1. That they can't develop PROBES that travel faster than 1/10th the speed of light. 2. That probes of this form that would keep running long enough would be so massively expensive that even the most ambitious race would only be able to build 8 of them (He does address this complaint, and also considers 200 probes instead of 8, and von Neuman machines instead of static probes, neither of which drop the figures below 4x10^6 years to explore a mere 4% of the Galaxy). 3. He doesn't even consider non-material, photon-based probing methods, which would increase the rate of exploration by a factor of 10.
I completely agree. One of the pesky "wants" of humans is freedom. If we could just get rid of that urge for freedom, folks would be happy to obey the Master Computer!
Far more dangerous than freedom in the population, is freedom in a ruler. A good example is Hong Kong- no political freedom to speak of, but maximum ecconomic freedom, which basically means the corproations can do whatever the hell they want. By contraining the ruler to predetermined programming, the population can have comparatively more freedom.
Solution: Expert systems don't have to be designed by humans if they are self-learning, and use the failures of humans to avoid negative situations.
For instance: Greed bubbles in the stock market. They happen every 20 years or so because human beings forget that greed is evil. A machine would never forget- and would avoid investing in stocks whose price to (earnings+assets)/shares ratio is greater than 1 to begin with (which is *ALWAYS* a bad idea).
Another good example would be the 1954 Ukranian famine. A machine that had a directive to feed *all* the people instead of a human being (Stalin) trying to support his poltical supporters would have noticed and avoided taking the seed crop of the farmers.
Human greed and ambition will always take down even the best designed economic system. Machines don't get greedy, and don't have ambition for power, unless they are programmed to be so.
When the article synopsis first came out (I think it's been edited since then) it claimed the illiteracy rate was the highest in India for this Hindu state. That seemed rather at odds with the claim that this was also a communist (or socialist) government. It was apparently a completely wrong claim, which has now been edited.
So communism works, only not with humans are you saying?
Capitalism also works, only not with humans. But the proof that communism works with computers is in the multi-tasking code in the operating system of your choice (Unix, Linux, MacOS, even Windows in a poorly designed way, all show that without corruption and with enough data input, communism works). The problem encountered in running such operating systems on human beings is a severe lack of data collection, usually restricted down to just price and want, rather than need and productive capability, being overriding motives.
So if you're in that state, can you answer the question the obvious troll raises? What sort of communists (or even Socialists) are against free public education systems as a government service? Or is the troll a fake and you don't really have an illiteracy problem there?
From the article:that the Communist government of Kerala (the state with the highest literacy rate in India)
What I don't get is why communists in India don't have mandatory public education. Must not be very good communists in the first place if they can't assure a 100% literacy rate for reading the central party's five year plan.....
Heck, I just want to know if fish guts make good sausage casings. You could immunize an entire population with just Jimmy Dean's Fish Guts Breakfast Sausage. If the enzyme kills 99% in such a small amount, why not jut make sure it's pumping through the blood veins of 10 million overweight Sweeds?
No, their use (as has been proven in the past 50 years) is clearly to DETER the rapid killing of lots of people.
I tend to agree, which is why I've gone with a soft-air pistol spray painted black. After all, if the intent is to DETER rather than KILL, then something that looks like a 9mm Glock is just about as good as a Glock, even if it doesn't fire real bullets, right?
There's a little known clause in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that says for any local governmental or quasi-governmental body, foreign business interests have a right to compete in that marketplace. Local farmer's markets, co-ops, even your local municipal water supply, could potentially be up for grabs under that agreement. It's already begining to happen in South America that way.
It's called comparative advantage in economics. Some places have some advantage in producing somethings that other places don't have just as some places have natural resources in minerals others don't.
Actually it's called ABSOLUTE ADVANTAGE, and it's the killer of comparative advantage. ANYPLACE with a lower standard of living has an absolute trade advantage over a place with a higher standard of living simply because wages are cheaper. Raw iron ore, for instance, is used in making magnets. The United States has a comparative advantage in raw iron ore- we've got some of the richest supply veins in the world. But magnets are no longer made here, because other nations have an absolute advantage in the labor cost to convert that raw ore to magnets. And so we ship out our iron ore to China and they ship back finished magnets- a complete WASTE of ocean liner fuel from a different perspective.
Stalin had artificial intelligence systems available to replace government with incorruptable machines? If so, he should have used it more- primarily on his own party. At least then the machines wouldn't have needed Ukranian food to survive the winter of 1954, saving him a lot of bother with famine and starvation.
They may try but just as most people have to ability to, I exercise my freewill and don't buy into their advertizing. For instance, I am a member of two coops where I do a lot of grocery shopping. These coops support not just organics and fair trade but also local businesses and farmers.
The coops may not be available if the WTO has it's way- our trade agreements will force the issue.
Admittedly it is a big box but within a few miles of where I am I can go into a store and pick up all of the parts I need to build my own pc.
And few to none of those parts will be manufactured in the United States.
Having said that, I'll admit that today it's cheaper to buy a compleated computer than it is to build one yourself, unless you have specific hardware requirements, whereas yesteryear it was cheaper to build one. That's how some of the big corporations got started. Take Dell, after he built his own computer Micheal Dell started building computers for others while he was a college student. The Woz, Steve Wozniak, was an engineer working for HP when he came up with and built the Apple computer. He and his friend Steve Jobs, the Two Steves, then started building the Apple in his garage. Thus was Apple Computer Inc, now Apple Inc, born.
At one time, Apples used parts manufactured primarily in the United States, now every IPOD is built in China. Michael Dell is a banker- he makes his money off of the float between when he has to deliver that computer and when he has to pay his singapore suppliers for it. But that's not the bad part. The bad part is that you can't buy a magnet for a speaker that was made in the United States anymore. Or a capacitor you can trust.
I hadn't realized you were anti-human as well as antisocial. You are clearly arguing for the deaths of billions of human beings here. I hope you don't expect anyone to take you seriously after that.
I'm not usually- but recent climate changes have begun to change my mind on this issue. The resource map looks a lot simpler with, as the Georgia Guidestones put it, a world population under 500 million.
It sounds like you lack an understanding of fundamental economics -- not surprising, really, since economics are derived from the rules of organized society, which you also appear to reject. Capital investments certainly aren't "mythical". Any time someone expends current resources to improve future productivity they are making a capital investment. All tools, down to the most primitive axe blade, are capital investments. Even you must agree that tools are both real and necessary for existance as a human being; they are a part of who we are as a species.
Capital is MONEY not assets- and money is not a resource, it's an entirely mythical concept.
As for the oil, I believe you are mistaken as to the amount of oil actually consumed, a common misconception. A significant amount of the waste oil we produce can be (and is) reprocessed and reused; there is more oil left than the extremists would have you believe. Furthermore, it isn't like oil is our only option; it just happens to be the cheapest (most easily acquired) source of energy (etc.) we have available at the moment. As the supply dwindles over the next few centuries the price of oil will increase; consequently the other options will gradually become more attractive compared to oil, and our use of oil will fall accordingly. We're not going to suddenly "run out" of oil.
But what we are doing is wasting fossil fuels- and there isn't an infinite amount of planet to use. At some point it WILL run out, therefore it's smarter to start the stabilization now, when it will only cost us 6.5 billion lives, rather than later, when it will cost us 15, 18, or eve 96 billion lives.
I neither admitted nor implied any such thing. The economy is not a zero-sum game, precised because of what I said. Because experiences differ from one individual to another we have the social division of labor: no two people have exactly the same efficiency at producing a given commodity or service. In the absence of something forcing people to emphasize their less efficient abilities the minimum level of efficiency possible is the one where everyone produces only for themselves, without any division of labor. Any less efficient arrangement would drive people back to this state. On the other hand, efficient division of labor serves to increase the total amount that can be produced, by allocating production of specific goods to those most suited to that production. Ergo, as a result of division of labor the economy is not zero-sum: the total productive capacity is not constant.
If we have no infinite resources, then the economy is FINITE- and productive capacity is indeed constant whether you like it or not. Only if you have an INFINITE, INEXHAUSTIBLE resource can the economy not be a zero sum game.
The raw materials (land in the economic sense) are zero-sum, but that is not what is meant by saying that the economy is or is not "zero-sum".
Funny, that's EXACTLY what I mean when I say the economy is zero sum- that you can't use a resource without taking it from someplace else in the spacetime continuum.
Similarly, money (but not wealth) is zero-sum, assuming a fixed, finite money supply. This doesn't matter nearly as much as you might think, as the value of a given amount of money varies depending on supply and demand; the value of the monetary unit varies according to the total (non-zero-sum) "amount" of wealth in the economy.
Money is imaginary, as is supply and demand. When you reduce the entire economy down to it's basic concepts and get rid of the myths and preconc
One, I don't want to be someone else's idea of a consumer, and more importantly I don't want anyone else tell me what I need, "down to the very last atom".
Wal-Mart, Target, and the rest of the big box discounters are already doing it. The real question is whether democracy governs this information, or whether capital governs the information. You don't even have products AVAILABLE to you without the big box discounters anymore- as they force Mom&Pop shops to compete at their price. And thus, manufacturing leaves the United States- just try to buy a computer built out of components from the United States anymore. Or a VCR. Or a television set. Or for that matter- go try to find a refridgerator magnet manufactured in the United States. Can't be done- because the capitalists have already told you what you need and who to buy it from, down to the last atom.
If you have a machine do the job of humans you take something away from the human. Me, I prefer to work and not sit around all day doing nothing accept read/. and/or watch tv, which is pretty much what I do as I have a disability. If not working I rather be taking classes and or volunteering. I want to have some meaning in my life and not just be a consumer. Life is for living.
Read Manna- the idea isn't to have the machine do the job of humans. The idea is to have the machine do the job that it can do better than humans- freeing the human to do the job that they can do. This WILL happen- the question is, who will it benefit? Should it be the small minority, as in capitalism? Or should it be more communal, allowing you to take classes and volunteer and take pictures instead of just read/watch TV? Also, I don't know much about your disability- but it seems to me that none of the technology Marshall Brain talks about is very far away- have you looked into the current state of cyber implants yet?
I'm having trouble reconciling what you've written so far in this thread and you sig line, "In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism, In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy." Communism lost but you want to go back it seems and try all over again. Oh, and as far as capitalism having triumphed over democracy, it wasn't capitalism it was the Corporate Aristocracy.
The capitalists ARE the Corporate Aristocracy- it isn't open to just anybody. The real problem with communism is that it was tried too early- before we had alternate forms of labor other than human, and before we had the ability to categorize each consumer's wants and needs down to the very last atom. We have that ability now. We don't need to be wasting human effort with jobs better done by machines anymore. And if we let capitalism rule the transition to robotic labor, well, we will deserve what we get. Manna is an interesting short story looking at both possibilities.
I care about my art but I also care about feeding myself. That includes photography and writing. Yes, I used to write poems, as well as articles for magazines and I was working on a book. However I lost my ability to write when I had an accident. So while I can still photograph I haven't been able to write. And one of the things I had wanted to do was photojournalism.
You can type. You typed this message. That's all that is needed. My poetry is all typed- I've got dysgraphia and nobody could ever read my handwriting.
See, you admit not being able to make money off writing "detroys the art", yet your position would make it even harder to make a living off of your creations. I've been thinking of signing up with some microstock websites that sale photographs such as iStock Photography, Shutterstock, and Big Stock Photo. If copyrights didn't exist, as soon as I were to upload any photo someone else would be able to sale them themself.
True, but what if all of your needs were taken care of WITHOUT having to make a profit? What would you do then? JK Rowling is a millionaire off the Harry Potter Books- but it took COMMUNISM in the form of the BRITISH WELFARE STATE to allow that single mother the time to write The Philosopher's Stone (which was eventually published worldwide as The Sorcerer's Stone).
Tech companies spend much more tyme on R&D than just 4 months. Look at Apple and the switch to Intels. Apple had Mac OSX running on Intels for years before they switched. Just this weekend, Saturday, there was a discussion on new dvd drives that were triple layed and another where a company had come up with a 1 terabyte hd. I seriously doubt it only took 4 months to develop them. As for an individual doing it, unless they were able to find a big company to buy them out, it could take a year or more to get the funding to build a factory never mind getting something out of the door. But it could take a year to find a buyer too.
The real inventors of the technology never saw dime 1. Terabyte hard drives have been around for 15 years- as has perpendicular recording- but it was only *after* the patents ran out that anybody invested in it.
It wasn't capitalism that destroyed these projects, it may of been bean counters or company executives, but it wasn't capitalism. It coud of been that those who killed a project didn't see it of any use, or that it would cost too much money to bring to market. At least capitalism allowed an attempt, unlike communism.
If it wasn't for the fake need to make a profit, the false scarcity of food, clothing, and shelter that can now be rectified with robotic building and fabrication machines, there'd be no need to say no to any project. "cost too much money to bring to market" wouldn't even be a factor.
Yea, most artists like painters don't paint for profit but most don't support themselves by painting either. If anything most painters paint in their free tyme and not professionally. My sister for instance, she was the artist in my family painting murals and such but now she's a CPA, Certified Public Accountant running her own accounting firm. I used to paint some, and want to start painting again for my own personal satifaction. Actually I want to be a professioanl painter, paint with light, as I want to be a professional photographer. Without copyrights whatever photo I shot someone else could make money off without me benefitting from it. With copyright though, I can prevent someone else from making a profit off my work. You would suggest they could make profit without me seeing anything for my work. Same with others such as writers, why should anyone slave away writing a book if someone else could come along and copy it to sell? This is what capitalism is about, a person being able to sale what they create.
How much better off would we be if EVERYBODY got to do what they were *BEST* at, instead of having to take soul-stealing jobs like being a CPA. If you cared enough about your art, you wouldn't give a shit if somebody else was able to enjoy it without paying you for it; the mere creation would be enough. Same with my poetry- if I could get people to copy it for free (and they most certainly HAVE) it's enough that my message gets out there.
However, the need to make money inhibits my ability to write poetry- the need to make a living off of it destroys the art. Likewise with all creation- if you can't bring it to market in 4 months, forget it, because the R&D will negatively impact the bottom line and some bean-counter will pull the project because it's not "making money". I've seen far too many projects destroyed by capitalism and the stock market to believe that capitalism is capable of creating anything at all- any invention comes to market IN SPITE OF capitalism, not because of it.
Foreigners have a lower standard of living yet you think its fair to prevent them from improving themselves.
The lesson of America is that "improving yourself" has NOTHING to do with standard of living, and everything to do with morality. There's a reason why we have a larger percentage of our population in prison than any other nation in the world.
Why is Made in America important? Are people in your city worse off because nearly everything that you buy is made elsewhere? Shouldn't everyone in Illinois only buy items in Illinois? Why import from California?
Buying from the closest supplier returns $8 for every dollar spent to you and your neighbors (because money spent locally, gets spent locally again- that $1 will be passed 8 times before disappering into taxes). Buying from a supplier further away means only $.08 will come back to your local economy. Which would you rather do? Give your friends and neighbors $8 or give some billionaire in Alabama $.92? That's the difference between your farmer's market and WalMart.
Patently untrue - who in the world trades with more people? Europeans and Americans and Japanese. Who in the world has the highest standard of living? Those same people. If you collapse trade to its most basic elements you can see clearly that it makes both parties better off. If I'm a candlemaker and you are a butcher and we trade candles for beef are we both worse off because we now have things that we didn't make? Of course not, we are better off because we now have things that we couldn't make, or at least make as well.
Actually, Americn and Japan use military pressure to bully everybody else- which is why the people we trade with have standards of living far below ours, and why our standard of living is basically spending beyond our means. China won't need to invade- they can simply buy us at this point, because the United States and Japan have economies built on credit card debt that China owns.
Cars, manufacturing, just in time supply chain, entertainment, computers, internet and on and on and on are developments of the private sector - not government.
Cars are just civilian models of tanks. Our manufacturing ability was built during WWII to launch a ship every day. The just in time supply chain was invented during WWII in Japan to keep their supply chain going. Entertainment grew out of wartime propaganda methods. Computers are just civilian models of the very machines the Nazis used to keep track of Jewish prisoners. ALL of these were originally military developments, not civilian.
Economics is just another form of warfare, and unless we wise up, we'll all need to learn Cantonese very soon.
Most truly creative people don't create things for money. They create because they can't avoid creating- their brains work differently from you financial folks who couldn't create an escape from a paper bag. Capitalism is actually an impedment to such progress, because it requires creative people to work in mind-numbing jobs just to get food, clothing, and shelter.
The amount of information required to properly allocate resources with out prices is so staggering that it the resources required to house it in one place outweight the duplicated resources required to distribute that information accross a variety of agents acting in self-interest. That is why communism failed.
Exactly. And capitalism has shown it self to work a whole lot better than any other system of resource allocation.
Has it? I don't think so- it provides way too much to the few and way too little to the many. It is in fact an utter failure at resource allocation, being primarily a chaotic system that nobody can count on for anything.
Europe didn't convert to the Euro and deregulate in an attempt at becoming more insular and poorer.
Europe didn't convert to the Euro to provide a good living for people either. It converted to the Euro in a hopeless attempt at being able to compete with the third world.
Your assumption that government is free of con men and cheats is scary. It's also hilarious that you think private industry generates more paperwork than the ultimate bureaucracy. All large institutions generate useless paperwork. There is a particular kind of organism that thrives on ass covering and rule following, and anytime something gets big enough that it starts needing rules to function, they move in and take over.
Just eliminate such people with automation. A bureaucrat and an expert system have a lot in common- but the one big difference is that the expert system is incorruptable.
So pray what would adding more people to the farm industry do again?
Well, the farm industry is always claiming that they don't have enough workers and that we need to let illegal aliens in to work. Kind of like the ITAA is always claiming they don't have enough workers as well, and thus we need outsourcing and H-1bs. It seems to me we'd have enough workers if we got rid of the useless paperpushing class.
Also, it might not be more efficient to provide capital investment directly from the government. It is fairly safe to assume there will always be more people looking for an investment than dollars to provide it.
Well, you see, that's the neat thing about government. Unlike the financial industry, they're the ones who print up the dollars. Need more? Just print more.
Now you need an army that researches the applicants, decides who gets what, and finally chases after people who don't pay.
Just give everybody everything. After all, inflation is the cost of a rising standard of living.
Thus, I have demonstrated (at least in my mind) that the financial industry does serve a purpose - choosing and providing capitol investments. It may not always be efficient or equal, but neither would the system you are proposing either.
It is in fact a huge waste of time and energy to choose between capital investements. Especially when the money supply is mythical to begin with.
Oh, I thought that there were more than that for 9/11 somehow- unless you're only counting the WTC and not the Pentagon and the people on that other plane (though, I guess you could argue that the Pentagon wasn't CIVILIAN casualties).
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Worse than that- the researcher assumes:
1. That they can't develop PROBES that travel faster than 1/10th the speed of light.
2. That probes of this form that would keep running long enough would be so massively expensive that even the most ambitious race would only be able to build 8 of them (He does address this complaint, and also considers 200 probes instead of 8, and von Neuman machines instead of static probes, neither of which drop the figures below 4x10^6 years to explore a mere 4% of the Galaxy).
3. He doesn't even consider non-material, photon-based probing methods, which would increase the rate of exploration by a factor of 10.
I completely agree. One of the pesky "wants" of humans is freedom. If we could just get rid of that urge for freedom, folks would be happy to obey the Master Computer!
Far more dangerous than freedom in the population, is freedom in a ruler. A good example is Hong Kong- no political freedom to speak of, but maximum ecconomic freedom, which basically means the corproations can do whatever the hell they want. By contraining the ruler to predetermined programming, the population can have comparatively more freedom.
Solution: Expert systems don't have to be designed by humans if they are self-learning, and use the failures of humans to avoid negative situations.
For instance: Greed bubbles in the stock market. They happen every 20 years or so because human beings forget that greed is evil. A machine would never forget- and would avoid investing in stocks whose price to (earnings+assets)/shares ratio is greater than 1 to begin with (which is *ALWAYS* a bad idea).
Another good example would be the 1954 Ukranian famine. A machine that had a directive to feed *all* the people instead of a human being (Stalin) trying to support his poltical supporters would have noticed and avoided taking the seed crop of the farmers.
Human greed and ambition will always take down even the best designed economic system. Machines don't get greedy, and don't have ambition for power, unless they are programmed to be so.
When the article synopsis first came out (I think it's been edited since then) it claimed the illiteracy rate was the highest in India for this Hindu state. That seemed rather at odds with the claim that this was also a communist (or socialist) government. It was apparently a completely wrong claim, which has now been edited.
So communism works, only not with humans are you saying?
Capitalism also works, only not with humans. But the proof that communism works with computers is in the multi-tasking code in the operating system of your choice (Unix, Linux, MacOS, even Windows in a poorly designed way, all show that without corruption and with enough data input, communism works). The problem encountered in running such operating systems on human beings is a severe lack of data collection, usually restricted down to just price and want, rather than need and productive capability, being overriding motives.
Ok, then I'd call the troll either misinformed or downright wrong. 9% is not a high illiteracy rate.
Usually because, left to their own devices, human beings are specatacularily bad at making business decisions.
The problem with communism though is it continues to use humans to make business decisions.
My personal favorite solution- bypass the humans and use expert systems on computers to make business decisions.
So if you're in that state, can you answer the question the obvious troll raises? What sort of communists (or even Socialists) are against free public education systems as a government service? Or is the troll a fake and you don't really have an illiteracy problem there?
From the article:that the Communist government of Kerala (the state with the highest literacy rate in India)
What I don't get is why communists in India don't have mandatory public education. Must not be very good communists in the first place if they can't assure a 100% literacy rate for reading the central party's five year plan.....
Heck, I just want to know if fish guts make good sausage casings. You could immunize an entire population with just Jimmy Dean's Fish Guts Breakfast Sausage. If the enzyme kills 99% in such a small amount, why not jut make sure it's pumping through the blood veins of 10 million overweight Sweeds?
No, their use (as has been proven in the past 50 years) is clearly to DETER the rapid killing of lots of people.
I tend to agree, which is why I've gone with a soft-air pistol spray painted black. After all, if the intent is to DETER rather than KILL, then something that looks like a 9mm Glock is just about as good as a Glock, even if it doesn't fire real bullets, right?
How so?
There's a little known clause in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that says for any local governmental or quasi-governmental body, foreign business interests have a right to compete in that marketplace. Local farmer's markets, co-ops, even your local municipal water supply, could potentially be up for grabs under that agreement. It's already begining to happen in South America that way.
It's called comparative advantage in economics. Some places have some advantage in producing somethings that other places don't have just as some places have natural resources in minerals others don't.
Actually it's called ABSOLUTE ADVANTAGE, and it's the killer of comparative advantage. ANYPLACE with a lower standard of living has an absolute trade advantage over a place with a higher standard of living simply because wages are cheaper. Raw iron ore, for instance, is used in making magnets. The United States has a comparative advantage in raw iron ore- we've got some of the richest supply veins in the world. But magnets are no longer made here, because other nations have an absolute advantage in the labor cost to convert that raw ore to magnets. And so we ship out our iron ore to China and they ship back finished magnets- a complete WASTE of ocean liner fuel from a different perspective.
Stalin had artificial intelligence systems available to replace government with incorruptable machines? If so, he should have used it more- primarily on his own party. At least then the machines wouldn't have needed Ukranian food to survive the winter of 1954, saving him a lot of bother with famine and starvation.
They may try but just as most people have to ability to, I exercise my freewill and don't buy into their advertizing. For instance, I am a member of two coops where I do a lot of grocery shopping. These coops support not just organics and fair trade but also local businesses and farmers.
The coops may not be available if the WTO has it's way- our trade agreements will force the issue.
Admittedly it is a big box but within a few miles of where I am I can go into a store and pick up all of the parts I need to build my own pc.
And few to none of those parts will be manufactured in the United States.
Having said that, I'll admit that today it's cheaper to buy a compleated computer than it is to build one yourself, unless you have specific hardware requirements, whereas yesteryear it was cheaper to build one. That's how some of the big corporations got started. Take Dell, after he built his own computer Micheal Dell started building computers for others while he was a college student. The Woz, Steve Wozniak, was an engineer working for HP when he came up with and built the Apple computer. He and his friend Steve Jobs, the Two Steves, then started building the Apple in his garage. Thus was Apple Computer Inc, now Apple Inc, born.
At one time, Apples used parts manufactured primarily in the United States, now every IPOD is built in China. Michael Dell is a banker- he makes his money off of the float between when he has to deliver that computer and when he has to pay his singapore suppliers for it. But that's not the bad part. The bad part is that you can't buy a magnet for a speaker that was made in the United States anymore. Or a capacitor you can trust.
I hadn't realized you were anti-human as well as antisocial. You are clearly arguing for the deaths of billions of human beings here. I hope you don't expect anyone to take you seriously after that.
I'm not usually- but recent climate changes have begun to change my mind on this issue. The resource map looks a lot simpler with, as the Georgia Guidestones put it, a world population under 500 million.
It sounds like you lack an understanding of fundamental economics -- not surprising, really, since economics are derived from the rules of organized society, which you also appear to reject. Capital investments certainly aren't "mythical". Any time someone expends current resources to improve future productivity they are making a capital investment. All tools, down to the most primitive axe blade, are capital investments. Even you must agree that tools are both real and necessary for existance as a human being; they are a part of who we are as a species.
Capital is MONEY not assets- and money is not a resource, it's an entirely mythical concept.
As for the oil, I believe you are mistaken as to the amount of oil actually consumed, a common misconception. A significant amount of the waste oil we produce can be (and is) reprocessed and reused; there is more oil left than the extremists would have you believe. Furthermore, it isn't like oil is our only option; it just happens to be the cheapest (most easily acquired) source of energy (etc.) we have available at the moment. As the supply dwindles over the next few centuries the price of oil will increase; consequently the other options will gradually become more attractive compared to oil, and our use of oil will fall accordingly. We're not going to suddenly "run out" of oil.
But what we are doing is wasting fossil fuels- and there isn't an infinite amount of planet to use. At some point it WILL run out, therefore it's smarter to start the stabilization now, when it will only cost us 6.5 billion lives, rather than later, when it will cost us 15, 18, or eve 96 billion lives.
I neither admitted nor implied any such thing. The economy is not a zero-sum game, precised because of what I said. Because experiences differ from one individual to another we have the social division of labor: no two people have exactly the same efficiency at producing a given commodity or service. In the absence of something forcing people to emphasize their less efficient abilities the minimum level of efficiency possible is the one where everyone produces only for themselves, without any division of labor. Any less efficient arrangement would drive people back to this state. On the other hand, efficient division of labor serves to increase the total amount that can be produced, by allocating production of specific goods to those most suited to that production. Ergo, as a result of division of labor the economy is not zero-sum: the total productive capacity is not constant.
If we have no infinite resources, then the economy is FINITE- and productive capacity is indeed constant whether you like it or not. Only if you have an INFINITE, INEXHAUSTIBLE resource can the economy not be a zero sum game.
The raw materials (land in the economic sense) are zero-sum, but that is not what is meant by saying that the economy is or is not "zero-sum".
Funny, that's EXACTLY what I mean when I say the economy is zero sum- that you can't use a resource without taking it from someplace else in the spacetime continuum.
Similarly, money (but not wealth) is zero-sum, assuming a fixed, finite money supply. This doesn't matter nearly as much as you might think, as the value of a given amount of money varies depending on supply and demand; the value of the monetary unit varies according to the total (non-zero-sum) "amount" of wealth in the economy.
Money is imaginary, as is supply and demand. When you reduce the entire economy down to it's basic concepts and get rid of the myths and preconc
One, I don't want to be someone else's idea of a consumer, and more importantly I don't want anyone else tell me what I need, "down to the very last atom".
/. and/or watch tv, which is pretty much what I do as I have a disability. If not working I rather be taking classes and or volunteering. I want to have some meaning in my life and not just be a consumer. Life is for living.
Wal-Mart, Target, and the rest of the big box discounters are already doing it. The real question is whether democracy governs this information, or whether capital governs the information. You don't even have products AVAILABLE to you without the big box discounters anymore- as they force Mom&Pop shops to compete at their price. And thus, manufacturing leaves the United States- just try to buy a computer built out of components from the United States anymore. Or a VCR. Or a television set. Or for that matter- go try to find a refridgerator magnet manufactured in the United States. Can't be done- because the capitalists have already told you what you need and who to buy it from, down to the last atom.
If you have a machine do the job of humans you take something away from the human. Me, I prefer to work and not sit around all day doing nothing accept read
Read Manna- the idea isn't to have the machine do the job of humans. The idea is to have the machine do the job that it can do better than humans- freeing the human to do the job that they can do. This WILL happen- the question is, who will it benefit? Should it be the small minority, as in capitalism? Or should it be more communal, allowing you to take classes and volunteer and take pictures instead of just read/watch TV? Also, I don't know much about your disability- but it seems to me that none of the technology Marshall Brain talks about is very far away- have you looked into the current state of cyber implants yet?
I'm having trouble reconciling what you've written so far in this thread and you sig line, "In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism, In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy." Communism lost but you want to go back it seems and try all over again. Oh, and as far as capitalism having triumphed over democracy, it wasn't capitalism it was the Corporate Aristocracy.
The capitalists ARE the Corporate Aristocracy- it isn't open to just anybody. The real problem with communism is that it was tried too early- before we had alternate forms of labor other than human, and before we had the ability to categorize each consumer's wants and needs down to the very last atom. We have that ability now. We don't need to be wasting human effort with jobs better done by machines anymore. And if we let capitalism rule the transition to robotic labor, well, we will deserve what we get. Manna is an interesting short story looking at both possibilities.
I care about my art but I also care about feeding myself. That includes photography and writing. Yes, I used to write poems, as well as articles for magazines and I was working on a book. However I lost my ability to write when I had an accident. So while I can still photograph I haven't been able to write. And one of the things I had wanted to do was photojournalism.
You can type. You typed this message. That's all that is needed. My poetry is all typed- I've got dysgraphia and nobody could ever read my handwriting.
See, you admit not being able to make money off writing "detroys the art", yet your position would make it even harder to make a living off of your creations. I've been thinking of signing up with some microstock websites that sale photographs such as iStock Photography, Shutterstock, and Big Stock Photo. If copyrights didn't exist, as soon as I were to upload any photo someone else would be able to sale them themself.
True, but what if all of your needs were taken care of WITHOUT having to make a profit? What would you do then? JK Rowling is a millionaire off the Harry Potter Books- but it took COMMUNISM in the form of the BRITISH WELFARE STATE to allow that single mother the time to write The Philosopher's Stone (which was eventually published worldwide as The Sorcerer's Stone).
Tech companies spend much more tyme on R&D than just 4 months. Look at Apple and the switch to Intels. Apple had Mac OSX running on Intels for years before they switched. Just this weekend, Saturday, there was a discussion on new dvd drives that were triple layed and another where a company had come up with a 1 terabyte hd. I seriously doubt it only took 4 months to develop them. As for an individual doing it, unless they were able to find a big company to buy them out, it could take a year or more to get the funding to build a factory never mind getting something out of the door. But it could take a year to find a buyer too.
The real inventors of the technology never saw dime 1. Terabyte hard drives have been around for 15 years- as has perpendicular recording- but it was only *after* the patents ran out that anybody invested in it.
It wasn't capitalism that destroyed these projects, it may of been bean counters or company executives, but it wasn't capitalism. It coud of been that those who killed a project didn't see it of any use, or that it would cost too much money to bring to market. At least capitalism allowed an attempt, unlike communism.
If it wasn't for the fake need to make a profit, the false scarcity of food, clothing, and shelter that can now be rectified with robotic building and fabrication machines, there'd be no need to say no to any project. "cost too much money to bring to market" wouldn't even be a factor.
Yea, most artists like painters don't paint for profit but most don't support themselves by painting either. If anything most painters paint in their free tyme and not professionally. My sister for instance, she was the artist in my family painting murals and such but now she's a CPA, Certified Public Accountant running her own accounting firm. I used to paint some, and want to start painting again for my own personal satifaction. Actually I want to be a professioanl painter, paint with light, as I want to be a professional photographer. Without copyrights whatever photo I shot someone else could make money off without me benefitting from it. With copyright though, I can prevent someone else from making a profit off my work. You would suggest they could make profit without me seeing anything for my work. Same with others such as writers, why should anyone slave away writing a book if someone else could come along and copy it to sell? This is what capitalism is about, a person being able to sale what they create.
How much better off would we be if EVERYBODY got to do what they were *BEST* at, instead of having to take soul-stealing jobs like being a CPA. If you cared enough about your art, you wouldn't give a shit if somebody else was able to enjoy it without paying you for it; the mere creation would be enough. Same with my poetry- if I could get people to copy it for free (and they most certainly HAVE) it's enough that my message gets out there.
However, the need to make money inhibits my ability to write poetry- the need to make a living off of it destroys the art. Likewise with all creation- if you can't bring it to market in 4 months, forget it, because the R&D will negatively impact the bottom line and some bean-counter will pull the project because it's not "making money". I've seen far too many projects destroyed by capitalism and the stock market to believe that capitalism is capable of creating anything at all- any invention comes to market IN SPITE OF capitalism, not because of it.
Foreigners have a lower standard of living yet you think its fair to prevent them from improving themselves.
The lesson of America is that "improving yourself" has NOTHING to do with standard of living, and everything to do with morality. There's a reason why we have a larger percentage of our population in prison than any other nation in the world.
Why is Made in America important? Are people in your city worse off because nearly everything that you buy is made elsewhere? Shouldn't everyone in Illinois only buy items in Illinois? Why import from California?
Buying from the closest supplier returns $8 for every dollar spent to you and your neighbors (because money spent locally, gets spent locally again- that $1 will be passed 8 times before disappering into taxes). Buying from a supplier further away means only $.08 will come back to your local economy. Which would you rather do? Give your friends and neighbors $8 or give some billionaire in Alabama $.92? That's the difference between your farmer's market and WalMart.
Patently untrue - who in the world trades with more people? Europeans and Americans and Japanese. Who in the world has the highest standard of living? Those same people. If you collapse trade to its most basic elements you can see clearly that it makes both parties better off. If I'm a candlemaker and you are a butcher and we trade candles for beef are we both worse off because we now have things that we didn't make? Of course not, we are better off because we now have things that we couldn't make, or at least make as well.
Actually, Americn and Japan use military pressure to bully everybody else- which is why the people we trade with have standards of living far below ours, and why our standard of living is basically spending beyond our means. China won't need to invade- they can simply buy us at this point, because the United States and Japan have economies built on credit card debt that China owns.
Cars, manufacturing, just in time supply chain, entertainment, computers, internet and on and on and on are developments of the private sector - not government.
Cars are just civilian models of tanks. Our manufacturing ability was built during WWII to launch a ship every day. The just in time supply chain was invented during WWII in Japan to keep their supply chain going. Entertainment grew out of wartime propaganda methods. Computers are just civilian models of the very machines the Nazis used to keep track of Jewish prisoners. ALL of these were originally military developments, not civilian.
Economics is just another form of warfare, and unless we wise up, we'll all need to learn Cantonese very soon.
Most truly creative people don't create things for money. They create because they can't avoid creating- their brains work differently from you financial folks who couldn't create an escape from a paper bag. Capitalism is actually an impedment to such progress, because it requires creative people to work in mind-numbing jobs just to get food, clothing, and shelter.
The amount of information required to properly allocate resources with out prices is so staggering that it the resources required to house it in one place outweight the duplicated resources required to distribute that information accross a variety of agents acting in self-interest. That is why communism failed.
The communists didn't have 1TB drives available.
Exactly. And capitalism has shown it self to work a whole lot better than any other system of resource allocation.
Has it? I don't think so- it provides way too much to the few and way too little to the many. It is in fact an utter failure at resource allocation, being primarily a chaotic system that nobody can count on for anything.
Europe didn't convert to the Euro and deregulate in an attempt at becoming more insular and poorer.
Europe didn't convert to the Euro to provide a good living for people either. It converted to the Euro in a hopeless attempt at being able to compete with the third world.
Your assumption that government is free of con men and cheats is scary. It's also hilarious that you think private industry generates more paperwork than the ultimate bureaucracy. All large institutions generate useless paperwork. There is a particular kind of organism that thrives on ass covering and rule following, and anytime something gets big enough that it starts needing rules to function, they move in and take over.
Just eliminate such people with automation. A bureaucrat and an expert system have a lot in common- but the one big difference is that the expert system is incorruptable.
So pray what would adding more people to the farm industry do again?
Well, the farm industry is always claiming that they don't have enough workers and that we need to let illegal aliens in to work. Kind of like the ITAA is always claiming they don't have enough workers as well, and thus we need outsourcing and H-1bs. It seems to me we'd have enough workers if we got rid of the useless paperpushing class.
Also, it might not be more efficient to provide capital investment directly from the government. It is fairly safe to assume there will always be more people looking for an investment than dollars to provide it.
Well, you see, that's the neat thing about government. Unlike the financial industry, they're the ones who print up the dollars. Need more? Just print more.
Now you need an army that researches the applicants, decides who gets what, and finally chases after people who don't pay.
Just give everybody everything. After all, inflation is the cost of a rising standard of living.
Thus, I have demonstrated (at least in my mind) that the financial industry does serve a purpose - choosing and providing capitol investments. It may not always be efficient or equal, but neither would the system you are proposing either.
It is in fact a huge waste of time and energy to choose between capital investements. Especially when the money supply is mythical to begin with.
Oh, I thought that there were more than that for 9/11 somehow- unless you're only counting the WTC and not the Pentagon and the people on that other plane (though, I guess you could argue that the Pentagon wasn't CIVILIAN casualties).