There is only one "fair" flat tax and that is a flat wealth tax. Of course, you will never hear that coming out of the mouth of any of the flat taxers who only are interested in a tax system that benefits the upper and upper middle class.
Rich people are already benefitting from the current "so called progressive" tax system as evidenced by the growing gap between rich and poor. And everyone with a tiny bit of economic understanding knows why. The current tax system is highly in favor of those who own capital.
The pirate bay removes torrents for several reasons, but not because of the content. Here are a few things they do remove:
* Child porn when the police tells them to take it down. * Torrents distributed for commercial gain. * Torrents with incorrect name/description (It isn't the content that matters, but the fact that name/description doesn't match up with the actual content. One of the principles of the piratebay is that you should know what you download)
If you want to distribute a trojan via a piratebay torrent, just clearly state it in the name/description.
"Troj/Qhost-AC" - Trojan that prevents you from accessing the piratebay and several other torrents sites. Hidden inside a key generator for the Game XXX. To install, simply make sure the key generator is run on a machine with appropriate permissions.
If you did it like that, I don't see why the piratebay wouldn't let it remain.
Because working longer has rapidly diminishing returns, even going negative after a certain point. If you wondering how returns can go negative, it is pretty simply. Stress, exhaustion and simply not caring are negative symptoms that appear with longer work hours or "hostile" environments.
Hunter gatherers aren't carbon neutral, The human body produces C02. What is that off set by?
Collecting plants, making room for a new plant that can absorb CO2. And all its animal preys are also carbon neutral for that same reason so eating meat doesn't offset the carbon neutrality either.
Of course, if you get enough hunter gatherers that they destroy the environment around them, making the plant life unable to recooperate quickly enough, then it isn't carbon neutral any more.
When you start handing out subsidies, people start chasing the subsidies rather than the goals that the subsidies are trying to jump-start.
So true. Subsidies is the exact opposite of what you should do. There is only one decently efficent way of dealing with externalties, and that is to tax the hell out of it.
Of course, politicians will never do something like that. Instead of taxing the release of CO2 into the atmosphere they will just tax using energy which punishes all types of energy uses independent of how it is produced. Then they will create random subsidies on various non-externalty based energy production methods on a pseudo random basis (using the lobbying dice). This completly destroys the free market and makes less efficent but lobbied ways of producing energy cheaper (as in subsidised) while newer efficent methods remains expensive.
On a similar note, why is there so much FUD surrouding IPv6 here on slashdot? It's as if it was invented by Microsoft, by the sound of it sometimes.
Slashdot is filled with BoFH wannabees. And NAT is one of the tools that the BoFH invented to have maximum control while insuring that noone would get an easy working internet experience. As one of the main advantages for IPv6 is to remove the need for NAT it is not strange that you get many protestors.
Atleast that is my theory, and I am sticking with it.
If I found out Richard Stallman's openID usr/pass I could create an account on slashdot and post shit and people would think I am him because I am using his openID identity.
What user/pass? If you want security, use an OpenID server that identifies you via one time tokens. Good luck trying to crack an account on such as server.
You ducked the question and contradicted yourself. You said that it is cheaper to employ people than deal with their unemployment. So why wouldn't the government work to maintain near 0% unemployment? Even if unemployment is only 3%, according to your logic it would be in the gov'ts best interest to bring that lower.
Good question. From my understanding, this is because there is a diminishing return on lower unemployment. When unemployment is low, most of it is actually people between jobs. If goverment efforts are implemented to reduce it too much, it will start to affect the availibility of labor for the private sector. Especially, since it is difficult to predict the exact movements of the job market. Also, with a low unemployment, most people don't stay unemployed very long, reducing the bad side effects of unemployment. Goverment projects also have a tendency to lose efficency over time so creating permanent budgeted items may not be the best idea. Also, you don't want to keep the same people employed permanently as the goal should always be to get them into the private sector that is better at determining what the people want. It s a very good question though which sometimes occupies my mind.
If "creating jobs" has no downside
I never said no downsides. For every worker you still have to pay him (although after deducting the cost of keeping him unemployed, which includes welfare, increased crime rates, worsened family situations, less work experience and some other things), provide him with working tools and material (fortunally cheaper in recessions) and come up with actual productive projects to work on (public infrastructure is popular because it is something that helps everyone and doesn't require very much vision). Fortunally
The free market is dysfunctional when it comes to societal needs? You mean like improving everyone's standard of living? I would consider that a societal need.
Yes, the free market has some very good parts. Which is why I like it very much. It doesn't solve everything however. What it mainly misses is when individuals fall out of the system via unemployment for a longer time. There are four options. You can let them starve. You can provide welfare of some kind. You can help them find a job in the private sector. Or the goverment can give them a temporary work of some kind until they find something better in the private sector.
Assuming a civilized western society and a deep recession like the one we are entering now this is basically reduced to two options, welfare or goverment created work.
You don't seem to be very on-board with capitalism.
I am somewhat of a middle walker. There are good and bad things with most ideologies. Also, my comment on the free market doesn't mean that I think it is a bad thing. It is one of the better economical ideas in existance. Very good for distributing limited resources. I just don't think it can fix everything.
the point I made is that the benefits of this work do not outweigh the costs. You make the point that there is a hidden cost of unemployment. Ok, let's show that this hidden cost is enough to justify us doing work that we wouldn't otherwise see as beneficial enough to justify the cost
Yup. That is the big question that can debated back and forward. But I feel like we are atleast coming to terms on what we disagree on.
but wait, there's more that doesn't instantly springs to the eye. You save money by keeping people afloat, that means by keeping them employed, you make them keep producing value, not only do you do that, but you also give them experience and skills, with which they produce more value (which is why more experienced people make more money), but not only that, you also allow them to invest more in the future, by allowing them to send their kids to better schools than they would if they were broke and unemployed
Excellent post.
Most slashdotters grasp business economics fairly well, but goverment economics is on another level. For a business, an unemployed person is unimportant. For the goverment, every unemployed person is a burden. You gave most of the reasons why in your post, except maybe increased crime with rising unemployment.
Wow, I hate to be a typical slashdot commenter, but:
Bzzzt. You're wrong.
An investment is something you do when the benefits outweigh the costs. If that was the case here, it would have been on the books before the decision to "create jobs."
Sorry, but govermental economics has a lot more to care about a lot than simple business economics. Private businesses don't have to care about unemployed people who don't produce anything. Goverments do.
The cost for the goverment to putting people to work is actually very low as they would have to deal with those people in one way or another. Unless those people were about to be employed by the private sector of course. But that is obviously not happening right now, which is why the goverment is taking action.
It is therefore not strange that the goverment goes in the direction "Lots of unemployed -> Need to create jobs -> Come up with productive jobs that could be done" unlike businesses that goes like this "Can earn more money by doing more->Hire worker to do more". Goverments have to worry about the whole population, unlike businesses that only have to worry about themselves.
The whole idea of "creating jobs" is ridiculous. If "creating jobs" is what it sounds like, then why doesn't the government always do it?
Because most of the time the demand for people is high enough in the private sector that unemployment is low enough so the goverment doesn't have to get involved. No need to spend effort creating jobs when the free market delegates jobs more efficently.
And why don't we blame government when there is a rise in unemployment?
Goverment usually is blamed if the unemployment goes to high, as they should be there to catch the slack when the market is having a downturn.
this is just a wealth distribution tool (otherwise where are the wages coming from to pay these currently unemployed people?)
Yes, it is resource/wealth distribution, but with the added benefit of producing something for the goverment (and society), which makes it much preferable to pure welfare measures.
If the private sector and free market were capable of keeping people employed and working with decent income it wouldn't be nescessary. But unfortunally the free market is very dysfunctional when it comes to societal needs.
increases the long-term consequences.
Putting people to productive work isn't usually be bad for a country as a whole, unless those people could be put to more efficent work elsewhere. But, as the private sector is in a big slump that doesn't seem to be the case.
When do we stop deciding to screw over the country to temporarily relieve the difficulties of the minority few?
Screwing over the country? As I have said above, I can't see what part in putting people to productive work involves screwing over the country.
Also, one final bonus thing. The unemployed are a pretty decent part of the minority. Especially if you include nearby family that can be affected. Too high unemployment can cause unrest and crime. And don't think for a second that those in power won't do everything they can to keep down civil unrest and crime.
Yep. The problem is that the government is (with a few exceptions) extremely bad at producing anything other than paperwork and hindrances
I think the main reason goverments are unefficent is confined to one specific thing. Goverments simply tend to have an easy time to start projects and a hard time to get rid of them. That leads to projects that can be good at the start but drag on for too long. Businesses on the other hand will lay off people when they no longer are needed. In a similar manner, goverments are less likely to give up on bad projects which cause extra money to be spent on something useless.
Therefore it is important for any goverment that want to stimulate the job market to create jobs that are temporary. Building infrastructure usable by society as a whole is one such type of job. Adding more people into the DMV bueraucracy is not.
Also, to prevent bad project being "money pits" it is important to not invest money too much money into any individual project. Also, having many smaller projects make it easier to judge externally employed companies on reliability as well as efficency. Not to mention that corruption becomes less likely. I have also always wondered if it wouldn't be a good idea to introduce an independent goverment agency whose only purpose is to review the efficency of other agencies.
How to make a goverment run operations more efficently is actually a very interesting topic. And, no, a small goverment isn't the same as an efficent goverment, although smaller goverments are often forced to be more efficent.
It sure looks like the market has gotten incredibly removed from reality. Huge sums of money are invested in side-bets such as options and dervitives, with less actually invested in owning shares of actual companies.
And less of what gets invested in actual shares goes to actual companies and more is traded as a zero sum game between traders. (while collecting fees for it)
Getting "blown up" happens to the derivitives traders, not those who hold actual stocks
True, stocks are less risky that derivatives. But in most parts it is still a zero sum game. In any deal one side loses and one side wins. The exception being for situations where there is some external benefits for one/both of the parties, usually when the seller needs cash that the buyer can provide, or when the buyer is looking for more direct control of the company.
Most everyone seem to have forgotten the basics of economy which is that trades are supposed to be mutually benefitial deals. That is what drives real societal progress. Not trying to "con" the other part into buying something that is worth less. Of course, the con game is benefitial for the individual who is doing the con and is often legal because there is rules against stupidity. So you can't really blame the con man.
What you can do, and what any society that is trying to run a free market should do is provide a framework that combats excessive conning. This usually involves making market participants more informed (transparency regulations) and punishing commercial lies.
Note: I hope it is clear that when I use the word "con" I am using it in a somewhat liberal meaning, meaning any transaction where you think that the other party is going to lose out on the deal.
Sorry, you aren't putting your money into companies by gambling on the stock market. If you want to put money into a company you have to buy stock directly from them. Yes, there are occasions where companies do release new stock which is when money gets invested into actual production, but most of the stock market and other financial markets are zero sum speculations that serve little purpose other than to enrich those with the best insider information and skill.
The whole idea that investing on the stock market is always good is bogus. There are very rarely any cheap/undervalued stocks nowadays. Sure, stocks go up in price which make them look like they were cheap before, but that is usually an illusion because one idiot is hoping that another idiot will buy the stock at an even higher price. Speculation value is only artifical value that is zero sum in the long run. Dividends and company assets is what really matters when evaluating the true value of stocks.
It gets worse. With the lack of information about companies due to lax book keeping regulations, people looking to actually buy stock based on real value can't, because it is near impossible to evaluate companies as there is a lot of debt and bad asset hiding going on. Finally, with all the insider bailouts going on, even if you had an idea of what the company had on the books you still couldn't evaluate the company, because the goverment might just decided to prop up that specific company.
To be fair, not all companies are equally bad. But I am talking about the attitude of the financial markets in general that has turned into little more than self serving beasts.
Oh, you have the "right" to be nude as long as it is in the right place. Where right place usually is defined as any place where the wrong state/local goverment can't see you.
Note that there actually isn't a federal law against nudism, so state and local laws take precident.
No, it is an unlawful act that could get you on the sex offenders list, positioning you below a murderer who has served his time. Assuming of course that you live in the land of the not so free.
The problem isn't installation itself. The problem is with the idicoy that surround the current way of thinking that computer security has, starting with the whole centering on user access. Programs aren't data files and simply shouldn't be governed under the same rules as data files. Instead programs need their own restrictions that are handled independent to which user who runs the program.
An ordinary user should have the right to install any program, but the rights of the programs the user installs should be limited to access to the application's own directories as well as access to files via a secure file dialog.
The whole idea that I have to install as an administrator is what caused this whole mess, because that just causes every user to become an administrator every time he wants to install a new program. The solution isn't to make it more difficult to install things. Instead you want to make it easier to install things, but ensure that things that get installed can't do any harm.
But you can't divorce the reality from the fantasy like that
Says who? You. I guess you are one of those fanatics that thinks that games like "Grand Theft Auto" turns people into mass murdering criminals and watching horror movies means you enjoy watching real people getting killed.
I said in my post below that I know a girl who has a rape fantasy; she understands that means either getting raped by an unfeeling psychopath or having a normal guy have a moment of madness and then experience extreme guilt afterwards. It's weird but understandable as an extreme domination fantasy.
Quote from your other post:
and whilst the content of her fantasy is unusual it's at least understandable that she wants her fantasy to be fulfilled. What I find odd about your claims is that you have a sexual fantasy that you don't want to be fulfilled"
Your lady friend seems to be a little odd. Most people (males and females) who have fantasies about getting raped don't actually want it to happen. They fully realize the difference between being in control in their own fantasy and something happening in reality. And it is pretty common to have fantasies about getting raped or dominated. Actually it seems to be a bit more common than the opposite from statistics I have seen. But just to make myself clear. Fantasising about getting raped doesn't not in an way mean that you want to get raped in reality.
As for your friend, she should probably visit a psychologist as wanting to get raped in reality is not normal. Those into S&M play understand this better than most, which is why the M part is in full control all the time by having safe word. (not into S&M myself though, but everyone to their own)
I could say you're the one suffering from a fantasy deficit,
If you mean knowing that fantasy isn't reality is a deficit, then fantasy deficit is the normal state of being. People who have trouble drawing lines between fantasy and reality are the really dangerous and crazy ones.
Personally I would think that fantasy deficit meant an inability to imagine things, which is a completly different thing. Being able to seperate reality and fantasy is in fact a prerequisite to improving your ability to imagine things. Those who have trouble seperating reality and fantasy will conciously or subconsciously restrict their imaginations.
I mean, if you're imagining rape without the horror then it's not really rape, it's something else.
How the heck did you arrive at that thought? You basically just said that whatever you imagined, it isn't really what you imagined, unless you fully believe that what you imagined is reality. That is just so wrong on so many levels.
Oh, I knew "the other side are whiners also" argument would come up as soon I had posted my first response.
There is a difference however. The "hardcore whiners" as I prefer to call them could easily restrict their actions to emulate a more difficult game. They however choose not to, because what they really want is everyone else to have as difficult a time as themselves. What they enjoy is to finish games when others can not. They are basically the "my car is better than yours" type of people.
The opposite is not true. Players who enjoys gameplay that flows along can't simply tune down the difficulty of a hard game. Actually, there is quicksave, but letting a hardcore player save once at the start of each level and then reload if the game doesn't "punish" him enough breaks immersion less than having the non hardcore player press quicksave every minute in a difficult game.
If you think the point is to waste time, go play World of Warcraft. And no, that isn't meant as an insult to WoW. It is just WoW is built around having fun by wasting time. However, that is not the only way to have fun.
If you don't want to waste time, I suggest to press "quit".
I have a better solution. If you enjoy wasting time, restart the game every time you fail in a task. Heck, you can even give yourself three lifes before you have to restart (or any other set of rules). Real hardcore players know how to challenge themselves. It is the hardcore whiners that try to force their idea of gameplay onto others.
Ok, I am not related to that website you mentioned, but I'll comment atleast
Why would paedophiles view images (real or simulated) and then not want to have sex with children?
Because they don't want to hurt a child?
The broad experience of just about everyone on the planet is that we view pornography that shows us our fantasy, i.e. things we'd really like to do (if only we had the pulling power).
defend what's essentially a rape fantasy
Ok, here I can actually give a good rebuttal to your unsubstiantiated claims. I personally enjoy reading the occasional rape fantasy when I find the story exciting but I would never dream of doing it in reality and find the idea of real rape abhorrent.
All you have demonstrated is that you have a lack of seperation between fantasy and reality. Something that seems to be a common trait among those who are pushing legislation against sexual fetishes.
Trying to apply the Supply&Demand curve to SMS is a failure because it satisy neither of the factors needed to make the S&D curve applicable.
* A non-constant marginal cost (raw material markets being the strongest example here) * Short term over/under-satisfied market (limited factory capacity for new products, any product with a long production->consumtion cycle where you have to guess the market demand)
However, SMS (and pretty much any information service) has neither of those factors. The marginal cost is constant. And with a very short production->consumption cycle it is pretty much impossible to underproduce or overproduce.
Google sucks for searching the specific forums you are following. You can either search all the web or a specific forum. But you can't search all forums you are following easily.
"Google?"
Google doesn't do much archiving. If a site goes offline it is online with all its posts. Sure, you can dig up some in the google cache, but calling that arching is laughable.
"There are single sign on systems around but who wants to give that much control aaway?"
Single sign on systems are far safer anyway as they puts the trust into one provider that you can choose. They don't take away control. They give you control.
"I suppose so but RSS helps."
RSS has nothing to do with posting. It only provides an extremly inferior version of pulling that only fetches the thread head. Compare that with a usenet client where you can fetch all new threads, mark the interesting ones and consistently get the new messages that appear in those threads while ignoring any thread you aren't interested in.
Even compared to "New posts" in some bullentin board software, usenet clients are far far superior in this regard because the mechanism allows two things. The ignoring of uninteresting threads and consitent and efficent working on multiple boards at once. This is the main damning thing of all web forums. They work decently well for people who read a subject once and then moves on, but they suck for keeping track of discussions and following interesting threads while ignoring the boring ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations on calculating the sum of numbers from 0 to 99.
There is only one "fair" flat tax and that is a flat wealth tax. Of course, you will never hear that coming out of the mouth of any of the flat taxers who only are interested in a tax system that benefits the upper and upper middle class.
Rich people are already benefitting from the current "so called progressive" tax system as evidenced by the growing gap between rich and poor. And everyone with a tiny bit of economic understanding knows why. The current tax system is highly in favor of those who own capital.
Strange, since my external USB connected hardrive uses 3% of the CPU. Not what I would call a processor hog.
The pirate bay removes torrents for several reasons, but not because of the content. Here are a few things they do remove:
* Child porn when the police tells them to take it down.
* Torrents distributed for commercial gain.
* Torrents with incorrect name/description (It isn't the content that matters, but the fact that name/description doesn't match up with the actual content. One of the principles of the piratebay is that you should know what you download)
If you want to distribute a trojan via a piratebay torrent, just clearly state it in the name/description.
"Troj/Qhost-AC" - Trojan that prevents you from accessing the piratebay and several other torrents sites. Hidden inside a key generator for the Game XXX. To install, simply make sure the key generator is run on a machine with appropriate permissions.
If you did it like that, I don't see why the piratebay wouldn't let it remain.
Because working longer has rapidly diminishing returns, even going negative after a certain point. If you wondering how returns can go negative, it is pretty simply. Stress, exhaustion and simply not caring are negative symptoms that appear with longer work hours or "hostile" environments.
Hunter gatherers aren't carbon neutral, The human body produces C02. What is that off set by?
Collecting plants, making room for a new plant that can absorb CO2. And all its animal preys are also carbon neutral for that same reason so eating meat doesn't offset the carbon neutrality either.
Of course, if you get enough hunter gatherers that they destroy the environment around them, making the plant life unable to recooperate quickly enough, then it isn't carbon neutral any more.
When you start handing out subsidies, people start chasing the subsidies rather than the goals that the subsidies are trying to jump-start.
So true. Subsidies is the exact opposite of what you should do. There is only one decently efficent way of dealing with externalties, and that is to tax the hell out of it.
Of course, politicians will never do something like that. Instead of taxing the release of CO2 into the atmosphere they will just tax using energy which punishes all types of energy uses independent of how it is produced. Then they will create random subsidies on various non-externalty based energy production methods on a pseudo random basis (using the lobbying dice). This completly destroys the free market and makes less efficent but lobbied ways of producing energy cheaper (as in subsidised) while newer efficent methods remains expensive.
On a similar note, why is there so much FUD surrouding IPv6 here on slashdot? It's as if it was invented by Microsoft, by the sound of it sometimes.
Slashdot is filled with BoFH wannabees. And NAT is one of the tools that the BoFH invented to have maximum control while insuring that noone would get an easy working internet experience. As one of the main advantages for IPv6 is to remove the need for NAT it is not strange that you get many protestors.
Atleast that is my theory, and I am sticking with it.
If I found out Richard Stallman's openID usr/pass I could create an account on slashdot and post shit and people would think I am him because I am using his openID identity.
What user/pass? If you want security, use an OpenID server that identifies you via one time tokens. Good luck trying to crack an account on such as server.
You ducked the question and contradicted yourself. You said that it is cheaper to employ people than deal with their unemployment. So why wouldn't the government work to maintain near 0% unemployment? Even if unemployment is only 3%, according to your logic it would be in the gov'ts best interest to bring that lower.
Good question. From my understanding, this is because there is a diminishing return on lower unemployment. When unemployment is low, most of it is actually people between jobs. If goverment efforts are implemented to reduce it too much, it will start to affect the availibility of labor for the private sector. Especially, since it is difficult to predict the exact movements of the job market. Also, with a low unemployment, most people don't stay unemployed very long, reducing the bad side effects of unemployment. Goverment projects also have a tendency to lose efficency over time so creating permanent budgeted items may not be the best idea. Also, you don't want to keep the same people employed permanently as the goal should always be to get them into the private sector that is better at determining what the people want. It s a very good question though which sometimes occupies my mind.
If "creating jobs" has no downside
I never said no downsides. For every worker you still have to pay him (although after deducting the cost of keeping him unemployed, which includes welfare, increased crime rates, worsened family situations, less work experience and some other things), provide him with working tools and material (fortunally cheaper in recessions) and come up with actual productive projects to work on (public infrastructure is popular because it is something that helps everyone and doesn't require very much vision). Fortunally
The free market is dysfunctional when it comes to societal needs? You mean like improving everyone's standard of living? I would consider that a societal need.
Yes, the free market has some very good parts. Which is why I like it very much. It doesn't solve everything however. What it mainly misses is when individuals fall out of the system via unemployment for a longer time. There are four options. You can let them starve. You can provide welfare of some kind. You can help them find a job in the private sector. Or the goverment can give them a temporary work of some kind until they find something better in the private sector.
Assuming a civilized western society and a deep recession like the one we are entering now this is basically reduced to two options, welfare or goverment created work.
You don't seem to be very on-board with capitalism.
I am somewhat of a middle walker. There are good and bad things with most ideologies. Also, my comment on the free market doesn't mean that I think it is a bad thing. It is one of the better economical ideas in existance. Very good for distributing limited resources. I just don't think it can fix everything.
the point I made is that the benefits of this work do not outweigh the costs. You make the point that there is a hidden cost of unemployment. Ok, let's show that this hidden cost is enough to justify us doing work that we wouldn't otherwise see as beneficial enough to justify the cost
Yup. That is the big question that can debated back and forward. But I feel like we are atleast coming to terms on what we disagree on.
but wait, there's more that doesn't instantly springs to the eye. You save money by keeping people afloat, that means by keeping them employed, you make them keep producing value, not only do you do that, but you also give them experience and skills, with which they produce more value (which is why more experienced people make more money), but not only that, you also allow them to invest more in the future, by allowing them to send their kids to better schools than they would if they were broke and unemployed
Excellent post.
Most slashdotters grasp business economics fairly well, but goverment economics is on another level. For a business, an unemployed person is unimportant. For the goverment, every unemployed person is a burden. You gave most of the reasons why in your post, except maybe increased crime with rising unemployment.
Wow, I hate to be a typical slashdot commenter, but:
Bzzzt. You're wrong.
An investment is something you do when the benefits outweigh the costs. If that was the case here, it would have been on the books before the decision to "create jobs."
Sorry, but govermental economics has a lot more to care about a lot than simple business economics. Private businesses don't have to care about unemployed people who don't produce anything. Goverments do.
The cost for the goverment to putting people to work is actually very low as they would have to deal with those people in one way or another. Unless those people were about to be employed by the private sector of course. But that is obviously not happening right now, which is why the goverment is taking action.
It is therefore not strange that the goverment goes in the direction "Lots of unemployed -> Need to create jobs -> Come up with productive jobs that could be done" unlike businesses that goes like this "Can earn more money by doing more->Hire worker to do more". Goverments have to worry about the whole population, unlike businesses that only have to worry about themselves.
The whole idea of "creating jobs" is ridiculous. If "creating jobs" is what it sounds like, then why doesn't the government always do it?
Because most of the time the demand for people is high enough in the private sector that unemployment is low enough so the goverment doesn't have to get involved. No need to spend effort creating jobs when the free market delegates jobs more efficently.
And why don't we blame government when there is a rise in unemployment?
Goverment usually is blamed if the unemployment goes to high, as they should be there to catch the slack when the market is having a downturn.
this is just a wealth distribution tool (otherwise where are the wages coming from to pay these currently unemployed people?)
Yes, it is resource/wealth distribution, but with the added benefit of producing something for the goverment (and society), which makes it much preferable to pure welfare measures.
If the private sector and free market were capable of keeping people employed and working with decent income it wouldn't be nescessary. But unfortunally the free market is very dysfunctional when it comes to societal needs.
increases the long-term consequences.
Putting people to productive work isn't usually be bad for a country as a whole, unless those people could be put to more efficent work elsewhere. But, as the private sector is in a big slump that doesn't seem to be the case.
When do we stop deciding to screw over the country to temporarily relieve the difficulties of the minority few?
Screwing over the country? As I have said above, I can't see what part in putting people to productive work involves screwing over the country.
Also, one final bonus thing. The unemployed are a pretty decent part of the minority. Especially if you include nearby family that can be affected. Too high unemployment can cause unrest and crime. And don't think for a second that those in power won't do everything they can to keep down civil unrest and crime.
Yep. The problem is that the government is (with a few exceptions) extremely bad at producing anything other than paperwork and hindrances
I think the main reason goverments are unefficent is confined to one specific thing. Goverments simply tend to have an easy time to start projects and a hard time to get rid of them. That leads to projects that can be good at the start but drag on for too long. Businesses on the other hand will lay off people when they no longer are needed. In a similar manner, goverments are less likely to give up on bad projects which cause extra money to be spent on something useless.
Therefore it is important for any goverment that want to stimulate the job market to create jobs that are temporary. Building infrastructure usable by society as a whole is one such type of job. Adding more people into the DMV bueraucracy is not.
Also, to prevent bad project being "money pits" it is important to not invest money too much money into any individual project. Also, having many smaller projects make it easier to judge externally employed companies on reliability as well as efficency. Not to mention that corruption becomes less likely. I have also always wondered if it wouldn't be a good idea to introduce an independent goverment agency whose only purpose is to review the efficency of other agencies.
How to make a goverment run operations more efficently is actually a very interesting topic. And, no, a small goverment isn't the same as an efficent goverment, although smaller goverments are often forced to be more efficent.
It sure looks like the market has gotten incredibly removed from reality. Huge sums of money are invested in side-bets such as options and dervitives, with less actually invested in owning shares of actual companies.
And less of what gets invested in actual shares goes to actual companies and more is traded as a zero sum game between traders. (while collecting fees for it)
Getting "blown up" happens to the derivitives traders, not those who hold actual stocks
True, stocks are less risky that derivatives. But in most parts it is still a zero sum game. In any deal one side loses and one side wins. The exception being for situations where there is some external benefits for one/both of the parties, usually when the seller needs cash that the buyer can provide, or when the buyer is looking for more direct control of the company.
Most everyone seem to have forgotten the basics of economy which is that trades are supposed to be mutually benefitial deals. That is what drives real societal progress. Not trying to "con" the other part into buying something that is worth less. Of course, the con game is benefitial for the individual who is doing the con and is often legal because there is rules against stupidity. So you can't really blame the con man.
What you can do, and what any society that is trying to run a free market should do is provide a framework that combats excessive conning. This usually involves making market participants more informed (transparency regulations) and punishing commercial lies.
Note: I hope it is clear that when I use the word "con" I am using it in a somewhat liberal meaning, meaning any transaction where you think that the other party is going to lose out on the deal.
Sorry, you aren't putting your money into companies by gambling on the stock market. If you want to put money into a company you have to buy stock directly from them. Yes, there are occasions where companies do release new stock which is when money gets invested into actual production, but most of the stock market and other financial markets are zero sum speculations that serve little purpose other than to enrich those with the best insider information and skill.
The whole idea that investing on the stock market is always good is bogus. There are very rarely any cheap/undervalued stocks nowadays. Sure, stocks go up in price which make them look like they were cheap before, but that is usually an illusion because one idiot is hoping that another idiot will buy the stock at an even higher price. Speculation value is only artifical value that is zero sum in the long run. Dividends and company assets is what really matters when evaluating the true value of stocks.
It gets worse. With the lack of information about companies due to lax book keeping regulations, people looking to actually buy stock based on real value can't, because it is near impossible to evaluate companies as there is a lot of debt and bad asset hiding going on. Finally, with all the insider bailouts going on, even if you had an idea of what the company had on the books you still couldn't evaluate the company, because the goverment might just decided to prop up that specific company.
To be fair, not all companies are equally bad. But I am talking about the attitude of the financial markets in general that has turned into little more than self serving beasts.
Oh, you have the "right" to be nude as long as it is in the right place. Where right place usually is defined as any place where the wrong state/local goverment can't see you.
Note that there actually isn't a federal law against nudism, so state and local laws take precident.
No, it is an unlawful act that could get you on the sex offenders list, positioning you below a murderer who has served his time. Assuming of course that you live in the land of the not so free.
The problem isn't installation itself. The problem is with the idicoy that surround the current way of thinking that computer security has, starting with the whole centering on user access. Programs aren't data files and simply shouldn't be governed under the same rules as data files. Instead programs need their own restrictions that are handled independent to which user who runs the program.
An ordinary user should have the right to install any program, but the rights of the programs the user installs should be limited to access to the application's own directories as well as access to files via a secure file dialog.
The whole idea that I have to install as an administrator is what caused this whole mess, because that just causes every user to become an administrator every time he wants to install a new program. The solution isn't to make it more difficult to install things. Instead you want to make it easier to install things, but ensure that things that get installed can't do any harm.
But you can't divorce the reality from the fantasy like that
Says who? You. I guess you are one of those fanatics that thinks that games like "Grand Theft Auto" turns people into mass murdering criminals and watching horror movies means you enjoy watching real people getting killed.
I said in my post below that I know a girl who has a rape fantasy; she understands that means either getting raped by an unfeeling psychopath or having a normal guy have a moment of madness and then experience extreme guilt afterwards. It's weird but understandable as an extreme domination fantasy.
Quote from your other post:
and whilst the content of her fantasy is unusual it's at least understandable that she wants her fantasy to be fulfilled. What I find odd about your claims is that you have a sexual fantasy that you don't want to be fulfilled"
Your lady friend seems to be a little odd. Most people (males and females) who have fantasies about getting raped don't actually want it to happen. They fully realize the difference between being in control in their own fantasy and something happening in reality. And it is pretty common to have fantasies about getting raped or dominated. Actually it seems to be a bit more common than the opposite from statistics I have seen. But just to make myself clear. Fantasising about getting raped doesn't not in an way mean that you want to get raped in reality.
As for your friend, she should probably visit a psychologist as wanting to get raped in reality is not normal. Those into S&M play understand this better than most, which is why the M part is in full control all the time by having safe word. (not into S&M myself though, but everyone to their own)
I could say you're the one suffering from a fantasy deficit,
If you mean knowing that fantasy isn't reality is a deficit, then fantasy deficit is the normal state of being. People who have trouble drawing lines between fantasy and reality are the really dangerous and crazy ones.
Personally I would think that fantasy deficit meant an inability to imagine things, which is a completly different thing. Being able to seperate reality and fantasy is in fact a prerequisite to improving your ability to imagine things. Those who have trouble seperating reality and fantasy will conciously or subconsciously restrict their imaginations.
I mean, if you're imagining rape without the horror then it's not really rape, it's something else.
How the heck did you arrive at that thought? You basically just said that whatever you imagined, it isn't really what you imagined, unless you fully believe that what you imagined is reality. That is just so wrong on so many levels.
Thanks for proving my point.
Oh, I knew "the other side are whiners also" argument would come up as soon I had posted my first response.
There is a difference however. The "hardcore whiners" as I prefer to call them could easily restrict their actions to emulate a more difficult game. They however choose not to, because what they really want is everyone else to have as difficult a time as themselves. What they enjoy is to finish games when others can not. They are basically the "my car is better than yours" type of people.
The opposite is not true. Players who enjoys gameplay that flows along can't simply tune down the difficulty of a hard game. Actually, there is quicksave, but letting a hardcore player save once at the start of each level and then reload if the game doesn't "punish" him enough breaks immersion less than having the non hardcore player press quicksave every minute in a difficult game.
No the whole point is to have fun.
If you think the point is to waste time, go play World of Warcraft. And no, that isn't meant as an insult to WoW. It is just WoW is built around having fun by wasting time. However, that is not the only way to have fun.
If you don't want to waste time, I suggest to press "quit".
I have a better solution. If you enjoy wasting time, restart the game every time you fail in a task. Heck, you can even give yourself three lifes before you have to restart (or any other set of rules). Real hardcore players know how to challenge themselves. It is the hardcore whiners that try to force their idea of gameplay onto others.
Ok, I am not related to that website you mentioned, but I'll comment atleast
Why would paedophiles view images (real or simulated) and then not want to have sex with children?
Because they don't want to hurt a child?
The broad experience of just about everyone on the planet is that we view pornography that shows us our fantasy, i.e. things we'd really like to do (if only we had the pulling power).
defend what's essentially a rape fantasy
Ok, here I can actually give a good rebuttal to your unsubstiantiated claims. I personally enjoy reading the occasional rape fantasy when I find the story exciting but I would never dream of doing it in reality and find the idea of real rape abhorrent.
All you have demonstrated is that you have a lack of seperation between fantasy and reality. Something that seems to be a common trait among those who are pushing legislation against sexual fetishes.
Trying to apply the Supply&Demand curve to SMS is a failure because it satisy neither of the factors needed to make the S&D curve applicable.
* A non-constant marginal cost (raw material markets being the strongest example here)
* Short term over/under-satisfied market (limited factory capacity for new products, any product with a long production->consumtion cycle where you have to guess the market demand)
However, SMS (and pretty much any information service) has neither of those factors. The marginal cost is constant. And with a very short production->consumption cycle it is pretty much impossible to underproduce or overproduce.
Google?
Google sucks for searching the specific forums you are following. You can either search all the web or a specific forum. But you can't search all forums you are following easily.
"Google?"
Google doesn't do much archiving. If a site goes offline it is online with all its posts. Sure, you can dig up some in the google cache, but calling that arching is laughable.
"There are single sign on systems around but who wants to give that much control aaway?"
Single sign on systems are far safer anyway as they puts the trust into one provider that you can choose. They don't take away control. They give you control.
"I suppose so but RSS helps."
RSS has nothing to do with posting. It only provides an extremly inferior version of pulling that only fetches the thread head. Compare that with a usenet client where you can fetch all new threads, mark the interesting ones and consistently get the new messages that appear in those threads while ignoring any thread you aren't interested in.
Even compared to "New posts" in some bullentin board software, usenet clients are far far superior in this regard because the mechanism allows two things. The ignoring of uninteresting threads and consitent and efficent working on multiple boards at once. This is the main damning thing of all web forums. They work decently well for people who read a subject once and then moves on, but they suck for keeping track of discussions and following interesting threads while ignoring the boring ones.