The article didn't say "scientists and religious people can mix" it said "Science and religion can and do mix, mostly". I find the whole idea of answering if that's true via a survey as showing the exact wooly thinking which shows the difficulty of mixing science with religion. This is a
Science and religion can mix if, for example:
religious people can either state their ideas clearly or recognise them as non scientific
religious people can demonstrate an ability to change their ideas according to evidence
non religious scientists can accept evidence from religious scientists
Fortunately it seems that for most religious scientists in most circumstances those things are true. Unfortunately there are some specific areas of cosmology and evolution where it seems many religious people are unable to follow scientific methods.
Not to mention that the married man's monogamous wife will also get AIDS. Probably more likely than if she were not married since she won't be using condoms.
The people who end up paying to sort out the problems in the world are mostly Europeans and we look forward to the day the "American Taxpayer" starts paying their share.
Google. Facebook. They both do plenty of proprietary; but their FOSS is clearly what's given them the leg up to get competitive and they have pretty strong community involvement in quite a bit of the software they have released back.
So let's get this right. Currently a person gets, say 20k Dollars a year. They have savings of 3k and nothing else. Under my scheme, they pay 1% of 3k = $30. Under your scheme they pay 20% of 20k, say pay 4k tax, or more than their entire savings. Apparently this means that my scheme makes it more difficult for them to save.
As with every other simple flat rate tax scheme, there are lots of things wrong with the scheme I proposed (mostly the inability to distingush between adtive and inactive assets and the penalisation of people holding assets in the public good). It's just that this is not one of these things.
Your percentage; which is rediculously high; actually does matter. There is a key barrier, which is when it falls below the rate of compound interest. E.g. let's say interest rates are 5%. Now, let's assume that that's more or less the current average ROI, or put another way, that's what person makes on an investment. Taxation is currently 20% of income, so with 5% ROI, taxation would have to be around 1% of wealth.
Now, since taxation is below the rate of interest, it still makes sense to invest, since you get a 5% return and end up keeping 4%.
Both can be true at the same time and can even be linked. People didn't save enough during the fat times so now they can't/don't spend enough during the lean times. This is not something new. There are even stories in the bible (old testament) about this.
No, you would be taxing it at an infinitely higher rate. Currently wealth is not taxed, only increases in wealth. You did not answer the most important question, how often would you tax wealth?
A lower rate than current income tax of course. I didn't answer the question because it's a stupid question. If it was done daily it would be done at approximately 1/400th of the value from if it was done yearly. Unless someone could come up with a demonstrably better idea I would do it according to what the tax collector would tell me would be most efficient; judging from trends worldwide that would probably be monthly.
N.B. there is no implication in my scheme that overall tax reciepts should change. Taxation need neither rise nor fall because of this.
So, how often do you plan on taxing that wealth? Say, somebody has $10 million, are you going to tax it every year? At what tax rate?
The problem with taxing wealth is that that makes saving impossible for everyone, even those who do not have very much.
Since I would have a vastly increased tax base, I'd end up taxing it at a much lower rate. The typical person would end up with taxes much lower than they pay today, since a big bunch of rich people who don't currently contribute much would end up having to contribute.
I don't see the difference b/w charging people based on their income/wealth, vs Lenin's 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'.
Did you know that Lenin also recommended that people breathe regularly and drink fluids at least occasionally. Think about it.
The rich actually spend proportionally much less. E.g. if you have your own estate, with your own servants and your own cooks, you have food cooked for you based on local produce. This makes a meal which would cost hundreds of dollars per person but, since it's all your own property, you don't buy it and so you don't pay sales tax.
If you or I go on holiday, we go to some resort where we pay for everything; every little bit of water you use ends up being taxed. When Richard Branson goes on holiday he flys in his own jet to his own island and the only sales taxable expense is his jet fuel. When his rich friends do the same they go to his island sometimes, and he comes to their islands in exchange other times. In a sense this is completely fair. I would get annoyed if you tried to tax me for having friends over for dinner rather than going to a restaurant, but the scale of the thing means that in the end, the really rich show much less income compared to the resources they use than you or I and pay even less tax.
No I didn't. At most I implied that their wealth was benefitting society relatively less than the equivalent amount of wealth in the hands of poorer people, but that point of view would be irrelevant to what I said. What I actually said was that these people cost society much more than poor people. What I would go on further to say is that they aren't mostly willing to pay their way with Warren Buffet appearing to be an honourable exception.
Generally, however; I'm not totally convinced by any flat tax. There is real logic to having rates which vary according to e.g. income or wealth levels. However, the original post seems to suggest that a flat rate of tax would be obviously fair. I'm suggesting that there are other positions, closer to taxing wealth, which would be much fairer.
I'm not sure how that's relevant to my comment. This is good. They will have more wealth to pay taxes on. At the same time they will have more wealth to be happy with. This would be actively encouraged by a system in which wealth was flat taxed.
How about a flat rate tax on wealth instead. Why should the ultra-rich be able to sit there not earning, not paying taxes, and just getting the benefit of everything they own whilst we have to defend their property, police their stupid legal disputes, deal with their garbage, clean up the results of their wastefulness etc. etc. etc.
The difference is that Microsoft's monopoly its self was illegally acquired (this is an appeals verified judgement of a US court; not just my speculation). Microsoft didn't just use their desktop monopoly illegally, their entire main business is illegally acquired. There's a whole bunch of "hang em high" people who run around wondering why we should punish microsoft. A bit like arguing Al Capone should have been let off because he was rich.
Are you for some reason under the impression that saying something over and over again without any reasoning behind it will somehow make it true? The Big Lie only works when no one is around to correct you.
Let's try another business where the customers do not pay for the product: The public library. [...]
The public library is paid for by taxes and is a perfect example of a service which works best in that way. There is no "customer" there is just a citizen who has the right to read because the public have decided to pay for and create this service. Analysing this in terms of a business just doesn't work and will lead to inverted goals which will be completely wrong.
What's wrong with the claim that "you" are Google's product is that actually it's your attention which is Google's product. Google maintains a model where it provides the lead to you but the advertiser pays for your clicks. Contrast this with Facebook which gives pretty much full access to your profile to developers. Google's current business model pressures them to be a much less evil company because a) you are able to terminate your relationship with them and start using other services (Facebook can still sell your data even if you aren't using it) and b) they have to keep you interested in and not ignoring their advertising because otherwise they don't get their revenue.
I didn't say that all the countries on the list were Civilised, just that countries not on the list, with the possible out of Korea, are not.
The USA has proven it's credentials with the use of phosphorous and cluster bombs against civilians recently enough that I don't even see what we are discussing. That's before we get into the "extraordinary rendition" of a number of innocents to be tortured in 3rd world countries all over the world.
I had to think much longer about, for example, the inclusion of Israel, Finland and Russia (which have real border defence problems) being included as uncivilised countries than I had to think about the USA.
Had the USA been willing to join the treaty that would have been such a big thing that I think getting a specific exception for the Korean border would have been easy.
treaty still allows anti-tank mines and even remote triggered claymore mines so it's still possible to do area denial against serious military forces.
Anti-tank mines are quite useless without the protection of anti-personnel mines.
Not true; there are other things you can do to protect the tank mines; e.g. Claymores and automated machine guns.
They go together like Apple's accessories. Do you think the South Korean's usage of automatic machine guns or the US use of UAVs and mostly blind airstrikes instead of actually going to the ground and apprehending the identified targets is very much different from landmines?
Yes; I do. Even if we accepted that UAVs are indescriminate, which I think is a bit of a mischaracterisation, they are only indiscriminate at the moment of the fighting. Land mines remain a persistent threat for decades afterwards. That is a really big difference. The same applies to automated machine guns which have a limited battery life and/or require electrical power, with the additional benefit that they are likely visible above ground and so much easier to clear than mines.
Which is why civilised countries have already outlawed them. No decent human could encourage the spread of the things which kill many civilians, animals and for the most case mine clearers for every attacking soldier they kill.
N.B. the treaty still allows anti-tank mines and even remote triggered claymore mines so it's still possible to do area denial against serious military forces. I will give Koreans a small out in this case in that this was the way that there border was divided long before the treaty and redesigning that would be a nightmare.
I think you have to do better than that. Please explain why EEE doesn't apply? It looks perfect for HTML5. Starting adding features which "would not translate to a normal X anyway" is exactly what they did with Kerberos, Java and so many other technologies during the "Embrace" stage. They then use this to get people to write apps which need to combine web technology with something else. Eventually some of those apps start to only work when the add on features are present and we have a new generation of lock in.
in answer to your question
what would you do instead? Try come up with a competing incompatible technology? Why would you not use an existing one?
Yes; you would; either put your add ons inside the HTML standard or put them as a completely new format. You do this to ensure a clean design, however it doesn't have to be "incompatible" just separate. The HTML can load and interact with the other technology but at the same time the HTML its self is clean and standardized. An example of this is, for example, adding a new image format or a new video format which doesn't require any change in the HTML standard at all.
We need serious loads of tools to test for this and allow us to fail compatibility testing if these features turn up in any applications vendors attempt to sell us anything with this garbage built in. We need serious bans on this garbage in any corporate environment.
Try spamgourmet. It's really neat because the act of signing up can automatically create the email address for you. After that you get to know for sure exactly which services sell on your email address. I've been surprised (I only found two so far; they weren't ones I expected; it seemed to be due to a security problem).
The advantage over a catch-all domain is that it has all sorts of mail handling features like auto-expiring the address if they start to spam; re-instating the address if it turns out they are sending useful info; allowing email to an address only from an address etc. etc.
My fundamental assumption is that wind and similar variable supply alternatives should be decisively over-provisioned (e.g. it should have to operate at about 20% of maximum capacity in order to supply it's average expected load), and that that, combined with things like geothermal and tidal should provide the base fundamentals of the grid; effectively the base load. The studies (by a "trusted 3rd party", Stanford) linked from Wikipedia say that you can use 33% of average capacity as baseload as long as you link together ten or more wind farms. At the point where this is done you don't need the large base load power plants of the past just fill in for peaks and/or rare periods where large amounts of your wind and solar falls at the same time and you don't have enough hydro to make up for it.
I'd also add another thing that I believe is important, and is definitely coming. Chemical storage of energy. There are various processes for converting electricity into methane. This is a much better process than conversion into hydrogen for a number of reasons.
Methane can be transported in the same pipes as Natural gas.
Excess Methane can safely and easily be used to fuel vehicles
Methane is much easier to store than hydrogen; it doesn't leak away
Methane is more stable and safer than hydrogen
Methane can be used to make polyethene etc..
Now think about a methane generating plant close to a Wind farm and a gas turbine power plant. The conversion plant is able to get really cheap energy from the wind farm when the wind is high (transmission capacity doesn't have to be built for all of the wind power available) and should be running most of the time with the exception of special times of low wind or moderate wind and high demand. If the wind speed collapses, then there's transmission capacity which makes the gas plant cheap to run. Excess energy can be converted into sellable fuel. By having a simple pipeline you can get fuel away when there's an excess and guarantee the gas plant can run when you have a non windy period or a moderately windy period and high demand from elsewhere.
In other words, you have a combined power strategy which is (locally) carbon negative and which will provide proper base load power. Now imagine a Germany which has invested in this big time. Like 80% of their power needs. Suddenly they have gone from being an net energy importer to being an exporter of both electricity and natural gas.
Does this rely on new / risky / difficult technology? I guess a there's a small risk with the methane generation (though hydrogen could be substituted without to many of the arguments changing). I think, though that it's mostly just an engineering and money question. The Germans are probably the right ones to pull it off though they'll probably have to get involved in some more windy/sunny countries to do so, and if they do it will be the French buying energy from them and not the other way.
Next add the fact that there are a bunch of new ideas for energy storge (underwater high pressure air! / underground pump storage) and generation (advanced wave technologies; concentrated solar into molten salt) really starting to appear and we have a situation which should be exciting Slashdotters and making them ask "how would I work around that" and "what could I do to make that better". Instead we end up with a big pile of what is frankly whining about how the world doesn't understand how they understand Nuclear (and I'm not including your excellent post about base load there; knowing the problem is the first stage of working out how to fix it). What could you guys do to make consumers not mind a smart grid which reduced their electricity supply occasionally?
Look to the future guys and gals.. There's going to be lots of jobs in Germany working this all out.
Slashdot Mirror
The article didn't say "scientists and religious people can mix" it said "Science and religion can and do mix, mostly". I find the whole idea of answering if that's true via a survey as showing the exact wooly thinking which shows the difficulty of mixing science with religion. This is a
Science and religion can mix if, for example:
Fortunately it seems that for most religious scientists in most circumstances those things are true. Unfortunately there are some specific areas of cosmology and evolution where it seems many religious people are unable to follow scientific methods.
Not to mention that the married man's monogamous wife will also get AIDS. Probably more likely than if she were not married since she won't be using condoms.
May Christ rapture you swiftly.
This is an original curse!!! Can I subscribe to your newsletter? Please!!? Get yourself an account at least and tell what it is here so I can find it.
You suffer from delusions of grandeur. The USA most famously is about the meanest country in the world, after only Italy. Most of what is called "foreign aid" is actually military aid particularly to Israel. That's not done out of charity, that's done in order to further your interests.
The people who end up paying to sort out the problems in the world are mostly Europeans and we look forward to the day the "American Taxpayer" starts paying their share.
There is the death tax...
Which is avoided by putting things in trusts and so only affects the poor... ARGGGGH
Google. Facebook. They both do plenty of proprietary; but their FOSS is clearly what's given them the leg up to get competitive and they have pretty strong community involvement in quite a bit of the software they have released back.
So let's get this right. Currently a person gets, say 20k Dollars a year. They have savings of 3k and nothing else. Under my scheme, they pay 1% of 3k = $30. Under your scheme they pay 20% of 20k, say pay 4k tax, or more than their entire savings. Apparently this means that my scheme makes it more difficult for them to save.
As with every other simple flat rate tax scheme, there are lots of things wrong with the scheme I proposed (mostly the inability to distingush between adtive and inactive assets and the penalisation of people holding assets in the public good). It's just that this is not one of these things.
Your percentage; which is rediculously high; actually does matter. There is a key barrier, which is when it falls below the rate of compound interest. E.g. let's say interest rates are 5%. Now, let's assume that that's more or less the current average ROI, or put another way, that's what person makes on an investment. Taxation is currently 20% of income, so with 5% ROI, taxation would have to be around 1% of wealth.
Now, since taxation is below the rate of interest, it still makes sense to invest, since you get a 5% return and end up keeping 4%.
Both can be true at the same time and can even be linked. People didn't save enough during the fat times so now they can't/don't spend enough during the lean times. This is not something new. There are even stories in the bible (old testament) about this.
No, you would be taxing it at an infinitely higher rate. Currently wealth is not taxed, only increases in wealth. You did not answer the most important question, how often would you tax wealth?
A lower rate than current income tax of course. I didn't answer the question because it's a stupid question. If it was done daily it would be done at approximately 1/400th of the value from if it was done yearly. Unless someone could come up with a demonstrably better idea I would do it according to what the tax collector would tell me would be most efficient; judging from trends worldwide that would probably be monthly.
N.B. there is no implication in my scheme that overall tax reciepts should change. Taxation need neither rise nor fall because of this.
So, how often do you plan on taxing that wealth? Say, somebody has $10 million, are you going to tax it every year? At what tax rate? The problem with taxing wealth is that that makes saving impossible for everyone, even those who do not have very much.
Since I would have a vastly increased tax base, I'd end up taxing it at a much lower rate. The typical person would end up with taxes much lower than they pay today, since a big bunch of rich people who don't currently contribute much would end up having to contribute.
I don't see the difference b/w charging people based on their income/wealth, vs Lenin's 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs'.
Did you know that Lenin also recommended that people breathe regularly and drink fluids at least occasionally. Think about it.
The rich actually spend proportionally much less. E.g. if you have your own estate, with your own servants and your own cooks, you have food cooked for you based on local produce. This makes a meal which would cost hundreds of dollars per person but, since it's all your own property, you don't buy it and so you don't pay sales tax.
If you or I go on holiday, we go to some resort where we pay for everything; every little bit of water you use ends up being taxed. When Richard Branson goes on holiday he flys in his own jet to his own island and the only sales taxable expense is his jet fuel. When his rich friends do the same they go to his island sometimes, and he comes to their islands in exchange other times. In a sense this is completely fair. I would get annoyed if you tried to tax me for having friends over for dinner rather than going to a restaurant, but the scale of the thing means that in the end, the really rich show much less income compared to the resources they use than you or I and pay even less tax.
No I didn't. At most I implied that their wealth was benefitting society relatively less than the equivalent amount of wealth in the hands of poorer people, but that point of view would be irrelevant to what I said. What I actually said was that these people cost society much more than poor people. What I would go on further to say is that they aren't mostly willing to pay their way with Warren Buffet appearing to be an honourable exception.
Generally, however; I'm not totally convinced by any flat tax. There is real logic to having rates which vary according to e.g. income or wealth levels. However, the original post seems to suggest that a flat rate of tax would be obviously fair. I'm suggesting that there are other positions, closer to taxing wealth, which would be much fairer.
I'm not sure how that's relevant to my comment. This is good. They will have more wealth to pay taxes on. At the same time they will have more wealth to be happy with. This would be actively encouraged by a system in which wealth was flat taxed.
How about a flat rate tax on wealth instead. Why should the ultra-rich be able to sit there not earning, not paying taxes, and just getting the benefit of everything they own whilst we have to defend their property, police their stupid legal disputes, deal with their garbage, clean up the results of their wastefulness etc. etc. etc.
The difference is that Microsoft's monopoly its self was illegally acquired (this is an appeals verified judgement of a US court; not just my speculation). Microsoft didn't just use their desktop monopoly illegally, their entire main business is illegally acquired. There's a whole bunch of "hang em high" people who run around wondering why we should punish microsoft. A bit like arguing Al Capone should have been let off because he was rich.
Are you for some reason under the impression that saying something over and over again without any reasoning behind it will somehow make it true? The Big Lie only works when no one is around to correct you.
Let's try another business where the customers do not pay for the product: The public library. [...]
The public library is paid for by taxes and is a perfect example of a service which works best in that way. There is no "customer" there is just a citizen who has the right to read because the public have decided to pay for and create this service. Analysing this in terms of a business just doesn't work and will lead to inverted goals which will be completely wrong.
What's wrong with the claim that "you" are Google's product is that actually it's your attention which is Google's product. Google maintains a model where it provides the lead to you but the advertiser pays for your clicks. Contrast this with Facebook which gives pretty much full access to your profile to developers. Google's current business model pressures them to be a much less evil company because a) you are able to terminate your relationship with them and start using other services (Facebook can still sell your data even if you aren't using it) and b) they have to keep you interested in and not ignoring their advertising because otherwise they don't get their revenue.
I didn't say that all the countries on the list were Civilised, just that countries not on the list, with the possible out of Korea, are not.
The USA has proven it's credentials with the use of phosphorous and cluster bombs against civilians recently enough that I don't even see what we are discussing. That's before we get into the "extraordinary rendition" of a number of innocents to be tortured in 3rd world countries all over the world.
I had to think much longer about, for example, the inclusion of Israel, Finland and Russia (which have real border defence problems) being included as uncivilised countries than I had to think about the USA.
Had the USA been willing to join the treaty that would have been such a big thing that I think getting a specific exception for the Korean border would have been easy.
treaty still allows anti-tank mines and even remote triggered claymore mines so it's still possible to do area denial against serious military forces.
Anti-tank mines are quite useless without the protection of anti-personnel mines.
Not true; there are other things you can do to protect the tank mines; e.g. Claymores and automated machine guns.
They go together like Apple's accessories. Do you think the South Korean's usage of automatic machine guns or the US use of UAVs and mostly blind airstrikes instead of actually going to the ground and apprehending the identified targets is very much different from landmines?
Yes; I do. Even if we accepted that UAVs are indescriminate, which I think is a bit of a mischaracterisation, they are only indiscriminate at the moment of the fighting. Land mines remain a persistent threat for decades afterwards. That is a really big difference. The same applies to automated machine guns which have a limited battery life and/or require electrical power, with the additional benefit that they are likely visible above ground and so much easier to clear than mines.
Which is why civilised countries have already outlawed them. No decent human could encourage the spread of the things which kill many civilians, animals and for the most case mine clearers for every attacking soldier they kill.
N.B. the treaty still allows anti-tank mines and even remote triggered claymore mines so it's still possible to do area denial against serious military forces. I will give Koreans a small out in this case in that this was the way that there border was divided long before the treaty and redesigning that would be a nightmare.
I think you have to do better than that. Please explain why EEE doesn't apply? It looks perfect for HTML5. Starting adding features which "would not translate to a normal X anyway" is exactly what they did with Kerberos, Java and so many other technologies during the "Embrace" stage. They then use this to get people to write apps which need to combine web technology with something else. Eventually some of those apps start to only work when the add on features are present and we have a new generation of lock in.
in answer to your question
what would you do instead? Try come up with a competing incompatible technology? Why would you not use an existing one?
Yes; you would; either put your add ons inside the HTML standard or put them as a completely new format. You do this to ensure a clean design, however it doesn't have to be "incompatible" just separate. The HTML can load and interact with the other technology but at the same time the HTML its self is clean and standardized. An example of this is, for example, adding a new image format or a new video format which doesn't require any change in the HTML standard at all.
We need serious loads of tools to test for this and allow us to fail compatibility testing if these features turn up in any applications vendors attempt to sell us anything with this garbage built in. We need serious bans on this garbage in any corporate environment.
I think Spamgourmet is pretty determined in blocking this. Do you have an examples? Have you reported this to them? (or their forum?)
Try spamgourmet. It's really neat because the act of signing up can automatically create the email address for you. After that you get to know for sure exactly which services sell on your email address. I've been surprised (I only found two so far; they weren't ones I expected; it seemed to be due to a security problem).
The advantage over a catch-all domain is that it has all sorts of mail handling features like auto-expiring the address if they start to spam; re-instating the address if it turns out they are sending useful info; allowing email to an address only from an address etc. etc.
My fundamental assumption is that wind and similar variable supply alternatives should be decisively over-provisioned (e.g. it should have to operate at about 20% of maximum capacity in order to supply it's average expected load), and that that, combined with things like geothermal and tidal should provide the base fundamentals of the grid; effectively the base load. The studies (by a "trusted 3rd party", Stanford) linked from Wikipedia say that you can use 33% of average capacity as baseload as long as you link together ten or more wind farms. At the point where this is done you don't need the large base load power plants of the past just fill in for peaks and/or rare periods where large amounts of your wind and solar falls at the same time and you don't have enough hydro to make up for it.
I'd also add another thing that I believe is important, and is definitely coming. Chemical storage of energy. There are various processes for converting electricity into methane. This is a much better process than conversion into hydrogen for a number of reasons.
Now think about a methane generating plant close to a Wind farm and a gas turbine power plant. The conversion plant is able to get really cheap energy from the wind farm when the wind is high (transmission capacity doesn't have to be built for all of the wind power available) and should be running most of the time with the exception of special times of low wind or moderate wind and high demand. If the wind speed collapses, then there's transmission capacity which makes the gas plant cheap to run. Excess energy can be converted into sellable fuel. By having a simple pipeline you can get fuel away when there's an excess and guarantee the gas plant can run when you have a non windy period or a moderately windy period and high demand from elsewhere.
In other words, you have a combined power strategy which is (locally) carbon negative and which will provide proper base load power. Now imagine a Germany which has invested in this big time. Like 80% of their power needs. Suddenly they have gone from being an net energy importer to being an exporter of both electricity and natural gas.
Does this rely on new / risky / difficult technology? I guess a there's a small risk with the methane generation (though hydrogen could be substituted without to many of the arguments changing). I think, though that it's mostly just an engineering and money question. The Germans are probably the right ones to pull it off though they'll probably have to get involved in some more windy/sunny countries to do so, and if they do it will be the French buying energy from them and not the other way.
Next add the fact that there are a bunch of new ideas for energy storge (underwater high pressure air! / underground pump storage) and generation (advanced wave technologies; concentrated solar into molten salt) really starting to appear and we have a situation which should be exciting Slashdotters and making them ask "how would I work around that" and "what could I do to make that better". Instead we end up with a big pile of what is frankly whining about how the world doesn't understand how they understand Nuclear (and I'm not including your excellent post about base load there; knowing the problem is the first stage of working out how to fix it). What could you guys do to make consumers not mind a smart grid which reduced their electricity supply occasionally?
Look to the future guys and gals.. There's going to be lots of jobs in Germany working this all out.