I'd argue it isn't intrinsic scarcity, it's artificial scarcity. Not that they bother actually printing the stuff these days, it's just a record in a database. Again the scarcity is at the whim of the politicians, it isn't intrinsic.
I thought the Treasuries around the country kept tabs on the circulation of the money out in the wild and when there gets to be too much, they remove some from circulation and if there's too much put some back into circulation. Yeah..... Maybe if the politicians didn't get involved that might actually happen. The bankers take money out by increasing interest rates... Which makes the economy tank because there's less money around. Which makes politicians look bad. You see our monetary system is based on debt, the national debt to be precise.
And of course the bankers make money from lending money so the more they have to lend the more they make... I'll leave it up to you to decide how wise it is for them to be left in charge of the production of money.
Odd, when I go to the store, they have items marked on the shelf at $2.00. I presume this means they assigned the value to the dollar of 1/2 the item. Sure they attempt to give the item that value, but if you don't buy it, then it doesn't have that value for you. If you don't buy the item then the dollar is worth more than half the item and the item is worth less than 2 dollars. This is why you can't assign the value of a dollar. The value is different for each and every person.
ok reading the rest of your post I think we're arguing over the scope. I'm not talking about individuals assigning a value I'm talking collectively.
What is it about being a commodity implies money cannot be a medium to symbolize value? OK... It can symbolize anything you want it to. It can symbolize good/evil/philanthropy or whatever, you can make anything a symbol of anything but that's meaning which you are applying to it, it isn't meaning which is inherent in it's nature.
Money isn't inherently a symbol of value, the symbolisation of it in that way is something people add, and are encouraged to add by governments and banks. It's basic nature is that of a commodity; If everyone has a million dollars, then a million dollars is worthless.
Creating more coffee does create value Does it? We have wine lakes in France. Wine which nobody wants. They're turning it into ethanol to get rid of it, they can't sell it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5253006.st m
All value comes from demand, if there is none then no matter the supply it's worthless. In general, money always has a high demand because it can be easily traded for any other item but even that demand is satiable.
You are asserting that the value of money is its value. That is a circular argument. It has value because we assign it value. Yes, its value is its value, but that value is arbitrary and not intrinsic. If it were intrinsic, you wouldn't have to resort to a circular argument. Yes ok, I should have said that the utility of money is it's market value. There's no such thing as intrinsic value. And no, we don't assign it value. It gets it's value from the supply/demand, in the same way as any commodity.
The value of money isn't arbitrary. If it were, then you could say a loaf of bread is 1 dollar, and it would stay one dollar until the end of time, or until the government decided to give bakers a raise and say it cost 2 dollars. Not the case. 1 dollar today will buy you 1/20th of what it would buy you a hundred years ago, basically because the supply of dollars has increased 20 fold.
The "market value" of a bank note only exist because you have a reasonable certainty that someone will accept it at that value (usually a government provides that certainty) You think they do? I suspect that government is largely irrelevant to the maintenance of the value of a currency, perhaps even counter productive. Other than limiting the amounts they print, which anyone is capable of doing.
he intrinsic value of a bank note is the amount of paper and ink needed to produce it - usually much lower than the market value. Ok, I know I should have used utility. There's really no such thing as intrinsic value.
I'm not sure what you are arguing. How does my understanding of economics allow the government to profit from my deception? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seniorage
That's just plain stupid. Coffee has intrinsic value, money does not. Just because the "value" of money fluctuates, does not make money a commodity. It isn't stupid, it's the nature of money. The intrinsic value of money is it's market value, as the intrinsic value of coffee is it's flavour and high caffeine content.
A currency is only as strong as the government that issued it. Nope... I live in Scotland, we have several notes, issued by private banks (not the government) which are accepted as currency, nobody even thinks about it.
Originally almost all money was privately issued, governments acquired the process because it allows them to create and spend money without having to tax the populace. Doing so devalues the existing currency and so is a subtle form of taxation. You've been taken in by your local government's propaganda over the nature of money.
If the Chinese Gov. stopped investing their massive trade surplus in US Gov. bonds, the Yun would come under even stronger pressure (to rise against the $)and the US economy would implode. Nobody wants this, especially the Chinese, since their major export market would promptly evaporate. They've already started moving their money out of US bonds. Only a few hundred billion though.
p.s. They have Europe, Japan and are developing their internal market.
Gold has intrinsic scarcity. Paper doesn't. BTW, the US government have printed, 8 trillion dollars worth of paper which is currently being held off the market by national reserves.
Currency is just an agreement on a medium to symbolize value. Common misconception, but one which governments are happy to foster. Actually, currency is a commodity in exactly the same way as coffee, bread, oil, gold, pork bellies.
You see if currency were really a medium which symbolised value, it wouldn't change much. Bread, coffee, gold etc would pretty much always cost the same, they would always have the same value throughout time. Instead what happens is that over time, everything becomes more expensive, inflation. What's happening is that the currency is losing it's value. It does that because there's more of it; supply and demand. When the government('s bankers) print money, all the existing money in circulation decreases in value because there is more of it around.
So, no, there's no fundamental difference between real and virtual money, just as there's no fundamental difference between real money and a kg of coffee.
But there just aren't good places to park all those cubic meters of helium each of our blimp-cars would need. Or you use hot air. http://www.personalblimp.com/
Of course, sky yacht is a more apt description than air car.
Parking space... Pick a field. Not exactly commuting material, more trip round the world material.
I don't think the problem with dirigibles is how to power them. I think the problem is that there's just about zero demand for a transport service that's about as slow as a ship or train but neither as efficient nor as reliable. Anywhere in the world at 80-90mph There isn't a single other vehicle which even has the potential to do that.
CargoLifter had several customers lined up who needed large cargos transported direct to site. They ran out of money before completing the prototype airship though.
Because MS don't support it, and Windows makes up 90% of client systems. They don't support it because they have a competing non standard embraced and extended system of their own.
Or rather, the job they are doing isn't the one that your average victim in the street wants them to be doing. Instead, they're doing the job that the politicians want them to do.
So... If the police and courts aren't doing the job, who will?
There are loads of them[1], they'd almost certainly love the business. Dell, HP etc don't really want Linux, they have to be forced, it's just extra hassle for them. So why buy from them?
Personally I think it's simple laziness. Dell and HP are easy, you just follow the marketing, no need to think at all.
[1] And they're on Google, so not exactly difficult to find.
Well, I think it's somewhere in between the two. Also there's several ways to increase throughput; you can increase bandwidth (more lanes), you can increase frequency (cars closer together) and you can decrease latency at metered interfaces (improving the entrance/exit speed, as you suggest.) The latter is a limiting factor but it is not the only one and it is possible for roads with choke points to have all of these problems at once in different places. Test the numbers, time some stuff, throughput of green lights, left, right turns etc. Adding additional lanes just transports vehicles faster to the next interface, where they get stuck in congestion caused by the low bandwidth exit. 1800 cars per hour, 3 lanes... How many exits are required to handle that kind of throughput? If you do the calculations you'll find that our road system capacity is primarily defined by the time it takes to move off the road and onto something else whether that be a parking space or another road.
Again, if you used a slightly more sophisticated system, probably a lot less than that. If it takes longer than 2 seconds per vehicle, it's going to be making the problem worse rather than better.
It would make far more sense just to replace the highways with rail lines, load cars onto trains, and ship them places. Then the cars can be loaded literally on top of one another. No, rail isn't the answer, the problem with loading cars onto rail cars is again, how long does it take to get the thing loaded...
The thing is, the grandparent is incorrect, the throughput isn't defined by how close cars are together... Sure, in theory on an infinitely long road which nobody ever wants to get off of it might be but in the real world where people park and turn off of main roads onto smaller ones, it's the interfaces which cause congestion and poor road throughput.
Quick thought experiment. We have an infintely long road, the cars are travelling 2 seconds apart. The throughput of the road is therefore about 1800 cars per hour. Now add a car park at the end of the road, it takes 10 seconds to get a ticket, open the barrier and enter the carpark. The road's throughput is now, 360 cars per hour because it's limited by the parking.
So... How long does it take to load a car onto a train? 2 minutes on a good day?
Say you... took the cars off the road. Created a simplified environment where there were no random incidents. No people on the road, no animals/children, no drunks, or nuts. Get rid of the steering wheel and turn the wheels into rollers on rails/guideway but kept the vehicles single person, as with cars. You would have a safe and reliable network which could go pretty much everywhere as with cars but one which wouldn't require AI, just a sensor in the front of the vehicle measuring relative speed & distance to the object in front. Now, if you did that and made stops offline, the throughput of the network could be defined by the distance between vehicles and in that simplified environment, computers could stop a vehicle very quickly indeed. Say 1/10th of a second between vehicles.
Slashdot Mirror
Lightweight?
http://www.e-gold.com/
I'd argue it isn't intrinsic scarcity, it's artificial scarcity. Not that they bother actually printing the stuff these days, it's just a record in a database. Again the scarcity is at the whim of the politicians, it isn't intrinsic.
And of course the bankers make money from lending money so the more they have to lend the more they make... I'll leave it up to you to decide how wise it is for them to be left in charge of the production of money.
ok reading the rest of your post I think we're arguing over the scope. I'm not talking about individuals assigning a value I'm talking collectively.
Money isn't inherently a symbol of value, the symbolisation of it in that way is something people add, and are encouraged to add by governments and banks. It's basic nature is that of a commodity; If everyone has a million dollars, then a million dollars is worthless. Creating more coffee does create value Does it? We have wine lakes in France. Wine which nobody wants. They're turning it into ethanol to get rid of it, they can't sell it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5253006.s
All value comes from demand, if there is none then no matter the supply it's worthless. In general, money always has a high demand because it can be easily traded for any other item but even that demand is satiable.
The value of money isn't arbitrary. If it were, then you could say a loaf of bread is 1 dollar, and it would stay one dollar until the end of time, or until the government decided to give bakers a raise and say it cost 2 dollars. Not the case. 1 dollar today will buy you 1/20th of what it would buy you a hundred years ago, basically because the supply of dollars has increased 20 fold.
http://www.rampantscotland.com/know/blknow_money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pou
Have a read:
http://www.mises.org/money.asp
Originally almost all money was privately issued, governments acquired the process because it allows them to create and spend money without having to tax the populace. Doing so devalues the existing currency and so is a subtle form of taxation. You've been taken in by your local government's propaganda over the nature of money.
The intrinsic value of money is it's market value, which is why people get so confused over it's nature. It's still a commodity.
p.s. They have Europe, Japan and are developing their internal market.
Gold has intrinsic scarcity. Paper doesn't. BTW, the US government have printed, 8 trillion dollars worth of paper which is currently being held off the market by national reserves.
You see if currency were really a medium which symbolised value, it wouldn't change much. Bread, coffee, gold etc would pretty much always cost the same, they would always have the same value throughout time. Instead what happens is that over time, everything becomes more expensive, inflation. What's happening is that the currency is losing it's value. It does that because there's more of it; supply and demand. When the government('s bankers) print money, all the existing money in circulation decreases in value because there is more of it around.
So, no, there's no fundamental difference between real and virtual money, just as there's no fundamental difference between real money and a kg of coffee.
The producers will just keep producing it and inflation will kick in. For some reason bankers just can't help themselves.
And a wireless mesh.
http://www.personalblimp.com/
Of course, sky yacht is a more apt description than air car.
Parking space... Pick a field. Not exactly commuting material, more trip round the world material.
I don't think the problem with dirigibles is how to power them. I think the problem is that there's just about zero demand for a transport service that's about as slow as a ship or train but neither as efficient nor as reliable. Anywhere in the world at 80-90mph There isn't a single other vehicle which even has the potential to do that.
http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/carg
CargoLifter had several customers lined up who needed large cargos transported direct to site. They ran out of money before completing the prototype airship though.
Hmmm, point to point, anywhere in the world... Almost sounds like a military dream...
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4538/
Because MS don't support it, and Windows makes up 90% of client systems. They don't support it because they have a competing non standard embraced and extended system of their own.
You've done exactly what they wanted you to.
You recover your data from your last backup. Just as you do when your bog standard sata drive fails.
Or rather, the job they are doing isn't the one that your average victim in the street wants them to be doing. Instead, they're doing the job that the politicians want them to do.
So... If the police and courts aren't doing the job, who will?
There are loads of them[1], they'd almost certainly love the business. Dell, HP etc don't really want Linux, they have to be forced, it's just extra hassle for them. So why buy from them?
Personally I think it's simple laziness. Dell and HP are easy, you just follow the marketing, no need to think at all.
[1] And they're on Google, so not exactly difficult to find.
Before there were blogs there was usenet, that pristine unadulterated source of helpful ideas and good manners.
Some people just have no idea...
The thing is, the grandparent is incorrect, the throughput isn't defined by how close cars are together... Sure, in theory on an infinitely long road which nobody ever wants to get off of it might be but in the real world where people park and turn off of main roads onto smaller ones, it's the interfaces which cause congestion and poor road throughput.
Quick thought experiment. We have an infintely long road, the cars are travelling 2 seconds apart. The throughput of the road is therefore about 1800 cars per hour. Now add a car park at the end of the road, it takes 10 seconds to get a ticket, open the barrier and enter the carpark. The road's throughput is now, 360 cars per hour because it's limited by the parking.
So... How long does it take to load a car onto a train? 2 minutes on a good day?
Say you... took the cars off the road. Created a simplified environment where there were no random incidents. No people on the road, no animals/children, no drunks, or nuts. Get rid of the steering wheel and turn the wheels into rollers on rails/guideway but kept the vehicles single person, as with cars. You would have a safe and reliable network which could go pretty much everywhere as with cars but one which wouldn't require AI, just a sensor in the front of the vehicle measuring relative speed & distance to the object in front. Now, if you did that and made stops offline, the throughput of the network could be defined by the distance between vehicles and in that simplified environment, computers could stop a vehicle very quickly indeed. Say 1/10th of a second between vehicles.