Besides it's very unlikely indeed. When IBM did business with Germany, Hitler was the champion of leftism everywhere : a form of leftism and redistribution that wasn't communism, and so wasn't scary because all the big Soviet guns. College sponsorship ! Unemployment benefits ! Pensions ! Invalidity assistance ! Free National Healthcare ! All of these were very rare, and no country went anywhere near as far as Germany. Not even the Soviets. Every politician worldwide pushed everyone to do business with him (companies just liked to do it without a German presence, because of the goons)
So everybody did do business with him. Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize, and all his anti-Jew propaganda was forgiven, just as it's unmentionable now when discussing Chavez or islamic countries (specifically the theocratic government of Iran, but also in general), or simply islam itself (let's not pretend there is any shortage of Jew hatred in islamic communities in America), for example.
So what did IBM help with exactly ? Well they helped organize the holocaust... yes and no. They helped organize the national healthcare program that transformed into the holocaust over many years.
As I said, the additional emissions created by the private jet may be significantly smaller than the emissions reduced by treaties negotiated at the conference. In contrast to your crude virginity joke, this is more like my original analogy: Spending money to make money. Only a fool would try to tell a man that spending any money on his business was hypocritical and counterproductive, and yet here you are.
You mean, spending other people's money on what you think is important, using the special provisions in law given for international treaties as a way to bypass parliament, and to prevent the budget from being evaluated by normal democratic means ?
Because it sounds a lot less honorable when you tell it like it is. You actually claim that flying around in a private jet to get co2 reduction treaties is somehow an act of charity on the part of the idiot placing his signature on them. As I said : democrats as a rule don't see the need to do what they preach. It is considered almost normal, and beside the point if a democrat politician is campaigning for the environment while his company dumps toxic waste in the very river his campaign stand is located at. I wonder if democrats see themselves in the same vein "I voted for the guy introducing ObamaCare, so I smoke like a coal plant and get lung cancer on the taxpayer's dime".
I mean you're beyond hypocritical. Someone who flies private jets when there is absolutely no shortage of normal flights is NOT interested in lowering co2 output. Sorry. Find someone else.
Well, since it isn't subject to magnetic or electrical forces, it basically has to slam into the nucleus (extremely unbelievably unlikely) or into an electron (unbelievably massively completely entirely extremely... well about the same chance that anyone in the world likes a justin bieber song).
Essentially, it needs to get close enough to another particle - by coincidence - for the weak force to start having a decent effect on them.
The problem is the government carries over it's debt. When one loan is about to end the government takes out a new loan - at the new conditions to repay it's obligations for the ending loan.
In effect, this means that for ${old_loan} the intrest rate "is actualized" (which for the last 2 years meant "goes up", and will for the forseeable future). This happens all the time and is a feature of our financial system for decades now.
Because the government has no hope in hell of actually paying for the loans of any given year with tax money, if this carryover were to become impossible (because, say, your country's loan rating is too low for the amount of debt requested), then the government cannot pay, and the only remaining question is who exactly doesn't get their money (employees ? homeless ? social programs ? banks ?... all have consequences).
Greece is doubly fucked since it can't "print" (inflate) it's way out of a debt situation the way the US can, or any sovereign state can (none of the EU "states" are sovereign anymore), at least not without the approval of their "betters" in Brussels. These "betters" are of course not exactly inclined to agree since doing that would seriously hurt their own economies (Germany, France and UK). So Greece will be outvoted if it tries to inflate. It could of course leave the union, and threaten to have it's banks print euros without permission (which they can), but...
Given that the average length of a government loan is 3 years (in the US, I doubt it's that different in Greece), that means that the intrest rate rises, for most of the federal debt, to the current level in about 3 years. Yes there are loans on 10 years and 30 years, but they make up much less of the total than 1,2,3 and 5 year loans. Why ? The shorter loans are cheaper for the government.
So then what happens if average intrest rates were to rise to, say 6%, a little over double what most govt. loans have now, debt interest would rise in about 3 years to just below 50% of all tax income. That means there is no possible way to pay for the *current* social programs after that happens (even if you fire everyone on the federal government, including the president, and shutter the army, there still wouldn't be enough). For "ObamaCare"... let's just not go there.
(1) Debt != Deficit. Carrying debt is not an issue - old loans get paid but new ones also get made, all based on the goodwill of the American Government being able to honour its debts at some point in the future.
This is of course the big problem with increasing debt. You would think that if, say, debt doubled, intrest payments would double. But this is not true.
The federal government has loans, on average, of 3 years, at x%. So every 3 years the federal government takes on new loans, at the new intrest rate. So if debt levels rise, the intrest percentage on existing loans rises within 3 years, and so the intrest payments rise accordingly.
So a doubling of debt would do something between rising intrest payments a factor of 4, or it might raise them a factor of 10. Most people think government debt can't spiral out of control in a year's time, but what happens in practice is that with a doubling of intrest rates, the federal government's intrest rates go up 33% for 3 years. If that happens, the federal government will have no choice but to cut half it's social programs in 3 years time.
Incidentally, this is exactly what is happening in Greece. Next year will be worse for Greece than this year, and the next year will be worse still. After that, things *might* (assuming they're not bankrupt) get better.
Unfortuantely no, the 500 MW is theoretical peak operational capacity, you know, if the plants were located in magical 24/7 daylight zone on the equator. So you can expect about 1/3 of that value to be actually produced.
I know it's a govt. project, but still. This makes nuclear look cheap.
The federal government doesn't repay any debt. They have done so in the past, but not in the last 70 years or so.
So it's intrest-only, and there are no plans to ever repay it. That would require so much money that we'd have to shut down all social programs for 25-30 years, or shutting down the army for about 70 years (and obviously in both cases spending must not grow as a result of cutting either, so e.g. this is in the assumption Sarah Palin becomes the next president and ObamaCare gets repealed before you can say "not reelected").
Let's not forget the MASSIVE electrical grid the (moronic) locations for the plants would take. I mean, powering the whole of Europe from a single plant in Egypt ? That's not stupid anymore, that's "let's call the friendly guys in white"-crazy.
Oh, and of course, the extra transmission losses these locations will take have been taken into account by "treehugger", right ? Well, no, only electricity use is taken into account. So start with doubling the sizes of the plants.
And for the realism of having these plants distributed, look how the idiotically optimal sahara plant is already much bigger than 3 European countries. By 2030, the landmass required for Europe will be the size of a medium-sized country, like Switzerland. And of course, land use increases exponentially with time.
I live less than 1 mile from a (research) nuclear power plant, and about 15 miles from a "production unit" 2.5 Gigawatt nuclear power plant. So does about half the population of Belgium.
Well if you tell that to the greens they'll ask "but what if gravity fails ?". I means, that argument holds about as much water as shutting down German reactors because of earthquake dangers.
I mean, these people succeeded in putting mobile phones in the same health hazard category as DDT. You just know some lunatic will sue Nokia in a few years, and get a few millions, and we'll all get fucked (again). Frankly, it's just not funny anymore.
So why couldn't they reactivate one of the reactors ? I mean, given the certainty that a meltdown would become unavoidable once the power ran out, and the power lines cut with little hope of repair for at least a week, if not months, why not make a little cross, pick the most reliable looking reactor, and start it ?
One reactor would have provided ample power to cool everything for 10 years or longer. I mean, they saw the failures coming 8 hours ahead. Why didn't anyone act ? Or is it so hard to restart a just-deactivated reactor that it couldn't be done with the reserve power ?
I swear, I will never shed the annoyance that FUD causes.
It does seem politics can't do without FUD. Everywhere : "illegal aliens are stealing our jobs" "global warming caused these extremely typical tornadoes" "nuclear power disasters ! OMG ! three eyed fishes" (or was that the simpsons ?)
The sad fact is, even if renewables magically became viable today, it would probably be too late to handle the extra loads these stupidities will create. Now if voters were to be held responsible for the actions of their elected representatives. Maybe we should vote in a law that the increased costs of legislation that turns out to have been moronic will be paid by the people who voted these representatives in...
Well, I wonder who'd be more fucked... Bush voters or Obama voters. How about we catch German voters and imprison them in hamster wheels ? Maybe a beowulf cluster of these...
You DO realize what these muslims did to the armenians, right ? Calling this guy a hater demonstrates a level of imbecility that borders on dangerous insanity.
Never mind what they did to dozens of other ethnic groups.
I do wonder how they work technically. I mean, there can't be much space for a battery in such a licence plate. You can't use RFID like technology at a distance of more than 10-50 meters, which would make actual eavesdropping a challenge even for a government. If it is to have any semblance of being secret obviously you can't use the car's battery or electrical systems.
Very weak radio transmitters still need about a watt for reasonable communications (ie. cell phones). So if you wish to use something like this for, say a year (they're valid for a year), you'd need a tiny, tiny 31 MJ (that's megajoule) battery, or 3 KWh, but it can't be much larger than a watch battery.
So how the hell do you keep that thing powered ?
For that matter, which radio do you use ? Cell network ? It would require a hell of a lot of people in the loop.
They don't think "information should be free" at all. Do you think they'd apply the same standards to themselves as they do to the enemy du jour ? By far, the most used attack vector is the fact that people don't use unique passwords. Do you think they find people have the right to know their password has been downloaded (generally, no cracking tools are involved. Encryption is not the weak point of site's defenses. Idiocy is) ? Get real.
Once you actually visit a few of these boards you have to admit the big part of their motivation is "wow I can steal without getting caught. Free stuff !" and another big part is self-congratulation (esp. in the defacing).
Their motivations are not the fight for freedom, morality and goodwill for all.
I actually get the impression that they are enemies of freedom. They are certainly enemies of any freedom to fairly produce software, even when we're talking about GPL software. I don't really get why slashdotters would support them.
What you mean to say "it's worse than FVWM", which is indeed a pretty damning indictment.
Of course, the whole point of open source is that there are lots (KDE, fluxbox, xmonad,... even GNOME). And if you truly don't like any of them... write your own ! (or hire someone)
Well what you will find is democrats' stance on email privacy. One might even associate these actions and the likely future of internet privacy under democrat leadership.
And I DON'T mean the stance of democrat leaders. I don't mean the stance of, say Obama, or Clinton. They're not doing this. This is the email privacy stance of the democrats in the street.
I find it just the reverse. Economic theory predicts human actions *very well*. What economic theory sucks at is taking the limits of the real world into account.
E.g. the only economic viewpoint on peak oil I've ever seen is that we'll replace it with something else before things become a problem. Call me thomas and color me skeptical, but... no way in hell. Even if we find a replacement, it's going to do no good for a *lot* of people. Besides, economic theory *should* say something useful about what will happen if we truly hit a wall in the real world, and something is utterly impossible to replace, independent of budget or price.
You are the best possible illustration I mean. You will actually defend flying around in private jets as a means to lower CO2 output. That's right up there with "let's fuck a few more times and you'll get your virginity back". One of the measures proposed is outlawing private jet use.
I bet you will even argue that this is somehow not an extremely arrogant and elitist view. Am I right ? Can't have the plebs up there with the really important people, right ?
Why would you need torpedoes to down a submarine ? One underwater grenade closer than 1 meter to the hull will definitely do the job. It may not be enough to kill everyone on board, but it will certainly force the sub to surface.
Must we truly remind you what happened last times this was tried ? Here's the deal :
Why are "the rich" rich (in a purely capitalist system) ? The short version is that they grow the economy in some way, then take a tiny percentage of that growth for themselves (1% at the very best). So in reality over 99% of the stuff that was produced "by" the rich has been divided over the population, and this is what's creating our living standard, and even this is what's keeping us alive.
If you take away the 1%, you're also taking away that 99%, because they're really one and the same thing. And the economy drops. And it keeps dropping (there can never be economic growth under a purely communist system, which is a proven fact in economic theory). Eventually, like the Soviets demonstrated, the economy drops below the level that's absolutely necessary to keep the population alive. And we all know how the Soviets responded to that, how Mugabe responded to that, how Kim Yong Il ("pine needle tea"),... Give it another few years and we can add Chavez to that list.
The short version : This specific prediction has been made as often as the end of the world predictions. Needless to say, most dates of "civilizational collapse" have passed, and nobody noticed. Every time something appears to go wrong, whether it's the real fucking great depression (1870, just not felt that hard in America because America played the role China plays today), WWI, the spanish flu, the great depression, WWII, the conflict with Japan, the oil crisis, the various crisises in the 80's, 90's and even the 2000's (how do you even call those ? The 00's ?) there is a new cohort of Malthusians that predict that "this time" it's really going to happen !
Let's now all mention the corollaries : peak oil, peak grain, peak food, peak corn, peak water, peak God's goodwill (this was the original version : God's "good will" will only support about 800 million people, so we'll never exceed that population), peak cows,... and, to some Global Warming is just another version of the Malthusian argument (given that we don't actually know very well what will happen with Global warming, there is something to be said for this : Global warming won't kill us even if we just let it happen, we'll have to move a few cities. You could say that's simply "stimulating the economy". Perhaps that's even true)
Just so you know, downing a submarine is easy, but only if you know where it is. Their whole defense system is based, almost purely, on the enemy not knowing their location. It's so fucking easy that you're actually right, somali pirates might actually succeed in downing one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides it's very unlikely indeed. When IBM did business with Germany, Hitler was the champion of leftism everywhere : a form of leftism and redistribution that wasn't communism, and so wasn't scary because all the big Soviet guns. College sponsorship ! Unemployment benefits ! Pensions ! Invalidity assistance ! Free National Healthcare ! All of these were very rare, and no country went anywhere near as far as Germany. Not even the Soviets. Every politician worldwide pushed everyone to do business with him (companies just liked to do it without a German presence, because of the goons)
So everybody did do business with him. Hitler was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize, and all his anti-Jew propaganda was forgiven, just as it's unmentionable now when discussing Chavez or islamic countries (specifically the theocratic government of Iran, but also in general), or simply islam itself (let's not pretend there is any shortage of Jew hatred in islamic communities in America), for example.
So what did IBM help with exactly ? Well they helped organize the holocaust ... yes and no. They helped organize the national healthcare program that transformed into the holocaust over many years.
As I said, the additional emissions created by the private jet may be significantly smaller than the emissions reduced by treaties negotiated at the conference. In contrast to your crude virginity joke, this is more like my original analogy: Spending money to make money. Only a fool would try to tell a man that spending any money on his business was hypocritical and counterproductive, and yet here you are.
You mean, spending other people's money on what you think is important, using the special provisions in law given for international treaties as a way to bypass parliament, and to prevent the budget from being evaluated by normal democratic means ?
Because it sounds a lot less honorable when you tell it like it is. You actually claim that flying around in a private jet to get co2 reduction treaties is somehow an act of charity on the part of the idiot placing his signature on them. As I said : democrats as a rule don't see the need to do what they preach. It is considered almost normal, and beside the point if a democrat politician is campaigning for the environment while his company dumps toxic waste in the very river his campaign stand is located at. I wonder if democrats see themselves in the same vein "I voted for the guy introducing ObamaCare, so I smoke like a coal plant and get lung cancer on the taxpayer's dime".
I mean you're beyond hypocritical. Someone who flies private jets when there is absolutely no shortage of normal flights is NOT interested in lowering co2 output. Sorry. Find someone else.
Well, since it isn't subject to magnetic or electrical forces, it basically has to slam into the nucleus (extremely unbelievably unlikely) or into an electron (unbelievably massively completely entirely extremely ... well about the same chance that anyone in the world likes a justin bieber song).
Essentially, it needs to get close enough to another particle - by coincidence - for the weak force to start having a decent effect on them.
The problem is the government carries over it's debt. When one loan is about to end the government takes out a new loan - at the new conditions to repay it's obligations for the ending loan.
In effect, this means that for ${old_loan} the intrest rate "is actualized" (which for the last 2 years meant "goes up", and will for the forseeable future). This happens all the time and is a feature of our financial system for decades now.
Because the government has no hope in hell of actually paying for the loans of any given year with tax money, if this carryover were to become impossible (because, say, your country's loan rating is too low for the amount of debt requested), then the government cannot pay, and the only remaining question is who exactly doesn't get their money (employees ? homeless ? social programs ? banks ? ... all have consequences).
Greece is doubly fucked since it can't "print" (inflate) it's way out of a debt situation the way the US can, or any sovereign state can (none of the EU "states" are sovereign anymore), at least not without the approval of their "betters" in Brussels. These "betters" are of course not exactly inclined to agree since doing that would seriously hurt their own economies (Germany, France and UK). So Greece will be outvoted if it tries to inflate. It could of course leave the union, and threaten to have it's banks print euros without permission (which they can), but ...
Given that the average length of a government loan is 3 years (in the US, I doubt it's that different in Greece), that means that the intrest rate rises, for most of the federal debt, to the current level in about 3 years. Yes there are loans on 10 years and 30 years, but they make up much less of the total than 1,2,3 and 5 year loans. Why ? The shorter loans are cheaper for the government.
So then what happens if average intrest rates were to rise to, say 6%, a little over double what most govt. loans have now, debt interest would rise in about 3 years to just below 50% of all tax income. That means there is no possible way to pay for the *current* social programs after that happens (even if you fire everyone on the federal government, including the president, and shutter the army, there still wouldn't be enough). For "ObamaCare" ... let's just not go there.
It's not quite that bad ... $4000 / kW (which ignores storage losses, but hey) still translates to
1 year life : 0.45$ / kWh ...
2 year life : 0.225$ / kWh
10 year life : 0.045 $ / kWh
20 year life : 0.0225 $ / kWh
Still, more expensive than nuclear ($2500-$3000 /kW capacity), lots more expensive than coal.
(1) Debt != Deficit. Carrying debt is not an issue - old loans get paid but new ones also get made, all based on the goodwill of the American Government being able to honour its debts at some point in the future.
This is of course the big problem with increasing debt. You would think that if, say, debt doubled, intrest payments would double. But this is not true.
The federal government has loans, on average, of 3 years, at x%. So every 3 years the federal government takes on new loans, at the new intrest rate. So if debt levels rise, the intrest percentage on existing loans rises within 3 years, and so the intrest payments rise accordingly.
So a doubling of debt would do something between rising intrest payments a factor of 4, or it might raise them a factor of 10. Most people think government debt can't spiral out of control in a year's time, but what happens in practice is that with a doubling of intrest rates, the federal government's intrest rates go up 33% for 3 years. If that happens, the federal government will have no choice but to cut half it's social programs in 3 years time.
Incidentally, this is exactly what is happening in Greece. Next year will be worse for Greece than this year, and the next year will be worse still. After that, things *might* (assuming they're not bankrupt) get better.
Unfortuantely no, the 500 MW is theoretical peak operational capacity, you know, if the plants were located in magical 24/7 daylight zone on the equator. So you can expect about 1/3 of that value to be actually produced.
I know it's a govt. project, but still. This makes nuclear look cheap.
The federal government doesn't repay any debt. They have done so in the past, but not in the last 70 years or so.
So it's intrest-only, and there are no plans to ever repay it. That would require so much money that we'd have to shut down all social programs for 25-30 years, or shutting down the army for about 70 years (and obviously in both cases spending must not grow as a result of cutting either, so e.g. this is in the assumption Sarah Palin becomes the next president and ObamaCare gets repealed before you can say "not reelected").
mod parent up.
Let's not forget the MASSIVE electrical grid the (moronic) locations for the plants would take. I mean, powering the whole of Europe from a single plant in Egypt ? That's not stupid anymore, that's "let's call the friendly guys in white"-crazy.
Oh, and of course, the extra transmission losses these locations will take have been taken into account by "treehugger", right ? Well, no, only electricity use is taken into account. So start with doubling the sizes of the plants.
And for the realism of having these plants distributed, look how the idiotically optimal sahara plant is already much bigger than 3 European countries. By 2030, the landmass required for Europe will be the size of a medium-sized country, like Switzerland. And of course, land use increases exponentially with time.
I live less than 1 mile from a (research) nuclear power plant, and about 15 miles from a "production unit" 2.5 Gigawatt nuclear power plant. So does about half the population of Belgium.
And yet you're the moron ...
Well if you tell that to the greens they'll ask "but what if gravity fails ?". I means, that argument holds about as much water as shutting down German reactors because of earthquake dangers.
I mean, these people succeeded in putting mobile phones in the same health hazard category as DDT. You just know some lunatic will sue Nokia in a few years, and get a few millions, and we'll all get fucked (again). Frankly, it's just not funny anymore.
So why couldn't they reactivate one of the reactors ? I mean, given the certainty that a meltdown would become unavoidable once the power ran out, and the power lines cut with little hope of repair for at least a week, if not months, why not make a little cross, pick the most reliable looking reactor, and start it ?
One reactor would have provided ample power to cool everything for 10 years or longer. I mean, they saw the failures coming 8 hours ahead. Why didn't anyone act ? Or is it so hard to restart a just-deactivated reactor that it couldn't be done with the reserve power ?
Germany is also just about as far from any geographical fault lines as you can get almost anywhere in the world.
Now if only there existed a defense against large amounts of morons thinking they know everything. Because in a democracy, that results in ... oh well.
I swear, I will never shed the annoyance that FUD causes.
It does seem politics can't do without FUD. Everywhere :
"illegal aliens are stealing our jobs"
"global warming caused these extremely typical tornadoes"
"nuclear power disasters ! OMG ! three eyed fishes" (or was that the simpsons ?)
The sad fact is, even if renewables magically became viable today, it would probably be too late to handle the extra loads these stupidities will create. Now if voters were to be held responsible for the actions of their elected representatives. Maybe we should vote in a law that the increased costs of legislation that turns out to have been moronic will be paid by the people who voted these representatives in ...
Well, I wonder who'd be more fucked ... Bush voters or Obama voters. How about we catch German voters and imprison them in hamster wheels ? Maybe a beowulf cluster of these ...
You DO realize what these muslims did to the armenians, right ? Calling this guy a hater demonstrates a level of imbecility that borders on dangerous insanity.
Never mind what they did to dozens of other ethnic groups.
Moron
stick the bug into the license plate!
I do wonder how they work technically. I mean, there can't be much space for a battery in such a licence plate. You can't use RFID like technology at a distance of more than 10-50 meters, which would make actual eavesdropping a challenge even for a government. If it is to have any semblance of being secret obviously you can't use the car's battery or electrical systems.
Very weak radio transmitters still need about a watt for reasonable communications (ie. cell phones). So if you wish to use something like this for, say a year (they're valid for a year), you'd need a tiny, tiny 31 MJ (that's megajoule) battery, or 3 KWh, but it can't be much larger than a watch battery.
So how the hell do you keep that thing powered ?
For that matter, which radio do you use ? Cell network ? It would require a hell of a lot of people in the loop.
They don't think "information should be free" at all. Do you think they'd apply the same standards to themselves as they do to the enemy du jour ? By far, the most used attack vector is the fact that people don't use unique passwords. Do you think they find people have the right to know their password has been downloaded (generally, no cracking tools are involved. Encryption is not the weak point of site's defenses. Idiocy is) ? Get real.
Once you actually visit a few of these boards you have to admit the big part of their motivation is "wow I can steal without getting caught. Free stuff !" and another big part is self-congratulation (esp. in the defacing).
Their motivations are not the fight for freedom, morality and goodwill for all.
I actually get the impression that they are enemies of freedom. They are certainly enemies of any freedom to fairly produce software, even when we're talking about GPL software. I don't really get why slashdotters would support them.
What you mean to say "it's worse than FVWM", which is indeed a pretty damning indictment.
Of course, the whole point of open source is that there are lots (KDE, fluxbox, xmonad, ... even GNOME). And if you truly don't like any of them ... write your own ! (or hire someone)
Well what you will find is democrats' stance on email privacy. One might even associate these actions and the likely future of internet privacy under democrat leadership.
And I DON'T mean the stance of democrat leaders. I don't mean the stance of, say Obama, or Clinton. They're not doing this. This is the email privacy stance of the democrats in the street.
I find it just the reverse. Economic theory predicts human actions *very well*. What economic theory sucks at is taking the limits of the real world into account.
E.g. the only economic viewpoint on peak oil I've ever seen is that we'll replace it with something else before things become a problem. Call me thomas and color me skeptical, but ... no way in hell. Even if we find a replacement, it's going to do no good for a *lot* of people. Besides, economic theory *should* say something useful about what will happen if we truly hit a wall in the real world, and something is utterly impossible to replace, independent of budget or price.
"PRIVATE" jet.
You are the best possible illustration I mean. You will actually defend flying around in private jets as a means to lower CO2 output. That's right up there with "let's fuck a few more times and you'll get your virginity back". One of the measures proposed is outlawing private jet use.
I bet you will even argue that this is somehow not an extremely arrogant and elitist view. Am I right ? Can't have the plebs up there with the really important people, right ?
Why would you need torpedoes to down a submarine ? One underwater grenade closer than 1 meter to the hull will definitely do the job. It may not be enough to kill everyone on board, but it will certainly force the sub to surface.
Marx ? Is that you ?
Must we truly remind you what happened last times this was tried ? Here's the deal :
Why are "the rich" rich (in a purely capitalist system) ? The short version is that they grow the economy in some way, then take a tiny percentage of that growth for themselves (1% at the very best). So in reality over 99% of the stuff that was produced "by" the rich has been divided over the population, and this is what's creating our living standard, and even this is what's keeping us alive.
If you take away the 1%, you're also taking away that 99%, because they're really one and the same thing. And the economy drops. And it keeps dropping (there can never be economic growth under a purely communist system, which is a proven fact in economic theory). Eventually, like the Soviets demonstrated, the economy drops below the level that's absolutely necessary to keep the population alive. And we all know how the Soviets responded to that, how Mugabe responded to that, how Kim Yong Il ("pine needle tea"), ... Give it another few years and we can add Chavez to that list.
In other words, it's the same discussion we have had in the 1950's, and the 1900's, and the 1830's, 1870's, and ...
There really isn't anything to add here. Really.
The short version : This specific prediction has been made as often as the end of the world predictions. Needless to say, most dates of "civilizational collapse" have passed, and nobody noticed. Every time something appears to go wrong, whether it's the real fucking great depression (1870, just not felt that hard in America because America played the role China plays today), WWI, the spanish flu, the great depression, WWII, the conflict with Japan, the oil crisis, the various crisises in the 80's, 90's and even the 2000's (how do you even call those ? The 00's ?) there is a new cohort of Malthusians that predict that "this time" it's really going to happen !
Let's now all mention the corollaries : peak oil, peak grain, peak food, peak corn, peak water, peak God's goodwill (this was the original version : God's "good will" will only support about 800 million people, so we'll never exceed that population), peak cows, ... and, to some Global Warming is just another version of the Malthusian argument (given that we don't actually know very well what will happen with Global warming, there is something to be said for this : Global warming won't kill us even if we just let it happen, we'll have to move a few cities. You could say that's simply "stimulating the economy". Perhaps that's even true)
Just so you know, downing a submarine is easy, but only if you know where it is. Their whole defense system is based, almost purely, on the enemy not knowing their location. It's so fucking easy that you're actually right, somali pirates might actually succeed in downing one of them.