"If you refuse to do business with all of them because they are arseholes, there is no problem. If you refuse to do business with the gay man and the black man ostensibly because they're arseholes but do business with the white arsehole anyway, then absolutely you should get in trouble, because you are discriminating. The same applies to any other combination of which arseholes you do business with and which you refuse, unless you do business with all of them anyway or refuse all of them."
I would accept this as a reasonable answer. It is the answer I would give, I think. I'm just not convinced everybody thinks the same way.
The problem with this scenario is enforcement. If you refuse to do business with the black or gay man, they might (but not necessarily, of course) cry "discrimination" when in fact you're trying to avoid that very thing. And that could make life difficult for you. The caucasian does not have that option though. Does this skew social power in favor of minorities? I'm not saying it does, just asking your opinion.
"Obviously this is a much bigger issue when it comes to basic necessities like food and housing, but it can still cause problems for general consumer goods and services."
Right. But that just takes us in circles, back to the same point.
It really isn't just one question. Or rather it is, but it has many aspects. Each of those aspects has (or should have) a line somewhere. I think we just haven't figured out where those lines are.
How much intrusion into peoples' business matters is justifiable in the name of discrimination? At what point does it become "government meddling in your private business"?
Given that some anti-discrimination legislation is necessary, how much of it is necessary to help victims of discrimination? At what point does it become reverse discrimination?
I am fascinated by the question of how Government anti-discrimination laws may unintentionally serve to institutionalize discrimination, rather than eliminating it.
With all respect, I really don't think that page is proof of much of anything. It's all about the law, sure, but there isn't a single word about jurisdiction.
"That I've heard libertarians make this argument 100 times shows that I'm not pretending. It's a broadly held belief amongst libertarians."
Fair enough. It would be dishonest to deny that.
"From characterizing everything as either strictly private, or strictly public, as though private ownership of a business made everything that business does a strictly private matter."
I think you meant a different word. I do think you're kind of getting at "duality" here, but "black and white" is not the kind of duality implied by "Manichean", which has more of a religious connotation.
"This is where you are wrong and where everyone who keeps parroting this dumb line is conpletely wrong."
First: I wasn't "parroting" anything, asshole, I was describing my personal reasons for doing something.
"Marriage is irrespective of religion. You can have marriages that never come into contact with any religion. "
I didn't say anything about religion, and I didn't mean anything about religion. Religion has zero to do with my comment. Where did you dream this shit up?
"Marriages are fucking contracts. Contract law is certainly part of Federal law."
No, it is not. The only thing the Constitution has to say about contracts is: "No State shall... pass any... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts". (Article 1, Section 10.)
Contract law is from Common Law, predating the Constitution and which has absolutely nothing to do with the Federal government at all (with the exception of Federal fraud statutes which govern interstate trade). It is almost entirely governed by the States and their courts, based on said Common Law.
You, sir, for all your insulting bullshit, don't have the slightest fucking clue what you're talking about. Fuck off.
No, it isn't. The Federal government has no Constitutional authority to tell you who you can marry and who you cannot. The "Defense of Marriage Act" was blatantly unconstitutional. It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. It was a law without lawful authority. The neighborhood kid has just as much lawful authority to decide who marries whom as the Federal government did. That is to say: none.
"There are thousands of federal rules and laws with the word married in them."
Means nothing. Even the Supreme Court would say (because they DID, on several occasions): the fact that laws were passed does not make them Constitutional.
"Opposing the laws in this context is bigotry and depriving people of rights."
NO, it isn't, and that's an extremely offensive thing to say. I oppose the laws because they are ILLEGAL. I don't have to be a bigot to oppose laws that aren't legal in the first place. Fuck you very much.
"So we should re-legalize discrimination against black people? That would be progress."
I didn't say that or anything like it. I am just asking where government power to tell people who they can do business with ends. It must end somewhere. But where is that line? Opinions vary.
What I'm saying is: you don't have to be a racist in order to not like government trying to tell you what to do. What if (just hypothetically) you know 3 people, one white, one black, and one gay (any color) who are all assholes? And you don't want to do business with them. Should you get in trouble for NOT doing business with only one of them? Which one and why?
"But if I have to spend $100k on lobbying before I get public funding, I don't want to have to share the results with freeloaders who didn't pony up the lobbying cash and didn't put the manpower into the research."
You are describing exactly why the current system is broken.
First off, if the research is worthwhile you shouldn't have to spend $100,000 to lobby for it. And I would argue that is an unethical practice: what about the little guy who is doing promising research but doesn't have the funds to lobby?
Second: quite frankly I don't give a flying fuck how much you spent to get the grant. Public money is public money. If I'm paying for it, it belongs to me. Period. And I don't care even a little if you don't like that.
"The rest of society benefits from the public funds after they have bought my product."
Then go pay to get a patent on your own, and leave public funds out of it. Why should the public pay so that you can profit? Independent inventors do it all the time without public funding. What makes you so special?
"Take Google, for instance."
Is Google doing publicly-funded research? That's news to me. If so, I object very strongly.
I suspect you are being sarcastic here. If you're not, I simply disagree with you. Very much.
"would likely have been able to do so until a federal law made such discrimination illegal."
Federal laws of that nature only apply to businesses that are involved in "interstate commerce". There are lots of businesses it simply would not affect.
"Libertarians, in their Manichean view, would argue that such businesses are privately owned."
First, it is disingenuous to pretend to know what someone else "would argue" unless they actually do it. But what really has my curiousity up is where your characterization "Manichean" came from. It does not seem to apply here.
"The bigots lost this argument fifty years ago. Why do some continue to try to fight that which law and jurisprudence forbids them?"
You don't have to be a bigot to ask the question.
"You're rights as a business are not an absolute on a number of fronts."
Of course. The question is: where is the line?
Your comment about "bigots lost the fight 50 years ago" was about Federal government, and the Constitutionality of that is being questioned even now. But this is about businesses over which presumably the Federal government has no jurisdiction. So where does the state power end?
But back to the point: I wasn't referring to bigotry or anything of that nature. My question was simply: to what extent can government tell people who they must do business with? It's easy to see that there can be a point that is too far. I'm just asking where that point is. That is all.
Different question: is it okay for the state to tell someone who they must do business with?
Completely leaving aside sexual orientation. Or not. Take your pick of prejudices. Can the state tell someone they must not refuse to do business with brunettes? Or people with freckles?
I did not oppose a Federal gay marriage law out of hate for gays. I opposed it because marriage is none of the Federal government's f*ing business.
Granted, this is not Federal but State. But that other question still remains: is it okay for the State to tell someone they can't do business with someone they don't like?
"now gays. Can't Americans just stop acting like utter fucking cunts for a few moments and work on their hatred? I'm guessing it's religious in nature; after all, religious texts are full of specious, homophobic nonsense. Thank fuck that shit is on the way out."
To many people, it's not about gays at all. It's about whether the government can tell them who they can like or do business with and who they can't.
"The public is currently not paying for this access."
I know it isn't. That was an aside, slightly off-topic, I admit.
"Your desire to access any and all data that was created using public money means that every research grant would need to be extended from the current length (one to three years for many of them) into decades."
Not if such a program were to affect only future research. After all: ex post facto laws are forbidden in the United States.
"Someone has to pay for the system administrator, the network access, the electricity, the replacement compute/server hardware, the maintenance contracts, etc. Are you willing? "
I am aware that it would cost somewhat more. But it is arguable that the benefit lost to society is worth far more.
"Are you willing to forgo your free access when the funding agencies don't pay?"
If they don't pay, then it wasn't publicly funded, was it?
"I can tell you, I MIGHT work for free to keep some of the systems I created running, but I wouldn't work for free to maintain the access to the pubic for that data."
If you are profiting on my dime, then yeah. Cough it up, bud.
I didn't say the researchers should pay for it. The public (meaning of course government at some level) would be responsible for maintaining publicly-accessible archives of publicly-funded research.
I think there's an arguable line to draw between "the entire body of data available", and the statistical sampling data that your typical paper is based on, or the specific data about a newly discovered phenomenon, for example.
Exactly where that line is, I don't claim to know. But it behooves us to be reasonable, and not draw UNreasonable fixed lines in the sand.
My personal opinion is: petabytes or not, if the research is publicly funded then the data belongs to the public, and must be made available in some fashion. That's a somewhat different subject than publishing a paper, but it's a related idea.
"I would be surprised if anyone who has actually used Ruby on Rails thinks it's a language. I used it for 2 years and I was aware of the separation from day 1."
It HAS surprised me. But I have read a lot of comments to the effect that somebody dipped their toes into "Ruby on Rails" and then went on to disparage both Ruby and Rails because of their bad experience. The only reasonable conclusion I see is that they were trying Rails without understanding Ruby first. If they already knew Ruby, they wouldn't disparage the language because of perceived failures of the web framework.
"A burger has an 'intrinsic value'. You can eat it."
I know you don't get it. But if you read what I have actually been writing, you would know that the quantity described in economics as "intrinsic value" is not "intrinsic" in the usual sense, nor does it have anything to do with "value" in the usual sense. It's just a name for an abstract economic concept. It has not one thing to do with what its "value" is to you, or what the market price is.
I have explained this many times now elsewhere in this thread. I am repeating it here for... well I don't know how many times it has been. I have no reason to repeat it again.
"Well...like I said before, if you can tell me what can be done with a bitcoin other than transfer it to a different wallet/account, I'd be open to the idea that bitcoins are commodities."
"Commodity" is not defined by the utility it has to someone. Ceramic figurines have no utilitarian purpose. They just sit there and people look at them. You could sit there and look at your stock of Bitcoins, maybe that gives you pleasure like some peoples' ceramic figurines give them pleasure. Where is the difference?
If it is something that is produced, which has an actual cost of production, and somebody will buy it, it's a commodity. What they do with it after they buy it has absolutely nothing to do with that.
"I think the point was that there's something to be learned from writing code in an editor that doesn't offer any handholding whatsoever. I don't think anyone is advocating doing this in production scenarios."
Depends on what you mean by "handholding".
Editors like Sublime Text and TextMate have macros and the like, but they are a far cry from an "IDE" in the common sense of the term (like Visual Studio for example). Generally speaking, they might have syntax highlighting, auto-indent, global search etc. but they are still just editors, not even close to IDEs. And millions of people use them for coding professionally every day.
"That was what drove me nuts about ruby on rails... the constant assertion that it was all so "intuitive" that you could just type in what you expected to work, and it would work by magic."
I don't know who was asserting that. I've been using it constantly for 8 years and I don't know anybody who asserts that.
But be that as it may: please don't think this is a criticism. It isn't about you, but just in general about the subject you brought up.
First is: many people seem to be under the impression that Ruby on Rails is a "language" for web development, something like what PHP was designed to be. Not so. The language is Ruby. Rails is just a web framework built on top of Ruby. They are not the same things at all. If you don't already have a firm grasp of Ruby, you really shouldn't be trying to use Rails. You wouldn't try to become an expert on SpringMVC or Struts without knowing Java first. But lots of people think they can jump into Rails without knowing Ruby first. I have no idea why this is so, but many people get lost that way.
Second is: Rails is very much what they like to call "opinionated". It works according to a certain logic and mindset. If you don't care for that logic or mindset, you probably aren't going to have a good experience with Rails. That's just the way it is. Rails core developers are very open about this and not even a little apologetic about it.
Third: as a general-purpose language, Ruby (apart from Rails) is very nice in many ways. In some ways it is more consistent than many other languages. Probably the main drawback is that it is a cross-platform dynamic language, and doesn't have close ties to any particular system APIs. So it doesn't do "native" apps very well unless you use JRuby with Java UI add-ons, or MacRuby, or the like.
"Intrinsic: in it self. Intrinsic value: having a value in it self."
I know what the definitions are. And I admit that the name "intrinsic value" is unfortunate, because what it describes is not a "value", per se, and what it describes is not "intrinsic" to the product either, but depends on outside factors.
But I did not make the name up; it's right here in my economics book. I'm just using it.
That is the cause of much confusion here. I've spent more time explaining that "intrinsic value" is not intrinsic and not a value, for a good part of the past 2 days.
It's just an abstract economic concept. As an example, but somewhat less abstract, is "bull market". Do you think it literally has anything to do with bulls? Probably not; it's just a name. Same here.
"Referring to 'books about macro economics' is quite rude, if you not even mention one author/book - preferable with either chapter or page, and it implies you never have read one. Sorry, you are simply to easy to defeat, smart, but uneducated, nice ideas, but no clue."
If I'm so easy to defeat, why have you never done it?
I learned about "intrinsic value" in college. I still have my textbooks. However, of course I have no easy way to show you my economics textbooks, nor for that matter do I particularly want to dig them out of the box they're in. You can say that "implies" I'm making it all up, but your argument carries no weight.
Here is an example of how "intrinsic value" is defined. But that is an old reference so it mentions "cost" mostly in terms of labor. Nevertheless, it's still cost, exactly as I described.
So now that I've proved it's not bullshit, will you stop your own bullshitting and leave me be? You are a pain in the ass.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you refuse to do business with all of them because they are arseholes, there is no problem. If you refuse to do business with the gay man and the black man ostensibly because they're arseholes but do business with the white arsehole anyway, then absolutely you should get in trouble, because you are discriminating. The same applies to any other combination of which arseholes you do business with and which you refuse, unless you do business with all of them anyway or refuse all of them."
I would accept this as a reasonable answer. It is the answer I would give, I think. I'm just not convinced everybody thinks the same way.
The problem with this scenario is enforcement. If you refuse to do business with the black or gay man, they might (but not necessarily, of course) cry "discrimination" when in fact you're trying to avoid that very thing. And that could make life difficult for you. The caucasian does not have that option though. Does this skew social power in favor of minorities? I'm not saying it does, just asking your opinion.
"Obviously this is a much bigger issue when it comes to basic necessities like food and housing, but it can still cause problems for general consumer goods and services."
Right. But that just takes us in circles, back to the same point.
It really isn't just one question. Or rather it is, but it has many aspects. Each of those aspects has (or should have) a line somewhere. I think we just haven't figured out where those lines are.
How much intrusion into peoples' business matters is justifiable in the name of discrimination? At what point does it become "government meddling in your private business"?
Given that some anti-discrimination legislation is necessary, how much of it is necessary to help victims of discrimination? At what point does it become reverse discrimination?
I am fascinated by the question of how Government anti-discrimination laws may unintentionally serve to institutionalize discrimination, rather than eliminating it.
"Too many badly reviewed articles are published by them."
Well, that's a pretty broad statement and I haven't seen any evidence. In any case, I repeat:
"They may have a way to go yet but I expect them to get better"
"Um....NO."
With all respect, I really don't think that page is proof of much of anything. It's all about the law, sure, but there isn't a single word about jurisdiction.
"That I've heard libertarians make this argument 100 times shows that I'm not pretending. It's a broadly held belief amongst libertarians."
Fair enough. It would be dishonest to deny that.
"From characterizing everything as either strictly private, or strictly public, as though private ownership of a business made everything that business does a strictly private matter."
I think you meant a different word. I do think you're kind of getting at "duality" here, but "black and white" is not the kind of duality implied by "Manichean", which has more of a religious connotation.
"What about by lying about motive, like firing policies in most states?"
Well, sure, but what are you going to do about that? I mean seriously. People lie about motive all the time:
"Honest, judge, I didn't reject his job application due to age. I just thought he would not be a good fit for the company."
Etc., etc., ad nauseum. Just an example but you know it happens.
"This is where you are wrong and where everyone who keeps parroting this dumb line is conpletely wrong."
First: I wasn't "parroting" anything, asshole, I was describing my personal reasons for doing something.
"Marriage is irrespective of religion. You can have marriages that never come into contact with any religion. "
I didn't say anything about religion, and I didn't mean anything about religion. Religion has zero to do with my comment. Where did you dream this shit up?
"Marriages are fucking contracts. Contract law is certainly part of Federal law."
No, it is not. The only thing the Constitution has to say about contracts is: "No State shall ... pass any ... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts". (Article 1, Section 10.)
Contract law is from Common Law, predating the Constitution and which has absolutely nothing to do with the Federal government at all (with the exception of Federal fraud statutes which govern interstate trade). It is almost entirely governed by the States and their courts, based on said Common Law.
You, sir, for all your insulting bullshit, don't have the slightest fucking clue what you're talking about. Fuck off.
"but it is. It shouldn't be, but it is."
No, it isn't. The Federal government has no Constitutional authority to tell you who you can marry and who you cannot. The "Defense of Marriage Act" was blatantly unconstitutional. It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. It was a law without lawful authority. The neighborhood kid has just as much lawful authority to decide who marries whom as the Federal government did. That is to say: none.
"There are thousands of federal rules and laws with the word married in them."
Means nothing. Even the Supreme Court would say (because they DID, on several occasions): the fact that laws were passed does not make them Constitutional.
"Opposing the laws in this context is bigotry and depriving people of rights."
NO, it isn't, and that's an extremely offensive thing to say. I oppose the laws because they are ILLEGAL. I don't have to be a bigot to oppose laws that aren't legal in the first place. Fuck you very much.
"So we should re-legalize discrimination against black people? That would be progress."
I didn't say that or anything like it. I am just asking where government power to tell people who they can do business with ends. It must end somewhere. But where is that line? Opinions vary.
What I'm saying is: you don't have to be a racist in order to not like government trying to tell you what to do. What if (just hypothetically) you know 3 people, one white, one black, and one gay (any color) who are all assholes? And you don't want to do business with them. Should you get in trouble for NOT doing business with only one of them? Which one and why?
"But if I have to spend $100k on lobbying before I get public funding, I don't want to have to share the results with freeloaders who didn't pony up the lobbying cash and didn't put the manpower into the research."
You are describing exactly why the current system is broken.
First off, if the research is worthwhile you shouldn't have to spend $100,000 to lobby for it. And I would argue that is an unethical practice: what about the little guy who is doing promising research but doesn't have the funds to lobby?
Second: quite frankly I don't give a flying fuck how much you spent to get the grant. Public money is public money. If I'm paying for it, it belongs to me. Period. And I don't care even a little if you don't like that.
"The rest of society benefits from the public funds after they have bought my product."
Then go pay to get a patent on your own, and leave public funds out of it. Why should the public pay so that you can profit? Independent inventors do it all the time without public funding. What makes you so special?
"Take Google, for instance."
Is Google doing publicly-funded research? That's news to me. If so, I object very strongly.
I suspect you are being sarcastic here. If you're not, I simply disagree with you. Very much.
"would likely have been able to do so until a federal law made such discrimination illegal."
Federal laws of that nature only apply to businesses that are involved in "interstate commerce". There are lots of businesses it simply would not affect.
"Libertarians, in their Manichean view, would argue that such businesses are privately owned."
First, it is disingenuous to pretend to know what someone else "would argue" unless they actually do it. But what really has my curiousity up is where your characterization "Manichean" came from. It does not seem to apply here.
"The bigots lost this argument fifty years ago. Why do some continue to try to fight that which law and jurisprudence forbids them?"
You don't have to be a bigot to ask the question.
"You're rights as a business are not an absolute on a number of fronts."
Of course. The question is: where is the line?
Your comment about "bigots lost the fight 50 years ago" was about Federal government, and the Constitutionality of that is being questioned even now. But this is about businesses over which presumably the Federal government has no jurisdiction. So where does the state power end?
But back to the point: I wasn't referring to bigotry or anything of that nature. My question was simply: to what extent can government tell people who they must do business with? It's easy to see that there can be a point that is too far. I'm just asking where that point is. That is all.
Different question: is it okay for the state to tell someone who they must do business with?
Completely leaving aside sexual orientation. Or not. Take your pick of prejudices. Can the state tell someone they must not refuse to do business with brunettes? Or people with freckles?
I did not oppose a Federal gay marriage law out of hate for gays. I opposed it because marriage is none of the Federal government's f*ing business.
Granted, this is not Federal but State. But that other question still remains: is it okay for the State to tell someone they can't do business with someone they don't like?
"now gays. Can't Americans just stop acting like utter fucking cunts for a few moments and work on their hatred? I'm guessing it's religious in nature; after all, religious texts are full of specious, homophobic nonsense. Thank fuck that shit is on the way out."
To many people, it's not about gays at all. It's about whether the government can tell them who they can like or do business with and who they can't.
"A lot of people ignore the collateral functions of the so-called 'peer review' system administered by the publisher."
I don't see this as a stumbling block, though. There are already public-access peer-reviewed journals. They may have a way to go yet but I expect them to get better and their number to expand in the near future.
"The public is currently not paying for this access."
I know it isn't. That was an aside, slightly off-topic, I admit.
"Your desire to access any and all data that was created using public money means that every research grant would need to be extended from the current length (one to three years for many of them) into decades."
Not if such a program were to affect only future research. After all: ex post facto laws are forbidden in the United States.
"Someone has to pay for the system administrator, the network access, the electricity, the replacement compute/server hardware, the maintenance contracts, etc. Are you willing? "
I am aware that it would cost somewhat more. But it is arguable that the benefit lost to society is worth far more.
"Are you willing to forgo your free access when the funding agencies don't pay?"
If they don't pay, then it wasn't publicly funded, was it?
"I can tell you, I MIGHT work for free to keep some of the systems I created running, but I wouldn't work for free to maintain the access to the pubic for that data."
If you are profiting on my dime, then yeah. Cough it up, bud.
I didn't say the researchers should pay for it. The public (meaning of course government at some level) would be responsible for maintaining publicly-accessible archives of publicly-funded research.
Well, but.
I think there's an arguable line to draw between "the entire body of data available", and the statistical sampling data that your typical paper is based on, or the specific data about a newly discovered phenomenon, for example.
Exactly where that line is, I don't claim to know. But it behooves us to be reasonable, and not draw UNreasonable fixed lines in the sand.
My personal opinion is: petabytes or not, if the research is publicly funded then the data belongs to the public, and must be made available in some fashion. That's a somewhat different subject than publishing a paper, but it's a related idea.
"I would be surprised if anyone who has actually used Ruby on Rails thinks it's a language. I used it for 2 years and I was aware of the separation from day 1."
It HAS surprised me. But I have read a lot of comments to the effect that somebody dipped their toes into "Ruby on Rails" and then went on to disparage both Ruby and Rails because of their bad experience. The only reasonable conclusion I see is that they were trying Rails without understanding Ruby first. If they already knew Ruby, they wouldn't disparage the language because of perceived failures of the web framework.
"You should assume this by default. Before you take a huge risk, you should ensure that you will be adequately compensated for the risk."
This is what I was going to say. If you are taking a big risk on their future, you should ask for and get (!) a share of the rewards.
"A burger has an 'intrinsic value'. You can eat it."
I know you don't get it. But if you read what I have actually been writing, you would know that the quantity described in economics as "intrinsic value" is not "intrinsic" in the usual sense, nor does it have anything to do with "value" in the usual sense. It's just a name for an abstract economic concept. It has not one thing to do with what its "value" is to you, or what the market price is.
I have explained this many times now elsewhere in this thread. I am repeating it here for... well I don't know how many times it has been. I have no reason to repeat it again.
"Well...like I said before, if you can tell me what can be done with a bitcoin other than transfer it to a different wallet/account, I'd be open to the idea that bitcoins are commodities."
"Commodity" is not defined by the utility it has to someone. Ceramic figurines have no utilitarian purpose. They just sit there and people look at them. You could sit there and look at your stock of Bitcoins, maybe that gives you pleasure like some peoples' ceramic figurines give them pleasure. Where is the difference?
If it is something that is produced, which has an actual cost of production, and somebody will buy it, it's a commodity. What they do with it after they buy it has absolutely nothing to do with that.
"I think the point was that there's something to be learned from writing code in an editor that doesn't offer any handholding whatsoever. I don't think anyone is advocating doing this in production scenarios."
Depends on what you mean by "handholding".
Editors like Sublime Text and TextMate have macros and the like, but they are a far cry from an "IDE" in the common sense of the term (like Visual Studio for example). Generally speaking, they might have syntax highlighting, auto-indent, global search etc. but they are still just editors, not even close to IDEs. And millions of people use them for coding professionally every day.
"That was what drove me nuts about ruby on rails... the constant assertion that it was all so "intuitive" that you could just type in what you expected to work, and it would work by magic."
I don't know who was asserting that. I've been using it constantly for 8 years and I don't know anybody who asserts that.
But be that as it may: please don't think this is a criticism. It isn't about you, but just in general about the subject you brought up.
First is: many people seem to be under the impression that Ruby on Rails is a "language" for web development, something like what PHP was designed to be. Not so. The language is Ruby. Rails is just a web framework built on top of Ruby. They are not the same things at all. If you don't already have a firm grasp of Ruby, you really shouldn't be trying to use Rails. You wouldn't try to become an expert on SpringMVC or Struts without knowing Java first. But lots of people think they can jump into Rails without knowing Ruby first. I have no idea why this is so, but many people get lost that way.
Second is: Rails is very much what they like to call "opinionated". It works according to a certain logic and mindset. If you don't care for that logic or mindset, you probably aren't going to have a good experience with Rails. That's just the way it is. Rails core developers are very open about this and not even a little apologetic about it.
Third: as a general-purpose language, Ruby (apart from Rails) is very nice in many ways. In some ways it is more consistent than many other languages. Probably the main drawback is that it is a cross-platform dynamic language, and doesn't have close ties to any particular system APIs. So it doesn't do "native" apps very well unless you use JRuby with Java UI add-ons, or MacRuby, or the like.
"Intrinsic: in it self. Intrinsic value: having a value in it self."
I know what the definitions are. And I admit that the name "intrinsic value" is unfortunate, because what it describes is not a "value", per se, and what it describes is not "intrinsic" to the product either, but depends on outside factors.
But I did not make the name up; it's right here in my economics book. I'm just using it.
That is the cause of much confusion here. I've spent more time explaining that "intrinsic value" is not intrinsic and not a value, for a good part of the past 2 days.
It's just an abstract economic concept. As an example, but somewhat less abstract, is "bull market". Do you think it literally has anything to do with bulls? Probably not; it's just a name. Same here.
"Referring to 'books about macro economics' is quite rude, if you not even mention one author/book - preferable with either chapter or page, and it implies you never have read one. Sorry, you are simply to easy to defeat, smart, but uneducated, nice ideas, but no clue."
If I'm so easy to defeat, why have you never done it?
I learned about "intrinsic value" in college. I still have my textbooks. However, of course I have no easy way to show you my economics textbooks, nor for that matter do I particularly want to dig them out of the box they're in. You can say that "implies" I'm making it all up, but your argument carries no weight. Here is an example of how "intrinsic value" is defined. But that is an old reference so it mentions "cost" mostly in terms of labor. Nevertheless, it's still cost, exactly as I described.
So now that I've proved it's not bullshit, will you stop your own bullshitting and leave me be? You are a pain in the ass.