I've had to make some physical representations of bitcoins at work (still not clear exactly what use those are), so yeah I don't see why not. Make geobitcoins, I mean. Patents don't work like that.
You're forgetting the actual "cache" part of geocaching! In traditional geocaching, the cache is a cache, a depository, a place where stuff has been stashed away. You bring something to the cache, and swap it with something that's been left behind by a previous geocacher. The traditional objects are custom-made coins, Geocoins, which are trackable online at Geocaching.com.
I'm not a cacher myself but I work for a company that makes stuff like coins and we get a lot of geocacher customers.
The show Dark Matter takes your suggestion. They have a transporter-like technology that sends a copy of you elsewhere, and then when (or if) that copy returns to the transporter, its memories are transmitted back to you and it is disintegrated again. Copies automatically disintegrate after some time anyway (for plot reasons I guess), and if your copy never makes it back to the transporter pod you just wake up out of the pod feeling like nothing happened at all.
Given that that world has also shown the ability to store memories outside of brains besides in this transporter tech, there's no good reason given why the original being transported has to stay in the pod while the clone is away, instead of the the original walking about like normal while the clone is away, the clone's memories just being sent back when it's done, and the original downloading them into their brain whenever it's convenient for them.
What I want to know is why do some people so desperately want to believe this nonsense? What's the angle? What does anyone have to gain from "proving" their nonsense right?
(I guess you could ask that about any kind of nonsense, but I'm asking about this one in particular).
The older I've gotten the less I've felt that my vote matters. Which hasn't changed my voting behavior, just how enthused I am about the whole process, but still. The first time I got to vote, I was super excited to be making a difference in the world, until the news called the election before I could even get to the polls after work on the west coast. And the feeling of futility has only increased since then as I've learned more and more about politics and political science. Voting is an extremely low-cost action though, so even if there seems to be negligible reward to doing it, meh, might as well anyway.
A lot of recruitment into our professional volunteer armies is driven by the fact that people have to work, and working for the army seems like the best option to them. People mostly don't join the army because joining the army sounds like fun, they join the army because if they don't do something they'll starve and joining the army is something so they do that.
In the History tab of an article, you can grab links to diffs of every edit. In your own user contributions page (which even anon ips have) you can find diffs of all your own edits to any pages. I wanted to see a diff of someone reverting your edits, to see what they reverted and why they said they did so. (If your not aware of article histories, you might have missed an edit summary politely telling you why you were reverted).
Yeah, my little edits usually stick. Even the occasional bigger one. Only explanation I can think of for your reported experience is that your edits somehow superficially look likely to be vandalism to, as you say, overzealous editors who probably see tons of actual vandalism and are too quick on the trigger. Do you have an account or are you an anonymous IP editor? (Some people are more suspicious of anons, even though that's actually against policy). Have you had any big fights that might make other users assume bad faith on your part (even though that is also against policy?) Other than that I can't imagine why you have such troubles and I don't.
Not that it undermines your main point, but encyclopedias are not even secondary sources, they are tertiary sources. Journals that comment on the importance and significance of primary sources (the original research) are the secondary sources. Wikipedia policy prefers that its own sources be secondary rather than primary, because Wikipedia is not supposed to be a secondary source, it's supposed to be a tertiary source, and relying too much on primary sources is frowned upon as it verges into the territory of "synthesis", which is making a novel point backed by primary sources, instead of just reporting that such a point has been made by a reputable secondary source.
"Wiki's editorial staff" are just its general users. As a casual editor for well over a decade now (as in, I fix up little things I find while reading it, and watch pages on topics I'm interested in for updates and mostly just revert obvious vandalism that hits those pages), I've witnessed my fair share of edit wars, and for the most part I get the feeling that people who have a big problem with Wikipedia's processes are disruptive editors unhappy that they're not successfully able to push their agenda through it.
Also, no encyclopedia is a reputable source in any academic institution. But unlike most encyclopedias, Wikipedia is supposed to point you to the reputable sources that it got its information from, instead of just asking you to trust it.
I literally said "in whose name". That's 100% what a republic is about. For illustration: criminal cases in the United States (a republic) are titled "The People of [wherever] vs [whoever]", while in the United Kingdom (not a republic but a monarchy) they are titled "Rex [or Regina] vs [whoever]" because the action is not in the name of the people but in the name of the king or queen.
Technically republicanism (small R like you're talking about) and democracy are orthogonal concepts. One is about in whose name state power is exercised, the other is about who directs the exercise of it. A republic is a state whose people are its "shareholders", in whose name its actions are conducted. A democracy is a state whose people are its "management", who direct its actions. A state can be both (like the US), one but not the other (the UK is a democracy but not a republic; North Korea is a republic but not a democracy), or neither (like Saudi Arabia).
"Republic" does not mean "representative democracy".
Well, sure, but now the argument has gone from "it can make as much sent to buy as to rent" to "it can make as much sense to buy as to rent, if we change a bunch of social constructs that make buying disadvantageous".
I guess maybe I was unclear to start with, but I've intended this whole conversation to be about changing social constructs. I never claimed (or meant to claim) that, as everything is set up now, everyone who's renting should just go buy. If they could, I'd have no complaint. I want to change things to make it so that people who would like to buy but are stuck renting now are not in that circumstance anymore; so that nobody is stuck renting when they don't want to be.
Yes the institutions who buy from sellers in one lump sum and sell to buyers on installment will have to buy low and sell high to make a profit from doing that, and the difference between the low buys and high sells will have to cover expected losses like you describe. That's not the same thing as interest, that's an alternative to interest, and one I have no problem with.
As for the friction of transactions, that's a product of human social constructs and can be changed just like anything else.
The long and short of it is, if renting out property was not an option, would-be landlords would have to sell on terms that would-be renters could afford, or else get no money for their property at all. The would-be landlords and other capital-owners collectively control the entire process of the transaction, so if they have the motive, which they would if it were their only option, they could make buying was as easy as renting. You'd get a world where people who rent now are basically doing the same thing, except after "renting" for a long enough period of time they get to stop paying forever, and if they move they can maybe get some of their money back (depending on circumstances like how long they've lived there, a consideration similar to your rent vs buy calculator). So people who would like to settle down and buy but just can't under our current system don't end up dumping way more than the cost of a house down a rent-hole over the course of their lived, but actually end up owning a house for all that money; and people who want to move around a lot can pay the cost for that just like they currently do. Nobody loses, except for the people who no longer get to profit off of just having more wealth than others.
The same logic applies to any other seller of expensive things that most people can't afford: they (directly or through some institutional intermediary) accept payments over time or else don't make any sales, so they'll accept payments over time.
Businesses needing investment can sell equity in themselves. And then buy it back out of their share of the profits later if they want.
And so on. There are ways to accomplish everything that's accomplished via usury without it, while also solving the problems that it causes.
Owners could sell their homes in payments over time, or else sell to an institution who will do so for them. It’s basicall an interest free loan, but if the alternative is no sale then it’s in their self-interest to do so.
Likewise, buyers who aren’t sure they want to stay long term can always sell before they’re done paying it off, for a loss equivalent to what they would otherwise have thrown down a hole on rent.
Violent revolution is a non-starter when the oligarchs have fully automated killbots defending them. (Sorry, "personal safety drones" who will use "less lethal" weapons to subdue you and store you in a "humane containment facility" somewhere the robot-owning overlords don't have to think about you).
Don't get me wrong, I think UBI is a great idea, I just don't have faith in the humanity of the people who have the power to decide whether it happens or not.
I say this every time, but it's worth repeating: all this bad stuff AirBnB does to the rental market, the existence of a rental market at all does to the housing market overall. Owners prefer AirBnB over long term rental which makes long term rental unaffordable. Owners also prefer rental of any kind over sale which makes homeownership unaffordable. Imagine a world where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced temporary housing at AirBnB rates? We live in a world like that already, where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced housing at rental rates.
Ban rent, and watch housing become more affordable.
(NB that interest is merely rent on money, so that's got to go too or else it's just the banks instead of the landlords who end up owning the world. Rent and interest, collectively "usury", the fee for a use, are the central failing of capitalism, the mechanism by which wealth concentrates exponentially, undermining the promise of a free market with parasitism by the capital-owners).
I'm pretty sure nobody who predicted that (many) others would vote for Trump thereby concluded that he would not win. People who thought he wouldn't win thought that because they thought more people were smarter than to vote for him. People who thought enough people could be suckered into it thought he stood a chance, and they turned out to be right. But neither group did any kind of fallacious reasoning. Nobody's stupid enough to think "everyone's gonna vote for him, but not me, so he won't win!"
It's not really surprising. Push people into hard times and their behavior generally gets worse. Look further back into the past and all of humanity "gets pushed" (in the reverse-motion you're watching them in) into harder and harder times, so their behavior "gets" worse as you'd expect.
Things will certainly get better for everyone eventually, the question is just how we get there from here. We could have everything from immediate distribution of the miraculous automation into the ownership of everyone, to only the wealthiest of the wealthy surviving at all, whose descendants then inherit a glorious postscarcity utopia. The glorious postscarcity utopia is coming one way or another (provided we don't somehow destroy ourselves in the way there), but will you or your descendants live to see it, or just someone else('s)?
Slashdot Mirror
I've had to make some physical representations of bitcoins at work (still not clear exactly what use those are), so yeah I don't see why not. Make geobitcoins, I mean. Patents don't work like that.
it's frivolous shit that accomplishes nothing useful or edifying in any way
You mean "it's a hobby/pastime"? Yeah, it is. Like hiking, but with a game overlaid on it.
You're forgetting the actual "cache" part of geocaching! In traditional geocaching, the cache is a cache, a depository, a place where stuff has been stashed away. You bring something to the cache, and swap it with something that's been left behind by a previous geocacher. The traditional objects are custom-made coins, Geocoins, which are trackable online at Geocaching.com.
I'm not a cacher myself but I work for a company that makes stuff like coins and we get a lot of geocacher customers.
The show Dark Matter takes your suggestion. They have a transporter-like technology that sends a copy of you elsewhere, and then when (or if) that copy returns to the transporter, its memories are transmitted back to you and it is disintegrated again. Copies automatically disintegrate after some time anyway (for plot reasons I guess), and if your copy never makes it back to the transporter pod you just wake up out of the pod feeling like nothing happened at all.
Given that that world has also shown the ability to store memories outside of brains besides in this transporter tech, there's no good reason given why the original being transported has to stay in the pod while the clone is away, instead of the the original walking about like normal while the clone is away, the clone's memories just being sent back when it's done, and the original downloading them into their brain whenever it's convenient for them.
What I want to know is why do some people so desperately want to believe this nonsense? What's the angle? What does anyone have to gain from "proving" their nonsense right?
(I guess you could ask that about any kind of nonsense, but I'm asking about this one in particular).
The older I've gotten the less I've felt that my vote matters. Which hasn't changed my voting behavior, just how enthused I am about the whole process, but still. The first time I got to vote, I was super excited to be making a difference in the world, until the news called the election before I could even get to the polls after work on the west coast. And the feeling of futility has only increased since then as I've learned more and more about politics and political science. Voting is an extremely low-cost action though, so even if there seems to be negligible reward to doing it, meh, might as well anyway.
A lot of recruitment into our professional volunteer armies is driven by the fact that people have to work, and working for the army seems like the best option to them. People mostly don't join the army because joining the army sounds like fun, they join the army because if they don't do something they'll starve and joining the army is something so they do that.
In the History tab of an article, you can grab links to diffs of every edit. In your own user contributions page (which even anon ips have) you can find diffs of all your own edits to any pages. I wanted to see a diff of someone reverting your edits, to see what they reverted and why they said they did so. (If your not aware of article histories, you might have missed an edit summary politely telling you why you were reverted).
Yeah, my little edits usually stick. Even the occasional bigger one. Only explanation I can think of for your reported experience is that your edits somehow superficially look likely to be vandalism to, as you say, overzealous editors who probably see tons of actual vandalism and are too quick on the trigger. Do you have an account or are you an anonymous IP editor? (Some people are more suspicious of anons, even though that's actually against policy). Have you had any big fights that might make other users assume bad faith on your part (even though that is also against policy?) Other than that I can't imagine why you have such troubles and I don't.
Can you link to some examples of this happening?
Not that it undermines your main point, but encyclopedias are not even secondary sources, they are tertiary sources. Journals that comment on the importance and significance of primary sources (the original research) are the secondary sources. Wikipedia policy prefers that its own sources be secondary rather than primary, because Wikipedia is not supposed to be a secondary source, it's supposed to be a tertiary source, and relying too much on primary sources is frowned upon as it verges into the territory of "synthesis", which is making a novel point backed by primary sources, instead of just reporting that such a point has been made by a reputable secondary source.
"Wiki's editorial staff" are just its general users. As a casual editor for well over a decade now (as in, I fix up little things I find while reading it, and watch pages on topics I'm interested in for updates and mostly just revert obvious vandalism that hits those pages), I've witnessed my fair share of edit wars, and for the most part I get the feeling that people who have a big problem with Wikipedia's processes are disruptive editors unhappy that they're not successfully able to push their agenda through it.
Also, no encyclopedia is a reputable source in any academic institution. But unlike most encyclopedias, Wikipedia is supposed to point you to the reputable sources that it got its information from, instead of just asking you to trust it.
I literally said "in whose name". That's 100% what a republic is about. For illustration: criminal cases in the United States (a republic) are titled "The People of [wherever] vs [whoever]", while in the United Kingdom (not a republic but a monarchy) they are titled "Rex [or Regina] vs [whoever]" because the action is not in the name of the people but in the name of the king or queen.
Technically republicanism (small R like you're talking about) and democracy are orthogonal concepts. One is about in whose name state power is exercised, the other is about who directs the exercise of it. A republic is a state whose people are its "shareholders", in whose name its actions are conducted. A democracy is a state whose people are its "management", who direct its actions. A state can be both (like the US), one but not the other (the UK is a democracy but not a republic; North Korea is a republic but not a democracy), or neither (like Saudi Arabia).
"Republic" does not mean "representative democracy".
Well, sure, but now the argument has gone from "it can make as much sent to buy as to rent" to "it can make as much sense to buy as to rent, if we change a bunch of social constructs that make buying disadvantageous".
I guess maybe I was unclear to start with, but I've intended this whole conversation to be about changing social constructs. I never claimed (or meant to claim) that, as everything is set up now, everyone who's renting should just go buy. If they could, I'd have no complaint. I want to change things to make it so that people who would like to buy but are stuck renting now are not in that circumstance anymore; so that nobody is stuck renting when they don't want to be.
Replying to both of your replies in one here.
Yes the institutions who buy from sellers in one lump sum and sell to buyers on installment will have to buy low and sell high to make a profit from doing that, and the difference between the low buys and high sells will have to cover expected losses like you describe. That's not the same thing as interest, that's an alternative to interest, and one I have no problem with.
As for the friction of transactions, that's a product of human social constructs and can be changed just like anything else.
The long and short of it is, if renting out property was not an option, would-be landlords would have to sell on terms that would-be renters could afford, or else get no money for their property at all. The would-be landlords and other capital-owners collectively control the entire process of the transaction, so if they have the motive, which they would if it were their only option, they could make buying was as easy as renting. You'd get a world where people who rent now are basically doing the same thing, except after "renting" for a long enough period of time they get to stop paying forever, and if they move they can maybe get some of their money back (depending on circumstances like how long they've lived there, a consideration similar to your rent vs buy calculator). So people who would like to settle down and buy but just can't under our current system don't end up dumping way more than the cost of a house down a rent-hole over the course of their lived, but actually end up owning a house for all that money; and people who want to move around a lot can pay the cost for that just like they currently do. Nobody loses, except for the people who no longer get to profit off of just having more wealth than others.
The same logic applies to any other seller of expensive things that most people can't afford: they (directly or through some institutional intermediary) accept payments over time or else don't make any sales, so they'll accept payments over time.
Businesses needing investment can sell equity in themselves. And then buy it back out of their share of the profits later if they want.
And so on. There are ways to accomplish everything that's accomplished via usury without it, while also solving the problems that it causes.
Owners could sell their homes in payments over time, or else sell to an institution who will do so for them. It’s basicall an interest free loan, but if the alternative is no sale then it’s in their self-interest to do so.
Likewise, buyers who aren’t sure they want to stay long term can always sell before they’re done paying it off, for a loss equivalent to what they would otherwise have thrown down a hole on rent.
Violent revolution is a non-starter when the oligarchs have fully automated killbots defending them. (Sorry, "personal safety drones" who will use "less lethal" weapons to subdue you and store you in a "humane containment facility" somewhere the robot-owning overlords don't have to think about you).
Don't get me wrong, I think UBI is a great idea, I just don't have faith in the humanity of the people who have the power to decide whether it happens or not.
I say this every time, but it's worth repeating: all this bad stuff AirBnB does to the rental market, the existence of a rental market at all does to the housing market overall. Owners prefer AirBnB over long term rental which makes long term rental unaffordable. Owners also prefer rental of any kind over sale which makes homeownership unaffordable. Imagine a world where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced temporary housing at AirBnB rates? We live in a world like that already, where all you can find is ridiculously overpriced housing at rental rates.
Ban rent, and watch housing become more affordable.
(NB that interest is merely rent on money, so that's got to go too or else it's just the banks instead of the landlords who end up owning the world. Rent and interest, collectively "usury", the fee for a use, are the central failing of capitalism, the mechanism by which wealth concentrates exponentially, undermining the promise of a free market with parasitism by the capital-owners).
A big cheap company would be among the first to replace a bunch of expensive humans with one cheap piece of software.
That's all more or less true with regard to economic issues, but we were discussing racial issues.
Our robot-owning overlords are unlikely to offer that option.
I'm pretty sure nobody who predicted that (many) others would vote for Trump thereby concluded that he would not win. People who thought he wouldn't win thought that because they thought more people were smarter than to vote for him. People who thought enough people could be suckered into it thought he stood a chance, and they turned out to be right. But neither group did any kind of fallacious reasoning. Nobody's stupid enough to think "everyone's gonna vote for him, but not me, so he won't win!"
It's not really surprising. Push people into hard times and their behavior generally gets worse. Look further back into the past and all of humanity "gets pushed" (in the reverse-motion you're watching them in) into harder and harder times, so their behavior "gets" worse as you'd expect.
Things will certainly get better for everyone eventually, the question is just how we get there from here. We could have everything from immediate distribution of the miraculous automation into the ownership of everyone, to only the wealthiest of the wealthy surviving at all, whose descendants then inherit a glorious postscarcity utopia. The glorious postscarcity utopia is coming one way or another (provided we don't somehow destroy ourselves in the way there), but will you or your descendants live to see it, or just someone else('s)?
It really should, yeah. But it won't.