There is no overpopulation problem in developed countries. If there is a problem it's declining population. I would even claim that many economies in developed countries struggle because of declining / aging population (e.g. Japan). Immigration compensates that to a degree which is maybe one reason why Mrs Merkel didn't oppose it.
Why is declining population a problem? a) Fewer people means demand for everything goes down - bad for businesses. It also means demand is shifting to older demographics - need to adapt your offering b) Fewer people means less taxes collected => less money to spend on public services c) You have to scale down public services like schools, public transport etc. This is difficult and most communities do it too late. Moreover there are sunken costs that you can't recover: closing a school won't give back the money invested to building it (and try selling a school) d) Declining population is a major challenge for retirement schemes. A smaller number of people have to generate the economic surplus that keeps retired people afloat. Major problem in countries like Germany where most people don't own personal retirement funds. e) Declining population is a major problem for the housing market - not only does demand go down but some (less popular) places shrink much faster than others. Property you own there can become pretty much worthless.
Mashiki, many people don't sit down and do the math of what it costs them to live and work in a metropolis. I did and figured that living in a certain well-known major city I'd have to ask a salary that the market would not provide. Working and living in a small town however looked entirely different on the financial side: _much_ lower living costs, commuting with the bike (costs = zero). Of course you have to look a little bit and wait for the opportunity (job opening) to come around - but it really pays to do the math and figure out what your living costs are.
My list of fixed costs includes: rent for apartment, health insurance, internet, electricity, heating, cell phone plan, commuting, insurance, subscriptions (professional magazines/associations). Also taxes, I subtract those first. The remainder is kind of disposable income, I categorize into: food, eating out, clothes, health (what's not covered by insurance), cosmetics, household (e.g. kitchenware), furniture, hobby, travel, media (magazines), electronics, gifts, education, culture (e.g. cinema).
Now when comparing places you need to research what each category will cost you. This is much easier now with internet. If you know you major cost areas concentrate on those, make educated guess for the others. For example, rent, health insurance, electricity and heating are the biggest ones for me. But surprisingly things like gyms can have dramatically different prices: one place I'd have to spend >$1000/yr the other more like $240. Also commuting costs can be quite different (hint: live close to work). For the others, food, eating out, health and travel are the major ones. Of course, if you are struggling, travel and eating out can be reduced to about zero.
Anyway, it really pays to a) know your expense structure (how much you typically pay for what, per month and year) b) compare places when looking for a job If you're young and don't have a mate yet, also look into the demographics.
but that assumes (as does UBI itself) that money grows on trees.
You are apparently not aware of this but money (almost) does grow on trees. Ever wondered where the money that is around came from? It was printed by a central bank. And it still is. Just google Mario Draghi and what he's doing with the Euro lately.
citing from The Article:
Not only does SAK say that the system may reduce the labor force -- for instance by tempting mothers of small children or those close to retirement to take more time off -- but the union also suggests that making it easier to refuse unpleasant jobs may create inflationary bottlenecks.
Having people work less - but voluntarily - is one of the benefits of UBI. Many people suffer involuntary unemployment due to automation. So we end up with a part of the workforce without ANY job and the other part with full jobs. It would be smarter to distribute jobs more evenly. But the present system drives everybody to try and get a fully paid job, as a matter of risk management: it could be anytime you lose that job and without a (substantial) financial buffer you'd be in deep trouble. UBI takes away that fear of existential threat - it gives you peace of mind and makes you less clingy to the job you have. It significantly improves your negotiating position towards (potential) employers. UBI can also significanlty reduced the size of financial buffer necessary to quit working entirely (freeing your position for someone who actually needs the salary). It's a feature, not a bug!
One might also wonder if money were created for free, whether cost (of everything) would remain the same, or rise to meet the levels of available money. In other words, the program might be undone by rampant inflation.
Yes, there will be inflation. FYI the European Central Bank is desperately trying to increase inflation (my above comment regarding Mario Draghi)
The reason why the union SKA is against UBI is pretty obvious once you think about it: Their main reason for existence is to give workers a more negotiating power against employers. UBI would provide that power naturally, making unions obsolete to some extent. The UBI is an existential threat for trade unions, THAT's why they are against it. Instead of going on strike to fight for better compensation people could just quit and look for a better job on the market.
This is what you might think, but actually the reason it's called Gigafactory is because you can fit 50 billion hamsters in it. Source: Elon himself https://youtu.be/U-Szj2qIYX8?t...
These specific neutrons are supposedly created during a process of weak interaction called "electron capture" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... This is not pseudo-science - it is a well-known process - see the Wikipedia article.
When this happens in heavier elements/nuclei the neutron is not emitted but becomes/stays part of the original nucleus.
In TFA case the sole proton of a hydrogen atom is converted. Thereby the formerly bound proton becomes a free neutron, but with a very low kinetic energy (in fact, below thermal). Free neutrons can themselves trigger nuclear reactions in nearby atoms, thereby transmuting them.
You are right, one could do crazy things - if this theory is true it would open the door to an entirely new technological field (nuclear chemistry). It goes beyond being just another energy source. One of the claims is that you can very effectively shield gamma radiation.
The new aspect here is that you can trigger electron capture (with a laser) for stable elements - hydrogenated metals, whereas usually electron capture is a decay channel for unstable elements.
By analogy to electricity that's like the difference between a lightning bolt (a natural force we can't control) and somebody being able to build an electric circuit.
Even if the chances were high that the whole story/theory falls apart we should devote significant resources to investigate because the potential benefits are tremendous.
You didn't study the published papers (on Widom-Larson theory). The proposed Low energy nuclear reactions are a phenomenon of the weak nuclear force whereas fusion is a phenomenon of the strong nuclear force. These two forces are entirely different beasts.
This is incorrect. The experimentally observed neutrino oscillations imply that neutrinos do have a mass which directly contradicts the Standard Model which assumes neutrinos to be massless particles.
Trends in most developed countries show fertility rates going down, even below reproduction rate (i.e. leading to declining population numbers - see Japan, and many European countries)
That's probably a sign to switch markets, i.e. work in an entirely different part of industry. You need to stay ahead of the development (change of demand) - keep the initiative - otherwise you'll end up on the sidelines.
Today's connected world makes it easier to acquire new skills and also advertise yourself (via LinkedIn - if you have relevant skills, the new job will find you). But you need to be smart, see where trends are going and keep the initiative.
Have you ever seen a modern brick? They are full of cavities. Basically half the the brick is air. Such bricks have heat conductivity values below 0.1 W/(mK)
The question is whether we (or who) will have control over the AI that becomes highly advanced. IMO it will be one of the business giants Alphabet, Amazon, IBM or Wolfram Research who will operate the first such AI, probably secretly and very likely it will connect to the internet, otherwise it would have very limited background.
The scary thing is such AI being controlled by someone like Alphabet enabling them to dominate everybody else even more.
At some point an advanced AI would be as intelligent as a human. This itself would not be such a huge benefit for a company (which have tens of thousands of employees). However companies could run many instances of the AI, in fact they'd probably run as many as they can support. Also AIs would be basically immortal which means you don't lose their experience due to retirement.
We should also keep in mind that the intelligence of humans varies wildly. Not everyone is Einstein. Then consider that the truly big breakthroughs are usually driven by a single or very few extraordinary individuals, rather than a combined mass of average individuals.
That's entirely correct. There are other implications when selling machinery, i.e. capital goods: the individual client has much more power over the manufacturer. A toothbrush consumer represents only one-billionth of your revenue and has virtually no power over the manufacturer. A capital goods customer can represent several percent of your revenue - in some industries several ten percent. That is on the order of the operating profit, i.e one customer can influence a lot the economic outcome. To deal with such customers you need not only to have a very good product, but also very good sales people (key account managers) and a very responsive field service, both of which are expensive to have. You cannot afford to have a homepage with no email to write to or no phone number to call.
Soviet Russia achieved quite a remarkable level of housing standardization. There is even a Russian move making fun of it: The Irony of Fate (1975): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... Maybe you want to see it. I leave it up to you to decide whether that level of standardization is desirable or not.
No, there's no photo involved in the transaction, though I wouldn't be surprised if individual merchants trained their store cameras on that spot should there ever be a need to confront a customer over a contested charge
Wouldn't that be questionable? A camera could be used to spy on the PIN entered or the signature given. I bet the CC processors would not like such kind of cameras in the shops.
It becomes obvious that space will be the next big thing after IT. Billionaires are otherwise running out of options of investing their money. Thanks to Elon Musk et al. in only ten years we'll be looking at another economic revolution, maybe even less than ten years.
In a way, yes. Global warming presumably is caused by less efficient heat removal from earth to space ("greenhouse effect"). Others claim it could be caused by variation in solar radiation (i.e. increased impinging energy flow on earth).
Significant additional energy transport from space to earth could accelerate global warming (e.g. from solar power that wasn't originally going to hit earth). It would be smarter to use the additional power in space for heavy industry, e.g. aluminum electrolysis and only bring the finished goods down to earth (pieces of aluminum won't contribute to solar warming, unless you'd burn them in an exothermic reaction). Of course, you'd mine asteroids, not shoot up raw materials from earth.
The problem is that's is very difficult to freeze population to a constant level (see China). You might be able to freeze the head count but run the risk of severly skewing your age pyramid, which can lead to massive problems a generation later. Moreover, birth control isn't popular in the free world, you'd be limiting an essential human freedom (and the purpose of life).
The danger is declining population. You don't actually want declining population: 1) Most pension schemes rely on at least constant population. Smarter pension schemes rely on economic growth (which is possible with slightly declining population), but not all countries have them implemented. 2) Declining population can also trigger massive problems with economy: You'll have to divest in a controlled and smart way. Example: real estate values are likely to drop if head count goes down. See former East German towns: some of them have become almost ghost towns, many with only retirees living there. This triggers business closings, which in turn makes young people move away. A self enforcing negative trend.
More population is no problem. There's lots of space on earth. If it becomes too crowded people will move to Mars or space. In fact, that could become a driving force, eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no overpopulation problem in developed countries. If there is a problem it's declining population. I would even claim that many economies in developed countries struggle because of declining / aging population (e.g. Japan). Immigration compensates that to a degree which is maybe one reason why Mrs Merkel didn't oppose it.
Why is declining population a problem?
a) Fewer people means demand for everything goes down - bad for businesses. It also means demand is shifting to older demographics - need to adapt your offering
b) Fewer people means less taxes collected => less money to spend on public services
c) You have to scale down public services like schools, public transport etc. This is difficult and most communities do it too late. Moreover there are sunken costs that you can't recover: closing a school won't give back the money invested to building it (and try selling a school)
d) Declining population is a major challenge for retirement schemes. A smaller number of people have to generate the economic surplus that keeps retired people afloat. Major problem in countries like Germany where most people don't own personal retirement funds.
e) Declining population is a major problem for the housing market - not only does demand go down but some (less popular) places shrink much faster than others. Property you own there can become pretty much worthless.
Mashiki, many people don't sit down and do the math of what it costs them to live and work in a metropolis. I did and figured that living in a certain well-known major city I'd have to ask a salary that the market would not provide. Working and living in a small town however looked entirely different on the financial side: _much_ lower living costs, commuting with the bike (costs = zero).
Of course you have to look a little bit and wait for the opportunity (job opening) to come around - but it really pays to do the math and figure out what your living costs are.
My list of fixed costs includes:
rent for apartment, health insurance, internet, electricity, heating, cell phone plan, commuting, insurance, subscriptions (professional magazines/associations). Also taxes, I subtract those first.
The remainder is kind of disposable income, I categorize into: food, eating out, clothes, health (what's not covered by insurance), cosmetics, household (e.g. kitchenware), furniture, hobby, travel, media (magazines), electronics, gifts, education, culture (e.g. cinema).
Now when comparing places you need to research what each category will cost you. This is much easier now with internet. If you know you major cost areas concentrate on those, make educated guess for the others.
For example, rent, health insurance, electricity and heating are the biggest ones for me. But surprisingly things like gyms can have dramatically different prices: one place I'd have to spend >$1000/yr the other more like $240. Also commuting costs can be quite different (hint: live close to work).
For the others, food, eating out, health and travel are the major ones. Of course, if you are struggling, travel and eating out can be reduced to about zero.
Anyway, it really pays to
a) know your expense structure (how much you typically pay for what, per month and year)
b) compare places when looking for a job
If you're young and don't have a mate yet, also look into the demographics.
but that assumes (as does UBI itself) that money grows on trees.
You are apparently not aware of this but money (almost) does grow on trees. Ever wondered where the money that is around came from? It was printed by a central bank. And it still is. Just google Mario Draghi and what he's doing with the Euro lately.
citing from The Article:
Not only does SAK say that the system may reduce the labor force -- for instance by tempting mothers of small children or those close to retirement to take more time off -- but the union also suggests that making it easier to refuse unpleasant jobs may create inflationary bottlenecks.
Having people work less - but voluntarily - is one of the benefits of UBI. Many people suffer involuntary unemployment due to automation. So we end up with a part of the workforce without ANY job and the other part with full jobs. It would be smarter to distribute jobs more evenly. But the present system drives everybody to try and get a fully paid job, as a matter of risk management: it could be anytime you lose that job and without a (substantial) financial buffer you'd be in deep trouble. UBI takes away that fear of existential threat - it gives you peace of mind and makes you less clingy to the job you have. It significantly improves your negotiating position towards (potential) employers.
UBI can also significanlty reduced the size of financial buffer necessary to quit working entirely (freeing your position for someone who actually needs the salary). It's a feature, not a bug!
One might also wonder if money were created for free, whether cost (of everything) would remain the same, or rise to meet the levels of available money. In other words, the program might be undone by rampant inflation.
Yes, there will be inflation. FYI the European Central Bank is desperately trying to increase inflation (my above comment regarding Mario Draghi)
The reason why the union SKA is against UBI is pretty obvious once you think about it: Their main reason for existence is to give workers a more negotiating power against employers. UBI would provide that power naturally, making unions obsolete to some extent. The UBI is an existential threat for trade unions, THAT's why they are against it. Instead of going on strike to fight for better compensation people could just quit and look for a better job on the market.
Well, a new node implies heavy infrastructure investment, so it's understandable. Issues / delays with EUV lithography aren't helping either.
People are already looking at solutions to that "problem"
http://www.spacex.com/mars
There is an insightful talk by Clayton Christensen on this topic:
https://youtu.be/rHdS_4GsKmg
This is what you might think, but actually the reason it's called Gigafactory is because you can fit 50 billion hamsters in it.
Source: Elon himself https://youtu.be/U-Szj2qIYX8?t...
These specific neutrons are supposedly created during a process of weak interaction called "electron capture" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is not pseudo-science - it is a well-known process - see the Wikipedia article.
When this happens in heavier elements/nuclei the neutron is not emitted but becomes/stays part of the original nucleus.
In TFA case the sole proton of a hydrogen atom is converted. Thereby the formerly bound proton becomes a free neutron, but with a very low kinetic energy (in fact, below thermal). Free neutrons can themselves trigger nuclear reactions in nearby atoms, thereby transmuting them.
You are right, one could do crazy things - if this theory is true it would open the door to an entirely new technological field (nuclear chemistry). It goes beyond being just another energy source.
One of the claims is that you can very effectively shield gamma radiation.
The new aspect here is that you can trigger electron capture (with a laser) for stable elements - hydrogenated metals, whereas usually electron capture is a decay channel for unstable elements.
By analogy to electricity that's like the difference between a lightning bolt (a natural force we can't control) and somebody being able to build an electric circuit.
Even if the chances were high that the whole story/theory falls apart we should devote significant resources to investigate because the potential benefits are tremendous.
You didn't study the published papers (on Widom-Larson theory). The proposed Low energy nuclear reactions are a phenomenon of the weak nuclear force whereas fusion is a phenomenon of the strong nuclear force. These two forces are entirely different beasts.
with none ever observed violations
This is incorrect. The experimentally observed neutrino oscillations imply that neutrinos do have a mass which directly contradicts the Standard Model which assumes neutrinos to be massless particles.
The magnitude of funding Uber receives is an indicator how "good" it can become.
Difficult question.
Trends in most developed countries show fertility rates going down, even below reproduction rate (i.e. leading to declining population numbers - see Japan, and many European countries)
That's probably a sign to switch markets, i.e. work in an entirely different part of industry. You need to stay ahead of the development (change of demand) - keep the initiative - otherwise you'll end up on the sidelines.
Today's connected world makes it easier to acquire new skills and also advertise yourself (via LinkedIn - if you have relevant skills, the new job will find you). But you need to be smart, see where trends are going and keep the initiative.
Have you ever seen a modern brick? They are full of cavities. Basically half the the brick is air. Such bricks have heat conductivity values below 0.1 W/(mK)
In fact, there is a great two-parts article on WaitButWhy discussing exactly this:
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...
The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...
The question is whether we (or who) will have control over the AI that becomes highly advanced. IMO it will be one of the business giants Alphabet, Amazon, IBM or Wolfram Research who will operate the first such AI, probably secretly and very likely it will connect to the internet, otherwise it would have very limited background.
The scary thing is such AI being controlled by someone like Alphabet enabling them to dominate everybody else even more.
At some point an advanced AI would be as intelligent as a human. This itself would not be such a huge benefit for a company (which have tens of thousands of employees). However companies could run many instances of the AI, in fact they'd probably run as many as they can support.
Also AIs would be basically immortal which means you don't lose their experience due to retirement.
We should also keep in mind that the intelligence of humans varies wildly. Not everyone is Einstein. Then consider that the truly big breakthroughs are usually driven by a single or very few extraordinary individuals, rather than a combined mass of average individuals.
This is a well-known phenomenon in marketing, called hype-cycle (by Gartner), google it.
In fact, AI had several such hype cycles, check out "AI Winter" on wikipedia.
That's entirely correct. There are other implications when selling machinery, i.e. capital goods: the individual client has much more power over the manufacturer. A toothbrush consumer represents only one-billionth of your revenue and has virtually no power over the manufacturer. A capital goods customer can represent several percent of your revenue - in some industries several ten percent. That is on the order of the operating profit, i.e one customer can influence a lot the economic outcome.
To deal with such customers you need not only to have a very good product, but also very good sales people (key account managers) and a very responsive field service, both of which are expensive to have. You cannot afford to have a homepage with no email to write to or no phone number to call.
But again, why send a human? Why not a cow, or a peacock?
So you propose to make cows a multi-planetary species instead of humans?
Soviet Russia achieved quite a remarkable level of housing standardization. There is even a Russian move making fun of it: The Irony of Fate (1975): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
Maybe you want to see it. I leave it up to you to decide whether that level of standardization is desirable or not.
When I discovered the internet in 1993 there was Yanoff's list. http://www.cryan.com/yanoff.php
I would go through then entries one by one (mostly ftp sites) trying to find interesting stuff.
No, there's no photo involved in the transaction, though I wouldn't be surprised if individual merchants trained their store cameras on that spot should there ever be a need to confront a customer over a contested charge
Wouldn't that be questionable? A camera could be used to spy on the PIN entered or the signature given. I bet the CC processors would not like such kind of cameras in the shops.
We could start by reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It becomes obvious that space will be the next big thing after IT. Billionaires are otherwise running out of options of investing their money. Thanks to Elon Musk et al. in only ten years we'll be looking at another economic revolution, maybe even less than ten years.
Damn, I live in the wrong country.
In a way, yes. Global warming presumably is caused by less efficient heat removal from earth to space ("greenhouse effect"). Others claim it could be caused by variation in solar radiation (i.e. increased impinging energy flow on earth).
Significant additional energy transport from space to earth could accelerate global warming (e.g. from solar power that wasn't originally going to hit earth). It would be smarter to use the additional power in space for heavy industry, e.g. aluminum electrolysis and only bring the finished goods down to earth (pieces of aluminum won't contribute to solar warming, unless you'd burn them in an exothermic reaction). Of course, you'd mine asteroids, not shoot up raw materials from earth.
The problem is that's is very difficult to freeze population to a constant level (see China). You might be able to freeze the head count but run the risk of severly skewing your age pyramid, which can lead to massive problems a generation later. Moreover, birth control isn't popular in the free world, you'd be limiting an essential human freedom (and the purpose of life).
The danger is declining population.
You don't actually want declining population:
1) Most pension schemes rely on at least constant population. Smarter pension schemes rely on economic growth (which is possible with slightly declining population), but not all countries have them implemented.
2) Declining population can also trigger massive problems with economy: You'll have to divest in a controlled and smart way. Example: real estate values are likely to drop if head count goes down. See former East German towns: some of them have become almost ghost towns, many with only retirees living there. This triggers business closings, which in turn makes young people move away. A self enforcing negative trend.
More population is no problem. There's lots of space on earth. If it becomes too crowded people will move to Mars or space. In fact, that could become a driving force, eventually.