If you really don't think, it is possible to become wealthy by honest means, we have nothing to talk about.
I think that it was possible at one time- but now these twin methods of Industry and Frugality will be destroyed by parasites if you let them. The method of Frugality is an obvious one- by allowing inheritance and unlimited wealth creation, inflation is allowed- and if you're not already wealthy, inflation will destroy your savings eventually. If you are already wealthy, a number of inflation shelters, known as investments, are available to you- but one cannot take advantage of those unless one is willing to be a parasite on your second value of Induatry. Industry is no longer a method of wealth creation because the patent process has become closed to the people; you can patent something, but it will cost you a lot to do so, and to defend that patent in court costs a lot more before you see even one red dime of profit. You can avoid this by going to the Venture Capitalists- but if you do, plan on them taking at least 99% of your profit despite the fact that they never had an idea worth being industrious for in their entire lives.
The superwealthy are not those who are industrious or frugal- they are the ones who earn money off of those who are industrious and frugal. The two richest men in the nation are Bill Gates and William Bennet- Bill Gates hasn't been involved in developing a software program himself since Altair Basic, he buys all of his programs, repackages them, and resells them, a perfect example of making money off of other people's industriousness. William Bennet made all of his money off of stocks and other investments- playing with other people's money, a perfect example of making money off of other people's frugality and self sacrifice.
Do you still believe it is possible to become truly wealthy by honest means?
No, I don't think so. Unless it's a government not run by people,
Very good, got it in the first try- that's exactly what I'm proposing, a government not run by people, but by information flow instead. A government PROGRAMMED to follow the rules- because there are no people involved at all, just computers and robots.
because given those same people we would have a corporation that would be unabashedly good or a church that is utterly humane. The problem is a psychological one, as groups get bigger the people involved start losing their sense of responsibility and attachment.
So don't use people, use machines instead. Program them to follow the rules every time in exactly the same way- with responsibility and attachment being at the core. Either that, or fake it- create a system of rewards and punishments in which those who lose their sense of responsibility also lose their heads- quite literally.
Let me reiterate my point: Any entity who's first primary purpose is not self interest and survival will cease to survive.
Only if you're really stupid in how you set up the rules to begin with; rewarding selfish behavior while punishing unselfish behavior.
This goes for animals, plants, people, families, communities, organizations, cities, governments, corporations, etc. If any other purpose were primary then any actions taken towards that primary goal NOT tempered by a survival instinct would lead it down the path of dissolution.
Only if you're stupid enough to base something as important as an economic system on chaos instead of engineering. Evolution is good for genetics- it's a really STUPID way to design an economic system.
Sometimes that's okay, sacrifice and sharing and negotiation allow for non optimal solutions, but if the overriding primary goal, stated or not, intentional or not, isn't survival then what will prevent it from collapsing?
Good engineering and a different set of goals- punishing the parasites and rewarding good behavior.
A government that serves it's people OVER serving itself will waste away. It will be under powered, under funded, under protected, and ineffective. There's nothing magical, special, or different about a government just because of the name. It's an organization like any other. It's only in the US's case that it's primary CUSTOMERs are it's citizens. If you want to think in terms of corporation, a corporation that doesn't serve it's customers gets no money, and dissolves. Not in the US- a corporation that doesn't serve it's customers goes back for a second round of IPO funding.
A government that doesn't serve it's citizens would also dissolve, and in our case it would be because we choose to elect new representatives or willfully revolt.
Can't choose to elect new representatives- the corporations control the campaign process, not the citizens, who have become second class customers to be ignored- but I'm all for the revolt.
I dunno, they seem to be meeting my interests, and plenty of others. We like our cheaper goods. Don't mistake me, though, I'm not saying that's the most important point, but it's one of them.
The problem is, cheaper goods is a short-sighted and stupid interest that is leading us down the road to ruin. Allowing it has created a $500 billion dollar a year deficit in our trade. It's ridiculous to allow that to continue- and we should use our military might to change the situation.
Yes, you're right, if we view foreign governments as enemies. When you give your neighbor the responsibility of egg production, and your father in law responsibility of caring for the pigs, and the guy down the street the responsibility of making furniture, you are being held hostage by your community!
They are enemies- every time. Make no mistake about it- anybody living more than a thousand miles away from you has no need to worry about your interests or the interests of your communit
Widespread respect for honest wealth was always a nice feature of this country.
Since when has wealth generation (beyond, of course, the inventor who gains a company completely by his own ideas and efforts) been honest? There ain't no such animal- and tons of nerds have learned that in the last 4 years as they got tossed out on the street for actually demanding a share of the profits as wages, instead of working as cheap as people do in India so that the wealthy can create more wealth.
The so-called "Marxists", on the other hand, by common consensus, belong on lamp-posts.
Nah, those were the Leninists and Stalinists. Most Marxists respect where Marx got his ideas (the Book of Acts in the Bible, chapters 4 & 5, all capitalists should read them and take heed of the price of selfishness), and don't try to turn communism into capitalism (Stalin was the ultimate corporatist- he owned all the stock and everybody else worked for him).
Hint: Sarcasm tags mean mine was a joke too- an expansion on your joke based on an old short story I read once about a group of people on the moon and in orbit helping out a politician by using a microwave laser meant for power generation to divert a hurricane (thus proving that space travel is the goose that lays the golden eggs- and getting the politician re-elected in an anti-science political atmosphere).
Some day I hope Kevin Smith gets this rich and famous- I'd love to see the 6 hour version of Dogma with all of the philosophical discussion in it. (the DVD gave a taste- but it would be nice to see the original script done).
Hey, they don't exist for him anymore- that means his COPYRIGHT IS RELEASED on the originals! Time to take those old LDs and convert them to DVD on your own for fun and profit!
Remember to give serious thought to who you are voting for in November and make sure that those around you are at least somewhat educated on what they are voting for.
You mean the choice between the rich hypocritical Christian and the rich hypocritical Christian? Which is the only realistic "choice" I see in any election in America this time around. Oh, sure, there are a few minorities in there- but they're all rich, they've all been corrupted by worship of mammon, which is the biggest problem that our country faces right now.
Morphed (through Congress) into that stupid Medicare Perscription Benefits Card- which insures mainly that the drug companies get to keep their profits while the local pharmacy loses theirs.
[SARCASM]Especially since major hurricanes would be so controlable if we just had a 6 MW microwave laser in orbit to irradiate the ocean with. And it will only cost us another 26 billion in tax money![/SARCASM]
Re:Of course the candidates are in favor!
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This is the first time efficency has stepped into the picture. I thought we where discussing morals. Well, suit yourself. I think the burden of proof that your 'system' must be more efficient lies on you. Believe me, I'm comfortable in my ablities to support the efficiency of capitalism both by experience and deduction.
I used to think I could support the efficiency (or rather lack thereof) of capitalism- until I was laid off so that my boss could get another quarter of a percent in profit sharing. Then I realized for the first time that the management class is an unfair tax on the working class- stealing effort like a tapeworm steals food from it's host. But whatever replaces the free market- where the corporate parasites exist- must do *something* to eliminate the parasites on the system. Just as an operating system needs a virus scanner, economic systems need protection against human greed.
As for man vs. machine: The distinction could but rarely does vs can not and does never is quite important and is fundamental in understanding the differences of mind vs machine.
And yet, in the end result, means wasted effort that can be better put to other uses. If you don't have to THINK about your economic/operating system, you can devote more clock cycles to the real problems. Henry Ford discovered that when he invented actually paying people enough to buy what they were making; I can't remember the first name, but Kaiser discovered that ship builders in WWII worked faster when they didn't have to worry about health care. Both these men would be considered horrible liberal communists by the ethical standards of business today; after all, who wants to give up profit to actually take care of the workers?
Well, again, the universe is also not infinite (depending on which side of the kantian argument you look at;) but for us it doesn't and will never matter. The term zero sum game is not meant as opposing the 2nd TD law at all. All it means is that my wealth must not and for the most part does not deprive you of anything.
The trouble is that axiom is proveable false- the more money the upper class has, the more expensive things get, and the more time it takes the lowest class to earn even the basics for survival. It's called inflation- and there's a good way around it proposed by Plato back about 2500 years ago in the Republic- a law that no man may earn more than 10x what another man does (For the United States, that would put the maximum wage at about $235,000/year, currently, indexed to minimum wage working maximum hours). Of course, that's forbidden too in our current system- which puts personal profit and greed as the highest virtue.
Well, how fortunate that it was discovered that the main player in the process are algea. Trees actually play quite a small role in it. And using wood doesn't necessarily imply killing trees either. Enough of them die. And it doesn't imply that you deplete the forest.
Care to take a look at a real-world example? In 1620, the King of England declared coal smoke to be a pollution he no longer wanted in his kingdom. Within 80 years, there wasn't a tree left anywhere in England, and even the venerable yew had to be brought back from imported German stock. If you don't replant three trees for every tree you take, you WILL deplete the forest, eventually.
This is actually a very good utilitarian argument for property. The owner of a forest has a long term interest in maintaining the ecosystem, raising new trees for those that where cut down.
Good analogy alright. Now let's say that owner is a stockholder looking only at the three month bottom line (like most stockholders in the United States do) with no actual responsibility for when things go wrong. He doesn't care about the future- he'll have sold his stocks before the six month quarterly report hits. It's in his best interest to do the short term thing, cut all the trees down and sell the wood, and le
I think he should do Spaceballs 0: Darth's College Years, with plenty of wedgies.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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Did it ever occur to anybody that a government like Hussien's was pathologically incapable of either generating such a list or maintaining it?
After all, it appears (from the difference between weapons found since we invaded and weapons claimed on the list and weapons we thought he had from our own intelligence- these are three distinct sets) that Hussien's own scientists were lying to him about chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons- and Iraq apparently never had anything other than the Sarin Gas that Bush, Chenney, and Rumsfield provided him back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
And if they buried them in sand- good luck getting either those aircraft to fly or those trucks to start again, burying them is as good as destroying them.
But all of this is beside the REAL point- that we haven't caught bin Laden yet because instead of pouring more troops into Afghanistan and Pakistan to look for him after he escaped, we went to Iraq instead. THAT alone is a major strategic blunder in the War on Terror- enough of one that Bush deserves to be impeached for gross incompetance and treason.
Not according to http://www.electoral-vote.com/, which has PA and IL both in play with less than a 4% lead for either candidate. NY is the largest still less-than-solid state in number of EVs. All the rest of yor list, though, if you look, are also less than 4%.
Sorry- you're right- got the colors backwards. To me though- the states the candidates should be focusing on are the ones with a high EV count and less than 4% difference between the candidates. That's not MN, or WI right now.
A candidate isn't going to change the mind of anybody who has already decided at this point, the country's too polarized for that. What they need is voters like my mother- who goes for Bush one day and Kerry the next, depending on who spoke last.
Those voters will make the biggest difference in a state that has little or no difference between the candidates. PA and IL have larger EVs than either MN or WI, and have less than 4% between the candidates.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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But the UN does military actions all the time, under the guise of "PeaceKeeping". One could argue that if UN Weapons Inspectors were allowed to do this- followed up with a NATO barrage- they'd be a lot more effective and there's be less ability to block them from seeing what they need to see.
Ah, so you think our government really looks out for our/your interests?
I think that the purpose of government is to look out for the interests of the people. Whether our current government does that (at all) is another discussion entirely- but the quick answer is, NO, it doesn't. Another part of the problem, and the reason we're a part of the WTO at all..
Or do you think, realistically, that our government looks out for it's own interests, and those who are in the government, and all those who are close to them?
That's what a corrput government does, sure- but all possible governments don't act like this, nor should they. If your government is acting like this, it's way past time for an armed insurrection. Thus another piece of the puzzle.
Really the only people who will ever look out for your interests is yourself, and anyone else who benefits when your interests are met. By that definition our government will half-heartedly look out for our interests because when some of our interests are met, so are some of theirs.
I would say that's the cynical point of view- and not always true. It's concieveable to have a government that doesn't act like this.
And the same with any entity, including those of Taiwan, Vietname, China, India, etc. By meeting our interests, we give them money. Failing to meet our interests means we don't give them money.
And since they don't meet our interests- why the heck are we buying from them and going in the hole to do so?
I mean, that's all it boils down to. Our interests in foreign manufacturing is lower prices, and as long as that holds true everyone is satisfied. If that doesn't hold true then monetary incentives will cause some local competition to rise. Yes, the market isn't perfect, I understand.
It's much, much worse than that- by making our sole interest lower prices, we've given the foreign governments control over our supply lines. That's a MAJOR military disadvantage- enough of one that if the other countries decided to call in the debt we owe tomorrow, we'd all end up slaves and there's not thing one our military can do- because all of their supplies are made in other countries.
Your other point, that it is stupid to put all of our eggs into one basket, is a wise one, but does not in any way negate sending our manufacturing overseas! It just means we shouldn't only have one manufacturer... in local terms it means we avoid vendor lock, and it's why you should ONLY rely on Microsoft, ONLY on Intel, ONLY on IBM, etc.
And yet- we are on an international basis. We have major portions of our military that could be stopped dead by an embargo- totally destroying us as a nation. That's a way bigger threat than a trippling of prices at Wal*Mart (if prices would indeed tripple- Wal*Mart pays their suppliers so little that most of their stuff is on a 65% markup).
The entire argument is very simple. Do you do everything yourself, or not? Do you make your own shoes, eggs, furniture, clothes, cut your own hair, grow your own vegetables, or not?
I try to- all that I'm allowed by stupid city ordinances. Why should I trust anybody else to do this for me?
It's a matter of scope, but letting your neighbor, a local farm, a company, and ultimately a company outside our borders to handle things we do not have the time, resources, or skill to do is all the same.
And by the same extension- I'd rather give my neighbor a job (and thus a reason NOT to rob me) than the guy halfway across the planet. We made all this stuff here in the US at one time- and there's NO reason why we can't have a self-contained economy again.
I get my shoes from Vietnam because I can't make my own. Rather, I go through Target, who goes through Adidas, who owns a plant in Vietname.
Where I do so only because I am forced to- and if Nike would only reopen their plant in Beaverton, I'd MUCH rather buy from them tha
Re:Of course the candidates are in favor!
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Its not same. As long as you keep the process in existance (executable and stack in memory) the process will not disappear. You might force it to 'pause' by not giving it more resources but you can't kill it that way (my example).
And yet- the stack is also a resource, as important to the process as air is to a human being. Delete the stack- or even merely "pollute" it with junk data, and the process will die- usually very loudly and painfully. So no, your example actually fails. Deny the process all resources, and it will die. Deny the human being all resources, and that human being will die.
If you speak truth about reality, why is it that I thrive to futher myself and my own goals? Why am I artificially sterilized without having a single offspring? Why do the vast majority of people act the same way (being selfish)? What is the 'I' I talk about and how could it possibly come about?
It's a myth- the myth of independance, one of those "basic axioms" you're so fearfull about questioning all right. And since you don't question it, you're exactly as selfish as your parents taught you to be.
The rounds a human can go with this are only limited by his lifetime. A program can not reason about itself. It can not step out of the system es hofstaeder said. level l is the level of optimization. Humans can always do l+1. If you got a program able to do this, you should talk to MIT.
But so few humans do so- you don't for instance, you're limited by your myth of independance to step up to the next level of efficiency. You're limited by both your programming (the basic axioms) and your physical world. The first can be destroyed easily, just as with a computer program- all that is needed is a change of the properties, a change of the point of view. The second is harder- but workarounds do exist.
Obiously, this is not true. Look at the stars at night. The photons hitting your retina where not here before humanity arrived. Or even yesterday. But I see your point nonetheless. In this reality, economics is not concerned with the universal scale. Where humans live and are able to act is what matters. Also, there is the pesky fact that eventhough E equals mc^2 not all energy is equally useful to us. Humans require special carbon hydrates and triglycerides combined with delicate enviromental conditions (tempratures and such) to function. These are not found in abundace on this planet. The whole point of the economy is to convert energy into other forms of it or mass or to manipulate mass with energy. At the end of which stands matter and energy that ensures and makes as comfortable as possible the individual survival. Or to put it an other way: where there was just sunlight, today here is bread. This is no violation of the 2nd law of TD but it matters to us a great deal anyhow.
And unlike what the economists claim- it's not an infinite ability. One cannot create without paying a cost. And that's where the zero sum game lies- in that cost. Governments and economic systems can hide the cost- but they cannot eliminate it.
No, we create resources, literally. We don't create the matter or energy, but that is not the issue. A resource is per definition something of value. Value relates to individual preferences but roots in the satisfaction of needs. If humans where never cold, wood wouldn't be a resource. Only after the first person recognized that wood could be used to satisfy the need for warmth, had wood become a resource. Before it just kinda sat there. It existed alright but it wasn't a resource.
Ah, but it was usefull to us- we just didn't know it. Without forests, we wouldn't have useable air to breathe- the wood was absorbing carbon and releasing oxygen, all along. How shortsighted of us to burn it as fuel without replenishing it! That's what I mean by a zero sum game- the economics may hide it, but there is ALWAYS a cost to the use of resources- and resources are made up of matter and energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed by human methods. Just because the basic axioms and myths have hidden the costs does NOT mean that the costs don't exist.
If it's the same one (I couldn't access the CBC report linked to so I googled it) then it's much more than just using your nose and eyelids for a mouse- it's full face tracking software at a subpixel resolution.
Which is a really cool idea- it means that a webcam can replace the mouse.
If the owners of the files didn't want them sent out to conservative news outlets, they could have at least password protected the directory. I'd call that a PEBCAK, not hacking.
The corruption's out there, but one has to follow the system enough to make a living.
True enough, which is why we need to redesign the system to punish corruption more severely. Certainly his bosses should not only be in court with him- they should be removed from their positions and sent back to their states in shame.
But so should the idiots who decided to place those memos on an unprotected share drive.
As long as we can still excel in something, anything, specialization and localization makes sense.
But we don't excel in anything anymore is part of the point. HOWEVER, that's not the main point. The main point is that specialization and localization is a bad engineering design- it provides for a single point of failure.
Why shouldn't Taiwan be building all our hardware?
Why shouldn't Vietnam be making all our shoes?
Why shouldn't India be writing all our software?
Why shouldn't China be making all our clothes?
Why shouldn't Japan be making all our cars?
The REAL reason is because we can't trust their governments to look out for the interests of OUR people, and therefore it's stupid to put all of our eggs into one basket. Nor can we trust these other governments with their own disaster recovery- they've all been proven to be rather bad at that aspect of running an economy in the past. Plus, none of them are using LOCAL resources for their work- we ship natural resources overseas to allow them to ship back finished products. This is a stupid waste of fuel.
It's like having all our crops grown in the midwest, all our movies on the west coast, and all our fishing on the coasts. Take advantage of and leverage local resources, and let others do stuff we can't otherwise afford to do.
It would be if those other countries actually had developed resources. By and large they don't. Do you really think all of the materials in your computer come from Taiwan just because they were turned into chips and plastic enclosures there?
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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2nd reply- even though it was Bush that kicked out the Weapons Inspectors, I always thought that we should have been arming the weapons inspectors with a combination laser range finder and GPS transciever- so that if they were denied access to a builting, it would be very simple to "paint" the building for later demolition by cruise missile.
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If you really don't think, it is possible to become wealthy by honest means, we have nothing to talk about.
I think that it was possible at one time- but now these twin methods of Industry and Frugality will be destroyed by parasites if you let them. The method of Frugality is an obvious one- by allowing inheritance and unlimited wealth creation, inflation is allowed- and if you're not already wealthy, inflation will destroy your savings eventually. If you are already wealthy, a number of inflation shelters, known as investments, are available to you- but one cannot take advantage of those unless one is willing to be a parasite on your second value of Induatry. Industry is no longer a method of wealth creation because the patent process has become closed to the people; you can patent something, but it will cost you a lot to do so, and to defend that patent in court costs a lot more before you see even one red dime of profit. You can avoid this by going to the Venture Capitalists- but if you do, plan on them taking at least 99% of your profit despite the fact that they never had an idea worth being industrious for in their entire lives.
The superwealthy are not those who are industrious or frugal- they are the ones who earn money off of those who are industrious and frugal. The two richest men in the nation are Bill Gates and William Bennet- Bill Gates hasn't been involved in developing a software program himself since Altair Basic, he buys all of his programs, repackages them, and resells them, a perfect example of making money off of other people's industriousness. William Bennet made all of his money off of stocks and other investments- playing with other people's money, a perfect example of making money off of other people's frugality and self sacrifice.
Do you still believe it is possible to become truly wealthy by honest means?
Hey- and the nation might yet re-elect a cokaine convict as President, so I guess even compassionate conservative crackheads have a chance.
No, I don't think so. Unless it's a government not run by people,
Very good, got it in the first try- that's exactly what I'm proposing, a government not run by people, but by information flow instead. A government PROGRAMMED to follow the rules- because there are no people involved at all, just computers and robots.
because given those same people we would have a corporation that would be unabashedly good or a church that is utterly humane. The problem is a psychological one, as groups get bigger the people involved start losing their sense of responsibility and attachment.
So don't use people, use machines instead. Program them to follow the rules every time in exactly the same way- with responsibility and attachment being at the core. Either that, or fake it- create a system of rewards and punishments in which those who lose their sense of responsibility also lose their heads- quite literally.
Let me reiterate my point: Any entity who's first primary purpose is not self interest and survival will cease to survive.
Only if you're really stupid in how you set up the rules to begin with; rewarding selfish behavior while punishing unselfish behavior.
This goes for animals, plants, people, families, communities, organizations, cities, governments, corporations, etc. If any other purpose were primary then any actions taken towards that primary goal NOT tempered by a survival instinct would lead it down the path of dissolution.
Only if you're stupid enough to base something as important as an economic system on chaos instead of engineering. Evolution is good for genetics- it's a really STUPID way to design an economic system.
Sometimes that's okay, sacrifice and sharing and negotiation allow for non optimal solutions, but if the overriding primary goal, stated or not, intentional or not, isn't survival then what will prevent it from collapsing?
Good engineering and a different set of goals- punishing the parasites and rewarding good behavior.
A government that serves it's people OVER serving itself will waste away. It will be under powered, under funded, under protected, and ineffective. There's nothing magical, special, or different about a government just because of the name. It's an organization like any other. It's only in the US's case that it's primary CUSTOMERs are it's citizens. If you want to think in terms of corporation, a corporation that doesn't serve it's customers gets no money, and dissolves.
Not in the US- a corporation that doesn't serve it's customers goes back for a second round of IPO funding.
A government that doesn't serve it's citizens would also dissolve, and in our case it would be because we choose to elect new representatives or willfully revolt.
Can't choose to elect new representatives- the corporations control the campaign process, not the citizens, who have become second class customers to be ignored- but I'm all for the revolt.
I dunno, they seem to be meeting my interests, and plenty of others. We like our cheaper goods. Don't mistake me, though, I'm not saying that's the most important point, but it's one of them.
The problem is, cheaper goods is a short-sighted and stupid interest that is leading us down the road to ruin. Allowing it has created a $500 billion dollar a year deficit in our trade. It's ridiculous to allow that to continue- and we should use our military might to change the situation.
Yes, you're right, if we view foreign governments as enemies. When you give your neighbor the responsibility of egg production, and your father in law responsibility of caring for the pigs, and the guy down the street the responsibility of making furniture, you are being held hostage by your community!
They are enemies- every time. Make no mistake about it- anybody living more than a thousand miles away from you has no need to worry about your interests or the interests of your communit
Widespread respect for honest wealth was always a nice feature of this country.
Since when has wealth generation (beyond, of course, the inventor who gains a company completely by his own ideas and efforts) been honest? There ain't no such animal- and tons of nerds have learned that in the last 4 years as they got tossed out on the street for actually demanding a share of the profits as wages, instead of working as cheap as people do in India so that the wealthy can create more wealth.
The so-called "Marxists", on the other hand, by common consensus, belong on lamp-posts.
Nah, those were the Leninists and Stalinists. Most Marxists respect where Marx got his ideas (the Book of Acts in the Bible, chapters 4 & 5, all capitalists should read them and take heed of the price of selfishness), and don't try to turn communism into capitalism (Stalin was the ultimate corporatist- he owned all the stock and everybody else worked for him).
Hint: Sarcasm tags mean mine was a joke too- an expansion on your joke based on an old short story I read once about a group of people on the moon and in orbit helping out a politician by using a microwave laser meant for power generation to divert a hurricane (thus proving that space travel is the goose that lays the golden eggs- and getting the politician re-elected in an anti-science political atmosphere).
Some day I hope Kevin Smith gets this rich and famous- I'd love to see the 6 hour version of Dogma with all of the philosophical discussion in it. (the DVD gave a taste- but it would be nice to see the original script done).
Hey, they don't exist for him anymore- that means his COPYRIGHT IS RELEASED on the originals! Time to take those old LDs and convert them to DVD on your own for fun and profit!
Remember to give serious thought to who you are voting for in November and make sure that those around you are at least somewhat educated on what they are voting for.
You mean the choice between the rich hypocritical Christian and the rich hypocritical Christian? Which is the only realistic "choice" I see in any election in America this time around. Oh, sure, there are a few minorities in there- but they're all rich, they've all been corrupted by worship of mammon, which is the biggest problem that our country faces right now.
Morphed (through Congress) into that stupid Medicare Perscription Benefits Card- which insures mainly that the drug companies get to keep their profits while the local pharmacy loses theirs.
[SARCASM]Especially since major hurricanes would be so controlable if we just had a 6 MW microwave laser in orbit to irradiate the ocean with. And it will only cost us another 26 billion in tax money![/SARCASM]
This is the first time efficency has stepped into the picture. I thought we where discussing morals. Well, suit yourself. I think the burden of proof that your 'system' must be more efficient lies on you. Believe me, I'm comfortable in my ablities to support the efficiency of capitalism both by experience and deduction.
;) but for us it doesn't and will never matter. The term zero sum game is not meant as opposing the 2nd TD law at all. All it means is that my wealth must not and for the most part does not deprive you of anything.
I used to think I could support the efficiency (or rather lack thereof) of capitalism- until I was laid off so that my boss could get another quarter of a percent in profit sharing. Then I realized for the first time that the management class is an unfair tax on the working class- stealing effort like a tapeworm steals food from it's host. But whatever replaces the free market- where the corporate parasites exist- must do *something* to eliminate the parasites on the system. Just as an operating system needs a virus scanner, economic systems need protection against human greed.
As for man vs. machine: The distinction could but rarely does vs can not and does never is quite important and is fundamental in understanding the differences of mind vs machine.
And yet, in the end result, means wasted effort that can be better put to other uses. If you don't have to THINK about your economic/operating system, you can devote more clock cycles to the real problems. Henry Ford discovered that when he invented actually paying people enough to buy what they were making; I can't remember the first name, but Kaiser discovered that ship builders in WWII worked faster when they didn't have to worry about health care. Both these men would be considered horrible liberal communists by the ethical standards of business today; after all, who wants to give up profit to actually take care of the workers?
Well, again, the universe is also not infinite (depending on which side of the kantian argument you look at
The trouble is that axiom is proveable false- the more money the upper class has, the more expensive things get, and the more time it takes the lowest class to earn even the basics for survival. It's called inflation- and there's a good way around it proposed by Plato back about 2500 years ago in the Republic- a law that no man may earn more than 10x what another man does (For the United States, that would put the maximum wage at about $235,000/year, currently, indexed to minimum wage working maximum hours). Of course, that's forbidden too in our current system- which puts personal profit and greed as the highest virtue.
Well, how fortunate that it was discovered that the main player in the process are algea. Trees actually play quite a small role in it. And using wood doesn't necessarily imply killing trees either. Enough of them die. And it doesn't imply that you deplete the forest.
Care to take a look at a real-world example? In 1620, the King of England declared coal smoke to be a pollution he no longer wanted in his kingdom. Within 80 years, there wasn't a tree left anywhere in England, and even the venerable yew had to be brought back from imported German stock. If you don't replant three trees for every tree you take, you WILL deplete the forest, eventually.
This is actually a very good utilitarian argument for property. The owner of a forest has a long term interest in maintaining the ecosystem, raising new trees for those that where cut down.
Good analogy alright. Now let's say that owner is a stockholder looking only at the three month bottom line (like most stockholders in the United States do) with no actual responsibility for when things go wrong. He doesn't care about the future- he'll have sold his stocks before the six month quarterly report hits. It's in his best interest to do the short term thing, cut all the trees down and sell the wood, and le
I think he should do Spaceballs 0: Darth's College Years, with plenty of wedgies.
Did it ever occur to anybody that a government like Hussien's was pathologically incapable of either generating such a list or maintaining it?
After all, it appears (from the difference between weapons found since we invaded and weapons claimed on the list and weapons we thought he had from our own intelligence- these are three distinct sets) that Hussien's own scientists were lying to him about chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons- and Iraq apparently never had anything other than the Sarin Gas that Bush, Chenney, and Rumsfield provided him back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
And if they buried them in sand- good luck getting either those aircraft to fly or those trucks to start again, burying them is as good as destroying them.
But all of this is beside the REAL point- that we haven't caught bin Laden yet because instead of pouring more troops into Afghanistan and Pakistan to look for him after he escaped, we went to Iraq instead. THAT alone is a major strategic blunder in the War on Terror- enough of one that Bush deserves to be impeached for gross incompetance and treason.
Not according to http://www.electoral-vote.com/, which has PA and IL both in play with less than a 4% lead for either candidate. NY is the largest still less-than-solid state in number of EVs. All the rest of yor list, though, if you look, are also less than 4%.
Sorry- you're right- got the colors backwards. To me though- the states the candidates should be focusing on are the ones with a high EV count and less than 4% difference between the candidates. That's not MN, or WI right now.
A candidate isn't going to change the mind of anybody who has already decided at this point, the country's too polarized for that. What they need is voters like my mother- who goes for Bush one day and Kerry the next, depending on who spoke last.
Those voters will make the biggest difference in a state that has little or no difference between the candidates. PA and IL have larger EVs than either MN or WI, and have less than 4% between the candidates.
But the UN does military actions all the time, under the guise of "PeaceKeeping". One could argue that if UN Weapons Inspectors were allowed to do this- followed up with a NATO barrage- they'd be a lot more effective and there's be less ability to block them from seeing what they need to see.
Ah, so you think our government really looks out for our/your interests?
I think that the purpose of government is to look out for the interests of the people. Whether our current government does that (at all) is another discussion entirely- but the quick answer is, NO, it doesn't. Another part of the problem, and the reason we're a part of the WTO at all..
Or do you think, realistically, that our government looks out for it's own interests, and those who are in the government, and all those who are close to them?
That's what a corrput government does, sure- but all possible governments don't act like this, nor should they. If your government is acting like this, it's way past time for an armed insurrection. Thus another piece of the puzzle.
Really the only people who will ever look out for your interests is yourself, and anyone else who benefits when your interests are met. By that definition our government will half-heartedly look out for our interests because when some of our interests are met, so are some of theirs.
I would say that's the cynical point of view- and not always true. It's concieveable to have a government that doesn't act like this.
And the same with any entity, including those of Taiwan, Vietname, China, India, etc. By meeting our interests, we give them money. Failing to meet our interests means we don't give them money.
And since they don't meet our interests- why the heck are we buying from them and going in the hole to do so?
I mean, that's all it boils down to. Our interests in foreign manufacturing is lower prices, and as long as that holds true everyone is satisfied. If that doesn't hold true then monetary incentives will cause some local competition to rise. Yes, the market isn't perfect, I understand.
It's much, much worse than that- by making our sole interest lower prices, we've given the foreign governments control over our supply lines. That's a MAJOR military disadvantage- enough of one that if the other countries decided to call in the debt we owe tomorrow, we'd all end up slaves and there's not thing one our military can do- because all of their supplies are made in other countries.
Your other point, that it is stupid to put all of our eggs into one basket, is a wise one, but does not in any way negate sending our manufacturing overseas! It just means we shouldn't only have one manufacturer... in local terms it means we avoid vendor lock, and it's why you should ONLY rely on Microsoft, ONLY on Intel, ONLY on IBM, etc.
And yet- we are on an international basis. We have major portions of our military that could be stopped dead by an embargo- totally destroying us as a nation. That's a way bigger threat than a trippling of prices at Wal*Mart (if prices would indeed tripple- Wal*Mart pays their suppliers so little that most of their stuff is on a 65% markup).
The entire argument is very simple. Do you do everything yourself, or not? Do you make your own shoes, eggs, furniture, clothes, cut your own hair, grow your own vegetables, or not?
I try to- all that I'm allowed by stupid city ordinances. Why should I trust anybody else to do this for me?
It's a matter of scope, but letting your neighbor, a local farm, a company, and ultimately a company outside our borders to handle things we do not have the time, resources, or skill to do is all the same.
And by the same extension- I'd rather give my neighbor a job (and thus a reason NOT to rob me) than the guy halfway across the planet. We made all this stuff here in the US at one time- and there's NO reason why we can't have a self-contained economy again.
I get my shoes from Vietnam because I can't make my own. Rather, I go through Target, who goes through Adidas, who owns a plant in Vietname.
Where I do so only because I am forced to- and if Nike would only reopen their plant in Beaverton, I'd MUCH rather buy from them tha
Its not same. As long as you keep the process in existance (executable and stack in memory) the process will not disappear. You might force it to 'pause' by not giving it more resources but you can't kill it that way (my example).
And yet- the stack is also a resource, as important to the process as air is to a human being. Delete the stack- or even merely "pollute" it with junk data, and the process will die- usually very loudly and painfully. So no, your example actually fails. Deny the process all resources, and it will die. Deny the human being all resources, and that human being will die.
If you speak truth about reality, why is it that I thrive to futher myself and my own goals? Why am I artificially sterilized without having a single offspring? Why do the vast majority of people act the same way (being selfish)? What is the 'I' I talk about and how could it possibly come about?
It's a myth- the myth of independance, one of those "basic axioms" you're so fearfull about questioning all right. And since you don't question it, you're exactly as selfish as your parents taught you to be.
The rounds a human can go with this are only limited by his lifetime. A program can not reason about itself. It can not step out of the system es hofstaeder said. level l is the level of optimization. Humans can always do l+1. If you got a program able to do this, you should talk to MIT.
But so few humans do so- you don't for instance, you're limited by your myth of independance to step up to the next level of efficiency. You're limited by both your programming (the basic axioms) and your physical world. The first can be destroyed easily, just as with a computer program- all that is needed is a change of the properties, a change of the point of view. The second is harder- but workarounds do exist.
Obiously, this is not true. Look at the stars at night. The photons hitting your retina where not here before humanity arrived. Or even yesterday. But I see your point nonetheless. In this reality, economics is not concerned with the universal scale. Where humans live and are able to act is what matters. Also, there is the pesky fact that eventhough E equals mc^2 not all energy is equally useful to us. Humans require special carbon hydrates and triglycerides combined with delicate enviromental conditions (tempratures and such) to function. These are not found in abundace on this planet. The whole point of the economy is to convert energy into other forms of it or mass or to manipulate mass with energy. At the end of which stands matter and energy that ensures and makes as comfortable as possible the individual survival. Or to put it an other way: where there was just sunlight, today here is bread. This is no violation of the 2nd law of TD but it matters to us a great deal anyhow.
And unlike what the economists claim- it's not an infinite ability. One cannot create without paying a cost. And that's where the zero sum game lies- in that cost. Governments and economic systems can hide the cost- but they cannot eliminate it.
No, we create resources, literally. We don't create the matter or energy, but that is not the issue. A resource is per definition something of value. Value relates to individual preferences but roots in the satisfaction of needs. If humans where never cold, wood wouldn't be a resource. Only after the first person recognized that wood could be used to satisfy the need for warmth, had wood become a resource. Before it just kinda sat there. It existed alright but it wasn't a resource.
Ah, but it was usefull to us- we just didn't know it. Without forests, we wouldn't have useable air to breathe- the wood was absorbing carbon and releasing oxygen, all along. How shortsighted of us to burn it as fuel without replenishing it! That's what I mean by a zero sum game- the economics may hide it, but there is ALWAYS a cost to the use of resources- and resources are made up of matter and energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed by human methods. Just because the basic axioms and myths have hidden the costs does NOT mean that the costs don't exist.
That would be nice too. Better yet, send the entire class home for being too farkin' stupid to rule a technological society.
If it's the same one (I couldn't access the CBC report linked to so I googled it) then it's much more than just using your nose and eyelids for a mouse- it's full face tracking software at a subpixel resolution.
Which is a really cool idea- it means that a webcam can replace the mouse.
If the owners of the files didn't want them sent out to conservative news outlets, they could have at least password protected the directory. I'd call that a PEBCAK, not hacking.
Wonder if that would work the same with CxOs, given the immense amount of corruption in business today?
The corruption's out there, but one has to follow the system enough to make a living.
True enough, which is why we need to redesign the system to punish corruption more severely. Certainly his bosses should not only be in court with him- they should be removed from their positions and sent back to their states in shame.
But so should the idiots who decided to place those memos on an unprotected share drive.
As long as we can still excel in something, anything, specialization and localization makes sense.
But we don't excel in anything anymore is part of the point. HOWEVER, that's not the main point. The main point is that specialization and localization is a bad engineering design- it provides for a single point of failure.
Why shouldn't Taiwan be building all our hardware?
Why shouldn't Vietnam be making all our shoes?
Why shouldn't India be writing all our software?
Why shouldn't China be making all our clothes?
Why shouldn't Japan be making all our cars?
The REAL reason is because we can't trust their governments to look out for the interests of OUR people, and therefore it's stupid to put all of our eggs into one basket. Nor can we trust these other governments with their own disaster recovery- they've all been proven to be rather bad at that aspect of running an economy in the past. Plus, none of them are using LOCAL resources for their work- we ship natural resources overseas to allow them to ship back finished products. This is a stupid waste of fuel.
It's like having all our crops grown in the midwest, all our movies on the west coast, and all our fishing on the coasts. Take advantage of and leverage local resources, and let others do stuff we can't otherwise afford to do.
It would be if those other countries actually had developed resources. By and large they don't. Do you really think all of the materials in your computer come from Taiwan just because they were turned into chips and plastic enclosures there?
2nd reply- even though it was Bush that kicked out the Weapons Inspectors, I always thought that we should have been arming the weapons inspectors with a combination laser range finder and GPS transciever- so that if they were denied access to a builting, it would be very simple to "paint" the building for later demolition by cruise missile.