I use ThinkPad W510 with Ubuntu and now Debian. There are some issues, I had to figure out how to have the sound behave correctly, but barring a few small things I find it to be a good value system.
I set my bets, and your insults are not on the other side of these bets. On the other side of these bets is your failed ideology. It is your failed system, and it coming to another comic end. Will there be blood on the streets? Ha! There is always blood on the streets. Didn't they just execute another good "life long" friend of USA government in Lybia?
What makes you stupid, not me, is the fact that you are still in the middle of the incoming storm, but as all storms, this one will pass too, and there will be a need for real credit again, and those who will be on the right side of that demand/supply curve, will come out on top.
The jeopardy is not coming from the poor, it is coming from the governments directing the poor, and the governments are dictatorial systems and the richest people are on top of them, and I think you underestimate the power that they hold in today's world and how well they are protected, literally and figuratively, much better than kings and queens of the past.
If the poor allow themselves to be pushed into yet another 'French' revolution, then the joke is on them, as they will be left even more poor, since nobody will want to deal with them and give them real credit, that would restore their real production capacity for a much longer timer period, than if they simply allowed the system to crash without any blood letting. But as I say, you are the one still stuck in the middle of that problem, maybe you should analyze again who is a 'blind fool' as per an objective definition of those words.
Short of adopting a strict diet of Soylent Green, what viable solutions will enable us to survive on this increasingly crowded pale blue dot? What will the role of technology be in supporting this many people?"
- interesting attitude problem that is permeating all throughout this story's 'scoop', including this gem:
seven billion ugly-bags-of-mostly-water (otherwise known as humans).
.
Well, these ugly bags of mostly water have invented a way to continue their continuous propagation in this system, it's called capitalism, and it's a pill that is better taken in a free market (free of government of any kind), because any government's point is to grow its power to sell it, which breeds corruption and monopolies and destroys innovation, competition and wealth, promotes inequality and poverty.
The technology is free market capitalism, we know it works. It is the same technology that was used to bring a mostly subsistence farmer population into the innovative industrial and lazy post-industrial age, with only 5% of the population feeding the 100%.
Of-course with all the government subsidies, being a farmer has been so ridiculously difficult in the last 40 years, that the average age of a farmer is over 58 y.o. in USA, and farmers have among the highest suicide rates out of most other professions (and this statistic is not limited to US, it's a very common occurrence in the developing world.)
The farmers were and still are depressed, very few people go to study farming (or mining or managing such activities), but the world supplies of food are very limited today, I think farming (and mining) will once again become a worthwhile investment over the next decade.
We don't know what technology will be invented to help us with all our problems, but if we do not use the best technology that we know we have (free market capitalism), we'll see all sorts of problems: food shortages and riots, higher and higher unemployment, lower and lower standard of living.
We need to accept the fact that the governments do not know better, that they are not there to help anybody but themselves, that people need to be responsible and that 7,000,000,000 ideas (good or bad) are better than few ideas generated by all of the combined brain trusts of governments (who are truly just extensions of the banking system, that took over the world with the monopoly power to print money).
The most dangerous technology that we know is the technology of currency printing and thus inflation - this is the worst technology, because it gives some ability to buy productivity without actually participating in creating and increasing this productivity.
But therein lie the seeds of that system's own destruction, as the future civilization will cleans itself from this monopolistic corruption of governments, lucratively merging with corporate power. The true potential and ingenuity of human spirit will be unlocked by the reduction of monopoly power over our lives, and if we do not achieve this, we will see a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, ending in a war and famine and there are plenty of those 'ugly water bags' that will just wither and die without nourishment.
We have the technology, do we have the strength of conviction to apply it?
Eventually libertarian ideals will win simply because there will be no money for your ideology of spreading poverty by pretending to spread some form of 'goodness', which is nothing else but an attempt at controlling the people by violence. You can't hold the water in your fist by tightening it, and you can't hold the economic production that way either, it moves and you are left poor. Unfortunately for the people who are poor but do not share your bankrupt ideology, it is still dominant exactly because of the education process, that relies on the gov't money and perpetuates itself by using the students as collateral to transfer the funds to the colleges, loyal to the political system. This is going to change once the real money runs out and nobody trades with USA for fake money anymore.
Poor are only lifted out of poverty by the enterprising people, who may become rich (or may fail), but they are never lifted out of poverty by your failed ideology of theft from the productive part of the population, supposedly to share the fruits of their labor with the poor part, but in reality stealing that wealth and distributing it to those, closest to the gov't trough. You will fail. Your system will fail. You thinking will fail and your way of life will fail. I am looking at it and I am glad to be part of it on the opposite of you, setting my bets.
It IS only about the money, it's a bubble, like housing or Internet before it or the USD and bond bubble. You can't fail a student and keep him/her in college for too long, because you are forgetting that the GPA also 'matters' to get your degree, and even though in principle you could keep failing somebody to keep them 'studying' longer if they are guaranteed a loan, don't forget that some will quit if their GPA is low enough, they don't feel they can continue, because they won't make it into a program.
But it doesn't matter, they do not fail anybody because so many of the people who shouldn't be there are in programs that are near IMPOSSIBLE to fail. It's not all high math and astrophysics and brain doctors out there, it's sociology and humanities of all sorts, maybe literature, etc.
The problem isn't the loans in a practical sense. The real problem is companies driving degree inflation.
- you don't even know how much you contradict yourself in this statement.
The degree inflation is caused by the loan guarantees in every sense.
The colleges don't have to compete on quality with all the loans and limited college space, so they don't compete on quality, they mark to model rather than to market, so to speak. All of this grading on a curve, never failing anybody for real, this is all causing quality to suffer, but it doesn't reflect in any way on the number of attendants, and the reason is that loans are guaranteed.
The degree inflation is directly caused by basically endless money.
- that's not true. This is a very old definition of what a free market is.
You are right that monopolies do not promote free market, but monopolies are only created by governments. There are no monopolies in markets that are unregulated by gov't force, there are economies of scale, and any economy of scale can seem like a monopoly, but it's not. The reason it's is that there are no artificial barriers to entry into the market with a natural economy of scale, but with government the barriers to entry are not natural, they are artificial.
There is nothing wrong with economies of scale, they provide highest quality, cheapest goods to the markets. Eventually technology changes, new efficiencies can be found and there are new entries into markets where there used to be just a few economies of scale, so those are not actual monopolies.
It's a worst kind of subsidy, every gov't program that guarantees something only does so at the expense of everyone's savings - the Fed will print (inflate) and steal your purchasing power to pay the bad debt off (bail outs to banks, companies, home owners, eventually to students, etc.)
The prices will come down if gov't money is removed from making these guarantees and quality will go up. Right now quality is shit, because nobody competes on quality. It's not like fewer people will want to enter your facilities if your quality is not that great, because space is limited, but gov't guarantees are not.
Yes, if the gov't guarantees are cut the tuition prices will fall (as it should) and based on qualities a number colleges will fail and NOT as many people will go if they have to take a private loan and prove it's not a waste of time and money (and that's what you have to do, you have to prove that there is some value there, some asset, or that your degree will allow you to pay the interest and loan back).
But this is a GOOD thing. Not everybody should go to college, not by a long shot. Right now the number of sociology majors is ridiculous, who needs any of them? Nobody does, they are worthless degrees and they are given out like candy. It happens because of the money transfer from gov't to educational facilities and students are the collateral.
Students are collateral, money is given to universities, universities in their turn support the political system that gives them this money, and the vicious cycle continues and economy worsens and those degrees are not worth anything and the lie of Keynesian solutions grows as the Fed counterfeits further.
yes, fewer people should go to universities, this is correct. All these people talking gov't guaranteed loans, which means constantly increasing prices and worsening quality, to study worthless shit that is absolutely useless IRL especially to pay the loans back, this stuff must stop.
All this "grading on the curve", all of this nonsense, where nobody fails, all of this must stop. It's only there because the gov't guarantees the loans, and the colleges know it. They won't fail anybody, because why? The money transfer continues, there is NO COMPETITION ON QUALITY between any of these universities and colleges, because WHY COMPETE? There is no point in competing at all, when the money is guaranteed so everybody keeps taking on more debt, there is no reason to compete.
It's not like if you compete, more people will come to you, because your degrees are worth more. No. It's like: all this money is flooding in, whether it will come here or will go somewhere else, this money will be allocated, guaranteed and spent on this so called 'education' that is worth less and less, so more and more of it is taken. This also has a nice side effect for the administration, that all these students are not coming out of the universities sooner, so the unemployment isn't growing as fast, as it would if they did come out.
Most of the people in these universities and colleges should never have had the ability to go there. They should have gone to maybe trade schools or become apprentices, but the real apprenticeships are also affected by the nonsense money and regulations, such as minimum wage for example and all the various 'non-discrimination' stuff, that brings in lawsuits.
No, the gravy train needs to be brought to an end.
The gov't will come out with a bail out plan for the students, I know it, but if they do so, if they actually bail out the students and let them not pay out the loans (which is wrong, if this is done, it should be discriminatory and debtors must be means tested), but if it's done, it can only be done if the gravy train stops, otherwise it's just another gov't moral hazard - an invitation for more loan taking, because why not? If gov't bails the students once, everybody will expect to be bailed out.
Same thing they did with the banks and are doing with all these home loans. It's all gov't nonsense, and it's economic illiteracy and it's destroying the economy.
The/. crowd is mostly so over their head when dealing with economics, that it actually is surprising.
Ron Paul is absolutely correct - government shouldn't be allowed in any financial matters in economy. Gov't shouldn't be allowed to regulate businesses and skew the market, distort the money allocation, set interest rates (price of money), counterfeit currency (Federal reserve), create imbalance in every single sector, from education and health care to energy and agriculture. Starting wars that cannot be paid for. Passing regulations that make labor too expensive and thus pushing production to other countries.
Ron Paul has been predicting this financial disaster ever since Nixon took the world (the world by proxy of USD being 'reserve currency') off the gold standard. US main exports include weapons and entertainment, but the real main export is of-course US DOLLAR.
The main export of US economy is inflation. This pushes the production out of USA and this causes a massive loss of jobs in USA. To keep the bubble of credit going, the bubble has to be inflated everywhere, from housing to medical insurance and care and to education and to money markets and wars. Nothing can be left untouched by inflation in an economy as unproductive as US economy.
Ron Paul is right of-course, never mind what economic illiterates are saying on this site.
So you are for a system that uses college students as collateral in this money transfer from gov't to professors, most of who would have to accept lower pay at private schools otherwise. You are for this continuous bail out to the education system at the expense of the students, who have to get into insane loans and get this ever inflated (in terms of quality and point) education.
This is a money hand out to buy votes, because professors end up 'educating' the public, who then tends to vote a certain way based on how they were educated. This is basically buying a propaganda machine and calling it 'education', while in reality pushing people towards worthless degrees, huge debts and poverty and destroying the economy in the process with all the worthless loan guarantees that can't even be repaid.
You don't get to raise prices based on the possibility of a future supply shortage.
- ha ha ha ha, that's what futures and options contracts are - anticipation of an event, that's how markets do price discounting.
Retailers do actually lower prices on possibility of a drop in demand, when new versions of stuff comes out, the possibility is that the demand for the current versions will drop, so they lower prices, but this doesn't make a good slashdot story.
There is no such thing as 'gouging'. There is only supply and demand curves that can meet in different points on the graph.
I am covering the story, sure, the prices can go higher than what the story had, because more time had passed. Good for them, they are trying to find the correct price and they are still selling at those higher prices, which means they can probably hike them further until there is little buying. --
As to WHO is going to get more money - if a factory isn't manufacturing drives, it can't SELL the drives, can it? You are so ignorant, it's painful. A factory that is shut down isn't producing any drives, and the drives that were produced earlier are sold and shipped to suppliers immediately, factories don't warehouse the stuff, if they have to, they can cut production. So it's not factories that will be making the extra money when FACTORIES are shut down.
FTFS:
Late last week Western Digital announced that their hard drive production facilities in Thailand were shutting down due to the extreme amount of flooding.
...
It seemed like plants were safe from the rising waters but over the weekend things changed. Their facilities in the Navanakorn and Bang Pa industrial areas outside of Bangkok were inundated, likely adding equipment loss estimated in the millions of dollars to an already bleak situation.
So things changed, factories have to retool now, so it will take more time to bring manufacturing back on line, which probably means a longer delay and even higher prices.
Factories will get retooled eventually, will reopen and will overproduce into this higher priced market, and it will eventually push prices lower than they used to sell for.
I'm still not seeing how this isn't screwing the poor people.
- what do you want? Confiscation and distribution of products that were created to make profit based on your idea of what is 'fair'? Why do you think poor should be able to get something they can't pay for, I don't follow?
The hard drives they need for their own 'productivity' are being redistributed to the rich.
- the supply/demand curve now meets at a higher price point, this cuts off those, who don't particularly need the drives at those prices, and it still allows those who really need the drives to be able to get them.
If prices are not raised here is what happens:
1. Anybody gets a drive at the old lower price, the stock is quickly emptied and those who need it more don't get it.
2. The stores are then making the profit for some of the time as long as the stocks last, all of a sudden there is a shortage and the stores can't get more drives. If that's the case, then you have a store that gets destroyed, which is also not an optimal situation for the distribution infrastructure. Instead the store raises the price, it collects more profit per drive, but the drives last longer in the store. If the shortage is real, the store will be able to cover the lower product turn over with higher prices and keep the store open, not have to fire people, search for lower rent, cut services, etc.
The point is that just because somebody is 'poor' doesn't mean they have the moral grounds to get some scarce resource at a cheaper price. When new plasma TVs came out the poor couldn't afford them at all! The initial prices were very high, only super rich and companies could buy plasma screens. Eventually the market sent signals that there was more demand, the efficiencies were reached, more production was brought on line, more competition, and prices fell eventually to the level where everybody could afford it.
It's the SAME situation in REVERSE. But this is a good thing that it works this way, it creates a queue, it sends signals to the manufacturers to bring up more production on line, and this eventually will result in even lower prices than originally were there.
This potentially makes them poorer, and nullifies attempts at being more productive.
- you can just take on faith that those who are richer are more productive than those who are poorer. Those who are richer generally invest into more business capacity, create more products, hire more people, etc., they are more productive just by the fact of having more savings and investments. Of-course it is desirable from every perspective that being richer should be rewarded more than being poorer.
Why? Why is it not important whether something is fair or not?
- because it's YOUR definition of fair? For example I disagree with it. You base it on some weird assumptions that poor people deserve more for some reason, I personally do not ever believe that for a second, never believed it in my life. I have good reasons to. Regardless of MY reasons - I disagree with you on what is FAIR. Do you understand that?
AFAIC the only fair outcome is the one that is NOT based on violence of gov't intervention, so it's a market based outcome, which always maximizes efficiencies and productivity, and I prefer productivity over moral indignations based on personal preferences of what 'fair' is.
I like a more efficient, more productive market. I like having access to more choices, more goods, more competition, lower prices. Productivity brings all of that about and moral indignations and gov't violence only shares one trait - poverty.
As to your last point - those economies, that have political systems that are corrupt because they are growing based on this idea, that they can distribute and enforce their idea of 'fairness' are now pretty much all bankrupt and they are only going based on the good grace of the economies that are almost unregulated and very productive. This proves my point.
Tell them about the purpose of computers outside of private communications devices and gaming platforms. Talk about the reasons we use computers, what they are for and how they are used.
I think that's more important if they are looking for a 'job' advice.
Ask anybody if they are just interested in doing stuff to see if they can, and tell them that the best way to learn is to try and build their own computers and languages, maybe they can invent something that we haven't really tried yet.
Sure they have governments, they have FOREIGN governments that are dealing there by proxy, selling cheap weapons and ammunition, allowing whoever is in power currently to kill indiscriminately making sure that there is no free market and there is no any form of democracy.
What you are observing there is your own government in action, and the way the dictators behave there is what your government wishes it could do in your own country, all this, while the gov't brainwashes easy prey like to you think that free market is bad for YOU and that you need more government.
No it doesn't screw the poor people at all. The poor people can't afford those drives because they are not as productive and likely those who are buying the drives at higher prices need those drives more for production. If they are buying for consumption and they have the resources to afford this consumption at higher prices, then they have been more productive in the past, and really we want productivity to be rewarded, not moral indignations based on ideology of what's 'fair' or not.
YES, exactly, but market efficiency in terms of the profit of the retailers not distribution to those who need it.
- of-course it is. If somebody buys the drive at a much higher price, it means he needs it. If you can't afford to buy the drive, it means you don't need it, it's that simple.
You can't afford to buy the drive, because you won't be doing anything productive with it. If somebody else can afford it, it means either they can justify the purchase with future production (profit), or they can justify their consumption with more of the production they did in the past (so they have more money than you).
Saying that they don't need the drive as much as you is a fallacy, obviously they do if they are buying it and you are not.
1. You are assuming that anybody with more money than you is interested in buying that stuff.
2. You are assuming that it is not true that if somebody is willing to pay more that they actually need the stuff more than you.
- Do you know what the real queue is? It's not buying stuff for consumption, it's buying stuff for production. So if a company pays more than you are willing for some equipment, it's because that company will use the equipment for something productive, that brings them revenue stream and makes them profit and satisfies more market demand. There is a real multiplier effect when you buy something to be productive. When you buy something just to consume it, but not to produce more of something that market needs, then it's just consumption, which is the trivial end result of production.
Economy is about production, not consumption. Without businesses saving and investing and producing and hiring there is nothing else happening. Fish has to be caught first, before it is distributed somehow in the market, but there is no shortage of people who want to eat it.
--
So yes, more money means more need, if you don't have enough money to compete for CONSUMPTION with somebody else, if you come up with a case, how you can actually use the stuff to produce with that purchase, you can come up with a business plan, as to how you'll generate revenue and profit and somebody will be interested in investing in your plan and will subsidize your purchase.
OTOH if you are just competing with another person purely for consumption, then from POV of the manufacturer/merchant, it makes most sense just to sell to the highest bidder in the room, but then when the top bidder goes away, the remaining stock is bid again, and somebody else can buy if the price is lowered.
It is true, whoever has most money is the one who'll win the bid if you are not ready to take a loan and purchase the stuff, but in absence of gov't counterfeiting money, you only will get a loan if you are going to be productive with it, otherwise the stuff will go the person who already WAS more productive than you in the past (and that's why they have more money).
You can argue that the person himself wasn't more productive than you, say he inherited the money, but it doesn't matter. SOMEBODY was more productive than you if they have more money than you. How they did it is not relevant.
It is a given that they are trying to make as much profit as they can, for that is what they do. If this werent the case, then competition would have come along and wiped them out a long time ago
-
1. Read the comments by that poster, they are preposterous in what they are stating.
2. You are actually not correct, as the story states that a policy of 1-2 drives per purchase is implemented together with price hikes of 15-30%. This means that the stores are not making the correct choice, not setting the prices high enough and they are creating space for secondary markets, where somebody can buy more drives from the stores by purchasing multiple times (or asking others to buy for them), and then reselling at higher prices.
Are these stores 'best of the best' in every situation? I deal with various stores on daily basis because I sell them software, most of them are absolutely not the 'best of the best', they don't know what they are doing and many are only a week away from bankruptcy at any point in time.
Yeah, if you go over this thread, you'll see so much misconception in understanding of basic economics that it raises hair on its ends. It's amazing how inadequate majority of posters are here in terms of economic understanding, and this is supposed to be one of more informed places on the web (obviously it's not true).
Most people think of suppliers as price gougers completely missing the point that those products are not some entitlement, they have to be produced and distributed and all the costs must be covered and profits must be made in excess of what inflation rates are and discounts have to be considered of the future situations... it's a very sad state of affairs here.
No, I don't have access to all of the pieces of information, but that's unnecessary. If I need a drive and I can wait, I can buy it later at a lower price, because the market signals that were sent to manufacturing will cause overproduction, which will eventually lead to a lower price even than was previously there.
Market is a discounting mechanism, not just a current price discovery mechanism, so it takes into account all possibilities to find the most efficiencies. Whether the shortage is real or perceived the market is in better position to find efficiencies than any artificial regulations.
If stores are right and there is real shortage, then they are correct in raising prices right NOW, because if they don't, they'll run out of inventory and will have a shortfall later, when the drives are not coming in but they still have to maintain the staff, pay rent, utilities, etc. If the stores are wrong, then all they have achieved by raising prices is some drop off in drive buying at this moment, but they didn't prevent somebody who really needed a drive from buying it.
As to your numbers - the prices for drives didn't go up by 50-90%, they went up by 15-30%.
From the fucking story:
Speaking of price increases, we have seen a spike of 15% to 30% in the cost of some models over the last 72 hours.
this means that the market expects a quick recovery. If the prices went up by the amount that you are describing, that would have been a response to much heavier damage to manufacturing sector.
What I'm wondering is how the hard drive manufacturers figured out how to cause the flood, 'cause it's a lot less suspicious than a fire.
- you can't even imagine... how stupid that sounds. I build and sell retail integration/analysis software, which is used by stores and suppliers and manufacturers, and one thing is certain - no manufacturer ever wants to stop production. They want to continue production day in day out, every second of every minute of every day. Once the factory is up and running it's insane how expensive it is not to use it. God, the misconceptions in basic economics on this site are just overwhelming.
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Why see shades of gray,
why be a loner?
Try another Soma. SOMA!
Life's good,
shut up!
I use ThinkPad W510 with Ubuntu and now Debian. There are some issues, I had to figure out how to have the sound behave correctly, but barring a few small things I find it to be a good value system.
I set my bets, and your insults are not on the other side of these bets. On the other side of these bets is your failed ideology. It is your failed system, and it coming to another comic end. Will there be blood on the streets? Ha! There is always blood on the streets. Didn't they just execute another good "life long" friend of USA government in Lybia?
What makes you stupid, not me, is the fact that you are still in the middle of the incoming storm, but as all storms, this one will pass too, and there will be a need for real credit again, and those who will be on the right side of that demand/supply curve, will come out on top.
The jeopardy is not coming from the poor, it is coming from the governments directing the poor, and the governments are dictatorial systems and the richest people are on top of them, and I think you underestimate the power that they hold in today's world and how well they are protected, literally and figuratively, much better than kings and queens of the past.
If the poor allow themselves to be pushed into yet another 'French' revolution, then the joke is on them, as they will be left even more poor, since nobody will want to deal with them and give them real credit, that would restore their real production capacity for a much longer timer period, than if they simply allowed the system to crash without any blood letting. But as I say, you are the one still stuck in the middle of that problem, maybe you should analyze again who is a 'blind fool' as per an objective definition of those words.
Short of adopting a strict diet of Soylent Green, what viable solutions will enable us to survive on this increasingly crowded pale blue dot? What will the role of technology be in supporting this many people?"
- interesting attitude problem that is permeating all throughout this story's 'scoop', including this gem:
seven billion ugly-bags-of-mostly-water (otherwise known as humans).
.
Well, these ugly bags of mostly water have invented a way to continue their continuous propagation in this system, it's called capitalism, and it's a pill that is better taken in a free market (free of government of any kind), because any government's point is to grow its power to sell it, which breeds corruption and monopolies and destroys innovation, competition and wealth, promotes inequality and poverty.
The technology is free market capitalism, we know it works. It is the same technology that was used to bring a mostly subsistence farmer population into the innovative industrial and lazy post-industrial age, with only 5% of the population feeding the 100%.
Of-course with all the government subsidies, being a farmer has been so ridiculously difficult in the last 40 years, that the average age of a farmer is over 58 y.o. in USA, and farmers have among the highest suicide rates out of most other professions (and this statistic is not limited to US, it's a very common occurrence in the developing world.)
The farmers were and still are depressed, very few people go to study farming (or mining or managing such activities), but the world supplies of food are very limited today, I think farming (and mining) will once again become a worthwhile investment over the next decade.
We don't know what technology will be invented to help us with all our problems, but if we do not use the best technology that we know we have (free market capitalism), we'll see all sorts of problems: food shortages and riots, higher and higher unemployment, lower and lower standard of living.
We need to accept the fact that the governments do not know better, that they are not there to help anybody but themselves, that people need to be responsible and that 7,000,000,000 ideas (good or bad) are better than few ideas generated by all of the combined brain trusts of governments (who are truly just extensions of the banking system, that took over the world with the monopoly power to print money).
The most dangerous technology that we know is the technology of currency printing and thus inflation - this is the worst technology, because it gives some ability to buy productivity without actually participating in creating and increasing this productivity.
But therein lie the seeds of that system's own destruction, as the future civilization will cleans itself from this monopolistic corruption of governments, lucratively merging with corporate power. The true potential and ingenuity of human spirit will be unlocked by the reduction of monopoly power over our lives, and if we do not achieve this, we will see a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, ending in a war and famine and there are plenty of those 'ugly water bags' that will just wither and die without nourishment.
We have the technology, do we have the strength of conviction to apply it?
Eventually libertarian ideals will win simply because there will be no money for your ideology of spreading poverty by pretending to spread some form of 'goodness', which is nothing else but an attempt at controlling the people by violence. You can't hold the water in your fist by tightening it, and you can't hold the economic production that way either, it moves and you are left poor. Unfortunately for the people who are poor but do not share your bankrupt ideology, it is still dominant exactly because of the education process, that relies on the gov't money and perpetuates itself by using the students as collateral to transfer the funds to the colleges, loyal to the political system. This is going to change once the real money runs out and nobody trades with USA for fake money anymore.
Poor are only lifted out of poverty by the enterprising people, who may become rich (or may fail), but they are never lifted out of poverty by your failed ideology of theft from the productive part of the population, supposedly to share the fruits of their labor with the poor part, but in reality stealing that wealth and distributing it to those, closest to the gov't trough. You will fail. Your system will fail. You thinking will fail and your way of life will fail. I am looking at it and I am glad to be part of it on the opposite of you, setting my bets.
Since when is a link to a youtube video and a tiny url redirect to this is a pop-up hell?
You need to check your computer.
It IS only about the money, it's a bubble, like housing or Internet before it or the USD and bond bubble. You can't fail a student and keep him/her in college for too long, because you are forgetting that the GPA also 'matters' to get your degree, and even though in principle you could keep failing somebody to keep them 'studying' longer if they are guaranteed a loan, don't forget that some will quit if their GPA is low enough, they don't feel they can continue, because they won't make it into a program.
But it doesn't matter, they do not fail anybody because so many of the people who shouldn't be there are in programs that are near IMPOSSIBLE to fail. It's not all high math and astrophysics and brain doctors out there, it's sociology and humanities of all sorts, maybe literature, etc.
Demand decreases, money in the system decreases, so prices go up? It's not the SUPPLY that gets cut, it's all the artificial demand.
By the way, are you now done with your ridiculous Keynesian based predictions or what?
The problem isn't the loans in a practical sense. The real problem is companies driving degree inflation.
- you don't even know how much you contradict yourself in this statement.
The degree inflation is caused by the loan guarantees in every sense.
The colleges don't have to compete on quality with all the loans and limited college space, so they don't compete on quality, they mark to model rather than to market, so to speak. All of this grading on a curve, never failing anybody for real, this is all causing quality to suffer, but it doesn't reflect in any way on the number of attendants, and the reason is that loans are guaranteed.
The degree inflation is directly caused by basically endless money.
That's a fairly new definition
- that's not true. This is a very old definition of what a free market is.
You are right that monopolies do not promote free market, but monopolies are only created by governments. There are no monopolies in markets that are unregulated by gov't force, there are economies of scale, and any economy of scale can seem like a monopoly, but it's not. The reason it's is that there are no artificial barriers to entry into the market with a natural economy of scale, but with government the barriers to entry are not natural, they are artificial.
There is nothing wrong with economies of scale, they provide highest quality, cheapest goods to the markets. Eventually technology changes, new efficiencies can be found and there are new entries into markets where there used to be just a few economies of scale, so those are not actual monopolies.
This is how gov't creates monopolies.
A gov't GUARANTEED loan IS a subsidy.
It's a worst kind of subsidy, every gov't program that guarantees something only does so at the expense of everyone's savings - the Fed will print (inflate) and steal your purchasing power to pay the bad debt off (bail outs to banks, companies, home owners, eventually to students, etc.)
The prices will come down if gov't money is removed from making these guarantees and quality will go up. Right now quality is shit, because nobody competes on quality. It's not like fewer people will want to enter your facilities if your quality is not that great, because space is limited, but gov't guarantees are not.
Yes, if the gov't guarantees are cut the tuition prices will fall (as it should) and based on qualities a number colleges will fail and NOT as many people will go if they have to take a private loan and prove it's not a waste of time and money (and that's what you have to do, you have to prove that there is some value there, some asset, or that your degree will allow you to pay the interest and loan back).
But this is a GOOD thing. Not everybody should go to college, not by a long shot. Right now the number of sociology majors is ridiculous, who needs any of them? Nobody does, they are worthless degrees and they are given out like candy. It happens because of the money transfer from gov't to educational facilities and students are the collateral.
Students are collateral, money is given to universities, universities in their turn support the political system that gives them this money, and the vicious cycle continues and economy worsens and those degrees are not worth anything and the lie of Keynesian solutions grows as the Fed counterfeits further.
yes, fewer people should go to universities, this is correct. All these people talking gov't guaranteed loans, which means constantly increasing prices and worsening quality, to study worthless shit that is absolutely useless IRL especially to pay the loans back, this stuff must stop.
All this "grading on the curve", all of this nonsense, where nobody fails, all of this must stop. It's only there because the gov't guarantees the loans, and the colleges know it. They won't fail anybody, because why? The money transfer continues, there is NO COMPETITION ON QUALITY between any of these universities and colleges, because WHY COMPETE? There is no point in competing at all, when the money is guaranteed so everybody keeps taking on more debt, there is no reason to compete.
It's not like if you compete, more people will come to you, because your degrees are worth more. No. It's like: all this money is flooding in, whether it will come here or will go somewhere else, this money will be allocated, guaranteed and spent on this so called 'education' that is worth less and less, so more and more of it is taken. This also has a nice side effect for the administration, that all these students are not coming out of the universities sooner, so the unemployment isn't growing as fast, as it would if they did come out.
Most of the people in these universities and colleges should never have had the ability to go there. They should have gone to maybe trade schools or become apprentices, but the real apprenticeships are also affected by the nonsense money and regulations, such as minimum wage for example and all the various 'non-discrimination' stuff, that brings in lawsuits.
No, the gravy train needs to be brought to an end.
The gov't will come out with a bail out plan for the students, I know it, but if they do so, if they actually bail out the students and let them not pay out the loans (which is wrong, if this is done, it should be discriminatory and debtors must be means tested), but if it's done, it can only be done if the gravy train stops, otherwise it's just another gov't moral hazard - an invitation for more loan taking, because why not? If gov't bails the students once, everybody will expect to be bailed out.
Same thing they did with the banks and are doing with all these home loans. It's all gov't nonsense, and it's economic illiteracy and it's destroying the economy.
The /. crowd is mostly so over their head when dealing with economics, that it actually is surprising.
Ron Paul is absolutely correct - government shouldn't be allowed in any financial matters in economy. Gov't shouldn't be allowed to regulate businesses and skew the market, distort the money allocation, set interest rates (price of money), counterfeit currency (Federal reserve), create imbalance in every single sector, from education and health care to energy and agriculture. Starting wars that cannot be paid for. Passing regulations that make labor too expensive and thus pushing production to other countries.
Ron Paul has been predicting this financial disaster ever since Nixon took the world (the world by proxy of USD being 'reserve currency') off the gold standard. US main exports include weapons and entertainment, but the real main export is of-course US DOLLAR.
The main export of US economy is inflation. This pushes the production out of USA and this causes a massive loss of jobs in USA. To keep the bubble of credit going, the bubble has to be inflated everywhere, from housing to medical insurance and care and to education and to money markets and wars. Nothing can be left untouched by inflation in an economy as unproductive as US economy.
Ron Paul is right of-course, never mind what economic illiterates are saying on this site.
So you are for a system that uses college students as collateral in this money transfer from gov't to professors, most of who would have to accept lower pay at private schools otherwise. You are for this continuous bail out to the education system at the expense of the students, who have to get into insane loans and get this ever inflated (in terms of quality and point) education.
This is a money hand out to buy votes, because professors end up 'educating' the public, who then tends to vote a certain way based on how they were educated. This is basically buying a propaganda machine and calling it 'education', while in reality pushing people towards worthless degrees, huge debts and poverty and destroying the economy in the process with all the worthless loan guarantees that can't even be repaid.
You don't get to raise prices based on the possibility of a future supply shortage.
- ha ha ha ha, that's what futures and options contracts are - anticipation of an event, that's how markets do price discounting.
Retailers do actually lower prices on possibility of a drop in demand, when new versions of stuff comes out, the possibility is that the demand for the current versions will drop, so they lower prices, but this doesn't make a good slashdot story.
There is no such thing as 'gouging'. There is only supply and demand curves that can meet in different points on the graph.
I am covering the story, sure, the prices can go higher than what the story had, because more time had passed. Good for them, they are trying to find the correct price and they are still selling at those higher prices, which means they can probably hike them further until there is little buying.
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As to WHO is going to get more money - if a factory isn't manufacturing drives, it can't SELL the drives, can it? You are so ignorant, it's painful. A factory that is shut down isn't producing any drives, and the drives that were produced earlier are sold and shipped to suppliers immediately, factories don't warehouse the stuff, if they have to, they can cut production. So it's not factories that will be making the extra money when FACTORIES are shut down.
FTFS:
Late last week Western Digital announced that their hard drive production facilities in Thailand were shutting down due to the extreme amount of flooding.
...
It seemed like plants were safe from the rising waters but over the weekend things changed. Their facilities in the Navanakorn and Bang Pa industrial areas outside of Bangkok were inundated, likely adding equipment loss estimated in the millions of dollars to an already bleak situation.
So things changed, factories have to retool now, so it will take more time to bring manufacturing back on line, which probably means a longer delay and even higher prices.
Factories will get retooled eventually, will reopen and will overproduce into this higher priced market, and it will eventually push prices lower than they used to sell for.
I'm still not seeing how this isn't screwing the poor people.
- what do you want? Confiscation and distribution of products that were created to make profit based on your idea of what is 'fair'? Why do you think poor should be able to get something they can't pay for, I don't follow?
The hard drives they need for their own 'productivity' are being redistributed to the rich.
- the supply/demand curve now meets at a higher price point, this cuts off those, who don't particularly need the drives at those prices, and it still allows those who really need the drives to be able to get them.
If prices are not raised here is what happens:
1. Anybody gets a drive at the old lower price, the stock is quickly emptied and those who need it more don't get it.
2. The stores are then making the profit for some of the time as long as the stocks last, all of a sudden there is a shortage and the stores can't get more drives. If that's the case, then you have a store that gets destroyed, which is also not an optimal situation for the distribution infrastructure. Instead the store raises the price, it collects more profit per drive, but the drives last longer in the store. If the shortage is real, the store will be able to cover the lower product turn over with higher prices and keep the store open, not have to fire people, search for lower rent, cut services, etc.
The point is that just because somebody is 'poor' doesn't mean they have the moral grounds to get some scarce resource at a cheaper price. When new plasma TVs came out the poor couldn't afford them at all! The initial prices were very high, only super rich and companies could buy plasma screens. Eventually the market sent signals that there was more demand, the efficiencies were reached, more production was brought on line, more competition, and prices fell eventually to the level where everybody could afford it.
It's the SAME situation in REVERSE. But this is a good thing that it works this way, it creates a queue, it sends signals to the manufacturers to bring up more production on line, and this eventually will result in even lower prices than originally were there.
This potentially makes them poorer, and nullifies attempts at being more productive.
- you can just take on faith that those who are richer are more productive than those who are poorer. Those who are richer generally invest into more business capacity, create more products, hire more people, etc., they are more productive just by the fact of having more savings and investments. Of-course it is desirable from every perspective that being richer should be rewarded more than being poorer.
Why? Why is it not important whether something is fair or not?
- because it's YOUR definition of fair? For example I disagree with it. You base it on some weird assumptions that poor people deserve more for some reason, I personally do not ever believe that for a second, never believed it in my life. I have good reasons to. Regardless of MY reasons - I disagree with you on what is FAIR. Do you understand that?
AFAIC the only fair outcome is the one that is NOT based on violence of gov't intervention, so it's a market based outcome, which always maximizes efficiencies and productivity, and I prefer productivity over moral indignations based on personal preferences of what 'fair' is.
I like a more efficient, more productive market. I like having access to more choices, more goods, more competition, lower prices. Productivity brings all of that about and moral indignations and gov't violence only shares one trait - poverty.
As to your last point - those economies, that have political systems that are corrupt because they are growing based on this idea, that they can distribute and enforce their idea of 'fairness' are now pretty much all bankrupt and they are only going based on the good grace of the economies that are almost unregulated and very productive. This proves my point.
Tell them about the purpose of computers outside of private communications devices and gaming platforms. Talk about the reasons we use computers, what they are for and how they are used.
I think that's more important if they are looking for a 'job' advice.
Ask anybody if they are just interested in doing stuff to see if they can, and tell them that the best way to learn is to try and build their own computers and languages, maybe they can invent something that we haven't really tried yet.
Sure they have governments, they have FOREIGN governments that are dealing there by proxy, selling cheap weapons and ammunition, allowing whoever is in power currently to kill indiscriminately making sure that there is no free market and there is no any form of democracy.
What you are observing there is your own government in action, and the way the dictators behave there is what your government wishes it could do in your own country, all this, while the gov't brainwashes easy prey like to you think that free market is bad for YOU and that you need more government.
No it doesn't screw the poor people at all. The poor people can't afford those drives because they are not as productive and likely those who are buying the drives at higher prices need those drives more for production. If they are buying for consumption and they have the resources to afford this consumption at higher prices, then they have been more productive in the past, and really we want productivity to be rewarded, not moral indignations based on ideology of what's 'fair' or not.
YES, exactly, but market efficiency in terms of the profit of the retailers not distribution to those who need it.
- of-course it is. If somebody buys the drive at a much higher price, it means he needs it. If you can't afford to buy the drive, it means you don't need it, it's that simple.
You can't afford to buy the drive, because you won't be doing anything productive with it. If somebody else can afford it, it means either they can justify the purchase with future production (profit), or they can justify their consumption with more of the production they did in the past (so they have more money than you).
Saying that they don't need the drive as much as you is a fallacy, obviously they do if they are buying it and you are not.
1. You are assuming that anybody with more money than you is interested in buying that stuff.
2. You are assuming that it is not true that if somebody is willing to pay more that they actually need the stuff more than you.
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Do you know what the real queue is? It's not buying stuff for consumption, it's buying stuff for production. So if a company pays more than you are willing for some equipment, it's because that company will use the equipment for something productive, that brings them revenue stream and makes them profit and satisfies more market demand. There is a real multiplier effect when you buy something to be productive. When you buy something just to consume it, but not to produce more of something that market needs, then it's just consumption, which is the trivial end result of production.
Economy is about production, not consumption. Without businesses saving and investing and producing and hiring there is nothing else happening. Fish has to be caught first, before it is distributed somehow in the market, but there is no shortage of people who want to eat it.
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So yes, more money means more need, if you don't have enough money to compete for CONSUMPTION with somebody else, if you come up with a case, how you can actually use the stuff to produce with that purchase, you can come up with a business plan, as to how you'll generate revenue and profit and somebody will be interested in investing in your plan and will subsidize your purchase.
OTOH if you are just competing with another person purely for consumption, then from POV of the manufacturer/merchant, it makes most sense just to sell to the highest bidder in the room, but then when the top bidder goes away, the remaining stock is bid again, and somebody else can buy if the price is lowered.
It is true, whoever has most money is the one who'll win the bid if you are not ready to take a loan and purchase the stuff, but in absence of gov't counterfeiting money, you only will get a loan if you are going to be productive with it, otherwise the stuff will go the person who already WAS more productive than you in the past (and that's why they have more money).
You can argue that the person himself wasn't more productive than you, say he inherited the money, but it doesn't matter. SOMEBODY was more productive than you if they have more money than you. How they did it is not relevant.
It is a given that they are trying to make as much profit as they can, for that is what they do. If this werent the case, then competition would have come along and wiped them out a long time ago
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1. Read the comments by that poster, they are preposterous in what they are stating.
2. You are actually not correct, as the story states that a policy of 1-2 drives per purchase is implemented together with price hikes of 15-30%. This means that the stores are not making the correct choice, not setting the prices high enough and they are creating space for secondary markets, where somebody can buy more drives from the stores by purchasing multiple times (or asking others to buy for them), and then reselling at higher prices.
Are these stores 'best of the best' in every situation? I deal with various stores on daily basis because I sell them software, most of them are absolutely not the 'best of the best', they don't know what they are doing and many are only a week away from bankruptcy at any point in time.
Yeah, if you go over this thread, you'll see so much misconception in understanding of basic economics that it raises hair on its ends. It's amazing how inadequate majority of posters are here in terms of economic understanding, and this is supposed to be one of more informed places on the web (obviously it's not true).
Most people think of suppliers as price gougers completely missing the point that those products are not some entitlement, they have to be produced and distributed and all the costs must be covered and profits must be made in excess of what inflation rates are and discounts have to be considered of the future situations... it's a very sad state of affairs here.
No, I don't have access to all of the pieces of information, but that's unnecessary. If I need a drive and I can wait, I can buy it later at a lower price, because the market signals that were sent to manufacturing will cause overproduction, which will eventually lead to a lower price even than was previously there.
Market is a discounting mechanism, not just a current price discovery mechanism, so it takes into account all possibilities to find the most efficiencies. Whether the shortage is real or perceived the market is in better position to find efficiencies than any artificial regulations.
If stores are right and there is real shortage, then they are correct in raising prices right NOW, because if they don't, they'll run out of inventory and will have a shortfall later, when the drives are not coming in but they still have to maintain the staff, pay rent, utilities, etc. If the stores are wrong, then all they have achieved by raising prices is some drop off in drive buying at this moment, but they didn't prevent somebody who really needed a drive from buying it.
As to your numbers - the prices for drives didn't go up by 50-90%, they went up by 15-30%.
From the fucking story:
Speaking of price increases, we have seen a spike of 15% to 30% in the cost of some models over the last 72 hours.
this means that the market expects a quick recovery. If the prices went up by the amount that you are describing, that would have been a response to much heavier damage to manufacturing sector.
What I'm wondering is how the hard drive manufacturers figured out how to cause the flood, 'cause it's a lot less suspicious than a fire.
- you can't even imagine... how stupid that sounds. I build and sell retail integration/analysis software, which is used by stores and suppliers and manufacturers, and one thing is certain - no manufacturer ever wants to stop production. They want to continue production day in day out, every second of every minute of every day. Once the factory is up and running it's insane how expensive it is not to use it. God, the misconceptions in basic economics on this site are just overwhelming.