The point is that the sweatshop workers have it about as bad as we westerners did a ca 150 years ago.
Krugman argues that sweatshops is making the real world a better place. These are complex problems and Krugman would probably be the first to argue for a better solution if he saw one (he's not exactly right wing in US politics).
The slave workers have it better in the factories than their previous alternatives (farming, unemployment).
Later, there will be a lack of workers for the traditional job market and hence a push upwards in salary.
At least, that is Krugman's position (well known economist on the left side of US' politics). Google for Krugman and swetshops if you want to see discussion on the subject.
This is one comment earlier than standard, but I thought I'd take the meta discussion directly.
Your writings show the signs of a dishonest debate:
1. You repeatedly refuse to answer my central points (or do straw mans by arguing against 19th century (or African?!?!) versions of the west, which I clearly stated I didn't intend) -- and instead pour vitriol on side issues, most of which are made non-relevant by the central point. The vitriol (e.g. declaring the other's political home and attacking that -- without any background!!) are normally used by nonserious debaters to get a rise out of the other side so they forget the central issues.
2. According to your argument it is always wrong to kick out a dictator since you count the costs to displace a dictator without subtracting the costs of him remaining (numbers murdered per year, lack of freedom, number of tortured, the lowered tendency for the world's generals to kick over their governments, etc). 1/2 a year (with active guerillas!) is a long time to build a democracy from zero?!?! 40 countries on the planet with more oppression, more military aggression, etc, etc than Iraq?!?! (name 20...) You're just not intellectually honest. I don't say your theses are wrong (that is a longer argument), but that your arguments are trivially dishonest.
3. I could keep on with examples of dishonest arguments like in 2 (e.g. get an Amnesty link to jailed dissidents in China and compare the reasons they are there with your (and NY Times') criticism of US policy -- since you argue that there is really no difference China/USA!), but that would make it easier for you to discuss other points instead of either my original point or what I want to discuss in this meta discussion.
(OK, I will give you something to argue about instead of discussing my main point:
Your thesis regarding Iran has a flaw -- it won't be a religious dictatorship for much longer. The majority of their population hates their priests and the longer they are kept down, the more they'll hate the religion when they at last get rid of them. USA probably lets them stew for a while without influences. (-: Now if we could cure the bible belt, too...:-)
Also, for the record -- I'm undecided if I think the Iraq invasion is a good thing. It depends on how USA succeeds in rebuilding the country and avoiding a civil war; sadly, it doesn't look good. I doubt if the use of resources is a net benefit for the world, but it might be good for the people of Iraq.)
(I removed a discussion on my own position (not conservative in any country I know of, but I guess you were just insulting to get a rise out of me) -- if you really care I can post it.)
The reason I do this meta-debate thing, is that I have a question: Why be dishonest?!
If I can't argue for something I think is true, I read up on the subject. Either I change my opinion or I learn new aspects. Realistically, all mine (and everyone else's!) opinions are more or less wrong. What you can do is update your opinions to be more correct. It's no big deal, I've changed opinions dozens to hundreds of times -- and it will happen as many times in the future.
I think that you need your opinions to "win" so much for emotional reasons that you are certain that -- given enough information and arguments -- you will win any discussion. So if you behave non-seriously when your arguments fail, it is OK because you know you're correct, just don't have all data?
But please inform me:
If you're not so sick that you have no introspection, how do you think when you argue side issues that the most important arguments make irrelevant -- or spouts arguments that literally means that it is always wrong to kick out a dictator (you literally argued that 3-4 years of murdered by the dictator is too high a cost for liberation!!).
(The charitable attitude would be to assume that you're used to argue with people of certain opinions and after a while, the next one that sound similar is exactly like that. I've done that, myself! The problem is I've had the same experience I have with you with lots of lefties, so it's hardly so simple.)
First of all, I am not arguing against capitalist DEMOCRACY; I'm arguing against capitalism. Capitalism has nothing to do with democracy. If anything, pure capitalism and pure democracy are contradictory.
Again -- you fail to argue against my thesis:
Show me something that works a fraction as well as a modern western democracy. (Not pre-20th century versions, which you argued against -- their classification is debatable.)
We have press freedom, freedom of opinion (don't try criticism of the ruling government in China!), etc, etc.
Also again, I noted that any experimental societies like anarchism aren't tested over a few decades in country-sized tests. Tests (Soviet etc) has in modern times resulted in literally tens of millions of dead.
I could also note that Saddam's secret policy in just a few "normal" years killed more people than died in the US invasion; as an investment in lives it seems worth it (you seem to value e.g. press/speech freedom as nil). But please show that you understand my often repeated point above before discussing that.
Democratic capitalism is a disgusting and terrible thing - the only thing worse are the alternatives.
Before you recommend some idealistic alternative, please note that most new things fails and the failure mode for those attempts usually involves millions of dead.
Go ahead and experiment, but I'll move if it is close to where I live!
Sadly, I don't think it is possible to do full simulations of societies because those simulations would need to simulate the behaviour of computers that e.g. the financial markets use to decide on their behaviour. And, as I noted, experiments aren't fun...
I won't have time to discuss much this week, for obvious reasons. My most important point is this:
I am arguing that "this is the only thing that has been shown to work -- and all alternatives are ten times worse". You're countering that with "it's not perfect -- foreign policy, world bank, etc".
I'm not arguing that capitalist democracies are perfect, only that they are the best thing we have found. I'm discussing your points below anyway, but your way of arguing is not really relevant.
Yes things fail but so what? As I said, we wouldn't be where we are without trying and failing. Being scared of failure will simply result in no progress at all.
That is obvious -- the results are worse than becoming poorer than Ethiopia... If you consider the attempts over the last hundred years (Cambodia, Soviet, China, etc), which have resulted in destroyed cultures, societies -- and murders of millions of people. Not risks to be taken likely.
But I'll bet that most people would consider Nazism to be worse.
I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious that I was comparing statistics of mass murders. Communism has done it repeatedly (nazism once) and both in larger numbers (Soviet, China) and in larger percentage of the population (Cambodia).
I don't really see much difference -- nazism had socialising agendas, etc. Not a capitalist laissez faire-system and they claimed to be socialist, too.
You live in Sweden and it is one of hte top countries in the world. So the status-quo is very attractive to you
A nice place to live, but the problem is that it doesn't seem to be stable. The economic development has been continously lagging the west world for 30+ years. I'm seriously considering moving, since I don't think this will stop. The taxes are the world's highest but still less and less of the commonly financed things work -- a big problem since few people can afford private alternatives after paying taxes...
I've heard Canada described as "a Sweden that works" and people talking about moving there...
By all means, go ahead and try a new way of organizing a society! New information is good! But I will move out if you try to implement it where I live. I'm a bit shy after living in one that seem to be failing.
Also, implement an exit strategy -- to minimize the number of dead and destroyed lives when it fails (> 90% risk).
In any case, USA, or for that matter any other country, has NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to destablize another country, or invade it, and kill thousands to millions of people! Maybe your morals are different but there is NO EXCUSE for the millions killed over the last 50 years by USA. USA killed over 2 million in Vietnam alone (many of them innocent).
Personally, I don't really care that much about the rights of dictatorships. The Iraq invasion was stupid -- but good for Iraq, I guess, since it was a Stalin-like dictatorship and probably couldn't have been overthrown in any other way. The world is a better place without Hussein -- and if USA manages to create a working Arab democracy to influence the neighbours, the world will be a much, much better place.
All the dead in Vietnam are because of USA? There was no guerilla and army attacks into South Vietnam? North Vietnam wasn't a brutal and disgusting dictatorship worse even than South Vietnam? I don't understand why left-wingers only approve of evil countries without any freedom of speech, safety before the law for the population, etc, etc.
USA isn't a democracy? NY Times and Washington Post seems to unearth more scandals in the US president administration than the rest of the world's media do in all of the world's governments.
I find this fun! Nothing (and certainly not USA!) is perfect -- but leftwingers are both eating and trying to keep their cake here:
Left-wingers usually motivate that the c
Your assumes that the large majority of economists in the world are in a conspiracy. (-: Let me guess -- the Apollo missions were fake, too?:-)
Your argument is exactly why I made the parallel with leftwing believers and creationists.
The creationist theory is that all evolutionary biologists and palaeontologists are in a conspiracy (and/or total idiots). You assume the same about another research area.
As a reason of why that is impossible, consider:
Here in Sweden the government has for a long time had the final word on who gets the professor jobs. This has certainly resulted in politically correct research in some areas, including economy. Sweden has had leftwing governments for most of the last century. But Sweden has just a small subset of the total research in the world! It is not that damaging for the total research
You must be the first one that has ever mentioned 'creationist' and 'communist' in the same sentence.
There are similarities in (at least) the Swedish left-wing arguments on economical research and the creationist arguments.
This criticism from the idealists (religious and political) assumes that all the researchers are either intellectually dishonest (in a conspiracy) or total idiots that fail to realize obvious facts (that are pointed out by the idealists).
Let's take an international example of what I'm writing about...
Leftwing ideology needs (I don't know why) that the majority of personality and talents (not physical talents?) are based on culture and not inherited. Look up e.g. Lysenko. This is contradicted by modern research in the psychology (intelligence research) and evolutionary biology. Marxists have spent lots of time arguing against that research -- in popular media and not in serious publications... (Gould, Lewontin, etc.)
Regarding your examples:
Societies rotten with corruption (like Argentina) don't work well no matter how they are organized... Are there any non-capitalist democracies? Are there any modern non-capitalist societies without large amounts of corruption? Etc, etc, etc ad nauseum. The standard answer here is that capitalist societies are disgusting places -- and that the only thing worse are the alternatives. You have certainly heard that argument multiple times.
What is your point regarding Japan?
I could note that Japan presently doesn't need to pay for an expensive military which, considering their neighbours, they certainly would need without USA. For historical reasons Japan probably finds it advantageous to keep a low profile in both military capabilities and in foreign policy... the present situation is probably better than most alternatives -- from a japanese perspective. Are you claiming USA would military invade a democracy if Japan started to build their own defence? There is no historical example of war between democracies. Please show good support for any such claim.
It do sound like a normal leftwing conspiracy theory (everything bad on the planet is because of USA).
And WHY must a national debt be a bad thing?! Are you a troll?! Is it bad to e.g. borrow money to buy a machine for your company or a house to live in? Investments that give a larger return than the interest is often a good thing.
(India used to have a non-capitalist economy. It didn't work well, like all ways of organizing economies without large capitalist influences.)
Sure, the Indians might think they're getting a good deal right now, but it's draining away their best resources from improving their own country, and they become even more relying on the western countries.
Are you trolling, high or a true believer of some ideology?!
Can you give serious references in support that aren't from some crazy creationist (and/or communist) group?
Did their "best resources" do a good job of "improving their own country" when the Indian economy was terrible for decades of a socialist economy?
From what I've seen, the economists claim that India can use these changes go the same way as Japan and South Korea. Fewer poor is a good thing for humanity IMHO -- unless it destabilizes too much of the world economy.
Why are the large majority of the world's economists wrong? (-: As the creationists claim about the paleontologists -- they are idiots and/or in a conspiracy?:-)
(The present changes sucks only for us that are caught in an industrial shift. It was no fun to be a worker in early industrialization either.)
My thesis is that:
The person behind a proposal is an good heuristic predictor when you review an idea in most areas (probably including science) -- without doing a full research paper on the idea.
For most subjects there are many more ways to be totally wrong than there are ways to be (close to) correct. So, e.g., any randomly choosen answer to a problem (how to stop crime, etc, etc) is almost certainly non-working (or even detrimental).
People of fixed ideas (and of any ideological political (etc) opinions) have pink colored glasses that distort their world view and they base their decisions on how to e.g. solve problems (relevant to their fixed ideas) because of that. This results in an (at least) partly randomly choosen solution -- which probably is bad because randomly choosen solutions don't work (or are incorrect) -- see previous paragraph.
So it is a good heuristic to assume that cranks and people with agendas seldom are correct.
(Of course, the ideology or preconceived opinion might be correct... But it will be accepted if the cranks turn out to do correct predictions. Most to all ideologies are wrong, of course -- see argument above.)
Disclaimer: I'm playing a bit of the devil's advocate here -- at least in the way I've formulated this comment.
Well, you don't need to be an economist to know that the economy tends to be good for people in election years...
Or is that too cynical? Here in Sweden the government takes in about half of BNP, which probably gives the local goverment a larger influence on the country's economy than in the US.
(And, yes, I know -- "too cynical is a contradiction in terms" -- but it seems to fit here.)
Highpowered lasers have a wonderful application --
laser launch. With a bit of luck, those projects will start up again.
I went through the thread with hot mod points, looking for a comment mentioning the one thing as cool as the
Orion project and the/. standard story beanstalks.
Relax, people, military research is good!:-)
(-: But to actually build lots of the military stuff are usually a waste, though.:-)
The sad thing is that many people believe him, because he's rich -- not because he is correct.
To be more specific, even condemned criminals with a history of desinformation are believed not because they are rich -- but because of the size of their ad budget...
(And it probably doesn't hurt when lots of companies with large ad budgets are dependent upon the criminals because of their monopoly control...)
The classical question are -- do media sell ad views or magazines/newspapers?
The only drawback I see to solar power stations on the moon is the expense in buying 1,000,000 of those bright orange 50' extension cords so we can run the power back down to Earth.
Energy transfer from space is a solved problem. microwave antennas can send/receive large amounts of electricity with low losses -- and even safely.
I Googled for a random
reference discussing the subject.
It is yet another space possibility that won't be realized while it costs thousands of dollars to launch a kilo to orbit. That price won't go down while lots of jobs at NASA depends on the shuttle...
And this is only one of the spectacular things that NASA is doing next year.
The problem is that it usually takes NASA multiple years to do what they plan for a year... (and cost overruns are even worse -- was it a hundred times more expensive/pound to orbit than NASA promised?):-(
(And even worse than the shuttle -- the space station.)
What space research needs are for some of the private initiatives to get funded, so the launch costs get down to the level NASA promised for the Shuttle. Then universities can build and send their own space probes. (If weight wasn't such a concern for something to be launched, they will be much cheaper to build, too.)
You missed something about the historical tradeoff -- some fat cats usually lose in the beginning. We are the fat cats. I doubt there is a difference between historical examples and this, unless the boat is rocked hard enough by the transition to turn over.
The standard of living will increase really fast in Asia, etc. Their salaries will increase. The standard of living in the west will go down now, but will turn up again -- together with the Asian standard.
In 30-40 years the world will probably be a better place than if this hadn't happened.
I'm not certain I have enough spiritual greatness to humbly accept that life as I know it is destroyed for a good cause.
But since I don't have any choice, I might as well be gracious about it -- and look like a cool and though guy, willing to take one for the best of the world...:-(
Health care should be hard to ship off? Any interesting job there takes lots of education.
The number of fields are constrained because, frankly, most computer people (including myself) I know are not into computers because of our excellent people skills...
A non-shippable career that a technical background could help is crime.:-)
It seems like the industrialization in the 19th century. Before everything stabilized and things got better with a higher standard of living, it sucked even worse for most people than the previous period.
Well, it will be good for our grandchildren when the whole world have a good life -- and not only the west.
From ISR's FAQ
on space elevators, it is: 7.5 kg/km
Disclaimer: I'm an undergrad physics student with a headache.
(-: I haven't studied physics since high school, but don't have a headache -- and had the energy to check the FAQ. The moral of this is left for the reader to think out, but probably has something to do about how students should limit alcohol intake.:-)
My taxes are NOT higher than those I would pay in the US.
If so, those in the USA pay taxes for other things (-: larger military?:-) with their taxes.
I am willing to believe/hope you are right and that a public health care system could be implemented better than the garbage we have here in Sweden. Sweden has the world's highest taxes -- and not much of the publically financed areas are work well (e.g. police, education or health care).
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that the sweatshop workers have it about as bad as we westerners did a ca 150 years ago.
Krugman argues that sweatshops is making the real world a better place. These are complex problems and Krugman would probably be the first to argue for a better solution if he saw one (he's not exactly right wing in US politics).
Later, there will be a lack of workers for the traditional job market and hence a push upwards in salary.
At least, that is Krugman's position (well known economist on the left side of US' politics). Google for Krugman and swetshops if you want to see discussion on the subject.
I'm not certain if I should put ":-(" or ":-)" on this one.
Your writings show the signs of a dishonest debate:
1. You repeatedly refuse to answer my central points (or do straw mans by arguing against 19th century (or African?!?!) versions of the west, which I clearly stated I didn't intend) -- and instead pour vitriol on side issues, most of which are made non-relevant by the central point. The vitriol (e.g. declaring the other's political home and attacking that -- without any background!!) are normally used by nonserious debaters to get a rise out of the other side so they forget the central issues.
2. According to your argument it is always wrong to kick out a dictator since you count the costs to displace a dictator without subtracting the costs of him remaining (numbers murdered per year, lack of freedom, number of tortured, the lowered tendency for the world's generals to kick over their governments, etc). 1/2 a year (with active guerillas!) is a long time to build a democracy from zero?!?! 40 countries on the planet with more oppression, more military aggression, etc, etc than Iraq?!?! (name 20...) You're just not intellectually honest. I don't say your theses are wrong (that is a longer argument), but that your arguments are trivially dishonest.
3. I could keep on with examples of dishonest arguments like in 2 (e.g. get an Amnesty link to jailed dissidents in China and compare the reasons they are there with your (and NY Times') criticism of US policy -- since you argue that there is really no difference China/USA!), but that would make it easier for you to discuss other points instead of either my original point or what I want to discuss in this meta discussion.
(OK, I will give you something to argue about instead of discussing my main point: :-)
Your thesis regarding Iran has a flaw -- it won't be a religious dictatorship for much longer. The majority of their population hates their priests and the longer they are kept down, the more they'll hate the religion when they at last get rid of them. USA probably lets them stew for a while without influences. (-: Now if we could cure the bible belt, too...
Also, for the record -- I'm undecided if I think the Iraq invasion is a good thing. It depends on how USA succeeds in rebuilding the country and avoiding a civil war; sadly, it doesn't look good. I doubt if the use of resources is a net benefit for the world, but it might be good for the people of Iraq.)
(I removed a discussion on my own position (not conservative in any country I know of, but I guess you were just insulting to get a rise out of me) -- if you really care I can post it.)
The reason I do this meta-debate thing, is that I have a question: Why be dishonest?!
If I can't argue for something I think is true, I read up on the subject. Either I change my opinion or I learn new aspects. Realistically, all mine (and everyone else's!) opinions are more or less wrong. What you can do is update your opinions to be more correct. It's no big deal, I've changed opinions dozens to hundreds of times -- and it will happen as many times in the future.
I think that you need your opinions to "win" so much for emotional reasons that you are certain that -- given enough information and arguments -- you will win any discussion. So if you behave non-seriously when your arguments fail, it is OK because you know you're correct, just don't have all data?
But please inform me:
If you're not so sick that you have no introspection, how do you think when you argue side issues that the most important arguments make irrelevant -- or spouts arguments that literally means that it is always wrong to kick out a dictator (you literally argued that 3-4 years of murdered by the dictator is too high a cost for liberation!!).
(The charitable attitude would be to assume that you're used to argue with people of certain opinions and after a while, the next one that sound similar is exactly like that. I've done that, myself! The problem is I've had the same experience I have with you with lots of lefties, so it's hardly so simple.)
Show me something that works a fraction as well as a modern western democracy. (Not pre-20th century versions, which you argued against -- their classification is debatable.)
We have press freedom, freedom of opinion (don't try criticism of the ruling government in China!), etc, etc.
Also again, I noted that any experimental societies like anarchism aren't tested over a few decades in country-sized tests. Tests (Soviet etc) has in modern times resulted in literally tens of millions of dead.
I could also note that Saddam's secret policy in just a few "normal" years killed more people than died in the US invasion; as an investment in lives it seems worth it (you seem to value e.g. press/speech freedom as nil). But please show that you understand my often repeated point above before discussing that.
It should then be enough to copy the BSD comments in the beginning and replace the copyright on errno.h, signal.h, etc.
Or?
(As another user noted, errno.h et al are also parts of ANSI standards for C...)
Otherwise -- thanks, SCO -- finally I might get a kick on my backside to take the trouble to install and try OpenBSD! :-)
Before you recommend some idealistic alternative, please note that most new things fails and the failure mode for those attempts usually involves millions of dead.
Go ahead and experiment, but I'll move if it is close to where I live!
Sadly, I don't think it is possible to do full simulations of societies because those simulations would need to simulate the behaviour of computers that e.g. the financial markets use to decide on their behaviour. And, as I noted, experiments aren't fun...
I am arguing that "this is the only thing that has been shown to work -- and all alternatives are ten times worse". You're countering that with "it's not perfect -- foreign policy, world bank, etc".
I'm not arguing that capitalist democracies are perfect, only that they are the best thing we have found. I'm discussing your points below anyway, but your way of arguing is not really relevant.
That is obvious -- the results are worse than becoming poorer than Ethiopia... If you consider the attempts over the last hundred years (Cambodia, Soviet, China, etc), which have resulted in destroyed cultures, societies -- and murders of millions of people. Not risks to be taken likely.
I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious that I was comparing statistics of mass murders. Communism has done it repeatedly (nazism once) and both in larger numbers (Soviet, China) and in larger percentage of the population (Cambodia).
I don't really see much difference -- nazism had socialising agendas, etc. Not a capitalist laissez faire-system and they claimed to be socialist, too.
A nice place to live, but the problem is that it doesn't seem to be stable. The economic development has been continously lagging the west world for 30+ years. I'm seriously considering moving, since I don't think this will stop. The taxes are the world's highest but still less and less of the commonly financed things work -- a big problem since few people can afford private alternatives after paying taxes...
I've heard Canada described as "a Sweden that works" and people talking about moving there...
By all means, go ahead and try a new way of organizing a society! New information is good! But I will move out if you try to implement it where I live. I'm a bit shy after living in one that seem to be failing.
Also, implement an exit strategy -- to minimize the number of dead and destroyed lives when it fails (> 90% risk).
Personally, I don't really care that much about the rights of dictatorships. The Iraq invasion was stupid -- but good for Iraq, I guess, since it was a Stalin-like dictatorship and probably couldn't have been overthrown in any other way. The world is a better place without Hussein -- and if USA manages to create a working Arab democracy to influence the neighbours, the world will be a much, much better place.
All the dead in Vietnam are because of USA? There was no guerilla and army attacks into South Vietnam? North Vietnam wasn't a brutal and disgusting dictatorship worse even than South Vietnam? I don't understand why left-wingers only approve of evil countries without any freedom of speech, safety before the law for the population, etc, etc.
USA isn't a democracy? NY Times and Washington Post seems to unearth more scandals in the US president administration than the rest of the world's media do in all of the world's governments.
I find this fun! Nothing (and certainly not USA!) is perfect -- but leftwingers are both eating and trying to keep their cake here:
Left-wingers usually motivate that the c
Your argument is exactly why I made the parallel with leftwing believers and creationists.
The creationist theory is that all evolutionary biologists and palaeontologists are in a conspiracy (and/or total idiots). You assume the same about another research area.
As a reason of why that is impossible, consider:
Here in Sweden the government has for a long time had the final word on who gets the professor jobs. This has certainly resulted in politically correct research in some areas, including economy. Sweden has had leftwing governments for most of the last century. But Sweden has just a small subset of the total research in the world! It is not that damaging for the total research
This criticism from the idealists (religious and political) assumes that all the researchers are either intellectually dishonest (in a conspiracy) or total idiots that fail to realize obvious facts (that are pointed out by the idealists).
Let's take an international example of what I'm writing about...
Leftwing ideology needs (I don't know why) that the majority of personality and talents (not physical talents?) are based on culture and not inherited. Look up e.g. Lysenko. This is contradicted by modern research in the psychology (intelligence research) and evolutionary biology. Marxists have spent lots of time arguing against that research -- in popular media and not in serious publications... (Gould, Lewontin, etc.)
Regarding your examples:
Societies rotten with corruption (like Argentina) don't work well no matter how they are organized... Are there any non-capitalist democracies? Are there any modern non-capitalist societies without large amounts of corruption? Etc, etc, etc ad nauseum. The standard answer here is that capitalist societies are disgusting places -- and that the only thing worse are the alternatives. You have certainly heard that argument multiple times.
What is your point regarding Japan?
I could note that Japan presently doesn't need to pay for an expensive military which, considering their neighbours, they certainly would need without USA. For historical reasons Japan probably finds it advantageous to keep a low profile in both military capabilities and in foreign policy... the present situation is probably better than most alternatives -- from a japanese perspective. Are you claiming USA would military invade a democracy if Japan started to build their own defence? There is no historical example of war between democracies. Please show good support for any such claim.
It do sound like a normal leftwing conspiracy theory (everything bad on the planet is because of USA).
And WHY must a national debt be a bad thing?! Are you a troll?! Is it bad to e.g. borrow money to buy a machine for your company or a house to live in? Investments that give a larger return than the interest is often a good thing.
(India used to have a non-capitalist economy. It didn't work well, like all ways of organizing economies without large capitalist influences.)
I think that was all.
Can you give serious references in support that aren't from some crazy creationist (and/or communist) group?
Did their "best resources" do a good job of "improving their own country" when the Indian economy was terrible for decades of a socialist economy?
From what I've seen, the economists claim that India can use these changes go the same way as Japan and South Korea. Fewer poor is a good thing for humanity IMHO -- unless it destabilizes too much of the world economy.
Why are the large majority of the world's economists wrong? (-: As the creationists claim about the paleontologists -- they are idiots and/or in a conspiracy? :-)
(The present changes sucks only for us that are caught in an industrial shift. It was no fun to be a worker in early industrialization either.)
Your opinion reminds me of that kind of "Swedish movies" that are made in California with actors that don't even know the term "smorgasbord"... :-)
The person behind a proposal is an good heuristic predictor when you review an idea in most areas (probably including science) -- without doing a full research paper on the idea.
For most subjects there are many more ways to be totally wrong than there are ways to be (close to) correct. So, e.g., any randomly choosen answer to a problem (how to stop crime, etc, etc) is almost certainly non-working (or even detrimental).
People of fixed ideas (and of any ideological political (etc) opinions) have pink colored glasses that distort their world view and they base their decisions on how to e.g. solve problems (relevant to their fixed ideas) because of that. This results in an (at least) partly randomly choosen solution -- which probably is bad because randomly choosen solutions don't work (or are incorrect) -- see previous paragraph.
So it is a good heuristic to assume that cranks and people with agendas seldom are correct.
(Of course, the ideology or preconceived opinion might be correct... But it will be accepted if the cranks turn out to do correct predictions. Most to all ideologies are wrong, of course -- see argument above.)
Disclaimer: I'm playing a bit of the devil's advocate here -- at least in the way I've formulated this comment.
Oops, you can't buy the original version anymore?!
Sigh, not lost like tears in rain, I hope?
Or is that too cynical? Here in Sweden the government takes in about half of BNP, which probably gives the local goverment a larger influence on the country's economy than in the US.
(And, yes, I know -- "too cynical is a contradiction in terms" -- but it seems to fit here.)
I went through the thread with hot mod points, looking for a comment mentioning the one thing as cool as the Orion project and the /. standard story beanstalks.
Relax, people, military research is good! :-)
(-: But to actually build lots of the military stuff are usually a waste, though. :-)
(And it probably doesn't hurt when lots of companies with large ad budgets are dependent upon the criminals because of their monopoly control...)
The classical question are -- do media sell ad views or magazines/newspapers?
They could even advertise in a cool comic! Lucifer, the Sandman followup. :-)
" Why settle with the lesser of two evils?
Forget Cthulhu -- go Microsoft!
Let's go to a hot place today! "
I Googled for a random reference discussing the subject.
It is yet another space possibility that won't be realized while it costs thousands of dollars to launch a kilo to orbit. That price won't go down while lots of jobs at NASA depends on the shuttle...
(And even worse than the shuttle -- the space station.)
What space research needs are for some of the private initiatives to get funded, so the launch costs get down to the level NASA promised for the Shuttle. Then universities can build and send their own space probes. (If weight wasn't such a concern for something to be launched, they will be much cheaper to build, too.)
The standard of living will increase really fast in Asia, etc. Their salaries will increase. The standard of living in the west will go down now, but will turn up again -- together with the Asian standard.
In 30-40 years the world will probably be a better place than if this hadn't happened.
I'm not certain I have enough spiritual greatness to humbly accept that life as I know it is destroyed for a good cause.
But since I don't have any choice, I might as well be gracious about it -- and look like a cool and though guy, willing to take one for the best of the world... :-(
The number of fields are constrained because, frankly, most computer people (including myself) I know are not into computers because of our excellent people skills...
A non-shippable career that a technical background could help is crime. :-)
It seems like the industrialization in the 19th century. Before everything stabilized and things got better with a higher standard of living, it sucked even worse for most people than the previous period.
Well, it will be good for our grandchildren when the whole world have a good life -- and not only the west.
And, yes, I know that you certainly know that. It was a joke, too. :-)
I am willing to believe/hope you are right and that a public health care system could be implemented better than the garbage we have here in Sweden. Sweden has the world's highest taxes -- and not much of the publically financed areas are work well (e.g. police, education or health care).