You're overlooking the economic proof that time travel can't exist: If it ever existed or will exist, then the inventor would have anything possible at any point in time. If there is any chance that this technology could be created once, then it could be stolen over the course of the history of the universe, or invented again, and again, effectively many, many times. Assuming the universe is a rival good (i.e. if I use if for my purposes, you can't), this makes the entire universe an area of competition at all points in time, and you'd be working for someone with a time machine time now. This means investments wouldn't appreciate over time, and the time value of your labor would go to zero. So there will never be time travel.
There are a few fine points missing in the proof. This is left as an exercise for the reader.
It seems you've never dealt with HR issues. An employee who takes $50,000 from you in salary usually costs about $100,000 per year because of payroll taxes, insurance, and administrative costs. Based on unclassified figures of similar government agencies, I would expect that payroll is about 30% of the cost, which would mean 180,000 people get jobs throughout the dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations. Most of those are probably double counted in the military.
It seems you've never dealt with government contractors, because the problem with paying them to do something isn't that they make excessive profits, it's that they don't care about controlling costs. Waste is waste, but laziness and incompetence is far more common than evil.
It seems you've never dealt with other people's money, because rich people "hoard" by investing in things like start-ups and government debt from overspending. Don't get me wrong, after you've got a million in the bank, I don't think you need to cry about paying more than your share of taxes.
While probably a quarter of America agrees with you that there are better ways to spend that $60 billion, probably half of America thinks there's no better thing for the government to do than spend on intelligence to make the country safer. You need to accept the fact that if you want the right to complain, you need to take the responsibility of respecting the democratic mechanisms. If you abhor this system for its inefficiency, there are always positions open in the government for well qualified individuals with a passion for doing the right thing.
Sadly, American (and other developed world) farm subsidies are not in place for food security. For example, while the United States has 5% of the world population, the US produces 17% of the world's cereals and 15% of meats. I mean, we eat a lot (avg 3637 kcal/day we're fatties), but we don't need that much food. Why? Exports. Because if we sell them food cheaper than they can make it themselves, we're safer.
I had finance and economics majors in undergrad, and registered representative issues were never discussed in any economics class. Any business student would have seen it in corporate law, though...
If this is cost efficient and effective, why doesn't the local government provide tax incentives for properties near the levees to have secondary levees around their properties? Is it cost effective, or is it on the order of $1000 per meter? Though it would make for nice fencing.
Yeah, but you have to pay money to keep pond scum from forming. Dollar for dollar, plants are still more efficient. As opposed to the 15% efficiency cells that cost $50k to cover your average roof, you could have ten times the area, chest high with plants for the mere cost of a bag of fertilizer, algal blooms in your runoff area, and angry calls from your neighbors.
"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire."
You're right that it would be much more efficient than ethanol, and that's a step forward.
Sure, you have to pay attention to the problems of rising food costs...The economy will figure out the rest
You have to pay a LOT of attention to rising food costs. Let me introduce you to my little friend, price elasticity of demand (ped). ped is a metric for how much quantity changes for a change in price. Basically, this measures how substitutable the good in question is: smokers have very inelastic demand for cigarettes, drivers have very inelastic demand for gasoline. And humans and animals have very, very inelastic demand for food. This means that a small change in the quantity of corn supplied leads to a large change in the price of corn.
Everyone will love when you can't afford to buy bread because of government subsidies pay better for starch conversion than for producing food. Washington would know better, right? In Mexico this year, there have been anti-American riots, because the price of the main Mexican foodstuffs, corn based tortillas and breads, have doubled in cost due to the American ethanol fantasy. Despite a 51 cent/gal government subsidy, this ethanol industry hasn't shown much progress in production efficiency breakthroughs necessary to make ethanol a cost efficient fuel. Sure, it's nice a lot of companies have cut back on HFCS because its too expensive these days, but what about the millions of more Mexicans who need to move somewhere to feed their families?
To tax it, you have to appraise it. To appraise it, you have to know what others are willing to buy it for. To buy it for a price, it needs to give you a stream of cash flows whose discounted present value is worth the price. To predict and tax future income is harder than taxing present income forever, so this plan breaks down a bit.
Besides, taxing 30% of income forever gives you 30% of its present value in taxes, which isn't bad.
These quotes tend to be based on the most outrageous assumptions possible. For example, you could make the (terrible) assumption that only financial capital matters. So, if you have a PhD and just got a job for $150,000 a year, then bought a $200,000 house for 10% down, you now have a debt of $180,000 - so your wealth is negative, and you are one of the poorest Americans. Or if you're a retiree whose pension plan provides you $20,000 per year forever, at 4% interest rate your wealth must be $500,000, so you're at the top.
So it really depends on which items you're counting and how you're counting - these are easy examples of very stupid mistakes real economists and accountants rarely make, but the point is to show you that this is easy to manipulate.
Last I heard, the richest 1% had about 32% of the national wealth - which is obviously still large. But income inequality is more important - the top 10% make about 45% of the US's income. If you've ever worked in a team, you know this is basically how it works - for any given period, about 1 out of 8 does about half the work. If you think this is a bad thing, consider "Communist" China - their income inequality, as measured by Gini index, is a bit worse than the American inequality.
"Tweaks to its amino acid components boosted its anti-HIV potency by two orders of magnitude."
Considering that we've known about 1% of the population is naturally immune to HIV, if we can use these tweaks to increase that percentage by two orders of magnitude...
Also, we'll need to 'fix' all our history and social science textbooks, so that no mentions of crime, war, sex, or immoral actions are mentioned. Added bonus: when the giant books are purged down to a couple pages, they'll be cheaper and easier to read!
Let's develop a game that shows the world that violence isn't the problem.
In this game, you should get points for:
humiliating and ostracizing people who are different from you,
evading taxes by exploiting questionable tax breaks,
using barely legal accounting practices,
manipulating other people's emotions for political objectives,
taking campaign contributions that create conflicts of interest,
and suing people under immoral circumstances for profit.
Personally, I'd rather kids pretend to shoot people.
While some independent projects are bound to be faster than government projects, you'd be amazed at the completely unpredictable environments military equipment works in. It has to work in the rain, when thrown in the mud, when filled with dust from Arabian winds, when a private tries to connect everything backwards, be usable to people who've never seen it before, take shockwaves from incoming artillery, sit in a black metal container in the sun when its 130 degrees, sit in a metal container in the -30 degree arctic, be jumped on repeatedly when you're trying to save your buddies in a fight and you don't care what you're walking on...
The military isn't efficient. But they are very good at preparing for the vast array of impossible conditions that military operations take place in.
You are wrong. Hospitals and HMO's lose money when costs are high, especially on things like cancer. $100,000 in revenues is a lot different from $100,000 in profits - nuclear medicine, oncologists, and surgeons are not cheap.
Legally, hospitals are obligated to give you treatment if you don't have insurance, but they will bill you for it afterwards. Most people without insurance who can't pay medical bills just go to bankruptcy - which leaves the hospital with bills for drugs and surgeons and whatnot, but no money. Cancer is one of the most expensive things to treat, and thus one of the places someone is more likely to go bankrupt than pay whatever the hospital requests.
Insurers want costs to be lower, so they can sell their insurance cheaper, so they can make money by taking business away from other insurers. They lose revenue when people don't buy into the system. It's within their interest to have cheaper treatments available - cheaper after you include all the associated costs like legal liabilities and follow-up care.
You're right, I'm an idiot. Then my real point is that people should use that right, because a lot more than 1-in-12 adults in America would be sympathetic (if 1-in-12 is enough in your jurisdiction).
Manufacturers aren't dumb - the big cases that cost more save money. Breakage is a huge portion of distribution costs, especially with fragile items like lightbulbs.
..is if you steal a $15 cd from a store, you have a right to a trial by jury, but if you're accused of stealing $30,000 of music online, it's only a civil case, so there's no right to jury. Certainly, if these copyright infringement cases were tried by jury, almost no one would be prosecuted...
Besides, what 16 year old has $30,000? That's more than most 16 year olds make in two years of working - why not throw him in jail for two years? The average bank robbery nets $5,000 or so - has he really done the equivalent of 6 bank robberies?
Sure you wouldn't have this on the West coast, but on the East Coast it makes sense. Why waste that precious fresh water rain on the ocean? Lower precipitation means more shopping days, fewer rain checks, less global warming, less flooding, less road repair, and fewer mosquitoes. Crops can use irrigation windmills. So can desert cities, ships, hospitals, military units, etc. It would take an excessive amount of work, and it won't be cost effective, but its possible to redistribute precipitation onto land instead of over the oceans, which could (naively based on % of landmass) triple land precipitation, increasing local wildlife. And since total evaporation is based on humidity over oceans, you might increase precipitation even more, as more water evaporates into drier oceanic air.
Of course, desalination plants and massive water pipe networks could do the entire thing cheaper. My point is that bad effects can be mitigated and worked around.
Water causes most of the greenhouse gas effect, while carbon dioxide contributes about a third as much. Sure, we'd kill off a bunch of carbon dioxide intaking organisms (aka plants), but theoretically, its possible to cool the planet by decreasing humidity.
Many of the most important people in America have no bodyguards. Crowds reach tens of thousands daily, and hundreds of thousands weekly. I know you're kidding, but the misconception by some that terrorists care enough to develop an algorithm is disturbing. Instead, one could club a guy on the back of the head and spray paint "God is great," and guarantee to get press coverage for twenty minutes of work and anonymously survive to the next attack.
The "ten a day" limitation is on floating power plants. Presumably, one could find more energy on a continent.
But, you're right. 600 nm exclusive economic zones, boarding civilian ships, and most importantly, power projection beyond 200 miles are why you have navies.
Slashdot Mirror
You're overlooking the economic proof that time travel can't exist:
If it ever existed or will exist, then the inventor would have anything possible at any point in time. If there is any chance that this technology could be created once, then it could be stolen over the course of the history of the universe, or invented again, and again, effectively many, many times. Assuming the universe is a rival good (i.e. if I use if for my purposes, you can't), this makes the entire universe an area of competition at all points in time, and you'd be working for someone with a time machine time now. This means investments wouldn't appreciate over time, and the time value of your labor would go to zero. So there will never be time travel.
There are a few fine points missing in the proof. This is left as an exercise for the reader.
It seems you've never dealt with HR issues. An employee who takes $50,000 from you in salary usually costs about $100,000 per year because of payroll taxes, insurance, and administrative costs. Based on unclassified figures of similar government agencies, I would expect that payroll is about 30% of the cost, which would mean 180,000 people get jobs throughout the dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations. Most of those are probably double counted in the military.
It seems you've never dealt with government contractors, because the problem with paying them to do something isn't that they make excessive profits, it's that they don't care about controlling costs. Waste is waste, but laziness and incompetence is far more common than evil.
It seems you've never dealt with other people's money, because rich people "hoard" by investing in things like start-ups and government debt from overspending. Don't get me wrong, after you've got a million in the bank, I don't think you need to cry about paying more than your share of taxes.
While probably a quarter of America agrees with you that there are better ways to spend that $60 billion, probably half of America thinks there's no better thing for the government to do than spend on intelligence to make the country safer. You need to accept the fact that if you want the right to complain, you need to take the responsibility of respecting the democratic mechanisms. If you abhor this system for its inefficiency, there are always positions open in the government for well qualified individuals with a passion for doing the right thing.
Sadly, American (and other developed world) farm subsidies are not in place for food security. For example, while the United States has 5% of the world population, the US produces 17% of the world's cereals and 15% of meats. I mean, we eat a lot (avg 3637 kcal/day we're fatties), but we don't need that much food. Why? Exports. Because if we sell them food cheaper than they can make it themselves, we're safer.
I had finance and economics majors in undergrad, and registered representative issues were never discussed in any economics class. Any business student would have seen it in corporate law, though...
If this is cost efficient and effective, why doesn't the local government provide tax incentives for properties near the levees to have secondary levees around their properties? Is it cost effective, or is it on the order of $1000 per meter? Though it would make for nice fencing.
Yeah, but you have to pay money to keep pond scum from forming. Dollar for dollar, plants are still more efficient. As opposed to the 15% efficiency cells that cost $50k to cover your average roof, you could have ten times the area, chest high with plants for the mere cost of a bag of fertilizer, algal blooms in your runoff area, and angry calls from your neighbors.
"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire."
You're right that it would be much more efficient than ethanol, and that's a step forward.
Sure, you have to pay attention to the problems of rising food costs...The economy will figure out the rest
You have to pay a LOT of attention to rising food costs. Let me introduce you to my little friend, price elasticity of demand (ped). ped is a metric for how much quantity changes for a change in price. Basically, this measures how substitutable the good in question is: smokers have very inelastic demand for cigarettes, drivers have very inelastic demand for gasoline. And humans and animals have very, very inelastic demand for food. This means that a small change in the quantity of corn supplied leads to a large change in the price of corn.
Everyone will love when you can't afford to buy bread because of government subsidies pay better for starch conversion than for producing food. Washington would know better, right? In Mexico this year, there have been anti-American riots, because the price of the main Mexican foodstuffs, corn based tortillas and breads, have doubled in cost due to the American ethanol fantasy. Despite a 51 cent/gal government subsidy, this ethanol industry hasn't shown much progress in production efficiency breakthroughs necessary to make ethanol a cost efficient fuel. Sure, it's nice a lot of companies have cut back on HFCS because its too expensive these days, but what about the millions of more Mexicans who need to move somewhere to feed their families?
To tax it, you have to appraise it. To appraise it, you have to know what others are willing to buy it for. To buy it for a price, it needs to give you a stream of cash flows whose discounted present value is worth the price. To predict and tax future income is harder than taxing present income forever, so this plan breaks down a bit.
Besides, taxing 30% of income forever gives you 30% of its present value in taxes, which isn't bad.
These quotes tend to be based on the most outrageous assumptions possible. For example, you could make the (terrible) assumption that only financial capital matters. So, if you have a PhD and just got a job for $150,000 a year, then bought a $200,000 house for 10% down, you now have a debt of $180,000 - so your wealth is negative, and you are one of the poorest Americans. Or if you're a retiree whose pension plan provides you $20,000 per year forever, at 4% interest rate your wealth must be $500,000, so you're at the top.
So it really depends on which items you're counting and how you're counting - these are easy examples of very stupid mistakes real economists and accountants rarely make, but the point is to show you that this is easy to manipulate.
Last I heard, the richest 1% had about 32% of the national wealth - which is obviously still large. But income inequality is more important - the top 10% make about 45% of the US's income. If you've ever worked in a team, you know this is basically how it works - for any given period, about 1 out of 8 does about half the work. If you think this is a bad thing, consider "Communist" China - their income inequality, as measured by Gini index, is a bit worse than the American inequality.
"Tweaks to its amino acid components boosted its anti-HIV potency by two orders of magnitude."
Considering that we've known about 1% of the population is naturally immune to HIV, if we can use these tweaks to increase that percentage by two orders of magnitude...
Goodbye, Darwin. Hello, future.
Also, we'll need to 'fix' all our history and social science textbooks, so that no mentions of crime, war, sex, or immoral actions are mentioned.
Added bonus: when the giant books are purged down to a couple pages, they'll be cheaper and easier to read!
Let's develop a game that shows the world that violence isn't the problem.
In this game, you should get points for:
humiliating and ostracizing people who are different from you,
evading taxes by exploiting questionable tax breaks,
using barely legal accounting practices,
manipulating other people's emotions for political objectives,
taking campaign contributions that create conflicts of interest,
and suing people under immoral circumstances for profit.
Personally, I'd rather kids pretend to shoot people.
1) Build Post-Apocalyptic Seed Bank for $5 million
2) Cause Apocalypse
3) Profit!!
While some independent projects are bound to be faster than government projects, you'd be amazed at the completely unpredictable environments military equipment works in. It has to work in the rain, when thrown in the mud, when filled with dust from Arabian winds, when a private tries to connect everything backwards, be usable to people who've never seen it before, take shockwaves from incoming artillery, sit in a black metal container in the sun when its 130 degrees, sit in a metal container in the -30 degree arctic, be jumped on repeatedly when you're trying to save your buddies in a fight and you don't care what you're walking on...
The military isn't efficient. But they are very good at preparing for the vast array of impossible conditions that military operations take place in.
MRIs might not be mobile, but neither are inmates...
You are wrong. Hospitals and HMO's lose money when costs are high, especially on things like cancer. $100,000 in revenues is a lot different from $100,000 in profits - nuclear medicine, oncologists, and surgeons are not cheap.
Legally, hospitals are obligated to give you treatment if you don't have insurance, but they will bill you for it afterwards. Most people without insurance who can't pay medical bills just go to bankruptcy - which leaves the hospital with bills for drugs and surgeons and whatnot, but no money. Cancer is one of the most expensive things to treat, and thus one of the places someone is more likely to go bankrupt than pay whatever the hospital requests.
Insurers want costs to be lower, so they can sell their insurance cheaper, so they can make money by taking business away from other insurers. They lose revenue when people don't buy into the system. It's within their interest to have cheaper treatments available - cheaper after you include all the associated costs like legal liabilities and follow-up care.
You're right, I'm an idiot. Then my real point is that people should use that right, because a lot more than 1-in-12 adults in America would be sympathetic (if 1-in-12 is enough in your jurisdiction).
Manufacturers aren't dumb - the big cases that cost more save money. Breakage is a huge portion of distribution costs, especially with fragile items like lightbulbs.
Excise taxes are harder to enforce than bans.
We have energy efficiency requirements on most appliances and vehicles - it only makes sense to extend this to lighting where 15% of electricity goes.
..is if you steal a $15 cd from a store, you have a right to a trial by jury, but if you're accused of stealing $30,000 of music online, it's only a civil case, so there's no right to jury. Certainly, if these copyright infringement cases were tried by jury, almost no one would be prosecuted...
Besides, what 16 year old has $30,000? That's more than most 16 year olds make in two years of working - why not throw him in jail for two years? The average bank robbery nets $5,000 or so - has he really done the equivalent of 6 bank robberies?
Sure you wouldn't have this on the West coast, but on the East Coast it makes sense. Why waste that precious fresh water rain on the ocean? Lower precipitation means more shopping days, fewer rain checks, less global warming, less flooding, less road repair, and fewer mosquitoes. Crops can use irrigation windmills. So can desert cities, ships, hospitals, military units, etc. It would take an excessive amount of work, and it won't be cost effective, but its possible to redistribute precipitation onto land instead of over the oceans, which could (naively based on % of landmass) triple land precipitation, increasing local wildlife. And since total evaporation is based on humidity over oceans, you might increase precipitation even more, as more water evaporates into drier oceanic air.
Of course, desalination plants and massive water pipe networks could do the entire thing cheaper. My point is that bad effects can be mitigated and worked around.
Water causes most of the greenhouse gas effect, while carbon dioxide contributes about a third as much. Sure, we'd kill off a bunch of carbon dioxide intaking organisms (aka plants), but theoretically, its possible to cool the planet by decreasing humidity.
Now terrorists can use an algorithm to look for fuzzy areas
Yeah, as though Googling "nuclear power plant address" was too hard.
Many of the most important people in America have no bodyguards. Crowds reach tens of thousands daily, and hundreds of thousands weekly. I know you're kidding, but the misconception by some that terrorists care enough to develop an algorithm is disturbing. Instead, one could club a guy on the back of the head and spray paint "God is great," and guarantee to get press coverage for twenty minutes of work and anonymously survive to the next attack.
Real terrorists do not exist in America. Period.
For coastal defense, we have "airfields."
The "ten a day" limitation is on floating power plants. Presumably, one could find more energy on a continent.
But, you're right. 600 nm exclusive economic zones, boarding civilian ships, and most importantly, power projection beyond 200 miles are why you have navies.