I've read a couple of Edison biographies. One of them left me with the impression that he was frequently on the edge of being insolvent. As a businessman, good possibly, but not great.
You have fallen for the fallacy of the stolen concept.
any definition we may decide on, can "easily" be faked.
Who would be faked, and who would do the faking? Do you think that the person doing the faking could have the idea that he is doing faking, without first having the idea that he himself exists?
The claim that we don't understand life is mysticism and poppycock. Many aspects are well worked out.There are a lot of details that remain, and there are sure to be surprises and new principles to be found yet. By sheer volume of things not yet done, most of the work is ahead. But we understand a great deal and life is not a secret.
Insurance has no necessary connection to health care. Insurance is part of the reason health care is so expensive. Health care involves a patient paying a doctor for health services. Placing an insurance company between them provides a fat income for insurance company employees and owners, with the only benefit to the patient being risk diffusion. One substantial disadvantage of health insurance is that it disconnects the patient from cost considerations: he doesn't care how much his treatment costs, so prices rise. Another is that insurance companies are a target for fraud: prices rise. Another is that insurance encourages people to take health risks and ignore responsibility for their own health because they don't pay in proportion to their body's damage: health is worse and prices rise.
Most things that can be learned don't need to be taught. All professions that need a college education, do not need college teaching for all parts of the knowledge required by that profession. In other words, the money spent on a college education is either partly or totally a waste.
Political pressure from Democrats to make bad loans, bad changes in banking laws caused by both parties.
Why wasn't it stopped by regulation?
Political pressure from Democrats
How can such a small number of private institutions have so much impact and power over the world economy?
Dodd-Frank (Democrats) among other things, makes the overhead expenses of large banks smaller in relation to their size. Large banks can afford bribes. The Federal Reserve, the World Bank, and other conspiracies.
How can we stop this kind of crash from happening again?
Ah, the tough question. Fractional reserve banking is a risk-reward problem, and the allowed leverage must be reduced gradually on a schedule announced completely in advance and taking place over a couple of decades. (Alternately, banks must prominently display how heavily they're leveraged, so that consumers can use it as a guide to their safety.) The Federal Reserve must be abolished, and the power of issuing money returned to the government. Failed banks have to be broken up, and the pieces not allowed to be incorporated into existing large banks. Bank mergers are prohibited outright. -- But I'm not competent to evaluate those ideas, I'm just guessing.
Are cyclical crisis inevitable in capitalism?
Overexpansion on credit seems to be a human foible, and that means some amount of cycles in economic activity. Government meddling makes cycles deeper and thus worse. (Businesses with political influence, that are running at a loss, get loans or loan guarantees from the government. The business, now propped up by the government, continues to lose money due to bad management. Eventually the company fails, with bigger losses and a bigger hit to the economy than if it had been allowed to fail earlier.)
The question is not "is it profitable on your roof" but "is it profitable on your roof without subsidies" including subsidies provided to the manufacturer and to the retailer, which you never see. The answer is "it depends on local conditions." Generally, we're getting there, but it's not a slam dunk yet.
Those 3 issues are primarily political, and until a person has spent at least a year studying economics, he's not knowledgeable enough to make sense of the economic aspects of those issues. If they're introduced before the student is capable of handling them mathematically, we can be reasonably sure that they will be introduced in a manner that elicits an emotional response.
Oh, the poor! Economics must do something for them. (Or economics must prove that they're victims)
Oh, globalization! Unfair competition (or send all your money to poor countries)
Oh, climate change! Economics must prove that a strong economy will drown us all which will cause a weak economy and everyone will starve
Microeconomics, the study of individual and business choices to optimize the use of scarce resources (i.e. all resources), the role of supply and demand in setting prices.
Macroeconomics, the study of the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. (wikipedia).
One of the most significant books of economics from a right view is von Mises' Human Action. Therein, we may find that economic activities, like all activities, are based on human choices. It is human choices that drive economic actions, not economic decisions that drive human actions. In a disaster, people help others as a human choice, knowing that it makes their lives better. When helping in an emergency, economic consequences are not a leading consideration in the decision to help.
Looked at more narrowly, your "proper insurance" claim is silly from the standpoint of timing. Insurance pays off in weeks or months. Government's time frame varies, it guides people during the emergency and provides rescue on an hourly-daily basis, but recovery funds come no faster than insurance companies. Private individual and organized charity actions tend to come faster than government recovery funds, mostly because there's less hierarchy involved. Put succinctly, emergency response is unrelated to insurance.
Feudalism (n) the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.
Really?
Dominantly capitalist systems tend to degrade toward socialism as two things combine forces: 1.The education system fails to maintain knowledge of the consequences of lack of freedom, and 2 Malicious zealots claiming that altruism is good blame capitalism for the problems caused by government and propose to fix the problems by increasing government control. This doesn't lead to feudalism (that's a truly silly idea), it leads to creeping socialism.
For the same reason that it's wrong to teach teens how to make hydrogen cyanide or pipe bombs, it's wrong to fill their minds with leftist cant. Death results.
The combination of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland is about 80% of the population of Venezuela. Venezuela depends on the combination of a relatively small population and the export (to capitalistic nations) of natural resources to fund the social programs.
Would you like to explain the difference in economic success?
Taking the example of Sweden, you are not talking about a static social system. Sweden had one of the world's freest economies for a long time; it prospered and became relatively rich.
Then Sweden voted to become socialist. The work ethic continued for a while (after all, when it's as cold as Sweden is, it's pretty obvious that if you don't produce, you die) but eventually the corrosive effects of socialism weakened that, and the economic drain on previously great companies caused them to become unprofitable or to move out of Sweden or be bought out. It got so bad that by about 1980 the most profitable economic entity in Sweden was the pop group ABBA.
More recently, some in Sweden have seen the error of its ways, and some reforms have been instituted that are helping Sweden start to trend back to prosperity. Dishonest or ignorant people will continue to claim that this improvement is due to socialism. Not even close to true.
You are promulgating a lie. "Perfect information" is a straw man created by some enemies of capitalism in order to discredit capitalism. FWIW information is also a product, which can be charged for.
Any claim that some system of human affairs is perfect is untrue. Knowledgeable and honest adherents of Capitalism do not claim that Capitalism is perfect. Capitalists acknowledge the necessity of a court system to handle disputes, that alone shows that they understand that Capitalism isn't perfect.
...companies lie and cheat their customers...
First, a lesson in English grammar and logic: in any statement like the above made without any qualifiers, the qualifiers "all" and "always" are presumed. Thus your statement reads in full "All companies always lie and cheat all their customers." This is obviously false, and a little thought reveals that if it were close to true civilization would be impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Ultrasonic is a reasonable guess because the wavelength would be short enough to aim and meet the other characteristics described in the summary.
What's screwy is that the source of the problem has not been tracked down and eliminated. This should not be a difficult technical problem.
Having been bitten and scratched by a species dedicated to annihilating songbirds has nothing to do with it.
I've read a couple of Edison biographies. One of them left me with the impression that he was frequently on the edge of being insolvent. As a businessman, good possibly, but not great.
My experience has been otherwise.
Even if a product doesn't result, companies like a patent portfolio and consider each patent an asset. Patents, at least in intent, are new ideas.
Re: self-consciousness
You have fallen for the fallacy of the stolen concept.
Who would be faked, and who would do the faking? Do you think that the person doing the faking could have the idea that he is doing faking, without first having the idea that he himself exists?
The claim that we don't understand life is mysticism and poppycock. Many aspects are well worked out.There are a lot of details that remain, and there are sure to be surprises and new principles to be found yet. By sheer volume of things not yet done, most of the work is ahead. But we understand a great deal and life is not a secret.
That's known as a hand waving argument. "Somehow" is not a method, and it's not a demonstration that the desired thing is possible.
Leftism is the philosophy of consolation for a nation committing suicide. If we lose in fighting leftism, the country dies.
My side is the side of extreme good.
Insurance has no necessary connection to health care. Insurance is part of the reason health care is so expensive. Health care involves a patient paying a doctor for health services. Placing an insurance company between them provides a fat income for insurance company employees and owners, with the only benefit to the patient being risk diffusion. One substantial disadvantage of health insurance is that it disconnects the patient from cost considerations: he doesn't care how much his treatment costs, so prices rise. Another is that insurance companies are a target for fraud: prices rise. Another is that insurance encourages people to take health risks and ignore responsibility for their own health because they don't pay in proportion to their body's damage: health is worse and prices rise.
Most things that can be learned don't need to be taught. All professions that need a college education, do not need college teaching for all parts of the knowledge required by that profession. In other words, the money spent on a college education is either partly or totally a waste.
Political pressure from Democrats to make bad loans, bad changes in banking laws caused by both parties.
Political pressure from Democrats
Dodd-Frank (Democrats) among other things, makes the overhead expenses of large banks smaller in relation to their size. Large banks can afford bribes. The Federal Reserve, the World Bank, and other conspiracies.
Ah, the tough question. Fractional reserve banking is a risk-reward problem, and the allowed leverage must be reduced gradually on a schedule announced completely in advance and taking place over a couple of decades. (Alternately, banks must prominently display how heavily they're leveraged, so that consumers can use it as a guide to their safety.) The Federal Reserve must be abolished, and the power of issuing money returned to the government. Failed banks have to be broken up, and the pieces not allowed to be incorporated into existing large banks. Bank mergers are prohibited outright. -- But I'm not competent to evaluate those ideas, I'm just guessing.
Overexpansion on credit seems to be a human foible, and that means some amount of cycles in economic activity. Government meddling makes cycles deeper and thus worse. (Businesses with political influence, that are running at a loss, get loans or loan guarantees from the government. The business, now propped up by the government, continues to lose money due to bad management. Eventually the company fails, with bigger losses and a bigger hit to the economy than if it had been allowed to fail earlier.)
The question is not "is it profitable on your roof" but "is it profitable on your roof without subsidies" including subsidies provided to the manufacturer and to the retailer, which you never see. The answer is "it depends on local conditions." Generally, we're getting there, but it's not a slam dunk yet.
Those 3 issues are primarily political, and until a person has spent at least a year studying economics, he's not knowledgeable enough to make sense of the economic aspects of those issues. If they're introduced before the student is capable of handling them mathematically, we can be reasonably sure that they will be introduced in a manner that elicits an emotional response.
Oh, the poor! Economics must do something for them. (Or economics must prove that they're victims)
Oh, globalization! Unfair competition (or send all your money to poor countries)
Oh, climate change! Economics must prove that a strong economy will drown us all which will cause a weak economy and everyone will starve
Microeconomics, the study of individual and business choices to optimize the use of scarce resources (i.e. all resources), the role of supply and demand in setting prices.
Macroeconomics, the study of the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. (wikipedia).
One of the most significant books of economics from a right view is von Mises' Human Action. Therein, we may find that economic activities, like all activities, are based on human choices. It is human choices that drive economic actions, not economic decisions that drive human actions. In a disaster, people help others as a human choice, knowing that it makes their lives better. When helping in an emergency, economic consequences are not a leading consideration in the decision to help.
Looked at more narrowly, your "proper insurance" claim is silly from the standpoint of timing. Insurance pays off in weeks or months. Government's time frame varies, it guides people during the emergency and provides rescue on an hourly-daily basis, but recovery funds come no faster than insurance companies. Private individual and organized charity actions tend to come faster than government recovery funds, mostly because there's less hierarchy involved. Put succinctly, emergency response is unrelated to insurance.
Aha! Someone else who opposes liberty.
Feudalism (n) the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.
Really?
Dominantly capitalist systems tend to degrade toward socialism as two things combine forces: 1.The education system fails to maintain knowledge of the consequences of lack of freedom, and 2 Malicious zealots claiming that altruism is good blame capitalism for the problems caused by government and propose to fix the problems by increasing government control. This doesn't lead to feudalism (that's a truly silly idea), it leads to creeping socialism.
For the same reason that it's wrong to teach teens how to make hydrogen cyanide or pipe bombs, it's wrong to fill their minds with leftist cant. Death results.
It is not the proper role of government to make money.
The combination of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland is about 80% of the population of Venezuela. Venezuela depends on the combination of a relatively small population and the export (to capitalistic nations) of natural resources to fund the social programs.
Would you like to explain the difference in economic success?
Taking the example of Sweden, you are not talking about a static social system. Sweden had one of the world's freest economies for a long time; it prospered and became relatively rich.
Then Sweden voted to become socialist. The work ethic continued for a while (after all, when it's as cold as Sweden is, it's pretty obvious that if you don't produce, you die) but eventually the corrosive effects of socialism weakened that, and the economic drain on previously great companies caused them to become unprofitable or to move out of Sweden or be bought out. It got so bad that by about 1980 the most profitable economic entity in Sweden was the pop group ABBA.
More recently, some in Sweden have seen the error of its ways, and some reforms have been instituted that are helping Sweden start to trend back to prosperity. Dishonest or ignorant people will continue to claim that this improvement is due to socialism. Not even close to true.
You are promulgating a lie. "Perfect information" is a straw man created by some enemies of capitalism in order to discredit capitalism. FWIW information is also a product, which can be charged for.
Any claim that some system of human affairs is perfect is untrue. Knowledgeable and honest adherents of Capitalism do not claim that Capitalism is perfect. Capitalists acknowledge the necessity of a court system to handle disputes, that alone shows that they understand that Capitalism isn't perfect.
First, a lesson in English grammar and logic: in any statement like the above made without any qualifiers, the qualifiers "all" and "always" are presumed. Thus your statement reads in full "All companies always lie and cheat all their customers." This is obviously false, and a little thought reveals that if it were close to true civilization would be impossible.
You are making the common mistake of believing that the goal of Marxism is the betterment of humanity.
Their engineers are just as good at engineering as our lawyers are.
In the Earth's crust there is about 65 thousand tons of lithium per person now living. That seems like enough to me.