Actually, "enlightened" communism (sorry for the scare quotes, but it's so unlikely in practice that I can't help it) is much more dependent on rational actors than libertarianism. Presumably what you mean by "enlightened" communism is left anarchism, in which the state has withered away, and everyone agrees to share all resources without a central authority. In this scenario, a single bad actor can screw up the entire system. Once he stops playing by the rules, the only way to bring him back in line is by the use of force, i.e. the coercive power of the state, which the society has supposedly given up. Libertarianism does not have this flaw (it has other flaws; I'm not arguing in favor of it; it's just a less bad idea than left anarchism).
As to your second point, a "war economy" is a good example of the fact that what governments are good at (and markets bad at) is allocating public goods. National defense is a public good. When the defense crisis is an existential one (as in a total war), it may make sense for the government to cause a vast array of national resources to be brought to bear on the problem.
But one has to be very careful not to let these wartime institutions bleed over into peactime. In the U.S. we're still paying for wartime interventions not only from World War II, but even World War I!
Also, "working towards a specific goal" isn't the right way to put it. There are lots of specific goals we may wish to achieve. That doesn't justify bringing the full power of the state to bear on them, though. It was a huge mistake to try to use government intervention to ration and spend our way out of the Great Depression, for example. FDR tried to propagandize it as a "war on poverty", but what it really was was the government trying to do what you're suggesting: accomplish some great short-term goal by mobilizing state control. It failed miserably.
I don't mean to bring the smackdown on you here, but that's not what elasticity means. Elasticity is a (static!!) measure of the ratio between changes in demand and changes in price. So if a 20% rise in demand leads to a 10% rise in price, that's an elasticity of 2.0. A 10% rise in demand causing a 20% rise in price is an elasticity of 0.5. Both situations are common.
What you're talking about is a dynamic effect, and again, it works both ways. It's simply not true to say that markets only price a shortage after it has occurred; the truth is that they are often priced in well before they happen, if they are forecast to happen. Even if there is no shortage being forecast, the possibility of a shortage may be priced in if the supply has been volatile in the past.
Obviously markets are not perfect at this. It's possible to come up with scenarios in which a sudden unexpected shortage has caused prices to spike (look at Katrina's effect on U.S. gasoline prices, for example). (And it could be argued that such a temporary spike in an inelastic - proper usage - product like gasoline is worse than the alternative, which is fiat rationing by the government. I don't think it's a winnable argument in most cases, but there are points to be made for that position.) The question is: what authority would do better consistently enough to make a difference? Markets are really good at coming up with efficient prices, especially for tangible goods used in industrial production. It's really quite absurd to argue otherwise. There are plenty of other reasonable arguments against unfettered markets; this just isn't one of them.
Those of us who do run out of copper will suffer from our copper loss.
That's certainly true in the short run. (And in the long run, as Keynes famously said, "we're all dead.") If you think I'm "OK" with this then you're reading something from my post that I didn't write. What I would argue is that we should be as careful as possible about bringing in the heavy hand of government to "solve" these frictional problems, since it tends to cause more problems that it solves. (Not always. Just usually.)
Replace copper in the past section with water. Natural resource, scarce, of public concern. Not a free market issue. A policy issue. And policy is best handled by government, not by corporations.
On this point I can't agree even slightly. Allocating scarce resources is the fundamental problem markets solve well. Governments are good at allocating public goods (and restricting externalities), but neither copper nor fresh water are public goods. (Fresh water is closer given that pollution is an externality, but still - it really isn't one.)
That's truly the beauty of the free market. If copper starts to get scarce, the price goes up. This allows copper mining companies to invest more money to find new sources or extend existing ones. If that doesn't work, then the economics of recycling become more favorable. And if that doesn't work, then the economics of replacing copper with a cheaper alternative become favorable. Given all this, it's nearly impossible to actually run out of copper.
Beyond that, though, the price of copper declined significantly between 1970 and today. Granted, 1970 was a local maximum, but the current inflation-adjusted price is under half what it was then. We're not running out of copper any time soon.
Well, at least that kind of crap won't go all grey-goo on us. It's the robust, well-written replicator that can handle a few mutations and still work that'll kick our asses.
It might make you feel better to know that those star naming deals are scams. They are not creating official names. What they tell you (in very careful language) is that the name you choose will go in the [insert important-sounding catalog name]. But that catalog is really just one they keep. Scientists don't use it.
Also, according to Wikipedia, when these high-schoolers name the asteroid, the IAU gets to vet the name. If it's "Johnsmithisajerk", they'll probably say no.
11/9 was just big because it was in the US. Anti-US sentiment aside, the US is simply a more influential country than any of those affected by the Tsunami. US has very a powerful media and politic, so of course its going to be well covered.
9/11 was big because it was caused by people. The tsunami was caused by nature. Comparing responses to them is like comparing responses to a murder versus a heart attack.
We haven't signed a treaty banning air-to-air missiles, either. By your logic, we shouldn't have complained about the Russian shoot-down of Korean Air Flight 007. Right?
In pedantic mode: Of course you have to worry about bounds checking (or at least existence checking). What if you want to add a new giraffe at an existing key? If you don't check first, you'll overwrite the previous entry. Surely that's not what you want.
Geez, of course it is! I was thinking 6 times 660 and wrote 2000, but of course it's 4000. Still doesn't change my point much - accelerating another 13,500 mph is not a whole lot easier than accelerating another 15,500 mph.
If you can get up to 100,000 feet and Mach 6 on scramjet power, wouldn't that dramatically reduce the rocket's fuel requirements for going the rest of the way?
Sure, it helps. But all you're really saving is the weight of oxidizer for the scramjet portion of flight. This weight savings has to be balanced against the need to carry two types of engines (or one type of hybrid engine, if you can design it). This is not to mention the added complexity. I'm not saying this can't be solved, but it isn't trivial. Just making scramjets won't get us there.
Well, let's think about that for a second. Mach 6 at high altitude is (roughly) 2,000 mph. Orbital velocity at LEO is around 17,500 mph. It's really hard to get into orbit.
Yes, we really should be talking about IRBMs (Intermediate Range...). The nations that we're most worried about right now can't field ICBMs, only IRBMs.
Note that an IRBM isn't a cruise missile. It's a ballistic missile with a range of hundreds to a couple thousand miles.
Well, suppose hypothetically that you're an insane squinty freak in charge of a large nation, and you want to "erase from the map" a small liberal democracy not too far away. You have a few nukes. You don't really care what happens to your nation - you're exploiting the shit out of it anyway, and you've socked away a few billion in a Swiss account. You make sure you're "on vacation" when the attack happens.
Effectively, they're a very good form of suicide... [and therefore would never happen].
Shouldn't all arguments of this type have ended on 9/11/2001?
It'd be much more effective to smuggle in some sort of device, even with the "heightened border security" that we have these days.
For the U.S., that's the scarier scenario, since we don't have any nearby ICBM-capable nations that are likely to fire them at us. But lots of our allies do.
Does this also mean that a large enough black hole can't emit Hawking's radiation, because the photons would need to have a larger wavelength than can fit into the universe?
Maybe. But it might just mean that large black holes emit the photons at a lower rate.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, "enlightened" communism (sorry for the scare quotes, but it's so unlikely in practice that I can't help it) is much more dependent on rational actors than libertarianism. Presumably what you mean by "enlightened" communism is left anarchism, in which the state has withered away, and everyone agrees to share all resources without a central authority. In this scenario, a single bad actor can screw up the entire system. Once he stops playing by the rules, the only way to bring him back in line is by the use of force, i.e. the coercive power of the state, which the society has supposedly given up. Libertarianism does not have this flaw (it has other flaws; I'm not arguing in favor of it; it's just a less bad idea than left anarchism).
As to your second point, a "war economy" is a good example of the fact that what governments are good at (and markets bad at) is allocating public goods. National defense is a public good. When the defense crisis is an existential one (as in a total war), it may make sense for the government to cause a vast array of national resources to be brought to bear on the problem.
But one has to be very careful not to let these wartime institutions bleed over into peactime. In the U.S. we're still paying for wartime interventions not only from World War II, but even World War I!
Also, "working towards a specific goal" isn't the right way to put it. There are lots of specific goals we may wish to achieve. That doesn't justify bringing the full power of the state to bear on them, though. It was a huge mistake to try to use government intervention to ration and spend our way out of the Great Depression, for example. FDR tried to propagandize it as a "war on poverty", but what it really was was the government trying to do what you're suggesting: accomplish some great short-term goal by mobilizing state control. It failed miserably.
I totally made it up, actually. Sorry. :) I'm sure you're right.
I don't mean to bring the smackdown on you here, but that's not what elasticity means. Elasticity is a (static!!) measure of the ratio between changes in demand and changes in price. So if a 20% rise in demand leads to a 10% rise in price, that's an elasticity of 2.0. A 10% rise in demand causing a 20% rise in price is an elasticity of 0.5. Both situations are common.
What you're talking about is a dynamic effect, and again, it works both ways. It's simply not true to say that markets only price a shortage after it has occurred; the truth is that they are often priced in well before they happen, if they are forecast to happen. Even if there is no shortage being forecast, the possibility of a shortage may be priced in if the supply has been volatile in the past.
Obviously markets are not perfect at this. It's possible to come up with scenarios in which a sudden unexpected shortage has caused prices to spike (look at Katrina's effect on U.S. gasoline prices, for example). (And it could be argued that such a temporary spike in an inelastic - proper usage - product like gasoline is worse than the alternative, which is fiat rationing by the government. I don't think it's a winnable argument in most cases, but there are points to be made for that position.) The question is: what authority would do better consistently enough to make a difference? Markets are really good at coming up with efficient prices, especially for tangible goods used in industrial production. It's really quite absurd to argue otherwise. There are plenty of other reasonable arguments against unfettered markets; this just isn't one of them.
Actually, the guy 400 yards away with the high-powered rifle has the advantage. As was verified in this case.
That's certainly true in the short run. (And in the long run, as Keynes famously said, "we're all dead.") If you think I'm "OK" with this then you're reading something from my post that I didn't write. What I would argue is that we should be as careful as possible about bringing in the heavy hand of government to "solve" these frictional problems, since it tends to cause more problems that it solves. (Not always. Just usually.)
On this point I can't agree even slightly. Allocating scarce resources is the fundamental problem markets solve well. Governments are good at allocating public goods (and restricting externalities), but neither copper nor fresh water are public goods. (Fresh water is closer given that pollution is an externality, but still - it really isn't one.)
That's truly the beauty of the free market. If copper starts to get scarce, the price goes up. This allows copper mining companies to invest more money to find new sources or extend existing ones. If that doesn't work, then the economics of recycling become more favorable. And if that doesn't work, then the economics of replacing copper with a cheaper alternative become favorable. Given all this, it's nearly impossible to actually run out of copper.
Beyond that, though, the price of copper declined significantly between 1970 and today. Granted, 1970 was a local maximum, but the current inflation-adjusted price is under half what it was then. We're not running out of copper any time soon.
Well, at least that kind of crap won't go all grey-goo on us. It's the robust, well-written replicator that can handle a few mutations and still work that'll kick our asses.
Listen, John Edwards, I know the campaign isn't working out too well for you, but you're not going to save it by posting on Slashdot.
Yes, I long for days of yore, when politicians were experts who had deep insight into their subjects and consistently made good choices.
It might make you feel better to know that those star naming deals are scams. They are not creating official names. What they tell you (in very careful language) is that the name you choose will go in the [insert important-sounding catalog name]. But that catalog is really just one they keep. Scientists don't use it.
Also, according to Wikipedia, when these high-schoolers name the asteroid, the IAU gets to vet the name. If it's "Johnsmithisajerk", they'll probably say no.
9/11 was big because it was caused by people. The tsunami was caused by nature. Comparing responses to them is like comparing responses to a murder versus a heart attack.
We haven't signed a treaty banning air-to-air missiles, either. By your logic, we shouldn't have complained about the Russian shoot-down of Korean Air Flight 007. Right?
What does this mean exactly? You don't believe they exist? You don't believe they work?
In pedantic mode: Of course you have to worry about bounds checking (or at least existence checking). What if you want to add a new giraffe at an existing key? If you don't check first, you'll overwrite the previous entry. Surely that's not what you want.
Yeah, but that's hard to iterate over. Let's go with: giraffe[0], giraffe[1], giraffe[2], giraffe[3], giraffe[4], giraffe[5].
Plus, if Palau ever gets a little uppity - ZAP!
Geez, of course it is! I was thinking 6 times 660 and wrote 2000, but of course it's 4000. Still doesn't change my point much - accelerating another 13,500 mph is not a whole lot easier than accelerating another 15,500 mph.
Sure, it helps. But all you're really saving is the weight of oxidizer for the scramjet portion of flight. This weight savings has to be balanced against the need to carry two types of engines (or one type of hybrid engine, if you can design it). This is not to mention the added complexity. I'm not saying this can't be solved, but it isn't trivial. Just making scramjets won't get us there.
Well, let's think about that for a second. Mach 6 at high altitude is (roughly) 2,000 mph. Orbital velocity at LEO is around 17,500 mph. It's really hard to get into orbit.
Yes, we really should be talking about IRBMs (Intermediate Range...). The nations that we're most worried about right now can't field ICBMs, only IRBMs.
Note that an IRBM isn't a cruise missile. It's a ballistic missile with a range of hundreds to a couple thousand miles.
Well, suppose hypothetically that you're an insane squinty freak in charge of a large nation, and you want to "erase from the map" a small liberal democracy not too far away. You have a few nukes. You don't really care what happens to your nation - you're exploiting the shit out of it anyway, and you've socked away a few billion in a Swiss account. You make sure you're "on vacation" when the attack happens.
Shouldn't all arguments of this type have ended on 9/11/2001?
For the U.S., that's the scarier scenario, since we don't have any nearby ICBM-capable nations that are likely to fire them at us. But lots of our allies do.
Of course they were confused. That should be "niner".
Thank Bog it wasn't a Norrisaurus!
Complete definition of pi:
4 * sum(i=1 to infinity) { (-1)^(i-1) (1/i) }
Maybe. But it might just mean that large black holes emit the photons at a lower rate.