Anyone mentioning Notepad seriously in their comments on this article has no knowledge of what a proper text editor is and have an apathy to find out so they can actually contibute meaningfully to the conversation.
There's a difference between a text editor (and proper or not, Notepad is one) and a code editor.
IDEs like Eclipse have multiple code editors for different uses such as Java, C, SQL, Python and so forth. In the case of Eclipse, they're usually plugin options.
Emacs provides code editors but calls them "modes".
The point is, that a text editor can do generic text, but if you want to type in API calls and generic code, you have to type it all in yourself. A code editor is sensitive to the desired product and can suggest auto-completions for API calls, plug in boilerplate and the like. Back in the Bad Old Days, all we had to create code with was text editors and a stack of manuals printed on processed dead trees. And we liked it. At least until IDEs came along and we liked that better.
Then there are code "wizards", which are another species of skunk entirely.
Relying on an IDE doesn't make you a bad programmer. But if you are a bad programmer, you don't just rely on an IDE, you depend on it.
I don't think so. An IDE is not supposed to help you discover a language or a framework, but rather provide you with a workflow that makes you as productive as possible.
In fact, I've found that trying to learn a language or framework via an IDE can be a very bad thing indeed.
First, because you don't really learn how the language/framework works, you learn how the IDE's generators and editors work. And frequently automated code generators create some really awful, unnatural code, because they're using one-size-fits-all models rather than intelligence.
Secondly, because even with one-size-fits-all, there are a lot of features and capabilities in most languages/frameworks that won't be supported. And when someone who's used to having the IDE do all the work tries to go in and manually remedy the situation, the results can be horrible.
An IDE in the hands of people who know what they're doing can be a tremendous productivity aid.
An IDE in the hands of cheap untrained monkeys hired because management thought that the IDE could replace experience, skill, and talent is disaster on the hoof.
You can tell which is which by swapping out the IDE with Windows Notepad. The skilled people will slow down and grumble about having to do everything the hard way. The monkeys will sit around idly weeping, because without the crutch that an IDE affords, they don't know what to do.
The whole reason why India became such a hot supply of labor is that when a refrigerator is a luxury purchase and electricity is so hit-and-miss that companies build their own private power plants, the cost of living is a LOT lower. You could buy lunch for an entire week for USD $1. Try that at a New Jersey McDonalds. Even today, after 10+ years of Indian professionals pushing salaries up, they still don't get paid anywhere near what westerners do.
So, given a choice between getting well-paid by Indian standards to work in India, or an opportunity to get what amounts to a fantastic salary in the US and other western countries as an H1-B or equivalent - even if they are underpaid by US standards, a lot of them come to the US with the idea of building up an enormous retirement fund, then taking it home to India where it will buy much more than it does in the USA.
Often, however, they end up getting seduced by American-style living. I know quite a few with big fancy air-conditioned houses with modern appliances and an SUV or 2 in the drive. Their main concession is that they generally don't crank the A/C down to 65 like some of my native-born neighbors do.
Well, I know myself. I believe the results in this study are obvious. Most of the time reading code involves parsing which is essentially a linguistic task. Mathematical thought might be more active in specific code sections but language will still account for 99.9% of your mental work. Writing code is probably the same or even more skewed towards language. Of course, I am assuming most people think before sitting down to write code.
There are, I believe, a number of people responsible for the development of programming languages whose formal credentials are in linguistics.
Nor does a connection with mathematics make computer languages unique - I would say that any communication system - including human languages - can be described at least in part in mathematical terms. Or perhaps even the reverse. Mathematics is as much about symbolic manipulation as it is about numbers, and symbolic manipulation is at the core of language.
That doesn't mean that I'm personally in favor of granting skill in Ruby as an equivalent of Urdu (although perhaps Perl). Human linguistics requires a few extra skills, such as mastering idiom, pronunciation in its many forms, including accent and tonality, and the nuance and ambiguity that is essential to diplomatic communication but the bane of software.
(it'll replace all the bullets in a list with a clock icon, regardless of what font we use).
Irony. I think most of the clocks I've seen were in genuine 100% Microsoft Word.
However, I think I recognize your problem and it has to do (IIRC) with the fact that the font used for the bullet is not controlled by the font specification for the bulleted content itself, and I'm pretty sure that there is actually a difference between Word's handling of this nuance and Open/Libre Office handling of it.
If that was the worst problem I had, I think a fairly simple solution could be achieved, but my definition of "fairly simple" can run up to and including unzipping the ODF and doing a "sed" replace, so your definition may vary.
I just love the thought of the FSB, Mossad, MI5, and just about every other foreign intelligence network on Earth (and those are merely the legal ones) running rampant throughout our country and society without the CIA to check them. Gosh, that'd be so much fun to just lower our guard and take punches! Oh hey, maybe those other nations would be so friendly towards us once we dismantled our intelligence apparatus that they'd willingly leave us alone! And forswear corporate espionage to boot! Dismantle the NSA, yes. Spread it out amongst the other agencies, yes. But don't disarm us completely. The CIA has screwed up a lot, so has the FBI--but they're still good ideas to have in place. We as a society have to reassume the responsibility, and the maturity of overseeing the operations of those two agencies on an appropriate basis.
Er, you do realize that when foreign adversaries run rampant through our country and our society, that the federal agency tasked with dealing with them is the FBI, don't you?
The CIA is supposed to be restricted to doing that job OUTSIDE the USA.
The roots of drone are the male bee, then to unproductive parasite (not making honey), then to the sound that these bees made.
there are two paths to the modern usage: drone as parasite, and the drone sound of a plane.
A target drone would be a mix of the two being non-productive as a war ship and sounding like a plane.
As the drone targets were at least partially on auto pilot, the drones that were "productive" as war ships kept the same name.
You found a different dictionary than I did, then, because the predecessor words listed for "drone" in mine were all relating to sound. Implying that the bee got its appellation from the noise it made (perhaps all buzz, no honey).
You're confusing drones with worker bees; their purpose is to breed, not to make honey. Hence its usage in English as a term for a slacker.
Which says something about human perceptions, when the quantity of the work you do is more important than whether or not it's essential to the survival of the species.
If you think that a drone is an unproductive parasite, I invite you to remove all the drones from a bee colony and see how long you get honey.
I don't know if the OED would be as much help on where the military adoption comes from as a good military history would, but I can hazard a crude guess. Here goes:
The roots of the word "drone" seem to be more about making a continuous monotonous noise rather than specifically about the alleged productivity of male bees. In that sense, an automated noise-making vehicle would probably sound more monotonous than something that a pilot was continually adjusting and navigating. And the noise an engine makes is typically called "drone" in any event, whether it's an airplane or an automobile. So something that isn't always flitting about, but makes a continuous noise would fit the name "drone" as well as anything.
no one would take the risk or the very hard work like 70 hour work weeks, MBAs, and other things for dozens of years without the compensation.
As opposed to all the software developers and other salaried workers who are expected to work 70 hour weeks and NEVER see that level of compensation. Or, for that matter the people at janitorial level who do their 70 hour weeks by working 3 separate jobs and see even less compensation. But if you're management, you're "magic".
Doing so would make great talent do something else or not try as hard and everyone looses out.
You "loosed" the education derby. Sorry, after about the first $150K or so, you're no longer working to earn money, you're making money to score points. It no longer matters how hard you work at that level, just how much you are in a position to extort.
If someone is paid too much the market takes care of that with something called a firing. Losing your job does suck and is very disruptive
No, people don't get fired simply because they're being paid too much. They may lose bonuses or get a pay cut, but there's no need to actually fire someone. And when you're in the millionaire club, the major disruption is that you lose points with your fellow millionaires, not that you're going to have to become homeless. Especially considering the fact that some CEOs can earn more getting fired than ordinary workers will earn in an entire lifetime of 70-hour work.
but the shareholders need a return and who is the shareholder?
The self-same persecuted corporate officers that you're so diligently defending (BTW, don't expect a check from them for doing so). Also mutual funds looking for quarterly returns. Not many of us are making a living solely off stocks or even from funds. Almost none of us have enough shares to vote on what we really want, which is generally something that returns a steady income or growth instead of yo-yo-ing as the major stockholders shuffle around corporate divising in the game of merge, acquire, and divest.
Also investment money is needed to expand or go into more markets. They only way to do that is to have great accounting books.
Actually, since major moves are usually funded from outside sources (I'm involved in one right now, in fact), your accounting books are less important to the money people than your track record. People are more likely to lend venture capital, buy bonds, or whatever, if they think you are likely to succeed.
Yes it does suck to be laid off at a human level, but ask yourself what are you providing? The reason you are let go is because you fix some computers. The CEO on the otherhand changes the lives of milllions of people.
You want that cash and job security then you ought to be a better worker and provide greater value. The sky is the limit and the CEO didn't start out like this overnight. It was not luck. Even company founders are poor. It took Zuckerberg 10 years before he became very wealthy.
The free market takes care of everything if you just bud out and not interfere.
At this point, you've just shot all credibility. CEOs are magic, and everyone else is useless. If you want money and security, you need to work 70+ hours and "provide greater value", nothwitstanding all of the people who did that and got canned so the CEO could get a bigger bonus. No luck was ever involved, and The Free Market is magic and fixes everything if you just leave it alone.
Your mom is calling. The milk and cookies are ready, so leave the basement and come up into the kitchen. And don't forget to do your homework. You really do need to do that homework.
No written language. They didn't remember the pre-horse days.
Horses had already drastically changed Indian life. Made raider tribes dominant.
Ever heard of "oral history"? It's all most people had until fairly recently - how recent depends on where you lived. Stuff like the Eddas or the Kalevela were originally oral.
Raiding isn't dependent on fast transportation either. You just have to be faster (or more elusive) than your pursuit. It wasn't like raiding was something new invented because horses were now available.
Uhm, no - there are no "fundamental" human rights, the very idea is a bullshit concept.
Well, in the view of the authors of the US Declaration of Independence, there are 3 "inalienable" human rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. I think we can equate "inalienable" with "fundamental".
However, it's noteworthy that despite these high words, the USA is very big on the death penalty, which would seem to indicate that the right to life isn't so inalienable after all.
if there's no competition, then the one supplier is an authority controlling the forces of supply and demand, so it's not a free market. I agree with you completely.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of free-market proponents who ignore that fact. "Free to Starve" isn't free, for example, and it really grinds my gears when they pretend like it is.
Except the "Free Market" is defined as one in which "the forces of supply and demand are not controlled by a government or other authority".
Then it's a false definition. If no competition exists and the product is essential, most of us wouldn't call it a Free Market regardless of whether some other authority is controlling commerce.
I believe in markets, but even absent third-party interference, few of them exist in the real world and many will grow in directions that cause them to no longer be free even without external interference.
What I am mocking, in fact, is the widely-held conceit that markets would be free and monopolies would not exist solely by the removal of all government interference. In short, silver bullet one-size-fits-all solutions.
If government hadn't created the Internet and instead left it for the free market to develop we wouldn't be in this position, now would we? Therefore any "market failure" concerning the Internet is actually a government failure.
I'm sure that if we just see clearly we'll see that the Internet was actually a Free Market invention that succeeded despite government interference just like everything else that's good in the world. After all, Al Gore was involved. Doesn't that automatically invalidate things?
As I remember it the story was one of the Grand Revolution falling to corruption until it looked just like the original situation. Certainly not a cheerful outcome, but at least they tried. And for a while they got a taste of freedom and equality. Better than nothing, and perhaps it will inspire the next generation to learn from their mistakes and try *better*.
We can hope. But Animal Farm, like its more famous peer was the product of someone who believed in the Socialist Ideal and was greatly disappointed in what it became in reality.
Orwell didn't offer solutions, unfortunately. He left it at "He loved Big Brother" and pigs that had become indistinguishable from humans.
You are blaspheming against the True Religion. The Market solves everything. Obviously if the incumbents can interfere that means that Government must have given them an unfair advantage. Everyone Knows that all you have to do is provide better quality cheaper service than anyone else that you will instantly skyrocket to Olympian success unless that evil old government interference prevents it. It's right there in the Free Market Bible, available everywhere at market prices. Copyright (C) John Galt Publishing Company.
Geez. How am I supposed to earn my own bridge if people take me seriously?
But isn't the history of oil consumption a de facto demonstration of pricing? As demand increases, prices increase and production technology improves? The 1970s brought off-shore and deep water oil production, followed by increasingly more fuel efficient cars (as one example).
Contemporary pricing has given us hybrid and viable electric cars. Fracking and tar sands have extended oil production. Even trucking has gotten aerodynamic.
It also brought us the Energy Crisis.
I'm not saying that adjustments don't occur. Just that market trends carry an immense amount of momentum. Boom-and-bust are by no means unique to the energy industry. Recent events in the housing industry are another example. But it's not like people didn't see things coming. Remember "irrational exuberance"? Just that too often we swing from one extreme to the other. People get hurt that way.
Horses were relatively new technology for the natives back then. They'd just have to revert to pre-European behavior.
Besides, if there's any truth to the stereotype, Apaches excelled at stealth, which is a lot harder to achieve if there's a great big noisy horse sticking out of the landscape.
Wipe out all the millionaires and watch society crumble without their corrupting influence and flagrant self-interest to prop it up? I'm unconvinced of the outcome, but I'm not seeing a down side...:-P
Every time I hear about peak oil as a concept it gets turned into the idea we'll just run out, all at once.
Why won't the pricing mechanism of markets just raise the price over time and slow consumption, or increase the use of alternatives where they exist, increase research into improving or finding new alternatives? It will also affect choices, so as food prices increase because of fertilizer price increases people will choose food over, say, power boats.
Fracking is kind of the great example as well. AFAIK it was a known technique but not economically viable. As prices increased it was improved as a process and put into use because it was more economically viable at higher price levels.
I have read some arguments that claim significant economic disruption as oil prices cross a certain threshold creating an amplification effect. I think one example is the use of trucks for transportation -- the cost of shipping increases it makes other activities dependent on trucking not economically viable as the transportation costs exceed the marginal value of the thing being transported. I buy this, sort of, but it doesn't take into account the adaptation of the use of localized production or alternative products being used.
Overall I buy the idea that oil is a limited resource, but find the predictions of its increasing scarcity a lot less due to the complexity and sophistication of economies.
That's hard to say because nothing is ever as simple as it ought to be. Pricing could slowly rise, but markets are often more likely to stampede. We could have alternative energy sources (and fertilizer sources) ready to roll, but the current energy barons don't want to risk the possibility that someone else could get rich instead of them and don't want cheaper energy as long as they can make more from oil. So alternative approaches are ignored, locked up, even suppressed in favor of more toxic (but more profitable) solutions. And to add the suspenders to the belt, they've ensured that a lot of yelping guard dogs defend what they are doing no matter what it does to the long-term success of the species.
Historically, we just lurch along, and I doubt things will be any different here.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone mentioning Notepad seriously in their comments on this article has no knowledge of what a proper text editor is and have an apathy to find out so they can actually contibute meaningfully to the conversation.
There's a difference between a text editor (and proper or not, Notepad is one) and a code editor.
IDEs like Eclipse have multiple code editors for different uses such as Java, C, SQL, Python and so forth. In the case of Eclipse, they're usually plugin options.
Emacs provides code editors but calls them "modes".
The point is, that a text editor can do generic text, but if you want to type in API calls and generic code, you have to type it all in yourself. A code editor is sensitive to the desired product and can suggest auto-completions for API calls, plug in boilerplate and the like. Back in the Bad Old Days, all we had to create code with was text editors and a stack of manuals printed on processed dead trees. And we liked it. At least until IDEs came along and we liked that better.
Then there are code "wizards", which are another species of skunk entirely.
Relying on an IDE doesn't make you a bad programmer. But if you are a bad programmer, you don't just rely on an IDE, you depend on it.
I don't think so. An IDE is not supposed to help you discover a language or a framework, but rather provide you with a workflow that makes you as productive as possible.
In fact, I've found that trying to learn a language or framework via an IDE can be a very bad thing indeed.
First, because you don't really learn how the language/framework works, you learn how the IDE's generators and editors work. And frequently automated code generators create some really awful, unnatural code, because they're using one-size-fits-all models rather than intelligence.
Secondly, because even with one-size-fits-all, there are a lot of features and capabilities in most languages/frameworks that won't be supported. And when someone who's used to having the IDE do all the work tries to go in and manually remedy the situation, the results can be horrible.
An IDE in the hands of people who know what they're doing can be a tremendous productivity aid.
An IDE in the hands of cheap untrained monkeys hired because management thought that the IDE could replace experience, skill, and talent is disaster on the hoof.
You can tell which is which by swapping out the IDE with Windows Notepad. The skilled people will slow down and grumble about having to do everything the hard way. The monkeys will sit around idly weeping, because without the crutch that an IDE affords, they don't know what to do.
Can't They just live and work in India?
The whole reason why India became such a hot supply of labor is that when a refrigerator is a luxury purchase and electricity is so hit-and-miss that companies build their own private power plants, the cost of living is a LOT lower. You could buy lunch for an entire week for USD $1. Try that at a New Jersey McDonalds. Even today, after 10+ years of Indian professionals pushing salaries up, they still don't get paid anywhere near what westerners do.
So, given a choice between getting well-paid by Indian standards to work in India, or an opportunity to get what amounts to a fantastic salary in the US and other western countries as an H1-B or equivalent - even if they are underpaid by US standards, a lot of them come to the US with the idea of building up an enormous retirement fund, then taking it home to India where it will buy much more than it does in the USA.
Often, however, they end up getting seduced by American-style living. I know quite a few with big fancy air-conditioned houses with modern appliances and an SUV or 2 in the drive. Their main concession is that they generally don't crank the A/C down to 65 like some of my native-born neighbors do.
Well, I know myself.
I believe the results in this study are obvious. Most of the time reading code involves parsing which is essentially a linguistic task.
Mathematical thought might be more active in specific code sections but language will still account for 99.9% of your mental work.
Writing code is probably the same or even more skewed towards language.
Of course, I am assuming most people think before sitting down to write code.
There are, I believe, a number of people responsible for the development of programming languages whose formal credentials are in linguistics.
Nor does a connection with mathematics make computer languages unique - I would say that any communication system - including human languages - can be described at least in part in mathematical terms. Or perhaps even the reverse. Mathematics is as much about symbolic manipulation as it is about numbers, and symbolic manipulation is at the core of language.
That doesn't mean that I'm personally in favor of granting skill in Ruby as an equivalent of Urdu (although perhaps Perl). Human linguistics requires a few extra skills, such as mastering idiom, pronunciation in its many forms, including accent and tonality, and the nuance and ambiguity that is essential to diplomatic communication but the bane of software.
(it'll replace all the bullets in a list with a clock icon, regardless of what font we use).
Irony. I think most of the clocks I've seen were in genuine 100% Microsoft Word.
However, I think I recognize your problem and it has to do (IIRC) with the fact that the font used for the bullet is not controlled by the font specification for the bulleted content itself, and I'm pretty sure that there is actually a difference between Word's handling of this nuance and Open/Libre Office handling of it.
If that was the worst problem I had, I think a fairly simple solution could be achieved, but my definition of "fairly simple" can run up to and including unzipping the ODF and doing a "sed" replace, so your definition may vary.
I just love the thought of the FSB, Mossad, MI5, and just about every other foreign intelligence network on Earth (and those are merely the legal ones) running rampant throughout our country and society without the CIA to check them. Gosh, that'd be so much fun to just lower our guard and take punches! Oh hey, maybe those other nations would be so friendly towards us once we dismantled our intelligence apparatus that they'd willingly leave us alone! And forswear corporate espionage to boot!
Dismantle the NSA, yes. Spread it out amongst the other agencies, yes. But don't disarm us completely. The CIA has screwed up a lot, so has the FBI--but they're still good ideas to have in place. We as a society have to reassume the responsibility, and the maturity of overseeing the operations of those two agencies on an appropriate basis.
Er, you do realize that when foreign adversaries run rampant through our country and our society, that the federal agency tasked with dealing with them is the FBI, don't you?
The CIA is supposed to be restricted to doing that job OUTSIDE the USA.
The roots of drone are the male bee, then to unproductive parasite (not making honey), then to the sound that these bees made.
there are two paths to the modern usage: drone as parasite, and the drone sound of a plane.
A target drone would be a mix of the two being non-productive as a war ship and sounding like a plane.
As the drone targets were at least partially on auto pilot, the drones that were "productive" as war ships kept the same name.
You found a different dictionary than I did, then, because the predecessor words listed for "drone" in mine were all relating to sound. Implying that the bee got its appellation from the noise it made (perhaps all buzz, no honey).
You're confusing drones with worker bees; their purpose is to breed, not to make honey. Hence its usage in English as a term for a slacker.
Which says something about human perceptions, when the quantity of the work you do is more important than whether or not it's essential to the survival of the species.
If you think that a drone is an unproductive parasite, I invite you to remove all the drones from a bee colony and see how long you get honey.
I don't know if the OED would be as much help on where the military adoption comes from as a good military history would, but I can hazard a crude guess. Here goes:
The roots of the word "drone" seem to be more about making a continuous monotonous noise rather than specifically about the alleged productivity of male bees. In that sense, an automated noise-making vehicle would probably sound more monotonous than something that a pilot was continually adjusting and navigating. And the noise an engine makes is typically called "drone" in any event, whether it's an airplane or an automobile. So something that isn't always flitting about, but makes a continuous noise would fit the name "drone" as well as anything.
no one would take the risk or the very hard work like 70 hour work weeks, MBAs, and other things for dozens of years without the compensation.
As opposed to all the software developers and other salaried workers who are expected to work 70 hour weeks and NEVER see that level of compensation. Or, for that matter the people at janitorial level who do their 70 hour weeks by working 3 separate jobs and see even less compensation. But if you're management, you're "magic".
Doing so would make great talent do something else or not try as hard and everyone looses out.
You "loosed" the education derby. Sorry, after about the first $150K or so, you're no longer working to earn money, you're making money to score points. It no longer matters how hard you work at that level, just how much you are in a position to extort.
If someone is paid too much the market takes care of that with something called a firing. Losing your job does suck and is very disruptive
No, people don't get fired simply because they're being paid too much. They may lose bonuses or get a pay cut, but there's no need to actually fire someone. And when you're in the millionaire club, the major disruption is that you lose points with your fellow millionaires, not that you're going to have to become homeless. Especially considering the fact that some CEOs can earn more getting fired than ordinary workers will earn in an entire lifetime of 70-hour work.
but the shareholders need a return and who is the shareholder?
The self-same persecuted corporate officers that you're so diligently defending (BTW, don't expect a check from them for doing so). Also mutual funds looking for quarterly returns. Not many of us are making a living solely off stocks or even from funds. Almost none of us have enough shares to vote on what we really want, which is generally something that returns a steady income or growth instead of yo-yo-ing as the major stockholders shuffle around corporate divising in the game of merge, acquire, and divest.
Also investment money is needed to expand or go into more markets. They only way to do that is to have great accounting books.
Actually, since major moves are usually funded from outside sources (I'm involved in one right now, in fact), your accounting books are less important to the money people than your track record. People are more likely to lend venture capital, buy bonds, or whatever, if they think you are likely to succeed.
Yes it does suck to be laid off at a human level, but ask yourself what are you providing? The reason you are let go is because you fix some computers. The CEO on the otherhand changes the lives of milllions of people.
You want that cash and job security then you ought to be a better worker and provide greater value. The sky is the limit and the CEO didn't start out like this overnight. It was not luck. Even company founders are poor. It took Zuckerberg 10 years before he became very wealthy.
The free market takes care of everything if you just bud out and not interfere.
At this point, you've just shot all credibility. CEOs are magic, and everyone else is useless. If you want money and security, you need to work 70+ hours and "provide greater value", nothwitstanding all of the people who did that and got canned so the CEO could get a bigger bonus. No luck was ever involved, and The Free Market is magic and fixes everything if you just leave it alone.
Your mom is calling. The milk and cookies are ready, so leave the basement and come up into the kitchen. And don't forget to do your homework. You really do need to do that homework.
Actually, there's a big concentration of WATER near - or more precisely AT the North Pole. But that didn't stop the last ice age.
And it really doesn't matter how hot or cool the summer is, as long as there's enough winter to tip the balance towards accumulating ice and snow.
No written language. They didn't remember the pre-horse days.
Horses had already drastically changed Indian life. Made raider tribes dominant.
Ever heard of "oral history"? It's all most people had until fairly recently - how recent depends on where you lived. Stuff like the Eddas or the Kalevela were originally oral.
Raiding isn't dependent on fast transportation either. You just have to be faster (or more elusive) than your pursuit. It wasn't like raiding was something new invented because horses were now available.
Uhm, no - there are no "fundamental" human rights, the very idea is a bullshit concept.
Well, in the view of the authors of the US Declaration of Independence, there are 3 "inalienable" human rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. I think we can equate "inalienable" with "fundamental".
However, it's noteworthy that despite these high words, the USA is very big on the death penalty, which would seem to indicate that the right to life isn't so inalienable after all.
if there's no competition, then the one supplier is an authority controlling the forces of supply and demand, so it's not a free market. I agree with you completely.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of free-market proponents who ignore that fact. "Free to Starve" isn't free, for example, and it really grinds my gears when they pretend like it is.
If the free market had been allowed to function unimpeded we would now have multiple competing internets to choose from.
Comcast AND Time-Warner!
Except the "Free Market" is defined as one in which "the forces of supply and demand are not controlled by a government or other authority".
Then it's a false definition. If no competition exists and the product is essential, most of us wouldn't call it a Free Market regardless of whether some other authority is controlling commerce.
I believe in markets, but even absent third-party interference, few of them exist in the real world and many will grow in directions that cause them to no longer be free even without external interference.
What I am mocking, in fact, is the widely-held conceit that markets would be free and monopolies would not exist solely by the removal of all government interference. In short, silver bullet one-size-fits-all solutions.
If government hadn't created the Internet and instead left it for the free market to develop we wouldn't be in this position, now would we? Therefore any "market failure" concerning the Internet is actually a government failure.
I'm sure that if we just see clearly we'll see that the Internet was actually a Free Market invention that succeeded despite government interference just like everything else that's good in the world. After all, Al Gore was involved. Doesn't that automatically invalidate things?
As I remember it the story was one of the Grand Revolution falling to corruption until it looked just like the original situation. Certainly not a cheerful outcome, but at least they tried. And for a while they got a taste of freedom and equality. Better than nothing, and perhaps it will inspire the next generation to learn from their mistakes and try *better*.
We can hope. But Animal Farm, like its more famous peer was the product of someone who believed in the Socialist Ideal and was greatly disappointed in what it became in reality.
Orwell didn't offer solutions, unfortunately. He left it at "He loved Big Brother" and pigs that had become indistinguishable from humans.
You are blaspheming against the True Religion. The Market solves everything. Obviously if the incumbents can interfere that means that Government must have given them an unfair advantage. Everyone Knows that all you have to do is provide better quality cheaper service than anyone else that you will instantly skyrocket to Olympian success unless that evil old government interference prevents it. It's right there in the Free Market Bible, available everywhere at market prices. Copyright (C) John Galt Publishing Company.
Geez. How am I supposed to earn my own bridge if people take me seriously?
But isn't the history of oil consumption a de facto demonstration of pricing? As demand increases, prices increase and production technology improves? The 1970s brought off-shore and deep water oil production, followed by increasingly more fuel efficient cars (as one example).
Contemporary pricing has given us hybrid and viable electric cars. Fracking and tar sands have extended oil production. Even trucking has gotten aerodynamic.
It also brought us the Energy Crisis.
I'm not saying that adjustments don't occur. Just that market trends carry an immense amount of momentum. Boom-and-bust are by no means unique to the energy industry. Recent events in the housing industry are another example. But it's not like people didn't see things coming. Remember "irrational exuberance"? Just that too often we swing from one extreme to the other. People get hurt that way.
Shouldn't that be "4th Estate 2.0"?
Sorry. Couldn't help myself.
No, The Free Market will solve all that. Unless Government interferes.
What do you think the Apaches were riding?
Horses were relatively new technology for the natives back then. They'd just have to revert to pre-European behavior.
Besides, if there's any truth to the stereotype, Apaches excelled at stealth, which is a lot harder to achieve if there's a great big noisy horse sticking out of the landscape.
Wipe out all the millionaires and watch society crumble without their corrupting influence and flagrant self-interest to prop it up? I'm unconvinced of the outcome, but I'm not seeing a down side... :-P
Two words.
Animal Farm.
Every time I hear about peak oil as a concept it gets turned into the idea we'll just run out, all at once.
Why won't the pricing mechanism of markets just raise the price over time and slow consumption, or increase the use of alternatives where they exist, increase research into improving or finding new alternatives? It will also affect choices, so as food prices increase because of fertilizer price increases people will choose food over, say, power boats.
Fracking is kind of the great example as well. AFAIK it was a known technique but not economically viable. As prices increased it was improved as a process and put into use because it was more economically viable at higher price levels.
I have read some arguments that claim significant economic disruption as oil prices cross a certain threshold creating an amplification effect. I think one example is the use of trucks for transportation -- the cost of shipping increases it makes other activities dependent on trucking not economically viable as the transportation costs exceed the marginal value of the thing being transported. I buy this, sort of, but it doesn't take into account the adaptation of the use of localized production or alternative products being used.
Overall I buy the idea that oil is a limited resource, but find the predictions of its increasing scarcity a lot less due to the complexity and sophistication of economies.
That's hard to say because nothing is ever as simple as it ought to be. Pricing could slowly rise, but markets are often more likely to stampede. We could have alternative energy sources (and fertilizer sources) ready to roll, but the current energy barons don't want to risk the possibility that someone else could get rich instead of them and don't want cheaper energy as long as they can make more from oil. So alternative approaches are ignored, locked up, even suppressed in favor of more toxic (but more profitable) solutions. And to add the suspenders to the belt, they've ensured that a lot of yelping guard dogs defend what they are doing no matter what it does to the long-term success of the species.
Historically, we just lurch along, and I doubt things will be any different here.