Bankers create money out of thin air, why do they have to attach debt to it?
Debt must be backed by a collateral that should offset the debt, creating a balance between the money supply and the economic assets. Note that this can still go wrong if you overestimate the value of the collateral.
Without a debt + collateral, you get unchecked inflation. In addition, you'd have to agree who will be the first recipient of that newly created money.
It is analogous to if you take out a loan to start a business, as long as your business grows and you have sufficient revenue to meet operating expenses to service your debt, you are creating wealth.
Correct, but if you look at the US as a business, it's been running a trade deficit every year since 1976. As a business, that would mean 35 year after year losses. Any other business would have improved by now, or gone bankrupt.
Sure, the banks have, due their size, more financial options. But suppose you have good credit, and your neighbor has maxed out his credit cards, you can still borrow cheaply, and loan it to your neighbor for a higher rate.
Of course, what you are doing by that transaction is taking over some of his default risk for a premium. That's a perfectly good business method, and that kind of risk trading is beneficial to a smooth running society.
A lot of that money gets recycled back into the economy, so it doesn't equate a $3t loss. It just means a different kind of distribution than before.
More worrisome is the US trade deficit that's been running continuously for more than 3 decades. That is money that leaves the country, and doesn't come back. The trade deficit isn't caused by politicians, but by ordinary Americans consuming more stuff than they produce.
they forget to ask why bankers should have an exclusive, divine right to create money and automatically attach debt to it
They don't. If you have some money, you are free to loan it to your neighbor to start a new company in his garage. You can even charge him interest for it. Now, if you happen to have a supply trading company yourself, and your neighbor uses some of that borrowed money to buy your supplies, you can loan the same money again. Presto, you've created money!
I'd be curious about your estimate of the amount of materials you'd need to take to Mars in order to start a viable colony, and how much the combined mass would be.
Do you plan on getting regular supplies from earth, or do you want to be self-sufficient? In the first case, you'd also need estimates of the amount of supplies/year. In the latter case, you'd need a lot more stuff to get going. Mars soil isn't going to support earth plants without a buttload of nutrients and microorganisms shipped in from earth.
Of course, without round trips, we wouldn't be able to study Mars rocks in an earth lab, so you'd have to send the lab to Mars instead.
All this research that's being done would be done a lot faster if people where on Mars.
Not necessarily. A probe in an orbit around Mars can cover a lot more area than a human explorer by foot or a small cart.
We can send a 1000 probes, with different instruments, all in different locations, with less time and effort it would take to send a single human being in a clumsy space suit, and keep him alive.
And the robots have accomplished almost as much in the years they've been trundling about as a human could have in a day of work up there.
I assume that doesn't include the time it takes to get a human there in the first place ? I agree things are much better if you ignore reality.
But a permanent human presence on Mars at least does something worthwhile for the species in the long run - one more basket to put our eggs in.
An extremely expensive and flimsy basket, yes. Earth hasn't been exposed to anything that could wipe out humanity in hundreds of millions of years. I'll take my chances that our species on earth has better odds than a remote habitat on Mars.
The free market is able to provide, because rare earth elements aren't really rare in the first place. They are actually quite common.
Now, the free market will have a harder time coming up with new supplies of stuff we've been searching exhaustively for many decades, and which are getting harder to find every year.
There's no reason why you couldn't collect some rocks with an unmanned probe. The Russian Luna program did that, and I'm sure NASA could have done better.
On the other hand, unmanned missions have returned a wealth of information from the outer solar system. I don't know if the moon rocks can beat that.
Frankly, watching toy robots driving around Mars veeeery slowly isn't really all that interesting.
The robots have accomplished more than humans did in the same time. You don't have to watch them drive. You can do something else, and return in a few year's time to see the results.
There's nothing to learn there that matters to much of anyone on Earth, aside from a few PhD candidates.
I'm not a PhD candidate, and I enjoy reading about the stuff they've discovered. Many other people do the same thing. It costs less than football, and it's more fun to watch.
"How will it help us feed children in Somalia?"
You could ask the same thing about manned travel to Mars.
The point of space travel is that it is interesting. If we find proof of life on Mars, and manage to get a sample back on earth for study, I would be thrilled, and I would be happy to pay my share for the expenses.
As far as actual boots on Mars, I think that's a pretty pointless endeavor. It's just an empty rock, orders of magnitude harsher than the most desolate place on earth. Why the hell would you want to be there ?
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, climate is not weather, and if you don't know the difference, you're well advised to take some lessons.
I don't understand. If that's the case, why is the FED buying Treasuries ?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/43356436/Fed_Will_Buy_50_Billion_of_Treasurys_in_Final_QE2_Push
Debt must be backed by a collateral that should offset the debt, creating a balance between the money supply and the economic assets. Note that this can still go wrong if you overestimate the value of the collateral.
Without a debt + collateral, you get unchecked inflation. In addition, you'd have to agree who will be the first recipient of that newly created money.
At least AA+ is less wrong than AAA.
Correct, but if you look at the US as a business, it's been running a trade deficit every year since 1976. As a business, that would mean 35 year after year losses. Any other business would have improved by now, or gone bankrupt.
Getting out of a war is a lot harder than not getting into one, though.
Sure, the banks have, due their size, more financial options. But suppose you have good credit, and your neighbor has maxed out his credit cards, you can still borrow cheaply, and loan it to your neighbor for a higher rate.
Of course, what you are doing by that transaction is taking over some of his default risk for a premium. That's a perfectly good business method, and that kind of risk trading is beneficial to a smooth running society.
A lot of that money gets recycled back into the economy, so it doesn't equate a $3t loss. It just means a different kind of distribution than before.
More worrisome is the US trade deficit that's been running continuously for more than 3 decades. That is money that leaves the country, and doesn't come back. The trade deficit isn't caused by politicians, but by ordinary Americans consuming more stuff than they produce.
They don't. If you have some money, you are free to loan it to your neighbor to start a new company in his garage. You can even charge him interest for it. Now, if you happen to have a supply trading company yourself, and your neighbor uses some of that borrowed money to buy your supplies, you can loan the same money again. Presto, you've created money!
I'd be curious about your estimate of the amount of materials you'd need to take to Mars in order to start a viable colony, and how much the combined mass would be.
Do you plan on getting regular supplies from earth, or do you want to be self-sufficient? In the first case, you'd also need estimates of the amount of supplies/year. In the latter case, you'd need a lot more stuff to get going. Mars soil isn't going to support earth plants without a buttload of nutrients and microorganisms shipped in from earth.
Of course, without round trips, we wouldn't be able to study Mars rocks in an earth lab, so you'd have to send the lab to Mars instead.
Well, you can start by getting the funding. A trillion dollars might be enough for a short trip.
I assume they got out of their cave to hunt for food, not because "it was hard" .
Not necessarily. A probe in an orbit around Mars can cover a lot more area than a human explorer by foot or a small cart.
We can send a 1000 probes, with different instruments, all in different locations, with less time and effort it would take to send a single human being in a clumsy space suit, and keep him alive.
I assume that doesn't include the time it takes to get a human there in the first place ? I agree things are much better if you ignore reality.
An extremely expensive and flimsy basket, yes. Earth hasn't been exposed to anything that could wipe out humanity in hundreds of millions of years. I'll take my chances that our species on earth has better odds than a remote habitat on Mars.
With a production rate that has been dropping since 1970.
http://www.energybulletin.net/image/uploads/27804/us-production.jpeg
The free market is able to provide, because rare earth elements aren't really rare in the first place. They are actually quite common.
Now, the free market will have a harder time coming up with new supplies of stuff we've been searching exhaustively for many decades, and which are getting harder to find every year.
There's no reason why you couldn't collect some rocks with an unmanned probe. The Russian Luna program did that, and I'm sure NASA could have done better.
On the other hand, unmanned missions have returned a wealth of information from the outer solar system. I don't know if the moon rocks can beat that.
The robots have accomplished more than humans did in the same time. You don't have to watch them drive. You can do something else, and return in a few year's time to see the results.
I'm not a PhD candidate, and I enjoy reading about the stuff they've discovered. Many other people do the same thing. It costs less than football, and it's more fun to watch.
You could ask the same thing about manned travel to Mars.
Because it's cheaper/easier to have manned research in Antarctica than to deploy robots to do the same.
Pretty much. It was a nice demonstration what we once could do, but that's about it. Do you even wonder why we stopped doing it ?
The point of space travel is that it is interesting. If we find proof of life on Mars, and manage to get a sample back on earth for study, I would be thrilled, and I would be happy to pay my share for the expenses.
As far as actual boots on Mars, I think that's a pretty pointless endeavor. It's just an empty rock, orders of magnitude harsher than the most desolate place on earth. Why the hell would you want to be there ?
Not unlike posting on slashdot, actually.
Exploration is best done by unmanned craft, and they don't need any water.
No, but you can interest me in an 'edit' feature for slashdot to fix simple typos.
How about a book about the solar system, with nice glossy pictures of all the planets ? That's what my generation had as kids.