No, "population growth" does not assume exponential growth. What makes you think there are no other options besides exponential growth and no growth at all?
She did write straight-up philosophy books, too. Thing is, she couldn't get anybody to read them. Put it in a novel that strokes the ego of 18 year old boys, however, and BAM! Instant cult following!
What the hell are you talking about? Market capitalization is a function of share price. So you simultaneously want to give all workers stock options then fuck them over by saying those options can't ever appreciate by more than a certain amount? I mean, seriously, how would you even go about doing that? And what exactly the hell would you be looking to accomplish by doing it?
How is buying a stock someone else is selling for a profit a loss for the seller? If they bought at $5 and it went to $10 and then sold it to you, then it went to $15 and you sold it to me, then it went to $20 and I sold it to Bill Gates, didn't we all make $5?
Now if the stock then falls back to $5 while Bill holds it, he has a paper loss of $15. He can sell it at at a loss and use it to write off other gainers in his portfolio, or he can just hold tight if he thinks the company is a good one and wait for it to go up. It's true that for every seller there has to be a buyer, but that doesn't make it zero-sum. We didn't profit directly off Bill's losses. And Bill's losses aren't realized until he sells--the stock may turn around and go to $100 in two years and he makes out more than the rest of us.
The thing is, wealth isn't zero-sum. It can be created. You don't have to gain wealth at someone else's expense.
As for inflation, the stock market averages something like 9% to 11% per year annualized over the past fixty years or something. That's better than inflation. But it also doesn't mean that each year you gain that much. Some years you gain 25%, and some years you lose 40% (such as, say, 2008). In the end, it averages out to between 9% and 11%--the longer you hold, the longer your returns tend to mimic those numbers. Inflation tends to be less than 5% a year, so the stock market will return more than inflation eats on average.
Redistribution of wealth depends an awful lot on how they do it. McCain will continue the usual republican model where they "create wealth" so that rich people can be richer making everyone else comparatively poorer.
You have a mistaken understanding of wealth creation. It's not a zero sum game, no matter what that guy in that movie said. You can create wealth without taking anything from anyone. Wealth is different from money.
You can take a block of wood, a knife, and some labor, and from those create something worth more than the sum of its parts. If you can buy a block of wood for $1, spend 6 hours carving it into something beautiful, and sell it for $50 on eBay, you just created wealth. You created something that someone was willing to pay $50 for out of $1 worth of material and six hours of labor (netting you a bit more than $8 an hour for your time, so you may not get rich this way, but you see the idea, right?)
But, you argue, you "took" $50 from someone else, that makes him $50 poorer. Well, no, you didn't. He freely gave you $50 in exchange for something he obviously values at at least $50, so it's a wash for him. He may even think he's getting a good deal if he thinks he could sell it himself for more than the $50 you are selling it to him for.
Wealth is not money. You can be very wealthy and not have any cash, if you own things of value. Likewise, you can have lots of cash and be poor (think hyper-inflationary times like Germany in the 20s and Argentina more recently). Similarly, wealth can be created. If it couldn't, capitalism wouldn't work at all. The equation that drives all of capitalism is basically "Raw Materials + Labor = Wealth". You can argue all day about exploitation of workers and whether or not they receive a "fair wage" for their labor under current implementations of capitalism, but to say that I can't grow rich without you growing poorer is a fallacy. The only way that would be true would be if I were growing rich by directly stealing things that belong to you--your possessions, your cash, or your labor (by making you a slave--and no, "wage slave" doesn't count. If you're getting a wage, you're being paid for your labor).
When does this happen? Under "wealth redistribution" schemes that socialists favor--only it goes in the other direction. Things of value are taken directly from more wealthy people and given to those less wealthy. In this case, someone *is* getting wealthier at the expense of someone else.
Exactly. As someone wise once said, "The best government is that which governs least." I'd much prefer gridlock to one party having control of everything, regardless of which party it is. The people who cry "BUT NOTHING WILL GET DONE" miss the entire point. The less government does, the better.
Bah. Not being able to tell which are my "quick launch" buttons and which are my running applications is a pain in the ass. Why have the exact same interface option for two completely different things?
It shouldn't. If that were really the case, we wouldn't need anything more than local town meetings or city councils. If that's what I implied, then I apologize. It's not "everything should be local", it's "when in doubt, keep it local." Also, the way it's set up, powers not specifically given to the Federal government rightfully belong to the states or the people. Unfortunately, when our Constitution was written, it implicitly recognized slavery, and did not give the Federal government the power to abolish it. It took a Constitutional amendment to fix this. Similarly, it probably *should* have taken a Constitutional amendment to give the Federal government the power to pass the Civil Rights Act in the 60s. But they sort of did an end-run around that by somehow getting it in under the "interstate commerce" clause.
Except we generally don't consider those bugs--those are features. Local control is very important to most Americans, and they *want* more power in the hands of local government. The theory is, power should be concentrated mostly in local government, and as you go outwards from that (county, state, Federal) the government should get weaker. It doesn't work that way in practice anymore, but that's the theory anyway.
"State's rights" has, in the past, been used as a code phrase for slavery, and later segregation and other oppressive policies, and that's unfortunate. The principle of government getting weaker the farther from you the seat of government is is generally a sound one. It insures local control of local issues and less interference from others who don't understand your particular situations.
"Not unexpected" conveys a slightly different meaning than "expected" though. Clearly, they didn't deliberately make ads that nobody would like--they weren't "expecting" people to dislike them. But, they did know they were making something unconventional, and that there was a good chance a lot of people would be confused or turned off by the ads. So they knew there was a good chance people would dislike them--"not unexpected", but also, not exactly "expected".
Meteor impacts have already done more than we possibly could in the foreseeable future to "seed" the solar system. If there is life elsewhere in the solar system, it is likely to be Earth life, seeded by asteroid strikes that kicked up biological material in the distant past. Or, perhaps, life started elsewhere in the solar system and migrated here (the Panspermia hypothesis you mention).
Yeah, but then the people offering the bounties will realize that people are making their entire living from them, and that that living is disgustingly lower than the standard of living they themselves enjoy. This will constitute a sweat shop for OS/2 programming, and their liberal guilt will then kick in and force them to stop the bounty system entirely so as to "END THE SWEAT SHOP". This will make perfect sense to them despite the fact that the people who will then have to go back to selling their worldly possessions to make ends meet will be pissed the hell off.
Except that symbolic links don't use inode numbers. If you create a symbolic link as he describes, it will indeed break on Linux and probably OS X too (don't have a Mac, so can't test that one) if you rename the target file. Hard links would work, though.
And now, due to criminal lack of oversight (because regulation is BAD, Right?!)
Regulation isn't the answer. The correct answer is to let failing companies fail. This is how the market takes care of companies that do stupid, negligent things. Rewarding them with a government bailout is the stupid part.
Slashdot Mirror
No, "population growth" does not assume exponential growth. What makes you think there are no other options besides exponential growth and no growth at all?
Larry Niven said it best. "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program."
She did write straight-up philosophy books, too. Thing is, she couldn't get anybody to read them. Put it in a novel that strokes the ego of 18 year old boys, however, and BAM! Instant cult following!
What the hell are you talking about? Market capitalization is a function of share price. So you simultaneously want to give all workers stock options then fuck them over by saying those options can't ever appreciate by more than a certain amount? I mean, seriously, how would you even go about doing that? And what exactly the hell would you be looking to accomplish by doing it?
They are "entitled" to make exactly as much profit as the market will bear.
Explain to me what an "objective" valuation is?
How is buying a stock someone else is selling for a profit a loss for the seller? If they bought at $5 and it went to $10 and then sold it to you, then it went to $15 and you sold it to me, then it went to $20 and I sold it to Bill Gates, didn't we all make $5?
Now if the stock then falls back to $5 while Bill holds it, he has a paper loss of $15. He can sell it at at a loss and use it to write off other gainers in his portfolio, or he can just hold tight if he thinks the company is a good one and wait for it to go up. It's true that for every seller there has to be a buyer, but that doesn't make it zero-sum. We didn't profit directly off Bill's losses. And Bill's losses aren't realized until he sells--the stock may turn around and go to $100 in two years and he makes out more than the rest of us.
The thing is, wealth isn't zero-sum. It can be created. You don't have to gain wealth at someone else's expense.
As for inflation, the stock market averages something like 9% to 11% per year annualized over the past fixty years or something. That's better than inflation. But it also doesn't mean that each year you gain that much. Some years you gain 25%, and some years you lose 40% (such as, say, 2008). In the end, it averages out to between 9% and 11%--the longer you hold, the longer your returns tend to mimic those numbers. Inflation tends to be less than 5% a year, so the stock market will return more than inflation eats on average.
I love how you think a properly functioning government should disarm its citizens.
A collection of armed people are citizens. A disarmed populace are subjects.
When you set up a system that rewards failure (bailouts for companies that fail) is it any wonder that failure is treated as success?
Redistribution of wealth depends an awful lot on how they do it. McCain will continue the usual republican model where they "create wealth" so that rich people can be richer making everyone else comparatively poorer.
You have a mistaken understanding of wealth creation. It's not a zero sum game, no matter what that guy in that movie said. You can create wealth without taking anything from anyone. Wealth is different from money.
You can take a block of wood, a knife, and some labor, and from those create something worth more than the sum of its parts. If you can buy a block of wood for $1, spend 6 hours carving it into something beautiful, and sell it for $50 on eBay, you just created wealth. You created something that someone was willing to pay $50 for out of $1 worth of material and six hours of labor (netting you a bit more than $8 an hour for your time, so you may not get rich this way, but you see the idea, right?)
But, you argue, you "took" $50 from someone else, that makes him $50 poorer. Well, no, you didn't. He freely gave you $50 in exchange for something he obviously values at at least $50, so it's a wash for him. He may even think he's getting a good deal if he thinks he could sell it himself for more than the $50 you are selling it to him for.
Wealth is not money. You can be very wealthy and not have any cash, if you own things of value. Likewise, you can have lots of cash and be poor (think hyper-inflationary times like Germany in the 20s and Argentina more recently). Similarly, wealth can be created. If it couldn't, capitalism wouldn't work at all. The equation that drives all of capitalism is basically "Raw Materials + Labor = Wealth". You can argue all day about exploitation of workers and whether or not they receive a "fair wage" for their labor under current implementations of capitalism, but to say that I can't grow rich without you growing poorer is a fallacy. The only way that would be true would be if I were growing rich by directly stealing things that belong to you--your possessions, your cash, or your labor (by making you a slave--and no, "wage slave" doesn't count. If you're getting a wage, you're being paid for your labor).
When does this happen? Under "wealth redistribution" schemes that socialists favor--only it goes in the other direction. Things of value are taken directly from more wealthy people and given to those less wealthy. In this case, someone *is* getting wealthier at the expense of someone else.
Exactly. As someone wise once said, "The best government is that which governs least." I'd much prefer gridlock to one party having control of everything, regardless of which party it is. The people who cry "BUT NOTHING WILL GET DONE" miss the entire point. The less government does, the better.
Bah. Not being able to tell which are my "quick launch" buttons and which are my running applications is a pain in the ass. Why have the exact same interface option for two completely different things?
You keep on thinking that, bluebie. Thinking like that is what prevented that whole "President Kerry" debacle!
/reported
It shouldn't. If that were really the case, we wouldn't need anything more than local town meetings or city councils. If that's what I implied, then I apologize. It's not "everything should be local", it's "when in doubt, keep it local." Also, the way it's set up, powers not specifically given to the Federal government rightfully belong to the states or the people. Unfortunately, when our Constitution was written, it implicitly recognized slavery, and did not give the Federal government the power to abolish it. It took a Constitutional amendment to fix this. Similarly, it probably *should* have taken a Constitutional amendment to give the Federal government the power to pass the Civil Rights Act in the 60s. But they sort of did an end-run around that by somehow getting it in under the "interstate commerce" clause.
Except we generally don't consider those bugs--those are features. Local control is very important to most Americans, and they *want* more power in the hands of local government. The theory is, power should be concentrated mostly in local government, and as you go outwards from that (county, state, Federal) the government should get weaker. It doesn't work that way in practice anymore, but that's the theory anyway.
"State's rights" has, in the past, been used as a code phrase for slavery, and later segregation and other oppressive policies, and that's unfortunate. The principle of government getting weaker the farther from you the seat of government is is generally a sound one. It insures local control of local issues and less interference from others who don't understand your particular situations.
"Not unexpected" conveys a slightly different meaning than "expected" though. Clearly, they didn't deliberately make ads that nobody would like--they weren't "expecting" people to dislike them. But, they did know they were making something unconventional, and that there was a good chance a lot of people would be confused or turned off by the ads. So they knew there was a good chance people would dislike them--"not unexpected", but also, not exactly "expected".
My guess is, the meaning is "I'm good in this specific field." Which... is the point of a University education, isn't it?
Which "suppressed technology" would that be, exactly?
Two words: Off-site backups. Ok, maybe that's three words with a hyphen. Anyway, you get the picture.
You're only proving you don't know what the definition of "rootkit" is. Hint: It's not a synonym for malware.
Meteor impacts have already done more than we possibly could in the foreseeable future to "seed" the solar system. If there is life elsewhere in the solar system, it is likely to be Earth life, seeded by asteroid strikes that kicked up biological material in the distant past. Or, perhaps, life started elsewhere in the solar system and migrated here (the Panspermia hypothesis you mention).
Yeah, but then the people offering the bounties will realize that people are making their entire living from them, and that that living is disgustingly lower than the standard of living they themselves enjoy. This will constitute a sweat shop for OS/2 programming, and their liberal guilt will then kick in and force them to stop the bounty system entirely so as to "END THE SWEAT SHOP". This will make perfect sense to them despite the fact that the people who will then have to go back to selling their worldly possessions to make ends meet will be pissed the hell off.
Except that symbolic links don't use inode numbers. If you create a symbolic link as he describes, it will indeed break on Linux and probably OS X too (don't have a Mac, so can't test that one) if you rename the target file. Hard links would work, though.
And now, due to criminal lack of oversight (because regulation is BAD, Right?!)
Regulation isn't the answer. The correct answer is to let failing companies fail. This is how the market takes care of companies that do stupid, negligent things. Rewarding them with a government bailout is the stupid part.