Your position is weakening. But you show good character while doing so. I retract my "fuckhead" moniker.
I never claimed migrations, even mega-migrations, weren't happening, nor that they didn't have historical precedent. My point is that blending, amalgamation and migration only go so far, regardless of their intensity at any point of measurement. And when people acquire the stability of a home, they grab at it. And those wholly Human desires expand, demanding land... especially when the business cycle hits the next bottom, and people end up with time -- not money -- on their hands. This is what the yuppies are doing, in practical terms: they trade stability in a home for the luxuries.
I'm hardly not the only pastoralist (if indeed, that is what I am, but let's for the sake of argument accept your label). Many yuppies, hung about with iPods and credit cards, find themselves wanting to merge their prosperity with... waaait for it... the pastoral environment. People like open air, plants and animals... probably harkening back to the evolutionary path of the hunter-gatherer. But hunter-gatherers still strove to have homes, and their "migration" patterns were round-trips within their lifetimes; the new and strange would only compel movement when the food sources demanded it.
Picture this as part of an old war, between belly and brain, between the mundane and the sublime, and between rural and urban. Homesteading is a Human urge, and it conflicts with the wanderlust. These conflicts lead the sensible man to consider balancing them (instead of outright suppression of one or the other).
Balance is an old concept that the Orient knew so well that they made a well-touted symbol for it: yin-yang. They split, share, encroach, and interpenetrate. The end product is equality and co-existence.
Unfortunately, "equality and co-existence" are not within the hyper-yuppie agenda.
Enjoy the pastoral life. you might be one of a couple of hundred thousand people who give it a shot in the USA.
This viewpoint is a fundamental heart of the problem. Your perception is abysmally skewed. TENS OF MILLIONS are pastoral in the USA. It's just the nearness and closeness of city life that misleads you into concluding that the urban areas dominate. Population density is not population majority. If you'd get 20 miles away from most cities, you'd see real countryside... and in a nation of 3.5M square miles, there's quite a bit of that over the urban zones.
(As a side note, the US Census Bureau's "current urban definition" is problematical since it tends to define urban areas merely on the basis of incorporation or "2500 people live there", and not by their lifestyle. Hence, my use of the term urban is my own. I'd estimate that my "urban" is roughly 50% of the USCB's "urban". Look here in the notes.)
If I had to estimate, I'd say that with 2000 "urban" cities and towns with an average of 200 sq-mi, there's only about 1/4 of 1 million sq-mi of urban area. Let's say about 1/8th of all of America. And this 1/8th holds about half of America's population.
People call the rest the "flyover", but it exists. It's just not dense.
You're making all my arguments for me. Sheesh, let me get in a word or two, Gypsy.
What can I say? It's like you said it all already. Can you hear yourself? I doubt it, much like what happens with financially depraved people who gather in an area and start talking about their stocks. You say "pastoralist", "stability", "roots" and "American Way Of Life" like (fucking!) swear words. What will you condemn next, childbirth? Will the raising of children become passe? How about monogamy?
Gypsy, your obviously yuppie lifestyle is being pushed into hyper-yuppie modes, just to mint a few more millionaires (and note to you: your chance of joining their ranks is slim, so why not just stick to playing the lottery?). The yuppie lifestyle is unsustainable. I know this seems impossible... and worse, utter heresy. Why, you made $4000 last year in stock profits alone! Making money is prima facie evidence that your actions are most blessed! But it's all a facade and must destroy itself eventually. The intellect comes into play by observing that fact.
Energy demands alone will destroy the yuppie lifestyle. So you can imagine what hyper-yuppies are facing. But I speak out to these poor deluded souls as I would any violent criminal, to say: "Stop what you are doing since you are hurting other people." A lifestyle based on consumption is the ultimate violence one can do against the world.
If you just don't like other people, and just don't care what happens to them every time you fire up your SUV, then just come out and say so. The modern era of Emperor Bush means not having to say you're sorry. Just admit it. You like to hurt people for your personal gain. Your Emperor is saying essentially the same thing... why can't you be as honest? Perhaps it's because Gypsies have a tradition of prevarication to uphold?
Your children's children's children won't even know which continent you lived on, will probably have four or five ethnic identities, speak half a dozen languages and live in five countries before they're twenty five....
... I read a lot of SciFi too, but unlike you I don't actually believe this kind of crap. I must repeat: The energy demands alone will destroy this lifestyle. It cannot be sustained. Oil is as good as we will ever get on Earth's surface, and it's a limited commodity.
Also, cultures, races and religions remain, despite the smoothing and homogenizing effects of Western Consumerism's butter knife, and despite the threats that the Imperial militaries make against the "pastoral" world. Races tend to not mix, despite what your beloved metropolises show you. The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills (as Ethan Allen once said)... and crossing those lines invokes the now terrible spectre of world-wide or constant war.
But you know all of this. How could you not? Even the poor standards of Western education provide more than enough of this information.
And in knowing all of that, I call your particular condition "willful ignorance". There are too many like you; in America, it is practically an epidemic of what can only be called "fantasy life". You imagine something is true despite evidence and despite the murmurs of your own Human heart, and then believe it so fiercely that you find youself drawn into conversations like... this one, in fact.
To pick an icon... an iPod is not enough. One day, you will come to accept that, or it will kill you, as bums are killed, sleeping frozen under bridges in the winter, curled around their iPod equivalent icon: an empty bottle of liquor. Toys are not enough to sustain real Human beings. And superfluous lifestyles act the same.
This fuckhead is the result of too many people who have lost the sense of a home. They are stuffed into apartments and cannot conceive that the character of the American citizenry works hand-in-hand with the immobility of labor. When their jobs move, they move... leaving behind no notable indicators on the property. No well-composted gardens. No marks on the wall showing how their children have grown. No walkway stones laid by their own hands. No fruit or nut trees planted in order to yield a harvest.
People with real homes must use the power of government to make capital stay put and perform its necessary social function. If you hate American protectionism, then at some level you are the enemy of the American home... so you can just go fuck yourself as much as you are trying to fuck everyone else with your essentially Gypsy lifestyle.
You said it. Next DVD format? What about how terrible the current format is?
DVDs I get from the library are like rolling the dice... loaded dice, and they are not in your favor. After a few scratches by the general public, they become essentially unusable. I've had so many problems with unplayable and skipping DVDs that I'd decided almost 2 years ago that VHS was here to stay since it was a more reliable format. I obtain 10 tapes for every disk, and have yet to purchase a DVD player (having repaired my VHS player twice now, we're still going strong).
I'm not the only one noticing this. About half of the people I know with DVD players have mentioned how badly that DVDs play.
I'm going to laugh off any format that doesn't mandate a case-sealed disk. But I'm sure the same ol' simple disk will prevail, since people are so cheap. My concern is how long is the road we must travel like this, before the companies respond to consumer backlash from the sheer volume of unplayable disks. (Of course, I would've expected more of an uproar over the iPod battery issue, but too many yuppies with disposable income bought into those.)
Roger that. The best upgrade we can do is retire the fleet. They've served little purpose as it is, and their fragility is terrible when combined with realistic NASA administration (... which is to say, wholly incompetent).
It's time to retreat to the prior plans of sensibility... using small, tough, manned mission ships (like modified X15s), and big, fragile, unmanned heavy lifters. The shuttle program has given us more than enough knowledge to get this done almost as an afterthought. We are poised to take advantage of ditching the old shuttle compromise that has haunted us economically and morally (if dead crews are any indication).
You got that right. Appliances are supposed to be appliances: usable by anyone quickly with minimum fuss. I've been so peeved by those modern microwave ovens, with all their silly "pizza" and "bagel" buttons, since I'm an oven purist who thinks that [power dial] + [time dial] = [good enough for any heating job]... but I admit the designers understand that things like "idiot buttons" make it more of an appliance. Programming your appliances is not the way to go.
You have given good reasons, but you have to connect the dots.
S t o r a g e
When a bank runs your account to a staggering negative number, or issues you so many fees that the yearly result is a high interest rate on your money storage... then you come to understand that you money in a bank is safe from thieves but not safe from the bank itself.
The keeping of funds in cash and metal, stored inside a locked, attached safe in your basement, is as safe as it can get. Unless thieves come prepared with things like explosives or welding equipment, all that's bound to happen is a still-sealed safe with all manner of marks on it. There's something to be said for a 600# safe.
We can discuss rarity. Thieves raiding your house is rare, and a house fire that completely collapses your home into your basement is extraordinarily rare. You should not lead people to believe you have money stashed in your house (to avoid the problem that most house burglaries are motivated by inside information). Also, even if you aren't home, the fire department will still show up.
Of course, apartment dwellers (of which I am 1/2... I live in an apartment above a house that I have basement access to) are very disadvantaged. They have almost no means of securing money, which is probably why banks do so well in cities.
C a p i t a l i s m
You have defined a modern form of capitalism that has betrayed the sound basis we used to operate on. Following Elbert Hubbard, I can assert that "a man with savings and a home is unavoidably a Capitalist". You can see that this can involve banking, but doesn't have to. And you can further see that the modern form involves little savings and a whole bunch of credit, and this "home ownership" modern model which is just a fancy form of renting... well, you'll have to understand why I don't call that Capitalism at all.
You said "You are literally fighting the most powerful institution under capitalism", which lacks so much courage that I'm having trouble responding to it. Hmm... how about this: It doesn't matter how "powerful" the institution is, if I'm right. But you have made a point, inadvertently I suppose, that I try time and again to argue, that being: We are not really free, and really don't have liberty, as long as we are slaves to a financial system. That being the case, that is reason enough to oppose the modern form of banking. If our banks enslave us, we should stop using them. If they chase us down and still attempt to enslave us (i.e. picture them invoking a cash card that they try to force all merchants to use) then we should resist, up to and including acts of violence.
I n f l a t i o n
Again, your math is sound. Again, you can't apply math alone to what will happen in our future. I am now surrounded by people whose impeccable calculations -- checked hundreds of times across our culture -- drove them to invest in homes, stocks and various derivative financial instruments like 401(k)s. They have lost a great deal of wealth and are laboring under payments that cannot be sustained. Standing alongside them, I can see clearly that deflation must come and must decrease the value of their things while my things increase in value. So I'm not worried about comparisons -- either between myself and a metric, or myself and someone else. Through these sick business cycles, holding on to my philosophy of "cash is king" means that the only thing I won't be is WEALTHY. And that's the hidden heart of an investment mentality. The point is to become wealthy, because if you don't, you won't be wealthy. Well, what's so terrible about being middle-class all the way through life?
With savings, I will have a chunk of money for my retirement, and since it's cash, I'm literally betting that I will still have it despite thieves and fires. By avoiding stock
Sorry to burst your bubble, but call-center people walk out often enough over this, that and every other damned little thing. They are easily replaced, as designed. Hence, walkouts by this class of person are the next best thing to no effects at all.
That doesn't deny the validity of what they walked out about, or that they had courage to walk; I'm just saying that their actions are invisible in the statistical noise of the call centers.
This is one of the more interesting semi-debates that I've been in, in some time. (I say "semi" since I'm not addressing everything you propose.) Let's see where it goes.
What's wrong with putting it in a bank?
I have more reasons lurking. When I withdrew my life savings from a bank in Mass., I noticed then that the arrangement of accounts gypped me out of interest payments. I still have the documents where they "combined" the accounts, claiming it was all one thing... but all that money sitting in the checking account was still not counted towards interest. I was moving, and ended up in the Midwest, so to avoid bursting a blood vessel I just let it go. But I then ran into another problem. I was seeing that in order to cash a check drawn on someone's account, banks in general would charge me based upon their assertion that I "was not a customer"... and since a check is a demand for payment, that was extortion.
At that phase of my life, I was just beginning to understand how allegedly "legitimate" businesses were starting to function more immorally, and were turning their focus towards ripping people off (in entirely legal fashions, of course). The mafia had gone mainstream.
Just on these two examples alone, I wanted nothing further to do with banks. The way to defeat the mafia is to refuse to do business with them. This attitude has not only persisted, but has strengthened, considering what happens to the poorer folk who have the utter gall to get service at a bank. Fees are used in brutally punishing ways... just bounce a check in America and you'll see what happens. Banks will actually take your account to a negative value and tell you that you owe them. And the American Congress just sits there in session after session, ignoring this form of extortion.
You may find all this particularly amusing, since I now work in a bank's IT. I take a particular enjoyment in withdrawing my pay from the checking account (since as you can imagine, the bank will only do direct deposit for paychecks, so I was issued a checking account), so that the money is removed from their capital base. Note that even if the acct earned interest, it would only be less than a percent. I find screwing them out of capital to be more than worth the "loss" of interest. I am at this time reminded of the letter a previous employer wrote to the local electric monopoly, when de-regulation was being planned... he said "I will sign up for any distributor of electricity, as long as THEY ARE NOT YOU" (emphasis his). When you get screwed over by a institution (and in fact, an entire industry), you arrive at this level of anger.
A note about ATM usage, too: I made the mistake of withdrawing $40 more from my checking acct than it had, in my drive to remove all my money (except the last <$10, which is the least bill the ATM will dispense). My pay varies from period to period due to expense-acct and on-call payments, and so I just made an oopsie. This is the moment that financial America lusts after... make a mistake, and they slap you with fees. (Yes, even if you work for them.) But what I liked most about it was, the ATM simply let me take MORE MONEY out than what I had IN THE ACCT already. Now, an ATM transaction is not a check, so why would this overdrafting be allowed? It's a couple of lines of code to correct that kind of thing, right? Well, we already know the answer to that... it's so the bank can immediately sock you with a $40 overdraft fee, with a cumulative $6/day fee for "being <$0 today"... and if you make a deposit that is less than some magic number (which some teller later had to calculate for me, to stop the goddamn account bleeding), then you are still at <$0 when the daily fee hits... meaning that you are still losing $6 a day. And so on. And the Congre
Alright, I can't stand it: My answer is 12 hours off from yours. What gives?
I did the calculation twice (on a calculator). I found (using 365.25 days for an average year) that the components of 2^30 sec were 34y 9d 97m. I then simply ran 1970-01-01-0000 forward +34-00-09-0137. That's how I got to 1:37AM.
The fact that you recognize that there are ideological reasons for stuffing your mattress, speaks well of your intellect. I'd mod you up, but I seem to have left my modpoint wallet at home. I'll pay next time I come.
The battle with inflation is a mathematical certainty. But there are many other axes to the problem, revealing a much higher dimension. Like I said before, investing in paper assets takes the risk of principal loss, which makes a mockery of using such things to allay inflation losses. I have come upon a general distrust of paper assets in general (and while we're at it, I'm not that happy about all those greenbacks either). All these retirement funds are a huge unknown over the lifespan of... well, my life. I have no faith in them at all, regardless of their promised or demonstrated ROI. People in general are unable to tell me where their retirement funds are and what it being done with them, and that smells like a disaster in the making.
There are further factors. How about penalties? What's the use of sinking many thousands into locked-up funds if you and your family are staring future unemployment right in the face?... you'll just have to withdraw all that money, facing significant penalties that once again, make a mockery of fighting inflation.
Faced with these infrastructural factors, you can begin to see why gold and mattresses are viable alternatives. "I keep my money in a tin bucket, because a tin bucket has never lied to me about its contents."
While we're on the topic of inflation, it's a bit of a bugbear with the masses, yet few seem to anticipate deflation. In deflation, money is worth more than real assets, and that's a major reason why I'm hedging my bets in the mattress direction. Deflation (under the aegis of Depression) is apparently never a desired talking point with the media and involved classes since it opposes their bubble mentalities. Even after a long inflationary period, and then comes the necessary crash, these folk will continue to talk about fighting inflation in a perverse attempt to reflate their bubble. Credit must always be cheap to these folk. It seems contradictory, but bubble-y inflation is very good for the bankers, and they'd raise prices to infinite levels if they were able to... and that would keep their margin ball rolling forever.
The socialism issue is a thorny one. America already has significant socialist programs, but they are fueled by powers and greed. But it's the war of old socialist and modern capitalist that is coming to a head in America. America's too big to survive that, hence I anticipate a Hamiltonian moment ahead, and honestly I welcome it. We Americans have gone on for too long in a fog of fantasy, and the time must come to pay heavily for our over-indulgence. As America Balkanizes, we will probably see instances of more socialism arise in the newly created areas of increased local controls... States, if I may be so bold.
I read your comment based upon your link to my entirely hostile postings. Thank you for understanding where I'm coming from. One definitely loses about 50% audience per each use of the word "fuck" (so after about 10 of those, you may as well just be talking to yourself). Despite my confidence, I do have morale problems, and it's nice once in a while to see others are out there using their own powers to enact their own fates as best they can.
What you're doing (or considering doing) is an attempt to regain the "citizen craftsman/farmer" ideal that America was built so successfully on. (No offense towards your Australian position; I believe that ideal can be applied anywhere.) This indepenent individual type is essentially illegal in America. He is too independent from the governmental systems that requires his subservience in order to enact their scams. No revolution is legal.
What worries me is the pitfalls that will be dug in your path. "Owning" land itself is a bit of a misnomer, as governments undertake to apply property taxes (and that falls more and more upon the homeowner, as more and more businesses exempt themselves from such taxes) to the level that it seems that one can't own land, but can only "rent" it from the government. Since land is immobile, they can just go get it from a dissenter. To compound the problem, anything you do to the land is subject to one regulation or another, and probably contradictory ones by now, hence you can be assaulted by "security forces" at any time since you have broken some law just on that basis. Then the land can be confiscated.
Land ownership is a bit of a thorn in my side, as I try to regain all those liberties that my forefathers possessed in America.
Good luck with your efforts. Small movements in the right direction. Over time, you will be more free, and free men are powers unto themselves. Just don't isolate yourself and make yourself a target for a security team.
Thank you for your considerate response. Now I must bat you around the ears for your errors. You seem like a nice enough person, so I apologize for firing double-aught buckshot in your direction.
If you don't invest, inflation will eat your savings.
This is a tired and old mantra and I rather enjoy popping this particular balloon.
Invest, invest, invest... how many stock market losses will it take before the common man sees through this bullshit? What's the point of "investing" (see below) to alleviate "inflation losses" when your stocks tank?
Look, the stock market is a win-lose game. Except for the first buyer (whose money is supposed to go at least in part to the company that issued the stock), it's gambling.
Investing. What a crock-of-shit word... we've torn the heart out of it! Sorry, but sticking money in a stock-trading account without regard for dividends can only fulfill the characteristics of GAMBLING. You haven't given your money to some company so it can turn around and buy a machine tool with it; you have given your money to financial speculators who buy papers and electrons that are as far removed from the allegedly involved companies as possible. It's gambling, and it's as morally devoid as any other form of gambling. Look, America, if you want to gamble, do so with money you can afford to lose... don't stick your goddamned RETIREMENT money into it.
What mantra is there to fall back upon now? What about the tired old "but the index stocks have always gained money" mantra? Well, the market requires losers to cash out the winners, hence you can't have people continue to pile onto the "guaranteed no-loss stocks" of the index without all that money driving the index into loss. This is as basic a fact of economy, as well as the one that says "everyone can't be rich". Wealth isn't a position of equality, its one of superiority.
You know, there is a method of continued index expansion. It's called Socialism. You take care of the older now, and by the time you need care, you will get taken care of by the younger. This kind of thing can be universally applicable, but... and I can't state this strongly enough... YOU CAN'T MAKE FUCKING MILLIONAIRES OUT OF IT. The desire for uber-wealth has destroyed this rational and sustainable approach. In effect, over-speculation leads to a bubble, and then it bursts and crashes markets. A bust is entirely caused by a boom. I knew back in the mid-1990s that the speculation was forming a boom, which would create a bust... but oh, no, no one wanted to hear that. Now we have retirees coming back into the workforce in droves since they put too much of their retirement wealth into the stock-crap-shoot, and then we have people putting off retirement for years since due to the same processes they can't afford to retire. And this is putting incredible pressure upon the existing, younger workforce. The other half of the bust hasn't even happened yet. Stocks and homes are priced outrageously, and the real deflation has yet to appear. But that's what you get for the Clintonesque attempts to sustain such an irrational boom... the bust either takes a long time to clear, and will be even deeper in its severity.
(Sorry to wax rhetorial like some sort of Massachusetts Senator. Bleah!)
When I was writing my rant, I would have bet anything I would get at least -1 Troll. I was right. Now here's my effort to earn another -1....
What does "nigger rich" mean? Are you a racist?
No, it's just that terms like this have been removed from the body politic in an attempt to submerge your thinking about such topics.
The term was used by my previous generation, who were wise enough to not live beyond their means. Saying "nigger rich" is an implication that a dumb person buries himself in payment plans and cheap stuff, thinking that he has become wealthy, whereas in truth he constantly sells out his future one dollar at a time. As you can surmise, payments and plastic crap are now the height of fashion, hence such terms must be buried in the public mind.
And even if it is racist... what does that have to do with the logic of it? Oh, that's right, racist terms are disconnection terms, meaning you now have liberal permission to stop thinking about the topic and to write off the person who used them as some sort of kook. The liberal set has convinced you that this is an OK methodology. Well, your criminal asshole Clinton and his liberal crew have been out of office for a while, so fuck your knee-jerk and reactionary methods. Go bury your head in your mommy's lap, and wail about how unfair and mean the world is.
And whats the point of living a miserably poor lifestyle jost to make a point to corporate America?
Now you've really got me confused. How have you judged from my posting that my lifestyle is "miserably poor"? You're going to have to defend your assertion. In fact, what kind of lifestyle opposes a miserably poor condition? A new car every 3 years? Broadband Internet access? A home so large that you have to hire a maid since you don't have the time to clean it? Come on, let's get your yuppie viewpoint out into the open so we can dissect it.
You're little protest won't have any affect on corporations
On the contrary, if you'd look around instead of contemplating your navel, the consumptive lifestyles have (and are) indeed sunk companies and their employees. That's what you get when you align an entire economy with the desires of your average 14-yr-old girl. The stores are filled with fluff... what kind of idiot buys and buys that stuff? Answer: The kind of idiot that runs for the hills when he finally encounters financial problems. And a lot of people have run for the hills in the last 3 years.
You should really start to understand the power of accumulating small numbers.
Anyway, fighting evil and opposing mediocrity are always worthwhile. So many people out there have been convinced that there's no point even in fighting, and that's exactly how the evil and mediocre win most of their battles. Here's a clue: Don't fight your enemy's battles for him. Make him fight for a change... and you'll find out that most of the time, he has no stomach for facing the confident individual. And the other half of the point is to point the truth of this out to others, so the ranks of the sensible can grow.
Basically, even a registered cynic like me has hope for a future by the very acts of exposition that I indulge in, yet people like you are advocates for destruction of society... entirely based upon your cowardice and subservience to established orders of degradation. You must not be much of an opponent, since all it would take to defeat you would be to use PR to convince you that you have no chance of winning. One PR campaign later, and [poing!] you are hanging your head.
So what have you really achieved? The wealthy don't deprive themselves. They live the high life by making their money earn MORE money for them first THEN they buy the things they want. You're just deluding yourself if you think you
You said all that about 100 times better than I did, and about 10 times better had I even tried. Thank you for your sober approach to my spite-filled invective.
There are many assertions otherwise, and here are some samples:
gasoline,
toys,
groceries.
Wal-Mart's enormous capital base allows it to use a new store to bankrupt an area it opens in, and once the competition declines from that, it raises prices back to profitable levels. Companies who wish to return to the area must climb the investment wall again, and will probably eventually face Wal-Mart's returning to selling at a loss to drive them out again.
Selling at a loss has long been an illegal practice, but nonetheless companies do it to woo the market. I support such laws since it is the government's function to regulate between businesses and consumers, and between businesses and businesses.
I am one pauper, busily attaching thorns to my body to provide the poison pill effect. Try to swallow me alive, and I will stick in your throat.
Once I became re-employed (after 3 years of un- and under-employment, which as you can imagine produced some severe effects) I took to saving as much as I could. Now I have reached 5 figures. And you are getting next to nothing from it.
This money is not in a bank; fuck your banks and their predatory fee schedules. This money is not being spent on a new car; fuck your car companies and their "nigger rich" offerings. It's my money and I can prove it... but withholding it for as long as possible from as many of you as possible. After all, that's what you wealthy and credit-worthy have done to us all for the last 20 years at least. You're all admiration over the sensibilities of the wealthy and accredited... so here's a taste of where that leads:
I never expect to own a home. I never expect to own a new car. I buy things like clothes and cutlery from Goodwill. My car is used and I repair it myself. I buy toilet paper in gargantuan boxes that last me a year, at lowest cost per square-foot. My larder is stocked with bulk items; I never eat out. My home is kept at 60deg in the winter, and I don't use air conditioning in the summer. Etc.
New and service-heavy things have become a icon of conspicuous consumption. So, fuck your Consumer Capitalism. I've dropped many sigmas into the left-hand side of the consumer bellcurve... and I hope you feel it. I want to see you miserable bastards bankrupt so hard that I can buy you out for 3c on the dollar. And it's you who will come to live under a bridge, as I nearly came to recently.
Finally, I'm well armed, should you contend my position with force. What goes around comes around. Eat my spite.
Signed,
Capitalist of the Old School of Elbert Hubbard
P.S. If you want me to believe in a future, then perhaps you should have provided one instead of working towards ripping everyone off with your stock and house Ponzi schemes.
Re:Increased solar radiation - less light?
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
Your posting advocated disregarding data due to doubts about the reliability of the instruments used. What does any of your latest blather have to do with that?
It shows that we have very long-term data about variations that we cannot explain right now.
Sorry, Chum, but that seems to always be the case with climate studies. We can collect data until the sun expands, and never be sure we are seeing all the cycles of change that concern us. As for myself, I can make decisions based upon current data since... and get this, Roscoe... data is all we have to work with in the first place.
Doubting the data is entirely sensible. Trashing data based upon wolf-crying about "we don't know enough" is not. We can always form a theory from whatever data we have... even to the point of being run over by the Mack truck of rationality: seeing patterns where there are none.
I prefer the pitfalls of the rational, over the other ones made by the irrational.
I am thinking very suspiciously that you are one of the noveau riche of the Republican set that are striving to dismiss environmental concerns using allegedly rational arguments. Sorry, Bub, but any real scientist is not going to flushing data you don't like down the drain... instead, he will incorporate the new. The truth will out... but not by your methods of intentional forgetfullness.
You should go to a doctor to get that cranioanal insertion problem of yours looked at.
P.S. Thanks for the ref. It's late Friday, and my downtown lib closed early. I'll try tomorrow.
Unlike "normal" moderation models (and I was one in the dim Internet past (and good bloody riddance to that form of moderation, bleah!)), Slashdot hands out moderation duties to registered readers. So, it mostly complies with popular controls. If in light of this you consider Slashdot to be populated by "mindless automatons and lemmings"... well, the best I can say is that that speaks for your intestinal fortitude.
I knew you'd like the blah blah blah part. Such is the fate of reason to splash through the sieves of lesser minds. [sigh]
If you can put aside issues of anger, would you care to address any of my statements lacking "rationality"? You scorn the fist, so how about the word? I am prepared to defend any of mine. Are you really prepared to attack them? Let's find out, Roscoe.
In case your memory is bad, here's what I said to prompt your smug and dismissive little posting: LINK
Re:Increased solar radiation - less light?
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
Older men have thicker skin, and even a 12-yr-old can tell when you are avoiding the topic. You are more than proving my assertion that your head is bone all the way across the diameter.
You implied that we should disregard early data as being contaminated by the uncertainty of the instrumentation. We can put that data into perspective... and in fact, for ocean temperature data, that has already been done. (There's an excellent Scientific American article from the 90s that sticks out in my mind... go look it up.)
We must trust the data, since other than gut instinct, data's all we have, and just laying the charge of "you've been wrong before" is no the way to construct a theory and to test conclusions therefrom.
I suggest you get involved in taking measurements and evaluating the data collected. Your assertions might be moderated (as well as all that bone thawed out into gray matter) by direct contact with data itself. Then you might begin to see that science is carried on with approximations and calculations laid upon calculations.
P.S. If you really knew anything about Feynman, he was one of the least humble people you'd meet, so bollocks on his alleged statement.
Whaaat-ever. You're full of baloney. At this time, I have a score of 2, and you have a score of 0. There's something to be said there about who's getting more attention, eh?
But these things are details. I am angry about the energy situation in America, and there are rafts of people (you are probably one of them) who don't want to deal with the anger and the philosophies behind it. As I stress time and time again, the raised fist has a point and it's pointless to argue that it doesn't.
I live in Ohio. Do you see where this is going? No? Well, I'll continue. I happen to live upwind (thank the very gods) from a certain power plant. Are those enough hints yet? No? Well, I'll come out with it. It's all about Davis-Besse, and we came to within 1/4-inch of one of America's most severe nuclear accidents. People I know would have been irradiated from that one. If the concern about that incident makes me some hippie, then I accept the moniker. I'd rather be a hippie with concern about my fellow man, than some... what, "reasonable citizen"?... who clearly doesn't give a shit about the people downwind from a bomb.
Nuclear power is a great idea. Even now, the basic idea's awesome. But the real "retards" are the people who designed and ran our nuclear industry. That's why I laugh at it. Their creation is a monstrosity that must be changed. Economics alone say the present nuclear installed plant is a bad idea now. Waste handling also says it's a bad idea. These can all change, but as August's blackout showed, the all-encompassing overdrive of profit motives won't allow that to happen.
There are some rumblings about safer nuclear facilities, using pebble beds, and even scaled-down types that can be run on city-block scales. I think those are great ideas... and that's where the nuclear should head if they expect my support.
South of Toledo (where I am currently cursed to live) is Bowling Green. I clipped out a news article recently, which told of a 700kW wind generator farm that was installed nearby there. Wind power is a no-brainer -- generator, blades, tower, power lines. It only poses a hazard to birds and "visual environment". But it's acceptance is so obviously held back by the power companies that I'm likely to jump up and down, fit to burst over the issue. Wind power involves installations of certain sizes, and considering the size of the blades and the height of the tower, this places it outside any individual's capacity to install (excepting farms). We must rely on organizations for wind power. And there's the very problem... the prevailing orgs have little interest in generating power so cheaply. Like the usual terrors invoked by profit motives, they continue to support their usual profit margins... and even worse, this deregulation fiasco, with all this "stranded costs" bullshit, is making them cling to status quo as hard as ever.
So, not just no, but hell no, they won't be brought into the fold until there's cultural change. Wind power should have been deployed over a decade ago. What's holding it up are investment expectations... and the bubbles of the 90s (as well as the still expanding housing bubble of the early 00s) more than demonstrate that investors have wholly unreasonable demands that obliterate all sensible and sustainable investments. To toss out numbers like some fool, investing in a wind tower may get your money back in 15 years (including maintenance costs), but investing in a power company that chomps through oil and coal can get you your money back in 5. Those kinds of numbers are the things holding up wind power. To a sensible man (why, yes, like myself), putting up a generator is a great investment, considering all the things that can't be put into a goddamned spreadsheet and put into an annual report.
To sum up what I just said for you: blah blah blah. There, that'll save time for my future postings.
Re:How will H usage affect this?
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
Granted. It's just that my mind is currently filled and biased with our recent Ohio Issue 1, which by the grace of the gods was voted down (... barely, which is the way most defeated measures are done in Ohio). It represented statewide taxation (through debt service on bonds) in order to fund tech expansion... which will of course be grabbed by the cities (particularly the "Three Cs": Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati). Hence, the rurals would be fleeced for the urbanites.
I don't support much imbalance in my view of reasonable socialism. I frown mightily upon flows of wealth being pipelined too much from one group to another. For instance, for the last year I have data (2001?), Ohio got about 88c back on each dollar of gas tax it paid, while Massachusetts got about 110c. Having lived in both states, I would be hard-pressed to classify Mass. as being more "rural" than Ohio. I would easily conclude that Mass. has more influence in the national Congress.
It is the group of things like this that leads me to believe that other than those damned farm subsidies and obvious long road projects on the plains, the heartland of America is just a place getting soaked by the population centers, particularly the coasts.
Those farm subsidies are a terror in the national budget whose time has come to rationalize them to much lower levels, but so similarly it is time to stop paying Boeing to sell planes in Europe a la the Export-Import Bank (hence, too bad for the workers in Washington state, and too bad for the execs in Chicago).
Re:How will H usage affect this?
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
Until anarchism rolls around, I think pure democracy is the best.
You would. You clearly intend to be in the 51% that votes to put the other 49% in jail.
Democracy and Autocracy can both [CENSORED] my [CENSORED] [CENSORED] and then [CENSORED] up [CENSORED] elbow [CENSORED]... well, you get the idea by now. Both represent a tyranny... democracy the tyranny of the majority, and autocracy the tyranny of the minority. Doesn't anyone want a goddamn Republic anymore?
Slashdot Mirror
Your position is weakening. But you show good character while doing so. I retract my "fuckhead" moniker.
... especially when the business cycle hits the next bottom, and people end up with time -- not money -- on their hands. This is what the yuppies are doing, in practical terms: they trade stability in a home for the luxuries.
... waaait for it ... the pastoral environment. People like open air, plants and animals ... probably harkening back to the evolutionary path of the hunter-gatherer. But hunter-gatherers still strove to have homes, and their "migration" patterns were round-trips within their lifetimes; the new and strange would only compel movement when the food sources demanded it.
... and in a nation of 3.5M square miles, there's quite a bit of that over the urban zones.
I never claimed migrations, even mega-migrations, weren't happening, nor that they didn't have historical precedent. My point is that blending, amalgamation and migration only go so far, regardless of their intensity at any point of measurement. And when people acquire the stability of a home, they grab at it. And those wholly Human desires expand, demanding land
I'm hardly not the only pastoralist (if indeed, that is what I am, but let's for the sake of argument accept your label). Many yuppies, hung about with iPods and credit cards, find themselves wanting to merge their prosperity with
Picture this as part of an old war, between belly and brain, between the mundane and the sublime, and between rural and urban. Homesteading is a Human urge, and it conflicts with the wanderlust. These conflicts lead the sensible man to consider balancing them (instead of outright suppression of one or the other).
Balance is an old concept that the Orient knew so well that they made a well-touted symbol for it: yin-yang. They split, share, encroach, and interpenetrate. The end product is equality and co-existence.
Unfortunately, "equality and co-existence" are not within the hyper-yuppie agenda.
Enjoy the pastoral life. you might be one of a couple of hundred thousand people who give it a shot in the USA.
This viewpoint is a fundamental heart of the problem. Your perception is abysmally skewed. TENS OF MILLIONS are pastoral in the USA. It's just the nearness and closeness of city life that misleads you into concluding that the urban areas dominate. Population density is not population majority. If you'd get 20 miles away from most cities, you'd see real countryside
(As a side note, the US Census Bureau's "current urban definition" is problematical since it tends to define urban areas merely on the basis of incorporation or "2500 people live there", and not by their lifestyle. Hence, my use of the term urban is my own. I'd estimate that my "urban" is roughly 50% of the USCB's "urban". Look here in the notes.)
If I had to estimate, I'd say that with 2000 "urban" cities and towns with an average of 200 sq-mi, there's only about 1/4 of 1 million sq-mi of urban area. Let's say about 1/8th of all of America. And this 1/8th holds about half of America's population.
People call the rest the "flyover", but it exists. It's just not dense.
You're making all my arguments for me. Sheesh, let me get in a word or two, Gypsy.
... and worse, utter heresy. Why, you made $4000 last year in stock profits alone! Making money is prima facie evidence that your actions are most blessed! But it's all a facade and must destroy itself eventually. The intellect comes into play by observing that fact.
... why can't you be as honest? Perhaps it's because Gypsies have a tradition of prevarication to uphold?
...
... I read a lot of SciFi too, but unlike you I don't actually believe this kind of crap. I must repeat: The energy demands alone will destroy this lifestyle. It cannot be sustained. Oil is as good as we will ever get on Earth's surface, and it's a limited commodity.
... and crossing those lines invokes the now terrible spectre of world-wide or constant war.
... this one, in fact.
... an iPod is not enough. One day, you will come to accept that, or it will kill you, as bums are killed, sleeping frozen under bridges in the winter, curled around their iPod equivalent icon: an empty bottle of liquor. Toys are not enough to sustain real Human beings. And superfluous lifestyles act the same.
What can I say? It's like you said it all already. Can you hear yourself? I doubt it, much like what happens with financially depraved people who gather in an area and start talking about their stocks. You say "pastoralist", "stability", "roots" and "American Way Of Life" like (fucking!) swear words. What will you condemn next, childbirth? Will the raising of children become passe? How about monogamy?
Gypsy, your obviously yuppie lifestyle is being pushed into hyper-yuppie modes, just to mint a few more millionaires (and note to you: your chance of joining their ranks is slim, so why not just stick to playing the lottery?). The yuppie lifestyle is unsustainable. I know this seems impossible
Energy demands alone will destroy the yuppie lifestyle. So you can imagine what hyper-yuppies are facing. But I speak out to these poor deluded souls as I would any violent criminal, to say: "Stop what you are doing since you are hurting other people." A lifestyle based on consumption is the ultimate violence one can do against the world.
If you just don't like other people, and just don't care what happens to them every time you fire up your SUV, then just come out and say so. The modern era of Emperor Bush means not having to say you're sorry. Just admit it. You like to hurt people for your personal gain. Your Emperor is saying essentially the same thing
Your children's children's children won't even know which continent you lived on, will probably have four or five ethnic identities, speak half a dozen languages and live in five countries before they're twenty five.
Also, cultures, races and religions remain, despite the smoothing and homogenizing effects of Western Consumerism's butter knife, and despite the threats that the Imperial militaries make against the "pastoral" world. Races tend to not mix, despite what your beloved metropolises show you. The gods of the valley are not the gods of the hills (as Ethan Allen once said)
But you know all of this. How could you not? Even the poor standards of Western education provide more than enough of this information.
And in knowing all of that, I call your particular condition "willful ignorance". There are too many like you; in America, it is practically an epidemic of what can only be called "fantasy life". You imagine something is true despite evidence and despite the murmurs of your own Human heart, and then believe it so fiercely that you find youself drawn into conversations like
To pick an icon
P.S. You're still a fuckhead.
This fuckhead is the result of too many people who have lost the sense of a home. They are stuffed into apartments and cannot conceive that the character of the American citizenry works hand-in-hand with the immobility of labor. When their jobs move, they move ... leaving behind no notable indicators on the property. No well-composted gardens. No marks on the wall showing how their children have grown. No walkway stones laid by their own hands. No fruit or nut trees planted in order to yield a harvest.
... so you can just go fuck yourself as much as you are trying to fuck everyone else with your essentially Gypsy lifestyle.
People with real homes must use the power of government to make capital stay put and perform its necessary social function. If you hate American protectionism, then at some level you are the enemy of the American home
You said it. Next DVD format? What about how terrible the current format is?
... loaded dice, and they are not in your favor. After a few scratches by the general public, they become essentially unusable. I've had so many problems with unplayable and skipping DVDs that I'd decided almost 2 years ago that VHS was here to stay since it was a more reliable format. I obtain 10 tapes for every disk, and have yet to purchase a DVD player (having repaired my VHS player twice now, we're still going strong).
DVDs I get from the library are like rolling the dice
I'm not the only one noticing this. About half of the people I know with DVD players have mentioned how badly that DVDs play.
I'm going to laugh off any format that doesn't mandate a case-sealed disk. But I'm sure the same ol' simple disk will prevail, since people are so cheap. My concern is how long is the road we must travel like this, before the companies respond to consumer backlash from the sheer volume of unplayable disks. (Of course, I would've expected more of an uproar over the iPod battery issue, but too many yuppies with disposable income bought into those.)
Ditch the damn shuttle.
... using small, tough, manned mission ships (like modified X15s), and big, fragile, unmanned heavy lifters. The shuttle program has given us more than enough knowledge to get this done almost as an afterthought. We are poised to take advantage of ditching the old shuttle compromise that has haunted us economically and morally (if dead crews are any indication).
Roger that. The best upgrade we can do is retire the fleet. They've served little purpose as it is, and their fragility is terrible when combined with realistic NASA administration (... which is to say, wholly incompetent).
It's time to retreat to the prior plans of sensibility
You got that right. Appliances are supposed to be appliances: usable by anyone quickly with minimum fuss. I've been so peeved by those modern microwave ovens, with all their silly "pizza" and "bagel" buttons, since I'm an oven purist who thinks that [power dial] + [time dial] = [good enough for any heating job] ... but I admit the designers understand that things like "idiot buttons" make it more of an appliance. Programming your appliances is not the way to go.
You have given good reasons, but you have to connect the dots.
... then you come to understand that you money in a bank is safe from thieves but not safe from the bank itself.
... I live in an apartment above a house that I have basement access to) are very disadvantaged. They have almost no means of securing money, which is probably why banks do so well in cities.
... well, you'll have to understand why I don't call that Capitalism at all.
... how about this: It doesn't matter how "powerful" the institution is, if I'm right. But you have made a point, inadvertently I suppose, that I try time and again to argue, that being: We are not really free, and really don't have liberty, as long as we are slaves to a financial system. That being the case, that is reason enough to oppose the modern form of banking. If our banks enslave us, we should stop using them. If they chase us down and still attempt to enslave us (i.e. picture them invoking a cash card that they try to force all merchants to use) then we should resist, up to and including acts of violence.
S t o r a g e
When a bank runs your account to a staggering negative number, or issues you so many fees that the yearly result is a high interest rate on your money storage
The keeping of funds in cash and metal, stored inside a locked, attached safe in your basement, is as safe as it can get. Unless thieves come prepared with things like explosives or welding equipment, all that's bound to happen is a still-sealed safe with all manner of marks on it. There's something to be said for a 600# safe.
We can discuss rarity. Thieves raiding your house is rare, and a house fire that completely collapses your home into your basement is extraordinarily rare. You should not lead people to believe you have money stashed in your house (to avoid the problem that most house burglaries are motivated by inside information). Also, even if you aren't home, the fire department will still show up.
Of course, apartment dwellers (of which I am 1/2
C a p i t a l i s m
You have defined a modern form of capitalism that has betrayed the sound basis we used to operate on. Following Elbert Hubbard, I can assert that "a man with savings and a home is unavoidably a Capitalist". You can see that this can involve banking, but doesn't have to. And you can further see that the modern form involves little savings and a whole bunch of credit, and this "home ownership" modern model which is just a fancy form of renting
You said "You are literally fighting the most powerful institution under capitalism", which lacks so much courage that I'm having trouble responding to it. Hmm
I n f l a t i o n
Again, your math is sound. Again, you can't apply math alone to what will happen in our future. I am now surrounded by people whose impeccable calculations -- checked hundreds of times across our culture -- drove them to invest in homes, stocks and various derivative financial instruments like 401(k)s. They have lost a great deal of wealth and are laboring under payments that cannot be sustained. Standing alongside them, I can see clearly that deflation must come and must decrease the value of their things while my things increase in value. So I'm not worried about comparisons -- either between myself and a metric, or myself and someone else. Through these sick business cycles, holding on to my philosophy of "cash is king" means that the only thing I won't be is WEALTHY. And that's the hidden heart of an investment mentality. The point is to become wealthy, because if you don't, you won't be wealthy. Well, what's so terrible about being middle-class all the way through life?
With savings, I will have a chunk of money for my retirement, and since it's cash, I'm literally betting that I will still have it despite thieves and fires. By avoiding stock
Sorry to burst your bubble, but call-center people walk out often enough over this, that and every other damned little thing. They are easily replaced, as designed. Hence, walkouts by this class of person are the next best thing to no effects at all.
That doesn't deny the validity of what they walked out about, or that they had courage to walk; I'm just saying that their actions are invisible in the statistical noise of the call centers.
... since "snap" isn't a sound often heard from them.
I have more reasons lurking. When I withdrew my life savings from a bank in Mass., I noticed then that the arrangement of accounts gypped me out of interest payments. I still have the documents where they "combined" the accounts, claiming it was all one thing ... but all that money sitting in the checking account was still not counted towards interest. I was moving, and ended up in the Midwest, so to avoid bursting a blood vessel I just let it go. But I then ran into another problem. I was seeing that in order to cash a check drawn on someone's account, banks in general would charge me based upon their assertion that I "was not a customer" ... and since a check is a demand for payment, that was extortion.
... just bounce a check in America and you'll see what happens. Banks will actually take your account to a negative value and tell you that you owe them. And the American Congress just sits there in session after session, ignoring this form of extortion.
... he said "I will sign up for any distributor of electricity, as long as THEY ARE NOT YOU" (emphasis his). When you get screwed over by a institution (and in fact, an entire industry), you arrive at this level of anger.
... make a mistake, and they slap you with fees. (Yes, even if you work for them.) But what I liked most about it was, the ATM simply let me take MORE MONEY out than what I had IN THE ACCT already. Now, an ATM transaction is not a check, so why would this overdrafting be allowed? It's a couple of lines of code to correct that kind of thing, right? Well, we already know the answer to that ... it's so the bank can immediately sock you with a $40 overdraft fee, with a cumulative $6/day fee for "being <$0 today" ... and if you make a deposit that is less than some magic number (which some teller later had to calculate for me, to stop the goddamn account bleeding), then you are still at <$0 when the daily fee hits ... meaning that you are still losing $6 a day. And so on. And the Congre
At that phase of my life, I was just beginning to understand how allegedly "legitimate" businesses were starting to function more immorally, and were turning their focus towards ripping people off (in entirely legal fashions, of course). The mafia had gone mainstream.
Just on these two examples alone, I wanted nothing further to do with banks. The way to defeat the mafia is to refuse to do business with them. This attitude has not only persisted, but has strengthened, considering what happens to the poorer folk who have the utter gall to get service at a bank. Fees are used in brutally punishing ways
You may find all this particularly amusing, since I now work in a bank's IT. I take a particular enjoyment in withdrawing my pay from the checking account (since as you can imagine, the bank will only do direct deposit for paychecks, so I was issued a checking account), so that the money is removed from their capital base. Note that even if the acct earned interest, it would only be less than a percent. I find screwing them out of capital to be more than worth the "loss" of interest. I am at this time reminded of the letter a previous employer wrote to the local electric monopoly, when de-regulation was being planned
A note about ATM usage, too: I made the mistake of withdrawing $40 more from my checking acct than it had, in my drive to remove all my money (except the last <$10, which is the least bill the ATM will dispense). My pay varies from period to period due to expense-acct and on-call payments, and so I just made an oopsie. This is the moment that financial America lusts after
Alright, I can't stand it: My answer is 12 hours off from yours. What gives?
I did the calculation twice (on a calculator). I found (using 365.25 days for an average year) that the components of 2^30 sec were 34y 9d 97m. I then simply ran 1970-01-01-0000 forward +34-00-09-0137. That's how I got to 1:37AM.
The fact that you recognize that there are ideological reasons for stuffing your mattress, speaks well of your intellect. I'd mod you up, but I seem to have left my modpoint wallet at home. I'll pay next time I come.
... well, my life. I have no faith in them at all, regardless of their promised or demonstrated ROI. People in general are unable to tell me where their retirement funds are and what it being done with them, and that smells like a disaster in the making.
... you'll just have to withdraw all that money, facing significant penalties that once again, make a mockery of fighting inflation.
... and that would keep their margin ball rolling forever.
... States, if I may be so bold.
The battle with inflation is a mathematical certainty. But there are many other axes to the problem, revealing a much higher dimension. Like I said before, investing in paper assets takes the risk of principal loss, which makes a mockery of using such things to allay inflation losses. I have come upon a general distrust of paper assets in general (and while we're at it, I'm not that happy about all those greenbacks either). All these retirement funds are a huge unknown over the lifespan of
There are further factors. How about penalties? What's the use of sinking many thousands into locked-up funds if you and your family are staring future unemployment right in the face?
Faced with these infrastructural factors, you can begin to see why gold and mattresses are viable alternatives. "I keep my money in a tin bucket, because a tin bucket has never lied to me about its contents."
While we're on the topic of inflation, it's a bit of a bugbear with the masses, yet few seem to anticipate deflation. In deflation, money is worth more than real assets, and that's a major reason why I'm hedging my bets in the mattress direction. Deflation (under the aegis of Depression) is apparently never a desired talking point with the media and involved classes since it opposes their bubble mentalities. Even after a long inflationary period, and then comes the necessary crash, these folk will continue to talk about fighting inflation in a perverse attempt to reflate their bubble. Credit must always be cheap to these folk. It seems contradictory, but bubble-y inflation is very good for the bankers, and they'd raise prices to infinite levels if they were able to
The socialism issue is a thorny one. America already has significant socialist programs, but they are fueled by powers and greed. But it's the war of old socialist and modern capitalist that is coming to a head in America. America's too big to survive that, hence I anticipate a Hamiltonian moment ahead, and honestly I welcome it. We Americans have gone on for too long in a fog of fantasy, and the time must come to pay heavily for our over-indulgence. As America Balkanizes, we will probably see instances of more socialism arise in the newly created areas of increased local controls
Anyway, it's late and thaaaaat's what I think.
"This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted." Hence, I have to post my reply here.
I read your comment based upon your link to my entirely hostile postings. Thank you for understanding where I'm coming from. One definitely loses about 50% audience per each use of the word "fuck" (so after about 10 of those, you may as well just be talking to yourself). Despite my confidence, I do have morale problems, and it's nice once in a while to see others are out there using their own powers to enact their own fates as best they can.
What you're doing (or considering doing) is an attempt to regain the "citizen craftsman/farmer" ideal that America was built so successfully on. (No offense towards your Australian position; I believe that ideal can be applied anywhere.) This indepenent individual type is essentially illegal in America. He is too independent from the governmental systems that requires his subservience in order to enact their scams. No revolution is legal.
What worries me is the pitfalls that will be dug in your path. "Owning" land itself is a bit of a misnomer, as governments undertake to apply property taxes (and that falls more and more upon the homeowner, as more and more businesses exempt themselves from such taxes) to the level that it seems that one can't own land, but can only "rent" it from the government. Since land is immobile, they can just go get it from a dissenter. To compound the problem, anything you do to the land is subject to one regulation or another, and probably contradictory ones by now, hence you can be assaulted by "security forces" at any time since you have broken some law just on that basis. Then the land can be confiscated.
Land ownership is a bit of a thorn in my side, as I try to regain all those liberties that my forefathers possessed in America.
Good luck with your efforts. Small movements in the right direction. Over time, you will be more free, and free men are powers unto themselves. Just don't isolate yourself and make yourself a target for a security team.
2^30 = 1073741824s ~= 34y 9d 97m
1970JAN01 0000hr + (34y 9d 97m) ~= 2004JAN10 0137hr
January 10th should be an interesting day for somebody.
Thank you for your considerate response. Now I must bat you around the ears for your errors. You seem like a nice enough person, so I apologize for firing double-aught buckshot in your direction.
... how many stock market losses will it take before the common man sees through this bullshit? What's the point of "investing" (see below) to alleviate "inflation losses" when your stocks tank?
... we've torn the heart out of it! Sorry, but sticking money in a stock-trading account without regard for dividends can only fulfill the characteristics of GAMBLING. You haven't given your money to some company so it can turn around and buy a machine tool with it; you have given your money to financial speculators who buy papers and electrons that are as far removed from the allegedly involved companies as possible. It's gambling, and it's as morally devoid as any other form of gambling. Look, America, if you want to gamble, do so with money you can afford to lose ... don't stick your goddamned RETIREMENT money into it.
... and I can't state this strongly enough ... YOU CAN'T MAKE FUCKING MILLIONAIRES OUT OF IT. The desire for uber-wealth has destroyed this rational and sustainable approach. In effect, over-speculation leads to a bubble, and then it bursts and crashes markets. A bust is entirely caused by a boom. I knew back in the mid-1990s that the speculation was forming a boom, which would create a bust ... but oh, no, no one wanted to hear that. Now we have retirees coming back into the workforce in droves since they put too much of their retirement wealth into the stock-crap-shoot, and then we have people putting off retirement for years since due to the same processes they can't afford to retire. And this is putting incredible pressure upon the existing, younger workforce. The other half of the bust hasn't even happened yet. Stocks and homes are priced outrageously, and the real deflation has yet to appear. But that's what you get for the Clintonesque attempts to sustain such an irrational boom ... the bust either takes a long time to clear, and will be even deeper in its severity.
If you don't invest, inflation will eat your savings.
This is a tired and old mantra and I rather enjoy popping this particular balloon.
Invest, invest, invest
Look, the stock market is a win-lose game. Except for the first buyer (whose money is supposed to go at least in part to the company that issued the stock), it's gambling.
Investing. What a crock-of-shit word
What mantra is there to fall back upon now? What about the tired old "but the index stocks have always gained money" mantra? Well, the market requires losers to cash out the winners, hence you can't have people continue to pile onto the "guaranteed no-loss stocks" of the index without all that money driving the index into loss. This is as basic a fact of economy, as well as the one that says "everyone can't be rich". Wealth isn't a position of equality, its one of superiority.
You know, there is a method of continued index expansion. It's called Socialism. You take care of the older now, and by the time you need care, you will get taken care of by the younger. This kind of thing can be universally applicable, but
(Sorry to wax rhetorial like some sort of Massachusetts Senator. Bleah!)
When I was writing my rant, I would have bet anything I would get at least -1 Troll. I was right. Now here's my effort to earn another -1 ....
... what does that have to do with the logic of it? Oh, that's right, racist terms are disconnection terms, meaning you now have liberal permission to stop thinking about the topic and to write off the person who used them as some sort of kook. The liberal set has convinced you that this is an OK methodology. Well, your criminal asshole Clinton and his liberal crew have been out of office for a while, so fuck your knee-jerk and reactionary methods. Go bury your head in your mommy's lap, and wail about how unfair and mean the world is.
... what kind of idiot buys and buys that stuff? Answer: The kind of idiot that runs for the hills when he finally encounters financial problems. And a lot of people have run for the hills in the last 3 years.
... and you'll find out that most of the time, he has no stomach for facing the confident individual. And the other half of the point is to point the truth of this out to others, so the ranks of the sensible can grow.
... entirely based upon your cowardice and subservience to established orders of degradation. You must not be much of an opponent, since all it would take to defeat you would be to use PR to convince you that you have no chance of winning. One PR campaign later, and [poing!] you are hanging your head.
What does "nigger rich" mean? Are you a racist?
No, it's just that terms like this have been removed from the body politic in an attempt to submerge your thinking about such topics.
The term was used by my previous generation, who were wise enough to not live beyond their means. Saying "nigger rich" is an implication that a dumb person buries himself in payment plans and cheap stuff, thinking that he has become wealthy, whereas in truth he constantly sells out his future one dollar at a time. As you can surmise, payments and plastic crap are now the height of fashion, hence such terms must be buried in the public mind.
And even if it is racist
And whats the point of living a miserably poor lifestyle jost to make a point to corporate America?
Now you've really got me confused. How have you judged from my posting that my lifestyle is "miserably poor"? You're going to have to defend your assertion. In fact, what kind of lifestyle opposes a miserably poor condition? A new car every 3 years? Broadband Internet access? A home so large that you have to hire a maid since you don't have the time to clean it? Come on, let's get your yuppie viewpoint out into the open so we can dissect it.
You're little protest won't have any affect on corporations
On the contrary, if you'd look around instead of contemplating your navel, the consumptive lifestyles have (and are) indeed sunk companies and their employees. That's what you get when you align an entire economy with the desires of your average 14-yr-old girl. The stores are filled with fluff
You should really start to understand the power of accumulating small numbers.
Anyway, fighting evil and opposing mediocrity are always worthwhile. So many people out there have been convinced that there's no point even in fighting, and that's exactly how the evil and mediocre win most of their battles. Here's a clue: Don't fight your enemy's battles for him. Make him fight for a change
Basically, even a registered cynic like me has hope for a future by the very acts of exposition that I indulge in, yet people like you are advocates for destruction of society
So what have you really achieved? The wealthy don't deprive themselves. They live the high life by making their money earn MORE money for them first THEN they buy the things they want. You're just deluding yourself if you think you
You said all that about 100 times better than I did, and about 10 times better had I even tried. Thank you for your sober approach to my spite-filled invective.
Walmart doesn't sell at a loss.
There are many assertions otherwise, and here are some samples: gasoline, toys, groceries.
Wal-Mart's enormous capital base allows it to use a new store to bankrupt an area it opens in, and once the competition declines from that, it raises prices back to profitable levels. Companies who wish to return to the area must climb the investment wall again, and will probably eventually face Wal-Mart's returning to selling at a loss to drive them out again.
Selling at a loss has long been an illegal practice, but nonetheless companies do it to woo the market. I support such laws since it is the government's function to regulate between businesses and consumers, and between businesses and businesses.
Good post. Time to rant! ....
... but withholding it for as long as possible from as many of you as possible. After all, that's what you wealthy and credit-worthy have done to us all for the last 20 years at least. You're all admiration over the sensibilities of the wealthy and accredited ... so here's a taste of where that leads:
... and I hope you feel it. I want to see you miserable bastards bankrupt so hard that I can buy you out for 3c on the dollar. And it's you who will come to live under a bridge, as I nearly came to recently.
Dear Modern American Capitalist:
I am one pauper, busily attaching thorns to my body to provide the poison pill effect. Try to swallow me alive, and I will stick in your throat.
Once I became re-employed (after 3 years of un- and under-employment, which as you can imagine produced some severe effects) I took to saving as much as I could. Now I have reached 5 figures. And you are getting next to nothing from it.
This money is not in a bank; fuck your banks and their predatory fee schedules. This money is not being spent on a new car; fuck your car companies and their "nigger rich" offerings. It's my money and I can prove it
I never expect to own a home. I never expect to own a new car. I buy things like clothes and cutlery from Goodwill. My car is used and I repair it myself. I buy toilet paper in gargantuan boxes that last me a year, at lowest cost per square-foot. My larder is stocked with bulk items; I never eat out. My home is kept at 60deg in the winter, and I don't use air conditioning in the summer. Etc.
New and service-heavy things have become a icon of conspicuous consumption. So, fuck your Consumer Capitalism. I've dropped many sigmas into the left-hand side of the consumer bellcurve
Finally, I'm well armed, should you contend my position with force. What goes around comes around. Eat my spite.
Signed,
Capitalist of the Old School of Elbert Hubbard
P.S. If you want me to believe in a future, then perhaps you should have provided one instead of working towards ripping everyone off with your stock and house Ponzi schemes.
Your posting advocated disregarding data due to doubts about the reliability of the instruments used. What does any of your latest blather have to do with that?
... and get this, Roscoe ... data is all we have to work with in the first place.
... even to the point of being run over by the Mack truck of rationality: seeing patterns where there are none.
... instead, he will incorporate the new. The truth will out ... but not by your methods of intentional forgetfullness.
It shows that we have very long-term data about variations that we cannot explain right now.
Sorry, Chum, but that seems to always be the case with climate studies. We can collect data until the sun expands, and never be sure we are seeing all the cycles of change that concern us. As for myself, I can make decisions based upon current data since
Doubting the data is entirely sensible. Trashing data based upon wolf-crying about "we don't know enough" is not. We can always form a theory from whatever data we have
I prefer the pitfalls of the rational, over the other ones made by the irrational.
I am thinking very suspiciously that you are one of the noveau riche of the Republican set that are striving to dismiss environmental concerns using allegedly rational arguments. Sorry, Bub, but any real scientist is not going to flushing data you don't like down the drain
You should go to a doctor to get that cranioanal insertion problem of yours looked at.
P.S. Thanks for the ref. It's late Friday, and my downtown lib closed early. I'll try tomorrow.
Unlike "normal" moderation models (and I was one in the dim Internet past (and good bloody riddance to that form of moderation, bleah!)), Slashdot hands out moderation duties to registered readers. So, it mostly complies with popular controls. If in light of this you consider Slashdot to be populated by "mindless automatons and lemmings" ... well, the best I can say is that that speaks for your intestinal fortitude.
I knew you'd like the blah blah blah part. Such is the fate of reason to splash through the sieves of lesser minds. [sigh]
If you can put aside issues of anger, would you care to address any of my statements lacking "rationality"? You scorn the fist, so how about the word? I am prepared to defend any of mine. Are you really prepared to attack them? Let's find out, Roscoe.
In case your memory is bad, here's what I said to prompt your smug and dismissive little posting: LINK
Older men have thicker skin, and even a 12-yr-old can tell when you are avoiding the topic. You are more than proving my assertion that your head is bone all the way across the diameter.
... and in fact, for ocean temperature data, that has already been done. (There's an excellent Scientific American article from the 90s that sticks out in my mind ... go look it up.)
You implied that we should disregard early data as being contaminated by the uncertainty of the instrumentation. We can put that data into perspective
We must trust the data, since other than gut instinct, data's all we have, and just laying the charge of "you've been wrong before" is no the way to construct a theory and to test conclusions therefrom.
I suggest you get involved in taking measurements and evaluating the data collected. Your assertions might be moderated (as well as all that bone thawed out into gray matter) by direct contact with data itself. Then you might begin to see that science is carried on with approximations and calculations laid upon calculations.
P.S. If you really knew anything about Feynman, he was one of the least humble people you'd meet, so bollocks on his alleged statement.
Whaaat-ever. You're full of baloney. At this time, I have a score of 2, and you have a score of 0. There's something to be said there about who's getting more attention, eh?
... what, "reasonable citizen"? ... who clearly doesn't give a shit about the people downwind from a bomb.
... and that's where the nuclear should head if they expect my support.
... the prevailing orgs have little interest in generating power so cheaply. Like the usual terrors invoked by profit motives, they continue to support their usual profit margins ... and even worse, this deregulation fiasco, with all this "stranded costs" bullshit, is making them cling to status quo as hard as ever.
... and the bubbles of the 90s (as well as the still expanding housing bubble of the early 00s) more than demonstrate that investors have wholly unreasonable demands that obliterate all sensible and sustainable investments. To toss out numbers like some fool, investing in a wind tower may get your money back in 15 years (including maintenance costs), but investing in a power company that chomps through oil and coal can get you your money back in 5. Those kinds of numbers are the things holding up wind power. To a sensible man (why, yes, like myself), putting up a generator is a great investment, considering all the things that can't be put into a goddamned spreadsheet and put into an annual report.
But these things are details. I am angry about the energy situation in America, and there are rafts of people (you are probably one of them) who don't want to deal with the anger and the philosophies behind it. As I stress time and time again, the raised fist has a point and it's pointless to argue that it doesn't.
I live in Ohio. Do you see where this is going? No? Well, I'll continue. I happen to live upwind (thank the very gods) from a certain power plant. Are those enough hints yet? No? Well, I'll come out with it. It's all about Davis-Besse, and we came to within 1/4-inch of one of America's most severe nuclear accidents. People I know would have been irradiated from that one. If the concern about that incident makes me some hippie, then I accept the moniker. I'd rather be a hippie with concern about my fellow man, than some
Nuclear power is a great idea. Even now, the basic idea's awesome. But the real "retards" are the people who designed and ran our nuclear industry. That's why I laugh at it. Their creation is a monstrosity that must be changed. Economics alone say the present nuclear installed plant is a bad idea now. Waste handling also says it's a bad idea. These can all change, but as August's blackout showed, the all-encompassing overdrive of profit motives won't allow that to happen.
There are some rumblings about safer nuclear facilities, using pebble beds, and even scaled-down types that can be run on city-block scales. I think those are great ideas
South of Toledo (where I am currently cursed to live) is Bowling Green. I clipped out a news article recently, which told of a 700kW wind generator farm that was installed nearby there. Wind power is a no-brainer -- generator, blades, tower, power lines. It only poses a hazard to birds and "visual environment". But it's acceptance is so obviously held back by the power companies that I'm likely to jump up and down, fit to burst over the issue. Wind power involves installations of certain sizes, and considering the size of the blades and the height of the tower, this places it outside any individual's capacity to install (excepting farms). We must rely on organizations for wind power. And there's the very problem
So, not just no, but hell no, they won't be brought into the fold until there's cultural change. Wind power should have been deployed over a decade ago. What's holding it up are investment expectations
To sum up what I just said for you: blah blah blah. There, that'll save time for my future postings.
Granted. It's just that my mind is currently filled and biased with our recent Ohio Issue 1, which by the grace of the gods was voted down (... barely, which is the way most defeated measures are done in Ohio). It represented statewide taxation (through debt service on bonds) in order to fund tech expansion ... which will of course be grabbed by the cities (particularly the "Three Cs": Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati). Hence, the rurals would be fleeced for the urbanites.
I don't support much imbalance in my view of reasonable socialism. I frown mightily upon flows of wealth being pipelined too much from one group to another. For instance, for the last year I have data (2001?), Ohio got about 88c back on each dollar of gas tax it paid, while Massachusetts got about 110c. Having lived in both states, I would be hard-pressed to classify Mass. as being more "rural" than Ohio. I would easily conclude that Mass. has more influence in the national Congress.
It is the group of things like this that leads me to believe that other than those damned farm subsidies and obvious long road projects on the plains, the heartland of America is just a place getting soaked by the population centers, particularly the coasts.
Those farm subsidies are a terror in the national budget whose time has come to rationalize them to much lower levels, but so similarly it is time to stop paying Boeing to sell planes in Europe a la the Export-Import Bank (hence, too bad for the workers in Washington state, and too bad for the execs in Chicago).
Until anarchism rolls around, I think pure democracy is the best.
... well, you get the idea by now. Both represent a tyranny ... democracy the tyranny of the majority, and autocracy the tyranny of the minority. Doesn't anyone want a goddamn Republic anymore?
You would. You clearly intend to be in the 51% that votes to put the other 49% in jail.
Democracy and Autocracy can both [CENSORED] my [CENSORED] [CENSORED] and then [CENSORED] up [CENSORED] elbow [CENSORED]