Those twenty farm workers end up operating, repairing, and building those pieces of farm machinery instead of breaking their backs in a field and every benefits from the productivity increase.
Not quite...if it took 20 workers to support machinery that did the same amount of work, that wouldn't actually be a productivity increase. The real benefit is that it takes fewer than 20 workers to support the machinery, so the rest can be deployed to other useful activities. (Unfortunately this may result in some being unemployed for a while, but the overall economy benefits).
As far as developers and open source software, there will be fewer developers writing web servers and compilers and similar generic tools. There will be more developers hired to build custom applications using those tools, since more customers will be able to afford them. Overall everybody comes out ahead including developers; open source is the closest thing to a free lunch there is in economics.
Cato is also an almost-paid mouthpiece for big business.
A ludicrous claim, as a cursory glance at their positions would show. But Cato does inspire an extremely hostile reaction from many liberals, who are perhaps threatened by arguments for free markets on the basis of liberty and benefit to ordinary people, as opposed to the all too common corporatist Republican types.
If the on-line service provider model became institutionalized, everyone would adopt it
Why? It's already established that customers overwhelmingly prefer the open Internet. As long as there's any competition whatsoever, it will stay that way.
Because of the centuries of total bullshit shoveled off the exact same truck that you're standing on?
Ah. So testosterone and estrogen and the other large physical differences between the sexes somehow result in no mental differences whatsoever.
This is just like arguing with creationists who insist that evolution can't be true because it would mean that humans are no better than monkeys. Not only is that not what evolution says, it would be an invalid argument from consequences even if it did. "Men and women are the same because if they weren't then discrimination would be justified" is the same pattern of non-logic.
What does it indicate, that jobs with any power attached to them are overwhelmingly male-dominated?
The same thing that the over-representation of men among prison inmates and the mentally retarded indicates: variance in many attributes is greater among men. See here for an expanded argument; in summary, it's a better genetic strategy for women to play it safe and men to roll the dice, thus you end up with more men at both extremes.
Most women won't do that, so guys that wait to be asked are going to stay single.
I suspect it has more to do with being a geek and not being able to read people well. Either we think others are flirting all the time, or just fail to notice anyone who's actually trying to flirt.
Very true. Or we fail to notice anybody trying to flirt because nobody is...
It is well known that aside from all other determiners, a woman will receive less pay than a man.
"Well known" and mostly wrong. A woman with the same experience and education in the same job a man earns 98% of his salary on average. The main source of the gap is that men and women choose different jobs. Some of this is probably due to socialization, but it's never going to go away completely, if for no other reason than that women have babies.
It didn't help that McCain picked an airhead ultra-fundamentalist nutjob as his running mate.
Fundamentalist? She's religious and some people associated with her church have said nutty things. If that were disqualifying, then we wouldn't be talking about President Obama today. As governor Palin has made no attempts to impose her religious beliefs, she's much more focused on economic issues and energy in particular.
The poor people I know who eat like crap don't do it because they can't afford better. They do it because they have no willpower.
I suspect this is largely true. But in their defense, I also belive there's something to Scott Adams's Pleasure Unit Theory. If you have a crappy apartment and a crappy job and are just barely making ends meet, that Big Mac and fries might represent the most enjoyment you can get all day, and resisting it is much harder.
Ultimately, this has to result in fewer paid jobs and/or lower salaries for developers, as businesses realize that they do not have to send as much on technology.
Nope. You're assuming that the demand for software is static, and free software just eliminates some of what otherwise would have gone to paid developers. In reality, free software lowers the barriers for companies and increases the demand for developers. Say I have an idea for a website that I figure can make $100,000. If I can use LAMP and hire a developer to build the site for $75,000, I'll do it. But suppose you got your wish and free software magically vanishes. Now I'd have to pay $5000 for OS licenses, $20,000 for the database, and $10,000 for various other tools (web servers, development tools, compilers, etc). Oops, there goes my profit margin, and the developer never gets hired. Repeat this scenario enough and you've destroyed more jobs than you've saved.
There is absolutely no way to know if manipulation/fraud is being comitted. There is no trail or independent confirmation or any way at all to tell if it is honest.
Not true. For example with online poker, you can use programs that store your entire hand history. Any blatant cheating would be easily detected, and even subtle cheating would show up in a large enough sample size. There are players with databases of millions of hands, and nobody has found any significant deviations from random chance.
Internet Gambling should be outlawed, not because of killjoy prudism or moralizing, but because the state has an obligation to protect its citizens from certain fraud.
Wow. By that logic we should also shut down etrade, because fraud is "certain" to occur in the stock market somewhere. How about letting people make their own decisions about the risks?
Even wellknown "respected" sites can be fraudulant. Take a look at this MSNBC story Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit [msn.com].
Sure. Just like in a live game, players can collude with each other or the dealer. Again, the cheater was caught by statistical analysis of hand records.
Once reason for the virtual machine with Android may be that Google isn't going to be vetting apps as much as Apple. So apps will need some sort of sandbox environment for now.
All apps should always be sandboxed to the maximum extent feasible. Apple or anyone else isn't going to be able to find all bugs that could potentially lead to exploits. Safari on the iPhone has had several vulnerabilities, one of which was even used for "good" as a jailbreak method.
And the name "Milton Friedman" should be never be spoken in business schools again, except to show just how wrong someone can be.
Right, having to bail out a bunch of banks when capitalism goes wrong is so much worse than the mass graves and nuclear meltdowns when socialism goes wrong.
And the name "Milton Friedman" should be never be spoken in business schools again, except to show just how wrong someone can be. Turns out "Free Markets" were nothing more than a mechanism for squeezing wealth out of the lower 95% of the population and pouring it into the pockets of the top 5%.
Really, so the hordes of people standing in line for iPhones and Wiis are in the top 5%? I'd have thought they'd be too busy oppressing their indentured servants.
Because the normal regulations were absent! And why were they absent? They were changed... in Washington!
Those would be the "normal regulations" that brought us Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing and friends? The Bush Administration has nothing to be proud of, but the concept of corporate fraud was not invented on their watch.
The "Ownership Economy" included private equity accounts funded by your social security payments. As you might imagine that idea would have most of America up in arms right now.
Short term, the stock market goes up and down. Long term, it goes up. It's silly to use short term volatility as an argument against holding equities for retirement.
In my case, it has forced me to decline certain job opportunities because relocation is not an option, because of real estate values.
Serious and possibly stupid question: why does it matter that real estate prices have fallen, in terms of relocating? Sure your house has lost value, but the house you'd be moving to will also be cheaper, so doesn't it even out?
while some companies enjoy $11 billion-a-quarter profits
Yes, the employment situation would be much better if no companies were making money. By the way, Exxon paid $32 billion in taxes for that quarter. If you succeed in strangling their profits, you'll need to make that up somewhere.
Inflation is, well, inflating the price of goods, while most Americans' spending power is diminished.
Quite true. Perhaps we should stop burning food and causing its price to rise substantially.
Note that this is the plan the Democrats are pushing minus the drilling for oil now.
Democrats are at best neutral on nuclear. Unfortunately they have to placate their environmentalist wackos, just like Republicans have to placate their fundamentalist nutcases.
Apple's product is its smooth user experience. It creates this by severely limiting options.
This is the common perception, but only with the iPhone has it actually been true. Every Mac comes with free developer tools, and there is no restriction on the software you can build, sell, or give away. Nor does Apple care if you wipe OS X and run Windows or Linux full time. The reason many of us are irritated at what Apple is doing with the iPhone is exactly because it's a change from their usual approach.
But don't whine and complain.
There's nothing wrong with expressing an opinion about the shortcomings of a product, even if it's made by Apple.
What planet are you living on? That $15K is since January 1. Since the market peak it would be a hell of a lot worse than that.
The S&P 500 closed at 1468 the last day of 2007. Today it closed at 1277, so had you invested $80k then you'd have lost about $10.4k. The high point was 1565 last year, which would have resulted in a loss of $14.7k. It would be more if you're talking about the NASDAQ at the peak of the tech bubble, but that isn't appropriate for the bulk of a retirement fund.
Dollar cost averaging is really only good as a strategy for those who wouldn't invest unless they do it once a month.
Well yeah, which is the situation most people are in when saving for retirement. Putting X% of each paycheck in an index fund beats trying to time the market, or saving up a big lump sum and investing it all at once.
My point was to caution him against congratulating himself prematurely for saving $80K. When you think you're smarter than everyone else in the market is when you're in the most danger of losing your shirt.
Fair enough. I read it as a rebuttal of the arguments that it's impossible to save on an average salary, or that there's no point to saving because you "could" lose it in a financial disaster.
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Those twenty farm workers end up operating, repairing, and building those pieces of farm machinery instead of breaking their backs in a field and every benefits from the productivity increase.
Not quite...if it took 20 workers to support machinery that did the same amount of work, that wouldn't actually be a productivity increase. The real benefit is that it takes fewer than 20 workers to support the machinery, so the rest can be deployed to other useful activities. (Unfortunately this may result in some being unemployed for a while, but the overall economy benefits).
As far as developers and open source software, there will be fewer developers writing web servers and compilers and similar generic tools. There will be more developers hired to build custom applications using those tools, since more customers will be able to afford them. Overall everybody comes out ahead including developers; open source is the closest thing to a free lunch there is in economics.
Cato is also an almost-paid mouthpiece for big business.
A ludicrous claim, as a cursory glance at their positions would show. But Cato does inspire an extremely hostile reaction from many liberals, who are perhaps threatened by arguments for free markets on the basis of liberty and benefit to ordinary people, as opposed to the all too common corporatist Republican types.
If the on-line service provider model became institutionalized, everyone would adopt it
Why? It's already established that customers overwhelmingly prefer the open Internet. As long as there's any competition whatsoever, it will stay that way.
so why is there any objection to it?
"The Patriot Act will only be used to catch terrorists".
the more such organizations post crap like this, the lesser my respect for that political viewpoint becomes.
Ah. So I take it you support the Iraq war, legally enforced DRM, massive government surveillance, the war on drugs, and corporate welfare.
DONT accept them into your view.
Freedom bad, check.
the CATO Institute is an influential (in some circles) organization that often does disingenuous intellectual stunts for the GOP
Yes, like supporting the Iraq war, the Patriot Act, the war on drugs, and the DMCA. Oh wait.
Because of the centuries of total bullshit shoveled off the exact same truck that you're standing on?
Ah. So testosterone and estrogen and the other large physical differences between the sexes somehow result in no mental differences whatsoever.
This is just like arguing with creationists who insist that evolution can't be true because it would mean that humans are no better than monkeys. Not only is that not what evolution says, it would be an invalid argument from consequences even if it did. "Men and women are the same because if they weren't then discrimination would be justified" is the same pattern of non-logic.
What does it indicate, that jobs with any power attached to them are overwhelmingly male-dominated?
The same thing that the over-representation of men among prison inmates and the mentally retarded indicates: variance in many attributes is greater among men. See here for an expanded argument; in summary, it's a better genetic strategy for women to play it safe and men to roll the dice, thus you end up with more men at both extremes.
No, if I wanted a date, I would have asked.
Most women won't do that, so guys that wait to be asked are going to stay single.
I suspect it has more to do with being a geek and not being able to read people well. Either we think others are flirting all the time, or just fail to notice anyone who's actually trying to flirt.
Very true. Or we fail to notice anybody trying to flirt because nobody is...
It is well known that aside from all other determiners, a woman will receive less pay than a man.
"Well known" and mostly wrong. A woman with the same experience and education in the same job a man earns 98% of his salary on average. The main source of the gap is that men and women choose different jobs. Some of this is probably due to socialization, but it's never going to go away completely, if for no other reason than that women have babies.
Clinton left office with the economy is great shape. And he did go after terrorists.
Really. So the tech bubble and Enron's accounting and Al Qaeda's 9/11 plans all came into existence in February 2001?
It didn't help that McCain picked an airhead ultra-fundamentalist nutjob as his running mate.
Fundamentalist? She's religious and some people associated with her church have said nutty things. If that were disqualifying, then we wouldn't be talking about President Obama today. As governor Palin has made no attempts to impose her religious beliefs, she's much more focused on economic issues and energy in particular.
The poor people I know who eat like crap don't do it because they can't afford better. They do it because they have no willpower.
I suspect this is largely true. But in their defense, I also belive there's something to Scott Adams's Pleasure Unit Theory. If you have a crappy apartment and a crappy job and are just barely making ends meet, that Big Mac and fries might represent the most enjoyment you can get all day, and resisting it is much harder.
Ultimately, this has to result in fewer paid jobs and/or lower salaries for developers, as businesses realize that they do not have to send as much on technology.
Nope. You're assuming that the demand for software is static, and free software just eliminates some of what otherwise would have gone to paid developers. In reality, free software lowers the barriers for companies and increases the demand for developers. Say I have an idea for a website that I figure can make $100,000. If I can use LAMP and hire a developer to build the site for $75,000, I'll do it. But suppose you got your wish and free software magically vanishes. Now I'd have to pay $5000 for OS licenses, $20,000 for the database, and $10,000 for various other tools (web servers, development tools, compilers, etc). Oops, there goes my profit margin, and the developer never gets hired. Repeat this scenario enough and you've destroyed more jobs than you've saved.
No need for O(N). smartypants = lambda a,b: (b-a+1)*(a+b)//2
There is absolutely no way to know if manipulation/fraud is being comitted. There is no trail or independent confirmation or any way at all to tell if it is honest.
Not true. For example with online poker, you can use programs that store your entire hand history. Any blatant cheating would be easily detected, and even subtle cheating would show up in a large enough sample size. There are players with databases of millions of hands, and nobody has found any significant deviations from random chance.
Internet Gambling should be outlawed, not because of killjoy prudism or moralizing, but because the state has an obligation to protect its citizens from certain fraud.
Wow. By that logic we should also shut down etrade, because fraud is "certain" to occur in the stock market somewhere. How about letting people make their own decisions about the risks?
Even wellknown "respected" sites can be fraudulant. Take a look at this MSNBC story Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit [msn.com].
Sure. Just like in a live game, players can collude with each other or the dealer. Again, the cheater was caught by statistical analysis of hand records.
I use OS X because most apps written on OS X are standardized.
I agree that's a big advantage, and somehow it happens without Apple having veto power over every OS X app.
Once reason for the virtual machine with Android may be that Google isn't going to be vetting apps as much as Apple. So apps will need some sort of sandbox environment for now.
All apps should always be sandboxed to the maximum extent feasible. Apple or anyone else isn't going to be able to find all bugs that could potentially lead to exploits. Safari on the iPhone has had several vulnerabilities, one of which was even used for "good" as a jailbreak method.
And the name "Milton Friedman" should be never be spoken in business schools again, except to show just how wrong someone can be.
Right, having to bail out a bunch of banks when capitalism goes wrong is so much worse than the mass graves and nuclear meltdowns when socialism goes wrong.
And the name "Milton Friedman" should be never be spoken in business schools again, except to show just how wrong someone can be. Turns out "Free Markets" were nothing more than a mechanism for squeezing wealth out of the lower 95% of the population and pouring it into the pockets of the top 5%.
Really, so the hordes of people standing in line for iPhones and Wiis are in the top 5%? I'd have thought they'd be too busy oppressing their indentured servants.
Because the normal regulations were absent! And why were they absent? They were changed... in Washington!
Those would be the "normal regulations" that brought us Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing and friends? The Bush Administration has nothing to be proud of, but the concept of corporate fraud was not invented on their watch.
The "Ownership Economy" included private equity accounts funded by your social security payments. As you might imagine that idea would have most of America up in arms right now.
Short term, the stock market goes up and down. Long term, it goes up. It's silly to use short term volatility as an argument against holding equities for retirement.
In my case, it has forced me to decline certain job opportunities because relocation is not an option, because of real estate values.
Serious and possibly stupid question: why does it matter that real estate prices have fallen, in terms of relocating? Sure your house has lost value, but the house you'd be moving to will also be cheaper, so doesn't it even out?
unemployment is at a record high
Not even close.
while some companies enjoy $11 billion-a-quarter profits
Yes, the employment situation would be much better if no companies were making money. By the way, Exxon paid $32 billion in taxes for that quarter. If you succeed in strangling their profits, you'll need to make that up somewhere.
Inflation is, well, inflating the price of goods, while most Americans' spending power is diminished.
Quite true. Perhaps we should stop burning food and causing its price to rise substantially.
Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, nuclear (Yes nuclear dammit)
Yes.
Note that this is the plan the Democrats are pushing minus the drilling for oil now.
Democrats are at best neutral on nuclear. Unfortunately they have to placate their environmentalist wackos, just like Republicans have to placate their fundamentalist nutcases.
Apple's product is its smooth user experience. It creates this by severely limiting options.
This is the common perception, but only with the iPhone has it actually been true. Every Mac comes with free developer tools, and there is no restriction on the software you can build, sell, or give away. Nor does Apple care if you wipe OS X and run Windows or Linux full time. The reason many of us are irritated at what Apple is doing with the iPhone is exactly because it's a change from their usual approach.
But don't whine and complain.
There's nothing wrong with expressing an opinion about the shortcomings of a product, even if it's made by Apple.
What planet are you living on? That $15K is since January 1. Since the market peak it would be a hell of a lot worse than that.
The S&P 500 closed at 1468 the last day of 2007. Today it closed at 1277, so had you invested $80k then you'd have lost about $10.4k. The high point was 1565 last year, which would have resulted in a loss of $14.7k. It would be more if you're talking about the NASDAQ at the peak of the tech bubble, but that isn't appropriate for the bulk of a retirement fund.
Dollar cost averaging is really only good as a strategy for those who wouldn't invest unless they do it once a month.
Well yeah, which is the situation most people are in when saving for retirement. Putting X% of each paycheck in an index fund beats trying to time the market, or saving up a big lump sum and investing it all at once.
My point was to caution him against congratulating himself prematurely for saving $80K. When you think you're smarter than everyone else in the market is when you're in the most danger of losing your shirt.
Fair enough. I read it as a rebuttal of the arguments that it's impossible to save on an average salary, or that there's no point to saving because you "could" lose it in a financial disaster.