(BTW, you exhibit no understanding of bootstrapping industrial operations, which only supports my conclusion that Humans are no longer capable of undertaking large engineering projects. Too many people think like you, in terms of "profitable quarters" and not instead in terms of "advancing civilization".)
A certain number of launches will have to be done from Earth, certainly, and then the number of them will drop to a maintenance level. But that number is nowhere near that ones required equivalently from the Moon.
Furthermore, you'd have to be smoking a particularly strange form of ganja to think that "launches" are the way to do it from the lunar surface. Only a moron would try that. The only economical way to do it is to use mass drivers along the lunar surface. They could be built from local materials (Al, Fe and Si from the lunar regolith) and energized from the Sun.
Perhaps you think all this is "not practical". You are certainly free to think so. But you are wrong about this in so many dimensions of the problem that it's almost pointless to respond to you. You are uneducated about space operations and industrial development, boy. PERIOD. Please run and read some books before speaking again on this topic.
As a final note... you threw out the term "during the next 100 years". A century is nothing compared to the length of Human civilization. If I'm actually incorrect about my implied figures (note: I'm not), then I'm only off by a century. Big whoop. It hardly matters to me if Humans become a space-faring civilization by the year 2100 or 2200. It's irrelevant. What IS relevant is that Humans should be able to bootstrap themselves into a civilzation that exploits all the resources of the solar system. Humans did it to the entire Earth, while the village yokels like you said it couldn't be done. We can therefore do it to the entire system of planets, asteroids and moons (... and yes, even the Sun, via a Dyson Sphere).
You cannot undertake such a construction project by relying on Earth launches. You have to use the Moon. The lunar regolith is like talc in consistency, and is therefore processible as a readily available ore for Aluminum, Iron, Silicon, Oxygen, Titanium, Calcium, etc. The lunar surface is bathed in sunlight, which can be used for power. The Moon is the only manufacturing center available for construction of large objects even down to low Earth orbit (since it takes 22 times less energy to sling mass to LEO from the Moon than it does to lift it to LEO from the Earth).
Still, this entire ring/disk idea is farcical for other reasons, largely revolving around Humanity's lack of ability to carry out large construction projects. We were doing OK there for a while, then Humanity stopped thinking big and started acting in accordance of zero-sum game theory. So rings or disks will never be built, even if the Earth is actually threatened by the lack of them. Humans would much rather sit around a conference table and argue about the facts, and who to blame, as well as how exactly another buck can be made on the deal... anything than undertake the next step in massive engineering.
You may not be getting as far as you think with your consumer-rights stance. In my city, many of the HVAC companies in the yellow pages are actually owned by a couple of major holding companies. I laugh and point this out whenever I hear someone around here "shopping around" for furnace installation and repairs. So, you may have demonstrated nothing whatsoever to your first AC company in choosing another AC company. Just a thought.
Yes, the raft of people who are in personal financial trouble from the lack of steady work is vastly impressing. When the electricity gets shut off because you just can't come up with the 4 months in arrears, I'm sure that $10 CD player for sale in the nearby Wal*Mart will be a big fucking comfort to you.
The mantra of lowered prices is getting waaaaay out of control. People who are not only tossed out of steady work, but are also tossed into big indebtedness, are only going to consume your stupid cheap shit as long as the easy credit environment lasts. But easy credit is unsustainable. So you are being foolish.
Americans have already taken ENORMOUS hits to their standards of living merely by requiring 2nd jobs and serious overtime to support them. These extensions of work reduce the standard of living regardless of what they buy (note: often, purchases covered by the system of credit, hence these purchases are overly and unnecessarily expensive). As the common wealth leaves the country, the highly strained American work habit shows as clearly as a wrecked boat when exposed by the lowering tide. It was hidden by the velocity of money, but now we see it clearly.
It's gone much too far, and America's workforce is falling out of First World status. The middle class is being cashed out (yes, even by ITSELF) simply to mint a few more millionaires... who then expatriate by various means. And finally, when manufacturing flees, the very basis of the economy is gone, hence you cannot "make it up" with services. You cannot run a sustainable economy on junk bonds, websites, strip malls and pizza delivery. The manufacture of capital equipment must occur in EACH AND EVERY sustainable economy, or slavery results.
The only alternative is to use the power of populist government to put a stop to capital flight. If another American corporation makes plans to shut down another factory (note: often profitable, but just "not profitable enough" for the voracious investor class) and move it to Mexico, a real populist government would put a stop to it. If necessary, said assets would be confiscated on paper and redistributed as shares to the workers affected. A business is not the sole sandbox of the owner. The workers and community are involved to make it function... and as well, the real basis of a American corporation is that it's chartered to operate by the State it's in. Hence, the People have their say. The question is, are they willing to reach out the populist hand and take rightful command of America's business assets (the common wealth) as the businessmen and assorted investors try to defect?
... and then their "crony capitalist" class will buy up government assets at pennies on the dollar. Don't forget that part. But you can get yours, too... by being a stockholder in the crony companies who will own vast priorly-public holdings. I'm sure the Young Republicans {tm} will be pushing that part of the propaganda any day now.
Considering that the first intelligent reaction to the new Crusades in the Middle East is to refuse to participate, I can't see your need being fulfilled. Crusaders are morons (... which should be evident from all the success that Crusades garnered before). Hence, morons will be "needed" to fill the ranks of the cannon fodder of the American Empire, not intelligent people.
You may be mystified, but there's NO dismissing the numerous testimonials about confiscation of money from Paypal accounts with no recourse other than to sue. So it's not a matter of a few bad things happening during the normal course of business due to misunderstanding, lost paperwork, and some contention. It's a matter of what happens to you when Paypal UNILATERALLY decides you are some sort of risk or scammer. Then you're screwed since the testimonials indicate that they take all your fund money and essentially never give it back. THAT is the problem -- whether or not it happens to you or anyone you know.
I will never use Paypal for those reasons. There is no protection for confiscation of small accounts since the cost of a lawsuit is relatively large. Where the only recourse is the legal system, the REAL cost of using Paypal rises dramatically.
Using S&H as your actual profit margin has long been used in remote commerce. The $28 guy simply went too far in his search for profit, hence the judgment of insanity.
I knew a company that made airbrushing instruction videos and sold them directly to the buying public. They were blunt about the S&H being the profit margin.
Over in the first world, we know exactly what response our employers will have to such fraud and corruption, and it involves fines and imprisonment.
India has a legal system too, but there as is happening here, people in despondent conditions don't care much for the consequences of law. A large middle class has something to lose, hence is very easy to keep subject to the law. As Americans get poorer, the threat of losing their homes and losing their jobs will lessen as they increasing move into shitty apartments and do shitty work when they can find it. In short, America is cashing out the middle class and brainlessly expects the legal system to continue to have force.
It should be illegal for corporations to 'donate' any money to politicians.
Why? Isn't anyone at liberty to give financial support to anyone else?
The corporations may think they're buying a politician, but it's THE REST OF US that continues voting these politicians into office each and every time. Those dollars can't compare to the millions of votes that we continue to cast in support of the system of bribery.
Financial donation is obviously something that we should be at liberty to perform -- "we" as groups and "we" as individuals. The political corruption that results lies squarely in our laps as voters. We know perfectly well who gets money from whom... and so we should identify their voting records in whatever legislature they are in, and then vote accordingly in the next election (and if that's too long a time to toss a crook out of office, there's always a recall election).
Laws and other various prohibitions cannot make up for our fundamental lack of political involvement and overall sense of morality. Once We The People put down our beer bottles and TV remote controls, and actually get politically involved, then those corporations will see that there will be no point in bribing politicians since their bought shills are soon tossed out of office by a knowledgable and active public.
(Having a "none of the above" selection on ballots as a standard feature would be ALMOST ESSENTIAL toward setting up this kind of environment. After all, the politician class now has a lock on the election system, since Bad vs. Worse only ensures that a corporate stooge is elected from a restricted set of crooks.)
Gosh. Well, my statement stands. Your education is REALLY lacking. You are harping on a worldview that is not supported by reality itself.
The basic premise is that it costs too much to launch from Earth, so you're going to launch millions of tons from Earth so that you don't have to launch from Earth any more.
No, this is YOUR erroneous concentration. You launch megatons to REDUCE the costs of continuing space involvement. You don't "stop". Real investment (which you obviously have no idea about, Mr. ASS-trophysics) requires an initial surge of funds, then maintenance and oversight funding. DUH. You just don't keep "taking" for the rest of the life of the investment. This "taking" thing is a modern mental disease.
your seed capital is used to finance your competitors and invalidate your business premise.
For stupid fuckers like yourself, I'd imagine that's what happens when you lose control of what you thought you Smart Guy Investors thought you were investing in. The point is to NOT lose control. Why build a moonbase if you're going to lose control of it? And as well, why make colonies in America if you are again going to lose control?
The colonial British were stupid and could not accept that they'd have to become more partners than outright owners -- hence they lost a lot of control, spinning the gold of their investment into hay. (Note: Yes, yes, I know all about the many lines of influence and control between early Americans and the British. My point is still clear otherwise.)
And similarly, any fool can build a moonbase that soon says "fuck you Earth!". The real Mr. Smarty Guy (not you) will figure out how to increasingly partner with his creation and sustain his economic involvement and reaping of the rewards.
Unlike the assgoblins like yourself who purport to be intelligent, the hard man asserts control of his investment at select points, and retains controls through many mechanisms... even if he turns into "Mr. Five Percent" as was so notoriously documented in the book "The Prize".
(Remember what I said about your lacking education? Grab "The Prize" and play some catch-up in industrial investment.)
You need to put hundreds of millions of tons of something into space to make your scheme pay for itself
Ever hear of an economy? That's right, I almost forgot -- you are undoubtedly a Westerner who is chronically uneducated about a REAL economy -- one that is sustainable, and completely unlike the Western version which now appears to not only crash periodically, but at an accelerating pace.
In a REAL ECONOMY, you exchange value so that everyone involved gets prosperous over time. This means in my much-maligned plan, that Earth continues to ship items TO orbit that spacefarers need (like labor, select volatiles and refined elements and precision equipment), and gets FROM orbit things that the Earthbound cannot obtain otherwise (like continuous solar power, vacuum-dependent materials, etc.).
(Real trade is a dependency affair. True, to some level trade can be used to increase independence. But that should just spawn changes in the trade stream -- not shut it down.)
Any any rate: "TO." "FROM." Recognize these terms, Roscoe? They imply an EXCHANGE. Are catching on yet? Or do I have to use smaller words, and will have to post simple GIFs with cartoon characters and arrows showing how a fucking REAL ECONOMY works?
The vast wealth of the solar system is out there, waiting to be exploited by the bold. Yes, some of them will die. Yes, some of them will bankrupt. But progress must march forward to be called PROGRESS, right Bunky? Resources don't fucking exploit themselves. In contrast to what shitnoise you were fed in some dipshit Western university -- I should know, from the Engineering Physics program at UMass/Boston -- people have to GO places and DO things by using ST
A Shuttle-derived heavy-lifter vehicle is actually a bit mis-named. It is not derived from the Shuttle itself; it's instead derived from a launch platform that has much of the Shuttle removed. What is most important are the Shuttle main engines. They are marvels of modern engineering, and a lot of Shuttle investment was spent to simply develop them. We should think of those engines are the modern Saturn lifters, and we should use them as such.
A derived vehicle will simply be a large (100ton+ capacity) cargo container attached to a Shuttle boost package of main engines, H tank, and solid fuel rockets. So your tonnage requirements can be well met with what we have. I'm sure that a real aerospace company (not the bloated whores who currently dominate contracting) can whip up a derived container for $500 million, and then churn them out on a production line for an affordable sum apiece.
Yes, you have it more or less correct. You will have to launch up to a million tons of stuff off the Earth (as a source of volatiles, labor and precision equipment) in order to create an industry upon the Lunar surface that will be capable of launching seemingly endless billions of tons into LEO, Cislunar and Interplanetary space for the purposes of conducting a space-faring civilization.
In short, you will have to make a significant investment in order to gain returns over a long time. I'm sure this is a fucking foreign idea to you, what with the mental retardation against real investment that's been infecting many modern minds.
Go read some more books. Your education is lacking.
Finally you admit it. Intrinsic value DOES exist... and I must add, "... to a society that is willing to put labor, energy and materials to work to create more wealth (which can only be sensibly measured in labor, energy and materials)". In a society of paper-and-electron worshippers like yourself, capital assets have no value -- which only demonstrates that paper-and-electron worshippers are retards.
But otherwise, you clearly refuse to realize that capital assets are the heart of value. GM can leverage its capital equipment and access to skilled labor to make wealth. Google can only fool people into thinking that its services are "worth a lot". GM can work its way out of debt. Google can only accumulate debt. (It's GM's ability to work its way out of a hole that is what you refuse to understand.)
You clearly also don't understand the difference between the CONFIDENCE (Google) that a job can be done, and the ABILITY (GM) that a job can be done. And that leads you to erroneously conclude that Google is somehow worth more than GM in REAL terms.
Go and blow your wealth on "investing" in Google, you unbelievable shit-ape. You cannot erase that the dotcoms were an investment bubble, and a bubble is just a sign of greed overwhelming intelligence. I hope you lose everything you have in your search for more paper and electrons instead of STUFF.
You're dismissed. Go back to masturbating over a copy of Forbes.
Be careful, Banks don't make STUFF, but I would invest money in them, would you?
No, I wouldn't and I don't. Banks are now part of the overleveraged hype-scam system and I want nothing to do with them. All you can claim to be doing by "investing" (note: not actual investment -- you're just cashing out the previous sucker, proving him a little smarter or luckier than you) in banks today is that you hope to cash out before the crash.
People pay a lot of money for IP (ask CSR or ARM about this)
You can't eat paper and electrons. People woke up around 2000 and realized that this law is true. There will always be a market for IP, but what happened (and is apparently going to happen again) was so overblown, hyped and overleveraged that it was just a bubble that MUST burst (as it did).
Google's "valuation" is an indicator of this disease re-asserting itself. The margin between what's true and what's being promoted is again widening. God help us all if this does balloon into another bubble; we've still not hit the housing crash yet, and that's going to be utterly brutal all by itself.
Don't be a buffoon comparing cherries to watermelons. The set of automobile manufacturers is very limited, since it takes tens of billions of dollars to set one of them up. That's what I mean by DUPLICATED -- duplicating GM. Toyota already exists and has been an industrial giant for many decades. (In other words, your point would apply if Delorean actually survived. Bzzt!)
In high contrast, Google can be duplicated in less than 100M, easy. People are trying to duplicate Google all the time, since the barrier for entry is relatively low (because the business itself doesn't deliver that much value, you follow?). But the industrial giants of GM, Toyota and the rest have no real competition except their own incompetence... which is the real problem with GM. Which is why -- at the current rate of events -- GM must be restructured. GM may even be liquidated... but that only means its vast holdings of capital equipment will be sold off to other real capitalists who will simply expand their own real businesses at GM's expense.
About the only thing that could apply here in your sentiment is if China secures enough oil and gasoline to allow her to grow an industrial giant like GM for her own populace, and then it can produce the stuff of real value, like cars and trucks for the Chinese to use to do other, worthwhile things with, like transportation of materials and people. That's the only possibility I can foresee for "duplicating" GM in the manner you implied. AND HOW MANY TIMES CAN THAT HAPPEN? How may times in Human history are we going to have over 1 billion people tipping on the brink of a early 1800s economy into a late 1900s economy in about 30 years? How many Chinas do we really have left for those purposes?
You lack perspective. Please read some books -- books thet illustrate the real economy's function in history -- and in the meantime, put down that copy of Forbes that you've been masturbating over.
I made the assertions according to economic law. You are simply refusing to admit that those laws are true.
GM's physical assets alone are worth more than Google. PERIOD. Anyone can prove this by inventorying the items and then arranging them for sale. (Note that these items then have to be sold to real (not faux or paper) capitalists -- you know, people who take capital equipment, make things, and then sell them... thus increasing society's capacity.) GM's physical plant is INTRINSICALLY worth more, since such things are capital equipment -- you can make things with them that can be sold for good prices.
Do you even know what the fuck CAPITAL EQUIPMENT is? OR do you think that (for example) food gets to your fridge by magic elves tossing pixie dust?
It's only in the deranged mind of the dotcom boomer that a paper company like Google is somehow "worth" more than a company that produces the cars and trucks that makes the rest of the economy happen at the level it currently operates at.
Cars and trucks have INTRINSIC value. You can put in some gas, and manage to haul a person to the hospital in one of them. That's INTRINSIC value. They will always be valued in realistic terms, not in "I'll pay you $100 for the stock you bought for $80 just 2 days ago" terms of BULLSHIT.
It doesn't matter that for now, GM is incurring losses in order to make these vitally important physical assets. (Note well that cars and trucks are themselves CAPITAL EQUIPMENT, since you can use them to make more REAL (not paper) wealth.) GM is simply in a bind and it must be restructured. This is wholly different than truthfully asserting that GM is worth less that some Internet search engine. It's like saying a car is "worthless" or is a "junker" if a couple of parts on it need to be fixed.
I don't know what you specifically mean by paper assets. Are you talking about short term securities and cash?
Now you're just playing dumb. How the fuck did AOL (worth very little) manage to "buy" Time Warner (worth much, much more)? Duh, they used horrendously overinflated paper assets like STOCKS to swindle people into thinking they could "buy" an asset like TW. Hence, PAPER ASSETS.
Your equating of a stable system of paper currency to this hype is just nonsense. There is no rational equation there. The only way that paper currency applies is when the government opts to print money as wildly as stock certificates were printed in the late 1990s -- in short, hyperinflating it.
I can clearly see that the dotcom fraud is just going to happen again from stupid-assed sentiments like yours that are put forth with such ignorance, yet with such force. You clearly overvalue paper and electrons... but paper and electrons only peripherally manage to get you gasoline, food, lumber, steel, etc. -- and these deliverables are the things that actually matter, not stock certificates. Paper assets are only a means of keeping score (i.e. tracking WHO owns REAL value), but you must actually be playing a real game for that to function sustainably. And the real game is the use of capital equipment to make stuff that improves people's lives. PERIOD.
In closing, if you don't think unemployment follows from companies slagging themselves over paper assets, you've been fucking blind to the financial and social news of the last 5 years. You can't possibly be THAT ignorant, so you must be indulging in willful ignorance. Keep responding so that I can pound your foolishness into the dirt for the rest of the readership to see.
Don't you ever wish that the middle class will start teaching their children to save money, buy carefully, and in general abide by the philosophies of thrift?
The fact is that most people will have to go to college to obtain a successful career.
Considering how many of the jobs those degrees allegedly apply towards are going overseas to the cheaper labor markets, I can only cry "bullshit" on your assertion of SUCCESS and CAREER. What you are saying here is simply in line with the Myth of Re-Training.
If there's no point in training for a job that will be offshored as soon as the company can arrange it, then it's equally pointless to re-train for another job that is equally offshorable. Instead of all this college and training crap, societies need to get a grip on the real problems: the overfluidity of capital and the reluctance of governments to regulate capital.
Considering your sentiment is just sending people into big education debts with only a little more option for employability in return, you really are promoting a myth. People with a massive debt due to education, car and home purchases are the VERY DEFINITION of "poor". You are just being fooled by their cash flow. Many of the people you seem to admire by implication are in too much debt, and indebtedness is much worse than being merely poor.
The inevitable housing crash is going to bring all these myths out into high relief for us to examine. But wasn't the point of intelligence instead to foresee a catastrophe and then avoid it?
Slashdot Mirror
(BTW, you exhibit no understanding of bootstrapping industrial operations, which only supports my conclusion that Humans are no longer capable of undertaking large engineering projects. Too many people think like you, in terms of "profitable quarters" and not instead in terms of "advancing civilization".)
... you threw out the term "during the next 100 years". A century is nothing compared to the length of Human civilization. If I'm actually incorrect about my implied figures (note: I'm not), then I'm only off by a century. Big whoop. It hardly matters to me if Humans become a space-faring civilization by the year 2100 or 2200. It's irrelevant. What IS relevant is that Humans should be able to bootstrap themselves into a civilzation that exploits all the resources of the solar system. Humans did it to the entire Earth, while the village yokels like you said it couldn't be done. We can therefore do it to the entire system of planets, asteroids and moons (... and yes, even the Sun, via a Dyson Sphere).
A certain number of launches will have to be done from Earth, certainly, and then the number of them will drop to a maintenance level. But that number is nowhere near that ones required equivalently from the Moon.
Furthermore, you'd have to be smoking a particularly strange form of ganja to think that "launches" are the way to do it from the lunar surface. Only a moron would try that. The only economical way to do it is to use mass drivers along the lunar surface. They could be built from local materials (Al, Fe and Si from the lunar regolith) and energized from the Sun.
Perhaps you think all this is "not practical". You are certainly free to think so. But you are wrong about this in so many dimensions of the problem that it's almost pointless to respond to you. You are uneducated about space operations and industrial development, boy. PERIOD. Please run and read some books before speaking again on this topic.
As a final note
You cannot undertake such a construction project by relying on Earth launches. You have to use the Moon. The lunar regolith is like talc in consistency, and is therefore processible as a readily available ore for Aluminum, Iron, Silicon, Oxygen, Titanium, Calcium, etc. The lunar surface is bathed in sunlight, which can be used for power. The Moon is the only manufacturing center available for construction of large objects even down to low Earth orbit (since it takes 22 times less energy to sling mass to LEO from the Moon than it does to lift it to LEO from the Earth).
... anything than undertake the next step in massive engineering.
Still, this entire ring/disk idea is farcical for other reasons, largely revolving around Humanity's lack of ability to carry out large construction projects. We were doing OK there for a while, then Humanity stopped thinking big and started acting in accordance of zero-sum game theory. So rings or disks will never be built, even if the Earth is actually threatened by the lack of them. Humans would much rather sit around a conference table and argue about the facts, and who to blame, as well as how exactly another buck can be made on the deal
Mind yøu, prøprietary førmat bites can be pretti nasti ....
You have out-done yourself, going above and beyond the call of /. duty. Consider yourself No Prized. {clap clap clap}
You may not be getting as far as you think with your consumer-rights stance. In my city, many of the HVAC companies in the yellow pages are actually owned by a couple of major holding companies. I laugh and point this out whenever I hear someone around here "shopping around" for furnace installation and repairs. So, you may have demonstrated nothing whatsoever to your first AC company in choosing another AC company. Just a thought.
Yes, the raft of people who are in personal financial trouble from the lack of steady work is vastly impressing. When the electricity gets shut off because you just can't come up with the 4 months in arrears, I'm sure that $10 CD player for sale in the nearby Wal*Mart will be a big fucking comfort to you.
... who then expatriate by various means. And finally, when manufacturing flees, the very basis of the economy is gone, hence you cannot "make it up" with services. You cannot run a sustainable economy on junk bonds, websites, strip malls and pizza delivery. The manufacture of capital equipment must occur in EACH AND EVERY sustainable economy, or slavery results.
... and as well, the real basis of a American corporation is that it's chartered to operate by the State it's in. Hence, the People have their say. The question is, are they willing to reach out the populist hand and take rightful command of America's business assets (the common wealth) as the businessmen and assorted investors try to defect?
The mantra of lowered prices is getting waaaaay out of control. People who are not only tossed out of steady work, but are also tossed into big indebtedness, are only going to consume your stupid cheap shit as long as the easy credit environment lasts. But easy credit is unsustainable. So you are being foolish. Americans have already taken ENORMOUS hits to their standards of living merely by requiring 2nd jobs and serious overtime to support them. These extensions of work reduce the standard of living regardless of what they buy (note: often, purchases covered by the system of credit, hence these purchases are overly and unnecessarily expensive). As the common wealth leaves the country, the highly strained American work habit shows as clearly as a wrecked boat when exposed by the lowering tide. It was hidden by the velocity of money, but now we see it clearly.
It's gone much too far, and America's workforce is falling out of First World status. The middle class is being cashed out (yes, even by ITSELF) simply to mint a few more millionaires
The only alternative is to use the power of populist government to put a stop to capital flight. If another American corporation makes plans to shut down another factory (note: often profitable, but just "not profitable enough" for the voracious investor class) and move it to Mexico, a real populist government would put a stop to it. If necessary, said assets would be confiscated on paper and redistributed as shares to the workers affected. A business is not the sole sandbox of the owner. The workers and community are involved to make it function
... and then their "crony capitalist" class will buy up government assets at pennies on the dollar. Don't forget that part. But you can get yours, too ... by being a stockholder in the crony companies who will own vast priorly-public holdings. I'm sure the Young Republicans {tm} will be pushing that part of the propaganda any day now.
Considering that the first intelligent reaction to the new Crusades in the Middle East is to refuse to participate, I can't see your need being fulfilled. Crusaders are morons (... which should be evident from all the success that Crusades garnered before). Hence, morons will be "needed" to fill the ranks of the cannon fodder of the American Empire, not intelligent people.
You may be mystified, but there's NO dismissing the numerous testimonials about confiscation of money from Paypal accounts with no recourse other than to sue. So it's not a matter of a few bad things happening during the normal course of business due to misunderstanding, lost paperwork, and some contention. It's a matter of what happens to you when Paypal UNILATERALLY decides you are some sort of risk or scammer. Then you're screwed since the testimonials indicate that they take all your fund money and essentially never give it back. THAT is the problem -- whether or not it happens to you or anyone you know.
I will never use Paypal for those reasons. There is no protection for confiscation of small accounts since the cost of a lawsuit is relatively large. Where the only recourse is the legal system, the REAL cost of using Paypal rises dramatically.
Using S&H as your actual profit margin has long been used in remote commerce. The $28 guy simply went too far in his search for profit, hence the judgment of insanity.
I knew a company that made airbrushing instruction videos and sold them directly to the buying public. They were blunt about the S&H being the profit margin.
Over in the first world, we know exactly what response our employers will have to such fraud and corruption, and it involves fines and imprisonment.
India has a legal system too, but there as is happening here, people in despondent conditions don't care much for the consequences of law. A large middle class has something to lose, hence is very easy to keep subject to the law. As Americans get poorer, the threat of losing their homes and losing their jobs will lessen as they increasing move into shitty apartments and do shitty work when they can find it. In short, America is cashing out the middle class and brainlessly expects the legal system to continue to have force.
It should be illegal for corporations to 'donate' any money to politicians.
... and so we should identify their voting records in whatever legislature they are in, and then vote accordingly in the next election (and if that's too long a time to toss a crook out of office, there's always a recall election).
Why? Isn't anyone at liberty to give financial support to anyone else?
The corporations may think they're buying a politician, but it's THE REST OF US that continues voting these politicians into office each and every time. Those dollars can't compare to the millions of votes that we continue to cast in support of the system of bribery.
Financial donation is obviously something that we should be at liberty to perform -- "we" as groups and "we" as individuals. The political corruption that results lies squarely in our laps as voters. We know perfectly well who gets money from whom
Laws and other various prohibitions cannot make up for our fundamental lack of political involvement and overall sense of morality. Once We The People put down our beer bottles and TV remote controls, and actually get politically involved, then those corporations will see that there will be no point in bribing politicians since their bought shills are soon tossed out of office by a knowledgable and active public.
(Having a "none of the above" selection on ballots as a standard feature would be ALMOST ESSENTIAL toward setting up this kind of environment. After all, the politician class now has a lock on the election system, since Bad vs. Worse only ensures that a corporate stooge is elected from a restricted set of crooks.)
Gosh. Well, my statement stands. Your education is REALLY lacking. You are harping on a worldview that is not supported by reality itself.
... even if he turns into "Mr. Five Percent" as was so notoriously documented in the book "The Prize".
The basic premise is that it costs too much to launch from Earth, so you're going to launch millions of tons from Earth so that you don't have to launch from Earth any more.
No, this is YOUR erroneous concentration. You launch megatons to REDUCE the costs of continuing space involvement. You don't "stop". Real investment (which you obviously have no idea about, Mr. ASS-trophysics) requires an initial surge of funds, then maintenance and oversight funding. DUH. You just don't keep "taking" for the rest of the life of the investment. This "taking" thing is a modern mental disease.
your seed capital is used to finance your competitors and invalidate your business premise.
For stupid fuckers like yourself, I'd imagine that's what happens when you lose control of what you thought you Smart Guy Investors thought you were investing in. The point is to NOT lose control. Why build a moonbase if you're going to lose control of it? And as well, why make colonies in America if you are again going to lose control?
The colonial British were stupid and could not accept that they'd have to become more partners than outright owners -- hence they lost a lot of control, spinning the gold of their investment into hay. (Note: Yes, yes, I know all about the many lines of influence and control between early Americans and the British. My point is still clear otherwise.)
And similarly, any fool can build a moonbase that soon says "fuck you Earth!". The real Mr. Smarty Guy (not you) will figure out how to increasingly partner with his creation and sustain his economic involvement and reaping of the rewards.
Unlike the assgoblins like yourself who purport to be intelligent, the hard man asserts control of his investment at select points, and retains controls through many mechanisms
(Remember what I said about your lacking education? Grab "The Prize" and play some catch-up in industrial investment.)
You need to put hundreds of millions of tons of something into space to make your scheme pay for itself
Ever hear of an economy? That's right, I almost forgot -- you are undoubtedly a Westerner who is chronically uneducated about a REAL economy -- one that is sustainable, and completely unlike the Western version which now appears to not only crash periodically, but at an accelerating pace.
In a REAL ECONOMY, you exchange value so that everyone involved gets prosperous over time. This means in my much-maligned plan, that Earth continues to ship items TO orbit that spacefarers need (like labor, select volatiles and refined elements and precision equipment), and gets FROM orbit things that the Earthbound cannot obtain otherwise (like continuous solar power, vacuum-dependent materials, etc.).
(Real trade is a dependency affair. True, to some level trade can be used to increase independence. But that should just spawn changes in the trade stream -- not shut it down.)
Any any rate: "TO." "FROM." Recognize these terms, Roscoe? They imply an EXCHANGE. Are catching on yet? Or do I have to use smaller words, and will have to post simple GIFs with cartoon characters and arrows showing how a fucking REAL ECONOMY works?
The vast wealth of the solar system is out there, waiting to be exploited by the bold. Yes, some of them will die. Yes, some of them will bankrupt. But progress must march forward to be called PROGRESS, right Bunky? Resources don't fucking exploit themselves. In contrast to what shitnoise you were fed in some dipshit Western university -- I should know, from the Engineering Physics program at UMass/Boston -- people have to GO places and DO things by using ST
A Shuttle-derived heavy-lifter vehicle is actually a bit mis-named. It is not derived from the Shuttle itself; it's instead derived from a launch platform that has much of the Shuttle removed. What is most important are the Shuttle main engines. They are marvels of modern engineering, and a lot of Shuttle investment was spent to simply develop them. We should think of those engines are the modern Saturn lifters, and we should use them as such.
A derived vehicle will simply be a large (100ton+ capacity) cargo container attached to a Shuttle boost package of main engines, H tank, and solid fuel rockets. So your tonnage requirements can be well met with what we have. I'm sure that a real aerospace company (not the bloated whores who currently dominate contracting) can whip up a derived container for $500 million, and then churn them out on a production line for an affordable sum apiece.
Yes, you have it more or less correct. You will have to launch up to a million tons of stuff off the Earth (as a source of volatiles, labor and precision equipment) in order to create an industry upon the Lunar surface that will be capable of launching seemingly endless billions of tons into LEO, Cislunar and Interplanetary space for the purposes of conducting a space-faring civilization.
In short, you will have to make a significant investment in order to gain returns over a long time. I'm sure this is a fucking foreign idea to you, what with the mental retardation against real investment that's been infecting many modern minds.
Go read some more books. Your education is lacking.
GM's capital assets ARE worth more than Google's.
... and I must add, "... to a society that is willing to put labor, energy and materials to work to create more wealth (which can only be sensibly measured in labor, energy and materials)". In a society of paper-and-electron worshippers like yourself, capital assets have no value -- which only demonstrates that paper-and-electron worshippers are retards.
Finally you admit it. Intrinsic value DOES exist
But otherwise, you clearly refuse to realize that capital assets are the heart of value. GM can leverage its capital equipment and access to skilled labor to make wealth. Google can only fool people into thinking that its services are "worth a lot". GM can work its way out of debt. Google can only accumulate debt. (It's GM's ability to work its way out of a hole that is what you refuse to understand.)
You clearly also don't understand the difference between the CONFIDENCE (Google) that a job can be done, and the ABILITY (GM) that a job can be done. And that leads you to erroneously conclude that Google is somehow worth more than GM in REAL terms.
Go and blow your wealth on "investing" in Google, you unbelievable shit-ape. You cannot erase that the dotcoms were an investment bubble, and a bubble is just a sign of greed overwhelming intelligence. I hope you lose everything you have in your search for more paper and electrons instead of STUFF.
You're dismissed. Go back to masturbating over a copy of Forbes.
I didn't cast a judgment on it. I just gave it a name. It's also a name that's been much used lately for similar purposes.
Be careful, Banks don't make STUFF, but I would invest money in them, would you?
No, I wouldn't and I don't. Banks are now part of the overleveraged hype-scam system and I want nothing to do with them. All you can claim to be doing by "investing" (note: not actual investment -- you're just cashing out the previous sucker, proving him a little smarter or luckier than you) in banks today is that you hope to cash out before the crash.
People pay a lot of money for IP (ask CSR or ARM about this)
You can't eat paper and electrons. People woke up around 2000 and realized that this law is true. There will always be a market for IP, but what happened (and is apparently going to happen again) was so overblown, hyped and overleveraged that it was just a bubble that MUST burst (as it did).
Google's "valuation" is an indicator of this disease re-asserting itself. The margin between what's true and what's being promoted is again widening. God help us all if this does balloon into another bubble; we've still not hit the housing crash yet, and that's going to be utterly brutal all by itself.
Don't be a buffoon comparing cherries to watermelons. The set of automobile manufacturers is very limited, since it takes tens of billions of dollars to set one of them up. That's what I mean by DUPLICATED -- duplicating GM. Toyota already exists and has been an industrial giant for many decades. (In other words, your point would apply if Delorean actually survived. Bzzt!)
... which is the real problem with GM. Which is why -- at the current rate of events -- GM must be restructured. GM may even be liquidated ... but that only means its vast holdings of capital equipment will be sold off to other real capitalists who will simply expand their own real businesses at GM's expense.
About the only thing that could apply here in your sentiment is if China secures enough oil and gasoline to allow her to grow an industrial giant like GM for her own populace, and then it can produce the stuff of real value, like cars and trucks for the Chinese to use to do other, worthwhile things with, like transportation of materials and people. That's the only possibility I can foresee for "duplicating" GM in the manner you implied. AND HOW MANY TIMES CAN THAT HAPPEN? How may times in Human history are we going to have over 1 billion people tipping on the brink of a early 1800s economy into a late 1900s economy in about 30 years? How many Chinas do we really have left for those purposes?
In high contrast, Google can be duplicated in less than 100M, easy. People are trying to duplicate Google all the time, since the barrier for entry is relatively low (because the business itself doesn't deliver that much value, you follow?). But the industrial giants of GM, Toyota and the rest have no real competition except their own incompetence
You lack perspective. Please read some books -- books thet illustrate the real economy's function in history -- and in the meantime, put down that copy of Forbes that you've been masturbating over.
I made the assertions according to economic law. You are simply refusing to admit that those laws are true.
... thus increasing society's capacity.) GM's physical plant is INTRINSICALLY worth more, since such things are capital equipment -- you can make things with them that can be sold for good prices.
... but paper and electrons only peripherally manage to get you gasoline, food, lumber, steel, etc. -- and these deliverables are the things that actually matter, not stock certificates. Paper assets are only a means of keeping score (i.e. tracking WHO owns REAL value), but you must actually be playing a real game for that to function sustainably. And the real game is the use of capital equipment to make stuff that improves people's lives. PERIOD.
GM's physical assets alone are worth more than Google. PERIOD. Anyone can prove this by inventorying the items and then arranging them for sale. (Note that these items then have to be sold to real (not faux or paper) capitalists -- you know, people who take capital equipment, make things, and then sell them
Do you even know what the fuck CAPITAL EQUIPMENT is? OR do you think that (for example) food gets to your fridge by magic elves tossing pixie dust?
It's only in the deranged mind of the dotcom boomer that a paper company like Google is somehow "worth" more than a company that produces the cars and trucks that makes the rest of the economy happen at the level it currently operates at.
Cars and trucks have INTRINSIC value. You can put in some gas, and manage to haul a person to the hospital in one of them. That's INTRINSIC value. They will always be valued in realistic terms, not in "I'll pay you $100 for the stock you bought for $80 just 2 days ago" terms of BULLSHIT.
It doesn't matter that for now, GM is incurring losses in order to make these vitally important physical assets. (Note well that cars and trucks are themselves CAPITAL EQUIPMENT, since you can use them to make more REAL (not paper) wealth.) GM is simply in a bind and it must be restructured. This is wholly different than truthfully asserting that GM is worth less that some Internet search engine. It's like saying a car is "worthless" or is a "junker" if a couple of parts on it need to be fixed.
I don't know what you specifically mean by paper assets. Are you talking about short term securities and cash?
Now you're just playing dumb. How the fuck did AOL (worth very little) manage to "buy" Time Warner (worth much, much more)? Duh, they used horrendously overinflated paper assets like STOCKS to swindle people into thinking they could "buy" an asset like TW. Hence, PAPER ASSETS.
Your equating of a stable system of paper currency to this hype is just nonsense. There is no rational equation there. The only way that paper currency applies is when the government opts to print money as wildly as stock certificates were printed in the late 1990s -- in short, hyperinflating it.
I can clearly see that the dotcom fraud is just going to happen again from stupid-assed sentiments like yours that are put forth with such ignorance, yet with such force. You clearly overvalue paper and electrons
In closing, if you don't think unemployment follows from companies slagging themselves over paper assets, you've been fucking blind to the financial and social news of the last 5 years. You can't possibly be THAT ignorant, so you must be indulging in willful ignorance. Keep responding so that I can pound your foolishness into the dirt for the rest of the readership to see.
Don't you ever wish that the middle class will start teaching their children to save money, buy carefully, and in general abide by the philosophies of thrift?
The fact is that most people will have to go to college to obtain a successful career.
Considering how many of the jobs those degrees allegedly apply towards are going overseas to the cheaper labor markets, I can only cry "bullshit" on your assertion of SUCCESS and CAREER. What you are saying here is simply in line with the Myth of Re-Training.
If there's no point in training for a job that will be offshored as soon as the company can arrange it, then it's equally pointless to re-train for another job that is equally offshorable. Instead of all this college and training crap, societies need to get a grip on the real problems: the overfluidity of capital and the reluctance of governments to regulate capital.
Considering your sentiment is just sending people into big education debts with only a little more option for employability in return, you really are promoting a myth. People with a massive debt due to education, car and home purchases are the VERY DEFINITION of "poor". You are just being fooled by their cash flow. Many of the people you seem to admire by implication are in too much debt, and indebtedness is much worse than being merely poor.
The inevitable housing crash is going to bring all these myths out into high relief for us to examine. But wasn't the point of intelligence instead to foresee a catastrophe and then avoid it?
When the primary motivation for learning something is money and not an actual interest in the topic, this will likely lead to failure.
.sig real estate right there, Sir.
That's prime
That was almost as good as a valid:
FR15T PS0T!!1111!!1one11!!ONEONE