Less than 50% of the US population watches TV at all. You can compare modern TV programs to the TV programs of the past century, but keep in mind that in the past century TV viewer audience was a much larger percentage of the population. The dumbing down of TV programs is more likely result of smarter population segments turning away from TV than of general population becoming dumber.
This archaic system is an extra level of guarantee that ballot staffing doesn't have nation-wide effect. It can only effect the outcome of the votes from a single state.
If that were so, the proponents of AGW would have no second thoughts about open debates with the skeptics. Any number number of evolutionary biologists will engage in open debates because they know they have solid arguments behind them. The only response one ever hears from AGW proponents (when they get challenged) is that the skeptics are kooks. There is plenty well-mannered and well-informed among the skeptics. Until the proponents engage them in open debates, suspicions of them will be warranted.
Well, for once, it was not the attitude of the time to focus on civilian targets; that was more the WWII attitude.
Industrial production was very labor intensive. So servicing it required large populations. In fact, servicing industrial production is the reason why most modern cities appeared.
No, a thousand times no. Had it not been for crusades, Europe would not have been exposed to the decimal system. Without it, Renaissance DEFINITELY would not have happened. Europe most likely would have never been able to withstand and horde and would been over-ran and seen its population reduced to ragtag tribes.
was Renaissance the cause or the effect of advanced technology? Adaptation of arabic numerals (the technology which enabled then-modern math) was almost concurrent with Thomas Aquinas' logical "proof" of existence of God (the act which is thought to have started the Renaissance by broaching the idea that reason is above God). Since the two developments were essentially concurrent, I wouldn't credit one as more important in causality of the events that followed than the other. It is entirely possible that the technical advances is what forced social changes on society. Gauss, for example, claimed that not introducing a decimal system was Greek's greatest failure. He went so far as to suggest that Dark Ages would not have happened at all if either the Greeks or the Romans had introduced a decimal system. Before knee jerking an answer with some facts you learn in school, think twice whether the level of your own insight on what influences math and scientific development is above that of Gauss.
Milton Friedman describing how a #2 pencil is made through efforts of people who "might hate one another if they ever met" still cooperate because of trade:
Only until the "which they use to bomb Americans" part. FED lended that money to banks based in other countries because those banks also do a lot of their business in the US. Comparing doing business in the US (while using US banking system) with bombing of the US (while using US-manufactured bombers) does not make any sense.
As for the attitude towards people with higher level of skin pigmentation, it's a historical accident. They are unique American and they only persisted due to prolonged bitterness over the destruction in the South during the American Civil War. Over-reaction to bitterness over historical "injustice" is usually a cause for the rise of the next injustice (Godwin be damned, but Hitler rose to power mostly by exploiting Germany's legitimate historical grievances against France).
No, our psychology does not change. Look at the effect of failed European states. They descended back into slave trade and tribalism. People stayed the same. The only thing which changed was lesser reliance on brute force to produce that which sustains life. We still chase that which we value. When it could be produced by those with weak physical abilities, then those who posses other abilities which hold value grow in affluence. If the capitalist system were to collapse, we'd see a re-emergence of slavery and patriarchal society again.
In fact, your arguments are so implausible that it is more likely that you hold the opposite view and you are just testing to see how someone else might make your point for you. I think I'll pass on helping you out there as well.
Soviet Union had an income tax rate of roughly 15% to 17%. It had to essentially erase one zero from its currency in the 60s. And by 1985 most observers indicated that the consumer prices rose back to the 60s level. Since no accounting was done of the inflation it's hard to compare it to tax receipts. But tax receipts themselves were minimal. Only those "employed" in government jobs would pay taxes (ie, anyone participating in private economy did not because private economy was illegal). And inflation rate of 10 times over a period of 20 years is equivalent to roughly 12%-13% a year. That's on par with the "official" income tax rate. Soviet Union was rife with nepotism-based corruption. References to it permeated the popular culture through and through.
What matters is innovation and the advance of knowledge.
Matters to whom? Those who want to consume it? That's nice. But who would produce it when having "connections" become a larger factor in whether you can feed your family than having the useful skills? Innovation is a form of self-advancement. Anyone who even thinks that people innovate to better human kind has never created anything himself.
The idea that a govt can only spend what it takes in is as feudal as the notion of divine right of rule.
This is nonsense. At it does not in any way whatsoever follow from anything you said nor anything that is supported by historical evidence. Not to mention that you are going for a direct "freedom is slavery" logic by trying to equate less government with a feudal rule.
We have not just lost a world war, so comparisons to Weimar are invalid.
Our level of debt (relative to GDP) is currently higher than it was at the end of WWII. Except we don't have the option of cutting spending on a World War (because that's not where the money is going).
stimulate innovation through providing everyone with a basic income and holding challenges
providing everyone with basic income is a recipe for stifling innovation -- not for increasing it. I am not sure why I am arguing with you. You are completely dogmatic and the only counterpoints you offer are based on some gotcha "but the situation is not 100% identical" arguments. Parallels can still be drawn. You are insisting that we don't learn from history. That's volunteering insanity. I'll pass.
I do not fear inflation. I simply point out its effects. Your attempt to smear me with a brush of someone irrational is just that -- a smear. Japan has a modern taxation system -- it does not rely on inflation as he main source of taxation, so I am not sure why you threw that in there. I suspect you are grasping for deflections (since you are unquestionably grasping for ad hominems).
North Korea and South Korea are two countries with the same people. And yet their view on society are entirely different. People are pretty much the same everywhere. Social norms are part of the nurture -- not of the nature -- of human experience.
You mean bigots are making judgements before they have full information at hand? It's almost as if they were prejudging. If only there was a word for the faculty of making judgements before knowing all the facts. If only.
The key to your sentence is history. Because that is the only place that Soviet Union exists. And learning from history is hardly the same thing as dwelling on it. Over-reacting to the memory of history is how most animosities linger.
I lived in the Soviet Union. My (Russian born) wife has not. Yes, she is young. But she already completed a university degree. That should tell you something about where in history you can place that country. The generation which was born after it has already began graduating from universities.
I'm guessing, in your fantasy world, that you believe since Northrop Grumman has been delegated the authority to build bombers for the US military, that those are somehow "private" bombers?
You are arguing with a point which hasn't been made. That money isn't public or private. FED issues money by making short-term loans. It's issued money. It's not owned by the recipients because they have to repay them. The equivalent in your military manufacturing wouldn't be production and sale of bombers. It would be production and lease of bombers. Since your analogy doesn't hold, the rest is moot. My explanation was not a fantasy, by the way. It was factual. So the whole "in your fantasy world" snide was uncalled for.
Federal Reserve *giving* free money to foreign banks
No such thing happened. Money was lent at low interest. It wasn't given without an obligation to be returned.
These are not predictions. This is what happened in every country which switched to financing the government through inflation. y2k armageddon didn't happen because of the millions of man hours spent to avert it -- not because it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
References to Communist Era (when talking about Russia) are as dated as references to pre-WWII tech. Soviet Union doesn't exist even as a memory anymore.
Well if we had just an "inflation tax" perhaps that would be relevant, but it just gets piled on top of all the other taxes.
Actually, it would be much, much worse. At least today we have a notion of taxes so we have a language in place to discuss the effect of inflation. If inflation was the only tax, it would grow much faster (all corruption begins with nepotism because no one can deny their family and family also has family). It would be a rapid expansion of cronyism. In fact, once it is allowed to take foot hold, it would be all pervasive within a generation.
That's an interesting argument against government take over of all industries. If any industry is taken over (even partially) by the government, then FOIA allows anyone to request all paperwork produced by that industry. This destroys ALL privacy in EVERYTHING. I wonder if anyone has tried to use FOIA to subpoena all medical records of all Medicare patients. I also wonder if it would hold up.
Well, the money which would be issued by Congress wouldn't be "public money", either. It would be "issued money". And since you don't actually expect the Congressmen to operate minting presses, I expect they have to delegate that job one way or another.
Slashdot Mirror
Less than 50% of the US population watches TV at all. You can compare modern TV programs to the TV programs of the past century, but keep in mind that in the past century TV viewer audience was a much larger percentage of the population. The dumbing down of TV programs is more likely result of smarter population segments turning away from TV than of general population becoming dumber.
This archaic system is an extra level of guarantee that ballot staffing doesn't have nation-wide effect. It can only effect the outcome of the votes from a single state.
If that were so, the proponents of AGW would have no second thoughts about open debates with the skeptics. Any number number of evolutionary biologists will engage in open debates because they know they have solid arguments behind them. The only response one ever hears from AGW proponents (when they get challenged) is that the skeptics are kooks. There is plenty well-mannered and well-informed among the skeptics. Until the proponents engage them in open debates, suspicions of them will be warranted.
Well, for once, it was not the attitude of the time to focus on civilian targets; that was more the WWII attitude.
Industrial production was very labor intensive. So servicing it required large populations. In fact, servicing industrial production is the reason why most modern cities appeared.
No, a thousand times no. Had it not been for crusades, Europe would not have been exposed to the decimal system. Without it, Renaissance DEFINITELY would not have happened. Europe most likely would have never been able to withstand and horde and would been over-ran and seen its population reduced to ragtag tribes.
was Renaissance the cause or the effect of advanced technology? Adaptation of arabic numerals (the technology which enabled then-modern math) was almost concurrent with Thomas Aquinas' logical "proof" of existence of God (the act which is thought to have started the Renaissance by broaching the idea that reason is above God). Since the two developments were essentially concurrent, I wouldn't credit one as more important in causality of the events that followed than the other. It is entirely possible that the technical advances is what forced social changes on society. Gauss, for example, claimed that not introducing a decimal system was Greek's greatest failure. He went so far as to suggest that Dark Ages would not have happened at all if either the Greeks or the Romans had introduced a decimal system. Before knee jerking an answer with some facts you learn in school, think twice whether the level of your own insight on what influences math and scientific development is above that of Gauss.
Milton Friedman describing how a #2 pencil is made through efforts of people who "might hate one another if they ever met" still cooperate because of trade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Gppi-O3a8
This isn't an oops moment. This is a moment to realize, once again, that greed is the best tool for cooperation known to man kind.
Only until the "which they use to bomb Americans" part. FED lended that money to banks based in other countries because those banks also do a lot of their business in the US. Comparing doing business in the US (while using US banking system) with bombing of the US (while using US-manufactured bombers) does not make any sense.
As for the attitude towards people with higher level of skin pigmentation, it's a historical accident. They are unique American and they only persisted due to prolonged bitterness over the destruction in the South during the American Civil War. Over-reaction to bitterness over historical "injustice" is usually a cause for the rise of the next injustice (Godwin be damned, but Hitler rose to power mostly by exploiting Germany's legitimate historical grievances against France).
No, our psychology does not change. Look at the effect of failed European states. They descended back into slave trade and tribalism. People stayed the same. The only thing which changed was lesser reliance on brute force to produce that which sustains life. We still chase that which we value. When it could be produced by those with weak physical abilities, then those who posses other abilities which hold value grow in affluence. If the capitalist system were to collapse, we'd see a re-emergence of slavery and patriarchal society again.
In fact, your arguments are so implausible that it is more likely that you hold the opposite view and you are just testing to see how someone else might make your point for you. I think I'll pass on helping you out there as well.
What matters is innovation and the advance of knowledge.
Matters to whom? Those who want to consume it? That's nice. But who would produce it when having "connections" become a larger factor in whether you can feed your family than having the useful skills? Innovation is a form of self-advancement. Anyone who even thinks that people innovate to better human kind has never created anything himself.
The idea that a govt can only spend what it takes in is as feudal as the notion of divine right of rule.
This is nonsense. At it does not in any way whatsoever follow from anything you said nor anything that is supported by historical evidence. Not to mention that you are going for a direct "freedom is slavery" logic by trying to equate less government with a feudal rule.
We have not just lost a world war, so comparisons to Weimar are invalid.
Our level of debt (relative to GDP) is currently higher than it was at the end of WWII. Except we don't have the option of cutting spending on a World War (because that's not where the money is going).
stimulate innovation through providing everyone with a basic income and holding challenges
providing everyone with basic income is a recipe for stifling innovation -- not for increasing it. I am not sure why I am arguing with you. You are completely dogmatic and the only counterpoints you offer are based on some gotcha "but the situation is not 100% identical" arguments. Parallels can still be drawn. You are insisting that we don't learn from history. That's volunteering insanity. I'll pass.
I do not fear inflation. I simply point out its effects. Your attempt to smear me with a brush of someone irrational is just that -- a smear. Japan has a modern taxation system -- it does not rely on inflation as he main source of taxation, so I am not sure why you threw that in there. I suspect you are grasping for deflections (since you are unquestionably grasping for ad hominems).
North Korea and South Korea are two countries with the same people. And yet their view on society are entirely different. People are pretty much the same everywhere. Social norms are part of the nurture -- not of the nature -- of human experience.
You mean bigots are making judgements before they have full information at hand? It's almost as if they were prejudging. If only there was a word for the faculty of making judgements before knowing all the facts. If only.
The key to your sentence is history. Because that is the only place that Soviet Union exists. And learning from history is hardly the same thing as dwelling on it. Over-reacting to the memory of history is how most animosities linger.
I lived in the Soviet Union. My (Russian born) wife has not. Yes, she is young. But she already completed a university degree. That should tell you something about where in history you can place that country. The generation which was born after it has already began graduating from universities.
I'm guessing, in your fantasy world, that you believe since Northrop Grumman has been delegated the authority to build bombers for the US military, that those are somehow "private" bombers?
You are arguing with a point which hasn't been made. That money isn't public or private. FED issues money by making short-term loans. It's issued money. It's not owned by the recipients because they have to repay them. The equivalent in your military manufacturing wouldn't be production and sale of bombers. It would be production and lease of bombers. Since your analogy doesn't hold, the rest is moot. My explanation was not a fantasy, by the way. It was factual. So the whole "in your fantasy world" snide was uncalled for.
Federal Reserve *giving* free money to foreign banks
No such thing happened. Money was lent at low interest. It wasn't given without an obligation to be returned.
Psychology is changeable.
No.
These are not predictions. This is what happened in every country which switched to financing the government through inflation. y2k armageddon didn't happen because of the millions of man hours spent to avert it -- not because it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
I had no idea Slashdot predates the end of the Cold War.
References to Communist Era (when talking about Russia) are as dated as references to pre-WWII tech. Soviet Union doesn't exist even as a memory anymore.
Well if we had just an "inflation tax" perhaps that would be relevant, but it just gets piled on top of all the other taxes.
Actually, it would be much, much worse. At least today we have a notion of taxes so we have a language in place to discuss the effect of inflation. If inflation was the only tax, it would grow much faster (all corruption begins with nepotism because no one can deny their family and family also has family). It would be a rapid expansion of cronyism. In fact, once it is allowed to take foot hold, it would be all pervasive within a generation.
That's an interesting argument against government take over of all industries. If any industry is taken over (even partially) by the government, then FOIA allows anyone to request all paperwork produced by that industry. This destroys ALL privacy in EVERYTHING. I wonder if anyone has tried to use FOIA to subpoena all medical records of all Medicare patients. I also wonder if it would hold up.
Well, the money which would be issued by Congress wouldn't be "public money", either. It would be "issued money". And since you don't actually expect the Congressmen to operate minting presses, I expect they have to delegate that job one way or another.