"We need workers that have as much rights as machines, make us money, but are never in the way, and require no maintenance"
Well, you can't have both. Either you are a non-profit organisation that facilitates people doing something for each other, or you are a for-profit employer with employees. Uber seems to think that the term "sharing economy" means that everybody "shares" their money towards Uber itself.
No. I just want a sane society. A society based on cooperation is easier than one based on abuse. I don't want to be a slave, but I don't want slaves myself either. I just want slavery to stop. No, I do not follow.
Inspired by Douglas Adams, there will be a space program to send everyone from the UK into space. In three space craft. We send the ternary sector first...
a 60-year-old entrepreneur who made himself a fortune on Wall Street
The con, sorry, finance industry is one of the few areas where sane thinking only leads to people jumping ship instead of production. In real professions, you'd better know what you are talking about.
I always wonder how anyone with more than a half brain cell can work in the finance industry and still look at himself in the mirror each morning.
That is exactly the reason you should use cash. The financial industry tries to shoehorn itself into every transaction you make. Society is by far better off without banks than without cash.
A lot. First of all, the money system could be in the hands of society instead of the other way around, as it is now. This could change the very definition of money for the Greeks.
The current situation in Europe is that all the nations are under control of the European Central Bank. NOT the other way around, as the ECB is an independent institution. This independent institution however has the power to grab as much money from the nations as they want (through the "stability pact"). Even so, it is just a bank, but with the right to print money.
Now you all know how fiat money is made, right? You have to give (well, promise) a valuable thing to the bank (the "security"), the bank puts in in the books, says "hey, we have an extra amount of money in the books!" and "lends" it out to you. I put the word "lends" between quotes, because it is not lent, but created by this bookkeping fraud. The money never existed before the loan. Off course, holding their laugh, the bank says that they are doing something risky by lending your own value out to you, so they ask usury. In Newspeak: interest. So, basically, you pay the bank to hijack your security.
There is off course a downside to this piramid scheme: the usury that you have to pay extra has never existed and can only be generated by new loans! At some point you are lending so much to pay the usury (thus bringing more and more valuable items to the bank as security!), that loads get refused, and you will have to default or plunder even more resources to give away to the bank. That is where Greece is right now. The Greeks have nothing to loose, as they have been plundered to the bone already.
Now what would happen if society itself (represented by the goverment for example) could issue money? In that case money could become "effort for the greater good of society" instead of "bottomless debt to an independent company". The government could pay "made up" money to people building roads, providing healthcare, etc. That money can then circulate further within society. The difference would not be that the money is made up (it is made up now also), but that money would actually get a real value. Off course, the goverment can always "unmake up" the money with taxes. But hey, taxes can be much lower. Instead of requiring high taxes in bank-debt to pay to road-building companies and to repay it and more to the ECB, the money can become its own tax! You pay in effort to society instead of in bank debt to the bank!
Off course there is a catch: everything depends on how wise the amount of money is chosen to be paid to society. Too little, and society will issue its own currency (and pay in sigarettes, for example). Too much, and nobody will believe the numbers. Vary too fast, and the money will be unreliable. I really wish the Greek goverment a lot of wisdom.
As an aside, if the government prints the money, they can set the rules as well. A ban on usury ("interest"), for example. Or a ban on speculation that is no more than a gambling game. Or even negative interest (some local currencies feature this) to encourage people to keep the money circulating.
All in all, getting control over their own money is the best (and I think the only) option left to Greece.
Do you have any idea how much it would cost the tax payers to try to *replace* all that embedded technology?
A lot less then trying to work around systems that cannot be maintained, let alone be repaired and are therefore utterly broken. Have you any idea how many security leaks their software must have? Even if they upgrade Windows for a few MegaBucks, all the libraries used inside the software remain unpatched. Heck, if somebody from China wants to be anonymous on-line, it is probably easier to do through the US Navy than through any Chinese server.
Are you sure? Tax havens like the Netherlands are "home" to a huge lot of companies who are only there on paper to avoid taxation. However, there have already been a lot of lawsuits by such companies abusing Dutch treaties. So many in fact, that other countries are thinking of revoking all their treaties with the Netherlands.
Given that nuclear energy producers are not required to have an insurance against nuclear disasters (at least on this side of the Pond), is insurance included or is it as usual "delegated" to society? The calculator itself refuses to run without cross-site scripting attacks from Google, so I could not check.
If it serves as a "basis for discussion", you can bet it serves a political rather than a technical purpose.
I don't know where you come from, but if a windmill or a wind turbine makes any noise at all, it is time to put some grease on the bearings. Modern wind turbines run at their own pace and synchronize the frequency themselves before adding the power to the grid. And what I really cannot understand is why people complain about wind turbines being ugly and not about flood-lighted billboards. These are really ugly, but nobody complains about them.
Oh yes. I don't think they have zero rupee notes or an equivalent in the USA. At least in Europe we sure could use a € 0,- note. Just look at how Greece is being extorted by the international financial sector.
Funny, if they can steal your card along with the codes (you have to pay, right?), this means that all your money can be stolen. If I pay with cash, they can only steal the amount of cash I happen to carry on my person. Apart from that, digital currency is just made up by a regular bank when issuing a loan, while paper money is at least a bit more official. Our banking and money system is so fucked up we should depend less on banks, not more.
The same as you do with the regular waste, I think. Where I live, compost is collected separately. Anyway, collecting compost is a lot easier that purifying water.
Sorry, but why do you shit in drinking water to begin with? Just use a compost toilet. The composting process kills almost every known disease, and if it is your own toilet, you know what diseases went in, so you know what can come out (it probably won't, and if it does, your body has learned to cope with it).
It's literally dirt cheap, low-tech, and can be implemented almost anywhere. And you get better compost as well. See the Humanure Handbook for all the details.
It puts McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the bill’s co-sponsor, squarely on the side of advocates of the National Security Agency’s continued ability to collect millions of Americans’ phone records each day in the cluesless hunt for terrorist activity
Slashdot Mirror
Aye! The good old times! I still miss the polite habit of throwing the oncoming traffic out of the saddle with a lance...
I would very much rather take the loop out of the lawyer.
"We need workers that have as much rights as machines, make us money, but are never in the way, and require no maintenance"
Well, you can't have both. Either you are a non-profit organisation that facilitates people doing something for each other, or you are a for-profit employer with employees. Uber seems to think that the term "sharing economy" means that everybody "shares" their money towards Uber itself.
Envious much?
No. I just want a sane society. A society based on cooperation is easier than one based on abuse. I don't want to be a slave, but I don't want slaves myself either. I just want slavery to stop. No, I do not follow.
Inspired by Douglas Adams, there will be a space program to send everyone from the UK into space. In three space craft. We send the ternary sector first...
a 60-year-old entrepreneur who made himself a fortune on Wall Street
The con, sorry, finance industry is one of the few areas where sane thinking only leads to people jumping ship instead of production. In real professions, you'd better know what you are talking about.
I always wonder how anyone with more than a half brain cell can work in the finance industry and still look at himself in the mirror each morning.
Yes, but at least they screw themselves now instead of being raped by foreigners.
As a Greek, you're paying for someone else's money anyway.
There, fixed that for you.
Because those machines are just as old and therefore come with just as dry capacitors?
That is exactly the reason you should use cash. The financial industry tries to shoehorn itself into every transaction you make. Society is by far better off without banks than without cash.
What would exiting the Euro actually accomplish?
A lot. First of all, the money system could be in the hands of society instead of the other way around, as it is now. This could change the very definition of money for the Greeks.
The current situation in Europe is that all the nations are under control of the European Central Bank. NOT the other way around, as the ECB is an independent institution. This independent institution however has the power to grab as much money from the nations as they want (through the "stability pact"). Even so, it is just a bank, but with the right to print money.
Now you all know how fiat money is made, right? You have to give (well, promise) a valuable thing to the bank (the "security"), the bank puts in in the books, says "hey, we have an extra amount of money in the books!" and "lends" it out to you. I put the word "lends" between quotes, because it is not lent, but created by this bookkeping fraud. The money never existed before the loan. Off course, holding their laugh, the bank says that they are doing something risky by lending your own value out to you, so they ask usury. In Newspeak: interest. So, basically, you pay the bank to hijack your security.
There is off course a downside to this piramid scheme: the usury that you have to pay extra has never existed and can only be generated by new loans! At some point you are lending so much to pay the usury (thus bringing more and more valuable items to the bank as security!), that loads get refused, and you will have to default or plunder even more resources to give away to the bank. That is where Greece is right now. The Greeks have nothing to loose, as they have been plundered to the bone already.
Now what would happen if society itself (represented by the goverment for example) could issue money? In that case money could become "effort for the greater good of society" instead of "bottomless debt to an independent company". The government could pay "made up" money to people building roads, providing healthcare, etc. That money can then circulate further within society. The difference would not be that the money is made up (it is made up now also), but that money would actually get a real value. Off course, the goverment can always "unmake up" the money with taxes. But hey, taxes can be much lower. Instead of requiring high taxes in bank-debt to pay to road-building companies and to repay it and more to the ECB, the money can become its own tax! You pay in effort to society instead of in bank debt to the bank!
Off course there is a catch: everything depends on how wise the amount of money is chosen to be paid to society. Too little, and society will issue its own currency (and pay in sigarettes, for example). Too much, and nobody will believe the numbers. Vary too fast, and the money will be unreliable. I really wish the Greek goverment a lot of wisdom.
As an aside, if the government prints the money, they can set the rules as well. A ban on usury ("interest"), for example. Or a ban on speculation that is no more than a gambling game. Or even negative interest (some local currencies feature this) to encourage people to keep the money circulating.
All in all, getting control over their own money is the best (and I think the only) option left to Greece.
Yes, but when it comes, it will be spectacular.
Do you have any idea how much it would cost the tax payers to try to *replace* all that embedded technology?
A lot less then trying to work around systems that cannot be maintained, let alone be repaired and are therefore utterly broken. Have you any idea how many security leaks their software must have? Even if they upgrade Windows for a few MegaBucks, all the libraries used inside the software remain unpatched. Heck, if somebody from China wants to be anonymous on-line, it is probably easier to do through the US Navy than through any Chinese server.
Good thing Slashdot isn't in the EU
Are you sure? Tax havens like the Netherlands are "home" to a huge lot of companies who are only there on paper to avoid taxation. However, there have already been a lot of lawsuits by such companies abusing Dutch treaties. So many in fact, that other countries are thinking of revoking all their treaties with the Netherlands.
It's both. But when it's awful, it is really awful.
Given that nuclear energy producers are not required to have an insurance against nuclear disasters (at least on this side of the Pond), is insurance included or is it as usual "delegated" to society? The calculator itself refuses to run without cross-site scripting attacks from Google, so I could not check.
If it serves as a "basis for discussion", you can bet it serves a political rather than a technical purpose.
I don't know where you come from, but if a windmill or a wind turbine makes any noise at all, it is time to put some grease on the bearings. Modern wind turbines run at their own pace and synchronize the frequency themselves before adding the power to the grid. And what I really cannot understand is why people complain about wind turbines being ugly and not about flood-lighted billboards. These are really ugly, but nobody complains about them.
Oh yes. I don't think they have zero rupee notes or an equivalent in the USA. At least in Europe we sure could use a € 0,- note. Just look at how Greece is being extorted by the international financial sector.
Funny, if they can steal your card along with the codes (you have to pay, right?), this means that all your money can be stolen. If I pay with cash, they can only steal the amount of cash I happen to carry on my person. Apart from that, digital currency is just made up by a regular bank when issuing a loan, while paper money is at least a bit more official. Our banking and money system is so fucked up we should depend less on banks, not more.
The same as you do with the regular waste, I think. Where I live, compost is collected separately. Anyway, collecting compost is a lot easier that purifying water.
Sorry, but why do you shit in drinking water to begin with? Just use a compost toilet. The composting process kills almost every known disease, and if it is your own toilet, you know what diseases went in, so you know what can come out (it probably won't, and if it does, your body has learned to cope with it). It's literally dirt cheap, low-tech, and can be implemented almost anywhere. And you get better compost as well. See the Humanure Handbook for all the details.
And off course the other way around. If I hack a router, I want to be anonymous. Oops, forgot to post as coward...
Indeed. Please stay there.
It puts McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the bill’s co-sponsor, squarely on the side of advocates of the National Security Agency’s continued ability to collect millions of Americans’ phone records each day in the cluesless hunt for terrorist activity
There, fixed that for you