Some here are old enough to remember getting paid by the pound for aluminum cans. But, now I find myself paying for the service of recycling my recyclables. Recyclable materials have economic value, do they not? And, I paid for them when I bought the original products that utilized them, did they not? And he who receives the recycled material from me will extract economic value from them, will he not? That seems like a case study of win-win&win economics&environmentalism.
So how exactly did the get-paid-for-recycling model fail?
I concede that free markets are bad at accounting for tragedy-of-the-commons types of costs. I call myself an eco-libertarian for that very reason. Some regulation of commerce is necessary... it's just so dang hard to get government to implement precisely the right kinds, at precisely the right amounts. And, I don't pretend to know what those limits are myself.
Ideally, the invisible hand of the market would price the hybrid vehicles higher than their non-hybrid counterparts, to such a degree that the hybrid's price discounts the future value of the gasoline saved over the vehicle's lifetime. If the market didn't do this, an arbitrage opportunity would exist... and arbitrageurs would act upon it, which would have the effect of raising the price of the hybrids anyway.
Obviously this will never work out perfectly outside of academia, but if you had a crystal ball and all future prices were knowable by all parties in the present, this is how the pricing would work out, all other variables held constant.
Next thing you know, holding a cell phone with the thumb and forefinger by the top right corner will become the fashionable way for any of the cognoscenti to hold their phones.
The GP's comment isn't as banal as you seem to take it to be. Yes, "1g" is a measurement we made up. So? The scales of all of our commonplace units of measure are just as anthropic as that one.[*]
Putting the GP's post another way: the force we would experience in an escaped spacecraft accelerating at 9.8m/s^2 is essentially equivalent to the sensation of the force of gravity that we experience on the surface of the Earth.
[*] You could argue that Natural Units are not anthropic, but neither are they commonplace.
Your argument is reductio ad absurdum. A 'truly free market' does not preclude any and all protection under the law. Other posters here have already mentioned that protecting the freedoms of citizens is a legitimate purpose of government, and that raison d'être is not a 'regulation' in the same sense as Glass-Steagall, or countless other examples.[*] This includes my freedom to live my life without fear of your organ-harvesting scalpel.
Thanks for that explanation; very well stated, and easy to visualize.
I'm the OP for this thread, and it was my statement that the kites would retard (and possibly reverse) the moon's escape to higher orbits. The cause of my error was that I was thinking that the moon orbits counter to the Earth's own rotation. But after thinking about it more, I believe you are correct on that detail. Ergo, the kites will help the moon escape, as you've described.
Of course, the point of my post was humor, anyway. But it's better to be correct and funny than wrong and funny.:)
Tidal forces are from the moon, and over time the moon is getting farther away.
So far, so good....
Clearly, if we harvest tidal energy we will force the moon away faster as it makes up for the difference.
No. The moon is currently getting farther away because it is stealing energy from the Earth's rotational momentum (with the tides being the mechanism of transference.) If we extract energy from the tides to make electricity, then there is less energy remaining in the Earth-Moon system. So the consequence of our tide leeching will be either (1) the Earth slowing down faster than it already is, or (2) the moon moving away slower, possibly even reversing course and coming closer! Or, some combination of (1) and (2).
Because of the tides, the Earth's rotational energy is being stolen by the moon, which is using that energy to slowly escape from orbit. (This is a diminishing effect over time, that will eventually reach equilibrium.) But when we leach this energy for our own purposes, we are changing the delicate balance of that equation....Siphon off too much energy from the tides, and we could either increase the rate at which the Earth is slowing, bring the moon crashing down upon us, or both!
Won't somebody think of the children? We owe future generations a planet fit to live on and capable of sustaining the future.
"No control over monetary policy?" Pshaw! Monetary policy is the cause of the problem, not the cure. Or, is the cure for heroin withdrawal to shoot up more heroin?
The socks don't escape through the washer. They escape through the dryer's lint trap. Eventually, after you've captured at least one socks-worth of lint, a sock somewhere in the world has to go "poof". (Note that it's not necessarily your sock, or your lint trap. It's a conservation-of-mass/quantum-lint-mechanics kind of thing.)
They scan your fingerprint and translate that into a numeric value and then store that. Not a copy of your fingerprint itself.
That's a superfluous distinction. *Everything* stored in a computer is a 'numeric value'. Once in computer memory, a 100x100 image of your fingerprint is indistinguishable from a 10,000 bit number (assuming 1 bit per pixel, for sake of argument.)
A warning to anyone tempted to google for the article's intriguing term "seal screamer": the google search result pointing to Urban Dictionary's entry for "screamin' seal"-- while interesting in its own right, and marginally related-- is likely not the same phenomenon.
Hmmm.... *BRAIN STRAIN*.... ummm... wouldn't any direction from the north pole be south?
Since magnetic North does not coincide with true North, then magnetic North can move East by simply circling true North in a counter-clockwise direction, as viewed from above the (true) North Pole.
Oh, you said "why are none... ever packaged", and 'ever' in particular made it sound like you didn't know about the name change.
It's been a while since I've used Linux, but I never knew Debian to be fast at adopting new versions of stuff... at least not in Stable. I think that was on purpose.
So there are no songwriters, instrumentalists, or producers involved in any of Britney Spears's records? They just somehow appear from the ether through the evil powers of the record companies?
For Britney Spears' albums, that would be my assertion, yes.:)
No, obviously not. Likening Michelle Obama to a monkey is insulting her because she is black, and is therefore racist. Likening Bush to a monkey is not insulting him because he is white, and so is not racist
Reluctantly, I googled for possible copies of the offending image, and came up short. Before replying to you, I would have liked to gauge for myself how blatantly racist the image is.
Let me break this down:
* The picture caricatures Michelle Obama as a monkey
* Michelle Obama is black
* Therefore, the creator of the image was racially motivated to insult her with that caricature.
Do you not see the HUGE assumption that exists between those premises, and your conclusion? That assumption might be occasionally true-- and I concede that it could actually be true in this case-- but it is not universally so. What is it about monkeys that makes their use in caricatures of (only!) blacks inherently and unequivocally racist?
Pretending race doesn't exist, on the other hand, is just a way of pretending that racism doesn't exist, and so will inevitably perpetuate it.
By that logic, racism will never be eliminated. By your reckoning, the moment we finally manage to become color-blind, we give new life to racism. It's a demon that can't be vanquished. And, I suspect, some people like it that way.
I should feel free to (example) make hiring decisions based solely on merits and content of character, without having to worry that someone will accuse me of having decided based on skin color.
I don't see a point in imagining not having the Internet.
The point in imagining it is: the prospect of engaging conversation with peers, in an online forum. It doesn't have to be a plausible situation if it generates entertaining dialogue. If that isn't obvious to you, perhaps you should get out and socialize a little more, AFK.
But I agree with you on one point: it would be far more interesting to focus the conversation on the withdrawal phase, and not the acceptance phase.
Lowered taxes resulted in the destruction of jobs? That's a first for me... Would it be safe to presume that the lowered taxes also generated new jobs, elsewhere in the economy?
Also: maybe the problem wasn't that capital gains taxes were lowered too much, but rather that income taxes were left too high relative to cap-gains taxes.
Actually, if he makes the right int 10h calls to the video BIOS[*], he can get 80x43, 80x50, or 80x60!! (assuming he has an EGA-or-better graphics adapter.)
[*] No text-mode console jockey worth their salt would be caught dead using the "MODE CON LINES=50" cheat in their autoexec.bat file.
Slashdot Mirror
Some here are old enough to remember getting paid by the pound for aluminum cans. But, now I find myself paying for the service of recycling my recyclables. Recyclable materials have economic value, do they not? And, I paid for them when I bought the original products that utilized them, did they not? And he who receives the recycled material from me will extract economic value from them, will he not? That seems like a case study of win-win&win economics&environmentalism.
So how exactly did the get-paid-for-recycling model fail?
You left out 'venomous' and 'duck-billed'.
I concede that free markets are bad at accounting for tragedy-of-the-commons types of costs. I call myself an eco-libertarian for that very reason. Some regulation of commerce is necessary... it's just so dang hard to get government to implement precisely the right kinds, at precisely the right amounts. And, I don't pretend to know what those limits are myself.
That's how the market is supposed to work.
Ideally, the invisible hand of the market would price the hybrid vehicles higher than their non-hybrid counterparts, to such a degree that the hybrid's price discounts the future value of the gasoline saved over the vehicle's lifetime. If the market didn't do this, an arbitrage opportunity would exist... and arbitrageurs would act upon it, which would have the effect of raising the price of the hybrids anyway.
Obviously this will never work out perfectly outside of academia, but if you had a crystal ball and all future prices were knowable by all parties in the present, this is how the pricing would work out, all other variables held constant.
Next thing you know, holding a cell phone with the thumb and forefinger by the top right corner will become the fashionable way for any of the cognoscenti to hold their phones.
L, is that you? I thought Kira killed you.
Unless you're referring to the 20 year-old video game, the word you're looking for is "populace".
The GP's comment isn't as banal as you seem to take it to be. Yes, "1g" is a measurement we made up. So? The scales of all of our commonplace units of measure are just as anthropic as that one.[*]
Putting the GP's post another way: the force we would experience in an escaped spacecraft accelerating at 9.8m/s^2 is essentially equivalent to the sensation of the force of gravity that we experience on the surface of the Earth.
[*] You could argue that Natural Units are not anthropic, but neither are they commonplace.
Your argument is reductio ad absurdum. A 'truly free market' does not preclude any and all protection under the law. Other posters here have already mentioned that protecting the freedoms of citizens is a legitimate purpose of government, and that raison d'être is not a 'regulation' in the same sense as Glass-Steagall, or countless other examples.[*] This includes my freedom to live my life without fear of your organ-harvesting scalpel.
[*] Admittedly a U.S.-centric example. Sorry.
Thanks for that explanation; very well stated, and easy to visualize.
I'm the OP for this thread, and it was my statement that the kites would retard (and possibly reverse) the moon's escape to higher orbits. The cause of my error was that I was thinking that the moon orbits counter to the Earth's own rotation. But after thinking about it more, I believe you are correct on that detail. Ergo, the kites will help the moon escape, as you've described.
Of course, the point of my post was humor, anyway. But it's better to be correct and funny than wrong and funny. :)
Tidal forces are from the moon, and over time the moon is getting farther away.
So far, so good....
Clearly, if we harvest tidal energy we will force the moon away faster as it makes up for the difference.
No. The moon is currently getting farther away because it is stealing energy from the Earth's rotational momentum (with the tides being the mechanism of transference.) If we extract energy from the tides to make electricity, then there is less energy remaining in the Earth-Moon system. So the consequence of our tide leeching will be either (1) the Earth slowing down faster than it already is, or (2) the moon moving away slower, possibly even reversing course and coming closer! Or, some combination of (1) and (2).
I do realize you were aiming for Funny++.
Because of the tides, the Earth's rotational energy is being stolen by the moon, which is using that energy to slowly escape from orbit. (This is a diminishing effect over time, that will eventually reach equilibrium.) But when we leach this energy for our own purposes, we are changing the delicate balance of that equation. ...Siphon off too much energy from the tides, and we could either increase the rate at which the Earth is slowing, bring the moon crashing down upon us, or both!
Won't somebody think of the children? We owe future generations a planet fit to live on and capable of sustaining the future.
Prepare to be schooled in my Austrian perspective.
You've confused dark socks with anti-socks. Your theory fails.
The socks don't escape through the washer. They escape through the dryer's lint trap. Eventually, after you've captured at least one socks-worth of lint, a sock somewhere in the world has to go "poof". (Note that it's not necessarily your sock, or your lint trap. It's a conservation-of-mass/quantum-lint-mechanics kind of thing.)
Merciless, the magistrate turns 'round [to EMI,] frowning.
They scan your fingerprint and translate that into a numeric value and then store that. Not a copy of your fingerprint itself.
That's a superfluous distinction. *Everything* stored in a computer is a 'numeric value'. Once in computer memory, a 100x100 image of your fingerprint is indistinguishable from a 10,000 bit number (assuming 1 bit per pixel, for sake of argument.)
A warning to anyone tempted to google for the article's intriguing term "seal screamer": the google search result pointing to Urban Dictionary's entry for "screamin' seal"-- while interesting in its own right, and marginally related-- is likely not the same phenomenon.
> It's moving East, not South.
Hmmm.... *BRAIN STRAIN*.... ummm... wouldn't any direction from the north pole be south?
Since magnetic North does not coincide with true North, then magnetic North can move East by simply circling true North in a counter-clockwise direction, as viewed from above the (true) North Pole.
Oh, you said "why are none... ever packaged", and 'ever' in particular made it sound like you didn't know about the name change. It's been a while since I've used Linux, but I never knew Debian to be fast at adopting new versions of stuff... at least not in Stable. I think that was on purpose.
They are, just under unfamiliar names. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel
So there are no songwriters, instrumentalists, or producers involved in any of Britney Spears's records? They just somehow appear from the ether through the evil powers of the record companies?
For Britney Spears' albums, that would be my assertion, yes. :)
No, obviously not. Likening Michelle Obama to a monkey is insulting her because she is black, and is therefore racist. Likening Bush to a monkey is not insulting him because he is white, and so is not racist
Reluctantly, I googled for possible copies of the offending image, and came up short. Before replying to you, I would have liked to gauge for myself how blatantly racist the image is.
Let me break this down:
* The picture caricatures Michelle Obama as a monkey
* Michelle Obama is black
* Therefore, the creator of the image was racially motivated to insult her with that caricature.
Do you not see the HUGE assumption that exists between those premises, and your conclusion? That assumption might be occasionally true-- and I concede that it could actually be true in this case-- but it is not universally so. What is it about monkeys that makes their use in caricatures of (only!) blacks inherently and unequivocally racist?
Pretending race doesn't exist, on the other hand, is just a way of pretending that racism doesn't exist, and so will inevitably perpetuate it.
By that logic, racism will never be eliminated. By your reckoning, the moment we finally manage to become color-blind, we give new life to racism. It's a demon that can't be vanquished. And, I suspect, some people like it that way.
I should feel free to (example) make hiring decisions based solely on merits and content of character, without having to worry that someone will accuse me of having decided based on skin color.
I don't see a point in imagining not having the Internet.
The point in imagining it is: the prospect of engaging conversation with peers, in an online forum. It doesn't have to be a plausible situation if it generates entertaining dialogue. If that isn't obvious to you, perhaps you should get out and socialize a little more, AFK. But I agree with you on one point: it would be far more interesting to focus the conversation on the withdrawal phase, and not the acceptance phase.
Lowered taxes resulted in the destruction of jobs? That's a first for me... Would it be safe to presume that the lowered taxes also generated new jobs, elsewhere in the economy? Also: maybe the problem wasn't that capital gains taxes were lowered too much, but rather that income taxes were left too high relative to cap-gains taxes.
Actually, if he makes the right int 10h calls to the video BIOS[*], he can get 80x43, 80x50, or 80x60!! (assuming he has an EGA-or-better graphics adapter.) [*] No text-mode console jockey worth their salt would be caught dead using the "MODE CON LINES=50" cheat in their autoexec.bat file.