Yes, but it will be "focused" on the entire back of the eye, not on a single spot, I hope ?
So that "focused" beam would have the same intensity on the retina as it has at the iris, no ? (or at least it would be related to aperture/retina size ratio, so unless I'm mistaken it would be weakened (as the retina is a lot bigger than the aperture, like in every camera that hopes to focus anything at all)
TFA's method is designed to optimize rush builds, where the goal (ex. 7 roaches ASAP) is specified by the human. It wouldn't work at all for longer games where you have to respond to your opponent, since then your goals depend on what they do.
1. Open DNA instructions file 2. add reactive instructions (preferably turing complete) 3. evolve it (probably will need a few years of training, weeks at the very least... but then again a human has to grow for 12 years, and evolve for 3 billion years if starting from zero before they will decently play strategic games, so for a program to do it in a few years is not bad at all)
done/done
Just to make the obvious point : evolutionary games with DNA can obviously work to defeat humans... after all both animals and humans, both playing out their DNA, defeat humans all the time. Hell sometimes plants manage to get the best of a human.
A brute force approach will ALWAYS beat a genetic one. The problem is that they're nearly always impossible (for even mildly interesting problems). The problem is that the searchspace is so absurdly large that you'd never be able to explore even tiny sections of it. Evaluating individual points is all you can hope for. A "genetic algorithm" is simply one way to select the points to evaluate.
Genetic algorithms are not, for general problems, very good problem solvers. In essence the only property of learning algorithms, provided they're not horribly broken, is how fast they find solutions. Genetic algorithms are one of the very slowest general algorithms. The best ones are bayesian networks, if you want to know "what they're thinking", and neural networks (like your brain) if you just "want it done".
(the difference is that a bayesian network will tell you WHY it's doing something, while the actions of a neural network cannot be derived in any way except confronting the network with problems and seeing what it does*, like a biologist might do. Neural networks, like the solar system, or climate, are chaotic.You cannot know what they'll do (long) before they do it. In a sense, determining the climate 100 years ahead is exactly the same problem as going to a hospital, picking a baby, and writing down their biography (before they actually age to live through the biography))
* and yes, that means that you could duplicate a human mind, have a computer "run the real world" faster than realtime and then predict in that way. The question, of course, will be if you have missed any important details. The mathematical problem is that there are infinite amounts of important details, thereby of course guaranteeing that you'll miss at least a few. This means that once you start attempting to predict human behavior, solar system movements, or the climate more than a few days out, you'll most likely be completely off.
That's the whole point of using a lens to spread out the image maximally. This power source's energy would actually be better spread out on your retina than the image of the sun, thus less dangerous.
Mid IR is a very usable frequency, as the athmosphere mostly leaves it alone, so you could probably bridge rather large distances with it. Eye safety would be a great bonus.
Well I must admit I did the calculations rather quickly, but unless I'm radically wrong the sun's normal irradiation (that can't possibly be considered dangerous) is 1.3 kW/m2.
That means, I think, that when looking directly at the sun, at 14h noon, solar irradiation would create much more than 0.1W (about 0.2 actually). That may be uncomfortable, but we all get exposed 365 times a year.
For remote power that means that you could send 0.1W per 10 square millimeters safely. This means 100 kW per square meter. If one stays within this safety limit it'd still be 1 kW per square meter. I do think this quadcopter would have to violate the safety limit though, as it probably can't support more than 10cm2 panels and needs, say, 50W or something like that.
I still doubt it would be dangerous to look into the "unsafe" transmitter though. Perhaps if you did it for an hour it'd be dangerous, but not for a second or so.
Incidentally, this problem has been solved. Simply de-focus the beam at the sending end, and re-focus it at the receiver side (and do it with a diameter lens that nobody except godzilla has in their eyes - easy enough).
The goal is to spread, say 100W, in a beam that has a surface area of, say 10cm2. Since the aperture of the eye has a surface area of about 10mm2, the power delivered into the retina if someone were to glue their eyeballs to the transmitter would be 100W * 10cm2 / 10mm2 = 1W (and the eye will immediately respond by lowering that surface area to less than 1mm2, making the total delivered power less than 0.1W, and obviously, even with your retina glued to the transmitter you won't get anywhere near 10% efficiency).
Directly looking into the sun delivers about 2W to your retina (and will destroy it, but not immediately).
This is a big problem for the "solar panel in space" technologies. But it's not much of a problem really. If you were to send down 100 GW over a square kilometer, anyone could walk over the receiver perfectly safely without any protection. The power from the satellite would be a factor 1 million less than the solar irradiation (so you could send it quite safely over 10 square meters as well if needed).
The central position in government is trying to pull more power into it's office ?
Stop the presses !
Besides, Americans are really lucky. In European countries (all EU member states), international treaties only have to be ratified by the minister of foreign affairs, and take precedence over the constitution of the signatory countries. Obama's simply trying to destroy the sovereignty of America the way Barosso succeeded in doing to the European countries.
Barosso destroyed the sovereignty of these countries, with much accomplishes from those countries, simply to amass more power into a centralized point. This is simply what governments do.
And don't worry : "It's for your own good" (says the "ex-"communist "ex-"maoist Barosso, owner of more than ten times more luxury cars than I have pairs of footwear). I'm sure Obama (insert whatever reason you don't like him) will behave a *lot* better, right ?
If the autonomous van doesn't... well... what? We can take the human "driver" off the road, sure, but that's not fixed the problem. So the second one person has an accident in an autonomous vehicle, you're looking at major liability and lawsuits directed towards the car manufacturer - whether or not it was their fault and whether or not a human driver could have prevented the accident in *any* car. That manufacturer now has to take responsibility for that car versus every idiot on the road, every pedestrian that runs out and everything that can confuse one of its sensors.
As in every other situation - the owner of the car is responsible "by default" for any accident. (It's not because just about every leasing contract specifies the driver being responsible that this is always true). Obviously, you'd probably want to change this with contracts.
And frankly this "impressive feat" was pulled off by animals with barely a few tenthousand neurons, using much harder to navigate routes than the public road network. While I agree, given the current state of technology, it is unfortunately impressive. That AI is not actually capable of giving us something half as smart as a stupid dog is sad, though.
As for the magical system you're describing, it exists ! It's called "public roads". It requires things with the intelligence of a stupid dog (ie. not a very interesting job for humans, but done by humans for lack of alternatives). Now if we could just make programs that can be just a little bit smarter than the least of the mammals, that'd be great, and it would allow us to build your "pod system" for an investment of $0, losing none of the flexibility we have now. While your system, if we can make it work (it's a much harder problem than you state) requires a few Obama's ($1 trillion per 6 months, for 4 years).
It's much, much worse than that. During the dark ages, about 30 million Christians (and a few tenthousand Jews) produced more literary works than 1 billion muslims do *today*.
islam and culture do not mix. islam only destroys, it does not create.
"the muslims" *bzzzzzt* it was Hindus, actually. Then they passed the torch, via slaves, to Venitians. The only thing muslims have to do with it is that they "owned" the slaves in question.
It's not because something gets discovered by an occupied people, that the occupier gets credit.
Actually hydrogen gas will blow up in almost any athmosphere (additionally you will find large amounts of either O2 or CO2 in just about all planetary athmospheres). Unless mars' athmosphere consists of 90% argon or helium at least, it's still gonna blow up. Ah, so it's mostly CO2.
H2 would blow up in a CO2 athmosphere at 350 degrees and up (Sabatier reaction). Additionally above 500 degrees it would blow up, for a different reason. Believe it or not, this will make H2 even more volatile on mars than it is on earth (on earth a spark of 500 degrees is required to ignite a mixture of > 4% H2 and > 30% O2).
So even on mars you're just one spark removed from becoming a big crater. You certainly cannot set off a rocket engine anywhere near a hydrogen gas cloud. H2 gas also doesn't naturally occur on mars, despite being produced in the upper athmosphere, meaning, like on earth, something is likely making those clouds blow up without any help from a spark.
But hey, since the hindenburg there haven't really been any spectacular hydrogen blowups. Since the contemporary political reaction to any insufficiently large disaster is to create the conditions for truly massive failures (aka. the "stimulus), the big hydrogen clouds on mars must look pretty attractive to Obama...
You do realize that most of the free world can't actually feed itself, right ? None of the western european nations can support their own population from their own agriculture sector. And let's just not talk about how self-insufficient the "muslim world" is. The total agricultural production of Egypt couldn't feed the one city that is Dubai.
I seriously doubt this is anywhere near changing.
Rationally, I of course agree that this is beyond stupid. However in the real world, it doesn't seem to be doing that much damage.
It's the moron version of communism defended. The argument "free stuff for me, stolen by the government" of moronic communism is hard to beat. Unless, of course, you understand that it's a lie. It's so big a lie that Communists had to massacre close to a billion people just to give their states a sliver of a chance to exist.
But there's that "more free stuff from the govt." argument. More free stuff !
Hmm. Some (not very up to date) data for you: In the US, as of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class, about 3 million people) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).
And when government interferes to make this better... this happens :
In socialist countries the top echelon of the party controls ALL the wealth. And since organizations, like political parties of every bent, companies, unions and the like, even in the US, basically trust no-one, that means that per 100 square miles ONE individual can afford a car when socialism holds sway.
The difference between a socialist system and a capitalist one : in a capitalist system the 1% riches control 50% of the wealth (it's not quite that bad yet, but I'm being flexible here). In a socialist system the 0.000000001% richest control 100% of the wealth.
That is your "solution". It is, almost literally, the suggestion of making Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pott/Mao emergency president in order to fix an outbreak of the flu.
Euhm, quite frankly if you were tasked with keeping the president safe on that day... wouldn't you do the same ?
All they "spied" upon was information published by the individuals, do you really have any sense of privacy of your facebook wall ? And of course, people had to ACCEPT this government "intrusion". It was 100% opt-in.
This is like people taking a shower and complaining they get wet. Completely nonsensical.
Besides, government spying on facebook... who cares. If only the companies on facebook stopped doing the same AND spamming, now that'd be great.
I don't know. In Brussels, they've changed the rules halfway through the year on me twice, resulting in surprise tax bills ("somehow" this never resulted in me getting money back).
And that's ignoring the forest of different taxes that you pay under normal circumstances.
We're talking : (34% -at least- paid on company profits) 20% company pays on top of your take-home pay 45% you pay to the government from your pay (more if you're not married) ~ 10% (?) "personal tax" 21% VAT (6% for "basic" foodstuff)
So from what a company pays to employ you (ignoring any fringe benefits and even things like a desk), you get to spend...
0.8*0.55*0.9*0.79 = 31%
That makes a tax level of :
1-(0.8*0.55*0.9*0.79) = 69%
If you own something instead of renting, you pay more. If you do stuff on the side, you pay more. If you drive a car, you pay more. If you smoke, you pay more. If you...
you mean right after the "national" socialists started a really big one ?
Oh, and obviously discounting the whole of eastern europe, the middle east, latin america, and asia which has experienced quite a bit of war since 1945 (the "cold" war wasn't all that cold there), also, of course, at the hands of socialists (and other totalitarian governments).
But I'm sure all that hasn't happened (and it won't once you get your hands on the history books right ?)
Has it ever occured to you that a) totalitarian governments are necessarily socialist (they control everything, so they also control the means of production) b) socialist governments are necessarily totalitarian in almost all respects (socialist government controls - by definition - everything that involves either money, labour or land. And every socialist government has repressed opinions as well)
That would be enough, mathematically speaking, to say that socialist policies ARE IDENTICAL TO totalitarian policies (ie. the collection of socialist policies contains all the same elements as the collection of totalitarian policies).
And the real world, as only the most willfully blind can even contemplate doubting, confirms this further.
Quite frankly, when one looks at exactly what kinds of power the "benevolent" socialist advocates want, this is further confirmed. You want healthcare ? Sure, but there'll be laws against damaging yourself... meaning what you eat will be regulated. What you use to wash your ass will be regulated. What you use to climb your roof and repair something will be regulated... And if you don't do this, healthcare will, for obvious reasons, become (even more) unpayable.
Quite frankly, for people who decry "unsustainable" policies all the time, democrats sure have strange ideas about taxmoney supply.
So, according to you, making the government refuse all requests for service until bribes are provided...
And... get this... this is to be considered CAPITALIST behavior... when every 3-year old knows perfectly well that this is the consequence of socialism...
Do you seriously expect people to believe this ? The capitalist way is to maximize return. That means that the electric utility company will, in general, attempt to fulfill ALL reasonable requests for service as soon as possible. Obviously.
Political approval for service delivery is (obviously) a VERY socialist attitude. Even outright communist (if you consider electrical power a "means of production").
Is this the new socialist tactic ? Take the faults of socialist and communist systems and then just flat-out lie that they're capitalist problems ? And then obviously count on people being stupid enough not to see through the lie...
The parent poster isn't saying that money delivering power does not exist in libertarian economies.
The crucial difference is simpler. Who has money (and power) :
a) socialist society : whomever has the biggest guns (hopefully - but not necessarily - the government and it's cronies) b) libertarian society : the people producing value for other people
Given the source of the money you can be DAMN sure what the money's going to be used for :
a) socialist society : more control, more guns, more interference, more cronies, more crime, more war (after a while war becomes the only viable way for the cronies to increase income), and above all : more corruption b) libertarian society : more, bigger, better (the companies that make the country actually do something decide what gets done)
If that's true how can one possibly explain why 99.9% of terrorists are muslim ? And not "just" muslims, but generally relatively rich and powerful people ?
In a 10-minute statement to the court that denounced post-9/11 foreign policy as it threatened future American bloodshed, Faisal Shahzad warned: "Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the blood that will follow me.
Invoking the names of Osama bin Laden and the medieval Muslim sultan Saladin, the 31-year-old Pakistani immigrant justified his evil plot in the name of Islam, insisting that "the Koran gives us the right to defend, and that's all I'm doing."
"We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have Sharia [sacred Muslim] law and freedom . . . The past nine years, the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the US, except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam," he said.
"We are only Muslims trying to defend our religion, people, honor and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace."
Are you saying this was in his genes ? (of course that'd be racist) So where does this guy's words and actions come from ? What, exactly, is the explanation for his behavior ?
We all know the answer, of course. It's because he's a muslim. There I've said it.
You must have a really thick reality denial shield.
And, more general, muslims literally have a large "sect" teaching to just that.
"A man can have sex with sheep, cows and camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village; however, selling the meat to the next door village should be fine."
(ayatollah khomeini, google it if you don't believe it)
Of course, now you're going to say how this guy has nothing to do with islam right ?
The taliban routinely rape young boys "to experience the beauty of allah" (that's not a joke), and that also has a huge tradition (the "tolerant" Sufi islam). In fact, they are not the only large muslim sects that teaches the rape of young boys (and girls) for various reasons.
(you see, in islam, rape is not a crime in most cases. It might even be stated that the only persecution that can occur within sharia for rape is the stoning of the female victim. You might even go as far as to say that traditional muslim marriage involves intercourse, yet does not involve the agreement of the woman. That, in a western law definition of the crime rape, makes it rape. It is *possible* to get a man convicted too, but that's about as realistic as goldman sachs getting punished for causing the crisis (ie. a woman's testimony is not accepted, you see a woman is only half as much worth as a man)
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Yes, but it will be "focused" on the entire back of the eye, not on a single spot, I hope ?
So that "focused" beam would have the same intensity on the retina as it has at the iris, no ? (or at least it would be related to aperture/retina size ratio, so unless I'm mistaken it would be weakened (as the retina is a lot bigger than the aperture, like in every camera that hopes to focus anything at all)
TFA's method is designed to optimize rush builds, where the goal (ex. 7 roaches ASAP) is specified by the human. It wouldn't work at all for longer games where you have to respond to your opponent, since then your goals depend on what they do.
1. Open DNA instructions file ... but then again a human has to grow for 12 years, and evolve for 3 billion years if starting from zero before they will decently play strategic games, so for a program to do it in a few years is not bad at all)
2. add reactive instructions (preferably turing complete)
3. evolve it (probably will need a few years of training, weeks at the very least
done/done
Just to make the obvious point : evolutionary games with DNA can obviously work to defeat humans ... after all both animals and humans, both playing out their DNA, defeat humans all the time. Hell sometimes plants manage to get the best of a human.
A brute force approach will ALWAYS beat a genetic one. The problem is that they're nearly always impossible (for even mildly interesting problems). The problem is that the searchspace is so absurdly large that you'd never be able to explore even tiny sections of it. Evaluating individual points is all you can hope for. A "genetic algorithm" is simply one way to select the points to evaluate.
Genetic algorithms are not, for general problems, very good problem solvers. In essence the only property of learning algorithms, provided they're not horribly broken, is how fast they find solutions. Genetic algorithms are one of the very slowest general algorithms. The best ones are bayesian networks, if you want to know "what they're thinking", and neural networks (like your brain) if you just "want it done".
(the difference is that a bayesian network will tell you WHY it's doing something, while the actions of a neural network cannot be derived in any way except confronting the network with problems and seeing what it does*, like a biologist might do. Neural networks, like the solar system, or climate, are chaotic.You cannot know what they'll do (long) before they do it. In a sense, determining the climate 100 years ahead is exactly the same problem as going to a hospital, picking a baby, and writing down their biography (before they actually age to live through the biography))
* and yes, that means that you could duplicate a human mind, have a computer "run the real world" faster than realtime and then predict in that way. The question, of course, will be if you have missed any important details. The mathematical problem is that there are infinite amounts of important details, thereby of course guaranteeing that you'll miss at least a few. This means that once you start attempting to predict human behavior, solar system movements, or the climate more than a few days out, you'll most likely be completely off.
Will an eye really focus any collimated beam ? What if the lens' focal length is different ?
That's the whole point of using a lens to spread out the image maximally. This power source's energy would actually be better spread out on your retina than the image of the sun, thus less dangerous.
Mid IR is a very usable frequency, as the athmosphere mostly leaves it alone, so you could probably bridge rather large distances with it. Eye safety would be a great bonus.
Well I must admit I did the calculations rather quickly, but unless I'm radically wrong the sun's normal irradiation (that can't possibly be considered dangerous) is 1.3 kW/m2.
That means, I think, that when looking directly at the sun, at 14h noon, solar irradiation would create much more than 0.1W (about 0.2 actually). That may be uncomfortable, but we all get exposed 365 times a year.
For remote power that means that you could send 0.1W per 10 square millimeters safely. This means 100 kW per square meter. If one stays within this safety limit it'd still be 1 kW per square meter. I do think this quadcopter would have to violate the safety limit though, as it probably can't support more than 10cm2 panels and needs, say, 50W or something like that.
I still doubt it would be dangerous to look into the "unsafe" transmitter though. Perhaps if you did it for an hour it'd be dangerous, but not for a second or so.
Incidentally, this problem has been solved. Simply de-focus the beam at the sending end, and re-focus it at the receiver side (and do it with a diameter lens that nobody except godzilla has in their eyes - easy enough).
The goal is to spread, say 100W, in a beam that has a surface area of, say 10cm2. Since the aperture of the eye has a surface area of about 10mm2, the power delivered into the retina if someone were to glue their eyeballs to the transmitter would be 100W * 10cm2 / 10mm2 = 1W (and the eye will immediately respond by lowering that surface area to less than 1mm2, making the total delivered power less than 0.1W, and obviously, even with your retina glued to the transmitter you won't get anywhere near 10% efficiency).
Directly looking into the sun delivers about 2W to your retina (and will destroy it, but not immediately).
This is a big problem for the "solar panel in space" technologies. But it's not much of a problem really. If you were to send down 100 GW over a square kilometer, anyone could walk over the receiver perfectly safely without any protection. The power from the satellite would be a factor 1 million less than the solar irradiation (so you could send it quite safely over 10 square meters as well if needed).
The central position in government is trying to pull more power into it's office ?
Stop the presses !
Besides, Americans are really lucky. In European countries (all EU member states), international treaties only have to be ratified by the minister of foreign affairs, and take precedence over the constitution of the signatory countries. Obama's simply trying to destroy the sovereignty of America the way Barosso succeeded in doing to the European countries.
Barosso destroyed the sovereignty of these countries, with much accomplishes from those countries, simply to amass more power into a centralized point. This is simply what governments do.
And don't worry : "It's for your own good" (says the "ex-"communist "ex-"maoist Barosso, owner of more than ten times more luxury cars than I have pairs of footwear). I'm sure Obama (insert whatever reason you don't like him) will behave a *lot* better, right ?
If the autonomous van doesn't... well... what? We can take the human "driver" off the road, sure, but that's not fixed the problem. So the second one person has an accident in an autonomous vehicle, you're looking at major liability and lawsuits directed towards the car manufacturer - whether or not it was their fault and whether or not a human driver could have prevented the accident in *any* car. That manufacturer now has to take responsibility for that car versus every idiot on the road, every pedestrian that runs out and everything that can confuse one of its sensors.
As in every other situation - the owner of the car is responsible "by default" for any accident. (It's not because just about every leasing contract specifies the driver being responsible that this is always true). Obviously, you'd probably want to change this with contracts.
And frankly this "impressive feat" was pulled off by animals with barely a few tenthousand neurons, using much harder to navigate routes than the public road network. While I agree, given the current state of technology, it is unfortunately impressive. That AI is not actually capable of giving us something half as smart as a stupid dog is sad, though.
As for the magical system you're describing, it exists ! It's called "public roads". It requires things with the intelligence of a stupid dog (ie. not a very interesting job for humans, but done by humans for lack of alternatives). Now if we could just make programs that can be just a little bit smarter than the least of the mammals, that'd be great, and it would allow us to build your "pod system" for an investment of $0, losing none of the flexibility we have now. While your system, if we can make it work (it's a much harder problem than you state) requires a few Obama's ($1 trillion per 6 months, for 4 years).
It's much, much worse than that. During the dark ages, about 30 million Christians (and a few tenthousand Jews) produced more literary works than 1 billion muslims do *today*.
islam and culture do not mix. islam only destroys, it does not create.
"the muslims" *bzzzzzt* it was Hindus, actually. Then they passed the torch, via slaves, to Venitians. The only thing muslims have to do with it is that they "owned" the slaves in question.
It's not because something gets discovered by an occupied people, that the occupier gets credit.
Actually hydrogen gas will blow up in almost any athmosphere (additionally you will find large amounts of either O2 or CO2 in just about all planetary athmospheres). Unless mars' athmosphere consists of 90% argon or helium at least, it's still gonna blow up. Ah, so it's mostly CO2.
H2 would blow up in a CO2 athmosphere at 350 degrees and up (Sabatier reaction). Additionally above 500 degrees it would blow up, for a different reason. Believe it or not, this will make H2 even more volatile on mars than it is on earth (on earth a spark of 500 degrees is required to ignite a mixture of > 4% H2 and > 30% O2).
So even on mars you're just one spark removed from becoming a big crater. You certainly cannot set off a rocket engine anywhere near a hydrogen gas cloud. H2 gas also doesn't naturally occur on mars, despite being produced in the upper athmosphere, meaning, like on earth, something is likely making those clouds blow up without any help from a spark.
But hey, since the hindenburg there haven't really been any spectacular hydrogen blowups. Since the contemporary political reaction to any insufficiently large disaster is to create the conditions for truly massive failures (aka. the "stimulus), the big hydrogen clouds on mars must look pretty attractive to Obama ...
You do realize that most of the free world can't actually feed itself, right ? None of the western european nations can support their own population from their own agriculture sector. And let's just not talk about how self-insufficient the "muslim world" is. The total agricultural production of Egypt couldn't feed the one city that is Dubai.
I seriously doubt this is anywhere near changing.
Rationally, I of course agree that this is beyond stupid. However in the real world, it doesn't seem to be doing that much damage.
It's the moron version of communism defended. The argument "free stuff for me, stolen by the government" of moronic communism is hard to beat. Unless, of course, you understand that it's a lie. It's so big a lie that Communists had to massacre close to a billion people just to give their states a sliver of a chance to exist.
But there's that "more free stuff from the govt." argument. More free stuff !
Hmm. Some (not very up to date) data for you: In the US, as of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class, about 3 million people) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).
And when government interferes to make this better ... this happens :
'nuff said
What you're saying is perhaps even mostly true. And it's certainly not the case that we're perfect. The problem, of course, is that your supposed "solution" is akin to Obama's healthcare suggestion that pacemakers should be replaced by pain medication. Much cheaper.
In socialist countries the top echelon of the party controls ALL the wealth. And since organizations, like political parties of every bent, companies, unions and the like, even in the US, basically trust no-one, that means that per 100 square miles ONE individual can afford a car when socialism holds sway.
The difference between a socialist system and a capitalist one : in a capitalist system the 1% riches control 50% of the wealth (it's not quite that bad yet, but I'm being flexible here). In a socialist system the 0.000000001% richest control 100% of the wealth.
That is your "solution". It is, almost literally, the suggestion of making Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pott/Mao emergency president in order to fix an outbreak of the flu.
So if you were tasked with protecting someone you would NOT focus on potential threats ?
You'd be the worst bodyguard since Moses Bernstein hired this sympathetic Berlin known only as "Adolf" to protect his wife.
Euhm, quite frankly if you were tasked with keeping the president safe on that day ... wouldn't you do the same ?
All they "spied" upon was information published by the individuals, do you really have any sense of privacy of your facebook wall ? And of course, people had to ACCEPT this government "intrusion". It was 100% opt-in.
This is like people taking a shower and complaining they get wet. Completely nonsensical.
Besides, government spying on facebook ... who cares. If only the companies on facebook stopped doing the same AND spamming, now that'd be great.
I don't know. In Brussels, they've changed the rules halfway through the year on me twice, resulting in surprise tax bills ("somehow" this never resulted in me getting money back).
And that's ignoring the forest of different taxes that you pay under normal circumstances.
We're talking :
(34% -at least- paid on company profits)
20% company pays on top of your take-home pay
45% you pay to the government from your pay (more if you're not married)
~ 10% (?) "personal tax"
21% VAT (6% for "basic" foodstuff)
So from what a company pays to employ you (ignoring any fringe benefits and even things like a desk), you get to spend ...
0.8*0.55*0.9*0.79 = 31%
That makes a tax level of :
1-(0.8*0.55*0.9*0.79) = 69%
If you own something instead of renting, you pay more. If you do stuff on the side, you pay more. If you drive a car, you pay more. If you smoke, you pay more. If you ...
you mean right after the "national" socialists started a really big one ?
Oh, and obviously discounting the whole of eastern europe, the middle east, latin america, and asia which has experienced quite a bit of war since 1945 (the "cold" war wasn't all that cold there), also, of course, at the hands of socialists (and other totalitarian governments).
But I'm sure all that hasn't happened (and it won't once you get your hands on the history books right ?)
Has it ever occured to you that
a) totalitarian governments are necessarily socialist (they control everything, so they also control the means of production)
b) socialist governments are necessarily totalitarian in almost all respects (socialist government controls - by definition - everything that involves either money, labour or land. And every socialist government has repressed opinions as well)
That would be enough, mathematically speaking, to say that socialist policies ARE IDENTICAL TO totalitarian policies (ie. the collection of socialist policies contains all the same elements as the collection of totalitarian policies).
And the real world, as only the most willfully blind can even contemplate doubting, confirms this further.
Quite frankly, when one looks at exactly what kinds of power the "benevolent" socialist advocates want, this is further confirmed. You want healthcare ? Sure, but there'll be laws against damaging yourself ... meaning what you eat will be regulated. What you use to wash your ass will be regulated. What you use to climb your roof and repair something will be regulated ... And if you don't do this, healthcare will, for obvious reasons, become (even more) unpayable.
Quite frankly, for people who decry "unsustainable" policies all the time, democrats sure have strange ideas about taxmoney supply.
So, according to you, making the government refuse all requests for service until bribes are provided ...
And ... get this ... this is to be considered CAPITALIST behavior ... when every 3-year old knows perfectly well that this is the consequence of socialism ...
Do you seriously expect people to believe this ? The capitalist way is to maximize return. That means that the electric utility company will, in general, attempt to fulfill ALL reasonable requests for service as soon as possible. Obviously.
Political approval for service delivery is (obviously) a VERY socialist attitude. Even outright communist (if you consider electrical power a "means of production").
Is this the new socialist tactic ? Take the faults of socialist and communist systems and then just flat-out lie that they're capitalist problems ? And then obviously count on people being stupid enough not to see through the lie ...
You actually know BEFOREHAND how much taxes you'll pay ?
Could you teach those tricks to a few European governments ? That'd be great.
The parent poster isn't saying that money delivering power does not exist in libertarian economies.
The crucial difference is simpler. Who has money (and power) :
a) socialist society : whomever has the biggest guns (hopefully - but not necessarily - the government and it's cronies)
b) libertarian society : the people producing value for other people
Given the source of the money you can be DAMN sure what the money's going to be used for :
a) socialist society : more control, more guns, more interference, more cronies, more crime, more war (after a while war becomes the only viable way for the cronies to increase income), and above all : more corruption
b) libertarian society : more, bigger, better (the companies that make the country actually do something decide what gets done)
And yet it enabled him to supply more power than the average renewable power government project. I say we need more nuts and rocks !
If that's true how can one possibly explain why 99.9% of terrorists are muslim ? And not "just" muslims, but generally relatively rich and powerful people ?
And, just for completeness, while you were writing that this statement was made in court
In a 10-minute statement to the court that denounced post-9/11 foreign policy as it threatened future American bloodshed, Faisal Shahzad warned: "Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the blood that will follow me.
Invoking the names of Osama bin Laden and the medieval Muslim sultan Saladin, the 31-year-old Pakistani immigrant justified his evil plot in the name of Islam, insisting that "the Koran gives us the right to defend, and that's all I'm doing."
"We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have Sharia [sacred Muslim] law and freedom . . . The past nine years, the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the US, except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam," he said.
"We are only Muslims trying to defend our religion, people, honor and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace."
Are you saying this was in his genes ? (of course that'd be racist) So where does this guy's words and actions come from ? What, exactly, is the explanation for his behavior ?
We all know the answer, of course. It's because he's a muslim. There I've said it.
Well ... Then the following, according to you, did not happen ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DIU33MvSJiHs
You must have a really thick reality denial shield.
And, more general, muslims literally have a large "sect" teaching to just that.
"A man can have sex with sheep, cows and camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village; however, selling the meat to the next door village should be fine."
(ayatollah khomeini, google it if you don't believe it)
Of course, now you're going to say how this guy has nothing to do with islam right ?
The taliban routinely rape young boys "to experience the beauty of allah" (that's not a joke), and that also has a huge tradition (the "tolerant" Sufi islam). In fact, they are not the only large muslim sects that teaches the rape of young boys (and girls) for various reasons.
(you see, in islam, rape is not a crime in most cases. It might even be stated that the only persecution that can occur within sharia for rape is the stoning of the female victim. You might even go as far as to say that traditional muslim marriage involves intercourse, yet does not involve the agreement of the woman. That, in a western law definition of the crime rape, makes it rape. It is *possible* to get a man convicted too, but that's about as realistic as goldman sachs getting punished for causing the crisis (ie. a woman's testimony is not accepted, you see a woman is only half as much worth as a man)
Given that one of the warring parties is a theocracy and the other is a faith-neutral democracy ...
I think that'd be stupid.