The wealth distribution is fairly equal when you look at it in historic terms.
In the US for example: anyone, anywhere has access to clean water that isn't going to cause any waterborne diseases, there is nearly universal literacy (and anyone who is illiterate has many opportunities to learn to read), while hunger is still a problem in some areas, in the vast, vast majority of the US hunger is not a problem to the point where anyone who asks for food can easily obtain it (those who starve are usually on some sort of mind-altering substance of their own free will), our standard of living is extremely high. Unlike many third world countries the gap between "rich" and "poor" isn't the difference between living on the street with no clean water, no opportunities for schooling and no hope for advancement and a dictator dining on lobster flown in from a helicopter daily.
And yes, it is based on voluntary and mutual gain. Show me one relationship (that isn't manipulated by the government which does not operate on mutual gain but instead by violence) of me and a corporation that does not operate on that.
For example, today I went to the grocery store and bought myself a few oranges and a loaf of bread, since I was hungry, I benefit in that I have oranges and a loaf of bread, the grocery store benefits because I paid them for these oranges and a loaf of bread. Because I valued the oranges and bread more than I valued my money, I benefit by the difference between my maximum I would have paid for them and the amount that I paid. Because the store valued the money more than the oranges and the bread they benefit by the difference between the amount I paid them and the lowest amount they would take for the items.
Consider grapefruit, it has very little benefit to me since I really don't like grapefruit. Lets say a few grapefruits cost $5 and the amount that I value that amount of grapefruits is only 50 cents. Buying them for $5 would not benefit me, therefore I do not buy them.
If there are no gains from trade, why would I do business with them? The only way that such things happen is via violence, since the grocery store doesn't threaten to imprison me, or shoot me if I refuse to buy items there, my actions there were completely voluntary. Whatever the government does is done via the threat of violence. There is no ability to refuse to "trade" with the government.
Compulsory voting is a bad idea. If someone doesn't know the issues why should they have as much say as someone who has thoroughly researched the campaign? By at least allowing people not to vote, you can skip the people who know nothing about politics so they aren't making decisions that affect everyone. Of course they should still have the opportunity to chose to vote, but if they don't know the issues, its best for them not to vote, otherwise you end up voting on whichever candidate looks the best or has the most entertaining ads.
Elections aren't decided by those devoted to their cause. Obama didn't win because he had a lot of loyal followers. Obama won because he managed to convince a bunch of people without loyalty to any political party. McCain lost because he was unable to convince them to join his cause, not because there was a shortage of die-hard republicans, there were about the same amount of die-hard republicans and democrats (and the same amount of die-hard Libertarians/Greens/Constitution/etc. voters).
The people who donate money to a campaign and care enough to get an "app" dedicated to their candidate don't win elections.
Unless Ron Paul loses the Republican nomination but still maintains a large following, and splits what is traditionally the "Republican" vote (or some other candidate, but I can't see any other candidate currently in the GOP race running as an independent or third party if they don't get the nomination). There will be ~45% people voting for Obama no matter what, ~45% people voting for the GOP nominee no matter what but the 10% that are undecided will made those candidates win or lose the race.
I'm sorry, but speaking as a Libertarian/Supporter of Ron Paul in 2012 these "straw polls" are nothing more than political BS. They show *insert candidate here* in first place because they are rigged towards supporters of that candidate because that candidate (and supporters) post that on their webpage/FB page/Twitter Feed with a note to download it and vote for *insert candidate here*. After a while the hope being that someone will look at it and think that, wow, *insert candidate here* is doing pretty well! Because the app was made to make that candidate look decent.
Sure, such things are a great way to pat yourself on the back and think wow *insert candidate here* is doing great! But are completely useless for what polls are used for: to find out what people think.
Yep, I mean, honestly is someone from the GOP/really/ going to install the Obama 2012 "app"? Or is someone who is a die-hard Obama fan going to install the Gingrich 2012 "app"? I don't understand why this would benefit candidates. After all, I get the messages of the ones I want to via social networking, I don't need an app on my phone for that. What they need to do is cater to the masses via TV and shills... I mean the completely unbiased cable news networks. No one but the most die-hard fans will install an "app" for a candidate. Its easier just to ask them for money and bombard the TV with ads.
So who would you elect then? Like I said, I don't 100% agree with everything Ron Paul says but he's the best candidate running in 2012. Its hardly cult like to say that out of all of the people running X candidate is the best one.
If you are so judgmental Mr. Anonymous Coward, why don't you voice who you are voting for? And don't say you aren't going to vote (assuming you are American), even if your preferred candidate has no chance of winning at least have the peace of mind knowing that you did your part the best you could.
Because socialist countries clearly have great privacy protection against the government! After all no government intrusion in private matters and full freedom of speech in the socialist countries in Europe! And in the socialist countries (because they aren't true communist countries) like the USSR, North Korea and Cuba there are lots of freedoms against big government!
It makes no sense to be against the PATRIOT act and still consider yourself a socialist. It makes about as much sense as considering yourself a Republican and against big government. Or democrat and anti-war.
Which makes no difference if Ron Paul is president. He has publicly stated that he wants abortion to be regulated by the states, not the federal government. Since Ron Paul is running for the federal government, and not for a seat in state congress or a governor it doesn't affect much. The idea that abortion is a "right to privacy" is an absurd argument, no matter which side of the debate you are on. The Constitution is silent on the matter, therefore it is constitutionally correct for the matter to go to the states. And unless a constitutional amendment is passed giving the power to the federal government, it should not be regulated by the federal government.
Like it or not, Ron Paul, (along with whoever the 3rd party candidates are going to be) are the only hope in restoring America. And the only ones wanting a sane government.
Who's the better choice in 2012? Obama who helped wreck the economy (it is partially Bush/Congress's fault also), got us into yet another expensive and unconstitutional war (Libya), has failed to stop the torturing of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, ended the War in Iraq with more or less of a defeat rather than a victory, and we are still at war in Afghanistan. Or the clueless GOP?
If the choice is between Paul or Obama/Bachmann/Gingrich/Perry/Sanatorium/Palin/Trump/etc. the choice is clear, Paul is the best candidate. And even though there are things I disagree with on Mr. Paul's policy, if he runs as part of the GOP, Libertarian Party or as an independent, he has my vote because the rest of the candidates are terrible.
Exactly, there is no power given to corporations that you don't give to them voluntarily. If I oppose the War in Iraq I can't exactly not fund it, they'd throw me in jail if I refuse to pay my taxes. If I oppose Wal-Mart's hiring practices I can refuse to shop at Wal-Mart and (barring government interference in the economy) Wal-Mart will not get a penny of business from me. If I don't like Facebook's privacy policies, I don't have to use Facebook. If I don't want to buy into the pyramid scheme that is Social Security, I can't opt out of it.
We support the government because of a barrel of a gun. We support corporations based on mutual gain.
Right... Because you don't see that in corn at all. The price that paper corn says is the/exact/ same price you see at the supermarket on the side of the road right? No, of course not. Physical and imaginary commodities trade at different prices. When the price of paper corn goes up, you can expect the price of physical corn to go up, but it might not go up by the same amount or percentage. "We Buy Gold" places also do not use the paper price, they trade on what the uninformed public views their scrap gold as worth. Heck, most of the public doesn't even know how much gold is in their gold jewellery. There are multiple markets each with their own price. And when they move around physical gold (which happens rarely) it still trades at a different price. No one is ripping anyone off, there are multiple markets each with different prices. Currently, the price for real, physical gold is much higher than the price in commodity or paper gold. It is even more evident in the silver market, for example a "junk" silver Peace Dollar has a melt value of about $23 and little to no collector value. Today they are selling for around $27 from nearly every single coin dealer, both online and offline, about a $4 premium at $30/troy ounce silver. On the other hand, when silver was near $40 and the melt value of a junk Peace Dollar was at $31, coin dealers were selling them at $32.50 or $33 a coin, much less of a premium. It is then safe to say that the real market price of silver is much higher than the paper price of $30.
First off, you are comparing two different things, real gold (as in, physical, have it in your hand metal) and paper gold (as in, you don't really own it). Go to a few bullion dealers, places like pawn shops, coin shops, jewelry shops, etc. and you will find that the paper price isn't the real price of gold. It is even more so in silver, and we aren't talking about things like pre-1933 US gold and US silver dollars which have a high premium due to their collectability but the cheapest things they have, silver rounds, 'junk silver' (worn silver coins previously in everyday circulation but have no collector value beyond bullion) gold bars, etc. and you will find that especially now the paper price and the real price are vastly different.
And it hasn't "crashed" it had a temporary decrease in prices and quickly recovered. On the other hand, barring a massive burning of money or a massive, massive, massive, population increase cash will crash and will crash quickly. If you want to talk about a bloated commodity, talk about cash. It is worthless, being debased at an alarming rate and you are taking a guaranteed loss.
Spend as much fiat currency for commodities while it is still spendable, a time is coming where people will reject fiat currency because it is worthless, unlike commodities. Copper, gold, silver, nickel, oil, etc. are all solid investments when compared to taking a guaranteed loss.
Except, historically there are none that really are "still around" the US has only had fiat currency since Nixon decided to take us off the gold standard (and by extension most of the world) so most currencies have only been fiat since about 40 years ago. And let's see a list of currencies that aren't around in their original form thanks to fiat currencies.
Most notably, the Zimbabwean Dollar and the German Mark but many other countries too, the Mexican Peso, Hungarian Krona, Greek Drachma, Chinese Yuan, Yugoslavian Dinar, Russian/Soviet Ruble, etc. the list goes on and on.
The only fiat currencies that haven't failed have been very recent inventions, history has shown that every fiat currency fails.
Um... so obviously you haven't seen the graph of gold prices. From 2007 to present gold has gone from $640 an ounce to the present $1600+ an ounce (though the real price of physical gold is/much/ higher, it is only paper gold being sold, don't believe me? try buying physical bullion, you will find that the premiums are much higher now than it was back when silver was $40 and gold was $1850). At the same time, the US dollar is being debased at an alarming rate (see http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/BASE_Max_630_378.png ) the only reason it is becoming "stronger" is because China keeps its currency devalued and the Euro is on brink of collapsing. If there was "way too much gold supply" on the market surely someone would be selling massive amounts of it to take advantage of it being overpriced. But instead, no one is doing it. Why? Because gold is still undervalued (and the dollar is overvalued). Silver is even more convincing of a case.
Physical commodities are the only thing that won't be fully affected by the impending collapse of fiat currency. Historically every single fiat currency has failed. Historically, people owning precious metals or non-debased coins have been much better off than those storing their wealth in fiat currency or debased coins. I tend to side with history.
a falling supply of crops will drive up the price of gold and cause inflation
Inflation is not an increase in prices. Inflation is the increase in supply of a good that has a monetary use. For example, when Bernake decides to fire up the printing presses and issue more paper dollars, that is inflation. The resulting increase in prices is the result of inflation, but is not inflation itself. In this case if failing crops meant that more people worked as miners and the supply of gold increased, that would be inflation, but an increase in prices is not inflation.
Regulation is what got us in the financial mess to begin with.
As for Japan, when nature decides to deliver the fifth largest earthquake next to a nuclear power plant, there isn't much you can do. Yes, I know hindsight is 20/20, but really, Fukushima was designed to withstand the vast majority of earthquakes, it was only a freak disaster that caused this. Yes, it could have been handled better, but nothing can be perfectly safe or perfectly foolproof.
Because users cannot be expected to be running a modern browser (Though this has gotten better), or running a system with many plugins. On the other hand, you can expect any desktop system to have flash. For example, Flash works great for things like YouTube videos on pretty much any desktop, running any OS and any browser I can watch YouTube videos, from a public computer in the library, to my friend's iMac to my own personal Debian box, heck on my parent's 7 year old machine where they insist on using IE it still works. All of this, running in the browser, running fairly transparently.
Trademarks should be used not to try to destroy large businesses who come up with names that may be vaguely similar to the name of an unrelated product, but to protect consumers against fraud. No one in their right mind thinks that Timelines.com and Facebook are in any way related. Trademarks are designed for the purpose so that I know what I'm buying, for example, if I order an Xbox 360 game console, I should receive an Xbox 360 game console and no other makers of game consoles other than Microsoft (or who are affiliated with Microsoft) can make a console called the Xbox 360.
Yes, a free market would have no copyrights or patents or any other intellectual "property" (well, with the exception of trademarks to identify products to avoid fraud).
Just let the free market work, the scanners that only degrade system performance will be slowly pushed out of the market by scanners that work. The problem is, people think they "don't know computers" and do whatever the "computer" or people on TV tell them. When the "computer" says it has found 18,323 viruses and needs a payment of $29.95 to delete them, they often pay it. When the guy at Best Buy recommends Norton, they buy Norton. When the TV tech "experts" say you need a firewall, they go out and buy a $30 firewall. Things like that will keep happening so long as people think that they "don't know computers" and don't make any effort to know them.
The free market has a/much/ better track record of ensuring quality than government ever has. This isn't a market problem, this is a problem with society and people refusing to take responsibility for their own decisions.
The 2 biggest barriers to kids using computers is:
A) Typing speed
and B) Special input characters.
Kids generally can't type quickly. Until kids learn qwerty and have a normal typing speed, it is usually hunt and peck. A kid can write with their hand much faster until their typing speed changes. Unfortunately it isn't really possible to decide/when/ that is because it changes depending on the kid.
And input often isn't coded correctly. For example, on a question asking who the first president of the United States was, a kid answering George washington might be counted as incorrect, as would a kid answering george washington, similarly a kid answering Geogre Washington (obviously a minor spelling mistake) would also be wrong. A teacher grading these when they were hand written would realize that all of the kids knew the answer.
Similarly, in special applications like math, it simply is faster to write things out by hand. Writing a formula using symbols like pi by hand is really quick, navigating to a special characters page and clicking on pi really isn't.
Because after a while class stops being new and revolutionary and back to boring old class. It's like taking an online class, at first it is new and exciting and you get to do all sorts of things you never could do in a traditional classroom, than after a while it becomes evident that in reality it is no "better' than traditional classrooms, especially with the way that some teachers teach it (with deadlines and certain times where you -must- log in). Or, if you are old enough, remember when teachers first started using PowerPoint? It was new, it was exciting, you could watch movie clips and sound clips and teachers could send you their slides and after the first 2 weeks it really was no more exciting than with transparencies and lectures.
It has nothing to do with socialized vs free market medicine. What it does have to do is that the FDA won't legalize a lot of practices that are commonplace in most European countries. In fact, you could say in this regard European countries have a more free market in health care procedures than the US.
And by the time the copyright expires on the first Star Wars film, everyone who had seen it in the theater will be long dead, as will everyone who even saw the third movie in the theater.
Slashdot Mirror
The wealth distribution is fairly equal when you look at it in historic terms.
In the US for example: anyone, anywhere has access to clean water that isn't going to cause any waterborne diseases, there is nearly universal literacy (and anyone who is illiterate has many opportunities to learn to read), while hunger is still a problem in some areas, in the vast, vast majority of the US hunger is not a problem to the point where anyone who asks for food can easily obtain it (those who starve are usually on some sort of mind-altering substance of their own free will), our standard of living is extremely high. Unlike many third world countries the gap between "rich" and "poor" isn't the difference between living on the street with no clean water, no opportunities for schooling and no hope for advancement and a dictator dining on lobster flown in from a helicopter daily.
And yes, it is based on voluntary and mutual gain. Show me one relationship (that isn't manipulated by the government which does not operate on mutual gain but instead by violence) of me and a corporation that does not operate on that.
For example, today I went to the grocery store and bought myself a few oranges and a loaf of bread, since I was hungry, I benefit in that I have oranges and a loaf of bread, the grocery store benefits because I paid them for these oranges and a loaf of bread. Because I valued the oranges and bread more than I valued my money, I benefit by the difference between my maximum I would have paid for them and the amount that I paid. Because the store valued the money more than the oranges and the bread they benefit by the difference between the amount I paid them and the lowest amount they would take for the items.
Consider grapefruit, it has very little benefit to me since I really don't like grapefruit. Lets say a few grapefruits cost $5 and the amount that I value that amount of grapefruits is only 50 cents. Buying them for $5 would not benefit me, therefore I do not buy them.
If there are no gains from trade, why would I do business with them? The only way that such things happen is via violence, since the grocery store doesn't threaten to imprison me, or shoot me if I refuse to buy items there, my actions there were completely voluntary. Whatever the government does is done via the threat of violence. There is no ability to refuse to "trade" with the government.
Compulsory voting is a bad idea. If someone doesn't know the issues why should they have as much say as someone who has thoroughly researched the campaign? By at least allowing people not to vote, you can skip the people who know nothing about politics so they aren't making decisions that affect everyone. Of course they should still have the opportunity to chose to vote, but if they don't know the issues, its best for them not to vote, otherwise you end up voting on whichever candidate looks the best or has the most entertaining ads.
Elections aren't decided by those devoted to their cause. Obama didn't win because he had a lot of loyal followers. Obama won because he managed to convince a bunch of people without loyalty to any political party. McCain lost because he was unable to convince them to join his cause, not because there was a shortage of die-hard republicans, there were about the same amount of die-hard republicans and democrats (and the same amount of die-hard Libertarians/Greens/Constitution/etc. voters).
The people who donate money to a campaign and care enough to get an "app" dedicated to their candidate don't win elections.
Unless Ron Paul loses the Republican nomination but still maintains a large following, and splits what is traditionally the "Republican" vote (or some other candidate, but I can't see any other candidate currently in the GOP race running as an independent or third party if they don't get the nomination). There will be ~45% people voting for Obama no matter what, ~45% people voting for the GOP nominee no matter what but the 10% that are undecided will made those candidates win or lose the race.
Which is completely useless.
I'm sorry, but speaking as a Libertarian/Supporter of Ron Paul in 2012 these "straw polls" are nothing more than political BS. They show *insert candidate here* in first place because they are rigged towards supporters of that candidate because that candidate (and supporters) post that on their webpage/FB page/Twitter Feed with a note to download it and vote for *insert candidate here*. After a while the hope being that someone will look at it and think that, wow, *insert candidate here* is doing pretty well! Because the app was made to make that candidate look decent.
Sure, such things are a great way to pat yourself on the back and think wow *insert candidate here* is doing great! But are completely useless for what polls are used for: to find out what people think.
Yep, I mean, honestly is someone from the GOP /really/ going to install the Obama 2012 "app"? Or is someone who is a die-hard Obama fan going to install the Gingrich 2012 "app"? I don't understand why this would benefit candidates. After all, I get the messages of the ones I want to via social networking, I don't need an app on my phone for that. What they need to do is cater to the masses via TV and shills... I mean the completely unbiased cable news networks. No one but the most die-hard fans will install an "app" for a candidate. Its easier just to ask them for money and bombard the TV with ads.
So who would you elect then? Like I said, I don't 100% agree with everything Ron Paul says but he's the best candidate running in 2012. Its hardly cult like to say that out of all of the people running X candidate is the best one.
If you are so judgmental Mr. Anonymous Coward, why don't you voice who you are voting for? And don't say you aren't going to vote (assuming you are American), even if your preferred candidate has no chance of winning at least have the peace of mind knowing that you did your part the best you could.
Because socialist countries clearly have great privacy protection against the government! After all no government intrusion in private matters and full freedom of speech in the socialist countries in Europe! And in the socialist countries (because they aren't true communist countries) like the USSR, North Korea and Cuba there are lots of freedoms against big government!
It makes no sense to be against the PATRIOT act and still consider yourself a socialist. It makes about as much sense as considering yourself a Republican and against big government. Or democrat and anti-war.
Which makes no difference if Ron Paul is president. He has publicly stated that he wants abortion to be regulated by the states, not the federal government. Since Ron Paul is running for the federal government, and not for a seat in state congress or a governor it doesn't affect much. The idea that abortion is a "right to privacy" is an absurd argument, no matter which side of the debate you are on. The Constitution is silent on the matter, therefore it is constitutionally correct for the matter to go to the states. And unless a constitutional amendment is passed giving the power to the federal government, it should not be regulated by the federal government.
Like it or not, Ron Paul, (along with whoever the 3rd party candidates are going to be) are the only hope in restoring America. And the only ones wanting a sane government.
Who's the better choice in 2012? Obama who helped wreck the economy (it is partially Bush/Congress's fault also), got us into yet another expensive and unconstitutional war (Libya), has failed to stop the torturing of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, ended the War in Iraq with more or less of a defeat rather than a victory, and we are still at war in Afghanistan. Or the clueless GOP?
If the choice is between Paul or Obama/Bachmann/Gingrich/Perry/Sanatorium/Palin/Trump/etc. the choice is clear, Paul is the best candidate. And even though there are things I disagree with on Mr. Paul's policy, if he runs as part of the GOP, Libertarian Party or as an independent, he has my vote because the rest of the candidates are terrible.
Exactly, there is no power given to corporations that you don't give to them voluntarily. If I oppose the War in Iraq I can't exactly not fund it, they'd throw me in jail if I refuse to pay my taxes. If I oppose Wal-Mart's hiring practices I can refuse to shop at Wal-Mart and (barring government interference in the economy) Wal-Mart will not get a penny of business from me. If I don't like Facebook's privacy policies, I don't have to use Facebook. If I don't want to buy into the pyramid scheme that is Social Security, I can't opt out of it.
We support the government because of a barrel of a gun. We support corporations based on mutual gain.
Right... Because you don't see that in corn at all. The price that paper corn says is the /exact/ same price you see at the supermarket on the side of the road right? No, of course not. Physical and imaginary commodities trade at different prices. When the price of paper corn goes up, you can expect the price of physical corn to go up, but it might not go up by the same amount or percentage. "We Buy Gold" places also do not use the paper price, they trade on what the uninformed public views their scrap gold as worth. Heck, most of the public doesn't even know how much gold is in their gold jewellery. There are multiple markets each with their own price. And when they move around physical gold (which happens rarely) it still trades at a different price. No one is ripping anyone off, there are multiple markets each with different prices. Currently, the price for real, physical gold is much higher than the price in commodity or paper gold. It is even more evident in the silver market, for example a "junk" silver Peace Dollar has a melt value of about $23 and little to no collector value. Today they are selling for around $27 from nearly every single coin dealer, both online and offline, about a $4 premium at $30/troy ounce silver. On the other hand, when silver was near $40 and the melt value of a junk Peace Dollar was at $31, coin dealers were selling them at $32.50 or $33 a coin, much less of a premium. It is then safe to say that the real market price of silver is much higher than the paper price of $30.
First off, you are comparing two different things, real gold (as in, physical, have it in your hand metal) and paper gold (as in, you don't really own it). Go to a few bullion dealers, places like pawn shops, coin shops, jewelry shops, etc. and you will find that the paper price isn't the real price of gold. It is even more so in silver, and we aren't talking about things like pre-1933 US gold and US silver dollars which have a high premium due to their collectability but the cheapest things they have, silver rounds, 'junk silver' (worn silver coins previously in everyday circulation but have no collector value beyond bullion) gold bars, etc. and you will find that especially now the paper price and the real price are vastly different.
And it hasn't "crashed" it had a temporary decrease in prices and quickly recovered. On the other hand, barring a massive burning of money or a massive, massive, massive, population increase cash will crash and will crash quickly. If you want to talk about a bloated commodity, talk about cash. It is worthless, being debased at an alarming rate and you are taking a guaranteed loss.
Spend as much fiat currency for commodities while it is still spendable, a time is coming where people will reject fiat currency because it is worthless, unlike commodities. Copper, gold, silver, nickel, oil, etc. are all solid investments when compared to taking a guaranteed loss.
Except, historically there are none that really are "still around" the US has only had fiat currency since Nixon decided to take us off the gold standard (and by extension most of the world) so most currencies have only been fiat since about 40 years ago. And let's see a list of currencies that aren't around in their original form thanks to fiat currencies.
Most notably, the Zimbabwean Dollar and the German Mark but many other countries too, the Mexican Peso, Hungarian Krona, Greek Drachma, Chinese Yuan, Yugoslavian Dinar, Russian/Soviet Ruble, etc. the list goes on and on.
The only fiat currencies that haven't failed have been very recent inventions, history has shown that every fiat currency fails.
Um... so obviously you haven't seen the graph of gold prices. From 2007 to present gold has gone from $640 an ounce to the present $1600+ an ounce (though the real price of physical gold is /much/ higher, it is only paper gold being sold, don't believe me? try buying physical bullion, you will find that the premiums are much higher now than it was back when silver was $40 and gold was $1850). At the same time, the US dollar is being debased at an alarming rate (see http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/BASE_Max_630_378.png ) the only reason it is becoming "stronger" is because China keeps its currency devalued and the Euro is on brink of collapsing. If there was "way too much gold supply" on the market surely someone would be selling massive amounts of it to take advantage of it being overpriced. But instead, no one is doing it. Why? Because gold is still undervalued (and the dollar is overvalued). Silver is even more convincing of a case.
Physical commodities are the only thing that won't be fully affected by the impending collapse of fiat currency. Historically every single fiat currency has failed. Historically, people owning precious metals or non-debased coins have been much better off than those storing their wealth in fiat currency or debased coins. I tend to side with history.
a falling supply of crops will drive up the price of gold and cause inflation
Inflation is not an increase in prices. Inflation is the increase in supply of a good that has a monetary use. For example, when Bernake decides to fire up the printing presses and issue more paper dollars, that is inflation. The resulting increase in prices is the result of inflation, but is not inflation itself. In this case if failing crops meant that more people worked as miners and the supply of gold increased, that would be inflation, but an increase in prices is not inflation.
Regulation is what got us in the financial mess to begin with.
As for Japan, when nature decides to deliver the fifth largest earthquake next to a nuclear power plant, there isn't much you can do. Yes, I know hindsight is 20/20, but really, Fukushima was designed to withstand the vast majority of earthquakes, it was only a freak disaster that caused this. Yes, it could have been handled better, but nothing can be perfectly safe or perfectly foolproof.
Because users cannot be expected to be running a modern browser (Though this has gotten better), or running a system with many plugins. On the other hand, you can expect any desktop system to have flash. For example, Flash works great for things like YouTube videos on pretty much any desktop, running any OS and any browser I can watch YouTube videos, from a public computer in the library, to my friend's iMac to my own personal Debian box, heck on my parent's 7 year old machine where they insist on using IE it still works. All of this, running in the browser, running fairly transparently.
Trademarks should be used not to try to destroy large businesses who come up with names that may be vaguely similar to the name of an unrelated product, but to protect consumers against fraud. No one in their right mind thinks that Timelines.com and Facebook are in any way related. Trademarks are designed for the purpose so that I know what I'm buying, for example, if I order an Xbox 360 game console, I should receive an Xbox 360 game console and no other makers of game consoles other than Microsoft (or who are affiliated with Microsoft) can make a console called the Xbox 360.
Yes, a free market would have no copyrights or patents or any other intellectual "property" (well, with the exception of trademarks to identify products to avoid fraud).
Just let the free market work, the scanners that only degrade system performance will be slowly pushed out of the market by scanners that work. The problem is, people think they "don't know computers" and do whatever the "computer" or people on TV tell them. When the "computer" says it has found 18,323 viruses and needs a payment of $29.95 to delete them, they often pay it. When the guy at Best Buy recommends Norton, they buy Norton. When the TV tech "experts" say you need a firewall, they go out and buy a $30 firewall. Things like that will keep happening so long as people think that they "don't know computers" and don't make any effort to know them.
/much/ better track record of ensuring quality than government ever has. This isn't a market problem, this is a problem with society and people refusing to take responsibility for their own decisions.
The free market has a
The 2 biggest barriers to kids using computers is:
/when/ that is because it changes depending on the kid.
A) Typing speed
and B) Special input characters.
Kids generally can't type quickly. Until kids learn qwerty and have a normal typing speed, it is usually hunt and peck. A kid can write with their hand much faster until their typing speed changes. Unfortunately it isn't really possible to decide
And input often isn't coded correctly. For example, on a question asking who the first president of the United States was, a kid answering George washington might be counted as incorrect, as would a kid answering george washington, similarly a kid answering Geogre Washington (obviously a minor spelling mistake) would also be wrong. A teacher grading these when they were hand written would realize that all of the kids knew the answer.
Similarly, in special applications like math, it simply is faster to write things out by hand. Writing a formula using symbols like pi by hand is really quick, navigating to a special characters page and clicking on pi really isn't.
Because after a while class stops being new and revolutionary and back to boring old class. It's like taking an online class, at first it is new and exciting and you get to do all sorts of things you never could do in a traditional classroom, than after a while it becomes evident that in reality it is no "better' than traditional classrooms, especially with the way that some teachers teach it (with deadlines and certain times where you -must- log in). Or, if you are old enough, remember when teachers first started using PowerPoint? It was new, it was exciting, you could watch movie clips and sound clips and teachers could send you their slides and after the first 2 weeks it really was no more exciting than with transparencies and lectures.
It has nothing to do with socialized vs free market medicine. What it does have to do is that the FDA won't legalize a lot of practices that are commonplace in most European countries. In fact, you could say in this regard European countries have a more free market in health care procedures than the US.
Not near enough of them I'm afraid.
And by the time the copyright expires on the first Star Wars film, everyone who had seen it in the theater will be long dead, as will everyone who even saw the third movie in the theater.