Price increase != Deflation. The rapid price increase is caused by hyper increases in the Bitcoin economy not deflation. The Bitcoin economy has grown by billions in actual use as a currency and billions more worth of investment.
Some say investment is bullshit I say they are full of shit. Gentleman played early on in Bitcoin had thousands in a wallet which he'd forgotten about. Heard a bitcoin story and took a look and found out he has a few million worth now. Thanks to speculators making the market liquid he was able to sell coin and buy a flat for $250,000 (in Euro actually). Now you could claim that because he converted his BTC to Euro the Euro was worth a flat but I say it makes no difference. Had I bought the same flat from the US I'd have to convert my dollars to Euros but I'd still view it as a $250,000 purchase and my dollars as having bought it for me and $250,000 worth of Bitcoin still changed hands.
You have it backwards. Neither inflation nor deflation changes how much economic activity over hoarding is favored. In both cases the innate human desire to hoard is what drives economic activity. People want more than they have, no matter how much they have. It's the rate of deflation/inflation that sets the base.
Right now BTC is growing rapidly but it isn't actually growing rapidly as a result of deflation, it is growing rapidly as a result of increased economic activity. The Bitcoin economy is growing rapidly. Vendors are starting to accept bitcoin, thanks to the FBI we know the silk road drug trade (which has simply shifted to other markets, including SR 2.0) was a 1.2b bitcoin based economy, investors are converting their dollars, euros, and yen buying power into bitcoin buying power now that the SEC, DoJ, and US Senate have given their blessing to Bitcoin.
Additionally, not all Bitcoin is distributed yet. Bitcoin transaction/mining technology is rapidly advancing and there is huge investment in the equipment to do it because it is highly profitable. Yes the miners are profiting from this but those vendors and consumers are benefiting as well. It used to take a day to send someone bitcoin and have the transaction confirmed. Now it takes less than 30mins.
This is no different than a successful business in an emerging market where someone investing early stands to make huge gains. Later the market will mature. The rate of deflation will stabilize and the everyone will still be greedy. The challenge for all investments will then be to get a return greater than the rate of deflation. The rate of deflation becomes the new baseline. Just like all businesses need to charge enough to cover the rate of inflation now they will need to charge enough for goods and services to cover the rate of deflation with BTC because their investors are going to charge interest greater than that rate for their venture capital. And since consumers (the ones who actually move money in both an inflationary and deflationary system) still need to consume they will ultimately have to pay a mark-up greater than the rate of deflation for their goods and services.
Of course. That's why bitcoin divides to trillions of units. The idea that trade will involve smaller and smaller units. For instance when the price hit $1000 for a BTC it made more sense to think of Bitmils.001 than Bitcoins for transactions because a bitmil was essentially a dollar.
Or is this another one of those BS laws where they bypass due process by stating in the law that "such and such" conditions are sufficient to establish it?
Right, the 80% failure rate is entirely because nobody failing could manage a taco stand. It couldn't be because of entrenched competition and that there simply isn't enough consumption to support that many businesses.
"Anyone, however, can be good at unskilled labor, therefore it is worth almost nothing."
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. The skill doesn't come from the labor or base education required it comes from the individual performing it. In high school I worked in a McDonalds, there were individuals who could produce 4-6x as much output in the same time frame as their co-workers. They might have been "flipping burgers" but they were skilled at it and the difficulty rating of performing that job at that level by far exceeds anything being done by management in the store both mentally and physically.
Jobs typically classed as "unskilled" have much higher turn-over rates than management, management actually has one of the lowest turn-over rates of any profession. This indicates that most people given the job are able to perform it and therefore does not indicate that capable managers are exceedingly rare at all. It's actually much easier to find capable managers than capable laborers there are simply more laborers needed than managers.
In fact, because of how easy it is fill management spots companies tend to be much more picky and add artificial criteria not necessary to perform the work. For instance, many companies require a degree to be a manager. Actually performing the job requires math at a high school freshman's "general math" level and some basic social skills. A proper attitude is desirable but that is true of any employee. For the most part there is a very specific "right way to do it" for managing staff and most of it could be automated by a computer if you paid staff based on their production.
"Were that true, nobody, and I mean nobody, would be doing wage slave jobs."
Who exactly would the now everybody and I mean everybody be managing?
"They would be running their own business and employing cheap, imported labor or managing cheap, imported labor."
When something like 80% of startups go out of business? Doesn't seem likely. Also what cheap imported labor in your world the imported labor are simply making less money because aren't as capable and your analysis that only their lack of capability separates them means they'd all be employing or managing... who?
Not everyone can do the job of managing because someone actually has to produce something and since the job of managing isn't that difficult you only need one of them for a large number of people actually producing goods and services directly.
"The cold, hard fact of the matter is, most people are not capable and driven enough to run anything. Thus scarcity. Thus value. "
Hardly. First is the fallacy that running something means you are contributing more than the people who make up the thing and therefore deserve more than them. You aren't. You are just doing another job.
"As for where wealth comes from, it comes from work, be it mental or physical. If you work, you create wealth. Wage slaves can lay claim only to the fruits their own work, management can lay claim to that as well as the creation of every job an employee of theirs holds."
See above. This is the part where it's easy to snow people. Management can claim only to amount of work it takes to balance some books, keep inventory, and make a schedule. In modern times, that means being able to perform data entry into a computer which automatically reorders inventory, builds the schedule, and balances the books. They are actually doing less work per hour than the guy making the taco for the most part, mentally and physically. It isn't any more work whether it is 10 staff or a thousand and shouldn't be any more pay. Oh there is more involved in managing a thousand but there aren't enough hours in the day for one guy to do it so instead that guy will actually manage 10 guys who are managing 100 guys or however many is required and not a single one of them is by and large doing anything more.
There is of course the responsibility myth. But it breaks down pretty quickly in reality. If you have a staff of ten and you meet or exceed goals you as a manager get credit for this, you led your team to victory. If you fail to meet goals or something otherwise screws up, you simply show you took action by firing or punishing staff. In other words, the cream floats up for managers but generally speaking they have LESS accountability than their staff because their staff have nobody else to blame and identify as the problem and to punish or impose a policy on.
"Point being, who is the "people" you speak of? Engineers know and use as appropriate."
Fair enough and a computer engineering course on operating system design is going to teach design principles for a kernel. But the general population, even the general technical population, certainly isn't using the word this way. It's at the core of the whole Linux vs GNU/Linux debate.
As hardware becomes more and more powerful even wristwatches, alarm clocks, and washing machines are often running cli interfaces now. So the concept gets more and more difficult to explain.
"Without basic tools to do so, how are you going to get software on your Operating System?"
You'd likely build an image with a more general purpose system that had tools on it then flash or network boot. The question would make more sense if I was building something rather than pointing out that the term "operating system" used to refer to a basic system that managed resources to simply programming (the operating system) rather than the more modern idea that an "operating system" is the software set that allows a human to operate the computer.
It's even more confusing because operating a computer back in the day was often synonymous with programming one.
Some of us remember the operating system being the software that operates the system, not the software that lets YOU operate the system. Back in the day of monolithic kernels being the norm the kernel WAS the OS. The shell (graphical or cli) was just an application that utilized the operating system.
People have gotten so used to the idea of a computer being a general purpose machine they've forgotten that you could just run a kernel and application set that requires no human interaction software at all. For instance a cluster node that dynamically grabs it's parameters from the network on boot. Or a wrist watch, or an alarm clock, or a washing machine.
It's even more easy to convince someone their contribution is so magnificent that an hour of their labor is actually worth 10x or 100x or 1000x that of someone else. The reality of course is that it's impossible to improve yourself to that degree and for your time to be that much more valuable, you are actually getting a cut of what someone who is perceived to be worth less has produced. Therefore you are to the degree you got said cut responsible for their inability to meet their need. Since you took a portion of the wealth they generated and they use public services you are also responsible for a portion of their tax burden.
The most heavily weighted income group in the US for instance is the $12,000-$24,000 year income bracket. So if you make $120,000 a year that extra wealth had to come from somewhere. Now maybe you are better educated, and it was totally private education. So, 4 years of your time or at the highest end of that bracket $192,000 worth of effort. So for the time and effort you invested in education you spread that across 45 years working and get an extra $4,300 a year of actual deserved increased income.
Let's pretend you belong in the high end, that's $28,300. Now, what you probably make is $70,000+. That's $40,000 worth of value that your labor didn't actually produce. Where did it come from? Janitors, secretaries, cashiers, bus boys, etc. People who don't have any more time to live than you who are working just as hard but are being paid less so you can make more. You are taking a portion of their production, so you need to pay a portion of the cost for THEM to use roads, get healthcare, police and emergency service, get a drivers license, public education, legal defense, etc in addition to your own share. Why? Because it took all of those things to produce that extra wealth and you are the one who ended up with it.
If they buy half the circulating bitcoin and take them out of circulation they've cut supply in half without reducing demand and effectively doubled the value of the circulating bitcoin. The same principle holds true no matter how much they buy. They'll never have all of it and whatever remains will continue to be worth x billion. Fiat currency is designed to increase units in front of the decimal. Bitcoin also increases units but behind the decimal. Right now it makes more sense to think in terms of Bitmils (.001 or 43 cents usd) rather than whole Bitcoin ($433) for the purpose of making purchases.
If the Federal Reserve attempted to buy up all the Bitcoins they would only succeed in dramatically increasing the value of the remaining bitcoin. Bitcoin divides to 9 decimals if I recall correctly. So people would have no trouble conducting trade in units of.0000001 for instance and still have room for cents. And the 9 decimal places is an arbitrary limit. An update to the client software and it can be made smaller.
Even if they somehow succeeded in destablizing bitcoin this way, you can launch a new bitcoin with a unique block chain pretty effortlessly. That's why there are already alternative bitcoins being traded.
I don't believe in the Yeti or Bigfoot but I have yet to hear any particular reason to assume there aren't such creatures either. If the places where both are said to exist can support bears they could support large primates as well. I'm thrilled to see some actual investigation of the yeti at least even it's no more effort than to remotely collect a couple samples and sequence them with no field work.
I can understand why the idea of an upright primate might make the anti-evolution crowd uncomfortable and cause an irrational level of opposition to the idea but I don't understand the irrational disdain spreading further than that. NOBODY credible investigates this, if they do anything it is set out with the bias of disproving some piece of evidence or providing an alternate explanation.
It is perfectly reasonable that there could be an upright primate, that it might well be reclusive, and given the size would likely have a low population. Credible researchers have spent decades actively looking to try to confirm the existence of a species. So why does looking for this one make you a crackpot? Just because the idea got media attention and there were a few hoaxes? The sightings of this creature go back hundreds of years. Isn't it worth someone who actually knows what they are doing actually making a real effort?
Unless they do, I doubt we'll ever know because guys going out in the woods at night and yelling and banging sticks together is not a strategy that is likely to EVER successfully find any woodland creature.
Re:This is a real problem and conflict of interest
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How Science Goes Wrong
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"But you gain recognition and get published if you prove someone else wrong."
But you get no funding from it and potentially make an enemy who now DOES have reason to scrutinize and point out your every mistake. If you aren't accomplished enough yourself your failure to replicate something isn't likely to even be published. And it isn't to the same degree. This is Dr. So-and-So, the man who did that brilliant work and discovered x,y,z impressive sounding thing vs This is Dr. So-and-So, he's never actually accomplished anything but he did a great job of failing to replicate his peer's results.
You'd be better off in the long run pretending to replicate or even expand on the results of your peers. It isn't like they are ever going to call you out on it, you've made an ally AND made it much more difficult for either of your reputations to be harmed by a third party regardless of their claims.
"And your academic progress is hampered if someone shows your results to be flawed."
Yeah, but apparently it's not likely and you can select areas of study to minimize the probability. Even if someone fails to replicate your results it isn't proof that you faked them.
"I think you are ignoring the competitive element."
I don't think so. Most people are probably working from the assumption that work accepted and that has passed peer review is most likely legitimate. Why spend all that time and effort in hopes someone else in wrong? And in a way you can prove? Even if you suspect they faked something, that just means you are likely to be able to get away with it too and as stated above there is more glory down that path.
It's no different than essays and other academic papers. You are required to provide references to support your assertions and credit sources but everyone knows the professor doesn't actually have time to read them. So people find credible and uncontroversial sources on topics that could well be saying something that could support their assertions. On the slim chance you were caught in it, you'd just find something you accidentally misinterpreted and be a little cautious for the next couple. And that's if you had to say anything, the professor is far more likely to assume (s)he has better comprehension of the topic than the student and add a note to educate the poor fledgling, they might not even reduce the grade over it depending on the topic.
This is a real problem and conflict of interest
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How Science Goes Wrong
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· Score: 5, Insightful
All researchers in the sciences have a motivation to be published, in the form of recognition, academic progress, and financial motivation. Not many of them have an incentive stop working on looking great for producing results and check the work of someone else.
There's DNA taken from two distinct samples taken 800 miles apart, one them from an actual mummified animal body that anyone can test and examine.
That seems like more evidence than there is for the yeti to me. Also, I do agree this seems like more of a blow to the skeptics than the believers because while it seems the creature was not a large manlike primate there was in fact something up there. The problem with skeptics is that if everyone listens to them nobody investigates and finds the truth behind anything.
Both the sender and recipient have to provide their information to Paypal and Google for their services as well.
The law is set up in such a way that all money exchangers are required to get identifying information from you. But even if they weren't, you have to provide a source and destination for the funds to get them in and out of the service.
I assume it was a reference to the price of a T1 link... which isn't really relevant when we are talking about Google... or anyone else really in the modern age. A small branch that would have once used a T1 is better off using the local broadband connection. Get the telco flavor plus the cable flavor if you are that worried about availability.
"suppliers typically charge per the amount of bandwidth available, not the amount actually downloaded"
Yes.
"For example a 1Mbps link of UNCONTENDED bandwidth might cost $400 per month, regardless of whether it is utilised or not."
On average it is more like $5/MB, for Google much much much less. You could manage to pay $400 for 2MB if you were at the absolute bottom of the purchasing scale.
According to a calculator I just ran it's about $75/week or $300 a month.
http://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/salary/
Weekly Gross Pay $354.00
Federal Withholding $38.17
Social Security $21.94
Medicare $5.13
New Mexico $9.90
WC $0.15
"On the other hand, you don't qualify for food stamps because at that income level, you aren't poor."
Actually you do, because housing and utility cost are considered and if you don't think that is poor you are out of your mind.
"It starts with your silly assumption that the only way to get housing is to go out and rent a $600 apartment by yourself."
I suppose you could try to pack your wife and kid into a room for rent/roommate situation somewhere but you still aren't going to shave more than $100 off doing it.
"Anybody near the center of the income distribution or above"
This is quite another:
" i.e., the great majority of Americans"
The problem is you are using the term "income distribution" and it is a term financial analysts use very loosely, specifically, how it is calculated and presented isn't a concrete and defined thing. Unfortunately, census.gov is down so I can't see if there is data there I can use to get a REAL set of stats on "income distribution." But I will do my best to unfuzz the conversation and get to some actual numbers.
Let's start with the table of household incomes from 2011 here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States. Checking this, we see aprox 50% of the income earning households are making <$5000-$45,000. Most of those (33% of total US population) earn between $10k-$40. Most of those earn between $10k-$25k. So the most typical income in the US between $10-$14 at 5.89% but the gap is within 0.21% in the $10k-$25k range so it is fair to call that whole range typical (more Americans fall in this income range than any other) and the median of that range is $17,000 for a household. In other words $17,000 is the most typical average income for American households even though the majority of the population with income make more than this (it's estimated that 40% of american's don't file taxes and the typical cause is having little or no income to report so MOST american's actually make less than $10k but we are using the chart for now).
So lets see how far that goes trying to maintain a minimal US standard of living. That's $1416/month gross if we ballpark 30% for mandatory withholding it is $944/mo. If you hunt you can find a tiny and crappy hole for $600 in many places and you will by necessity be living in one of those places. That leaves you $344 for utilities, phone+internet (both ARE essentials in the modern age even if you will have to go minimal), food, healthcare, car+gas, car insurance, and entertainment (yes a certain amount of entertainment and social interaction is essential for a human being to be happy) for you and your family (this is household income not individual). Where is the margin for savings? There isn't much of anything there to plan. Utilities alone is going to eat $200. That leaves $144. Even just going to work and back you are going to need $80 for gas that is unavoidable. That leaves $66 for all the rest. You have a pay as you go phone and use it as little as possible. You use the cheap unadvertised internet for $15. Now $51 - phone usage. Insurance? You don't have it. Healthcare? Emergency room and you don't pay the bills because you can't afford them. Food? Food Stamps, because the typical american household makes so little they qualify and they should they NEED them in order to eat. You are down to MAYBE $51 after "welfare" and it's doubtful you are putting it in a savings account, $51 just doesn't go far and that is all you have for phone, incidentals, and entertainment. There is no way that's going in a savings account.
If you are at the top end of typical at $25k you've got another $333 a month but then you don't qualify for the food stamps. Someone here is probably going to spend the difference on some of the stuff that was simply not paid by $17k guy. They certainly aren't likely to accumulate savings. Car trouble alone will eat more than they can save. And lets face it, they have next to nothing for entertainment, they are probably going to spend a chunk on cable to waste the time away.
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Price increase != Deflation. The rapid price increase is caused by hyper increases in the Bitcoin economy not deflation. The Bitcoin economy has grown by billions in actual use as a currency and billions more worth of investment.
Some say investment is bullshit I say they are full of shit. Gentleman played early on in Bitcoin had thousands in a wallet which he'd forgotten about. Heard a bitcoin story and took a look and found out he has a few million worth now. Thanks to speculators making the market liquid he was able to sell coin and buy a flat for $250,000 (in Euro actually). Now you could claim that because he converted his BTC to Euro the Euro was worth a flat but I say it makes no difference. Had I bought the same flat from the US I'd have to convert my dollars to Euros but I'd still view it as a $250,000 purchase and my dollars as having bought it for me and $250,000 worth of Bitcoin still changed hands.
You have it backwards. Neither inflation nor deflation changes how much economic activity over hoarding is favored. In both cases the innate human desire to hoard is what drives economic activity. People want more than they have, no matter how much they have. It's the rate of deflation/inflation that sets the base.
Right now BTC is growing rapidly but it isn't actually growing rapidly as a result of deflation, it is growing rapidly as a result of increased economic activity. The Bitcoin economy is growing rapidly. Vendors are starting to accept bitcoin, thanks to the FBI we know the silk road drug trade (which has simply shifted to other markets, including SR 2.0) was a 1.2b bitcoin based economy, investors are converting their dollars, euros, and yen buying power into bitcoin buying power now that the SEC, DoJ, and US Senate have given their blessing to Bitcoin.
Additionally, not all Bitcoin is distributed yet. Bitcoin transaction/mining technology is rapidly advancing and there is huge investment in the equipment to do it because it is highly profitable. Yes the miners are profiting from this but those vendors and consumers are benefiting as well. It used to take a day to send someone bitcoin and have the transaction confirmed. Now it takes less than 30mins.
This is no different than a successful business in an emerging market where someone investing early stands to make huge gains. Later the market will mature. The rate of deflation will stabilize and the everyone will still be greedy. The challenge for all investments will then be to get a return greater than the rate of deflation. The rate of deflation becomes the new baseline. Just like all businesses need to charge enough to cover the rate of inflation now they will need to charge enough for goods and services to cover the rate of deflation with BTC because their investors are going to charge interest greater than that rate for their venture capital. And since consumers (the ones who actually move money in both an inflationary and deflationary system) still need to consume they will ultimately have to pay a mark-up greater than the rate of deflation for their goods and services.
Of course. That's why bitcoin divides to trillions of units. The idea that trade will involve smaller and smaller units. For instance when the price hit $1000 for a BTC it made more sense to think of Bitmils .001 than Bitcoins for transactions because a bitmil was essentially a dollar.
Or is this another one of those BS laws where they bypass due process by stating in the law that "such and such" conditions are sufficient to establish it?
Right, the 80% failure rate is entirely because nobody failing could manage a taco stand. It couldn't be because of entrenched competition and that there simply isn't enough consumption to support that many businesses.
"Anyone, however, can be good at unskilled labor, therefore it is worth almost nothing."
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. The skill doesn't come from the labor or base education required it comes from the individual performing it. In high school I worked in a McDonalds, there were individuals who could produce 4-6x as much output in the same time frame as their co-workers. They might have been "flipping burgers" but they were skilled at it and the difficulty rating of performing that job at that level by far exceeds anything being done by management in the store both mentally and physically.
Jobs typically classed as "unskilled" have much higher turn-over rates than management, management actually has one of the lowest turn-over rates of any profession. This indicates that most people given the job are able to perform it and therefore does not indicate that capable managers are exceedingly rare at all. It's actually much easier to find capable managers than capable laborers there are simply more laborers needed than managers.
In fact, because of how easy it is fill management spots companies tend to be much more picky and add artificial criteria not necessary to perform the work. For instance, many companies require a degree to be a manager. Actually performing the job requires math at a high school freshman's "general math" level and some basic social skills. A proper attitude is desirable but that is true of any employee. For the most part there is a very specific "right way to do it" for managing staff and most of it could be automated by a computer if you paid staff based on their production.
"Were that true, nobody, and I mean nobody, would be doing wage slave jobs."
Who exactly would the now everybody and I mean everybody be managing?
"They would be running their own business and employing cheap, imported labor or managing cheap, imported labor."
When something like 80% of startups go out of business? Doesn't seem likely. Also what cheap imported labor in your world the imported labor are simply making less money because aren't as capable and your analysis that only their lack of capability separates them means they'd all be employing or managing... who?
Not everyone can do the job of managing because someone actually has to produce something and since the job of managing isn't that difficult you only need one of them for a large number of people actually producing goods and services directly.
"The cold, hard fact of the matter is, most people are not capable and driven enough to run anything. Thus scarcity. Thus value. "
Hardly. First is the fallacy that running something means you are contributing more than the people who make up the thing and therefore deserve more than them. You aren't. You are just doing another job.
"As for where wealth comes from, it comes from work, be it mental or physical. If you work, you create wealth. Wage slaves can lay claim only to the fruits their own work, management can lay claim to that as well as the creation of every job an employee of theirs holds."
See above. This is the part where it's easy to snow people. Management can claim only to amount of work it takes to balance some books, keep inventory, and make a schedule. In modern times, that means being able to perform data entry into a computer which automatically reorders inventory, builds the schedule, and balances the books. They are actually doing less work per hour than the guy making the taco for the most part, mentally and physically. It isn't any more work whether it is 10 staff or a thousand and shouldn't be any more pay. Oh there is more involved in managing a thousand but there aren't enough hours in the day for one guy to do it so instead that guy will actually manage 10 guys who are managing 100 guys or however many is required and not a single one of them is by and large doing anything more.
There is of course the responsibility myth. But it breaks down pretty quickly in reality. If you have a staff of ten and you meet or exceed goals you as a manager get credit for this, you led your team to victory. If you fail to meet goals or something otherwise screws up, you simply show you took action by firing or punishing staff. In other words, the cream floats up for managers but generally speaking they have LESS accountability than their staff because their staff have nobody else to blame and identify as the problem and to punish or impose a policy on.
"Point being, who is the "people" you speak of? Engineers know and use as appropriate."
Fair enough and a computer engineering course on operating system design is going to teach design principles for a kernel. But the general population, even the general technical population, certainly isn't using the word this way. It's at the core of the whole Linux vs GNU/Linux debate.
As hardware becomes more and more powerful even wristwatches, alarm clocks, and washing machines are often running cli interfaces now. So the concept gets more and more difficult to explain.
"Without basic tools to do so, how are you going to get software on your Operating System?"
You'd likely build an image with a more general purpose system that had tools on it then flash or network boot. The question would make more sense if I was building something rather than pointing out that the term "operating system" used to refer to a basic system that managed resources to simply programming (the operating system) rather than the more modern idea that an "operating system" is the software set that allows a human to operate the computer.
It's even more confusing because operating a computer back in the day was often synonymous with programming one.
Some of us remember the operating system being the software that operates the system, not the software that lets YOU operate the system. Back in the day of monolithic kernels being the norm the kernel WAS the OS. The shell (graphical or cli) was just an application that utilized the operating system.
People have gotten so used to the idea of a computer being a general purpose machine they've forgotten that you could just run a kernel and application set that requires no human interaction software at all. For instance a cluster node that dynamically grabs it's parameters from the network on boot. Or a wrist watch, or an alarm clock, or a washing machine.
It's even more easy to convince someone their contribution is so magnificent that an hour of their labor is actually worth 10x or 100x or 1000x that of someone else. The reality of course is that it's impossible to improve yourself to that degree and for your time to be that much more valuable, you are actually getting a cut of what someone who is perceived to be worth less has produced. Therefore you are to the degree you got said cut responsible for their inability to meet their need. Since you took a portion of the wealth they generated and they use public services you are also responsible for a portion of their tax burden.
The most heavily weighted income group in the US for instance is the $12,000-$24,000 year income bracket. So if you make $120,000 a year that extra wealth had to come from somewhere. Now maybe you are better educated, and it was totally private education. So, 4 years of your time or at the highest end of that bracket $192,000 worth of effort. So for the time and effort you invested in education you spread that across 45 years working and get an extra $4,300 a year of actual deserved increased income.
Let's pretend you belong in the high end, that's $28,300. Now, what you probably make is $70,000+. That's $40,000 worth of value that your labor didn't actually produce. Where did it come from? Janitors, secretaries, cashiers, bus boys, etc. People who don't have any more time to live than you who are working just as hard but are being paid less so you can make more. You are taking a portion of their production, so you need to pay a portion of the cost for THEM to use roads, get healthcare, police and emergency service, get a drivers license, public education, legal defense, etc in addition to your own share. Why? Because it took all of those things to produce that extra wealth and you are the one who ended up with it.
If they buy half the circulating bitcoin and take them out of circulation they've cut supply in half without reducing demand and effectively doubled the value of the circulating bitcoin. The same principle holds true no matter how much they buy. They'll never have all of it and whatever remains will continue to be worth x billion. Fiat currency is designed to increase units in front of the decimal. Bitcoin also increases units but behind the decimal. Right now it makes more sense to think in terms of Bitmils (.001 or 43 cents usd) rather than whole Bitcoin ($433) for the purpose of making purchases.
If the Federal Reserve attempted to buy up all the Bitcoins they would only succeed in dramatically increasing the value of the remaining bitcoin. Bitcoin divides to 9 decimals if I recall correctly. So people would have no trouble conducting trade in units of .0000001 for instance and still have room for cents. And the 9 decimal places is an arbitrary limit. An update to the client software and it can be made smaller.
Even if they somehow succeeded in destablizing bitcoin this way, you can launch a new bitcoin with a unique block chain pretty effortlessly. That's why there are already alternative bitcoins being traded.
I don't believe in the Yeti or Bigfoot but I have yet to hear any particular reason to assume there aren't such creatures either. If the places where both are said to exist can support bears they could support large primates as well. I'm thrilled to see some actual investigation of the yeti at least even it's no more effort than to remotely collect a couple samples and sequence them with no field work.
I can understand why the idea of an upright primate might make the anti-evolution crowd uncomfortable and cause an irrational level of opposition to the idea but I don't understand the irrational disdain spreading further than that. NOBODY credible investigates this, if they do anything it is set out with the bias of disproving some piece of evidence or providing an alternate explanation.
It is perfectly reasonable that there could be an upright primate, that it might well be reclusive, and given the size would likely have a low population. Credible researchers have spent decades actively looking to try to confirm the existence of a species. So why does looking for this one make you a crackpot? Just because the idea got media attention and there were a few hoaxes? The sightings of this creature go back hundreds of years. Isn't it worth someone who actually knows what they are doing actually making a real effort?
Unless they do, I doubt we'll ever know because guys going out in the woods at night and yelling and banging sticks together is not a strategy that is likely to EVER successfully find any woodland creature.
"But you gain recognition and get published if you prove someone else wrong."
But you get no funding from it and potentially make an enemy who now DOES have reason to scrutinize and point out your every mistake. If you aren't accomplished enough yourself your failure to replicate something isn't likely to even be published. And it isn't to the same degree. This is Dr. So-and-So, the man who did that brilliant work and discovered x,y,z impressive sounding thing vs This is Dr. So-and-So, he's never actually accomplished anything but he did a great job of failing to replicate his peer's results.
You'd be better off in the long run pretending to replicate or even expand on the results of your peers. It isn't like they are ever going to call you out on it, you've made an ally AND made it much more difficult for either of your reputations to be harmed by a third party regardless of their claims.
"And your academic progress is hampered if someone shows your results to be flawed."
Yeah, but apparently it's not likely and you can select areas of study to minimize the probability. Even if someone fails to replicate your results it isn't proof that you faked them.
"I think you are ignoring the competitive element."
I don't think so. Most people are probably working from the assumption that work accepted and that has passed peer review is most likely legitimate. Why spend all that time and effort in hopes someone else in wrong? And in a way you can prove? Even if you suspect they faked something, that just means you are likely to be able to get away with it too and as stated above there is more glory down that path.
It's no different than essays and other academic papers. You are required to provide references to support your assertions and credit sources but everyone knows the professor doesn't actually have time to read them. So people find credible and uncontroversial sources on topics that could well be saying something that could support their assertions. On the slim chance you were caught in it, you'd just find something you accidentally misinterpreted and be a little cautious for the next couple. And that's if you had to say anything, the professor is far more likely to assume (s)he has better comprehension of the topic than the student and add a note to educate the poor fledgling, they might not even reduce the grade over it depending on the topic.
All researchers in the sciences have a motivation to be published, in the form of recognition, academic progress, and financial motivation. Not many of them have an incentive stop working on looking great for producing results and check the work of someone else.
There's DNA taken from two distinct samples taken 800 miles apart, one them from an actual mummified animal body that anyone can test and examine.
That seems like more evidence than there is for the yeti to me. Also, I do agree this seems like more of a blow to the skeptics than the believers because while it seems the creature was not a large manlike primate there was in fact something up there. The problem with skeptics is that if everyone listens to them nobody investigates and finds the truth behind anything.
It's not really anything more than you provide with any credit card processor. You give Paypal as much or more.
Both the sender and recipient have to provide their information to Paypal and Google for their services as well.
The law is set up in such a way that all money exchangers are required to get identifying information from you. But even if they weren't, you have to provide a source and destination for the funds to get them in and out of the service.
Square requires your debit card info and SQUARE gets the recipients bank account details not the guy paying.
The $400/month reference I was responding to had to be referring to a T1 link? A T1 is a lot more than $20/month.
I think you meant to reply to the guy above me.
I assume it was a reference to the price of a T1 link... which isn't really relevant when we are talking about Google... or anyone else really in the modern age. A small branch that would have once used a T1 is better off using the local broadband connection. Get the telco flavor plus the cable flavor if you are that worried about availability.
"suppliers typically charge per the amount of bandwidth available, not the amount actually downloaded"
Yes.
"For example a 1Mbps link of UNCONTENDED bandwidth might cost $400 per month, regardless of whether it is utilised or not."
On average it is more like $5/MB, for Google much much much less. You could manage to pay $400 for 2MB if you were at the absolute bottom of the purchasing scale.
According to a calculator I just ran it's about $75/week or $300 a month.
http://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/salary/
Weekly Gross Pay $354.00
Federal Withholding $38.17
Social Security $21.94
Medicare $5.13
New Mexico $9.90
WC $0.15
"On the other hand, you don't qualify for food stamps because at that income level, you aren't poor."
Actually you do, because housing and utility cost are considered and if you don't think that is poor you are out of your mind.
"It starts with your silly assumption that the only way to get housing is to go out and rent a $600 apartment by yourself."
I suppose you could try to pack your wife and kid into a room for rent/roommate situation somewhere but you still aren't going to shave more than $100 off doing it.
This is one thing:
"Anybody near the center of the income distribution or above"
This is quite another:
" i.e., the great majority of Americans"
The problem is you are using the term "income distribution" and it is a term financial analysts use very loosely, specifically, how it is calculated and presented isn't a concrete and defined thing. Unfortunately, census.gov is down so I can't see if there is data there I can use to get a REAL set of stats on "income distribution." But I will do my best to unfuzz the conversation and get to some actual numbers.
Let's start with the table of household incomes from 2011 here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States.
Checking this, we see aprox 50% of the income earning households are making <$5000-$45,000. Most of those (33% of total US population) earn between $10k-$40. Most of those earn between $10k-$25k. So the most typical income in the US between $10-$14 at 5.89% but the gap is within 0.21% in the $10k-$25k range so it is fair to call that whole range typical (more Americans fall in this income range than any other) and the median of that range is $17,000 for a household. In other words $17,000 is the most typical average income for American households even though the majority of the population with income make more than this (it's estimated that 40% of american's don't file taxes and the typical cause is having little or no income to report so MOST american's actually make less than $10k but we are using the chart for now).
So lets see how far that goes trying to maintain a minimal US standard of living. That's $1416/month gross if we ballpark 30% for mandatory withholding it is $944/mo. If you hunt you can find a tiny and crappy hole for $600 in many places and you will by necessity be living in one of those places. That leaves you $344 for utilities, phone+internet (both ARE essentials in the modern age even if you will have to go minimal), food, healthcare, car+gas, car insurance, and entertainment (yes a certain amount of entertainment and social interaction is essential for a human being to be happy) for you and your family (this is household income not individual). Where is the margin for savings? There isn't much of anything there to plan. Utilities alone is going to eat $200. That leaves $144. Even just going to work and back you are going to need $80 for gas that is unavoidable. That leaves $66 for all the rest. You have a pay as you go phone and use it as little as possible. You use the cheap unadvertised internet for $15. Now $51 - phone usage. Insurance? You don't have it. Healthcare? Emergency room and you don't pay the bills because you can't afford them. Food? Food Stamps, because the typical american household makes so little they qualify and they should they NEED them in order to eat. You are down to MAYBE $51 after "welfare" and it's doubtful you are putting it in a savings account, $51 just doesn't go far and that is all you have for phone, incidentals, and entertainment. There is no way that's going in a savings account.
If you are at the top end of typical at $25k you've got another $333 a month but then you don't qualify for the food stamps. Someone here is probably going to spend the difference on some of the stuff that was simply not paid by $17k guy. They certainly aren't likely to accumulate savings. Car trouble alone will eat more than they can save. And lets face it, they have next to nothing for entertainment, they are probably going to spend a chunk on cable to waste the time away.