Yep, sounds like the attitude most people have nowadays. Nothing is ever the fault of the individual; it's always the environment that caused his actions.
Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme but it behaves similar to one - the increasing mining difficulty and limited overall amount of coins heavily rewards early adopters (who hoard their bitcoins) if and if only these early adopters can convince the latecomers that bitcoins actually have value (otherwise cashing out becomes hard).
By that logic, any company taking investor money is a ponzi scheme: the early adopters (i.e. initial investors) are heavily rewarded if and only if they can convince latecomers that the company actually has value (otherwise cashing out -- selling their stock -- becomes hard).
To suck American's and other peoples' money out of their wallets from overhead. Same basic effect.
I'm not sure how this post got a +4 insightful -- he provided no reasoning to support his claim. I counter: hedge funds do not take money out of other people's wallets (they're not the government:D ). Rather, they are like entrepreneurs; they search for misallocated resources in the markets, and exploit any such misallocations to make money. For instance, sometimes they add extra liquidity to the markets (i.e. through high frequency trading), and sometimes they find undervalued companies and give them the necessary resources to continue operating. It's not that they are taking money from others -- rather, they are creating value and offering a valuable service to the economy as a whole. Remember: it's not a zero sum game -- if someone makes money by providing me a service, I am not poorer. In fact, I am richer because they are providing me with something I deem useful.
Keynesian theory is more certainly not akin to Newton's theories. Keynesianism differs significantly from other prominent schools such as the Chicago School, the Austrian School, etc. If you read up on the different approaches, you'll see that economists disagree a lot about some pretty basic things and we're really far away from a consensus.
So the testing part is looking at previous success a failure, and the prediction side would be using the previously success as a reaction to current economic situation and seeing the results.
Not all economists view their study in this empirical manner. For instance, the Austrians view the subject more like mathematics; they deduce their principles from basic axioms. The Keynesians (e.g. Krugman) study it in that way you just described.
This difference, though seemingly trivial, does in fact have important implications. For example, the minimum wage debate is fundamentally based on the distinction: the Austrians think that a lower bound on wages will create unemployment because all those whose value (technically, marginal revenue product) falls below the minimum wage will be unemployed, while the Keynesians require empirical evidence to support the claim that minimum wage laws have adverse effects on the economy.
Humans are corrupted by money and power.... The corruption of money and power allow capitalists to exploit people just the same.
I'm sick and tired of this fallacy being bandied around, day in day out, by those who don't seem to understand what Capitalism is. How do capitalists exploit people when the economic system is fundamentally based on voluntary, free trade? Sure, they employ the labor of others in order to advance our businesses... Indeed, sometimes workers think their wages are "unjust"... But that is a far cry from exploitation or coercion, words which the ignorant tend to throw around without really understanding the economic system of capitalism.
And this comment about human corruption by wealth and power demonstrates that you don't understand the nature of human beings. Of course humans try to obtain more wealth! Of course they want more power to satisfy their desires! To deny this fact is to deny the existence of the evolutionary struggle in which each animal / human being tries to best exploit their environment in order to live. This is a fundamental fact of life that no one (not even the socialists/communists/marxists) can deny.
But I do not blame you, OP. You are simply spewing out platitudes which you have heard repeated so many times that they seem to gain an air of truth. I don't think you truly believe these terrible fallacies.
Not quite, it would only increase inflation if it hit the economy. The effect of having a $5tn coin to borrow against would be more or less identical to issuing another $5tn in bonds..
It will 'hit the economy'; why would the government create new fiat money if they weren't going to use it?
If an attacker can act as the gateway for a victim (man in the middle), he can use this attack. sslsniff works by intercepting requests between the server and the victim, and it removes all HTTPS tags/references/links. In effect, the victim doesn't know there was supposed to be an SSL connection. I don't see how they can patch this with the current technology..
taxpayers are coming out ahead -- by at least $40 billion
This is fallacious -- the taxpayer never comes out ahead financially (excluding the ones who are subsidized by the government). The author of that article is implying that, somehow, the taxpayer is gaining money -- an idea totally contrary to taxation.
Although having the leaker's name can increase credibility a little bit, it is ultimately the correctness of the information that matters. People believe Wikileak's documents because large portions have been verified; having whistleblower names attached to the leaked information wouldn't increase significantly increase the credibility of the docs.
it [the government] is there to uphold the rules that the majority of the nation agrees upon.
I'm probably gonna get a -1 flamebait for this, but I'll counter this point anyways. There is no need to have a government, if its sole function is to uphold the rules of the majority. If the Fed didn't exist, people would still agree that, say, stealing is bad; we don't need a government to affirm this conviction. But I do agree with you: we do have a federal government that imposes (better word) the will of the majority on everyone. E.G. if most people don't like drugs, hey, "we should ban them!" "Don't like gays? Hey, make their marriages illegal!" I think that's a better way to look at it.
The police would answer that the arrest provides an example for future teens who want to publish demeaning content about their peers. But what makes you think that the police are interested in benefiting society? Fundamentally, they want more cases like this so they can justify their continued existence, and keep coercing more tax dollars.
Free speech doesn't protect racist or sexist slurs.
Actually, it does. Free speech must not be restricted unless it presents a "clear and present danger [to others]." The founding fathers knew that democracies function only when people have a right to criticize freely. This means that governments cannot eliminate speech simply because the masses find it undesirable. For instance: what if, in the early 19th century, all talk about freeing the slaves were made illegal because most considered it an undesirable and offensive idea? We would still have slaves! Thus, all speech (even racist or sexist slurs) must be protected. Although I find the 17-year-old's content repulsive, he absolutely does have a right to free speech.
With all the complaints about the disrepair of contemporary roads, I think we need to ask what sort of alternative solutions exist to improve the quality of American highways/bridges/roads/etc.
Fundamentally, the problem is that the States maintain transportation infrastructure. Although they succeed (somewhat) at repairing the roads, State governments have the same problems as all governmental institutions; namely, inefficiency and lack of accountability. Private organizations, by contrast, do not suffer from these issues.
Before the 1950s, almost all roads were handled by private companies. They used a number of business models to profit; for instance, they established tolls (toll roads) to fund themselves. Instead of obtaining money through mandatory gas taxes or tax by mile systems, the organizations created systems that were voluntary, simple, and non-coercive: three qualities that the current and proposed governmental solutions do not have.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, sounds like the attitude most people have nowadays. Nothing is ever the fault of the individual; it's always the environment that caused his actions.
Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme but it behaves similar to one - the increasing mining difficulty and limited overall amount of coins heavily rewards early adopters (who hoard their bitcoins) if and if only these early adopters can convince the latecomers that bitcoins actually have value (otherwise cashing out becomes hard).
By that logic, any company taking investor money is a ponzi scheme: the early adopters (i.e. initial investors) are heavily rewarded if and only if they can convince latecomers that the company actually has value (otherwise cashing out -- selling their stock -- becomes hard).
-Steve jobs, 1996 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/16/1550206/nsa-building-uss-biggest-spy-center -- c'mon /. editors.
To suck American's and other peoples' money out of their wallets from overhead. Same basic effect.
I'm not sure how this post got a +4 insightful -- he provided no reasoning to support his claim. I counter: hedge funds do not take money out of other people's wallets (they're not the government :D ). Rather, they are like entrepreneurs; they search for misallocated resources in the markets, and exploit any such misallocations to make money. For instance, sometimes they add extra liquidity to the markets (i.e. through high frequency trading), and sometimes they find undervalued companies and give them the necessary resources to continue operating. It's not that they are taking money from others -- rather, they are creating value and offering a valuable service to the economy as a whole. Remember: it's not a zero sum game -- if someone makes money by providing me a service, I am not poorer. In fact, I am richer because they are providing me with something I deem useful.
Keynesian theory is more certainly not akin to Newton's theories. Keynesianism differs significantly from other prominent schools such as the Chicago School, the Austrian School, etc. If you read up on the different approaches, you'll see that economists disagree a lot about some pretty basic things and we're really far away from a consensus.
So the testing part is looking at previous success a failure, and the prediction side would be using the previously success as a reaction to current economic situation and seeing the results.
Not all economists view their study in this empirical manner. For instance, the Austrians view the subject more like mathematics; they deduce their principles from basic axioms. The Keynesians (e.g. Krugman) study it in that way you just described.
This difference, though seemingly trivial, does in fact have important implications. For example, the minimum wage debate is fundamentally based on the distinction: the Austrians think that a lower bound on wages will create unemployment because all those whose value (technically, marginal revenue product) falls below the minimum wage will be unemployed, while the Keynesians require empirical evidence to support the claim that minimum wage laws have adverse effects on the economy.
Humans are corrupted by money and power. ... The corruption of money and power allow capitalists to exploit people just the same.
I'm sick and tired of this fallacy being bandied around, day in day out, by those who don't seem to understand what Capitalism is. How do capitalists exploit people when the economic system is fundamentally based on voluntary, free trade? Sure, they employ the labor of others in order to advance our businesses... Indeed, sometimes workers think their wages are "unjust"... But that is a far cry from exploitation or coercion, words which the ignorant tend to throw around without really understanding the economic system of capitalism.
And this comment about human corruption by wealth and power demonstrates that you don't understand the nature of human beings. Of course humans try to obtain more wealth! Of course they want more power to satisfy their desires! To deny this fact is to deny the existence of the evolutionary struggle in which each animal / human being tries to best exploit their environment in order to live. This is a fundamental fact of life that no one (not even the socialists/communists/marxists) can deny.
But I do not blame you, OP. You are simply spewing out platitudes which you have heard repeated so many times that they seem to gain an air of truth. I don't think you truly believe these terrible fallacies.
the phrase shares the context of the data it encrypts and also could have been guessed eventually since it had so little entropy and difficulty.
"ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#"
Mandatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/936/
Not quite, it would only increase inflation if it hit the economy. The effect of having a $5tn coin to borrow against would be more or less identical to issuing another $5tn in bonds..
It will 'hit the economy'; why would the government create new fiat money if they weren't going to use it?
If an attacker can act as the gateway for a victim (man in the middle), he can use this attack. sslsniff works by intercepting requests between the server and the victim, and it removes all HTTPS tags/references/links. In effect, the victim doesn't know there was supposed to be an SSL connection. I don't see how they can patch this with the current technology..
taxpayers are coming out ahead -- by at least $40 billion
This is fallacious -- the taxpayer never comes out ahead financially (excluding the ones who are subsidized by the government). The author of that article is implying that, somehow, the taxpayer is gaining money -- an idea totally contrary to taxation.
"The only way for us to continue to have crime reduction is to start anticipating where crime is going to occur."
Maybe not having a poverty rate of over 16% would be a way?
I can drive to the local Cal State campus, pull the journal off the shelf, and photocopy this paper for 50 cents.
How much does gas cost where you live?!
(when I started cashing out my holdings).
Wtf, why'd you have >$1000 in bitcoins?
Why not use https://encrypted.google.com/ ?
anonymous whistle-blowing has zero credibility.
Although having the leaker's name can increase credibility a little bit, it is ultimately the correctness of the information that matters. People believe Wikileak's documents because large portions have been verified; having whistleblower names attached to the leaked information wouldn't increase significantly increase the credibility of the docs.
it [the government] is there to uphold the rules that the majority of the nation agrees upon.
I'm probably gonna get a -1 flamebait for this, but I'll counter this point anyways. There is no need to have a government, if its sole function is to uphold the rules of the majority. If the Fed didn't exist, people would still agree that, say, stealing is bad; we don't need a government to affirm this conviction. But I do agree with you: we do have a federal government that imposes (better word) the will of the majority on everyone. E.G. if most people don't like drugs, hey, "we should ban them!" "Don't like gays? Hey, make their marriages illegal!" I think that's a better way to look at it.
...the porn scanners are bad because they waste money.
Now I agree.
It's not a waste if they sell it o.O
I know it when I see it.
How does an arrest benefit society here?
The police would answer that the arrest provides an example for future teens who want to publish demeaning content about their peers. But what makes you think that the police are interested in benefiting society? Fundamentally, they want more cases like this so they can justify their continued existence, and keep coercing more tax dollars.
Free speech doesn't protect racist or sexist slurs.
Actually, it does. Free speech must not be restricted unless it presents a "clear and present danger [to others]." The founding fathers knew that democracies function only when people have a right to criticize freely. This means that governments cannot eliminate speech simply because the masses find it undesirable. For instance: what if, in the early 19th century, all talk about freeing the slaves were made illegal because most considered it an undesirable and offensive idea? We would still have slaves! Thus, all speech (even racist or sexist slurs) must be protected. Although I find the 17-year-old's content repulsive, he absolutely does have a right to free speech.
Innocent until proven guilty.
Fundamentally, the problem is that the States maintain transportation infrastructure. Although they succeed (somewhat) at repairing the roads, State governments have the same problems as all governmental institutions; namely, inefficiency and lack of accountability. Private organizations, by contrast, do not suffer from these issues.
Before the 1950s, almost all roads were handled by private companies. They used a number of business models to profit; for instance, they established tolls (toll roads) to fund themselves. Instead of obtaining money through mandatory gas taxes or tax by mile systems, the organizations created systems that were voluntary, simple, and non-coercive: three qualities that the current and proposed governmental solutions do not have.
Now Islamic extremists have a martyr.