Any proposed solution that involves hurting the economies of the nations with resources to actually deal with the problem is not the answer.
Whilst it would be desirable to have a solution to climate change that does not involve hurting the economy (and I believe this is certainly possible), we should get our priorities straight. I would not want a bigger television at the expense of living in a filthy polluted desert.
It's baffling to me why a country that has consistently and fairly been compared with Nazi Germany, to the point of concentration camps and illegal medical experimentation, has been allowed to exist for this long.
Because they have an enormous army and loads of missiles aimed at one of the world's densest population areas?
Just about every regime in existence thinks NK is a scar on the face of the world but no one is able to do anything about it.
Volcanos and oceans are the major contributers to greenhouse gases. When you add up the numbers, we contribute less than half a percent. But you won't here that from the alarmist crowd.
That's because it's complete bollocks. You have it backwards: volcanoes produce a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases humans cause to be emitted. Feel free to try to find a source for your "facts".
Oh, sure, you can claim he made the world safe by taking down a dictator. Just try telling that to the Iraq people as they bury more people in a single day than Saddam killed.
While I agree with the general sentiment of your post, this isn't true. Saddam killed significantly more people than even the highest estimates of the casualties of the invasion (though admittedly, these rates were only achieved with USA-supplied arms and chemical weapons).
They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs.
There's actually been a fair bit of speculation as to whether humans can breed with chimps. We should in theory be close enough genetically (though the offspring would almost certainly be infertile).
It would certainly be interesting as to whether the religous would grant a human-chimp hybrid a soul, or whether it would be gain legal human rights.
Actually never -- if they did, they would be neglectful of their responsibilities as leaders to do the best thing for their country.
Since when has the job description for government been to place the needs of their country above the rest of humanity? Hitler was doing pretty well for Germany in that case before he decided to invade Russia. Feel free to invoke Godwin's.
How much is someones online gaming time worth really?
It's not for you to decide how much someone else's time is worth.
All of the things you listed above would take time and money to fix, what I did would take disconnecting from a server and going to another one to fix.
Why should others have to inconvenience themselves to accommodate your antisocial behaviour? If, IRL, you came across a group of people playing [football, rugby, Ultimate...] would you feel justified in running around and disrupting their game -- after all they could find somewhere else to play?
I don't play x-box online, as for your line with cheating in video games...If someone camps they are fucking up your life experence so isn't it the same thing? If someone plays really well, you could argue they are fucking up your game so is that the same thing? When someone threw you at street fighter 10 years ago in the arcade, was that the same thing? Really it's no different, and easy to agitate people like you are the ones who make it so much fun. You act like an aimbotter is the reincarnation of Hitler. Your emphasis on how much the game matters is what makes you an attractive target.
I agree with the other posters' assessment: you are a sociopath. Justifying annoying others because they take their chosen leisure activity seriously is bizarre.
Well, there are lots of versions of "anarcho-socialism" and you seem to be okay with having *some* market, just that the workers should own it. This utterly fails to account for the objection I gave above: if everyone owns their own business, no one can own, share-wise or debt-wise, anyone else's, and both your job and your savings are tied up in one investment, vulnerable to all kinds of things you have no control over.
Yes there are so many versions, it's fairly meaningless in specifics, more a statement of preference towards a certain philosophy. I've certainly heard plenty of bad ideas under the umbrella of the term (such as failing to account for your objection). I don't really have time here to detail how my ideal society would look, but it would involve a decentralised form of both risk and decision making in terms of allocation of resources.
Unless you read my previous response, where I pointed out that a) irrational investors don't matter unless their errors skew one way (truly random errors will cancel out and leave the raitional investors setting the value), and b) the emergent effect is that the prices are such that you cannot predictably make a profit.
Well I think errors do tend to skew one way (e.g. people will invest in a bigger rather than smaller company if only because they haven't heard of it) and I don't think that making a profit is necessarily a good indicator that investment decisions are being handled well.
Looks like you mostly agree with me, you just think that all investment should come from an entrepreneur's own saved funds (or his partners' saved funds), even after the venture has been around a while. Is that about right?
Er no, not in the slightest. I only agreed with you about your assessment of how capitalism "works" and the theory behind it. My preference for how society should work would be some form of anarcho-socialism, up to the point of pragmatism, but I'll leave that for now...
And in regard to irrationality on the stock market: irrationality isn't a problem as long as some investors are rational, and the irrationality skews randomly. In a bubble, of course, it all skews the same way. But even then, it's not possible for someone to predictably make returns.
If more people invest irrationally than rationally, then it is difficult to claim intelligent behaviour arises through the stock market.
The title to the story is "Faster Global Warming from Permafrost Melt" yet TFA & even the extract say "No one is sure if the greenhouse effect will cause them to lock up more, or to release more carbon"...
Um no. First of all, you obviously haven't read TFA because it doesn't say this. It was apparently written by the/. submitter, who is in any case referring to uncertainty over bogs, not the melting permafrost.
Sensationalist titles like this are why I still have my doubts about global warning.
You decide whether or not to accept scientific studies based on Slashdot headlines? We're in more trouble than I thought.
That's probably because you haven't learned very much about economics and finance. (Obviously, you are not guaranteed to change your position after doing so, but here you seem to be speaking more from ignorance.) When one makes a loan or buys a share, one is forgoing the opportunity to consume goods they otherwise could have, and bearing the risk that the venture will not turn out as expected. These are real costs that inhere in society and so would appear under any economic system, just in different forms. (The communist fallacy is to assume that the true economic value of any good for all time can be known with certainty right now, and therefore to regard those reaping from accurate estimation thereof as exploiters.) In a communist society, production would still require committing heterogenous goods irreversibly to some process, closing off a certain set of opportunities. This is exactly what happens when one makes a loan -- they lose the liquity and opportunity to commit resources to any number of needs that could come up.
Leaving out the personal abuse and the bit about the communist fallacy, I'd agree with the above.
Also in communism, not all projects will turn out to be worth the effort, so such societies still encounter risk. When someone buys shares in a business under capitalism, they are diverting that risk to themselves so that people skeptical of that use of resources need to lose out if their skepticism is justified. Communism doese not eliminate this risk, but rather forces it on everyone.
Assuming you mean "do not need to lose out" I agree, particularly your last statement. Though I think that our estimate of the degree of risk the investor faces would be different.
More fundamentally though, the people only *bought* the shares because those with the risky idea issued them on the condition that they would be very liquid (easy to trade with others) and allowing future investors to buy from previous investors is necessary to fulfill this promise.
OK.
When you "lazily" purchase the shares you are adding your knowledge to a common pool (the stock exchange) that the value of such a venture is higher than others have currently estimated it to be, and in so doing, you signal others of its likelihood of future success, allowing their resources to be better allocated.
Well this is where we disagree. I do not accept that by buying shares you are necessarily adding meaningful knowledge to a common pool. People often invest for irrational reasons. This often makes money, but often not for the good of society. Also, you fail to make use of the knowledge of people who do not have the capital to invest.
I accept this method does work to a certain extent (see Western society) but I do not think it is either a fair, nor an efficient, way to distribute resources.
Having the money therefore typically does not change your decision about whether to start a business.
Are you seriously suggesting that the possession of capital has little effect on whether someone decides to start a business?
Only if you use a crude, clueless conception of "work". You seem to think that anything that doesn't involve direct, manual labor isn't "real work" and therefore ideally should receive no return. (If I've incorrectly described your view, your view nevertheless entails classifying a socially useful activity as "non-work".) But digging a hole is a different input from identifying *where* a hole should be dug (for e.g., a building that will be constructed to provide some service).
I certainly don't classify only manual labour as work. In fact, I would indeed define work as something that produces something socially useful. Writing a computer program, cutting hair, carrying out scientific research, performing a consulting service, etc. You may be surprised to hear I'd also include managing a company. (I think we'd agree up to this point even if we might disagree about how these roles should be "rewarded").
However, I do not class as work buying a share, providing a loan etc. A person who buys 5,000 shares in Microsoft because they saw its advertising campaign is not performing a socially useful activity in my view.
If you knew I already believed it, why did you bring it up?
Because you seemed to be under the impression that I didn't.
Let's compare apples to apples here. If a worker were given free money with which he could start a business, yes, he could try out his own ideas. He could risk it all on the chance he's right and can do it better. Or, more likely, if he had that kind of capital, he'd loan it out himself, draw the interest near-risk-free, and continue to work for a wage. I'm not sure what that proves though.
It's a fair point. Capitalism is indeed weighted against the worker. Unless you have an abundance of wealth it is often too risky to set up your own business.
The distinction was irrelevant in the context I was using it. In any case, once you concede that someone who doesn't have the capital but has an idea can raise the funds, you objections about workers not being able to start competing businesses on account of "not having funds" withers.
Sorry, that wasn't the point I was trying to make. The original point you were arguing against was about whether "workers should reap the benefits of their own efforts". Under capitalism they don't. If someone merely provides funds for a venture, any profit they eventually reap is from doing no actual work. They have earnt money simply by virtue of having money. They may be undertaking a small risk, but this can be minimised by having a portfolio of investments. The worker does the work, and the person with the capital gets the profit.
I agree that's not strictly speaking, communism, but then, I also don't like to change definitions of a term in the middle of a discussion and act confused. But again, that's just me. You may be different.
Hey, I never said it was: I was agreeing with you. You'll never convince anyone in a discussion if you attack people when they agree with you.
was speaking relative to how a "communist" (your sense above) society would start out
I was not the original poster.
No, that's you believing the Marxist bit hook, line, and sinker. If their work *really* has noticeably more value than that, someone can bid away the labor.
Only if they have the capital.
and the fact that the employer, not the worker, discovered the opportunity that allowed his labor to actually have a use in the first place
If the worker had "discovered the opportunity" then they wouldn't have the capital to set up the company in the first place, however much they might want to.
Anyway, you seem to be confusing "employer" and owner. Often it is not the person with the capital who sets up the business.
yes, individually, you generally can't compete against 200 people. However, you and "the workers" can save up, over 5-10 years and invest ALL of that into ONE venture to compete with your employer, where you'd have the same costs, and have to bear significant risk.
But the current company is already in existence and entrenched so you are already starting from a point of weakness. The closest viable option I can think of is a worker buyout, which tend to be quite successful (e.g. Tower Colliery). The conditions where they can occur are pretty rare though. Anyway, it's not really anything to do with communism.
If ANYTHING goes wrong -- over which they have no control -- they lose their job and their savings. Nice deal, huh? This is why people don't own their workplaces.
People don't own their own workplaces because they fear the risk, it is because a) most people don't work for public-traded companies and b) most people lack the capital to do so. When people are offered the opportunity to buy shares in their workplace, they often do so.
It makes much more sense for them to trade their share in their workplace and buy shares in a broad array of businesses so as to insure themselves against the financial risk.
Trade "their share in their workplace"? But people don't start off with a share in their workplace! They only get paid a proportion of the value they produce as wages, whereas the rest gets creamed off in the form of profit. Of course, over time some people who are paid enough (not if you are being paid just enough to survive) manage to save some money to buy some shares in other companies, but they will usually not be able to compete with the owners of the company they work for.
While inheriting wealth is certainly the easiest way to be rich, it isn't the "best" way as the vast majority of wealthy people did not inherit their money.
They may not have inherited *all* their money, but how many of those inherited a significant proportion of their wealth? It is very hard to make money with no capital. Under the doctrines of capitalism, you would expect those that started off with more money to end up with more money.
I had a go of one of those Virtuality arcade machines when they first came out and it still managed to impress me. The tech must be viable by now. VR is ripe for a major comeback.
I'd settle for another go on a virtuality machine though. Anyone reading this know where you can still find one in the UK?
I mean, be serious. Imagine there's a shutdown backdoor in the plane software (or whatever) that allows remote controlled shutdown. Key question: What if that code falls into enemy's hands?
Obviously they would compile a different version of the software for export.
Slashdot Mirror
Any proposed solution that involves hurting the economies of the nations with resources to actually deal with the problem is not the answer.
Whilst it would be desirable to have a solution to climate change that does not involve hurting the economy (and I believe this is certainly possible), we should get our priorities straight. I would not want a bigger television at the expense of living in a filthy polluted desert.
It's baffling to me why a country that has consistently and fairly been compared with Nazi Germany, to the point of concentration camps and illegal medical experimentation, has been allowed to exist for this long.
Because they have an enormous army and loads of missiles aimed at one of the world's densest population areas?
Just about every regime in existence thinks NK is a scar on the face of the world but no one is able to do anything about it.
Volcanos and oceans are the major contributers to greenhouse gases. When you add up the numbers, we contribute less than half a percent. But you won't here that from the alarmist crowd.
That's because it's complete bollocks. You have it backwards: volcanoes produce a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases humans cause to be emitted. Feel free to try to find a source for your "facts".
Oh, sure, you can claim he made the world safe by taking down a dictator. Just try telling that to the Iraq people as they bury more people in a single day than Saddam killed.
While I agree with the general sentiment of your post, this isn't true. Saddam killed significantly more people than even the highest estimates of the casualties of the invasion (though admittedly, these rates were only achieved with USA-supplied arms and chemical weapons).
They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs.
George Orwell, 1984
There's actually been a fair bit of speculation as to whether humans can breed with chimps. We should in theory be close enough genetically (though the offspring would almost certainly be infertile).
It would certainly be interesting as to whether the religous would grant a human-chimp hybrid a soul, or whether it would be gain legal human rights.
Google for Humanzee for more info.
Well, there are lots of versions of "anarcho-socialism" and you seem to be okay with having *some* market, just that the workers should own it. This utterly fails to account for the objection I gave above: if everyone owns their own business, no one can own, share-wise or debt-wise, anyone else's, and both your job and your savings are tied up in one investment, vulnerable to all kinds of things you have no control over.
Yes there are so many versions, it's fairly meaningless in specifics, more a statement of preference towards a certain philosophy. I've certainly heard plenty of bad ideas under the umbrella of the term (such as failing to account for your objection). I don't really have time here to detail how my ideal society would look, but it would involve a decentralised form of both risk and decision making in terms of allocation of resources.
Unless you read my previous response, where I pointed out that a) irrational investors don't matter unless their errors skew one way (truly random errors will cancel out and leave the raitional investors setting the value), and b) the emergent effect is that the prices are such that you cannot predictably make a profit.
Well I think errors do tend to skew one way (e.g. people will invest in a bigger rather than smaller company if only because they haven't heard of it) and I don't think that making a profit is necessarily a good indicator that investment decisions are being handled well.
Looks like you mostly agree with me, you just think that all investment should come from an entrepreneur's own saved funds (or his partners' saved funds), even after the venture has been around a while. Is that about right?
Er no, not in the slightest. I only agreed with you about your assessment of how capitalism "works" and the theory behind it. My preference for how society should work would be some form of anarcho-socialism, up to the point of pragmatism, but I'll leave that for now...
And in regard to irrationality on the stock market: irrationality isn't a problem as long as some investors are rational, and the irrationality skews randomly. In a bubble, of course, it all skews the same way. But even then, it's not possible for someone to predictably make returns.
If more people invest irrationally than rationally, then it is difficult to claim intelligent behaviour arises through the stock market.
The title to the story is "Faster Global Warming from Permafrost Melt" yet TFA & even the extract say
/. submitter, who is in any case referring to uncertainty over bogs, not the melting permafrost.
"No one is sure if the greenhouse effect will cause them to lock up more, or to release more carbon"...
Um no. First of all, you obviously haven't read TFA because it doesn't say this. It was apparently written by the
Sensationalist titles like this are why I still have my doubts about global warning.
You decide whether or not to accept scientific studies based on Slashdot headlines? We're in more trouble than I thought.
The Kyoto protocol is about dead because of the US and China opting out. That is true. But it was crap anyhow.
China ratified the treaty, so it makes the rest of your post a bit meaningless.
That's probably because you haven't learned very much about economics and finance. (Obviously, you are not guaranteed to change your position after doing so, but here you seem to be speaking more from ignorance.) When one makes a loan or buys a share, one is forgoing the opportunity to consume goods they otherwise could have, and bearing the risk that the venture will not turn out as expected. These are real costs that inhere in society and so would appear under any economic system, just in different forms. (The communist fallacy is to assume that the true economic value of any good for all time can be known with certainty right now, and therefore to regard those reaping from accurate estimation thereof as exploiters.) In a communist society, production would still require committing heterogenous goods irreversibly to some process, closing off a certain set of opportunities. This is exactly what happens when one makes a loan -- they lose the liquity and opportunity to commit resources to any number of needs that could come up.
Leaving out the personal abuse and the bit about the communist fallacy, I'd agree with the above.
Also in communism, not all projects will turn out to be worth the effort, so such societies still encounter risk. When someone buys shares in a business under capitalism, they are diverting that risk to themselves so that people skeptical of that use of resources need to lose out if their skepticism is justified. Communism doese not eliminate this risk, but rather forces it on everyone.
Assuming you mean "do not need to lose out" I agree, particularly your last statement. Though I think that our estimate of the degree of risk the investor faces would be different.
More fundamentally though, the people only *bought* the shares because those with the risky idea issued them on the condition that they would be very liquid (easy to trade with others) and allowing future investors to buy from previous investors is necessary to fulfill this promise.
OK.
When you "lazily" purchase the shares you are adding your knowledge to a common pool (the stock exchange) that the value of such a venture is higher than others have currently estimated it to be, and in so doing, you signal others of its likelihood of future success, allowing their resources to be better allocated.
Well this is where we disagree. I do not accept that by buying shares you are necessarily adding meaningful knowledge to a common pool. People often invest for irrational reasons. This often makes money, but often not for the good of society. Also, you fail to make use of the knowledge of people who do not have the capital to invest.
I accept this method does work to a certain extent (see Western society) but I do not think it is either a fair, nor an efficient, way to distribute resources.
Having the money therefore typically does not change your decision about whether to start a business.
Are you seriously suggesting that the possession of capital has little effect on whether someone decides to start a business?
Only if you use a crude, clueless conception of "work". You seem to think that anything that doesn't involve direct, manual labor isn't "real work" and therefore ideally should receive no return. (If I've incorrectly described your view, your view nevertheless entails classifying a socially useful activity as "non-work".) But digging a hole is a different input from identifying *where* a hole should be dug (for e.g., a building that will be constructed to provide some service).
I certainly don't classify only manual labour as work. In fact, I would indeed define work as something that produces something socially useful. Writing a computer program, cutting hair, carrying out scientific research, performing a consulting service, etc. You may be surprised to hear I'd also include managing a company. (I think we'd agree up to this point even if we might disagree about how these roles should be "rewarded").
However, I do not class as work buying a share, providing a loan etc. A person who buys 5,000 shares in Microsoft because they saw its advertising campaign is not performing a socially useful activity in my view.
If you knew I already believed it, why did you bring it up?
Because you seemed to be under the impression that I didn't.
Let's compare apples to apples here. If a worker were given free money with which he could start a business, yes, he could try out his own ideas. He could risk it all on the chance he's right and can do it better. Or, more likely, if he had that kind of capital, he'd loan it out himself, draw the interest near-risk-free, and continue to work for a wage. I'm not sure what that proves though.
It's a fair point. Capitalism is indeed weighted against the worker. Unless you have an abundance of wealth it is often too risky to set up your own business.
The distinction was irrelevant in the context I was using it. In any case, once you concede that someone who doesn't have the capital but has an idea can raise the funds, you objections about workers not being able to start competing businesses on account of "not having funds" withers.
Sorry, that wasn't the point I was trying to make. The original point you were arguing against was about whether "workers should reap the benefits of their own efforts". Under capitalism they don't. If someone merely provides funds for a venture, any profit they eventually reap is from doing no actual work. They have earnt money simply by virtue of having money. They may be undertaking a small risk, but this can be minimised by having a portfolio of investments. The worker does the work, and the person with the capital gets the profit.
I agree that's not strictly speaking, communism, but then, I also don't like to change definitions of a term in the middle of a discussion and act confused. But again, that's just me. You may be different.
Hey, I never said it was: I was agreeing with you. You'll never convince anyone in a discussion if you attack people when they agree with you.
was speaking relative to how a "communist" (your sense above) society would start out
I was not the original poster.
No, that's you believing the Marxist bit hook, line, and sinker. If their work *really* has noticeably more value than that, someone can bid away the labor.
Only if they have the capital.
and the fact that the employer, not the worker, discovered the opportunity that allowed his labor to actually have a use in the first place
If the worker had "discovered the opportunity" then they wouldn't have the capital to set up the company in the first place, however much they might want to.
Anyway, you seem to be confusing "employer" and owner. Often it is not the person with the capital who sets up the business.
yes, individually, you generally can't compete against 200 people. However, you and "the workers" can save up, over 5-10 years and invest ALL of that into ONE venture to compete with your employer, where you'd have the same costs, and have to bear significant risk.
But the current company is already in existence and entrenched so you are already starting from a point of weakness. The closest viable option I can think of is a worker buyout, which tend to be quite successful (e.g. Tower Colliery). The conditions where they can occur are pretty rare though. Anyway, it's not really anything to do with communism.
If ANYTHING goes wrong -- over which they have no control -- they lose their job and their savings. Nice deal, huh? This is why people don't own their workplaces.
People don't own their own workplaces because they fear the risk, it is because a) most people don't work for public-traded companies and b) most people lack the capital to do so. When people are offered the opportunity to buy shares in their workplace, they often do so.
It makes much more sense for them to trade their share in their workplace and buy shares in a broad array of businesses so as to insure themselves against the financial risk.
Trade "their share in their workplace"? But people don't start off with a share in their workplace! They only get paid a proportion of the value they produce as wages, whereas the rest gets creamed off in the form of profit. Of course, over time some people who are paid enough (not if you are being paid just enough to survive) manage to save some money to buy some shares in other companies, but they will usually not be able to compete with the owners of the company they work for.
Hair and nails keep on growing; trimming them is temporary.
While inheriting wealth is certainly the easiest way to be rich, it isn't the "best" way as the vast majority of wealthy people did not inherit their money.
They may not have inherited *all* their money, but how many of those inherited a significant proportion of their wealth? It is very hard to make money with no capital. Under the doctrines of capitalism, you would expect those that started off with more money to end up with more money.
I had a go of one of those Virtuality arcade machines when they first came out and it still managed to impress me. The tech must be viable by now. VR is ripe for a major comeback.
I'd settle for another go on a virtuality machine though. Anyone reading this know where you can still find one in the UK?
The absurd Kyoto Protocol would put no such restrictions on developing nations such as China and India.
You clearly haven't read the treaty. Also, you're a fucking idiot.
Maybe Luke had a low boredom threshold.
I mean, be serious. Imagine there's a shutdown backdoor in the plane software (or whatever) that allows remote controlled shutdown. Key question: What if that code falls into enemy's hands?
Obviously they would compile a different version of the software for export.
So you define the "fun bits" as interesting plot advancement and new shiny things to click on.
:)
Well something new anyway. A new monster, a new puzzle, a new situation.
Did you never play Pacman or Asteroids ?
Yep, was never much of a fan.
Sometimes the fun is just doing the same thing you did for the past 3 hours, depending on the game.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that.
Gauntlet is just running around killing everything with the same weapon, over and over and over and over.. still fun.
Only in 2 player
Come on, that's not true. One hour spent playing HL2 is more fun than an hour of Daikatana.