industry producing at an all time high? financial industry which is able to create money out of thin air and then charge real interest on it, industry which produces all kinds of fraudulently triple-A rated derivatives and sells them to the hardworking suckers abroad. Most of it doesn't produce anything of value, merely shuffles papers and numbers around.
That's one of the problems with the US economy. Honest work is passe, producing tangible items is passe, everyone wants to get rich by taking loans, blowing money on consumption and gambling on the stock market.
Financial institutions are responsible for 41% of all corporate profits now, while in 1985 it was 16%, their GDP share jumped from 4 to 8% in last 50 years. They simply grow like a cancer while other industries shrink. GDP numbers are fluff anyway because they don't measure the health and sustainability of the economy. Peter Schiff (mentioned earlier) explains it well in his multiple appearances - many of them precede the meltdown of 2008 (youtube has it all).
Peter Schiff (investor who saw the recession coming from miles away - look him up on youtube) described his experiences from the nasdaq bubble era when he started his own company. He tried to find clients and convince them to sell dotcom stocks that were about to crash and invest in some reliable oldschool industries but people didn't listen to him. He said that some startup companies were valued higher than the whole New Zealand stock market. "What would you prefer to own? a part of the whole country or a part of some startup without any business plan?" but people were batshit insane and all they wanted was internet stocks...
keep living in the fantasy land - the US is unable to pay the debt ever without resorting to money printing or old fashioned default, and what's even better that debt grows every day like mad. Debt is being rolled, government issues new papers to repay old ones.
Debt ceiling was recently raised by 2 trillion and that's going to last for 1 year (this year's deficit is 1.5trillion, total debt at the moment $12T). For every dollar collected in taxes, government spends $1.60 - how long will it take to destroy the economy, with all these healthcare reforms, stimulus packages and crap which add 1.5trillion of public debt every single year in a foreseeable future? What if the FED will be forced to fight inflation with raised interest rates? Debt is constantly being rolled, government issues new papers to repay old ones with interest. Let's say that creditors (China, Saudi Arabia, Japan) start to withdraw from US bonds - interest on treasury papers will raise and minute difference in interest rate will be equal to hundreds of billions dollars in additional payments.
And what institution managed that? The Federal Reserve, another institution Paul despises. Paul is not a stupid man, but if he imagines that the economy was free of the boom-bust cycle before the invention of the Federal Reserve, he's simply missing history.
1. he is not stupid - he is a strict constitutionalist. Founding fathers knew the opression from the almighty government first hand and were reluctant to give federal government more power than necessary. They chose gold and silver to be a legal tender so nobody has a print button - fiat currencies were tried in their times already and failed.
2. FED existed in 1929, as it was created in 1913, so they pretty much caused the problem and then helped to solve it? Twenties was a time of loose monetary policy of the FED and that ended with a disaster when they wanted to stop excessive debt levels. Prosperity fueled by debt is not real.
3. There was a recession of 1920 (caused by retooling to peace time production and returning soldiers sharply increasing workforce numbers), more severe than the Great Depression - it ended in 1,5 years because government did nothing to fight it. Great depression was enlarged and stretched out by failed policies meant to end it.
4. In a system were currency is stable in quantity and nobody is in charge of global interest rate any economic downturn is smaller than it would be otherwise. When people start to gamble and overinvest (prosperity) they compete for loanable funds. These funds shrink rapidly and IR raises to match high demand. Fuel for boom is cut short and it's time for slowdown. When someone regulates IR he is prone to political influences. People want prosperity so lowering IR to ridiculously low levels is more than likely (as seen after nasdaq bubble, IR=1%). The longer you keep inflating the money supply with dirt cheap money, the harder will be fallout of a disaster that's coming next. People will drive themselves into debt (because saving is not worth it at 1%) that will wipe them on any trace of slowdown causing chain reaction. Bubble of phony prosperity was blown by the FED, just like in the 20s.
5. System with a built-in inflation punishes responsible people who underconsume and their savings are diminished by the politicians. Inflation is a hidden tax - governments steal purchasing power from people and blow it left and right on pork so they keep being elected. Inflation encourages people to spend money as fast as possible and get into debt as it will be diminished by the inflation as well. Such system is broken because everyone consumes today at the expense of tomorrow's consumption. This implies that tomorrow you have to earn more than today (someone has to pay interest), but why would that happen if you haven't invested in anything profitable but blown all money on consumption?
things don't looks so rosy in case of blizzard since wc3 (circa 2003/4) they haven't released anything other than WoW and its expansions. Many people who built the success in the times of sc, d2 and wc3 are gone so it's not the same company it used to be.
sc2 is around the corner but it's planned as a 3 part experience right off the bat. You can see it as a good thing (more epic story) but there is a non-zero risk they'll follow the path of deliberate watering down and multiplying titles. Nobody knows how D3 will look like but it's not unlikely to see multiple expansions as well. Past performance doesn't say anything meaningful about future performance, after all they have new overlords now.
you need to understand that: - words are cheap - setting arbitrary interest rate by the central bank is as close to regulating the market as you can get
Free market tension between savings and loans doesn't exist and few bureaucrats decide. Interest rate decides relative profitability of saving vs living on credit card. Setting it too low (which was the case in the last decade) means that only total 'losers' are responsible and save. This is not how you build stable economy.
what absolutely necessary regulations do you speak of? More often than not they are the root of problems biting in the ass with their unintended consequences.
Go to youtube and watch some Peter Schiff clips who is quite famous for predicting the collapse with details how it will happen back in 2005-2006 or even earlier (and being laughed at, literally) - he runs for senate in CT now. He asks people: - how many of you have bank accounts? ok, pretty much everyone... so, how many of you looked up into the bank's balance sheets? nobody? why? after all you do shop around and learn about other stuff, be it laptops or plasma tvs? so simply you don't care about condition of the bank? why? because if something bad happens, government got you covered? If there was no regulation you would be afraid of losing your money and you'd check very thoroughly if the bank is safe. Do you see any bank advertising itself as the safest of all? No, they all compete with rates, how much they will offer you for keeping the money at their accounts.
As you can see fear of loss is removed from the natural balance and banks take a lot of risk. If they don't they'll lose that race of death. No guarantees would mean that everybody would check every invested dollar twice.
Barnie Madoff scheme worked for 15 years or so and no government agency found anything despite numerous tips that something is fishy.
Some mortgage backed papers that crashed global economy were rated at AAA even though their true reliability was much lower. Another example of too much faith put into regulatory bodies, rating agencies and all that unnecessary cruft freeing people of thinking and clouding true situation.
coincidentally all their previous games had main storyline told from perspective of all factions, WoW on the other hand has no story at all. So what's the reasoning behind your idea that blizzard somehow is able to turn 15 filler missions into player's wet dream? Remember that they are the part of the machine called Activision where 'exploiting on a yearly basis' is the way to go and their last non-WoW game was released in 2003.
it's often easier to prepare enough space in garrage/basement and providing internet for many people there can be tricky. With true lan you can set up LAN anywhere with a router/switch without worrying where to get internet pipe from.
hellgate was rushed by the publisher because they wanted to see the monies, unfortunately unpolished mmo-like product usually doesn't get a second chance and the game failed. Blizzard is unique because they are immune to the hard gamedev reality thanks to endless stream of money from WoW. If there was no WoW they would be in trouble, after all SC2 is in development for 7 or 8 years already.
Multiplayer in particular is also where most of the serious replay value lies. Of course you didn't really "forget", you just lied.
multiplayer is where replay value lies but i like to play single player content from time to time, i like SC lore. For noobs single player is where they learn units, strats and stuff. Besides if you think that hardcore players spending night and day at battlenet are a majority you are mistaken, casuals who like single player because they won't be owned there are a significant chunk of customer base.
You said "total shill" when you meant "someone with different tastes than me". This further proves you a liar.
no i mean people that think blizzard can do no wrong and their every design decision is the best thing since sliced bread and sacred. Don't forget that most of their actions are now dictated by Darth Bobby Kotick.
you have no guarantee that nvidia blob will support current cards in 2015, chances are that in such scenario users of older hardware will be forced to use open source drivers. Same thing with amd/ati - their drivers don't support older radeons, i am sure owners of such video adapters would love to get ANY 3d acceleration.
it mainly helps to 'encourage' customers to fill company coffers more than they should. TV series are not to be set as an example but unfortunately this is what will happen - games will be 10% substance and 90% of filler crap to keep players occupied until some new idea comes up.
and comparing sc2 where one player hosts the map to a fullblown mmog with a massive amount of data to serve doesn't make much sense. Battle.net is just another point of possible failure you don't really need to play on lan. Also you overestimate numbers of wow-to-sc2 converts. WoW has much more appeal for your average casual player than sc2 that will be completely dominated by exSc1/Wc3 players and RTS as a genre has much smaller base than countless FPShooters or even hack and slash Diablo clones.
still it's 30 terran missions and pretty much nothing else (there is some small protoss campaign-like thing). How many levels in a row can you play not to get bored with marines, siege tanks, and unlocking tech and playing mini-games of farming resources? unless you are a total shill, 3x10 > 1x30 There is a reason nobody tried to make a true RTS game with only 1 faction available at the release before. Episodic nature is ok when all episodes offer full experience on their own, in case of sc2 we have to wait undefined amount of time to get another puzzle, and then wait again. Earlier games were complete. It's a slippery slope from the gamer's perspective, companies will be justified to do even more of such dirty tricks, allowing them to offer less for more and more. In ten years people will be buying games for 60 bucks that offer 3 singleplayer missions and the other 95% of the game will be released in 10 expansions and 20 dlc's.
"If stocks go up, it is because of the free market."
not really, it can be caused by inflation. In fact Dow index didn't gain any value in last decade and even lost some when adjusted for cpi or when measured in ounces of gold, silver or pretty much every other commodity.
"If stocks go down, it is the free market correcting itself."
especially if they were inflated beyond the point indicated by the fundamentals alone.
"If a government purchases something, it makes the free market cry."
government doesn't have any money, it has to take away from the private sector in the form of taxes, print (and rob people of their purchasing power) or borrow (and ensure higher taxes down the road to pay interest) and then spend that newly aquired money in an inefficient manner.
"Yet when someone's retirement portfolio gets set back a year or more, they simply were not shrewd with their investments. Hey, it's a free market!"
Is there anything that is 100% sure in this world? I don't think so. No matter how you look at it, it's pretty much about finding proper investments to at least maintain purchasing power of your savings. Times of prosperity multiply them, downturns devour them. Besides stock market in its current form is a ponzi scheme, stock prices have no correlation with dividend yields so it's a game where suckers sell pieces of paper to even bigger suckers.
"When there's a near complete meltdown followed by a recession, it is because true free markets have never really been tried because of liberal regulations."
we can assume that 19th century in the US was a free market and it worked pretty well. USA became one of the richest countries in the world, inflation was almost inexistent and economic downturns of the 19th century were nothing compared to the great depression and current crisis. WW1 and WW2 convinced world governments that it's ok to micromanage economy, steal from people using a hidden tax called inflation - and free market is no more.
"So my question is this: For a theory to be Science it must be falsifiable; so what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?"
To deflect the question: So what would it take for one of keynesians and monetarists to admit that their idea of steering the markets to universal prosperity has failed hard? After all it's the keynesians and such who are numerous in central banks and governments set the rules, not the advocates of true free markets.
'too big to fail' is the situation identical to 'irreplaceable worker'. Smart companies can't let them to be a hostage of a single point of failure and immediately fire such very very important individual. It may suck for a while because productivity drops but they are better off when the arcane knowledge once possessed by that VIP is rediscovered/reclaimed and distributed among bigger number of people. Same thing should happen with governments and whole economy - government should never surrender because if they do they and the whole country become slaves of a privileged industries for eternity. Rescue insolvent business once - others have a precedent and will try to become as fat as possible to have a government guaranteed safety net.
At the very least companies bailed out with public money should be mercilessly sliced and diced so they won't be as big again. After all it's not the first time when the auto industry required multibillion govt help.
but by today's widely accepted keynesian logic government should have created jobs for those retired soldiers using taxpayer's money. They did nothing (except cutting expenses which again is against keynesian doctrine) and thousands of people found jobs on their own in less than two years. How cool is that?
in short: when they serious, unmanageable shit hits the fan, hands off approach tends to work wonders.
and one more thing - at least in these 2 terms of bush the US had the illusion of prosperity if you think it ended badly, just wait till you see the effects of Obama's term.
Socialism and blowing money left and right (which is what the current administration does) won't solve any problems, I promise you that.
so progressive is someone that is liked by the teenage highschool hippies on a basis of a nice appearance? actions tell more than worthless words.
Reckless monetary policy, running huge deficits, fiscal irresponsibility and bailouts for the buddies don't sound like true conservative and that's what Bush did. From the pure actions perspective he is merely a less spectacular copy of Obama. Obama does pretty much the same stuff that Bush did, but on a grander scale. Besides Obama was elected because he talked a lot about change - where is that change? At the moment there is: more wars? check huge, unheard of deficit? check bailouts for the selected few? check the same monetary policy that will eventually destroy the dollar? check
there are only 3 meaningful differences between these two: dem label vs rep label, black vs white, charismatic speaker vs redneck
i think this is a cheap trick to 'encourage' people to get all 3 to taste anything coming close to the full experience. 1 campaign per episode? It can be epic but also extremely boring, i think average gamer's patience is about 10 missions long for the same thing over and over, you need something else to change the taste. Old way let you see campaigns as entangled together giving an impression of depth and multiple dimensions, bringing all factions to bigass climax. Now i suspect you will get probably 10 missions of story and 20 missions of epic sidequests based on unlocking the tech and farming resources.
Is it a coincidence that nobody released rtses with ungodly long campaigns for 1 faction only and later sold next campaigns as separate episodes? Now it's appears to be the best thing since sliced bread because blizzard says so and they are never wrong. Episodes also mean undefined amount of time to see the actual ending - vide half life 2 and it's long awaited ep3.
2011 is being optimistic imho, they still haven't announced 5th class (barbarian, wizard, witch doctor, monk,...? ) given that sc2 was in a beta ready state 1 year ago (but they fucked up with battle.net and had to wait) i wouldn't count on d3 being released soon. As you see they have all the time in the world. Corporations are forever, you are not:)
if you want to see how things look and work, goto official website and youtube for gameplay clips from blizzcons and gaming expos.
Slashdot Mirror
industry producing at an all time high? financial industry which is able to create money out of thin air and then charge real interest on it, industry which produces all kinds of fraudulently triple-A rated derivatives and sells them to the hardworking suckers abroad. Most of it doesn't produce anything of value, merely shuffles papers and numbers around.
That's one of the problems with the US economy. Honest work is passe, producing tangible items is passe, everyone wants to get rich by taking loans, blowing money on consumption and gambling on the stock market.
http://economicsofcontempt.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-financial-sector-too-big.html
Financial institutions are responsible for 41% of all corporate profits now, while in 1985 it was 16%, their GDP share jumped from 4 to 8% in last 50 years. They simply grow like a cancer while other industries shrink.
GDP numbers are fluff anyway because they don't measure the health and sustainability of the economy. Peter Schiff (mentioned earlier) explains it well in his multiple appearances - many of them precede the meltdown of 2008 (youtube has it all).
Peter Schiff (investor who saw the recession coming from miles away - look him up on youtube) described his experiences from the nasdaq bubble era when he started his own company. He tried to find clients and convince them to sell dotcom stocks that were about to crash and invest in some reliable oldschool industries but people didn't listen to him. He said that some startup companies were valued higher than the whole New Zealand stock market.
"What would you prefer to own? a part of the whole country or a part of some startup without any business plan?"
but people were batshit insane and all they wanted was internet stocks...
keep living in the fantasy land - the US is unable to pay the debt ever without resorting to money printing or old fashioned default, and what's even better that debt grows every day like mad. Debt is being rolled, government issues new papers to repay old ones.
Debt ceiling was recently raised by 2 trillion and that's going to last for 1 year (this year's deficit is 1.5trillion, total debt at the moment $12T). For every dollar collected in taxes, government spends $1.60 - how long will it take to destroy the economy, with all these healthcare reforms, stimulus packages and crap which add 1.5trillion of public debt every single year in a foreseeable future?
What if the FED will be forced to fight inflation with raised interest rates? Debt is constantly being rolled, government issues new papers to repay old ones with interest. Let's say that creditors (China, Saudi Arabia, Japan) start to withdraw from US bonds - interest on treasury papers will raise and minute difference in interest rate will be equal to hundreds of billions dollars in additional payments.
listen to the guy who thanks to his austrian economics background was able to predict the current economic shitstorm and preached about it for years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ95njy0r0I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bApnkQGrte8
And what institution managed that? The Federal Reserve, another institution Paul despises. Paul is not a stupid man, but if he imagines that the economy was free of the boom-bust cycle before the invention of the Federal Reserve, he's simply missing history.
1. he is not stupid - he is a strict constitutionalist. Founding fathers knew the opression from the almighty government first hand and were reluctant to give federal government more power than necessary. They chose gold and silver to be a legal tender so nobody has a print button - fiat currencies were tried in their times already and failed.
2. FED existed in 1929, as it was created in 1913, so they pretty much caused the problem and then helped to solve it? Twenties was a time of loose monetary policy of the FED and that ended with a disaster when they wanted to stop excessive debt levels. Prosperity fueled by debt is not real.
3. There was a recession of 1920 (caused by retooling to peace time production and returning soldiers sharply increasing workforce numbers), more severe than the Great Depression - it ended in 1,5 years because government did nothing to fight it. Great depression was enlarged and stretched out by failed policies meant to end it.
4. In a system were currency is stable in quantity and nobody is in charge of global interest rate any economic downturn is smaller than it would be otherwise. When people start to gamble and overinvest (prosperity) they compete for loanable funds. These funds shrink rapidly and IR raises to match high demand. Fuel for boom is cut short and it's time for slowdown. When someone regulates IR he is prone to political influences. People want prosperity so lowering IR to ridiculously low levels is more than likely (as seen after nasdaq bubble, IR=1%). The longer you keep inflating the money supply with dirt cheap money, the harder will be fallout of a disaster that's coming next. People will drive themselves into debt (because saving is not worth it at 1%) that will wipe them on any trace of slowdown causing chain reaction.
Bubble of phony prosperity was blown by the FED, just like in the 20s.
5. System with a built-in inflation punishes responsible people who underconsume and their savings are diminished by the politicians. Inflation is a hidden tax - governments steal purchasing power from people and blow it left and right on pork so they keep being elected. Inflation encourages people to spend money as fast as possible and get into debt as it will be diminished by the inflation as well. Such system is broken because everyone consumes today at the expense of tomorrow's consumption. This implies that tomorrow you have to earn more than today (someone has to pay interest), but why would that happen if you haven't invested in anything profitable but blown all money on consumption?
things don't looks so rosy in case of blizzard
since wc3 (circa 2003/4) they haven't released anything other than WoW and its expansions. Many people who built the success in the times of sc, d2 and wc3 are gone so it's not the same company it used to be.
sc2 is around the corner but it's planned as a 3 part experience right off the bat. You can see it as a good thing (more epic story) but there is a non-zero risk they'll follow the path of deliberate watering down and multiplying titles. Nobody knows how D3 will look like but it's not unlikely to see multiple expansions as well.
Past performance doesn't say anything meaningful about future performance, after all they have new overlords now.
you need to understand that:
- words are cheap
- setting arbitrary interest rate by the central bank is as close to regulating the market as you can get
Free market tension between savings and loans doesn't exist and few bureaucrats decide. Interest rate decides relative profitability of saving vs living on credit card. Setting it too low (which was the case in the last decade) means that only total 'losers' are responsible and save. This is not how you build stable economy.
for teh lulz - rap battle between Keynes and Hayek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
what absolutely necessary regulations do you speak of? More often than not they are the root of problems biting in the ass with their unintended consequences.
Go to youtube and watch some Peter Schiff clips who is quite famous for predicting the collapse with details how it will happen back in 2005-2006 or even earlier (and being laughed at, literally) - he runs for senate in CT now. He asks people:
- how many of you have bank accounts? ok, pretty much everyone... so, how many of you looked up into the bank's balance sheets? nobody? why? after all you do shop around and learn about other stuff, be it laptops or plasma tvs? so simply you don't care about condition of the bank? why? because if something bad happens, government got you covered?
If there was no regulation you would be afraid of losing your money and you'd check very thoroughly if the bank is safe. Do you see any bank advertising itself as the safest of all? No, they all compete with rates, how much they will offer you for keeping the money at their accounts.
As you can see fear of loss is removed from the natural balance and banks take a lot of risk. If they don't they'll lose that race of death. No guarantees would mean that everybody would check every invested dollar twice.
Barnie Madoff scheme worked for 15 years or so and no government agency found anything despite numerous tips that something is fishy.
Some mortgage backed papers that crashed global economy were rated at AAA even though their true reliability was much lower. Another example of too much faith put into regulatory bodies, rating agencies and all that unnecessary cruft freeing people of thinking and clouding true situation.
coincidentally all their previous games had main storyline told from perspective of all factions, WoW on the other hand has no story at all. So what's the reasoning behind your idea that blizzard somehow is able to turn 15 filler missions into player's wet dream? Remember that they are the part of the machine called Activision where 'exploiting on a yearly basis' is the way to go and their last non-WoW game was released in 2003.
it's often easier to prepare enough space in garrage/basement and providing internet for many people there can be tricky. With true lan you can set up LAN anywhere with a router/switch without worrying where to get internet pipe from.
hellgate was rushed by the publisher because they wanted to see the monies, unfortunately unpolished mmo-like product usually doesn't get a second chance and the game failed. Blizzard is unique because they are immune to the hard gamedev reality thanks to endless stream of money from WoW. If there was no WoW they would be in trouble, after all SC2 is in development for 7 or 8 years already.
even shit in a can with a blizzard logo slapped on it would sell 5 million copies so targetting wow crowd is negligible imo.
Multiplayer in particular is also where most of the serious replay value lies. Of course you didn't really "forget", you just lied.
multiplayer is where replay value lies but i like to play single player content from time to time, i like SC lore. For noobs single player is where they learn units, strats and stuff. Besides if you think that hardcore players spending night and day at battlenet are a majority you are mistaken, casuals who like single player because they won't be owned there are a significant chunk of customer base.
You said "total shill" when you meant "someone with different tastes than me". This further proves you a liar.
no i mean people that think blizzard can do no wrong and their every design decision is the best thing since sliced bread and sacred. Don't forget that most of their actions are now dictated by Darth Bobby Kotick.
you have no guarantee that nvidia blob will support current cards in 2015, chances are that in such scenario users of older hardware will be forced to use open source drivers. Same thing with amd/ati - their drivers don't support older radeons, i am sure owners of such video adapters would love to get ANY 3d acceleration.
it mainly helps to 'encourage' customers to fill company coffers more than they should.
TV series are not to be set as an example but unfortunately this is what will happen - games will be 10% substance and 90% of filler crap to keep players occupied until some new idea comes up.
and comparing sc2 where one player hosts the map to a fullblown mmog with a massive amount of data to serve doesn't make much sense. Battle.net is just another point of possible failure you don't really need to play on lan. Also you overestimate numbers of wow-to-sc2 converts. WoW has much more appeal for your average casual player than sc2 that will be completely dominated by exSc1/Wc3 players and RTS as a genre has much smaller base than countless FPShooters or even hack and slash Diablo clones.
still it's 30 terran missions and pretty much nothing else (there is some small protoss campaign-like thing). How many levels in a row can you play not to get bored with marines, siege tanks, and unlocking tech and playing mini-games of farming resources? unless you are a total shill, 3x10 > 1x30
There is a reason nobody tried to make a true RTS game with only 1 faction available at the release before.
Episodic nature is ok when all episodes offer full experience on their own, in case of sc2 we have to wait undefined amount of time to get another puzzle, and then wait again. Earlier games were complete.
It's a slippery slope from the gamer's perspective, companies will be justified to do even more of such dirty tricks, allowing them to offer less for more and more. In ten years people will be buying games for 60 bucks that offer 3 singleplayer missions and the other 95% of the game will be released in 10 expansions and 20 dlc's.
"If stocks go up, it is because of the free market."
not really, it can be caused by inflation. In fact Dow index didn't gain any value in last decade and even lost some when adjusted for cpi or when measured in ounces of gold, silver or pretty much every other commodity.
"If stocks go down, it is the free market correcting itself."
especially if they were inflated beyond the point indicated by the fundamentals alone.
"If a government purchases something, it makes the free market cry."
government doesn't have any money, it has to take away from the private sector in the form of taxes, print (and rob people of their purchasing power) or borrow (and ensure higher taxes down the road to pay interest) and then spend that newly aquired money in an inefficient manner.
"Yet when someone's retirement portfolio gets set back a year or more, they simply were not shrewd with their investments. Hey, it's a free market!"
Is there anything that is 100% sure in this world? I don't think so. No matter how you look at it, it's pretty much about finding proper investments to at least maintain purchasing power of your savings. Times of prosperity multiply them, downturns devour them. Besides stock market in its current form is a ponzi scheme, stock prices have no correlation with dividend yields so it's a game where suckers sell pieces of paper to even bigger suckers.
"When there's a near complete meltdown followed by a recession, it is because true free markets have never really been tried because of liberal regulations."
we can assume that 19th century in the US was a free market and it worked pretty well. USA became one of the richest countries in the world, inflation was almost inexistent and economic downturns of the 19th century were nothing compared to the great depression and current crisis. WW1 and WW2 convinced world governments that it's ok to micromanage economy, steal from people using a hidden tax called inflation - and free market is no more.
"So my question is this: For a theory to be Science it must be falsifiable; so what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?"
To deflect the question: So what would it take for one of keynesians and monetarists to admit that their idea of steering the markets to universal prosperity has failed hard?
After all it's the keynesians and such who are numerous in central banks and governments set the rules, not the advocates of true free markets.
'too big to fail' is the situation identical to 'irreplaceable worker'. Smart companies can't let them to be a hostage of a single point of failure and immediately fire such very very important individual. It may suck for a while because productivity drops but they are better off when the arcane knowledge once possessed by that VIP is rediscovered/reclaimed and distributed among bigger number of people.
Same thing should happen with governments and whole economy - government should never surrender because if they do they and the whole country become slaves of a privileged industries for eternity. Rescue insolvent business once - others have a precedent and will try to become as fat as possible to have a government guaranteed safety net.
At the very least companies bailed out with public money should be mercilessly sliced and diced so they won't be as big again.
After all it's not the first time when the auto industry required multibillion govt help.
but by today's widely accepted keynesian logic government should have created jobs for those retired soldiers using taxpayer's money. They did nothing (except cutting expenses which again is against keynesian doctrine) and thousands of people found jobs on their own in less than two years. How cool is that?
in short: when they serious, unmanageable shit hits the fan, hands off approach tends to work wonders.
my bet would be: because the government mandates it, duh
and one more thing - at least in these 2 terms of bush the US had the illusion of prosperity
if you think it ended badly, just wait till you see the effects of Obama's term.
Socialism and blowing money left and right (which is what the current administration does) won't solve any problems, I promise you that.
so progressive is someone that is liked by the teenage highschool hippies on a basis of a nice appearance? actions tell more than worthless words.
Reckless monetary policy, running huge deficits, fiscal irresponsibility and bailouts for the buddies don't sound like true conservative and that's what Bush did.
From the pure actions perspective he is merely a less spectacular copy of Obama. Obama does pretty much the same stuff that Bush did, but on a grander scale. Besides Obama was elected because he talked a lot about change - where is that change?
At the moment there is:
more wars? check
huge, unheard of deficit? check
bailouts for the selected few? check
the same monetary policy that will eventually destroy the dollar? check
there are only 3 meaningful differences between these two:
dem label vs rep label,
black vs white,
charismatic speaker vs redneck
these shitheads also allow legitimate owners to run their games because securom or some other drm crap refuses to cooperate.
Read about UBISOFT using CRACK from RELOADED as their own patch to fix drm problems with RainbowSix: Vegas
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubisoft-Cracks-Own-Game-with-Reloaded-Fix-90318.shtml
or hear that rant of a devoted gamer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt4BpnfAN-o
i think this is a cheap trick to 'encourage' people to get all 3 to taste anything coming close to the full experience. 1 campaign per episode? It can be epic but also extremely boring, i think average gamer's patience is about 10 missions long for the same thing over and over, you need something else to change the taste.
Old way let you see campaigns as entangled together giving an impression of depth and multiple dimensions, bringing all factions to bigass climax. Now i suspect you will get probably 10 missions of story and 20 missions of epic sidequests based on unlocking the tech and farming resources.
Is it a coincidence that nobody released rtses with ungodly long campaigns for 1 faction only and later sold next campaigns as separate episodes? Now it's appears to be the best thing since sliced bread because blizzard says so and they are never wrong.
Episodes also mean undefined amount of time to see the actual ending - vide half life 2 and it's long awaited ep3.
2011 is being optimistic imho, they still haven't announced 5th class (barbarian, wizard, witch doctor, monk, ...? ) :)
given that sc2 was in a beta ready state 1 year ago (but they fucked up with battle.net and had to wait) i wouldn't count on d3 being released soon. As you see they have all the time in the world. Corporations are forever, you are not
if you want to see how things look and work, goto official website and youtube for gameplay clips from blizzcons and gaming expos.
sad thing is that in both cases (games and politics/economy) being cool, hip and 'progressive' will end in the same way - with a total disaster.