...put too much currency into an economy and you get inflation, restrict the flow of currency too much and you get a recession..
Well, then you must have forgotten the stagflation of 1979 where we had both inflation in prices and a recession in employment and industry. Something that they Keynes model of money says is impossible.
The problem with Keynes is that he made the solution to his "problem" to be the use of a central federal bank to lie to people about the value of their money. In theory, a central bank would inflate in bad times, and deflate in inflationary times. Unfortunately the fed established in 1911, has NOT stopped inflation or depression and the Keynes model especially did not predict the stagflation of the 1980's which the "austrian model" of economics predicted quite well.
The problem here is that 30-40% of real-estate is speculative, and many will dump it when ROI goes under 5%. Also, stock crashes usually aren't economically felt for up to a year after, where real estate crashes tend to snowball almost immediately. So once it starts, loose money will not be able to fix it. Sadly, not allowing people to write off bad debts almost guarantees a deflationary crash.
I don't know if the housing bubble is bigger, but housing bubbles are much much worse.
1) with a stock you can normally sell it immediately at a market value, real-estate seems liquid, but it is not, and people will very rudely find that out at crash time.
2) selling a home costs money! There are a zillion inspections, and regulations people need to meet just to sell one. Especially in CA. Selling stocks costs little in compare.
3) When a stock market crashes, it usually takes a year or so to filter thru the rest of the economy. In a real-estate crash, the effect is almost imediate as people cut back spending almost immediately. Which causes more economic slowdows, which causes real-estate to fall even faster. (which is why, after it starts to crash, then it's game over, no monitary adjustment in the world will fix it)
4)A stock crash (at least in the USA) will not bring down all the banks with it. Yeah, FDIC is usefull when a small group of banks fail, but when they all catch hell at the same time, forget it. All bets are off.
5)Even when stock crashes, you still own a piece of a company. In real-estate, there is no true ownership untill it is completely paid off, you will likely own nothing but debt.
6)With the asian real-estate crash, the US banking system and economic growth bailed them out to a certain extent. There is no one to back up the US system. If things go to hell here, then that's it.
7)Stocks do not cost monthly payments that are obligated over 30 years.
8)Currently, 30 to 45% of real-estate is speculative. Once it stops growing, just watch what happens as zillions start to sell their second homes, and their vacation homes, and their "investment homes". Nobody is going to cling to a loosing investment. When it goes, it will all go to hell quickly at information age speeds.
Normally to create ^h^h^h^h... oops I mean stop these kind of problems, the fed would just print up ^h^h^h^h... oops I mean loan more money by lowering interest rates. But they will not do that this time, because if they do, foriegners will get pissed off at the inflation and dump the dollar as the world reserve currency making things 10 times worse. So they will most likely raise rates till housing crashes, which they won't be able to stop from becomming a great depression, which will quickly become a global great depression, at which time the governments of the world will panic as all their govt bonds become unpayable so they will print up money like it's doomsday causing hyperinflation.
At this time, I would recommend getting out of ALL debt no matter what, and before all this happens you would be wise to put your money in something other than stocks, bonds, real-estate, banks, or cash ( try gold, silver, or comodities?) I would also strongly recommend food storage.
As a US citizen, I can't even believe I'm saying this. But too many people are falling for the "it's too big to fail", or the "they won't let it crash" mentality which will make the inevitable consequences worse. Hopefully, this time we will learn our lesson and demand money be backed with something other than "good faith of the US federal government".
The war on drugs has nothing to do with drugs. All those wonderfull laws about money laundering, and privacy, and search and seizure are very effective at keeping people from evading unjust taxes. But do very little to hamper drug use at all.
Also, the fact that the US exports intellectual property is not good. IP is not a just free market property right, and is more about controll over information than incentive. It is profitable for a few, but doesn't help the rest of us at all.
Ahem. "Today's" cars use R134a refrigerant, not ozone-depleting freon. This has been the standard for a little less than ten years now.
In all fairness r234a is probably more harmfull than freon because of it's chemichal structure, and freon is really not nearly as harmfull to the environment as people say it is.
see here
Also, something should be explained to the naieve masses: Freon became illegal THE VERY MONTH that DOW Chemichal's patent expired! But did DOW suffer, NO! They still hold patnets on the few similar replacements These patnets would have been worthless had freon not been made illegal. But it is illegal, so they are very valuable. Are the replacemnets safer, NO, are they cheaper NO, are they more environmentally friendly NO. Do they work better in machinery NO. The only reason why we are using them today is because they are patented, and DOW wanted to preserve their revenue stream. That is all. It is not for the environment, it is not for the ozone, and never was - that was just a poor excuse to push freon out of the marketplace.
People would wise to learn that usually when a company talks about preserving the environment, what they mean in business talk is "increase the regulatory barriers to entry for potential competitors in their industry, and push up revenue by driving used products out of the market place"
Once nano takes off, people will likely be able to manufacture things in their homes, and there will be two types of industries.
One will see the entire purpose and meaning of the nano age as a tool to leverage their patnet holdings for unlimited growth and profit, extracting royality for every last thing that everybody creates in every private home. They will try to secure this "right" by force.
The other side will see the entire purpose and meaning of the nano age as an opportunity to provide creation services, consulting, and customisation, and support with no restrictions or royalities on what people create.
When they collide, all hell will break loose.
(if this sounds allot like the copyright vs tech industries today, that is not a cooncidence)
Nonotech is a compettitive threat to a LOT of entrenched industries who have cozy monopolies. So you can better believe that there will be strong push to "regulate" it for peoples "safety" and the "protection" of society.
The inportant thing to understand is that there are two types of laws. Ones that seek justice by punishing people who make bad choices, and ones that try to "prevent" problems by limiting the kinds of choices people are "allowed" to have. It should always be understood that the former is usually good and the latter is almost always BS, and causes more harm than it "prevents".
Lets make no mistake about this, MS didn't do this because of some enlightened generosity, they did it because Linux is kicking their teeth in over the server space.
Funny how open source models aren't having any of these licensing "problems". To Linux unrestricted copying on the internet and huge multicore systems are a benefit, to proprietary vendors they are a threat... now which side do we think is going to win out over the long term here?
Look, the UN is accountable to the "rights" of countries, not the rights of individuals. That's what makes them shch a poor body to resolve disputes involving freedom, individual rights, and fairness to society. The internet relates to all of these.
The UN stood by and picked their nose when the former USSR went on a "purge" of 10's of millions of people and did the same thing again when China's land reform policy put farmers out of business and led to the starvation of 30 million chineese. Not to mention the countless other disasters they failed to prevent or halt and I doubt they prevented anything that western countries wouldn't have halted anyhow.
These are not the people we want in charge even if we do need to get the US governments nose out of it.
Let me get this straight. I agree it's a good idea to remove tld's from US controll to avoid being controlled and manpiulated by such a large and powerfull political entity that coulnd't care less about my rights online. Anyone else see the irony here?
Apparently that 'nice private school' skimped on spelling, grammar, logic and social studies courses.
Other than logic, maybe so, but they didn't skimp on computer programming, chemistry, calculus, and physics. So fine, I'd make a bad secretary. So what, I'm not sorry for it, and I'm not paying the price for it.
First you need to be open minded enough to stop excluding the best solution out of hand. If you have a sucking chest wound you don't say "What is the best thing I can do, except stop the bleeding?"
Public schools don't work, can't work and aren't even compatible with a Republican form of Government.
Step one: board up every public school and college of education.
Seriously. The damage is beyond repairing, it is systemic and inherent in the concept of forced government education as we currently understand it. Therefore any attempts at 'reform' only prolong a real solution and are a bad idea.
Private schools all the way. Even if someone wants to send their kids to an Islamic fundamentalist madrassas. The Right to be Wrong is the #1 basic right because the second thee or me presumes to sit in judgement of a parent's choice we presume to 1) be their master and 2) be wise enough to make their decisions for them. If parents are going to be empowered to truly make educational decisions for their children we must accept decisions we don't approve of.
The only place for the State to intervene is in cases which could rightly be called abuse/neglect.
Once that policy decision is made, everything else follows. The idea that a math major isn't qualified to teach mathamatics is one that only a union operation with a government mandated monopoly could think up so there go the 'colleges of education' to be replaced with majors in their subject matter perhaps supplementing with a couple of courses in pedagogy.
Here is the secret. Teaching isn't particularly hard. All it requires is a knowledgable and reasonably patient master and an apprentice motivated to learn. Note the ancient usages there, that was intentional and intended to remind just how far back learning goes. They didn't need billions of words of academic text telling them how to do it, they just did it.
Seriously, you have a point here and you didn't deserve to be modded troll. I know HK had a private-only school system for a long time, and not only did few go without, but HK had a high literacy and educational rate as well.
The sad truth is most public schools create a system of rewards and accountability that punish teachers that care, and students that learn. And God forbid you question things intellectually, eg "if schools should be taxpayer funded to begin with?"
Every private school in town knows that if they piss off one parent, then they not only loose a few K in revenue, but also get 10 bad refferals as well. Most public schools administrators/teachers frankly get their same salary no matter how incompetent they are. And the truth is, it's crazy to think that the state will be more interested in a students best interest than a parent.
I'm one of those "libertarians" whould would like to see public education disappear. FYI, my parents sent me to a nice private school in CA, and FYI it cost them less to send me there than it did the state of CA to send a kid in LA to gettho high about 30 minutes north.
Also, I believe govt funded education will go away, they simply cant meet our kids needs for the future, and the govt spending is quickly approaching bankruptcy levels.
People pay a lot for free software, but it is in labor and time costs to get custom products to work the way you want them to rather than in license costs. Which is good because free software is like the free labor market.
For example, yeah you can't "own" people as slaves, and maybe the plantation system had no "incentive" to produce cotton without them. But to assume that labor couldn't be used productively unless the masters had that incentive motive is silly. I think in 100 years, people will look at owernership of software in the same way. There is far more money to be made by using the free information, than in controlling it, and that's why free software is really more free market than closed software.
I had a similar situation once. I was not fired, but I quit because I just could not fit in. Why? Because it was 95 and I told my employer that SCO (their mainstay platform) is trash and that Linux was going to take over the marketplace, becuase "intellectual property" as we know it is trash too. They simply cound not handle such "communist" blasphmey.
Well, I left, beefed up on Linux for the next several years/jobs, and I think it is safe to say now that they are hurting more than I am.
Copyrights are still trash, and P2P systems are shapeing up to be as big as Linux and are also poised to be the next generation of data managment and distribution. I guarantee you that any company that deosn't expolit that for all it's worth will be DOA 10 years from now.
On several of my previous posts over the years, I would declare that all hell was about to break loose. Well it has now broken loose!
Basically this is like the civil war, accept information age style. The battles will not be fought with soldiers, but with endless cross litigation, civil harassment, frivolous lawsuits, property confiscation, virus and worm attacks, spyware and spybots, and plain old fasion brow beating.
There will be no north and south, this time only pro-ip and anti-ip, pro information controll and anti information controll backed by various loose alliances. In fact, even within the same corporations there will be massive division.
Better take sides now, because anyone inbetween will simply used as a pawn and exploited for the one or the other sides. Like it or not, the middle ground is dead! Like it or not, they are going to force this into an all or nothing game. Copyrights and non tangable patents will either last for all eternity or be dead for the rest of eternity. That is the bottom line.
Economy collapse?! The real estate industry is single handedly holding the economy too high. High-tech is exactly where it should be, go blame the real estate industry.
That's what I am trying to say though. Druing the dot com boom, even though it was over inflated they still created a lot of technology and internet infrastructure that over the long term could promote enough growth to keep the economy from collapsing. This time, all the money is from real-estate, it creates little new technologies, no factories, and no infrastructure technological or otherwise. People minus of well have just maxed out their credit cards. In addition stock collapses usually slowly hit the economy over the course of a year, real-estate collapses are almost instant. It will almost certainly start before the end of this year and a massive collapse will follow.
Between the interest rates not rising fast enough, and the Feds babying real estate as the only thing left. The average joe has to work their ass off in a low salary economy to feed real estate agents and rentlords. Don't blame slashdotters. At least techies have skills. Real estate agents just bullshit for a living.
Because this boom was real-estate and not real infrastructure, the fed is in a bind. If they raise interest rates by more than half a point the collapse will start, if they lower it hyperinflation will start. They have no room for forgiveness because of all the personal, national, and trade balance debt. Their room for manuvering is closing, and when it does we are all screwed.
What will likely happen, is the fed will not be able to hold off the collapse, it will cause an instant great depression, which will take all the markets in the globe with it, then the banks of the world will panic and print up money like no tommorow to try and stimulate things.
My vote is stay out of debt no matter what, get out of real-estate, buy gold and silver like there is no tommorow and if you really know what you're doing buy gold and silver stocks. Also, I never thought I'd see a day where I would recommend food storage in the USA. I'm serious, this is for real. It really is strange that so many people naievely think that everything is ok, it's like I'm in a movie. People buying houses now are freakin insane!
The economic growth is what matters, and before the end of this year the whole damn thing going to collapse no matter how you look at it. For a technical community, there is almost a arrogance on slashdot that shuns economic science, and I think that people will pay a bitter price within the next year if they don't loose that attitude.
So we have a commodity metal, where the demand has vanished, the global supply is constantly expanding with ever cheaper installments. Which direction is the price going? Only down.
Are you for real? With comments like that, it's no wonder the economy is going to crash. You do realise that is *exactly* what they said in 1971 just after they unlinked the gold from the dollar and right before it went from $35 to $800 per ounce over the next 10 years.
Gold has still only been increasing in circulation by about 1% per year no matter how efficient the mining process is. The dollar has been increasing in circulation by 4-7 percent per year.
So we have a currency, where the demand has vanished, the global supply is constantly expanding with ever cheaper installments. Which direction is the price going? Only down.
You will look awfully foolish as gold goes to well well over $1200 per ounce during the next few years.
The value of anything is merely what others are willing to give you for it. Money can be backed by gold because gold has a value to others. Money can be backed by the US government because the country has an intrinsic value to others.
That's the whole problem, economic truths are not about feelings and opinions. It's not that gold has high value (you can't eat it) it's that unlike paper currencies gold stores value for the trade and barter that is normal and healthy in free societies. Paper money does not store value and is easially manipulated against the holders best interest.
If you don't believe me now, just wait about till october thru december of this year. The housing market will collapse, the global economey with it, and the bankers of the world will all panic and print money like no tommorow to create "liquidity" causing hyperinflation.
If you are heavy in debt, you are screwed and even moreso if it is for real estate. (that will likely be confiscated) If you give value to your national governments paper money or bonds, you are even more screwed than that. Give it all the value you want, it won't help you.
Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We'll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration. That's the bastion of money."
I found it funny that you mentioned that, because the same force that is going to kill Microsoft (in less than 3 years) is the same one that is also going to cause the dollar to collapse and force the US back onto the gold standard.
That force is the information age. Both monitary policy and Microsoft are about controlling and manipulating information that people are allowed to have or apply.
Monitory policy manipulates information by lying to people about the value of their money, Microsoft controlls information thru copyright and licensing schemes that forbid people from copying office and windows. They call this right controll and manipulate what other people copy a "property right" but it's really about controlling how people use information. The *AA are even worse.
But the problem is, that in the information age, information, by definition can not be controlled. It is sorta like the plantation system that tried to controll the labor force in the industrial revolution. The scheme simply blew up in their face and all hell broke loose.
In sum, people would be very wise to buy every dam bit of gold or silver they can get their hands on. And break their neck doing everything immaginitively possible to bet their future career on Linux and ween themselves of windows.
The probmem is that this creates a loose loose situation for everyone no matter what side they're on.
If you hate copyrights, like me, then it forces you bow your head and say "I'm using this to not because I think copyrights suck, but becasue of lame sounding reason A"
If you love copyrights, I won't help you anyhow, because it will just continue to drive your opponents deeper underground and make them harder to deal with, also it doesn't and can't stop p2p, only make it give lip service to "non infringing uses"
If you're neutral, or somewhere in between, all it does is add another potential liability to your list.
I'd like to know how this helps anybody on any side.
IMHO, the best way to get excellent support is to use non proprietary technology. All to often patents cause people to segment and fence off technogoly, have incompatable parts, etc... This not only leads to product differentaion over service differentation, but it also makes things unsandardized across industries making the market area in a particular service area smaller, thus less choice, thus less quality.
Oh, and I know it's bad form to reply to my own post, but there is one more thing I wanted to add. At my current job, my Linux skills were so valuable to the company that my boss got tired of me wasting my time when I got dragged into supporting user windows desktop issues, so he hired another employee to work under me so I could work on the more valuable stuff. But soon after he was hired, I went all out teaching him everything about Linux I could think of, and now one of the biggest problems with him is that his time in becomming to valuable to waste on simple stupid desktop/office issues too. Not only do I get lots more time to play arround and do R&D, but the whole thing also made me look really good and the company is spending less money on my department then thay had planned because we rely so heavially on freely licensed Linux and cheap x86 boxes for our server farm.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, then you must have forgotten the stagflation of 1979 where we had both inflation in prices and a recession in employment and industry. Something that they Keynes model of money says is impossible.
The problem with Keynes is that he made the solution to his "problem" to be the use of a central federal bank to lie to people about the value of their money. In theory, a central bank would inflate in bad times, and deflate in inflationary times. Unfortunately the fed established in 1911, has NOT stopped inflation or depression and the Keynes model especially did not predict the stagflation of the 1980's which the "austrian model" of economics predicted quite well.
The problem here is that 30-40% of real-estate is speculative, and many will dump it when ROI goes under 5%. Also, stock crashes usually aren't economically felt for up to a year after, where real estate crashes tend to snowball almost immediately. So once it starts, loose money will not be able to fix it. Sadly, not allowing people to write off bad debts almost guarantees a deflationary crash.
I don't know if the housing bubble is bigger, but housing bubbles are much much worse.
... oops I mean stop these kind of problems, the fed would just print up ^h^h^h^h ... oops I mean loan more money by lowering interest rates. But they will not do that this time, because if they do, foriegners will get pissed off at the inflation and dump the dollar as the world reserve currency making things 10 times worse. So they will most likely raise rates till housing crashes, which they won't be able to stop from becomming a great depression, which will quickly become a global great depression, at which time the governments of the world will panic as all their govt bonds become unpayable so they will print up money like it's doomsday causing hyperinflation.
1) with a stock you can normally sell it immediately at a market value, real-estate seems liquid, but it is not, and people will very rudely find that out at crash time.
2) selling a home costs money! There are a zillion inspections, and regulations people need to meet just to sell one. Especially in CA. Selling stocks costs little in compare.
3) When a stock market crashes, it usually takes a year or so to filter thru the rest of the economy. In a real-estate crash, the effect is almost imediate as people cut back spending almost immediately. Which causes more economic slowdows, which causes real-estate to fall even faster. (which is why, after it starts to crash, then it's game over, no monitary adjustment in the world will fix it)
4)A stock crash (at least in the USA) will not bring down all the banks with it. Yeah, FDIC is usefull when a small group of banks fail, but when they all catch hell at the same time, forget it. All bets are off.
5)Even when stock crashes, you still own a piece of a company. In real-estate, there is no true ownership untill it is completely paid off, you will likely own nothing but debt.
6)With the asian real-estate crash, the US banking system and economic growth bailed them out to a certain extent. There is no one to back up the US system. If things go to hell here, then that's it.
7)Stocks do not cost monthly payments that are obligated over 30 years.
8)Currently, 30 to 45% of real-estate is speculative. Once it stops growing, just watch what happens as zillions start to sell their second homes, and their vacation homes, and their "investment homes". Nobody is going to cling to a loosing investment. When it goes, it will all go to hell quickly at information age speeds.
Normally to create ^h^h^h^h
At this time, I would recommend getting out of ALL debt no matter what, and before all this happens you would be wise to put your money in something other than stocks, bonds, real-estate, banks, or cash ( try gold, silver, or comodities?) I would also strongly recommend food storage.
As a US citizen, I can't even believe I'm saying this. But too many people are falling for the "it's too big to fail", or the "they won't let it crash" mentality which will make the inevitable consequences worse. Hopefully, this time we will learn our lesson and demand money be backed with something other than "good faith of the US federal government".
The war on drugs has nothing to do with drugs. All those wonderfull laws about money laundering, and privacy, and search and seizure are very effective at keeping people from evading unjust taxes. But do very little to hamper drug use at all.
Also, the fact that the US exports intellectual property is not good. IP is not a just free market property right, and is more about controll over information than incentive. It is profitable for a few, but doesn't help the rest of us at all.
Ahem. "Today's" cars use R134a refrigerant, not ozone-depleting freon. This has been the standard for a little less than ten years now.
In all fairness r234a is probably more harmfull than freon because of it's chemichal structure, and freon is really not nearly as harmfull to the environment as people say it is. see here
Also, something should be explained to the naieve masses: Freon became illegal THE VERY MONTH that DOW Chemichal's patent expired! But did DOW suffer, NO! They still hold patnets on the few similar replacements These patnets would have been worthless had freon not been made illegal. But it is illegal, so they are very valuable. Are the replacemnets safer, NO, are they cheaper NO, are they more environmentally friendly NO. Do they work better in machinery NO. The only reason why we are using them today is because they are patented, and DOW wanted to preserve their revenue stream. That is all. It is not for the environment, it is not for the ozone, and never was - that was just a poor excuse to push freon out of the marketplace.
People would wise to learn that usually when a company talks about preserving the environment, what they mean in business talk is "increase the regulatory barriers to entry for potential competitors in their industry, and push up revenue by driving used products out of the market place"
Politics 102
Once nano takes off, people will likely be able to manufacture things in their homes, and there will be two types of industries.
One will see the entire purpose and meaning of the nano age as a tool to leverage their patnet holdings for unlimited growth and profit, extracting royality for every last thing that everybody creates in every private home. They will try to secure this "right" by force.
The other side will see the entire purpose and meaning of the nano age as an opportunity to provide creation services, consulting, and customisation, and support with no restrictions or royalities on what people create.
When they collide, all hell will break loose.
(if this sounds allot like the copyright vs tech industries today, that is not a cooncidence)
Politics 101,
Nonotech is a compettitive threat to a LOT of entrenched industries who have cozy monopolies. So you can better believe that there will be strong push to "regulate" it for peoples "safety" and the "protection" of society.
The inportant thing to understand is that there are two types of laws. Ones that seek justice by punishing people who make bad choices, and ones that try to "prevent" problems by limiting the kinds of choices people are "allowed" to have. It should always be understood that the former is usually good and the latter is almost always BS, and causes more harm than it "prevents".
Lets make no mistake about this, MS didn't do this because of some enlightened generosity, they did it because Linux is kicking their teeth in over the server space.
... now which side do we think is going to win out over the long term here?
Funny how open source models aren't having any of these licensing "problems". To Linux unrestricted copying on the internet and huge multicore systems are a benefit, to proprietary vendors they are a threat
Look, the UN is accountable to the "rights" of countries, not the rights of individuals. That's what makes them shch a poor body to resolve disputes involving freedom, individual rights, and fairness to society. The internet relates to all of these.
The UN stood by and picked their nose when the former USSR went on a "purge" of 10's of millions of people and did the same thing again when China's land reform policy put farmers out of business and led to the starvation of 30 million chineese. Not to mention the countless other disasters they failed to prevent or halt and I doubt they prevented anything that western countries wouldn't have halted anyhow.
These are not the people we want in charge even if we do need to get the US governments nose out of it.
Let me get this straight. I agree it's a good idea to remove tld's from US controll to avoid being controlled and manpiulated by such a large and powerfull political entity that coulnd't care less about my rights online. Anyone else see the irony here?
Apparently that 'nice private school' skimped on spelling, grammar, logic and social studies courses.
Other than logic, maybe so, but they didn't skimp on computer programming, chemistry, calculus, and physics. So fine, I'd make a bad secretary. So what, I'm not sorry for it, and I'm not paying the price for it.
First you need to be open minded enough to stop excluding the best solution out of hand. If you have a sucking chest wound you don't say "What is the best thing I can do, except stop the bleeding?"
Public schools don't work, can't work and aren't even compatible with a Republican form of Government.
Step one: board up every public school and college of education.
Seriously. The damage is beyond repairing, it is systemic and inherent in the concept of forced government education as we currently understand it. Therefore any attempts at 'reform' only prolong a real solution and are a bad idea.
Private schools all the way. Even if someone wants to send their kids to an Islamic fundamentalist madrassas. The Right to be Wrong is the #1 basic right because the second thee or me presumes to sit in judgement of a parent's choice we presume to 1) be their master and 2) be wise enough to make their decisions for them. If parents are going to be empowered to truly make educational decisions for their children we must accept decisions we don't approve of.
The only place for the State to intervene is in cases which could rightly be called abuse/neglect.
Once that policy decision is made, everything else follows. The idea that a math major isn't qualified to teach mathamatics is one that only a union operation with a government mandated monopoly could think up so there go the 'colleges of education' to be replaced with majors in their subject matter perhaps supplementing with a couple of courses in pedagogy.
Here is the secret. Teaching isn't particularly hard. All it requires is a knowledgable and reasonably patient master and an apprentice motivated to learn. Note the ancient usages there, that was intentional and intended to remind just how far back learning goes. They didn't need billions of words of academic text telling them how to do it, they just did it.
Seriously, you have a point here and you didn't deserve to be modded troll. I know HK had a private-only school system for a long time, and not only did few go without, but HK had a high literacy and educational rate as well.
The sad truth is most public schools create a system of rewards and accountability that punish teachers that care, and students that learn. And God forbid you question things intellectually, eg "if schools should be taxpayer funded to begin with?"
Every private school in town knows that if they piss off one parent, then they not only loose a few K in revenue, but also get 10 bad refferals as well. Most public schools administrators/teachers frankly get their same salary no matter how incompetent they are. And the truth is, it's crazy to think that the state will be more interested in a students best interest than a parent.
I'm one of those "libertarians" whould would like to see public education disappear. FYI, my parents sent me to a nice private school in CA, and FYI it cost them less to send me there than it did the state of CA to send a kid in LA to gettho high about 30 minutes north.
Also, I believe govt funded education will go away, they simply cant meet our kids needs for the future, and the govt spending is quickly approaching bankruptcy levels.
People pay a lot for free software, but it is in labor and time costs to get custom products to work the way you want them to rather than in license costs. Which is good because free software is like the free labor market.
For example, yeah you can't "own" people as slaves, and maybe the plantation system had no "incentive" to produce cotton without them. But to assume that labor couldn't be used productively unless the masters had that incentive motive is silly. I think in 100 years, people will look at owernership of software in the same way. There is far more money to be made by using the free information, than in controlling it, and that's why free software is really more free market than closed software.
I had a similar situation once. I was not fired, but I quit because I just could not fit in. Why? Because it was 95 and I told my employer that SCO (their mainstay platform) is trash and that Linux was going to take over the marketplace, becuase "intellectual property" as we know it is trash too. They simply cound not handle such "communist" blasphmey.
Well, I left, beefed up on Linux for the next several years/jobs, and I think it is safe to say now that they are hurting more than I am.
Copyrights are still trash, and P2P systems are shapeing up to be as big as Linux and are also poised to be the next generation of data managment and distribution. I guarantee you that any company that deosn't expolit that for all it's worth will be DOA 10 years from now.
On several of my previous posts over the years, I would declare that all hell was about to break loose. Well it has now broken loose!
Basically this is like the civil war, accept information age style. The battles will not be fought with soldiers, but with endless cross litigation, civil harassment, frivolous lawsuits, property confiscation, virus and worm attacks, spyware and spybots, and plain old fasion brow beating.
There will be no north and south, this time only pro-ip and anti-ip, pro information controll and anti information controll backed by various loose alliances. In fact, even within the same corporations there will be massive division.
Better take sides now, because anyone inbetween will simply used as a pawn and exploited for the one or the other sides. Like it or not, the middle ground is dead! Like it or not, they are going to force this into an all or nothing game. Copyrights and non tangable patents will either last for all eternity or be dead for the rest of eternity. That is the bottom line.
Economy collapse?! The real estate industry is single handedly holding the economy too high. High-tech is exactly where it should be, go blame the real estate industry.
That's what I am trying to say though. Druing the dot com boom, even though it was over inflated they still created a lot of technology and internet infrastructure that over the long term could promote enough growth to keep the economy from collapsing. This time, all the money is from real-estate, it creates little new technologies, no factories, and no infrastructure technological or otherwise. People minus of well have just maxed out their credit cards. In addition stock collapses usually slowly hit the economy over the course of a year, real-estate collapses are almost instant. It will almost certainly start before the end of this year and a massive collapse will follow.
Between the interest rates not rising fast enough, and the Feds babying real estate as the only thing left. The average joe has to work their ass off in a low salary economy to feed real estate agents and rentlords. Don't blame slashdotters. At least techies have skills. Real estate agents just bullshit for a living.
Because this boom was real-estate and not real infrastructure, the fed is in a bind. If they raise interest rates by more than half a point the collapse will start, if they lower it hyperinflation will start. They have no room for forgiveness because of all the personal, national, and trade balance debt. Their room for manuvering is closing, and when it does we are all screwed.
What will likely happen, is the fed will not be able to hold off the collapse, it will cause an instant great depression, which will take all the markets in the globe with it, then the banks of the world will panic and print up money like no tommorow to try and stimulate things.
My vote is stay out of debt no matter what, get out of real-estate, buy gold and silver like there is no tommorow and if you really know what you're doing buy gold and silver stocks. Also, I never thought I'd see a day where I would recommend food storage in the USA. I'm serious, this is for real. It really is strange that so many people naievely think that everything is ok, it's like I'm in a movie. People buying houses now are freakin insane!
The economic growth is what matters, and before the end of this year the whole damn thing going to collapse no matter how you look at it. For a technical community, there is almost a arrogance on slashdot that shuns economic science, and I think that people will pay a bitter price within the next year if they don't loose that attitude.
So we have a commodity metal, where the demand has vanished, the global supply is constantly expanding with ever cheaper installments. Which direction is the price going? Only down.
Are you for real? With comments like that, it's no wonder the economy is going to crash. You do realise that is *exactly* what they said in 1971 just after they unlinked the gold from the dollar and right before it went from $35 to $800 per ounce over the next 10 years.
Gold has still only been increasing in circulation by about 1% per year no matter how efficient the mining process is. The dollar has been increasing in circulation by 4-7 percent per year.
So we have a currency, where the demand has vanished, the global supply is constantly expanding with ever cheaper installments. Which direction is the price going? Only down.
You will look awfully foolish as gold goes to well well over $1200 per ounce during the next few years.
The value of anything is merely what others are willing to give you for it. Money can be backed by gold because gold has a value to others. Money can be backed by the US government because the country has an intrinsic value to others.
That's the whole problem, economic truths are not about feelings and opinions. It's not that gold has high value (you can't eat it) it's that unlike paper currencies gold stores value for the trade and barter that is normal and healthy in free societies. Paper money does not store value and is easially manipulated against the holders best interest.
If you don't believe me now, just wait about till october thru december of this year. The housing market will collapse, the global economey with it, and the bankers of the world will all panic and print money like no tommorow to create "liquidity" causing hyperinflation.
If you are heavy in debt, you are screwed and even moreso if it is for real estate. (that will likely be confiscated) If you give value to your national governments paper money or bonds, you are even more screwed than that. Give it all the value you want, it won't help you.
Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We'll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration. That's the bastion of money."
Adolf Hitler
I found it funny that you mentioned that, because the same force that is going to kill Microsoft (in less than 3 years) is the same one that is also going to cause the dollar to collapse and force the US back onto the gold standard.
That force is the information age. Both monitary policy and Microsoft are about controlling and manipulating information that people are allowed to have or apply.
Monitory policy manipulates information by lying to people about the value of their money, Microsoft controlls information thru copyright and licensing schemes that forbid people from copying office and windows. They call this right controll and manipulate what other people copy a "property right" but it's really about controlling how people use information. The *AA are even worse.
But the problem is, that in the information age, information, by definition can not be controlled. It is sorta like the plantation system that tried to controll the labor force in the industrial revolution. The scheme simply blew up in their face and all hell broke loose.
In sum, people would be very wise to buy every dam bit of gold or silver they can get their hands on. And break their neck doing everything immaginitively possible to bet their future career on Linux and ween themselves of windows.
The probmem is that this creates a loose loose situation for everyone no matter what side they're on.
If you hate copyrights, like me, then it forces you bow your head and say "I'm using this to not because I think copyrights suck, but becasue of lame sounding reason A"
If you love copyrights, I won't help you anyhow, because it will just continue to drive your opponents deeper underground and make them harder to deal with, also it doesn't and can't stop p2p, only make it give lip service to "non infringing uses"
If you're neutral, or somewhere in between, all it does is add another potential liability to your list.
I'd like to know how this helps anybody on any side.
IMHO, the best way to get excellent support is to use non proprietary technology. All to often patents cause people to segment and fence off technogoly, have incompatable parts, etc ... This not only leads to product differentaion over service differentation, but it also makes things unsandardized across industries making the market area in a particular service area smaller, thus less choice, thus less quality.
Oh, and I know it's bad form to reply to my own post, but there is one more thing I wanted to add. At my current job, my Linux skills were so valuable to the company that my boss got tired of me wasting my time when I got dragged into supporting user windows desktop issues, so he hired another employee to work under me so I could work on the more valuable stuff. But soon after he was hired, I went all out teaching him everything about Linux I could think of, and now one of the biggest problems with him is that his time in becomming to valuable to waste on simple stupid desktop/office issues too. Not only do I get lots more time to play arround and do R&D, but the whole thing also made me look really good and the company is spending less money on my department then thay had planned because we rely so heavially on freely licensed Linux and cheap x86 boxes for our server farm.