Do child pornographers do it for money, or for kicks? I find it hard to believe there is a website which facilitates the purchase/sale of child porn, whether for moral or legal reasons.
The "price" for digital content, as we all know, rapidly approaches zero, and pretty much the only thing that raises the price over zero is legal threats. True, demand is increased - but let's be clear, this isn't a monetizable type of demand. The producers most likely want to feel like they're not outcasts, and will provide such materials freely to anyone who helps them think they're humans.
If they're digitally producing it, we should at least make sure their spouses and therapists know too. Then perhaps they can start feeling human without any kids getting hurt.
Today, a teacher is someone who lacks the knowledge and communication skills to get a real job.
Teachers were once a respectable profession. Now, their job is to rig tests to make administrators look good, while taking shit from pipsqueaks.
The politics of protecting kids and teachers unions make it impossible to punish bad students and to punish bad teaching respectively. Imagine the hell that would be raised if half of kids were told they have below average intelligence.
The American Medical Association restricts the supply of MDs, and by law you can't get most medical care from anyone who isn't an MD.
AC is correct: you cannot be a "realtor." You can be a "REALTOR" (Registered trademark) if the National Association of Realtors permits it.
Both restrict capacity of the labor in their industries. This is known to create at best Cournot competition. Meanwhile, a market that is not capacity constrained has Betrand competition - where the mere threat of entry can keep prices near their minimum. Cournot competition reduces economic efficiency (id est, screws you out of money).
I'd estimate the average working American is getting "screwed" (how much he pays less what a competitive market would cost) by about $6,000 per year (of the approximately $16,000/yr of medical expense he and his company pay). Your paycheck is probably light by $500 per month due to the AMA tax.
It is also worth noting that a supply shortage of saved lives is equivalent to preventable deaths. This artificial shortage raises prices of having your life saved while simultaneously reducing your odds of having your life saved.
The AMA and NAR are de facto monopsonists, restricting the ease of health care and real estate purchase respectively, and using your medical bills and need for housing to make their members artificially richer.
Don't believe that doctors are getting paid "too much"? See if you can find the trend in the Forbes best paying jobs in America: 1. Anesthesiologist 2. Surgeon 3. Obstetrician 4. Orthodontist 5. Oral Surgeon 6. Internist 7. Prosthodontist 8. Psychiatrist 9. General Practitioner 10. Chief Executive Officer 11. Physician and Surgeon, Other 12. Pediatrician 13. Dentist 14. Airline Pilot 15. Podiatrist 16. Lawyer
It reminds me of the story of the Russian farmer. When Communism fell in 1990, foreigners came through towns and found some using the original equipment acquired in the 1920's. They used it because "it still worked." They didn't realize that for the amount of time and money they put in maintenance, they could be renting a new, vastly more efficient pieces of equipment.
Let them go. They aren't worth spending hours messing with.
In fact, we should be switching to these alternatives today. Coal to diesel/gasoline is an old, reliable technology, and rumor is that it creates wholesale gasoline for about $2 per gallon, as compared to oil which produces for almost $3 per gallon these days.
The problem is, building an efficient production facility means gambling on the price and use of gasoline for the next 30+ years. Big oil companies know this technology exists, but don't want to invest $5 billion if a) the price of oil goes back under $50 in the next 30 years, or more likely b) the demand for gasoline goes down because of a new technology in the next 30 years, or c) the price of coal goes up relative to the price of oil.
My money is on (c) being the most likely, as gasoline is just way too good of a fuel to give up on it. Infrastructure, energy density, backward compatibility, and a new installed userbase in Asia...
Of course, that's what Kodak thought about film in the 1990's.
Offtopic? AC is correct, and spot on topic. You increase energy without increasing temperature in a phase change. Melting all the world's ice won't necessarily show an increase in temperature, just less ice. Thus, we could be putting a LOT of energy into the system and see very little change in temperature because of the phase change. That is how you have limited temperature change at first, then major temperature change later.
Not necessarily. For example, a large percentage of the Earth's land surface is in permafrost. Imagine if Siberia and Canada became useful for something. There may be crops requiring hotter temperatures that would increase the agricultural productivity of places like the US. Certainly, cold climate crops such as wheat have been bred for thousands of years to improve their characteristics.
This possible increased productivity will require change, but will increase the total output per cost. Thus, creating a profit.
"Smart bombs are a tiny, tiny fraction of ordinance dropped -- they just kept replaying the footage of the laser guided bomb dropping down a chimney to make you think all war we wage is nice and tidy like that."
1991 called - they want their facts back.
2002: 60% of munitions in Afghanistan were "smart" -DOD 2003: Operation Iraqi Freedom - "Smart bombs like the JDAM have comprised 80 percent of the munitions used during this operation." USAF
Our current generating capacity isn't gonna magically disappear. This could allow us to phase out coal plants as part of our baseload supply, and turn that coal towards a more useful purpose, like making gasoline out of it. Natural gas makes the best peak-available power, and coal gasification can be used to address our peak needs as well.
Hydrogen isn't ready to roll out today, while the rest appears to be.
"Begging the question" is to ask a question which only makes sense to ask after certain other questions have been answered. The classic example is, "have you stopped beating your wife?"
On Slashdot, the question that begs is "How did you get a girl to date you, let alone marry you?"
I see several problems. First, Medicare negotiating lower drug prices causes INCREASED prices for those not on Medicare. This will be a big hit to middle class and poor families. I agree with this in principle, but see no way around it harming others.
Not true. Profit maximizing is already done with each of these markets separately (big differences in demand elasticity). Big Pharma knows they can't make more money by raising prices on the poor, because the poor will take their chances with aspirin instead. Medicare/Medicaid negotiating prices will just reduce the supply of new drugs.
The real losers are the people who would have benefited from any other research those scientists would have done instead.
A proof on why we should expect the world has a high probability of being WORSE off with these rewards will come soon. Right now I gotta pay some bills.
We corporate types go to college, wear suits and ties, and act "professionally" because that's how we prove we can be trusted with our bosses' money. I wear t-shirts, like MBA students do, when I'm not expected to act "professionally." The reason corporate types wear suits and ties is to NOT look like the "common man." We are just lucky the business community was started by British aristocrats, and not Furries.
Business is about exchanging large amounts of money in exchange for goods and services, and giving large amounts of money requires trust. Anyone can look normal, but it takes a lot more effort to look like a polished professional, and most of the time, the untrustworthy don't bother. It's like a barbed wire fence - yes, anyone could safely cross it if he really wanted to, but for most criminals its just too inconvenient. For the mathematics behind this, read Spence, (1973) "Job Market Signaling." None of you will, because it is too inconvenient.
The general problem with "low level" employees is not that they aren't bright enough, or hard working enough to be management. The problem is that they only care about themselves.
You get paid at work because you're useful to someone else. But "low level" employees do their tasks, and that's it. "High quality" employees succeed by figuring out how to constantly be more useful to their boss. Don't confuse this as "sucking up" - creating efficiencies, new opportunities, and helping your boss achieve his tasks means your organization is making more money, and some of that money will get directed to the source if it can be found.
Lower management takes objectives and organizes the people to accomplish them for the middle management. A middle manager strives to hit the benchmarks for the upper management. The upper management strives to keep the profits growing for the CEO. The CEO is redirecting the company and dealing with the board of directors and everyone who wants his ear as the figurehead. Every step is about serving someone else - the CEO is a slave to the Board, who are slaves to the investors, who need the stock price to go up to pay for their retirement or their kids' tuition.
If you want to be paid more, just keep trying to keep the end customer happy.
1) Their claims are not based on the 'loss' - they're based on statute. IRS has no authority to tell Congress how to write the DMCA. 2) Pretend they were losses. There are far more "losses" than there are "gains" today for media companies - more copies are illegal than legal. 3) If we did treat these "losses" as taxable, they would REDUCE the tax owed. 4) Pretend it increased taxes. The media companies aren't worth much. Disney is worth $60 bil before it goes bankrupt, Time Warner is worth about $60 bil, News Corp about $60 bil, CBS $17 bil, Viacom $30 bil, etc... You'd be lucky to squeeze $300 bil out of them all. 5) The national debt is currently about $9.3 trillion, and that doesn't include obligations we haven't written bonds for.
That is done everyday by accountants. Mickey Mouse's image is booked as an Intangible Asset on Disney's Balance Sheet.
In general, you book the value by the lower of cost or market value. If there is significant reason to believe that the value has changed significantly, then you should take a gain on appreciation (increasing the value of the IP asset) or a loss (decreasing the value of the asset).
Suppose the accountants didn't do that. Suppose Mickey Mouse's copyrights were booked as only $1 billion asset. I then buy some Disney stock, and raise some cash. Then I could offer Disney $1.5 billion for it, and if they didn't accept, then I can sue them for a) falsifying the values on their balance sheet or b) failing to act in shareholders interests (or both). Then, they would settle out of court (for hundreds of millions of dollars) to prevent me from getting to the discovery phase of the trial which would allow me to look at what the values of every other piece of IP they have is booked at.
So, to prevent this from happening, they usually book the correct values.
What are "the correct values"? This is standard asset pricing, and you just find the net present value of the income stream generated by the asset using a discount factor to adjust for the risk of the income stream.
Infrastructure reduces costs. Reduced costs increase consumption, which increases jobs. The question is not whether the infrastructure is beneficial (it is), but whether it is the best use of money given the risks. Of course AT&T thinks the government paying for their broadband network is good for the world.
1. Record 360 tracks (videos, or of you talking on your microphone) on your laptop. 2. Give laptop to someone 3. Wait for laptop to be stolen 4. Sue person responsible for laptop for $1000 plus $150,000 per track of copyrighted recorded material for a total of $54 million
1. Record 360 tracks of you talking on your microphone on your laptop. 2. Give laptop to someone 3. Have laptop stolen 4. Sue person responsible for laptop for $1000 plus $150,000 per track of copyrighted recorded material 6. Citing precedent, settle out of court for a mere $10,000 per track
First time I've ever heard economics compared to sociology, and that stings:) Yes, economic values are fuzzier than physical values. But comparing certainty of the value of your money to the certainty of your likelihood to vote Democrat or your extroversion is disingenuous. The difference is that in Economics, there are common definitions (established in millenia of commercial code), massive scale of recorded observations, and cash incentives to show what people will trade for money.
The value of a dollar is not subjective. Try telling the store clerk that your dollar is actually worth more than everyone else's. What people are willing to trade for a dollar differs - that is subjective. But the value of a dollar is established over trillions of dollars in transactions per day, a sample size that effectively negates the effects of the preferences of everyone on earth. I have yet to hear of a sociology experiment with n>1E12 observations. There is objective value.
There aren't many alternative paradigms in economics today. There are alternative focuses, and of course many ideas are constantly being challenged and some changed. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there really is not another "school of economics." That "school" obviously failed because their "on paper" arguments, as you mentioned, was created by philosophy, not evidence. Their hypotheses were rejected on evidence, as I believe science is supposed to.
No economist would mistake stocks for wealth. Stocks and bonds and real estate and currencies and derivatives are tiny compared to the biggest type of wealth of the world: human capital.
It's clear you don't understand how economic "truth" is decided: by very careful analysis of lots and lots of data, and using statistical evidence to reject hypotheses. We know, for example, that commodity backed currency does not control inflation in a good way. As any good student of economics, certainly you recall the events of the first "Great Depression" from 1873 to 1896, caused by going from fiat money to the gold standard. Deflation is the real evil, not inflation. Certainly you understand deflation causes your debts to increase, crippling borrowing and risk taking and entrepreneurship. When the common man wants to buy land to farm or a house to live in, he must take on a mortgage for decades. Certainly, you recall the words of the man who nearly became President: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!"
Wars, tax policy, and whether to pass debt on to the next generation are good issues for parties and politicians to philosophize about. Whether a philosophical statement is "true" or not can be decided from election to election. The facts about how economics works cannot be changed by lengthy polemics.
Now we'll be allowed to talk about economics scientifically again. (NB: Paul's supporters believe in Austrian School "economics", which explicitly refutes science and empiricism)
Slashdot Mirror
Do child pornographers do it for money, or for kicks? I find it hard to believe there is a website which facilitates the purchase/sale of child porn, whether for moral or legal reasons.
The "price" for digital content, as we all know, rapidly approaches zero, and pretty much the only thing that raises the price over zero is legal threats. True, demand is increased - but let's be clear, this isn't a monetizable type of demand. The producers most likely want to feel like they're not outcasts, and will provide such materials freely to anyone who helps them think they're humans.
If they're digitally producing it, we should at least make sure their spouses and therapists know too. Then perhaps they can start feeling human without any kids getting hurt.
Today, a teacher is someone who lacks the knowledge and communication skills to get a real job.
Teachers were once a respectable profession. Now, their job is to rig tests to make administrators look good, while taking shit from pipsqueaks.
The politics of protecting kids and teachers unions make it impossible to punish bad students and to punish bad teaching respectively. Imagine the hell that would be raised if half of kids were told they have below average intelligence.
The American Medical Association restricts the supply of MDs, and by law you can't get most medical care from anyone who isn't an MD.
AC is correct: you cannot be a "realtor." You can be a "REALTOR" (Registered trademark) if the National Association of Realtors permits it.
Both restrict capacity of the labor in their industries. This is known to create at best Cournot competition. Meanwhile, a market that is not capacity constrained has Betrand competition - where the mere threat of entry can keep prices near their minimum. Cournot competition reduces economic efficiency (id est, screws you out of money).
I'd estimate the average working American is getting "screwed" (how much he pays less what a competitive market would cost) by about $6,000 per year (of the approximately $16,000/yr of medical expense he and his company pay). Your paycheck is probably light by $500 per month due to the AMA tax.
It is also worth noting that a supply shortage of saved lives is equivalent to preventable deaths. This artificial shortage raises prices of having your life saved while simultaneously reducing your odds of having your life saved.
The AMA and NAR are de facto monopsonists, restricting the ease of health care and real estate purchase respectively, and using your medical bills and need for housing to make their members artificially richer.
Don't believe that doctors are getting paid "too much"? See if you can find the trend in the Forbes best paying jobs in America:
1. Anesthesiologist
2. Surgeon
3. Obstetrician
4. Orthodontist
5. Oral Surgeon
6. Internist
7. Prosthodontist
8. Psychiatrist
9. General Practitioner
10. Chief Executive Officer
11. Physician and Surgeon, Other
12. Pediatrician
13. Dentist
14. Airline Pilot
15. Podiatrist
16. Lawyer
Productivity in the US has been going up steadily over the last decade, but real median income has gone down. Where does all that extra money go that you're not getting paid? Your company spends it on health insurance, most of which ends up in the hands of MDs.
OPEC dominates the trillion dollar global petroleum industry. The AMA dominates the two trillion dollar national medical industry. Politicians blame OPEC for our economy because doctors write big checks.
It reminds me of the story of the Russian farmer. When Communism fell in 1990, foreigners came through towns and found some using the original equipment acquired in the 1920's. They used it because "it still worked." They didn't realize that for the amount of time and money they put in maintenance, they could be renting a new, vastly more efficient pieces of equipment.
Let them go. They aren't worth spending hours messing with.
In fact, we should be switching to these alternatives today. Coal to diesel/gasoline is an old, reliable technology, and rumor is that it creates wholesale gasoline for about $2 per gallon, as compared to oil which produces for almost $3 per gallon these days.
The problem is, building an efficient production facility means gambling on the price and use of gasoline for the next 30+ years. Big oil companies know this technology exists, but don't want to invest $5 billion if
a) the price of oil goes back under $50 in the next 30 years, or more likely
b) the demand for gasoline goes down because of a new technology in the next 30 years, or
c) the price of coal goes up relative to the price of oil.
My money is on (c) being the most likely, as gasoline is just way too good of a fuel to give up on it. Infrastructure, energy density, backward compatibility, and a new installed userbase in Asia...
Of course, that's what Kodak thought about film in the 1990's.
Offtopic? AC is correct, and spot on topic. You increase energy without increasing temperature in a phase change. Melting all the world's ice won't necessarily show an increase in temperature, just less ice. Thus, we could be putting a LOT of energy into the system and see very little change in temperature because of the phase change. That is how you have limited temperature change at first, then major temperature change later.
You couldn't support modern population density with the agricultural technology of the 1930's.
Not necessarily. For example, a large percentage of the Earth's land surface is in permafrost. Imagine if Siberia and Canada became useful for something. There may be crops requiring hotter temperatures that would increase the agricultural productivity of places like the US. Certainly, cold climate crops such as wheat have been bred for thousands of years to improve their characteristics.
This possible increased productivity will require change, but will increase the total output per cost. Thus, creating a profit.
"Smart bombs are a tiny, tiny fraction of ordinance dropped -- they just kept replaying the footage of the laser guided bomb dropping down a chimney to make you think all war we wage is nice and tidy like that."
1991 called - they want their facts back.
2002: 60% of munitions in Afghanistan were "smart"
-DOD
2003: Operation Iraqi Freedom - "Smart bombs like the JDAM have comprised 80 percent of the munitions used during this operation." USAF
Our current generating capacity isn't gonna magically disappear. This could allow us to phase out coal plants as part of our baseload supply, and turn that coal towards a more useful purpose, like making gasoline out of it. Natural gas makes the best peak-available power, and coal gasification can be used to address our peak needs as well.
Hydrogen isn't ready to roll out today, while the rest appears to be.
"Begging the question" is to ask a question which only makes sense to ask after certain other questions have been answered. The classic example is, "have you stopped beating your wife?"
On Slashdot, the question that begs is "How did you get a girl to date you, let alone marry you?"
I see several problems. First, Medicare negotiating lower drug prices causes INCREASED prices for those not on Medicare. This will be a big hit to middle class and poor families. I agree with this in principle, but see no way around it harming others.
Not true. Profit maximizing is already done with each of these markets separately (big differences in demand elasticity). Big Pharma knows they can't make more money by raising prices on the poor, because the poor will take their chances with aspirin instead. Medicare/Medicaid negotiating prices will just reduce the supply of new drugs.
This is why I only drink rainwater and grain alcohol!
The real losers are the people who would have benefited from any other research those scientists would have done instead.
A proof on why we should expect the world has a high probability of being WORSE off with these rewards will come soon. Right now I gotta pay some bills.
We corporate types go to college, wear suits and ties, and act "professionally" because that's how we prove we can be trusted with our bosses' money. I wear t-shirts, like MBA students do, when I'm not expected to act "professionally." The reason corporate types wear suits and ties is to NOT look like the "common man." We are just lucky the business community was started by British aristocrats, and not Furries.
Business is about exchanging large amounts of money in exchange for goods and services, and giving large amounts of money requires trust. Anyone can look normal, but it takes a lot more effort to look like a polished professional, and most of the time, the untrustworthy don't bother. It's like a barbed wire fence - yes, anyone could safely cross it if he really wanted to, but for most criminals its just too inconvenient. For the mathematics behind this, read Spence, (1973) "Job Market Signaling." None of you will, because it is too inconvenient.
The general problem with "low level" employees is not that they aren't bright enough, or hard working enough to be management. The problem is that they only care about themselves.
You get paid at work because you're useful to someone else. But "low level" employees do their tasks, and that's it. "High quality" employees succeed by figuring out how to constantly be more useful to their boss. Don't confuse this as "sucking up" - creating efficiencies, new opportunities, and helping your boss achieve his tasks means your organization is making more money, and some of that money will get directed to the source if it can be found.
Lower management takes objectives and organizes the people to accomplish them for the middle management. A middle manager strives to hit the benchmarks for the upper management. The upper management strives to keep the profits growing for the CEO. The CEO is redirecting the company and dealing with the board of directors and everyone who wants his ear as the figurehead. Every step is about serving someone else - the CEO is a slave to the Board, who are slaves to the investors, who need the stock price to go up to pay for their retirement or their kids' tuition.
If you want to be paid more, just keep trying to keep the end customer happy.
1) Their claims are not based on the 'loss' - they're based on statute. IRS has no authority to tell Congress how to write the DMCA.
2) Pretend they were losses. There are far more "losses" than there are "gains" today for media companies - more copies are illegal than legal.
3) If we did treat these "losses" as taxable, they would REDUCE the tax owed.
4) Pretend it increased taxes. The media companies aren't worth much. Disney is worth $60 bil before it goes bankrupt, Time Warner is worth about $60 bil, News Corp about $60 bil, CBS $17 bil, Viacom $30 bil, etc... You'd be lucky to squeeze $300 bil out of them all.
5) The national debt is currently about $9.3 trillion, and that doesn't include obligations we haven't written bonds for.
That is done everyday by accountants. Mickey Mouse's image is booked as an Intangible Asset on Disney's Balance Sheet.
In general, you book the value by the lower of cost or market value. If there is significant reason to believe that the value has changed significantly, then you should take a gain on appreciation (increasing the value of the IP asset) or a loss (decreasing the value of the asset).
Suppose the accountants didn't do that. Suppose Mickey Mouse's copyrights were booked as only $1 billion asset. I then buy some Disney stock, and raise some cash. Then I could offer Disney $1.5 billion for it, and if they didn't accept, then I can sue them for a) falsifying the values on their balance sheet or b) failing to act in shareholders interests (or both). Then, they would settle out of court (for hundreds of millions of dollars) to prevent me from getting to the discovery phase of the trial which would allow me to look at what the values of every other piece of IP they have is booked at.
So, to prevent this from happening, they usually book the correct values.
What are "the correct values"? This is standard asset pricing, and you just find the net present value of the income stream generated by the asset using a discount factor to adjust for the risk of the income stream.
Infrastructure reduces costs. Reduced costs increase consumption, which increases jobs. The question is not whether the infrastructure is beneficial (it is), but whether it is the best use of money given the risks. Of course AT&T thinks the government paying for their broadband network is good for the world.
1. Record 360 tracks (videos, or of you talking on your microphone) on your laptop.
2. Give laptop to someone
3. Wait for laptop to be stolen
4. Sue person responsible for laptop for $1000 plus $150,000 per track of copyrighted recorded material for a total of $54 million
1. Record 360 tracks of you talking on your microphone on your laptop.
2. Give laptop to someone
3. Have laptop stolen
4. Sue person responsible for laptop for $1000 plus $150,000 per track of copyrighted recorded material
6. Citing precedent, settle out of court for a mere $10,000 per track
People who viewed "Jazz in Paris" bought:
Jazz in Paris 1%
Linux in a Nutshell 55%
Understanding the Linux Kernel 12%
Running Weblogs with Slash 7%
First time I've ever heard economics compared to sociology, and that stings :) Yes, economic values are fuzzier than physical values. But comparing certainty of the value of your money to the certainty of your likelihood to vote Democrat or your extroversion is disingenuous. The difference is that in Economics, there are common definitions (established in millenia of commercial code), massive scale of recorded observations, and cash incentives to show what people will trade for money.
The value of a dollar is not subjective. Try telling the store clerk that your dollar is actually worth more than everyone else's. What people are willing to trade for a dollar differs - that is subjective. But the value of a dollar is established over trillions of dollars in transactions per day, a sample size that effectively negates the effects of the preferences of everyone on earth. I have yet to hear of a sociology experiment with n>1E12 observations. There is objective value.
There aren't many alternative paradigms in economics today. There are alternative focuses, and of course many ideas are constantly being challenged and some changed. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there really is not another "school of economics." That "school" obviously failed because their "on paper" arguments, as you mentioned, was created by philosophy, not evidence. Their hypotheses were rejected on evidence, as I believe science is supposed to.
No economist would mistake stocks for wealth. Stocks and bonds and real estate and currencies and derivatives are tiny compared to the biggest type of wealth of the world: human capital.
It's clear you don't understand how economic "truth" is decided: by very careful analysis of lots and lots of data, and using statistical evidence to reject hypotheses. We know, for example, that commodity backed currency does not control inflation in a good way. As any good student of economics, certainly you recall the events of the first "Great Depression" from 1873 to 1896, caused by going from fiat money to the gold standard. Deflation is the real evil, not inflation. Certainly you understand deflation causes your debts to increase, crippling borrowing and risk taking and entrepreneurship. When the common man wants to buy land to farm or a house to live in, he must take on a mortgage for decades. Certainly, you recall the words of the man who nearly became President: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!"
Wars, tax policy, and whether to pass debt on to the next generation are good issues for parties and politicians to philosophize about. Whether a philosophical statement is "true" or not can be decided from election to election. The facts about how economics works cannot be changed by lengthy polemics.
Now we'll be allowed to talk about economics scientifically again.
(NB: Paul's supporters believe in Austrian School "economics", which explicitly refutes science and empiricism)