If something has no track record of safety then I want a label so I can decide whether to consume it.
At which point everything would be so inundated with labels you'd be unable to see the product.
Why single out GMO? Why not label that this product came from a new farm, with no proven track record? Why not label that they used radiation mutation to breed this pig? Why not label that the plastic wrapping isn't proven BPA-free? Why not label that the glue in the labels isn't proven to not cause cancer? Why not label that label overload present on this package can cause depression, anxiety, and paranoia, since that seems very likely to me to at least be true? Why not label that there's no proven track record of there not being a bridge troll hiding under this piece of pork?
Mandated labels are there to warn of a known or predicted danger, not to satisfy your need for advocacy. You're free to stick "non-GMO" labels on your organic food if you want, but you can't *force* GMO producers to label unless there's an identified safety issue.
...natural food...
Hah, an oxymoron if I've ever seen one. Humans haven't had "natural food" since the invention of agriculture.
Bitcoin as a currency might disappear, but the idea of a distributed verifiable ledger (the blockchain) is drawing a lot of attention from all over the place. The Economist did a long article on it a while back discussing the possibilities, for instance using the blockchain as a land registry in a country with no existing central authority on deeds. Just look at all the companies springing up that use Bitcoin's own blockchain as an authenticated information store, ignoring the currency aspect all together.
The tech that enables bitcoin has broader applications.
Thank you as well - of the many responses I got, yours was the only one that actually seemed interested in discussing the issue.
While I grant that this is certainly possible, I'd just like to add that this hinges upon the assumption that there's a severe penalty associated with acquiring a gun in a gun-less society...
Very true. I *think* that's the case in the UK - adding "with a gun" to any crime immediately increases the severity - but it's something I need to do a bit more research on. I'd be curious as to what the laws in Australia are, as to how severe they are on gun crime versus non-gun crime.
On your other two points, you're right that we should not only consider *whether* the measure will have any impact, but also whether the impact will be significant enough to justify the infringement on rights. It's a question I'll have to give some consideration to before I can form an opinion. I'm not sure how we'd go about studying it, as although we can use the example of countries that have banned weapons (UK, AU,...), the US is a unique mixed culture with a very independence-minded and opinionated people. Even trying it wouldn't give a clear answer, as there are so many trends that affect crime rates that it's hard to isolate the supply of guns as the single cause.
This leads me back to another point: that gun violence is merely a symptom, and we need to look at *why* US society is so adversarial. That is most certainly also a Hard Question, but it's the one I'd rather have an answer to. The ideal scenario would be a US where guns are still allowed, but society is peaceful nonetheless.
I'd love to go into a discussion on your points about fixing the legal system, but that'll be a bit off-topic, and is also a rabbit warren I have yet to find a good exit to. I tend to support laws being "interpreted" as needed, but in general it's a hard problem to create a legal system that is both fair and even-handed while also being flexible and human.
At least I have my optimism to protect me from the most disheartening effects. Things aren't too bad yet and I still have hope for the future, especially as long as there are still people open to a debate.
I think this assertion is what many "gun nuts" question. Since criminals are, by definition, not prevented by the force of law from committing crimes, through what mechanism would making guns illegal decrease the ownership of guns by criminals?
Fair question.
For one, it's very prevalent in this debate and similar ones that there's a black and white line between criminals and law-abiding citizens. This is not the case: a petty thief willing to bluff you out of your money with a gun is not necessarily willing to risk the severe penalty associated with acquiring a gun in a gun-less society.
Secondly, while everyone who commits a violent act with a gun is, by the technical definition, a criminal, a not-insignificant portion of gun violence is committed by otherwise law-abiding people, either by accident or in the heat of the moment. None of these people planned to commit gun violence, and if they didn't have a gun in the first place (in a society where they're banned), then the violence never would have happened.
Thirdly, if guns are banned, then the lack of a consumer demand will necessarily mean there are fewer producers, and I think it's therefore reasonable to assume there will physically be fewer guns in the country. This makes it harder for a criminal to get one.
1. You assume a ban on guns means criminals will have fewer guns to commit violence with.
This is an assumption, but is a reasonable one to make. A ban on guns means the consumer market will be shut down, production will drop drastically, and the total number of guns in existence will stop growing, and possibly even decline. This will make it harder for criminals to get guns.
2. You assume that criminals having fewer guns and law abiding citizens having no guns means there will be less gun violence.
You assume that all gun violence is committed by criminals. If guns are illegal, little kids, hotheads, and mental patients will stop shooting people because they won't have any legal way to get a gun and are unlikely to resort to illegal methods. This will definitely lead to less gun violence, and although it might lead to an increase in other forms of violence, I'll take a beating over a gunshot wound any day.
Also, if the criminal knows you don't have a gun, he has less of a reason to actually shoot you rather than to just wave it in your general direction. As for the types that'd shoot you anyway, they're as likely to knife you, strangle you, or whatever, so the legality of guns will have no effect on that whatsoever.
6. Expecting the cops to be able to be everywhere at once so they can protect you from armed criminals. There are more criminals than cops, and criminals tend to gather where cops are not. Even the cops admit that they cannot be everywhere and protect everyone all the time.
It seems to work in other developed countries. Maybe the cops in the US are doing something wrong?
Seriously? Do you live in a place so violent that you feel a need to have deadly force constantly at your side? Are you that risk-averse?
Your grandmother may be a good shot, but does she have the reflexes to go with it? If she can't actually get a bead on a young, fast mugger before he gets within arm's range, then she's defenseless with or without her gun. You're probably younger, and therefore have those reflexes, but that means you probably can also defend yourself without having a gun, assuming your attacker doesn't have one either.
Yes, if you make guns illegal, some criminals will still have guns, but it will be fewer. Gun control is not about the rich with bodyguards, it's about the rest of us not wanting to get shot in anger by some hothead, by accident by a child, or by some nut who never should have been given a weapon. That other forms of violent crime will go up is beside the point, as you're still more likely to survive a beating than a shooting, and a criminal can only beat one person at a time.
Have you seen their balance sheets? Their orders? Their setup costs? How much of the raw materials did they already procure? How much did it cost to get their electronics partner tooled up? If not, then on what basis are you making such assertions as though they are fact?
Unless we get to see a financial report, neither you nor I will ever know what happened. If you really care, go get them to open up their financials, but until then all you have is speculation.
In other words, they didn't change their assembly process.
The update linked in the summary says they've worked out how to get their partner to do the motor mounting as well, so they don't have to. Sounds like a production change to me.
Since they haven't assembled the vast majority of them, most of that money should also be floating around.
So it's all been spent while only minimal production has taken place, and most of the parts haven't been ordered.
Why? Gotta keep paying themselves for their amazing leadership and ingenuity, I guess...
Speculation, speculation, and speculation edging towards slanderous.
Should have been put into receivership when it was obvious that from a financial point they had spent so much that there wasn't enough for the rest of the parts, or shipping.
Very true, and is the actual discussion we should be having here, rather than all the pedestrian complaints and accusations.
Doing this would require having accountants and oversight from some kind of board, say of contributors and/or Kickstarter staff (feature request for Kickstarter v2.0?), and we'd need to work out a system to keep them accountable. Of course, that would increase the overhead, and thus make some otherwise-viable projects unviable again. It also turns Kickstarter into just another shopfront, while I'm more interested in using it as a staging ground for ideas that could not make it on their own, so I'm not sure I'd support having more oversight.
Further, considering that they raised nearly 30x the crowd funding goal -- the estimated necessary funding required to fulfill pledges...
That's not how manufacturing works. Minimum funding goal is how many pledges you need to at least overcome your anticipated fixed costs, but there's still a marginal cost associated with fulfilling each individual pledge. When you get 30x the expected number of pledges, that means your variable costs will also be 30x greater. On top of that, if you have to produce 15,000 pieces rather than 500 (say), then your fixed costs also rise as you now have to redesign your product for volume manufacturing, whereas previously your prototype process might have been sufficient.
... there's clearly something worthwhile to investigate...
No, there's not much to see here, just another startup that underestimated the challenges in going from prototype to volume, spent too much money on the transition, and went bust. The backers have my sympathy, but without evidence there's no basis for assuming malfeasance.
The interesting thing about this is not that they've found an explanation for why a GPS always overestimates (which is pretty obvious), but rather that they've taken the time to work out the statistics and quantify this overestimate. Imagine a GPS implementing this, and therefore able at any point in time to give the expected error. It might tell you that it measured a path of 10 km, but that, because of the type of noise present, the actual path was probably closer to 9 km. You could even take that a bit further and apply a smoothing algorithm to the track with as optimization goal to match the track with the expected distance.
Anybody with even a modicum of scientific knowledge who believes that something can be "unlimited" is lying, either to themselves or to the rest of us.
As for companies not being our friends - yes, I'm very well aware of that, but just because they're not my friends doesn't mean I have to treat them like enemies. Take the example of an ISP: if they sell "unlimited" and people take them at their word, and they suddenly discover that this is not a feasible business model, I can either demand my unlimited service and drive them into bankruptcy (what you seem to advocate) or I can accept they made a mistake, assume they're not acting in bad faith, and work out a deal with them that leaves them in existence and me with the service I want. If they are acting in bad faith *then* I take them to court, but I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
Likely I'll just take my business elsewhere, but I'm not going to stand their demanding my impossible-to-deliver service, as there's no point and I'd end up making myself and everyone around me miserable.
...to expect to get exactly what...
This small fragment of your answer is what I take issue with, specifically the word "exactly", a symptom of following the letter of the law rather than the spirit. It's very inhuman, and of all the places I've lived it seems most common in the US.
I'd say it's naive to think you'll ever get exactly what you want, in anything, as that's not the way the world works either.
Normal people understand "unlimited" to actually mean "unlimited" when used to promote the service. If it isn't unlimited it should not be advertised as such.
And this is why we can't have nice things: everyone's a lawyer, looking for the legalistic loophole they can take advantage of to get theirs. It's the consequence of living in an adversarial society, I guess, but it's rather unpleasant.
Agree, let me rephrase. A material's qualities are intrinsic. It is these qualities that give it high utility. It is the high utility that makes it valuable. But at this point that's really just semantics, and if you can come up with a better definition then please share, english isn't my first language.
No, actually, I'm perfectly fine with the way you put it there. I just take issue with people saying gold intrinsically has value, as they usually then use that as the reason to conclude we should use gold as currency rather than valueless bitcoin/seashells/US fiat dollars/etc. I also personally find it dangerous to assume that any item, be it gold, money, real estate, or whatever will always have a given value, as that assumption is what leads people to put all their eggs into one basket. It's an idea that I'm trying to stamp out, in the hopes that people then learn to hedge their bets and thus be better positioned to survive the next crisis, or at least be more accepting of the fact that "shit happens". This is why it's more than just semantics to me.
Couldn't tell English was your second language, so my complements.
The middle ages is recent - I'm thinking about the last 50,000 or 500,000 years of history, not the last 500.
It's all about resilience. Take oil for instance. What would cause oil to drop to the price of water?
Off the top of my head, we use oil as a fuel and as an ingredient to make various products (plastics, cosmetics, etc). It will no longer be used as a fuel when we improve battery tech to the point that we can use solar/wind/nuclear/future-tech instead, and our lungs will be grateful. Plastics I don't know, but you're right in pointing out that the supply is finite, so we'll have to find some alternative. Maybe we can distill the necessary ingredients from plants, as we try to do now with biodiesel, or maybe we just stop using plastic at some point in our development.
Utility gives at least some form of intrinsic value
If an external factor is giving something its value, then the value is not "intrinsic". There's no gray area on this in the definition. You could claim that the usefulness is intrinsic and therefore the value is too, but I'd also dispute that it is intrinsically useful: usefulness is only meaningful in a human context and is not a property of the material itself, unlike the intrinsic property of, say, color. Conductivity is an intrinsic property, but the usefulness in electronics that stems from that conductivity is not intrinsic to the gold itself, but is merely part of the way we use the gold.
Gold has significant utility, and therefore value, but by no stretch of the imagination is that value intrinsic.
None of which gives gold an intrinsic value. Like you say, if there's a fundamental change in how we live, gold may very well become worthless.
Just because it's unlikely, doesn't mean we should treat it as though it's impossible.
However the underpinning utility of minerals provides a floor to how low the price will go.
Floors are temporary, and caused only by constraints on supply. Production processes continually get cheaper, so the only constraint in the long run is the supply of the element and the energy cost to refine it. We're working on the energy problem (see fusion articles a few weeks ago), and if NASA's ARRM mission succeeds then eventually supply won't be an issue either, at which point gold will be cheaper than water.
More generally, I'm not sure why you seem to think that something major *won't* come along and upheave the market. Upheaval is the norm, if you look at history.
Fair enough, but that's still only a difference of degree rather than a fundamental difference. Anything, whether it has only one use or many, only has value while it remains useful. If the luddites won and we gave up technology, going back to simple lives on farms, we wouldn't have any use for platinum either. Gold maybe for fillings, but only for as long as we care about our teeth.
Just because we don't expect an end of a material's usefulness anywhere in the near future, doesn't mean that it has an intrinsic value, merely a current one.
In each case their prices may fluctuate a bit as supply and demand re-adjust but the wide utility of most minerals mean that their worth and value is constrained.
Eyeballing the data, the inflation-adjusted price of gold in 1970 was around $200, in 1980 around $2000, and in 200 around $400. I would not call a variation back and forth by an order of magnitude over 30 years "constrained".
You're kidding me, right? Turn signals are optional, as is driving within the lines, staying out of the passing lane, not tailgating, and in general paying attention to what's around you (cars, pedestrians, etc...), just to list a few issues I've experienced in Boston, Los Angeles, and around Georgia. The only reason there aren't more accidents is because traffic is so light. Contrast this with the northern European countries, such as Germany, Denmark and the BeNeLux area, where they drive faster and traffic is worse but the drivers know what they're doing and (apart from speeding) mostly follow the rules. At least for Belgium I suspect this is because driver's education is much more thorough and the exam harder.
I can't speak for the Mediterranean, but you have no idea what you're talking about if you're lumping all Europeans together.
By the same argument, couldn't you say that the value of bitcoin comes from humans' continuous demand for currency combined with the utility of bitcoin as a currency? Ignoring its volatility for a moment, bitcoin is a useful medium of exchange in the same way that cash is, and the demand for this utility gives bitcoin value in the same way that the demand for the utility of gold gives it value.
We need a medium of exchange in the same way we need catalysts and conductors, and that medium needs to have various properties, such as fungibility, unforgeability, verifiability, etc...
They may not, but they probably get rebar instead. That's a pretty good reception killer as well. Or, if it's a very secure building, maybe they cladded it in tinfoil.
GP's probably right about power lines not interfering - wrong scale to have any effect.
Except that the UNII-2 and other proposed 5 GHz wifi bands overlap with radar, meaning that equipment has to implement DFS and the radar gets priority. Having LTE in -1 and -3 means that all 5 GHz bands now have to deal with non-wifi interferers.
Yes, I think a "healthy respect" is a good way of putting it. We don't want either our leaders or the voters to become complacent, but they do need to cooperate.
I wish I had an idea of how to get us to that point.
I understand your sentiment, but there's a difference between the government fearing its populace and the government remembering that they rule by consent.
I heard an interesting theory once: that a monarchy or similar only works as long as the ruler does not fear the populace. The idea is that if the king feels secure, he'll actually govern the country (for better or for worse), but if he feels insecure he'll spend all his time shoring up his rule through whatever means necessary. It's possible he's a lousy king either way, but he's more likely to rule well if he's secure as his attention doesn't have to be on himself all the time.
This could be applied to representative democracies as well, in that fear also misdirects our representatives. If our legislators feel insecure in their positions, for instance, they'll spend all their time campaigning to win more votes and working on spying laws to raise internal security. Maybe if the populace actually showed some trust in their elected representatives, those representatives would spend more time actually governing. There's also more room for the government and the people to cooperate if the relationship is based on trust rather than fear.
Of course, I can't say our reps have done much to earn our trust...
The corporations have an incentive to be trustworthy because otherwise they will lose my business.
Only true if you have other options to go to, or if you have enough information to catch them in a lie, or if your need isn't so pressing you have time to evaluate the options, or one of many other reasons that people do business with a lousy company despite that not being the rational thing to do.
Governments have no such motivation.
I could take the same attitude you have towards corporations, but instead towards governments: governments have a motivation to be trustworthy, because otherwise their people will eventually rise up and overthrow them. Neither this statement nor yours is of any value, as it describes a world view so oversimplified as to be useless.
Corporations kill their customers far less frequently.
I'd love to see the statistics on that. Wonder how many people the car industry has killed with their willful disregard of emissions regulations. Or, how about the tobacco industry, or the alcohol industry? Hell, what about the arms industry? They may not be the ones shooting people, but they're complicit.
If you look around the world today, people live better lives in countries with powerful corporations and weak governments, and worse where corporations are weak (or nonexistent) and governments are strong.
False. By many standards Europe is a better place to live than the US, and there the government is noticeably stronger than the corporations.
I distrust government and corporations equally. The only person consistently looking out for your interests is you yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
At which point everything would be so inundated with labels you'd be unable to see the product.
Why single out GMO? Why not label that this product came from a new farm, with no proven track record? Why not label that they used radiation mutation to breed this pig? Why not label that the plastic wrapping isn't proven BPA-free? Why not label that the glue in the labels isn't proven to not cause cancer? Why not label that label overload present on this package can cause depression, anxiety, and paranoia, since that seems very likely to me to at least be true? Why not label that there's no proven track record of there not being a bridge troll hiding under this piece of pork?
Mandated labels are there to warn of a known or predicted danger, not to satisfy your need for advocacy. You're free to stick "non-GMO" labels on your organic food if you want, but you can't *force* GMO producers to label unless there's an identified safety issue.
Hah, an oxymoron if I've ever seen one. Humans haven't had "natural food" since the invention of agriculture.
Bitcoin as a currency might disappear, but the idea of a distributed verifiable ledger (the blockchain) is drawing a lot of attention from all over the place. The Economist did a long article on it a while back discussing the possibilities, for instance using the blockchain as a land registry in a country with no existing central authority on deeds. Just look at all the companies springing up that use Bitcoin's own blockchain as an authenticated information store, ignoring the currency aspect all together.
The tech that enables bitcoin has broader applications.
Thank you as well - of the many responses I got, yours was the only one that actually seemed interested in discussing the issue.
Very true. I *think* that's the case in the UK - adding "with a gun" to any crime immediately increases the severity - but it's something I need to do a bit more research on. I'd be curious as to what the laws in Australia are, as to how severe they are on gun crime versus non-gun crime.
On your other two points, you're right that we should not only consider *whether* the measure will have any impact, but also whether the impact will be significant enough to justify the infringement on rights. It's a question I'll have to give some consideration to before I can form an opinion. I'm not sure how we'd go about studying it, as although we can use the example of countries that have banned weapons (UK, AU, ...), the US is a unique mixed culture with a very independence-minded and opinionated people. Even trying it wouldn't give a clear answer, as there are so many trends that affect crime rates that it's hard to isolate the supply of guns as the single cause.
This leads me back to another point: that gun violence is merely a symptom, and we need to look at *why* US society is so adversarial. That is most certainly also a Hard Question, but it's the one I'd rather have an answer to. The ideal scenario would be a US where guns are still allowed, but society is peaceful nonetheless.
I'd love to go into a discussion on your points about fixing the legal system, but that'll be a bit off-topic, and is also a rabbit warren I have yet to find a good exit to. I tend to support laws being "interpreted" as needed, but in general it's a hard problem to create a legal system that is both fair and even-handed while also being flexible and human.
At least I have my optimism to protect me from the most disheartening effects. Things aren't too bad yet and I still have hope for the future, especially as long as there are still people open to a debate.
Cheers,
Jw
Fair question.
For one, it's very prevalent in this debate and similar ones that there's a black and white line between criminals and law-abiding citizens. This is not the case: a petty thief willing to bluff you out of your money with a gun is not necessarily willing to risk the severe penalty associated with acquiring a gun in a gun-less society.
Secondly, while everyone who commits a violent act with a gun is, by the technical definition, a criminal, a not-insignificant portion of gun violence is committed by otherwise law-abiding people, either by accident or in the heat of the moment. None of these people planned to commit gun violence, and if they didn't have a gun in the first place (in a society where they're banned), then the violence never would have happened.
Thirdly, if guns are banned, then the lack of a consumer demand will necessarily mean there are fewer producers, and I think it's therefore reasonable to assume there will physically be fewer guns in the country. This makes it harder for a criminal to get one.
Thoughts or criticisms?
This is an assumption, but is a reasonable one to make. A ban on guns means the consumer market will be shut down, production will drop drastically, and the total number of guns in existence will stop growing, and possibly even decline. This will make it harder for criminals to get guns.
You assume that all gun violence is committed by criminals. If guns are illegal, little kids, hotheads, and mental patients will stop shooting people because they won't have any legal way to get a gun and are unlikely to resort to illegal methods. This will definitely lead to less gun violence, and although it might lead to an increase in other forms of violence, I'll take a beating over a gunshot wound any day.
Also, if the criminal knows you don't have a gun, he has less of a reason to actually shoot you rather than to just wave it in your general direction. As for the types that'd shoot you anyway, they're as likely to knife you, strangle you, or whatever, so the legality of guns will have no effect on that whatsoever.
It seems to work in other developed countries. Maybe the cops in the US are doing something wrong?
Seriously? Do you live in a place so violent that you feel a need to have deadly force constantly at your side? Are you that risk-averse?
Your grandmother may be a good shot, but does she have the reflexes to go with it? If she can't actually get a bead on a young, fast mugger before he gets within arm's range, then she's defenseless with or without her gun. You're probably younger, and therefore have those reflexes, but that means you probably can also defend yourself without having a gun, assuming your attacker doesn't have one either.
Yes, if you make guns illegal, some criminals will still have guns, but it will be fewer. Gun control is not about the rich with bodyguards, it's about the rest of us not wanting to get shot in anger by some hothead, by accident by a child, or by some nut who never should have been given a weapon. That other forms of violent crime will go up is beside the point, as you're still more likely to survive a beating than a shooting, and a criminal can only beat one person at a time.
Tooling, Barbara, tooling. Go look it up.
Have you seen their balance sheets? Their orders? Their setup costs? How much of the raw materials did they already procure? How much did it cost to get their electronics partner tooled up? If not, then on what basis are you making such assertions as though they are fact?
Unless we get to see a financial report, neither you nor I will ever know what happened. If you really care, go get them to open up their financials, but until then all you have is speculation.
The update linked in the summary says they've worked out how to get their partner to do the motor mounting as well, so they don't have to. Sounds like a production change to me.
Speculation, speculation, and speculation edging towards slanderous.
Very true, and is the actual discussion we should be having here, rather than all the pedestrian complaints and accusations.
Doing this would require having accountants and oversight from some kind of board, say of contributors and/or Kickstarter staff (feature request for Kickstarter v2.0?), and we'd need to work out a system to keep them accountable. Of course, that would increase the overhead, and thus make some otherwise-viable projects unviable again. It also turns Kickstarter into just another shopfront, while I'm more interested in using it as a staging ground for ideas that could not make it on their own, so I'm not sure I'd support having more oversight.
Fair enough, there's the evidence of malfeasance then. However, that has absolutely nothing to do with how much money they took in, as GP implied.
That's not how manufacturing works. Minimum funding goal is how many pledges you need to at least overcome your anticipated fixed costs, but there's still a marginal cost associated with fulfilling each individual pledge. When you get 30x the expected number of pledges, that means your variable costs will also be 30x greater. On top of that, if you have to produce 15,000 pieces rather than 500 (say), then your fixed costs also rise as you now have to redesign your product for volume manufacturing, whereas previously your prototype process might have been sufficient.
No, there's not much to see here, just another startup that underestimated the challenges in going from prototype to volume, spent too much money on the transition, and went bust. The backers have my sympathy, but without evidence there's no basis for assuming malfeasance.
The interesting thing about this is not that they've found an explanation for why a GPS always overestimates (which is pretty obvious), but rather that they've taken the time to work out the statistics and quantify this overestimate. Imagine a GPS implementing this, and therefore able at any point in time to give the expected error. It might tell you that it measured a path of 10 km, but that, because of the type of noise present, the actual path was probably closer to 9 km. You could even take that a bit further and apply a smoothing algorithm to the track with as optimization goal to match the track with the expected distance.
I'd use that feature.
Anybody with even a modicum of scientific knowledge who believes that something can be "unlimited" is lying, either to themselves or to the rest of us.
As for companies not being our friends - yes, I'm very well aware of that, but just because they're not my friends doesn't mean I have to treat them like enemies. Take the example of an ISP: if they sell "unlimited" and people take them at their word, and they suddenly discover that this is not a feasible business model, I can either demand my unlimited service and drive them into bankruptcy (what you seem to advocate) or I can accept they made a mistake, assume they're not acting in bad faith, and work out a deal with them that leaves them in existence and me with the service I want. If they are acting in bad faith *then* I take them to court, but I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
Likely I'll just take my business elsewhere, but I'm not going to stand their demanding my impossible-to-deliver service, as there's no point and I'd end up making myself and everyone around me miserable.
This small fragment of your answer is what I take issue with, specifically the word "exactly", a symptom of following the letter of the law rather than the spirit. It's very inhuman, and of all the places I've lived it seems most common in the US.
I'd say it's naive to think you'll ever get exactly what you want, in anything, as that's not the way the world works either.
And this is why we can't have nice things: everyone's a lawyer, looking for the legalistic loophole they can take advantage of to get theirs. It's the consequence of living in an adversarial society, I guess, but it's rather unpleasant.
No, actually, I'm perfectly fine with the way you put it there. I just take issue with people saying gold intrinsically has value, as they usually then use that as the reason to conclude we should use gold as currency rather than valueless bitcoin/seashells/US fiat dollars/etc. I also personally find it dangerous to assume that any item, be it gold, money, real estate, or whatever will always have a given value, as that assumption is what leads people to put all their eggs into one basket. It's an idea that I'm trying to stamp out, in the hopes that people then learn to hedge their bets and thus be better positioned to survive the next crisis, or at least be more accepting of the fact that "shit happens". This is why it's more than just semantics to me.
Couldn't tell English was your second language, so my complements.
The middle ages is recent - I'm thinking about the last 50,000 or 500,000 years of history, not the last 500.
Off the top of my head, we use oil as a fuel and as an ingredient to make various products (plastics, cosmetics, etc). It will no longer be used as a fuel when we improve battery tech to the point that we can use solar/wind/nuclear/future-tech instead, and our lungs will be grateful. Plastics I don't know, but you're right in pointing out that the supply is finite, so we'll have to find some alternative. Maybe we can distill the necessary ingredients from plants, as we try to do now with biodiesel, or maybe we just stop using plastic at some point in our development.
If an external factor is giving something its value, then the value is not "intrinsic". There's no gray area on this in the definition. You could claim that the usefulness is intrinsic and therefore the value is too, but I'd also dispute that it is intrinsically useful: usefulness is only meaningful in a human context and is not a property of the material itself, unlike the intrinsic property of, say, color. Conductivity is an intrinsic property, but the usefulness in electronics that stems from that conductivity is not intrinsic to the gold itself, but is merely part of the way we use the gold.
Gold has significant utility, and therefore value, but by no stretch of the imagination is that value intrinsic.
None of which gives gold an intrinsic value. Like you say, if there's a fundamental change in how we live, gold may very well become worthless.
Just because it's unlikely, doesn't mean we should treat it as though it's impossible.
Floors are temporary, and caused only by constraints on supply. Production processes continually get cheaper, so the only constraint in the long run is the supply of the element and the energy cost to refine it. We're working on the energy problem (see fusion articles a few weeks ago), and if NASA's ARRM mission succeeds then eventually supply won't be an issue either, at which point gold will be cheaper than water.
More generally, I'm not sure why you seem to think that something major *won't* come along and upheave the market. Upheaval is the norm, if you look at history.
Fair enough, but that's still only a difference of degree rather than a fundamental difference. Anything, whether it has only one use or many, only has value while it remains useful. If the luddites won and we gave up technology, going back to simple lives on farms, we wouldn't have any use for platinum either. Gold maybe for fillings, but only for as long as we care about our teeth.
Just because we don't expect an end of a material's usefulness anywhere in the near future, doesn't mean that it has an intrinsic value, merely a current one.
Eyeballing the data, the inflation-adjusted price of gold in 1970 was around $200, in 1980 around $2000, and in 200 around $400. I would not call a variation back and forth by an order of magnitude over 30 years "constrained".
You're kidding me, right? Turn signals are optional, as is driving within the lines, staying out of the passing lane, not tailgating, and in general paying attention to what's around you (cars, pedestrians, etc...), just to list a few issues I've experienced in Boston, Los Angeles, and around Georgia. The only reason there aren't more accidents is because traffic is so light. Contrast this with the northern European countries, such as Germany, Denmark and the BeNeLux area, where they drive faster and traffic is worse but the drivers know what they're doing and (apart from speeding) mostly follow the rules. At least for Belgium I suspect this is because driver's education is much more thorough and the exam harder.
I can't speak for the Mediterranean, but you have no idea what you're talking about if you're lumping all Europeans together.
By the same argument, couldn't you say that the value of bitcoin comes from humans' continuous demand for currency combined with the utility of bitcoin as a currency? Ignoring its volatility for a moment, bitcoin is a useful medium of exchange in the same way that cash is, and the demand for this utility gives bitcoin value in the same way that the demand for the utility of gold gives it value.
We need a medium of exchange in the same way we need catalysts and conductors, and that medium needs to have various properties, such as fungibility, unforgeability, verifiability, etc...
They may not, but they probably get rebar instead. That's a pretty good reception killer as well. Or, if it's a very secure building, maybe they cladded it in tinfoil.
GP's probably right about power lines not interfering - wrong scale to have any effect.
Except that the UNII-2 and other proposed 5 GHz wifi bands overlap with radar, meaning that equipment has to implement DFS and the radar gets priority. Having LTE in -1 and -3 means that all 5 GHz bands now have to deal with non-wifi interferers.
Yes, I think a "healthy respect" is a good way of putting it. We don't want either our leaders or the voters to become complacent, but they do need to cooperate.
I wish I had an idea of how to get us to that point.
I understand your sentiment, but there's a difference between the government fearing its populace and the government remembering that they rule by consent.
I heard an interesting theory once: that a monarchy or similar only works as long as the ruler does not fear the populace. The idea is that if the king feels secure, he'll actually govern the country (for better or for worse), but if he feels insecure he'll spend all his time shoring up his rule through whatever means necessary. It's possible he's a lousy king either way, but he's more likely to rule well if he's secure as his attention doesn't have to be on himself all the time.
This could be applied to representative democracies as well, in that fear also misdirects our representatives. If our legislators feel insecure in their positions, for instance, they'll spend all their time campaigning to win more votes and working on spying laws to raise internal security. Maybe if the populace actually showed some trust in their elected representatives, those representatives would spend more time actually governing. There's also more room for the government and the people to cooperate if the relationship is based on trust rather than fear.
Of course, I can't say our reps have done much to earn our trust...
Only true if you have other options to go to, or if you have enough information to catch them in a lie, or if your need isn't so pressing you have time to evaluate the options, or one of many other reasons that people do business with a lousy company despite that not being the rational thing to do.
I could take the same attitude you have towards corporations, but instead towards governments: governments have a motivation to be trustworthy, because otherwise their people will eventually rise up and overthrow them. Neither this statement nor yours is of any value, as it describes a world view so oversimplified as to be useless.
I'd love to see the statistics on that. Wonder how many people the car industry has killed with their willful disregard of emissions regulations. Or, how about the tobacco industry, or the alcohol industry? Hell, what about the arms industry? They may not be the ones shooting people, but they're complicit.
False. By many standards Europe is a better place to live than the US, and there the government is noticeably stronger than the corporations.
I distrust government and corporations equally. The only person consistently looking out for your interests is you yourself.
Yikes, so they really screwed up everywhere then. Wonder how they got away with it that long.