It's NOT self-regulation, that's the big confusion.
Do you go around punching people in the face? Is it self regulation, or is it because you are going to have to face some consequences, least of which will be government involvement?
What about prices, can you sell your used car for a price of a new car? If not, why not?
There is no such thing as self-regulation. I am never implying it, never was, this is a huge straw-man.
There is such thing as market regulation, and if government was doing its job right, it would be protecting your and everybody's individual liberties, property, enforcing contracts and protecting the borders.
One thing you can rely on: people acting in their own self interest. This is what makes regulations, not self-imposed regulations, but regulations imposed by the market where you are an actor.
Well, if it were C and not C++, I'd suggest this project. There are so many concepts involved in database development, that it can give a run for its money to OS kernels, graphics libraries and probably most specialized math/astronomy/healthcare related software.
Gold could ONLY work if all the gold was in the US.
- you don't have a single clue, not a foggiest idea of what you speak. USA needs to produce more, but it consumed too much and it owes too much, so it needs to allow interest rates to be set by the market. This will happen anyway once the t-bonds bubble collapses. This will set interest rates where they belong, USA will be prevented from consumption.
Since all other countries now are following the same practice of fiat destruction, the other fiat currencies will collapse as well as dollar and gold will be de-facto money. Today gold is preferred market money as is. For USA to just return to gold standard, the market would have to discover the appropriate price, probably setting troy ounce at anywhere between 25,000 and 300,000 USD / ounce.
People see this minor recession(yes 10% unemployment is minor)
- unemployment and underemployment numbers are as fudged as any other government numbers, including inflation (real between 10 and 13%) and GDP, which has been falling steadily for 5 years at least, especially given that the deflater (CPI) is off by about 10%. Also US GDP is 70% consumption of foreign produced goods. "Domestic" my ass.
Ron paul is a racist lunatic who some how think removing regulations is better;
- you are a troll. Ron Paul is the only candidate to address the drug war as it must be - he is for abolishing it, and he wants to pardon all drug related non-violent prisoners.
These people are predominantly minorities. Right, a racist. You are such an incredible fucking asshole, it's beyond reprimand.
He is a clue fuck twad
- this is both, grammatically incorrect and inflammatory. There is a reason you are on 'foe' list. I only put people there who are actual trolls, liars and are also stupid. You meet all of the 3 criteria.
I was born in USSR, in Ukraine, and I believe many people who had to go through the Chernobyl experience here would rather have Fukushima experience. So AFAIC State ran nuclear power plants are much more dangerous than private ones.
I don't trust State in this much more than I don't trust a private company. Sure, a private company will find ways to screw up. However a private company also needs to continue making profits, and this means more reactors to be built and brought on line and this means looking at ways of improving the business by cutting costs. But cutting costs is a good thing if it can be done, because in case of such complex machines, it means investment into some types of new tools, research that allows to cut costs.
Cutting costs is not about letting the reactor stand there - rot in the dust, it won't make you any profit.
Intel increases profit by designing and building new processors, not by cutting costs where processors become unusable. Same with any business. I want to cut costs, and it's a good thing. I want to cut costs and government does not, because government is not looking at the economic side of this.
From cost cutting comes innovation, that's the real reason to do any innovation. When James Watt came out with the new separate condenser for a steam engine, he actually cut costs of energy expenditure and he increased efficiencies of the engines, making them better and more useful for everyday purposes.
Sure, some cost cutting when done indiscriminately can be dangerous, that's why gov't should be protecting private property and other rights of individuals - to allow recourse and prevent stupid things before they even happening by not letting the companies to run liability free.
The RBMK was the culmination of the Soviet nuclear power program to produce a water-cooled power reactor based on their graphite-moderated plutonium production military reactors...... The refueling machine is mounted on a gantry crane and remotely controlled. The fuel assemblies can be replaced without shutting down the reactor, a factor significant for production of weapon-grade plutonium and, in a civilian context, for better reactor uptime. When a fuel assembly has to be replaced, the machine is positioned above the fuel channel, mates to it, equalizes pressure within, pulls the rod, and inserts a fresh one. The spent rod is then placed in a cooling pond. The capacity of the refueling machine with the reactor at nominal power level is two fuel assemblies per day, with peak capacity of five per day........ RBMK reactors were designed to allow fuel rods to be changed without shutting down (as in the pressurized heavy water CANDU reactor), both for refueling and for plutonium production (for nuclear weapons). This required large cranes above the core.
In his book âoeThe Legacy of Chernobylâ, Zhores Medvedyev reveals that the turbine rundown test was to have been completed at the end of 1982, before the reactor was brought into a commercial regime. It was on a list of things, in typical Soviet fashion, that was agreed by the various ministries involved âoeto be completed laterâ notwithstanding the point that it was a requirement for the reactor to pass inspection. These kinds of oversights were typical to make sure that various projects were completed on or before deadlines, especially when there were bonuses at stake.
As to Fukushima - definitely there were some problem, I am still convinced that a privately operated reactor stands better even under these disastrous circumstances than a State operated one. It's right here, black on white.
By the way, do you really want unregulated nuclear power plants? Just look at what the effects of un-regulated hydrolic fracturing has on the surrounding environment.
- well, shit. Exactly. You want more and more nuclear power plants, so that your soil can be left alone, because it will not be economically viable to get more hydrocarbons out of the ground even with fracking, because nuclear power would be so abundant.
What we really need is government run nuclear power plants.
- you should read my first comment again.
State ran power plant - Chernobyl. Privately ran power plant - Fukushima.
Excuse me if I am not adventurous enough for you to want a State ran power plant anywhere near me.
. Screw the private industry, they will do almost anything to make a profit including cutting corners with safety standards and waste management.
- no no. Private industry will not do "almost" anything to make a profit.
Private industry will do anything to make a profit. Government has a role - enforcing liberties, private property and all other rights. That's what government is really for, and this is enough to keep any business from abuse as long as government cannot be bought off.
Government can only be bought off if it's allowed to regulate the private industry. What is needed is more private involvement into everything and less government, what we need is to get innovation and invention back, and it's not done with public money, it's done with private interests as long as there are few barriers to entry constructed by the government.
There need to be inventions in nuclear power, which will not come from government. There need to be inventions that will miniaturize nuclear power generation.
Thanks! I don't like the moderation system here specifically because there are 'super' moderators.
Also if I was designing one, I would allow anybody moderate any story with say a maximum of 2 points even if they post in the story.
Maximum of 2 points, but also, if one comment becomes too controversial, like it gets moderated up and down, up and down, I would keep it moderated up and then lock it from any further moderation. Clearly people disagreeing on a comment like that means it's at least worth a discussion and not to be shut out.
Also I think I would allow people to trade moderation. Why not? Have a moderator point exchange! This would be interesting, could even buy moderator points for real money:)
Thanks though, I was getting killed indiscriminately.
My point is that we don't know because we haven't tried doing all sorts of things that individuals could try. Sure, 99% of them would fail. What if somebody figures out a different way to get to the energy stored in the nuclear material without building a gigantic power plant and without exploding a bomb?
There is a way to FIX the problem of seagull managers, of overpaid CEOs, of underpaid investors, to fix the problem, not to apply band aids to it.
Stop destruction of money by inflation and stop allowing the Federal reserve to monetize Treasury debt.
This problem of overpaid CEOs, of non-existing dividend yields is found in USA more than in any other place, and it's because the business shares (corporate bonds) are not bought with a vision of investment, so most people are buying shares to flip them, not to hold them and not be actual investors to get dividends and to participate in the company's success.
The reason that people are not doing it is because the entire stock market in USA is turned into a giant casino by all this "free" money (it's not really free, you pay for it with insane inflation but the point stays). All this currency that is printed by the Fed and is lent at no interest, combined with the treasury bonds that yield some tiny interest allow making some "safe" steady profit stream (why are all these banks so "profitable" all of a sudden? What, you think they are smart?)
The problem is that there is no reason to pay dividends to shareholders. The expectation is not of being an investor, but instead of being a short term speculator. The incentive is not to hold an investment to get dividend, but to hope that the purchase will go up in price and to make the difference quickly. The reason is that the inflation is insanely huge - over 10%, close to 13% and it's been there for a long time, easily starting from 1971 (defaulting on the promise to pay gold for reserve notes).
With an inflation like that nobody can compete in providing a meaningful dividend yield. The money is cheap, so many people just gamble, and they gamble REGARDLESS of whether there is dividend yield or there isn't one, so there is no incentive to pay it.
Without paying dividends to the investors, the money can be then spent on insane CEO payments and management bonuses.
The system is broken, but applying band aid solutions won't help until there is a clear understanding why the system is broken.
State operated nuclear power plant, designed to produce weapon grade nuclear material and operated without complete theoretical understanding of the underlying principles and mishandled due to political pressure
vs
privately operated, but State regulated power plant, designed to provide power while withstanding extreme weather conditions, but a plant that should really have been decommissioned and newer designs should have been put into operation.
--
A reactor explosion due to build up of extreme pressure
vs
A reactor breach without an explosion but with hydrogen exploding subsequently around the reactor.
--
Well, I want privately operated power plants with new types of design, that's what I want all over the place. I want private money being allowed into the field, letting up on the government regulations, I want a tiny nuclear reactor in my house and in my car and at some point in my lightsaber, how about that?
Nope. The most disappointing president ever was Reagan.
That guy promised to deliver specific things: libertarian agenda basically. He failed like the other side was a boss.
It pisses me off every time I think about him being endorsed by Ron Paul, who believed in the message of that guy. But when it came to implementation it was absolutely horrendous. The first thing Reagan should have done obviously was re-evaluate the USD and connect it back to gold, that would have taken care of spending immediately. Instead the he grew the spending, deficits, waste, it was atrocious.
Education is a good, just like bread or living accommodations. In absence of government intervention, the cost of education is set in the market by the individuals, it's basically about how many dollars are chasing the same goods. Once government got involved it became impossible for a person of limited means just to work part time and in the summer to afford full prices of tuition, but don't worry, the government was there to give out student loans.
Well that's exactly the problem - now the amount of dollars that was chasing education (or health care/insurance) has gone up dramatically from what was available to students, who were willing to work part time/summers and from just people who could afford education costs independently, to amount of dollars that could be transfered from government to the education institutions and the students were used as collateral in this money transfer.
This stopped being about students the moment government got involved with money and regulations. This became about the education providers, who now could secure their income via government programs and lobbying of government officials say to increase education loans. Same with health insurance, etc. Any time government money and regulations get involved, prices go up and quality suffers, because there is no competition for quality of students. In fact with the guaranteed student loans, there is a perverse incentive to pass as many students as possible without failing them, so the quality of education went down dramatically (marking on a curve, teaching to a test, etc.)
The new money chasing the same amount of education made it possible to bring prices up dramatically, pricing out anybody who didn't want to take on all those loans. But this also created a bubble in education - now you have to get more and more of it, because people are coming into the system, who are told they can't go on without higher education, they are told they won't find ANY jobs now without a bachelor in something. This creates another perverse effect of having students in the system, who shouldn't be there.
Simultaneously the minimum wage laws made it basically impossible to hire people as apprentices, this destroyed ability of people to learn by getting hired for very little money.
How great would it have been for tens of thousands of people not to go to universities, but to go train on a job, earning little but NOT getting into all sorts of debt, and then spending 4 years making almost no money, but learning what they need to do work?
Well, in my case I distribute my site information to the customers in print, and I have instructions on how to accept the self signed cert., and the keys are all in the brochure. That's just one way. Obviously I left multiple comments in this thread talking about distributed lists transfered even via torrent like transport, coming from different locations and compared to each other, signed with hash keys, having expiration dates and being checked by site operators.
Any way towards removing the central signing authority needs to be looked at.
I am familiar with the forest fires coming back with vengeance after a while, it's a true problem that people create.
The prohibition of usury is more about unreasonably high rates charged for loans, but the religions are wrong. There should be a way to charge any amount of interest, but of-course the risk that comes with this is such that you should know, that many of the loans you make won't be returned. Some will be returned within a small amount of time, so even though the interest is very high, the absolute interest paid in money is really not that bad considering that the person really needed the money and couldn't get it from a different lender (maybe it was a very very risky thing he wanted to do, the collateral was non-existent, but the pay out was huge, so it makes sense to gamble), it is gambling - giving loans to people.
The problem with banks in the current financial market is the moral hazard provided by government, which guarantees depositors will be reimbursed, so bank depositors don't care to find out anything about the bank, they don't look at the business practice of the bank. Imagine that - they are loaning money to the bank (that's what a deposit is), but they don't check on what the bank is doing with the money. They don't care if the bank has private insurance and what the reserves are - government is going to take care of it.
Well CAs being 'Too Big To Fail' is exactly like that. Somebody is going to cover their problems, so why should we care about who we are using with part of our security procedure, an important, user facing part? Never mind, just do what everybody does.
--
Here is a good idea: whenever you find yourself in a situation, that the majority is agreeing with you, you need to reevaluate your own assertions and views, because it's likely you are on the wrong path as part of the herd.
Right, but you should then take a look at their "profits" a year and 2 years before that:
After a $53 million loss in 2009, it swing to a $90 million net profit in 2010. And profits grew 84 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to $11.8 million.
so they can swing by that much and you think it's a company that is really not hyped up and has a steady revenue and profit and can be actually evaluated to a billion IPO based on 3 years of performance record?
Right, this means all of the "Too Big To Fail" become shared ownership, and because their ways do not change, but their ability to hurt the economy/society grows, as they are now part of government system, they are going to get ever bigger. When all the things converge the government then becomes "Too Big To Fail" and because of all the misallocations and malinvestnments and resource misallignments based on the "Too Big To Fail" that are owned by the government, the government now is collapsing and there is nobody there who can bail out the government.
As to privatizing the army - the government already did that, what's Blackwater, so it failed in that respect.
The question is: how much can you put upon the government to do, before it becomes too big to fail, but then fails eventually anyway, taking down the economy with it?
When I hear that something is "Too Big To Fail", I think about 2008 but I also think about USSR. Was the entire country "Too Big To Fail"? How about USA, is it "Too Big To Fail"?
Who can prevent a country from failing?
CA is not a country, but if one CA issues a large number of certificates, then does this CA become too big to fail and do we close our eyes on the problem, which is - CA cannot be trusted?
Can a CA be trusted? Any CA at all? OK, let's turn this around and ask it differently, can a CA be shut down, as in, all certificates signed by that CA revoked and what is the moral hazard of NOT shutting down a CA if one is shown that it cannot be trusted?
Compare this question to the question of moral hazard in the financial industry: how much better is the health of economy now, that financial industry players were deemed "Too Big To Fail" and they were bailed out and stimulated?
Is it better now? Does anybody believe that the economy is better now, that those corporations were not allowed to go bankrupt, as the market required, debts liquidated, assets sold off to pay off some debts in order of priority?
I know the argument that is going to be brought up: counterparties are put at risk. Yes, other banks are put at risk and they will also go bankrupt and shut down and will have to be liquidated, because they assumed risk that was hedged by the counterparties, which are going down.
Same with the CAs, if you shut down the ones that are failing, then what about all the sites out there, whose certificates will stop working? It's not just B2P sites, it's all sorts of certificates that are used in B2B commerce systems, etc.
AFAIC there is no such thing: "Too Big To Fail". You let them fail, you always let them fail. Certificates must be recreated, it will cost businesses something, but it will make them choose their CAs (or whatever other means of doing business), this will increase competition, new ideas will be thrown around, likely many will go with self signed certificates (well many do, I know for a fact that many businesses do use self signed certificates for inter-business stuff).
If you think preventing something that is "Too Big To Fail" from failing with SOLVE the problem, look at the economy today, look at who was bailed out and think again.
Lehman Brothers failed and it was allowed to go bankrupt, this did not make financial crisis worse!
The destruction of that company displayed just how rotten the underlying economic and financial principles were, upon which the entire banking and investment sector were residing for the last 100 years, restructuring of debt was absolutely necessary, and failures of banks and other financial firms needed to continue. Today US and the world's economy would have been improving instead of going ever deeper down the drain with all the bail out and stimulus that was allocated to hide all of the malinvestments that were made, indeed due to government intervention - free money (1 and then 0% interest rates at the Fed's discount window) and all of the policies that sent jobs out of the country and at the same time caused the credit bubble (dot com, then housing, now US treasuries).
This has nothing to do with capitalism at all, AT ALL.
Your first point is about employment, because you are saying that somebody just doesn't have any income at all. So it may be the case with certain groups of people - some disabled people, the very young orphans, the very old and frail. If you are not one of these groups, in a working economy you'll find a job. Switzerland has under 4% unemployment and until just yesterday, Switzerland had the strongest currency, and it was becoming stronger every day, because the Swiss didn't try to play the currency war. Unfortunately the government decided it's going to give in to pressure of some of the money interests and will now print enough Francs to tie the currency to Euro a fixed exchange ratio.
This is the part where government starts destroying its own people's purchasing power and the economy of its own country. This is what Japan started doing 20 years ago, and still doing, this is what China is doing, Russia, USA and the rest of Europe (Germany).
This action is going to put Switzerland into the same fiscal zone as the rest of Europe, strengthening the Europe somewhat but hurting the Swiss plenty enough, the unemployment will go up as capital will start leaving (and I don't trust any fiat, so my money is real).
So this is what governments do to destroy their economies. In order to allow economies to fix themselves, governments must let go of the fiscal and economic regulations, not try and regulate what value of money is by destroying it.
It's easy to destroy the value of money and the underlying economy, it's very difficult to bring the value back up.
In an economy that is strong, unemployment is low and the instances of complete dependence on charity for certain individuals go down. Beyond that, the strong economy allows for greater charity by private individuals. You are saying you are keen on charity. Well, if you had more money it would be even easier for you to be charitable, wouldn't it? But it's totally different being charitable with your own resources from being charitable with other people's resources.
Can prices fall infinitely to 0? Not until we have infinite energy sources with free energy coming out of them, and even then prices won't be 0, they will just be very very low, so even a small salary would by enough to get by.
---
Your second point:
Marx obviously lived in the times of industrial revolution and machinery was expensive, so he was very specifically talking about factories and factory owners and workers.
Today it is not necessarily about being a factory worker and yes, education is important. However the same exact principles apply to education costs (and health insurance/maintenance costs) and other costs that apply to the costs of other goods.
Education is a good, just like bread or living accommodations. In absence of government intervention, the cost of education is set in the market by the individuals, it's basically about how many dollars are chasing the same goods. Once government got involved it became impossible for a person of limited means just to work part time and in the summer to afford full prices of tuition, but don't worry, the government was there to give out student loans.
Well that's exactly the problem - now the amount of dollars that was chasing education (or health care/insurance) has gone up dramatically from what was available to students, who were willing to work part time/summers and from just people who could afford education costs independently, to amount of dollars that could be transfered from government to the education institutions and the students were used as collateral in this money transfer.
This stopped being about students the moment government got involved with money and regulations. This became about the education providers, who now could secure their income via government programs and lobbying of government officials say to increase education loans. Same with health insurance, etc. Any time government money and regulations get involved, prices go up and quality suffers, becau
if you show them a fingerprint, they wouldn't know what to do
- well, people don't know how to use their GPS in their cars either, but they are still using them. It's not that hard for a bank to put a statement on the front page:
To make sure you are really on our site compare this number: 43:51:43:a1:b5:fc:8b:b7:0a:3a:a9:b1:0f:66:73:a8 to the fingerprint in your Internet browser address bar.
Browsers treat self-signed with suspicion because anyone can self-sign a certificate and they won't prove
- you can't prove that you are on HTTP site either, that doesn't cut it as an explanation for this duality in behavior. I wonder how much CAs pay browser development teams to add them to the CA lists.
CAs earned their trusts by passing a real audit
- I disagree. I don't trust any CA or whoever "audits" them. They didn't earn MY trust. That's the only trust that's important when I am browsing.
guarantees a minimum of security
- this makes no sense. I actually trust CAs less than I trust self signed certificates, because CAs are an easy target for government intervention into the security chain.
you describe a scheme of distributed CAs as a great alternative. We have now come full circle and returned to certificates checked against CAs.
- nope.
I never said that you must be a CA to host a list. I never said that you must prove yourself to be ANYTHING to host a list. In fact I am talking about multiple lists just being distributed via torrents. Some may be distributed via whoever wants to be seeing a distributer. Lists need to be checked actively by the site operators to make sure the data is right, and site operators can distribute their own lists. I am talking about a vote on security, not a central authority of any kind.
But nothing self-signed, that would be a nightmare.
- the nightmare for me is some third party signing a certificate for somebody else based on some authority they bought. This third party is a target for all sorts of intervention by all sorts of powers and money interests and that's the real nightmare.
Of-course people are part of market, and in real free market (market free of government regulations/intervention/money destruction/income taxes/subsidies/wars), the wants of those who are poor are met with lower and lower prices.
Do you know that early adopters pay premium on any technology or any product or service when it's first offered? Eventually the prices come down from prices that are only affordable by select few to prices that are affordable to "upper-middle" economic class, then just "middle class" and then even the lower economic class. Anybody has a TV, anybody has a mobile phone. People have living accommodations even those who are really destitute, because there are places where one can find shelter for just a few hundred bucks a month, and anybody in principle can make that much money and in the existing system they can have welfare paying for those accommodations.
In 19 century USA the market was free of government intervention, there were no regulations or income taxes, and USA was producing more and more cheap, high quality goods, and prices were falling all the time. Over time products became cheaper, not more expensive, as any risk that was taken had to be more calculated, as real money was at stake, before government learned how to counterfeit money with fiat currency.
AFAIC the real charity comes out of individuals, not out of governments, forcing individuals at the gun point to be 'charitable', and individuals can be charitable when they are themselves not destitute and this is only possible when there is a good working economy. Of-course government hijacks the economy, destroys it with counterfeiting, regulations, income taxes, subsidies to their buddies - monopolies, and destroys competition, drives capital to other countries and destroys production.
I left a journal entry here just now, and it's a point by point rebuttal of this entire premise in TFA, check it out if you want to see where I am coming from.
Actually I specifically mentioned that charity is a different type of cause, which may not require profit to be done. It's your resources that you are going to spend (if it's real charity, and not "charity" forced upon individuals by government authority), so I fail to see the problem with it.
You want to be charitable - that's great. Try building iPads by doing charity and have a product of similar quality have similar success. Charity has nothing to do with products that market wants, it's more for your personal satisfaction of having done something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
It's NOT self-regulation, that's the big confusion.
Do you go around punching people in the face? Is it self regulation, or is it because you are going to have to face some consequences, least of which will be government involvement?
What about prices, can you sell your used car for a price of a new car? If not, why not?
There is no such thing as self-regulation. I am never implying it, never was, this is a huge straw-man.
There is such thing as market regulation, and if government was doing its job right, it would be protecting your and everybody's individual liberties, property, enforcing contracts and protecting the borders.
One thing you can rely on: people acting in their own self interest. This is what makes regulations, not self-imposed regulations, but regulations imposed by the market where you are an actor.
Well, if it were C and not C++, I'd suggest this project. There are so many concepts involved in database development, that it can give a run for its money to OS kernels, graphics libraries and probably most specialized math/astronomy/healthcare related software.
But it's C.
Gold could ONLY work if all the gold was in the US.
- you don't have a single clue, not a foggiest idea of what you speak. USA needs to produce more, but it consumed too much and it owes too much, so it needs to allow interest rates to be set by the market. This will happen anyway once the t-bonds bubble collapses. This will set interest rates where they belong, USA will be prevented from consumption.
Since all other countries now are following the same practice of fiat destruction, the other fiat currencies will collapse as well as dollar and gold will be de-facto money. Today gold is preferred market money as is. For USA to just return to gold standard, the market would have to discover the appropriate price, probably setting troy ounce at anywhere between 25,000 and 300,000 USD / ounce.
People see this minor recession(yes 10% unemployment is minor)
- unemployment and underemployment numbers are as fudged as any other government numbers, including inflation (real between 10 and 13%) and GDP, which has been falling steadily for 5 years at least, especially given that the deflater (CPI) is off by about 10%. Also US GDP is 70% consumption of foreign produced goods. "Domestic" my ass.
Ron paul is a racist lunatic who some how think removing regulations is better;
- you are a troll. Ron Paul is the only candidate to address the drug war as it must be - he is for abolishing it, and he wants to pardon all drug related non-violent prisoners.
These people are predominantly minorities. Right, a racist. You are such an incredible fucking asshole, it's beyond reprimand.
He is a clue fuck twad
- this is both, grammatically incorrect and inflammatory. There is a reason you are on 'foe' list. I only put people there who are actual trolls, liars and are also stupid. You meet all of the 3 criteria.
Have a good day.
I was born in USSR, in Ukraine, and I believe many people who had to go through the Chernobyl experience here would rather have Fukushima experience. So AFAIC State ran nuclear power plants are much more dangerous than private ones.
Don't blame a "young and inexperienced engineer" for something, that the political system was responsible for.
I don't trust State in this much more than I don't trust a private company. Sure, a private company will find ways to screw up. However a private company also needs to continue making profits, and this means more reactors to be built and brought on line and this means looking at ways of improving the business by cutting costs. But cutting costs is a good thing if it can be done, because in case of such complex machines, it means investment into some types of new tools, research that allows to cut costs.
Cutting costs is not about letting the reactor stand there - rot in the dust, it won't make you any profit.
Intel increases profit by designing and building new processors, not by cutting costs where processors become unusable. Same with any business. I want to cut costs, and it's a good thing. I want to cut costs and government does not, because government is not looking at the economic side of this.
From cost cutting comes innovation, that's the real reason to do any innovation. When James Watt came out with the new separate condenser for a steam engine, he actually cut costs of energy expenditure and he increased efficiencies of the engines, making them better and more useful for everyday purposes.
Sure, some cost cutting when done indiscriminately can be dangerous, that's why gov't should be protecting private property and other rights of individuals - to allow recourse and prevent stupid things before they even happening by not letting the companies to run liability free.
The Chernobyl plant did not have anything to do with weapons or politics.
- oh?
Nothing to do with weapons -
The RBMK was the culmination of the Soviet nuclear power program to produce a water-cooled power reactor based on their graphite-moderated plutonium production military reactors. ..... .......
The refueling machine is mounted on a gantry crane and remotely controlled. The fuel assemblies can be replaced without shutting down the reactor, a factor significant for production of weapon-grade plutonium and, in a civilian context, for better reactor uptime. When a fuel assembly has to be replaced, the machine is positioned above the fuel channel, mates to it, equalizes pressure within, pulls the rod, and inserts a fresh one. The spent rod is then placed in a cooling pond. The capacity of the refueling machine with the reactor at nominal power level is two fuel assemblies per day, with peak capacity of five per day.
RBMK reactors were designed to allow fuel rods to be changed without shutting down (as in the pressurized heavy water CANDU reactor), both for refueling and for plutonium production (for nuclear weapons). This required large cranes above the core.
Nothing to do with politics -
In his book âoeThe Legacy of Chernobylâ, Zhores Medvedyev reveals that the turbine rundown test was to have been completed at the end of 1982, before the reactor was brought into a commercial regime. It was on a list of things, in typical Soviet fashion, that was agreed by the various ministries involved âoeto be completed laterâ notwithstanding the point that it was a requirement for the reactor to pass inspection. These kinds of oversights were typical to make sure that various projects were completed on or before deadlines, especially when there were bonuses at stake.
As to Fukushima - definitely there were some problem, I am still convinced that a privately operated reactor stands better even under these disastrous circumstances than a State operated one. It's right here, black on white.
By the way, do you really want unregulated nuclear power plants? Just look at what the effects of un-regulated hydrolic fracturing has on the surrounding environment.
- well, shit. Exactly. You want more and more nuclear power plants, so that your soil can be left alone, because it will not be economically viable to get more hydrocarbons out of the ground even with fracking, because nuclear power would be so abundant.
What we really need is government run nuclear power plants.
- you should read my first comment again.
State ran power plant - Chernobyl.
Privately ran power plant - Fukushima.
Excuse me if I am not adventurous enough for you to want a State ran power plant anywhere near me.
. Screw the private industry, they will do almost anything to make a profit including cutting corners with safety standards and waste management.
- no no. Private industry will not do "almost" anything to make a profit.
Private industry will do anything to make a profit. Government has a role - enforcing liberties, private property and all other rights. That's what government is really for, and this is enough to keep any business from abuse as long as government cannot be bought off.
Government can only be bought off if it's allowed to regulate the private industry. What is needed is more private involvement into everything and less government, what we need is to get innovation and invention back, and it's not done with public money, it's done with private interests as long as there are few barriers to entry constructed by the government.
There need to be inventions in nuclear power, which will not come from government. There need to be inventions that will miniaturize nuclear power generation.
Thanks! I don't like the moderation system here specifically because there are 'super' moderators.
Also if I was designing one, I would allow anybody moderate any story with say a maximum of 2 points even if they post in the story.
Maximum of 2 points, but also, if one comment becomes too controversial, like it gets moderated up and down, up and down, I would keep it moderated up and then lock it from any further moderation. Clearly people disagreeing on a comment like that means it's at least worth a discussion and not to be shut out.
Also I think I would allow people to trade moderation. Why not? Have a moderator point exchange! This would be interesting, could even buy moderator points for real money :)
Thanks though, I was getting killed indiscriminately.
My point is that we don't know because we haven't tried doing all sorts of things that individuals could try. Sure, 99% of them would fail. What if somebody figures out a different way to get to the energy stored in the nuclear material without building a gigantic power plant and without exploding a bomb?
There is a way to FIX the problem of seagull managers, of overpaid CEOs, of underpaid investors, to fix the problem, not to apply band aids to it.
Stop destruction of money by inflation and stop allowing the Federal reserve to monetize Treasury debt.
This problem of overpaid CEOs, of non-existing dividend yields is found in USA more than in any other place, and it's because the business shares (corporate bonds) are not bought with a vision of investment, so most people are buying shares to flip them, not to hold them and not be actual investors to get dividends and to participate in the company's success.
The reason that people are not doing it is because the entire stock market in USA is turned into a giant casino by all this "free" money (it's not really free, you pay for it with insane inflation but the point stays). All this currency that is printed by the Fed and is lent at no interest, combined with the treasury bonds that yield some tiny interest allow making some "safe" steady profit stream (why are all these banks so "profitable" all of a sudden? What, you think they are smart?)
The problem is that there is no reason to pay dividends to shareholders. The expectation is not of being an investor, but instead of being a short term speculator. The incentive is not to hold an investment to get dividend, but to hope that the purchase will go up in price and to make the difference quickly. The reason is that the inflation is insanely huge - over 10%, close to 13% and it's been there for a long time, easily starting from 1971 (defaulting on the promise to pay gold for reserve notes).
With an inflation like that nobody can compete in providing a meaningful dividend yield. The money is cheap, so many people just gamble, and they gamble REGARDLESS of whether there is dividend yield or there isn't one, so there is no incentive to pay it.
Without paying dividends to the investors, the money can be then spent on insane CEO payments and management bonuses.
The system is broken, but applying band aid solutions won't help until there is a clear understanding why the system is broken.
State operated nuclear power plant, designed to produce weapon grade nuclear material and operated without complete theoretical understanding of the underlying principles and mishandled due to political pressure
vs
privately operated, but State regulated power plant, designed to provide power while withstanding extreme weather conditions, but a plant that should really have been decommissioned and newer designs should have been put into operation.
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A reactor explosion due to build up of extreme pressure
vs
A reactor breach without an explosion but with hydrogen exploding subsequently around the reactor.
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Well, I want privately operated power plants with new types of design, that's what I want all over the place. I want private money being allowed into the field, letting up on the government regulations, I want a tiny nuclear reactor in my house and in my car and at some point in my lightsaber, how about that?
Nope. The most disappointing president ever was Reagan.
That guy promised to deliver specific things: libertarian agenda basically. He failed like the other side was a boss.
It pisses me off every time I think about him being endorsed by Ron Paul, who believed in the message of that guy. But when it came to implementation it was absolutely horrendous. The first thing Reagan should have done obviously was re-evaluate the USD and connect it back to gold, that would have taken care of spending immediately. Instead the he grew the spending, deficits, waste, it was atrocious.
Education is a good, just like bread or living accommodations. In absence of government intervention, the cost of education is set in the market by the individuals, it's basically about how many dollars are chasing the same goods. Once government got involved it became impossible for a person of limited means just to work part time and in the summer to afford full prices of tuition, but don't worry, the government was there to give out student loans.
Well that's exactly the problem - now the amount of dollars that was chasing education (or health care/insurance) has gone up dramatically from what was available to students, who were willing to work part time/summers and from just people who could afford education costs independently, to amount of dollars that could be transfered from government to the education institutions and the students were used as collateral in this money transfer.
This stopped being about students the moment government got involved with money and regulations. This became about the education providers, who now could secure their income via government programs and lobbying of government officials say to increase education loans. Same with health insurance, etc. Any time government money and regulations get involved, prices go up and quality suffers, because there is no competition for quality of students. In fact with the guaranteed student loans, there is a perverse incentive to pass as many students as possible without failing them, so the quality of education went down dramatically (marking on a curve, teaching to a test, etc.)
The new money chasing the same amount of education made it possible to bring prices up dramatically, pricing out anybody who didn't want to take on all those loans. But this also created a bubble in education - now you have to get more and more of it, because people are coming into the system, who are told they can't go on without higher education, they are told they won't find ANY jobs now without a bachelor in something. This creates another perverse effect of having students in the system, who shouldn't be there.
Simultaneously the minimum wage laws made it basically impossible to hire people as apprentices, this destroyed ability of people to learn by getting hired for very little money.
How great would it have been for tens of thousands of people not to go to universities, but to go train on a job, earning little but NOT getting into all sorts of debt, and then spending 4 years making almost no money, but learning what they need to do work?
Well, in my case I distribute my site information to the customers in print, and I have instructions on how to accept the self signed cert., and the keys are all in the brochure. That's just one way. Obviously I left multiple comments in this thread talking about distributed lists transfered even via torrent like transport, coming from different locations and compared to each other, signed with hash keys, having expiration dates and being checked by site operators.
Any way towards removing the central signing authority needs to be looked at.
Very interesting indeed, this could become a competitor to airlines, not only in price, but also in comfort (not in speed though).
I would love to take a ride in one of those. Even cooler would be to buy and own one, and just live in it!
What the hell, I would want to try it - live on an airship, spending most of my time in the air!
I am familiar with the forest fires coming back with vengeance after a while, it's a true problem that people create.
The prohibition of usury is more about unreasonably high rates charged for loans, but the religions are wrong. There should be a way to charge any amount of interest, but of-course the risk that comes with this is such that you should know, that many of the loans you make won't be returned. Some will be returned within a small amount of time, so even though the interest is very high, the absolute interest paid in money is really not that bad considering that the person really needed the money and couldn't get it from a different lender (maybe it was a very very risky thing he wanted to do, the collateral was non-existent, but the pay out was huge, so it makes sense to gamble), it is gambling - giving loans to people.
The problem with banks in the current financial market is the moral hazard provided by government, which guarantees depositors will be reimbursed, so bank depositors don't care to find out anything about the bank, they don't look at the business practice of the bank. Imagine that - they are loaning money to the bank (that's what a deposit is), but they don't check on what the bank is doing with the money. They don't care if the bank has private insurance and what the reserves are - government is going to take care of it.
Well CAs being 'Too Big To Fail' is exactly like that. Somebody is going to cover their problems, so why should we care about who we are using with part of our security procedure, an important, user facing part? Never mind, just do what everybody does.
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Here is a good idea: whenever you find yourself in a situation, that the majority is agreeing with you, you need to reevaluate your own assertions and views, because it's likely you are on the wrong path as part of the herd.
Right, but you should then take a look at their "profits" a year and 2 years before that:
After a $53 million loss in 2009, it swing to a $90 million net profit in 2010. And profits grew 84 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to $11.8 million.
so they can swing by that much and you think it's a company that is really not hyped up and has a steady revenue and profit and can be actually evaluated to a billion IPO based on 3 years of performance record?
Right, this means all of the "Too Big To Fail" become shared ownership, and because their ways do not change, but their ability to hurt the economy/society grows, as they are now part of government system, they are going to get ever bigger. When all the things converge the government then becomes "Too Big To Fail" and because of all the misallocations and malinvestnments and resource misallignments based on the "Too Big To Fail" that are owned by the government, the government now is collapsing and there is nobody there who can bail out the government.
As to privatizing the army - the government already did that, what's Blackwater, so it failed in that respect.
The question is: how much can you put upon the government to do, before it becomes too big to fail, but then fails eventually anyway, taking down the economy with it?
When I hear that something is "Too Big To Fail", I think about 2008 but I also think about USSR. Was the entire country "Too Big To Fail"? How about USA, is it "Too Big To Fail"?
Who can prevent a country from failing?
CA is not a country, but if one CA issues a large number of certificates, then does this CA become too big to fail and do we close our eyes on the problem, which is - CA cannot be trusted?
Can a CA be trusted? Any CA at all? OK, let's turn this around and ask it differently, can a CA be shut down, as in, all certificates signed by that CA revoked and what is the moral hazard of NOT shutting down a CA if one is shown that it cannot be trusted?
Compare this question to the question of moral hazard in the financial industry: how much better is the health of economy now, that financial industry players were deemed "Too Big To Fail" and they were bailed out and stimulated?
Is it better now? Does anybody believe that the economy is better now, that those corporations were not allowed to go bankrupt, as the market required, debts liquidated, assets sold off to pay off some debts in order of priority?
I know the argument that is going to be brought up: counterparties are put at risk. Yes, other banks are put at risk and they will also go bankrupt and shut down and will have to be liquidated, because they assumed risk that was hedged by the counterparties, which are going down.
Same with the CAs, if you shut down the ones that are failing, then what about all the sites out there, whose certificates will stop working? It's not just B2P sites, it's all sorts of certificates that are used in B2B commerce systems, etc.
AFAIC there is no such thing: "Too Big To Fail". You let them fail, you always let them fail. Certificates must be recreated, it will cost businesses something, but it will make them choose their CAs (or whatever other means of doing business), this will increase competition, new ideas will be thrown around, likely many will go with self signed certificates (well many do, I know for a fact that many businesses do use self signed certificates for inter-business stuff).
If you think preventing something that is "Too Big To Fail" from failing with SOLVE the problem, look at the economy today, look at who was bailed out and think again.
Lehman Brothers failed and it was allowed to go bankrupt, this did not make financial crisis worse!
The destruction of that company displayed just how rotten the underlying economic and financial principles were, upon which the entire banking and investment sector were residing for the last 100 years, restructuring of debt was absolutely necessary, and failures of banks and other financial firms needed to continue. Today US and the world's economy would have been improving instead of going ever deeper down the drain with all the bail out and stimulus that was allocated to hide all of the malinvestments that were made, indeed due to government intervention - free money (1 and then 0% interest rates at the Fed's discount window) and all of the policies that sent jobs out of the country and at the same time caused the credit bubble (dot com, then housing, now US treasuries).
This has nothing to do with capitalism at all, AT ALL.
Here is a speech given on 13th of November, 2006, explaining in precise detail how and why the economy was failing, so it was clearly predictable, because it was absolutely explainable, and the explanation was fairly well understood by enough people who made quite a killing on this.
Exactly, I mentioned DNS in this thread.
Your first point is about employment, because you are saying that somebody just doesn't have any income at all. So it may be the case with certain groups of people - some disabled people, the very young orphans, the very old and frail. If you are not one of these groups, in a working economy you'll find a job. Switzerland has under 4% unemployment and until just yesterday, Switzerland had the strongest currency, and it was becoming stronger every day, because the Swiss didn't try to play the currency war. Unfortunately the government decided it's going to give in to pressure of some of the money interests and will now print enough Francs to tie the currency to Euro a fixed exchange ratio.
This is the part where government starts destroying its own people's purchasing power and the economy of its own country. This is what Japan started doing 20 years ago, and still doing, this is what China is doing, Russia, USA and the rest of Europe (Germany).
This action is going to put Switzerland into the same fiscal zone as the rest of Europe, strengthening the Europe somewhat but hurting the Swiss plenty enough, the unemployment will go up as capital will start leaving (and I don't trust any fiat, so my money is real).
So this is what governments do to destroy their economies. In order to allow economies to fix themselves, governments must let go of the fiscal and economic regulations, not try and regulate what value of money is by destroying it.
It's easy to destroy the value of money and the underlying economy, it's very difficult to bring the value back up.
In an economy that is strong, unemployment is low and the instances of complete dependence on charity for certain individuals go down. Beyond that, the strong economy allows for greater charity by private individuals. You are saying you are keen on charity. Well, if you had more money it would be even easier for you to be charitable, wouldn't it? But it's totally different being charitable with your own resources from being charitable with other people's resources.
Can prices fall infinitely to 0? Not until we have infinite energy sources with free energy coming out of them, and even then prices won't be 0, they will just be very very low, so even a small salary would by enough to get by.
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Your second point:
Marx obviously lived in the times of industrial revolution and machinery was expensive, so he was very specifically talking about factories and factory owners and workers.
Today it is not necessarily about being a factory worker and yes, education is important. However the same exact principles apply to education costs (and health insurance/maintenance costs) and other costs that apply to the costs of other goods.
Education is a good, just like bread or living accommodations. In absence of government intervention, the cost of education is set in the market by the individuals, it's basically about how many dollars are chasing the same goods. Once government got involved it became impossible for a person of limited means just to work part time and in the summer to afford full prices of tuition, but don't worry, the government was there to give out student loans.
Well that's exactly the problem - now the amount of dollars that was chasing education (or health care/insurance) has gone up dramatically from what was available to students, who were willing to work part time/summers and from just people who could afford education costs independently, to amount of dollars that could be transfered from government to the education institutions and the students were used as collateral in this money transfer.
This stopped being about students the moment government got involved with money and regulations. This became about the education providers, who now could secure their income via government programs and lobbying of government officials say to increase education loans. Same with health insurance, etc. Any time government money and regulations get involved, prices go up and quality suffers, becau
if you show them a fingerprint, they wouldn't know what to do
- well, people don't know how to use their GPS in their cars either, but they are still using them. It's not that hard for a bank to put a statement on the front page:
To make sure you are really on our site compare this number: 43:51:43:a1:b5:fc:8b:b7:0a:3a:a9:b1:0f:66:73:a8 to the fingerprint in your Internet browser address bar.
Browsers treat self-signed with suspicion because anyone can self-sign a certificate and they won't prove
- you can't prove that you are on HTTP site either, that doesn't cut it as an explanation for this duality in behavior. I wonder how much CAs pay browser development teams to add them to the CA lists.
CAs earned their trusts by passing a real audit
- I disagree. I don't trust any CA or whoever "audits" them. They didn't earn MY trust. That's the only trust that's important when I am browsing.
guarantees a minimum of security
- this makes no sense. I actually trust CAs less than I trust self signed certificates, because CAs are an easy target for government intervention into the security chain.
you describe a scheme of distributed CAs as a great alternative. We have now come full circle and returned to certificates checked against CAs.
- nope.
I never said that you must be a CA to host a list. I never said that you must prove yourself to be ANYTHING to host a list. In fact I am talking about multiple lists just being distributed via torrents. Some may be distributed via whoever wants to be seeing a distributer. Lists need to be checked actively by the site operators to make sure the data is right, and site operators can distribute their own lists. I am talking about a vote on security, not a central authority of any kind.
But nothing self-signed, that would be a nightmare.
- the nightmare for me is some third party signing a certificate for somebody else based on some authority they bought. This third party is a target for all sorts of intervention by all sorts of powers and money interests and that's the real nightmare.
Of-course people are part of market, and in real free market (market free of government regulations/intervention/money destruction/income taxes/subsidies/wars), the wants of those who are poor are met with lower and lower prices.
Do you know that early adopters pay premium on any technology or any product or service when it's first offered? Eventually the prices come down from prices that are only affordable by select few to prices that are affordable to "upper-middle" economic class, then just "middle class" and then even the lower economic class. Anybody has a TV, anybody has a mobile phone. People have living accommodations even those who are really destitute, because there are places where one can find shelter for just a few hundred bucks a month, and anybody in principle can make that much money and in the existing system they can have welfare paying for those accommodations.
In 19 century USA the market was free of government intervention, there were no regulations or income taxes, and USA was producing more and more cheap, high quality goods, and prices were falling all the time. Over time products became cheaper, not more expensive, as any risk that was taken had to be more calculated, as real money was at stake, before government learned how to counterfeit money with fiat currency.
AFAIC the real charity comes out of individuals, not out of governments, forcing individuals at the gun point to be 'charitable', and individuals can be charitable when they are themselves not destitute and this is only possible when there is a good working economy. Of-course government hijacks the economy, destroys it with counterfeiting, regulations, income taxes, subsidies to their buddies - monopolies, and destroys competition, drives capital to other countries and destroys production.
I left a journal entry here just now, and it's a point by point rebuttal of this entire premise in TFA, check it out if you want to see where I am coming from.
Actually I specifically mentioned that charity is a different type of cause, which may not require profit to be done. It's your resources that you are going to spend (if it's real charity, and not "charity" forced upon individuals by government authority), so I fail to see the problem with it.
You want to be charitable - that's great. Try building iPads by doing charity and have a product of similar quality have similar success. Charity has nothing to do with products that market wants, it's more for your personal satisfaction of having done something like that.
Good for you.