Anything that contradicts your ignorance is going to be labeled wrong by you... why should I accept your definition of anything when I have evidence and you have nothing?
Well I know you're wrong since I've been talking to utility engineers in California that have been building solar farms longer then anyone else in the world.
So suck it, douchebag.
Here is the part where you claim superiority because I used a crude insult. Never mind that you've been throwing pretty nasty insults at me from the start.
You have nothing to contribute to the discussion besides contradiction which as demonstrated by John Cleese, is not an argument.
There are pages and pages and pages of links about the instability of this production method and these are just from the german project.
We can see similiar stories all over the world.
Wind and solar have a place in our total energy generation system. But until we have cheap storage for grid systems we cannot shift to these systems as our primary energy production method.
Cannot.
And if you try to force it, all you'll do is piss people off, waste money, and lose what support you have right now.
Environmentalists especially in Europe are doing very well. They have wide public support and political support. They are well funded and respected.
But if you threaten the German manufacturing industry... which is actually what this energy project is doing right now... You will lose it.
As it is, the Germans are drawing the project back in a way that meets the needs of their industry while at the same time saving face for their politicians and the environmental lobbies.
Understand, this is happening NOW. This is not a threat of what will come in the future but a current consequence.
There are lots of articles on the issue. Not only is it not nonsense but its a well known situation. So extreme is the problem that the German government is trying to reverse the program while saving face. The only person that will be surprised by this will be you.
2. Anyone with any experience with solar power and wind power knows this is false. Power output fluctuates from day to day with cloud cover, season, etc. And one has to remember that these systems produce no power at night. Which means you need a redundant power system for the night or you need to store the power which is currently impractical.
Lets say I need ten megawatts of generation at all times and I want to supply that power with solar. I must build a ten megawatt solar farm AND a ten megawatt coal, hydroelectric, or nuclear power plant to cover the system EVERY night. What is more, the solar system as pointed out will not produce as much some times which means the complimentary system must handle generation during the day as well sometimes.
Wind is different in that it isn't effected by the sun in the same way. But equally you must provide a complimentary reliable system if you want reliable power. Which means every wind farm's product must be backstopped by back up power plants with reliable on demand generation.
This further increases the cost of renewable power systems especially when they are taken to extremes.
3. As to choices, you are claiming wind and solar are as reliable as nuclear and coal which is idiotic. Then you presume to claim you are more informed then I am.
Well, I might not know everything. But you effectively failed to add 1+1 together so you're the last person that gets to presume superiority.
Kindly justify your reliability comment or I will accept your surrender to my argument now.
... Now what? Because as the Germans figured out when they shut down their nuclear plants and went to wind power, they have to build a coal power plant for every wind farm as a back up power supply.
Why? Renewable power is not reliable. It is also sometimes seasonal giving more power at one time of year and much less at others. Which means you need something else to handle the power needs in lean times.
Coal, for all its flaws is reliable. If you have coal stockpiles you have power.... winter, summer, spring... you have power.
You can also store coal very cheaply in huge quantities. Compare the energy storage capacity of a pile of coal with any battery, capacitor, flywheel, whatever you can imagine and obviously the coal will have a higher energy density and lower cost.
Okay, so it has the CO2 and global warming and all that hilarious stuff. But the fact is that the coal is reliable and we need reliable power to sustain modern infrastructure.
So, environmentalists... if you REALLY want to change the world... you need to come up with ACTUAL replacements for the things you want to remove from our system. Not half assed super expensive quasi broken replacements that literally kill people through failure. Because if you impliment that, people will get mad and they'll reverse their support and instead support anyone that can turn the lights back on. Which means that coal power plant you just shut down... will fire right back up rendering your whole campaign a total and complete failure.
So again... here are your choices.
1. Come up with actual replacements to fossil fuels that are competitively priced without subsidization or the same subsidization as fossil fuels enjoy. People always bring up that fossil fuels get subsidies as well... fine... same subsidies... no more. And it has to be as reliable as fossil fuels. People need to be able to count on it come hell or high water.
2. Utterly fail wasting the time, money, and public respect of everyone that supports you.
Those are your two choices.
I appreciate option one is difficult. That is however the task. Half assing it is not acceptable if you presume to shut down coal and nuclear plants.
What I personally prefer as a method to reduce fossil fuel use is a mixture of things that reduce our dependence on coal and nuclear power but still retains them to take whatever load we can't meet.
So for example, put solar panels on your roof. Put up a wind turbine. Install some Syngas/biofuel generators that turn farm waste/leaf litter/etc into power/fuel/compost. Make everything more efficient so it uses less power.
Do all of that and the number of big nuclear and coal power plants will be reduced. We just won't need as many of them. BUT if something happens... lets say its a really dark month with a lot of cloud cover, its really cold, maybe the wind isn't blowing, etc... Don't you want the power to flow to your house regardless?
Of course.
So please don't undermine the supporting infrastructure of the power grid. Coal and nuclear have their place. And that place is valid until people are generating enough of their own power and their technology is efficient enough not to need the coal and nuclear.
Please environmentalists... don't destroy yourselves by going off half cocked.
Guy was pitching them in my city recently. Said "put these reflectors on buses and save lives" they were nothing special. Just bits of shiny plastic.
His game was ambulance chasing people that got hit by buses and then demanding that the city install HIS little bits of shiny plastic. Anyone that disagreed clearly wanted everyone to be killed by undetectable buses because they didn't have his shiny reflectors.
It was a scam. As to this air plane thing... if they installed everything someone pitched at them the planes would be too heavy to fly. Lets be reasonable. These crashes are unusual and crashes you can't find quickly are extremely unusual. Just deal with it. the world isn't a perfect place.
Which is why you have to maintain a certain level of militancy and martial competency in your population. And when attacked... terminate the enemy with extreme prejudice.
That way you get long periods of peace punctuated with short bloody, though ultimately victorious wars.
Ideally with most of the blood being your foe.
As they said, if you want peace, prepare for war. Which means assume there is going to be a war at some point in the future, figure out what you're going to need to fight it. Maintain stockpiles of supplies. Maintain a standing military that can defend your country long enough to repel an invasion in a short war, serve as a seed to train additional soldiers, and maintain your munitions. Then you need prepared infrastructure.... Roads, airfields, navel yards, etc.
War is going to happen. Pretending otherwise is naive. When it does. Do it quickly and without hesitation or remorse. The faster and harder thrust the sooner it is over. It is the long wars that have the most collateral damage. Rather then worry about the enemy soldiers you're killing. Think of the millions of civilian lives you're saving by ending the war as quickly as possible.
Wealth is not necessarily created though. It can just exist or be found with no real work or effort.
If I go hiking in the hills one day and find a giant nugget of gold did I create that wealth? No. I just dumb luck wandered into it.
Same thing more or less for a lot things.
The point is that however wealth is created, once it is created it exists indifferent to how it was created and can be used.
I could get into a big long thing about wealth and production and go through lots of analogies. But I think I'll shift over and get at what I think is my real problem with your assessment. And that is that you're generally declaring business founders and operators and being dead weight unworthy of their financial compensation. The problem with that notion is that they do actually work very hard in most cases and the success of a given business is typically down to their management.
I had a grand father for example that built about 20 restaurants, a small ice cream company, and some similar concerns. He did it with some start up money from people in the area that invested in his company. And he did very well with it. He worked very hard. He visited all the restaurants and checked on everything. He trained the managers. He managed inventory, accounting, permits, construction, maintenance, etc.
Guess how many meals he made in those places? Try none.
My other grand father managed a series of farms. He didn't know how to grow anything. He knew how to sell it. So he bought land, hired farmers, bought equipment, etc... and then managed the inventory. At one point they had big packing houses where lots of people packaged the vegetables into boxes for shipment. It was likewise a lot of work.
And both of them didn't have enough money to start their businesses when the first started. They had to get investors. They talked to people in the area that had money and formed partnerships. Real simple sorts of deals. The grand father that had restaurants got about a third of the profit from the enterprise with two thirds of it going to his investors. And the one that had a farm got about half.
Point is... they both had hundreds of employees. Cooks, waitresses, field hands, etc. But they were the limiting factor on that business. They created it. Without them the whole thing wouldn't have happened.
You need people like that and an environment that allows them to operate or you get no business. And that means all this labor you're so fond of is unemployed and worse it is unemployable.
The current economic problems in the US are due almost entirely to the burdens and hostile environment that many businesses operate in... this discourages people to start businesses, discourages business people to expand, and as a result labor goes idle.
And look at the stock market... much of that investor money could go to local businesses. But because they're being suppressed investors have no choice but to put their money into the national and international investment markets. Which means that local money leaves the community further impoverishing it.
Its stupid. You either respect businesses and have a healthy economy and society. Or you screw them and destroy yourself.
Which is why chimpanzees don't rape and kill each other.
Oh wait... yeah they do...
Your grasp of our actual nature is naive.
We are opportunists. Put us in a situation where the easiest, safest, and most reliable way to get what we want is by killing someone and taking it... and we tend to do it.
This does not extend to direct family members of people seen by the individual as part of his "tribe". However, if there is another human not of your social group or bloodline that has something you want and you can take it with little risk or effort... it is our nature to take it.
Now, you can restrain that to some extent with cultural indoctrination but that is cultural indoctrination fighting our instinct.
Anyone that has ever raised children or really has any experience with them understands this instinct because children are human blanks. They don't have the culture poured into them yet and what is there is still fluid. It hasn't set and the instinct will always try to bend things to its own pattern.
Understand further, I don't think opportunism is bad. It is something we have to compensate for when we manage our society. Were we ants or cows or wolves we'd have to structure our society differently.
We are neither angels nor demons. We are not just tool users... we are users in general. The whole universe is a thing attempt to use for our own purpose.
We are dynamic.
One of the ways war is best prevented in the modern world is by interlacing our economic and cultural systems. In this way we build a web of interdependence and social intercourse that binds billions of people all over the world into an interconnected net. That net helps prevent hostilities because the incentives for war are reduces, the risks of war are increased, and while we do not feel ourselves to be one tribe we at least see those other people more as people because we have some interaction with them.
The parts of the world most likely to start wars are isolated from this net. Their trade with the outside world is typically very limited and very few people in those societies actually depend on international trade. Further, there tends to be very little cultural interaction.
If you actually want to prevent war, the best method of doing this is through trade and international cultural exchange. In this way, rather then becoming bitter enemies we may become friends and form relationships with people all over the world.
What binds the web together is self and tribal interest. If it is not in the interest of my self or my tribe to trade or interact with another group then I won't do it. And a gulf will open up between us. A gulf that CAN be filled with mistrust and hatred.
If the millionaire's work is the product of someone else then so is the product of everyone else's work no matter how small in the same society.
And what you get there is a situation where no one owns anything because everyone collectively owns everything.
Which is pretty damn communistic in case you weren't going for that.
Now assuming you were going for a defense of communism... The problem with this "we all equally own everything" argument is that some people are lazy and some people are geniuses. People that are lazy and don't do much must have less of a stake in society. And geniuses that contribute to the success of a society obviously deserve more. But if everyone has equal ownership of everything then that means we're rewarding slackers the same as all stars.
It gets worse because humans respond to incentives. We like being able to get nice homes and nice cars and take good care of our families. All of that tends to require resources. Ownership. Wealth. And if we don't own anything then that means no matter how hard we work we're all going to be on welfare. Which means there is no incentive to work for society to get what you want.
Rather, a black market forms and political games start being played because that is the only way to get more for your family. So you stop enriching society and start working for the shadow society. A society by the way that is more capitalistic or even older in tribal systems. You saw this in the soviet union and it is how life works in North Korea.
You can't kill capitalism. Its not some idea some guy came up with one day. Its a force of nature. People describe it like they describe the sun or the tides.
The mistake you're making is associating labor with wealth.
There is no direct association between labor and wealth.
The association is actually between WORK and wealth. Work is a very different concept then labor in that work can be done by tools. And a given person can do more work then another person. Under the labor model, all people are equal in some unrealistic communist fantasy. However, under the concept of work a given person or person with certain tools can preform many times the work of someone else.
So if we can agree that wealth comes from work, then we are in agreement. However, saying that wealth comes from labor is unsupportable. Labor in the sense of man power can be very inefficient or actually lose money... effectively destroy more wealth then it creates. Work can't do that.
As to your insistence on invalidating the concept of money and therefore value and therefore wealth itself... This sort of logic the rhetorical equivalent of spitting on the chess board, flipping it over so all the pieces go into the air, and then storming out of the room.
If you maintain that argument, I will have to accept your concession... because not only does that argument make no sense it is hostile to the very idea of having a rational discussion.
... Okay... so this is another "labor = wealth" argument. What if I use robots or my factory is otherwise automated?
As to abstract concepts, it doesn't really matter how you measure the wealth so long as there is a way to do it. You don't like money? We can use potatoes if that makes you happy. We can buy and sell everything by trading potatoes. They're not great for money but it gets around this abstract bullshit that frankly just confuses people. The money measures value. You don't like fiat currencies... fine. We can do the same thing in bitcoins, gold bars, potatoes, or tooth picks. It boils down to the same thing.
First, I don't worship the businesses, captain strawman. I am simply educated enough to know their role in society and therefore has a measure of respect for their importance in my comfort, health, and quality of life.
As to your auto industry argument, if that were true then the US auto companies would have made more money per unit sold then the japanese. Right? Because under your idea they'd be spending less per unit and making roughly the same in retail sales value per car.
They didn't. So your math fails instantly.
Furthermore, average car production PER employee in the US at that time was 14 cars PER employee. In Japan at the same time it was 30. If you're curious, the production per employee in Italy was about 7 per employee. So the US was better then Europe but worse then Japan.
So no. The US car companies did not fail because they used substandard parts.
This is not an opinion... its math.
You stand corrected.
The problem with US manufacturing was that it wasn't efficient enough. We had too many employees that didn't produce enough or really shouldn't have been employed at all. A lot of this is traced back to the auto unions that controlled how companies laid factories out, jobs in the factory, how many people were needed, hours worked, etc. Net result was a 50 percent loss in productivity per employee. That's huge and that is why the US auto industry suffered.
US manufacturing knows full well that the labor unions are poison to future productivity in this country. Which is why they are scaling back all factories in union controlled states and accelerating production in right to work states. What is more, foreign factory start ups paved the way for this behavior.
US companies at first stayed in union states not wanting to have a fight with powerful labor unions with congressmen in their pockets. But Toyota didn't care. And as that accelerated smaller US manufacturers followed suit. And now we have Boeing and Ford following them to more favorable legal environments.
The days of big unions are done. They ruined American manufacturing and they utterly killed British manufacturing.
Its over. This is beyond debate. Its happening. And the good news is that once we clean this retrograde shit off our system we can start competing again with anyone in the world.
The politics would change but there will always be war as long as there are people.
Its in our blood.
I am not entirely fatalistic about it. We can resist it and contain it. But we are going to kill each other on occasion.
I suppose the worst thing about immortality is that dictators will get it. And then you'll get someone like Castro that will never die. That is Cuba's only hope here... that the revolutionary generation dies of old age and the following generations are more realistic.
We're human beings and this is planet earth. Welcome to reality. Of course we're still going to go to war.
Do you know how I know that? Because look around slashdot. Imagine you gave someone in hear power... I mean a lot of power... the power to tell people what to do. And then lets say we do the same thing to another random person on slashdot. Think those two guys are going to remain in peace and harmony forever? Get real.
War happens. Don't seek it but don't shirk from it either. It happens and when it does... win or get used to giving blowjobs for bread.
Do consumer make cars? Do consumers grow food? Do consumers make medicine? Do consumers build homes? Do consumers refine fuel?
None of these things. And yet you presume to tell me that they generate the wealth of a society?
Idiocy.
Businesses make things. They hire people to facilitate that production. The people are paid in transferable credit for their contribution. And with that those same people can purchase at the businesses profit, a portion of its production.
Consumers do not create wealth. They consume it.
That is why they are called consumers. I would think that rather obvious observation would be obvious.
Businesses are often referred to as producers especially in manufacturing, mining, and agriculture.
Precisely where do you think the wealth comes from? Producers.
I don't know who that is... I can only assume you're trying to demean me by suggesting that I'm an agent of someone else that also thinks you're a fucktard.
Guess what... The first time you're called a retard, you punch him in teeth. The second time you're called a retard, you can call him a jerk. But the third time someone calls you a retard... possibly its time to go shopping for a bicycle helmet with a matching drool bib.
Your pathetic insults are meaningless to me. Not only are you an intellectual vacuum but you're not even amusing. Were you at least that I could call you a clown or a fool. A pathetic object of amusement that brings delight to children and drunks.
But you're not even that. And I could muster some pity for you in your impairment but through your sad arrogance you're not even worthy of that.
The overpopulation issue isn't a certainty. We've already seen massive declines in population growth in the developed world. You can't accurately estimate what our growth rate will be with immortality. It is entirely possible that our population will stabilize with many people infrequently having children.
Remember, there will still be deaths from one thing or another. We will have wars... which will claim thousands at the least and possibly millions on occasion. That is population that will have to be replaced.
Add in car accidents and various medical issues that this won't fix and you'll have a need to replace population.
it will be much lower then what we need today to counter aging. But it will remain significant. So long as our birth rate doesn't much exceed that rate our population will be stable. If it does exceed it then we'll have a major overcrowding issue.
Overcrowding leads to a scarcity of land, increases in prices, and a lower quality of living. In our society that tends to depress the birth rate.
In fact, in the modern world, there is a very keen link between economic prosperity and the birth rate in the middle class. In the very poor there is no such link since they don't actually share the same economy. Their economy is more about welfare stamps and various free housing policies. Its very difficult to quantity their economic prosperity because they don't actually use money per se. Amongst the rich its a non-issue since we can always assume they have enough to justify further breeding.
In any case, with immortality we can assume there are ways to deal with the overcrowding issue. Most of them will self correct.
And you forget the many benefits of immortality such as a highly skilled labor force that is always in prime working age. That means a much much higher level of industrial output and a much higher level of technological and educational sophistication.
With that sort of thing we might just make spreading beyond the planet practical. Far fetched today... but who can say tomorrow.
In any case, I will not retard our technological sophistication simply to satisfy the baseless worries of Luddites.
We're probably all going to die of old age around the same time we would regardless. But this sort of thing might eventually solve the aging problem.
Yes, that might lead to other issues such as over population etc... but its worth it.
Think of what percentage of the population is capable of high levels of education.
Then what percentage of that percentage actually gets it.
Then what percentage of that percentage that does anything useful with the education.
Then what percentage of their lives are left for productive work after they have been educated.
We have men that are useful for maybe 20 years tops after going through about 14 years of education and even during that 20 years there is follow up education to keep them current.
Imagine if they didn't age... if they could be kept productive indefinitely.
Imagine a whole population of polymaths as people learn at their own pace over 100s of years. 20 years as a bar tender. 20 years as a carpenter. 20 years as a fishermen. Life time on life time bleeding into each other.
The average number of cars produced per employee at a Detroit factory was 14.
The average number of cars produced per employee at a Japanese factory was 30.
US Auto companies TRIED to implement policies that would have increased productivity dramatically. They were blocked by the union. And so US manufacturing policies stagnated.
Productivity didn't increase in the US until Japanese companies opened factories in the US and hired Americans to work the same way people work in Japan. These remain some of the most productive facilities in the US because they largely ignore the US auto unions that have largely protested themselves out of a job.
As to government paying for business... where did government get that money? From business. Not Detroit's businesses obviously. But from a dairy farm here, an auto body shop there, a small medical practice here, and maybe a few big companies aren't either f'ed with endlessly to the point where they make no money.
You really think government is the producer of wealth? Were that the case, the Soviets would have crushed us with their wealth. They had resources, technical expertise, and a lot more government then us.
They lost because they didn't have as much business.
Slashdot Mirror
Anything that contradicts your ignorance is going to be labeled wrong by you... why should I accept your definition of anything when I have evidence and you have nothing?
You lose.
Your concession is accepted.
Better luck next time.
Well I know you're wrong since I've been talking to utility engineers in California that have been building solar farms longer then anyone else in the world.
So suck it, douchebag.
Here is the part where you claim superiority because I used a crude insult. Never mind that you've been throwing pretty nasty insults at me from the start.
You have nothing to contribute to the discussion besides contradiction which as demonstrated by John Cleese, is not an argument.
Good day, sir.
more if you have a problem with that publication:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
There are pages and pages and pages of links about the instability of this production method and these are just from the german project.
We can see similiar stories all over the world.
Wind and solar have a place in our total energy generation system. But until we have cheap storage for grid systems we cannot shift to these systems as our primary energy production method.
Cannot.
And if you try to force it, all you'll do is piss people off, waste money, and lose what support you have right now.
Environmentalists especially in Europe are doing very well. They have wide public support and political support. They are well funded and respected.
But if you threaten the German manufacturing industry... which is actually what this energy project is doing right now... You will lose it.
As it is, the Germans are drawing the project back in a way that meets the needs of their industry while at the same time saving face for their politicians and the environmental lobbies.
Understand, this is happening NOW. This is not a threat of what will come in the future but a current consequence.
1.
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
There are lots of articles on the issue. Not only is it not nonsense but its a well known situation. So extreme is the problem that the German government is trying to reverse the program while saving face. The only person that will be surprised by this will be you.
2. Anyone with any experience with solar power and wind power knows this is false. Power output fluctuates from day to day with cloud cover, season, etc. And one has to remember that these systems produce no power at night. Which means you need a redundant power system for the night or you need to store the power which is currently impractical.
Lets say I need ten megawatts of generation at all times and I want to supply that power with solar. I must build a ten megawatt solar farm AND a ten megawatt coal, hydroelectric, or nuclear power plant to cover the system EVERY night. What is more, the solar system as pointed out will not produce as much some times which means the complimentary system must handle generation during the day as well sometimes.
Wind is different in that it isn't effected by the sun in the same way. But equally you must provide a complimentary reliable system if you want reliable power. Which means every wind farm's product must be backstopped by back up power plants with reliable on demand generation.
This further increases the cost of renewable power systems especially when they are taken to extremes.
3. As to choices, you are claiming wind and solar are as reliable as nuclear and coal which is idiotic. Then you presume to claim you are more informed then I am.
Well, I might not know everything. But you effectively failed to add 1+1 together so you're the last person that gets to presume superiority.
Kindly justify your reliability comment or I will accept your surrender to my argument now.
... Now what? Because as the Germans figured out when they shut down their nuclear plants and went to wind power, they have to build a coal power plant for every wind farm as a back up power supply.
Why? Renewable power is not reliable. It is also sometimes seasonal giving more power at one time of year and much less at others. Which means you need something else to handle the power needs in lean times.
Coal, for all its flaws is reliable. If you have coal stockpiles you have power.... winter, summer, spring... you have power.
You can also store coal very cheaply in huge quantities. Compare the energy storage capacity of a pile of coal with any battery, capacitor, flywheel, whatever you can imagine and obviously the coal will have a higher energy density and lower cost.
Okay, so it has the CO2 and global warming and all that hilarious stuff. But the fact is that the coal is reliable and we need reliable power to sustain modern infrastructure.
So, environmentalists... if you REALLY want to change the world... you need to come up with ACTUAL replacements for the things you want to remove from our system. Not half assed super expensive quasi broken replacements that literally kill people through failure. Because if you impliment that, people will get mad and they'll reverse their support and instead support anyone that can turn the lights back on. Which means that coal power plant you just shut down... will fire right back up rendering your whole campaign a total and complete failure.
So again... here are your choices.
1. Come up with actual replacements to fossil fuels that are competitively priced without subsidization or the same subsidization as fossil fuels enjoy. People always bring up that fossil fuels get subsidies as well... fine... same subsidies... no more. And it has to be as reliable as fossil fuels. People need to be able to count on it come hell or high water.
2. Utterly fail wasting the time, money, and public respect of everyone that supports you.
Those are your two choices.
I appreciate option one is difficult. That is however the task. Half assing it is not acceptable if you presume to shut down coal and nuclear plants.
What I personally prefer as a method to reduce fossil fuel use is a mixture of things that reduce our dependence on coal and nuclear power but still retains them to take whatever load we can't meet.
So for example, put solar panels on your roof. Put up a wind turbine. Install some Syngas/biofuel generators that turn farm waste/leaf litter/etc into power/fuel/compost. Make everything more efficient so it uses less power.
Do all of that and the number of big nuclear and coal power plants will be reduced. We just won't need as many of them. BUT if something happens... lets say its a really dark month with a lot of cloud cover, its really cold, maybe the wind isn't blowing, etc... Don't you want the power to flow to your house regardless?
Of course.
So please don't undermine the supporting infrastructure of the power grid. Coal and nuclear have their place. And that place is valid until people are generating enough of their own power and their technology is efficient enough not to need the coal and nuclear.
Please environmentalists... don't destroy yourselves by going off half cocked.
Guy was pitching them in my city recently. Said "put these reflectors on buses and save lives" they were nothing special. Just bits of shiny plastic.
His game was ambulance chasing people that got hit by buses and then demanding that the city install HIS little bits of shiny plastic. Anyone that disagreed clearly wanted everyone to be killed by undetectable buses because they didn't have his shiny reflectors.
It was a scam. As to this air plane thing... if they installed everything someone pitched at them the planes would be too heavy to fly. Lets be reasonable. These crashes are unusual and crashes you can't find quickly are extremely unusual. Just deal with it. the world isn't a perfect place.
Which is why you have to maintain a certain level of militancy and martial competency in your population. And when attacked... terminate the enemy with extreme prejudice.
That way you get long periods of peace punctuated with short bloody, though ultimately victorious wars.
Ideally with most of the blood being your foe.
As they said, if you want peace, prepare for war. Which means assume there is going to be a war at some point in the future, figure out what you're going to need to fight it. Maintain stockpiles of supplies. Maintain a standing military that can defend your country long enough to repel an invasion in a short war, serve as a seed to train additional soldiers, and maintain your munitions. Then you need prepared infrastructure.... Roads, airfields, navel yards, etc.
War is going to happen. Pretending otherwise is naive. When it does. Do it quickly and without hesitation or remorse. The faster and harder thrust the sooner it is over. It is the long wars that have the most collateral damage. Rather then worry about the enemy soldiers you're killing. Think of the millions of civilian lives you're saving by ending the war as quickly as possible.
Wealth is not necessarily created though. It can just exist or be found with no real work or effort.
If I go hiking in the hills one day and find a giant nugget of gold did I create that wealth? No. I just dumb luck wandered into it.
Same thing more or less for a lot things.
The point is that however wealth is created, once it is created it exists indifferent to how it was created and can be used.
I could get into a big long thing about wealth and production and go through lots of analogies. But I think I'll shift over and get at what I think is my real problem with your assessment. And that is that you're generally declaring business founders and operators and being dead weight unworthy of their financial compensation. The problem with that notion is that they do actually work very hard in most cases and the success of a given business is typically down to their management.
I had a grand father for example that built about 20 restaurants, a small ice cream company, and some similar concerns. He did it with some start up money from people in the area that invested in his company. And he did very well with it. He worked very hard. He visited all the restaurants and checked on everything. He trained the managers. He managed inventory, accounting, permits, construction, maintenance, etc.
Guess how many meals he made in those places? Try none.
My other grand father managed a series of farms. He didn't know how to grow anything. He knew how to sell it. So he bought land, hired farmers, bought equipment, etc... and then managed the inventory. At one point they had big packing houses where lots of people packaged the vegetables into boxes for shipment. It was likewise a lot of work.
And both of them didn't have enough money to start their businesses when the first started. They had to get investors. They talked to people in the area that had money and formed partnerships. Real simple sorts of deals. The grand father that had restaurants got about a third of the profit from the enterprise with two thirds of it going to his investors. And the one that had a farm got about half.
Point is... they both had hundreds of employees. Cooks, waitresses, field hands, etc. But they were the limiting factor on that business. They created it. Without them the whole thing wouldn't have happened.
You need people like that and an environment that allows them to operate or you get no business. And that means all this labor you're so fond of is unemployed and worse it is unemployable.
The current economic problems in the US are due almost entirely to the burdens and hostile environment that many businesses operate in... this discourages people to start businesses, discourages business people to expand, and as a result labor goes idle.
And look at the stock market... much of that investor money could go to local businesses. But because they're being suppressed investors have no choice but to put their money into the national and international investment markets. Which means that local money leaves the community further impoverishing it.
Its stupid. You either respect businesses and have a healthy economy and society. Or you screw them and destroy yourself.
Choose.
Cake or death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which is why chimpanzees don't rape and kill each other.
Oh wait... yeah they do...
Your grasp of our actual nature is naive.
We are opportunists. Put us in a situation where the easiest, safest, and most reliable way to get what we want is by killing someone and taking it... and we tend to do it.
This does not extend to direct family members of people seen by the individual as part of his "tribe". However, if there is another human not of your social group or bloodline that has something you want and you can take it with little risk or effort... it is our nature to take it.
Now, you can restrain that to some extent with cultural indoctrination but that is cultural indoctrination fighting our instinct.
Anyone that has ever raised children or really has any experience with them understands this instinct because children are human blanks. They don't have the culture poured into them yet and what is there is still fluid. It hasn't set and the instinct will always try to bend things to its own pattern.
Understand further, I don't think opportunism is bad. It is something we have to compensate for when we manage our society. Were we ants or cows or wolves we'd have to structure our society differently.
We are neither angels nor demons. We are not just tool users... we are users in general. The whole universe is a thing attempt to use for our own purpose.
We are dynamic.
One of the ways war is best prevented in the modern world is by interlacing our economic and cultural systems. In this way we build a web of interdependence and social intercourse that binds billions of people all over the world into an interconnected net. That net helps prevent hostilities because the incentives for war are reduces, the risks of war are increased, and while we do not feel ourselves to be one tribe we at least see those other people more as people because we have some interaction with them.
The parts of the world most likely to start wars are isolated from this net. Their trade with the outside world is typically very limited and very few people in those societies actually depend on international trade. Further, there tends to be very little cultural interaction.
If you actually want to prevent war, the best method of doing this is through trade and international cultural exchange. In this way, rather then becoming bitter enemies we may become friends and form relationships with people all over the world.
What binds the web together is self and tribal interest. If it is not in the interest of my self or my tribe to trade or interact with another group then I won't do it. And a gulf will open up between us. A gulf that CAN be filled with mistrust and hatred.
Okay, I'm talking to a communist... Just making sure.
Good day, sir.
If the millionaire's work is the product of someone else then so is the product of everyone else's work no matter how small in the same society.
And what you get there is a situation where no one owns anything because everyone collectively owns everything.
Which is pretty damn communistic in case you weren't going for that.
Now assuming you were going for a defense of communism... The problem with this "we all equally own everything" argument is that some people are lazy and some people are geniuses. People that are lazy and don't do much must have less of a stake in society. And geniuses that contribute to the success of a society obviously deserve more. But if everyone has equal ownership of everything then that means we're rewarding slackers the same as all stars.
It gets worse because humans respond to incentives. We like being able to get nice homes and nice cars and take good care of our families. All of that tends to require resources. Ownership. Wealth. And if we don't own anything then that means no matter how hard we work we're all going to be on welfare. Which means there is no incentive to work for society to get what you want.
Rather, a black market forms and political games start being played because that is the only way to get more for your family. So you stop enriching society and start working for the shadow society. A society by the way that is more capitalistic or even older in tribal systems. You saw this in the soviet union and it is how life works in North Korea.
You can't kill capitalism. Its not some idea some guy came up with one day. Its a force of nature. People describe it like they describe the sun or the tides.
It is.
Deal with it.
Or not... Capitalism doesn't care.
The mistake you're making is associating labor with wealth.
There is no direct association between labor and wealth.
The association is actually between WORK and wealth. Work is a very different concept then labor in that work can be done by tools. And a given person can do more work then another person. Under the labor model, all people are equal in some unrealistic communist fantasy. However, under the concept of work a given person or person with certain tools can preform many times the work of someone else.
So if we can agree that wealth comes from work, then we are in agreement. However, saying that wealth comes from labor is unsupportable. Labor in the sense of man power can be very inefficient or actually lose money... effectively destroy more wealth then it creates. Work can't do that.
As to your insistence on invalidating the concept of money and therefore value and therefore wealth itself... This sort of logic the rhetorical equivalent of spitting on the chess board, flipping it over so all the pieces go into the air, and then storming out of the room.
If you maintain that argument, I will have to accept your concession... because not only does that argument make no sense it is hostile to the very idea of having a rational discussion.
again this labor argument... which if it were true there would be a direct relationship between population and economic output/prosperity.
Tell me, cupcake... is Africa more or less prosperous then... well take your pick... east asia... south america... europe... the middle east?
Be a scientist for two seconds and tell me what the limiting factor is on economic prosperity throughout the world. Population is rarely a factor.
Says the anonymous coward spouting moronic arguments... *yawn*
... Okay... so this is another "labor = wealth" argument. What if I use robots or my factory is otherwise automated?
As to abstract concepts, it doesn't really matter how you measure the wealth so long as there is a way to do it. You don't like money? We can use potatoes if that makes you happy. We can buy and sell everything by trading potatoes. They're not great for money but it gets around this abstract bullshit that frankly just confuses people. The money measures value. You don't like fiat currencies... fine. We can do the same thing in bitcoins, gold bars, potatoes, or tooth picks. It boils down to the same thing.
First, I don't worship the businesses, captain strawman. I am simply educated enough to know their role in society and therefore has a measure of respect for their importance in my comfort, health, and quality of life.
As to your auto industry argument, if that were true then the US auto companies would have made more money per unit sold then the japanese. Right? Because under your idea they'd be spending less per unit and making roughly the same in retail sales value per car.
They didn't. So your math fails instantly.
Furthermore, average car production PER employee in the US at that time was 14 cars PER employee. In Japan at the same time it was 30. If you're curious, the production per employee in Italy was about 7 per employee. So the US was better then Europe but worse then Japan.
So no. The US car companies did not fail because they used substandard parts.
This is not an opinion... its math.
You stand corrected.
The problem with US manufacturing was that it wasn't efficient enough. We had too many employees that didn't produce enough or really shouldn't have been employed at all. A lot of this is traced back to the auto unions that controlled how companies laid factories out, jobs in the factory, how many people were needed, hours worked, etc. Net result was a 50 percent loss in productivity per employee. That's huge and that is why the US auto industry suffered.
US manufacturing knows full well that the labor unions are poison to future productivity in this country. Which is why they are scaling back all factories in union controlled states and accelerating production in right to work states. What is more, foreign factory start ups paved the way for this behavior.
US companies at first stayed in union states not wanting to have a fight with powerful labor unions with congressmen in their pockets. But Toyota didn't care. And as that accelerated smaller US manufacturers followed suit. And now we have Boeing and Ford following them to more favorable legal environments.
The days of big unions are done. They ruined American manufacturing and they utterly killed British manufacturing.
Its over. This is beyond debate. Its happening. And the good news is that once we clean this retrograde shit off our system we can start competing again with anyone in the world.
The politics would change but there will always be war as long as there are people.
Its in our blood.
I am not entirely fatalistic about it. We can resist it and contain it. But we are going to kill each other on occasion.
I suppose the worst thing about immortality is that dictators will get it. And then you'll get someone like Castro that will never die. That is Cuba's only hope here... that the revolutionary generation dies of old age and the following generations are more realistic.
... sure. But if they don't actually do it then it doesn't matter if they can. The point is that they are not producers.
That they can be producers is besides the point. They're not.
If I open a fridge and take out food... and eat it. What am I?
Does it matter that I could replace that food even if I never do?
We're human beings and this is planet earth. Welcome to reality. Of course we're still going to go to war.
Do you know how I know that? Because look around slashdot. Imagine you gave someone in hear power... I mean a lot of power... the power to tell people what to do. And then lets say we do the same thing to another random person on slashdot. Think those two guys are going to remain in peace and harmony forever? Get real.
War happens. Don't seek it but don't shirk from it either. It happens and when it does... win or get used to giving blowjobs for bread.
I've never had a problem with letting morons die for their god.
And where do these consumers get the money?
Consumer don't generate value. They spend it.
Do consumer make cars?
Do consumers grow food?
Do consumers make medicine?
Do consumers build homes?
Do consumers refine fuel?
None of these things. And yet you presume to tell me that they generate the wealth of a society?
Idiocy.
Businesses make things. They hire people to facilitate that production. The people are paid in transferable credit for their contribution. And with that those same people can purchase at the businesses profit, a portion of its production.
Consumers do not create wealth. They consume it.
That is why they are called consumers. I would think that rather obvious observation would be obvious.
Businesses are often referred to as producers especially in manufacturing, mining, and agriculture.
Precisely where do you think the wealth comes from? Producers.
Business. All of it comes from business.
I don't know who that is... I can only assume you're trying to demean me by suggesting that I'm an agent of someone else that also thinks you're a fucktard.
Guess what... The first time you're called a retard, you punch him in teeth. The second time you're called a retard, you can call him a jerk. But the third time someone calls you a retard... possibly its time to go shopping for a bicycle helmet with a matching drool bib.
Your pathetic insults are meaningless to me. Not only are you an intellectual vacuum but you're not even amusing. Were you at least that I could call you a clown or a fool. A pathetic object of amusement that brings delight to children and drunks.
But you're not even that. And I could muster some pity for you in your impairment but through your sad arrogance you're not even worthy of that.
Now that insect is how you issue an insult.
Kill yourself.
The overpopulation issue isn't a certainty. We've already seen massive declines in population growth in the developed world. You can't accurately estimate what our growth rate will be with immortality. It is entirely possible that our population will stabilize with many people infrequently having children.
Remember, there will still be deaths from one thing or another. We will have wars... which will claim thousands at the least and possibly millions on occasion. That is population that will have to be replaced.
Add in car accidents and various medical issues that this won't fix and you'll have a need to replace population.
it will be much lower then what we need today to counter aging. But it will remain significant. So long as our birth rate doesn't much exceed that rate our population will be stable. If it does exceed it then we'll have a major overcrowding issue.
Overcrowding leads to a scarcity of land, increases in prices, and a lower quality of living. In our society that tends to depress the birth rate.
In fact, in the modern world, there is a very keen link between economic prosperity and the birth rate in the middle class. In the very poor there is no such link since they don't actually share the same economy. Their economy is more about welfare stamps and various free housing policies. Its very difficult to quantity their economic prosperity because they don't actually use money per se. Amongst the rich its a non-issue since we can always assume they have enough to justify further breeding.
In any case, with immortality we can assume there are ways to deal with the overcrowding issue. Most of them will self correct.
And you forget the many benefits of immortality such as a highly skilled labor force that is always in prime working age. That means a much much higher level of industrial output and a much higher level of technological and educational sophistication.
With that sort of thing we might just make spreading beyond the planet practical. Far fetched today... but who can say tomorrow.
In any case, I will not retard our technological sophistication simply to satisfy the baseless worries of Luddites.
We're probably all going to die of old age around the same time we would regardless. But this sort of thing might eventually solve the aging problem.
Yes, that might lead to other issues such as over population etc... but its worth it.
Think of what percentage of the population is capable of high levels of education.
Then what percentage of that percentage actually gets it.
Then what percentage of that percentage that does anything useful with the education.
Then what percentage of their lives are left for productive work after they have been educated.
We have men that are useful for maybe 20 years tops after going through about 14 years of education and even during that 20 years there is follow up education to keep them current.
Imagine if they didn't age... if they could be kept productive indefinitely.
Imagine a whole population of polymaths as people learn at their own pace over 100s of years. 20 years as a bar tender. 20 years as a carpenter. 20 years as a fishermen. Life time on life time bleeding into each other.
Its a good thing.
As to the Japanese, they exploited weakness.
The average number of cars produced per employee at a Detroit factory was 14.
The average number of cars produced per employee at a Japanese factory was 30.
US Auto companies TRIED to implement policies that would have increased productivity dramatically. They were blocked by the union. And so US manufacturing policies stagnated.
Productivity didn't increase in the US until Japanese companies opened factories in the US and hired Americans to work the same way people work in Japan. These remain some of the most productive facilities in the US because they largely ignore the US auto unions that have largely protested themselves out of a job.
As to government paying for business... where did government get that money? From business. Not Detroit's businesses obviously. But from a dairy farm here, an auto body shop there, a small medical practice here, and maybe a few big companies aren't either f'ed with endlessly to the point where they make no money.
You really think government is the producer of wealth? Were that the case, the Soviets would have crushed us with their wealth. They had resources, technical expertise, and a lot more government then us.
They lost because they didn't have as much business.
Business pays for everything.