the United Food and Commercial Workers--which claims 1.4m members--as well as the Teamsters Union, the Sierra Club, the 1.8m-strong Service Employees International Union and some 400 other organisations across the United States. Their lobbying efforts and public campaigning are being trumpeted by a number of political groups such as MoveOn.org, which likes to assail Republicans and capitalism. Many of these groups have been lambasting Wal-Mart for years, claiming that its relentless competitiveness and sheer clout have had a damaging effect on America's workers, small firms and neighbourhoods.

Now, I doubt, you'd have the personal integrity and honesty to admit to being a union sheeple, so I'll just leave this "debate" at that. So long...

when it comes to immigration they [congress] are doing exactly the opposite--trying their best to keep the world's best and brightest from darkening America's doors.

Consider the annual April Fool's joke played on applicants for H1B visas, which allow companies to sponsor highly-educated foreigners to work in America for three years or so. The powers-that-be have set the number of visas so low--at 85,000--that the annual allotment is taken up as soon as applications open on April 1st. America then deals with the mismatch between supply and demand in the worst possible way, allocating the visas by lottery. The result is that hundreds of thousands of highly qualified people--entrepreneurs who want to start companies, doctors who want to save lives, scientists who want to explore the frontiers of knowledge--are kept waiting on the spin of a roulette wheel and then, more often than not, denied the chance to work in the United States.

This is a policy of national self-sabotage. America has always thrived by attracting talent from the world. Some 70 or so of the 300 Americans who have won Nobel prizes since 1901 were immigrants. Great American companies such as Sun Microsystems, Intel and Google had immigrants among their founders. Immigrants continue to make an outsized contribution to the American economy. About a quarter of information technology (IT) firms in Silicon Valley were founded by Chinese and Indians. Some 40% of American PhDs in science and engineering go to immigrants. A similar proportion of all the patents filed in America are filed by foreigners.

These bright foreigners bring benefits to the whole of society. The foreigner-friendly IT sector has accounted for more than half of America's overall productivity growth since 1995. Foreigner-friendly universities and hospitals have been responsible for saving countless American cities from collapse. Bill Gates calculates, and respectable economists agree, that every foreigner who is given an H1B visa creates jobs for five regular Americans.

There was a time when ambitious foreigners had little choice but to put up with America's restrictive ways. Europe was sclerotic and India and China were poor and highly restrictive. But these days the rest of the world is opening up at precisely the time when America seems to be closing down. The booming economies of the developing world are sucking back talent that was once America's for the asking. About a third of immigrants who hold high-tech jobs in America are considering returning home. America's rivals are also rejigging their immigration systems to attract global talent.

Canada and Australia operate a widely emulated system that gives immigrants "points" for their educational qualifications. New Zealand allows some companies to hand out work visas along with job offers. Britain gives graduates of the world's top 50 business schools an automatic right to work in the country for a year. The European Union is contemplating introducing a system of "blue cards" that will give talented people a fast track to EU citizenship.

The United States is already paying a price for its failure to adjust to the new world. Talent-challenged technology companies are already being forced to export jobs abroad. Microsoft opened a software development centre in Canada in part because Canada's more liberal laws make it easier to recruit qualified people from around the world. This problem is only going to get worse if America's immigration restrictions are not lifted. The Labour Department projects that by 2014 there will be more than 2m job openings in science, technology and engineering, while the number of Americans g

I've done some more digging on this imaginary wealth ... Here's a news report from 2005, which says just how huge the bubble has got (even just up to 2005).

Jun 16th 2005
From The Economist print edition
"NEVER before have real house prices risen so fast, for so long, in so many countries. Property markets have been frothing from America, Britain and Australia to France, Spain and China. Rising property prices helped to prop up the world economy after the stockmarket bubble burst in 2000. What if the housing boom now turns to bust?

According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history."

So it "rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years" ... oh wow, that's way more than 2%!

Here's the link...
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4079027

...stockmarkets into freefall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down by 7%, and suffered its biggest-ever points loss. Perhaps fittingly in an economy that is in danger of sliding into depression, the only stock among the 500 in the S&P index that finished higher was Campbell's Soup. The S&P closed 29% below its peak. Reflecting fears that consumer demand will wilt, shares of Apple Computer, creator of the iPhone, fell by 18%.

And here's The Economist, part (ii):

A 90-year-old woman about to be evicted in Ohio shot herself last week. (She survived, and the mortgage firm forgave her debt.)

FOSS is a little easier on the wallet than Microsoft. A recession is cost-cutting. OO.org is one nail in the coffin of Microsoft Office. And that is my argument, and it's no non-sequitur, as much as you may like reality to be different. Please refrain from throwing chairs at me.

...stockmarkets into freefall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down by 7%, and suffered its biggest-ever points loss. Perhaps fittingly in an economy that is in danger of sliding into depression, the only stock among the 500 in the S&P index that finished higher was Campbell's Soup. The S&P closed 29% below its peak. Reflecting fears that consumer demand will wilt, shares of Apple Computer, creator of the iPhone, fell by 18%.

And here's The Economist, part (ii):

A 90-year-old woman about to be evicted in Ohio shot herself last week. (She survived, and the mortgage firm forgave her debt.)

FOSS is a little easier on the wallet than Microsoft. A recession is cost-cutting. OO.org is one nail in the coffin of Microsoft Office. And that is my argument, and it's no non-sequitur, as much as you may like reality to be different. Please refrain from throwing chairs at me.

So then we've done the most we can under the law.

Well, the Judiciary will not allow his prosecution, but the Executive not only may, but must treat him with suspicion... Don't be ridiculous — had he done something you actually disapprove of yourself (and escaped prosecution on a technicality), you would've agreed with me.

If somebody walked up to a cop and said: "I think, all cops should be killed," — would you not call the cop an idiot, if he didn't take a goooood look at the guy, jotted down his description, and shared the info with his colleagues? Although Ayers' actual crimes were committed when Obama was 8 years old, his public insistence on regretting only not setting more bombs continues to this day — both law enforcement and the rest of us would, indeed, be idiots, if we didn't carefully watch, what he is doing and whom he is helping to get ahead...

Then, again, looking at the polls today, perhaps, we are, indeed, mostly comprised of idiots...

You can't list drivers licenses as a counterexample, because drivers licenses are about driving cars, not traveling by car.

Yes, I suppose, you can walk too — except, you are still likely to be on a public highway and may be picked up by the Executive government at their whim — whether or not you are on any list. And then, again, you ignored my other example — provision of very basic services (be it plumbing or floating horses' teeth or even use of whois and traceroute ) increasingly requires an Executive Government's license, which can be taken away on a whim and without Judiciary's review.

Yet, somehow, I see neither ACLU nor yourself complaining about these outrages — and I suspect, you actually celebrated (along with most Slashdotters) the one requiring MediaSentry to have a private investigator (!) license to run whois and traceroute...

Then let's say that they placed people on this list any time they saw someone who, say, supported whatever political party they don't like. Even though pulling people over for lengthy traffic stops any time they exceed the speed limit is entirely within their rights, this still counts as persecution.

Well, that depends on what that hypothetical political party is advocating and known for. For example, if repeated trespassing (as was the case with Max Obuszewski and pals) is part of that party's action plan, then suspecting all its members of trespassing is quite reasonable.

Unless I actually said somewhere that I don't have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list, do not assume that this is the case.

You just missed a great opportunity to state, for the record, whether or not you actually have a problem with Osama bin Laden being on the list of suspected terrorists... I wonder, why you chose not to state your opinion... Khmm...

As someone pointed out, due to assortative mating that doesn't actually happen in practice.

I recently read an article, Religion, Disease and Evolution in the Economist, that seems to indicate that diseased populations are also religious ones. I recall the thesis being that religion is caused by disease, as a type of social xenophobia that's evolved to protect against the spread of disease.

I conjecture that assortative mixing (and homophily) is compounded by the ignorant who perceive difference (skin color and intelligence) as a disease. It's a worthwhile observation that an unbelievable 95% of churches in the USA are racially segregated.

It wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't first conspired to cause the crash and did so secretly.

I see. And was this before or after they planned the 9/11 attacks?

now that the free market has been shown to be utter rubbish.

Oh, please. I grant you that the free-market fundamentalists are just as crazy as creationists, biblical literalists, Maoists, Randites, astrologers, and the Heaven's Gate wackos.

However, free markets are very effective tools in the right circumstances, especially when well regulated. Sensible people in finance have been bitching for years about the problems that have been building up. See, for example, this 2003 article from The Economist saying that we were in a bubble:

the sheer size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which at the end of 2002 accounted for 44% of all mortgage debt) could pose a risk to the whole financial system. [...] If the housing bubbles burst, the economic consequences will be much more severe than those of the recent stockmarket crash.

And they've been pointing out this and other risks frequently in the years since.

What we have here is at least as much as a political failure as a financial one. US regulators stopped regulating. Partly because we had idiotic, ideology-driven government. And partly Washington is hip deep in lobbyists and their money. If regulators had regulated and the overseers had overseen, there still might have been problems, but not ones that risks a global crash.

Naked shorting, as essentially leveraged speculation on downward price movements, does serve as a useful counter to the massive, and often highly leveraged (i.e. bank-created money) speculation on upward price movements that created the bubble that got us into this mess in the first place.

The Economist provides a nice tongue-in-cheek fake newspaper article from the future, in which regulators ban naked longs to avoid that sort of speculative market manipulation.

... and to back up your point, here is an Economist article which explains it nicely.

C'mon moderators, THIS SHIT IS NOT FUNNY!

From The Economist:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down by 7%, and suffered its biggest-ever points loss. Perhaps fittingly in an economy that is in danger of sliding into depression, the only stock among the 500 in the S&P index that finished higher was Campbell's Soup.

Warming, for all its predicted deleterious effects, would potentially thaw out land that is currently unproductive for food crops.

Warming would also take land out of agricultural production. Some land that's now used for growing crops will become deserts. Other areas will become flooded. Especially with saltwater. As it is now, Southern California is a major source of produce. However all those crops get their water from the Colorado River, which is drying up. As another /.er has posted a number of tymes, people in Colorado can't even use cisterns to capture and store rainwater without a license or permit as people downstream already have "rights" to that water. Farmers in a desert have more "rights" to rainwater than those who live where it rains?

I can see your economic education has been dismally incomplete.

And yours is compleat? The book "Natural Capitalism", called by Frances Cairncross, a writer for the Economist and others as breaming with ideas to bridge the gulf between business and the environment. Some have said it's the followup to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". In it a number of studies are cited whereby businesses have reduced their ecological footprint and saved money at the same tyme. Environmental responsibility can even be traced back to Adam Smith the father of capitalism.

You're making the assumption that this climate change -- if it even exists

Even skeptics of human induced global warming admit the world is warming. Heck even President Bush said it was real.

I bet even the day after you won't get 100% agreement, being afterwards, on the cause.

And I'm sure you're right. There are still people who believe the Earth is flat. Those people are a decided minority.

Just as those who deny Global Warming is false is a decided minority. To me there's little difference, both discount or ignore facts. Yes, there are facts showing cooling in some places, but the world as a whole is warming.

Falcon

When the Russians go rolling across Europe again as the resources of the planet become scarce, remember you said that. You will be praying for the U.S. and all of its "wasteful" high-tech weaponry to come on over (again) and save you. Maybe next time we should stay home and let you all eat each other.

Sorry to burst your bubble here, but:

Russian population: 145 million
EU-27 population: 493 million
Russian GDP: 610.6 billions euro
EU-27 GDP: 10957.9 billions euro
Russian defense budget: $31 billion (of which an estimated third is lost in corruption)
EU-27 Defense budget: $292.7 billion

The russian army is said to currently be outmatched by any mid-sized european army.

You have to remove the semicolon at the end of his link to make it work: Iraq starts to fix itself.

but the "surge" and military tactics are only a small part of why violence has fallen in Iraq recently.

Every time you run `whois' to determine, which network an attacking IP belongs to, you perform (an unlicensed) investigation.

Keep this in mind cheering for the little music-thief. He is using a completely bogus law — the licensing is required for more and more things, turning more and more things from being rights (derived directly from the Right to the Pursuit of Happiness) into privileges, which the Executive Government can take away on a whim, without bothering with Judicial, etc.

It is a far more important battle than "the right to free music" or any other of slashdot's usual topics of outrage.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12052171

Economist:

...Alaska's economy is built on two things... The first is federal spending, especially the little-scrutinised grants known as earmarks. Between 1996 and 2006 per-capita federal spending in Alaska rose from 38% above the national average to 71% above. Scott Goldsmith, an economist, reckons a third of all jobs in the state depend on it.
 
...the other pillar of Alaska's economy: windfall taxes. Last year (Palin) championed a tax hike on oil companies which is helping bring in huge sumsâ"more than $10 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June... Suddenly flush, the state has promised $1,200 to every man, woman and child...

So Alaska's growth streak, now in its 21st year, is unlikely to break soon. But the good times obscure a big weakness. The state government has become dependent on revenues from oil, which are likely to decline as the major fields dry up.

For the same reason you get a ticket if you don't wear your seat-belt? Wear a helmet when riding your motorcycle?

Serious infringements on the freedoms, I say... A freedom to be a fool, in this case, but a freedom nonetheless. "Oh, but if you crash, we'll have to treat you!" — none of your business, that's between me and my health insurance...

Failing to follow building codes in your own home should be something that must be revealed to any potential buyers of your home.

Building code is another beast — an unlicensed contractor may be able to follow it just as well (or better) than a licensed one. In any case, it is (our ought to be) between the buyer and me... The licensing requirements are way out of hand, and it costs us greatly.

Because if you screw up the wiring in your house and it catches fire, you could end up destroying your neighbors' homes as well.

And if I have a heart-attack (from all that bacon) while driving, I'm likely to injure someone else in the same accident too.

Your reason may have some relevance to the requirement to license electricians, but not to, say, plumbers... And yet, in the State of New Jersey, for example, plumbers must be licensed. The supposed reason is to protect me from shoddy work — a typical mommy-State reasoning. Eeeww... The only plausible excuse to infringe upon Free Market with regulation, is when the consumer may not be able to "try again" — if the first bad choice kills him or leaves him prison. This means, it may be alright to regulate lawyers and doctors, but New Jersey regulates plumbers and "Home Renovators" must be licensed too...

The whole thing really is out of hand — in this country. It is too bad, the Founding Father have not thought of this, when drafting a Constitution... Licenses are handed out by the Executive Government, which can withdraw them on a whim — without having to prove anything in court, thus leaving us without the protection of the Judiciary Branch. Voila — an excellent way for the Executive to "work around" the "separation of powers" and to be rid of the infamous "burden of proof".

It's not only more time efficient, but also more fuel efficient to drive at times other than rush our. Rush hour traffic tends to involve more acceleration and deceleration.

I don't recall who did it but I think the "Economist" published an article on a study on the efficiency of traveling between Washington DC and NYC, it studied flying, driving a car, taking a bus, and taking a train. The most fuel efficient mode was train whereas flying used the most fuel per passenger mile. I don't recall for sure but I think taking the bus was more efficient than driving.

I was driving home (downstate IL) from a Chicago suburb when I was rear-ended in stop and go rush hour traffic on an Interstate highway. The accident totaled my car, sent me to the emergency room, cost me two days of lost work, left me in pain for months

Sorry about your accident. Almost 10 years ago I had a bad accident myself though I was riding my bike not driving. I was in college at the tyme, without health insurance, and was riding my bike after classes. I don't recall how long but I was in a coma for some days. While in the coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. Well, I lived but I would argue with those docs about it being a miracle. Instead my life has been more of a living hell. Anyway, I was in the hospital a few weeks then moved into a rehabilitation, rehab, house where I lived for about a month. I now have a permanent disability, a Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI and all together I spent more than a year in therapy.

and stuck me with an insurance deductible because the deadbeat had no insurance of his own.

My family was lucky, financially. My medical bills were over $120,000. However the person who hit me was at fault. Witnesses to the accident said the driver was weaving all over the road. And witnesses had to chance him down and force him to stop. He was working while driving his employer's vehicle, it was a moving van like Apartment Movers. It came out later he was a diabetic and they say he had a diabetic seizer. Never having heard of diabetic seizers I asked a friend in college who's an insulin dependent diabetic, she was born with it, about seizers. She said it's not seizers they have but they can pass out and lose consciousness. Anyway the driver had a history of causing accidents and had been admitted to hospitals because he didn't take care of his diabetes. He also fled the state he lived in and moved to mine because his state issued a warrant for his arrest.

So because of the driver's record his employer decided to settle after my family hired a lawyer. And the medical bills were paid for out of the settlement.

Falcon

People in Washington are starting to take notice. The Economist(subscription required) had a good article about how ITAR was driving technology R&D and manufacturing out of the USA, to the detriment of our security.

Whether they actually do anything about it before our domestic industries collapse is another question.

The complete and utter arrogance of our Government and it's treatment of, not only us, but the rest of the World is starting to bite us in the ass. Not only with our Government's attitude with tapping the internet but also with our perceived superiority in space. We are no longer the leaders in space technology thanks to our Government. Other countries have workarounds to our technology because it was too much of a pain to do business with American firms. All because our Government believes that we have a monopoly on technology and smart people.

See, our paranoia and fear is now hurting our economy. And as a result it's hastening our decline. Maybe this will be a wake up call to the powers that be.

And you don't think other Governments world wide do not monitor their citizens traffic? The only reason the US is in the bad light is because the US so greatly frowned upon that people are heavily biased. I would suggest to everyone that thinks their Government doesn't partake in anything like the US to go and query their government leaders. So please quit bashing the US Government, and go investigate your own Governments. I am sure you will find out a lot of information. I hope you all have something Similar to the Freedom of Information Act. Eavesdropping and spying is a part of every governments policies. The US just gets most of the negative energy, because we have whistle-blowing idiots who are protected by the 1st Amendment and other laws protecting them from any type of punishment.

See, our paranoia and fear is now hurting our economy. And as a result it's hastening our decline. Maybe this will be a wake up call to the powers that be.

Europe has the beginnings of a DC grid for long haul transmission of electric power (over very long distances AC losses add up). Looks like Edison was right, after all!

This consideration makes the prospect of upgrading America's power grid even more daunting, but I'd venture to say we'll be better off making the changes sooner rather than later.

Compared with what passes for a periodical these days the Economist is the paragon of journalistic rigor and integrity and even when judged from an academic standpoint the articles, econometrics, and original research stand up quite well. You could do a lot worse than the Economist for your business and world events news.

Here is the "quality of life" index from "The Economist" which is US periodical

"The Economist" isn't a US periodical. It has offices throughout the world but it's registered in London "The Economist Newspaper Limited Registered in England and Wales. No. 236383 | Registered office: 25 St James's Street, London, SW1A 1HG | VAT Reg No: GB 340 436 876".

You might note, near the top of both of those lists reside some countries such as Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Ireland. New Zealand, Canada, Australia and others also rank as very comparable to the US in quality of life, but much higher in freedom of the press.

Freedom of the press is only part of freedom. While I support Reporters Without Borders I value other things as well, such as economic freedom and the right to bare firearms.

So where would someone want to go? I don't know. Ireland? Norway? How about The Netherlands? Austria? They seem appealing these days.

Actually for now I want to go to Brazil. I'm hoping to go there as part of a study abroad program.

Falcon

Wow, I haven't seen a reference to the International Committee for the Fourth International in Ages - ever since I didn't get commercials for the French Communist Party. You could also get your news from The Economist (http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11893699) or even Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1831857,00.html?cnn=yes). Or pretty much any other news source that covers international events. Anything will have more and better analysis than what is essentially a worldwide organ for Russian-style communists.

I'm not surprised anymore at articles such as this one. Our DNA is basically a blue print of who we are. Our limitations, strengths, etc...

While we are also a product of our environment, it's interesting to see how as we move forward in the research of the human body and mind, many of our issues which we would have deemed "environmental", are actually genetic.

I think even more interesting than this is that the current "DNA is all" mindset has actually been proving wrong, or at best misleading. Moshe Szyf at McGill has shown that behavioural environmental factors (viz. not simply being exposed to some chemical or toxin) can alter gene expression leading to behavioural changes.

These links have OK summaries:

http://www.mcgill.ca/headway/fall2006/indepth1/
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11326195

I won't get into the rest of your post other than to say that the evidence for "soul" and "God" as something other than ways of talking about the world and patterns of human behaviour is...scarce.

I don't know your exact age, but I know your about 10 years younger then me.

How do you know you are 10 years older than I am if you do not know my age? Are you making an ass of yourself again by assuming what my age is?

if energy costs what it does today because of all the subsidies, then without the subsidies, the alternative energy would cost that much more.

This and the following can qat least partially dealt with with increased efficiency. As you say cheap energy has made things cheap however with higher prices for energy manufact5uring and transportation will become more efficient. Back in the 1970s US auto makers said more fuel efficient couldn't be made, but during the fake oil embargo Japanese auto makers ate their lunch. Now while Detroit struggles Honda, Toyota, and other Japanese, as well as European auto makers are opening factories in the US. Yea, part of it is because local and state governments give them tax breaks and other subsidies I oppose to them, but they also build more efficient vehicles. The book "Natural Capitalism", which a writer for the "Economist" said was "Brimming with examples and anecdote, Natural Capitalism will exasperate some and excite others--but leave every reader with the hope that the old battle between business and the environment can reach a peaceful and constructive conclusion" is filled with examples and case studies of how businesses have been able to cut resources used whether energy or raw materials and cut their costs at the same tyme. Simply with the end of cheap energy we need to improve efficiency.

Falcon

A Swiss company has of late been appearing in various publications which suggests their product is production ready.

It uses biometrics, but only to make sure you are you (no central Big Brother database that can be hacked) with a clever trick to ensure that detached fingers and copied fingerprints don't work (you "name" your fingers, so if it asks for finger "f" you will need to provide the right one), it uses symmetric encryption (your average token uses none, or is one sided) and from what I've heard they have even solved the "how do I know it's actually the bank" problem when the bank or credit card company calls you - if you think about it, all the gadgets you get only ever serve the bank, not you.

Next problem? :-)

How on earth does anyone survive on that!
Australia has a similar cost of living, and our minimum wage is around US$15/hour.
Is the USA that broke, or do you have a much cheaper cost of living.

According to the BigMac index, fast food cost is similar.
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11793125

What gives?

We may not be responsible for the CURRENT trend... but come on, our consumption is insane compared to the rest of the world.

It's a simple supply and demand problem. The supply is scarce so the cost rises. This allows oil speculators to raise the price even higher.

What's up with this "speculation" scapegoat recently? Like you said, oil price is a supply and demand problem: oil future's trading doesn't effect supply or demand since most of the contracts are never physically settled. To quote the Economist, "And since no oil is ever held back from the market, these bets do not affect the price of oil any more than bets on a football match affect the result."

I bloody hate people who trash futures and the basic derivatives, because these instruments can be extremely helpful for the economy. For example, hedging costs and reducing revenue volatility.

Read this article on the Economist, and maybe you'll learn something.

These guarantees made Freddie Mac have an impeccable credit rating, despite the fact that, to continue growing their profit, they kept buying more and more debt that was downright awful.In other words, Freddie Mac's credit rating didn't reflect the junk nature of their assets.

Excuse me? The problem isn't that these GSEs were buying bad assets at all. Read this article by the Economist, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - End of Illusions. It is a far more credible source than a random post on Slashdot.

"Investors have got quite a bit of protection against a housing bust because of the type of deals that Fannie and Freddie guaranteed. The duo focused on mortgages to borrowers with good credit scores and the wherewithal to put down a deposit. This was not subprime lending.... Although they tended to buy AAA-rated paper, that designation is not as reliable as it used to be, as the credit crunch has shown." - The Economist

There seems to be a disparity in the Big Mac index. Economist.

If anyone here has the time, it would be interesting to see how the index compares on software. EG. Big Mac is 2x more in Germany, is Adobe Photoshop 2x or more expensive?

A glance at the economist's "Big Mac Index" http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11793125
shows that a Big Mac in Europe costs E3.37, or $5.34, compared to $3.57 in the US.

Price differences probably caused by exchange rate movements rather than corporate greed.

What most governments and other "big brother" ideas confuse (willingly or not) is PHYSICAL and ELECTRONIC identity (or, if you prefer, a "representation" of you like your account number, credit card number, SSN (US), NHS (UK), SOFI (NL) etc, which is also why it is taking so long to get a digital signature into law (Spain's done it, and IMHO the system is only just about OK) - most laws start from the physical person.

Taking someone's physical identity is not that easy (sampling DNA and prints still requires physical presence which represents both risk and a lack of scalability) and not as profitable as cloning an electronic identity. The "items" that make you "you" (biometrics, knowledge et al) should stay with you so they have to be presented every time any of your electronic identities is used. This is what I like about OpenID - YOU control what accompanies every logon, and you can define multiple identities to make it easier. Most authentication mechanisms are only concerned with assuring that the person who undersigned the contract (i.e. at a bank) is the same person that gains access and authorises transactions, it really doesn't go further than that.

So, ONE person, MULTIPLE identities (which should be kept separate, so breaking one doesn't expose your entire life), and associated with each of those identities are again multiple rights and obligations (with a weird bend where a company is defined as one logical identity on which behalf a number of identities can acquire and exercise rights, but I digress).

However, instead of having one token for each bank account, government access, travel card and OpenID access you can now get it all in this gadget..

> something they can get for next to nothing in the way of costs, unlike oil based products which they have to import.

You'll love this...

Yes, China has vast internal coal potential. Internal in terms of geography - it is far from the coastal regions where it is most needed. Initially the coal was transported by rail, but this used too much precious diesel so instead China now imports coal by sea. Yes, imports.

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10795813

China is currently consuming around 30% of global coal production.

The earlier work was completely theoretical - the paper in question here is an experimental result.

Why do we care? A lot of reasons - the casimir effect is deeply rooted in quantum physics, but is observable without having to cool things to quantum temperatures. This sort of research is also potentially very important in nanotechnology - if we want our nanosurfaces to not stick, we should make them corrugated - the opposite of the macroworld!

Many times, people have calculated these casimir forces by assuming that the quantum force between two plates by just adding up the forces between particles (pairwise additivity). This is the first (I believe) research that shows this failing experimentally - there are large-scale geometrical effects. This is exciting, as it means that there may be many ways to tune casimir forces, making them do whatever we want - theoretical predictions on piston-like geometries have forces that are attractive at one distance, and repulsive at another!

If anyone's interested, the actual paper is at http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.3776 and better summaries (Moore's law wtf?) are at http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11402849 and http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=6827

Libertarianism is about the freedom to own slaves.

You would certainly be able to indenture yourself, if you choose to — to anyone, who would want such a thing from you.

99% of people who support libertarianism will end up being serfs if their plans ever succeeds

Serfdom (and the outright slavery) disappeared, not because of laws or regulations, but because it was inefficient. Re-read your Marx-volume. As the means of production evolve, the uninterested slaves' labor falls further and further behind in value — despite being cheaper — than that of motivated free workers.

So stop this "slavery" fear-mongering, and smears. For decades the country's policy-makers have been moving away from Libertarianism despite most Americans being in the Libertarian corner of the politics. The results, to name the most obvious are:

1. the insurmountably complex tax-code, the cost of which is hurting us more and more
2. insane amounts of red-tape, hurting both businesses and consumers alike;
3. a large public-welfare system (belovingly known as "safety net") which is now able to sustain itself through votes of millions of beneficiaries and hundreds of thousands of governments employees busying themselves with the process of handing out taxpayers' monies. Politicians used to appeal to the compassion of the givers — nowadays they increasingly aim directly for the greed of the receivers as the more numerous segment of the voters.

And all you can say against that is nonsense like: "Libertarians want to bring back slavery"?.. Pathetic...

Libertarianism is about the freedom to own slaves.

You would certainly be able to indenture yourself, if you choose to — to anyone, who would want such a thing from you.

99% of people who support libertarianism will end up being serfs if their plans ever succeeds

Serfdom (and the outright slavery) disappeared, not because of laws or regulations, but because it was inefficient. Re-read your Marx-volume. As the means of production evolve, the uninterested slaves' labor falls further and further behind in value — despite being cheaper — than that of motivated free workers.

So stop this "slavery" fear-mongering, and smears. For decades the country's policy-makers have been moving away from Libertarianism despite most Americans being in the Libertarian corner of the politics. The results, to name the most obvious are:

1. the insurmountably complex tax-code, the cost of which is hurting us more and more
2. insane amounts of red-tape, hurting both businesses and consumers alike;
3. a large public-welfare system (belovingly known as "safety net") which is now able to sustain itself through votes of millions of beneficiaries and hundreds of thousands of governments employees busying themselves with the process of handing out taxpayers' monies. Politicians used to appeal to the compassion of the givers — nowadays they increasingly aim directly for the greed of the receivers as the more numerous segment of the voters.

And all you can say against that is nonsense like: "Libertarians want to bring back slavery"?.. Pathetic...

Libertarianism is about the freedom to own slaves.

You would certainly be able to indenture yourself, if you choose to — to anyone, who would want such a thing from you.

99% of people who support libertarianism will end up being serfs if their plans ever succeeds

Serfdom (and the outright slavery) disappeared, not because of laws or regulations, but because it was inefficient. Re-read your Marx-volume. As the means of production evolve, the uninterested slaves' labor falls further and further behind in value — despite being cheaper — than that of motivated free workers.

So stop this "slavery" fear-mongering, and smears. For decades the country's policy-makers have been moving away from Libertarianism despite most Americans being in the Libertarian corner of the politics. The results, to name the most obvious are:

1. the insurmountably complex tax-code, the cost of which is hurting us more and more
2. insane amounts of red-tape, hurting both businesses and consumers alike;
3. a large public-welfare system (belovingly known as "safety net") which is now able to sustain itself through votes of millions of beneficiaries and hundreds of thousands of governments employees busying themselves with the process of handing out taxpayers' monies. Politicians used to appeal to the compassion of the givers — nowadays they increasingly aim directly for the greed of the receivers as the more numerous segment of the voters.

And all you can say against that is nonsense like: "Libertarians want to bring back slavery"?.. Pathetic...

That's the most ridiculous thing that I've heard. According to new research, girls are doing as well in school as boys at science and math, but still do better at reading, history, etc.

Women are also better at personal relationships. Thus the lack of women in science may be due to their comparative advantages in the humanities.

have a read...

There was an interesting article about this in the economist - it seems girls are catching up with boys (and have caught up in some countries) in math, but they are still ahead in language. So it makes sense for them to follow careers where they have more of an advantage - law etc.

they tend to round up a couple interesting things on the far horizon, written at a level that could help you sell those topics/people to the ultimate decision makers (assuming you're not one of them).

plus, the $6k conference crowd probably has a fair number of semi-regular readers in attendance, so they might have already had their interest piqued.

more here...you can probably order the last couple either as reprints for ~$15.

Liberatarians are okay with corporations drug testing, possibly even DNA testing their employees.

I know of no libertarian, small "l" or big "L", who agrees it's alright for corporations to require drug tests. Actually the Libertarian Party was started by Republicans when Nixon refused to legalize at least hemp, aka marijuana, among other issues like the gold standard. He had a presidential commission investigate whether hemp should be legalized. He then said no matter what they decided he'd never go along with legalizing it. Which is exactly what the commission decided, that hemp should be legalized. Instead Nixon started the War on Drugs, he used the term first in 1972. I don't know any that support employers testing DNA either.

The more extreme liberatarians are okay with the sale of human organs!

And what's wrong with that? If I have an organ I want someone else to have I should be able to give it to them, whether I donate it or I'm paid. Despite what people in the US think of Iran if a person there needs a new organ they are usually able to find an organ and don't have to wait on a waiting list for years.

There is no difference if the government is one of those several major employers, except the government is required to respect more rights of their employees than private employers are.

"B7. What would libertarians do about concentrations of corporate power?"
"First of all, stop creating them as our government does with military contractors and government-subsidized industries. Second, create a more fluid economic environment in which they'd break up. This happens naturally in a free market; even in ours, with taxes and regulatory policies that encourage gigantism, it's quite rare for a company to stay in the biggest 500 for longer than twenty years. We'd abolish the limited-liability shield laws to make corporate officers and stockholders fully responsible for a corporation's actions. We'd make it impossible for corporations to grow fat on "sweetheart deals" paid for with taxpayers' money; we'd lower the cost of capital (by cutting taxes) and regulatory compliance (by repealing regulations that presume guilt until you prove your innocence), encouraging entrepreneurship and letting economic conditions (rather than government favoritism) determine the optimum size of the business unit."

If I'm wrong, I'd love to learn why

You are wrong, which isn't surprising as both Democrats and Republican have been making Libertarians as lunatics on the fringe. I gave examples above in how you are wrong but if you really want to learn more read the Libertarian FAQ linked to above. The Libertarian Party's platform explains the party stances, and BTW I'm not registered Libertarian (that's why I call myself a small "l" "libertarian" not a big "L" "libertarian"), I am registered "No Party Affiliation" and vote for the person not the party. For any given office I look at where the candidates stand on the issues that concern me and I'll vote for the one that comes closest to me on those issues.

Falcon

There is reasonable debate occurring on the morality of an organ market.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8173039
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/murphy-s2.html

You make good points. I was not trying to trivialize the challenge of expanding the electricity grid, nor the challenge of creating better batteries. My salient point is that the path towards an all-electric replacement of our current petrol-driven system can be phased in gradually via plug-in hybrids, allowing time for technologies to improve, for demand to grow naturally, and for extra capacity to be installed as in pace with the demand. The same cannot be said for "all-or-nothing" conversions like switching to a hydrogen economy, which is of dubious environmental benefit at enormous cost anyway.

Incidentally, I should point out that the electricity grid has largely kept pace with population growth in North America, so the grid, for all its shortcomings, demonstrates a remarkable degree of flexibility. I doubt everyone is going to abandon their current vehicles and buy plugins all at once anyway, so the growth of demand will be at worst large but smooth.

As for battery technologies, you are correct that this is not a trivial problem to solve. However, I disagree that future advances will necessarily be only incremental. One exciting area of research is in ultracapacitors, which can behave like both conventional batteries and capacitors. http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10601407 I suspect that with enough bright minds focused on the challenge, the problem of electrical energy storage is ultimately solveable.