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Free-As-In-Beer Electricity In Greece?
PolygamousRanchKid writes New Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will lay out his radical left-wing government's policies in a speech later on Sunday, firmly rejecting any more austerity forced on his debt-strapped country by its euro zone partners. In his first major speech to parliament as premier, Tsipras is expected to say that Greece wants no more bailout money, plans to renegotiate its debt deal and wants a "bridge agreement" to tide the country over until a new pact is sealed. A second part of the speech will touch on his government's social and fiscal policy over the longer term and is likely to repeat pledges for such things as a rise in the minimum wage and free electricity for poorer Greeks. Which gets me to thinking: with free electricity, wouldn't that be a great business opportunity, to build a cloud of servers in poorer Greeks' basements? Maybe that is the real plan behind the free electricity idea.
I could see people starting to mine Bitcoin as well as other shitcoins a whole lot in Greece should this come into effect.
How many failed socialist experiments do we need to see before it's written off as a failure?
I suppose as long as there's 1 more sucker, it will keep working.
So, he doesn't want any more bailout money, but he DOES want them to give him money to "bridge" things over?
I take it that what he really means is that he doesn't want any more money with strings attached (like an obligation to pay it back), but he's happy to accept money with no strings....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
No more bailouts, but we'd be happy to take some money to "bridge" us over to ... something.
We firmly reject any policies that might move us toward fiscal responsibility. Oh, and since we're so solvent, we're going to give away free electricity, because that's what everyone who is hopelessly bankrupt does, give away more "free" stuff.
why do rich and poor people always get things for "free"??? Be it a rich guy who gets a goodie bag at an award show woth thousands of dollars such as at the grammys, Or giving the "poor" free food and electricity. All of this, on the backs of the actual hard working middle class. Its wrong, the government should not be taking money from X and giving it to Y
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If you're using the heat of the pc to keep warm, then there's no inefficiency in using the power to generate bitcoins.
Actually that sounds like a conservation of energy violation. Isn't there SOME loss of heat in creating order, information inside a computer?
If calculation generates heat exactly as efficiently as every other use of electricity that doesn't generate "work" then all heaters should be generating bitcoins or folding proteins or something.
Not to be a pedant, but since Greece to my knowledge doesn't experience ground freezing temperatures, houses there probably do not require (expensive!) ground excavations and basements that take the house's foundation to below the frost line. I have no doubt that in such warm climes a cellar is a very good idea due to the temperature-buffering effect of all that thermal mass around it (useful i.a. for aging cheese and wine and storing other foodstuffs), but to build one would presumably not necessarily be within the financial means of the poor.
Also, once those people start receiving rent from such (or any other) operation, they might no longer be "poor".
Even the place where I live, which must have one of the world's most intellectually-challenged (and by the way also very socialist-oriented, but I repeat myself) governments, basic amenities (water, electricity, etc.) are only provided without charge to the poor for the first X number of units, where X is really very basic survival usage, any usage above that is charged at the usual prices. Not saying that is what the Greeks plan to do, but they would be really stupid to offer "uncapped/limitless".
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Let's exploit the already-screwed Greek government for some 'free' CPU time to run your own business..
Actually, I believe a more accurate statement would be that the Greek government has been exploiting the rest of the EU for free money.
But, as the famous economist John Maynard Keynes said, "If I owe the bank 100 pounds . . . I have a problem. If I owe the bank 100,000 pounds . . . the bank has a problem."
Right now, Angela Merkel has a problem, because she guaranteed the German public that all the money that they lent to Greece would be eventually paid back.
Alexis Tsipras has stated that he wants Greece to stay in the Eurozone. I don't believe him. What he wants most, if for Greece to be free from old debts to the EU. The EU is not going write off the old debts, and let Greece stay in the Eurozone. So his other choice would be to let the bus crash and default on the debts. The EU would then have to toss the Greeks out of the Eurozone. Then Tsipras could claim that he wanted to stay in the Eurozone, and that it was the evil EU who kicked them out.
When the Greeks go back to their own Drachma, instead of the Euro, they can then print as many of them as they like. They can distribute them as they wish, and make everyone in Greece rich!
Of course, the Drachmas will be close to worthless on the world financial markets . . . so the Greeks would not be able to purchase things that they think they need from foreign countries . . . like TVs, cars, washing machines, etc.
But at least they would be free from the Euro yoke, and have control over their own fate . . . and have nobody else to blame, if they don't like how it turns out.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You're probably not poor enough for free electricity if you can run cloud servers... But you will have the benefit of paying taxes so that those poor enough can get free electricity!
Rich people don't pay taxes in Greece. Most of the wealthy doctors, attorneys and similar higher middle class report their income to be about 1000EUR/month, and basically pay no taxes. That's one of the reasons how the entire problem started. An effort to make them pay taxes after the crisis started ended miserably.
No sig today.
Europe is composed of socialist countries and has been for about 60 years or so for the ones that weren't communist and the rest became socialist when the communist regime fell. Germany? Socialist. France? Socialist. Sweden, the land of Ikea, Swedish meatballs, and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Socialist. Britain, that bastion of capitalism? Socialist. That big ass VAT they pay in Britain? That's to support their socialist regime. Take a look at the health care and welfare systems provided by the European countries. They're socialist.
Taking into account things like technology available to the common people, things like internet access and mobile phone technology, I would have to say that things are a hell of lot better than in the U.S.
So how exactly have they failed?
Care to explain why Cuba is a failure when health care and education are on a much higher level (and much cheaper) than in the USA albeit being under a boycott and other sanctions from the USA the last 70 years?
I don't know, why don't we ask the hundred of thousands of Cubans who fled that paradise and decided to live in Miami instead? Just to be fair and balanced we could also get the opinion of Americans who fled the USA and went to live in Cuba (if you can find one that's not a wanted felon).
lucm, indeed.
Why do we have to choose between capitalism and socialism? Both have their benefits and both have their problems but they are NOT mutually exclusive. Most countries used to have a progressive tax system with high rates of tax on high earners. CEOs and the like still made more money than the rest of us and did well for themselves but the higher taxes these people paid helped provide common services that we all used e.g. healthcare, transport infrastructure, free university education etc.
This system put both socialism and capitalism in balance. You have the freedom to use your (free) education to go an make money and will directly benefit yourself from doing that but society also benefits and uses the higher taxes you pay to educate the workers you employ, provide the infrastructure to transport the goods you make etc. The trick is to make sure that the high tax payers also benefit from how the taxes are spent even if they don't necessarily benefit as much.
The greek debts come from their own unwise choices.
Liberty.
Europe is composed of socialist countries and has been for about 60 years or so for the ones that weren't communist and the rest became socialist when the communist regime fell.
Believe it or not, governments are not black-and-white either/or systems. A government can have socialist systems without being primarily socialist. In the case of Europe, the means of production are still privately owned, mostly by rich capitalists or other individuals (shareholders) who have no direct connection to the government. That's the textbook definition of capitalism. To be socialist, the means of production would have to be mostly socialized (e.g. owned by a common group of some kind, such as the government, "the people", a central authority, etc), which they are not, in any of those governments. Not even remotely so.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
The fundamental idea of socialism was that the state would nationalize and own the means of production like factories so the workers got a fair share of the profits, at least that's the theory. Despite having a large public sector the vast majority is still on private hands and if anything the government is increasingly purchasing services from the private industry rather than provide them itself. For example most the public transportation around here? Contracts with private suppliers. The public garbage collection? Contracts with private suppliers. Building public roads? Contracts with private suppliers.
Yes, there's is a much stronger redistribution strategy in Europe in that we tax the rich and give universal services to the poor, but the way we've implemented it is nothing like Karl Marx imagined. Instead of taking over the economy we've built a welfare state with collective bargaining based on the market economy setting the trend and public sector wages following. It's definitively got its issues, but I feel they're usually far more social in form of a nanny state than economical.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You're saying that someone choosing to work in order to get paid is what slavery is. That's got to be the most ignorant and offensive post on Slashdot. Slaves don't get a choice, and don't get paid. GP's suggestion is "if you want to get paid, work".
Go read a paragraph about what slavery actually is, you entitled little whiny prick.
>. public is blaming the poor for being poor. Well, the rich can't have it both ways. Either they're The Job Creators, and they are failures at creating jobs,
Or in my town of 150,000, there are over 200 jobs listed in the want ads, and a few people who choose not to work a legitimate job since their needs will be met by other people, while they spend their "under the table" money on stupid play things.
Erm... I don't think Britain is socialist. Thatcher? It's currently being ruled by a right wing government who would love scrap the NHS.
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