If you start by looking at the Drake Equation and the assumption that Earth like planets with intelligent civilizations are not that uncommon
There's a whole lot of life on earth, and only one life form is intelligent enough to be reading slashdot. We often conclude that maybe the aliens are much smarter than us and hiding, but what if intelligence is super-rare?
A certain percentage of the US population is black, therefore it is expected that an equivalent percentage of American game developers are too. If they are not, it indicates some sort confounding variable that might (and in this case almost certainly does) indicate some sort of social inequity that needs to be addressed.
I hope you're not going to get around to addressing the lack of male nurses.
Maybe we can put all the ex-civil servants to work with sledgehammers and pickaxes destroying the interstate highway system, the space program, the Internet, and a load of other infrastructure and programs that either were funded by federal tax increases post-1890, or derived from programs that were...
Cool, you named 3 good things, but probably ignored the 2 billion bad ones.
I hate to say this, but Americans are very undertaxed relative to govt spending. The only thing worse than heavy taxes and heavy spending is light taxes and heavy spending (i.e. what we have now), because it WILL have to be repaid... with interest! Our deficit spending is killing the dollar, sending gas prices (and all imports) sky high.
What is killing the dollar is that its losing its place as the reserve currency of the world. This has a little bit to do with spending, but more to do with oil being traded in different denominations now.
At the risk of getting burned at the stake, I do see a problem with the mentality that it's "our money" implying we deserve to pay no taxes. We drive on the roads, we expect the fire dept and police to show up if necessary, we cheer on the troops - then we expect it all to be free.
With the exception of the troops and interstate highways, those are local issues. They don't excuse the high federal taxes. Yes we do 'drive on roads', but you should pay for that via a usage tax, (ie tolls) so that the people who use the roads pay for the maintenance. Yes, local people want local police and fire departments. That has nothing to do with federal taxes. The argument that we get all these 'great services' from the government in the US is shortsighted since most of the services we care about are handled, or best handled on a local level.
Could we disband public education and save a few bucks in tax money?
Again, you have to think about federal vs state in the US. The Dept of Education gets 68.6 billion dollars. 8% of that actually goes to schools. Now, the federal government sometimes does pass decent laws (NCLB was a mixed bag) that help, but not EVERY tax dollar you spend on education is used efficiently.
Sure, in the short run, but about 20 years later the GDP would fall by many times the amount "saved."
There is no proof of this. The reality is, if you disbanded public schools, you'd end up with a private system. Most kids probably would get a better education, but the poor would likely be left behind.
Sometimes taxing and spending is worthwhile.
That isn't a good excuse for overspending.
I think we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This idea has come and gone many times, such as Grahm/Rudman, and later Ross Perot advocated it. Our current course, especially since Reagan, is nothing short of robbing our children and grandchildren.
I think it's a good idea. I don't think Reagan 'robbed our grandchildren', and I do think the military spending was justified at the time. I don't think it is now.
Whether the deficit is resolved by cutting spending or increasing taxes, at least it would force us to be honest. We have proven beyond doubt that we're not capable of using the good times to repay deficits incurred during slowdowns.
I don't see how we'll ever repay the deficit. If it ever comes to that, expect a 'do over'.
I do agree that some taxation is needed for services on the local level. I can even live with the federal government taxing for interstate highways, the military, and possibly some income redistribution. I really think a balanced budget amendment and a 'war tax' would go a long way. The main philosophical problem I have with high federal taxes is that they're hard to get changed. At least when it comes to state and local taxes your voice can be heard, when something gets passed on a federal level, the odds of your congressional representative giving a shit about your point of view are slim.
WoW PvP will never be 'good' or balanced. Hell it was more balanced at 60 than 70.
All I get from this expansion's release is that Blizzard is actually somewhat worried about Conan/WAR.
They don't care about other games, blizzards plan since before TBC was to do 1 expansion pack a year. With blizzards usual dev cycle, that means one will be out every 1.5 to 2 years.
I'm not living in America, but I had to ask: if that's what's happening then why is nobody trying to change it?
When there is a high standard of living, people tend to overlook governmental abuse. When there is no more steak on joe 6 pack's table, then people might start looking for 'change' greater than our current list of pathetic candidates for president.
Increased broadband penetration made MMO's more playable. EQ was released in 1999, UO was before that. Five years after Everquest, WoW came out (late 2004). By then everyone and their brother had broadband. There was simply a bigger player base. This, along with lower barriers of entry that you mentioned, and a well known franchise is what led blizzard to success.
I'm just suspicious of this rather convenient "oh, both parties are just as bad" cliche that pops up after stories like these. I don't know any serious observers who claim that a Gore or Kerry administration would have gotten us into the predicament.
I'm a pretty serious observer, and I can tell you that neither you nor I know what Gore or Kerry might have gotten us into. Leadership has been pretty bad since the end of the cold war from both parties. If you think 'the parties are just as bad' is cliche, that's fine, but I really see little difference in the corporate/warfare/nanny state party and the nannystate/corporate/warfare party. They all favor the same shit, just in a different order. It's sad that you need to marginalize my comment as that from an 'non-serious' observer because it does not fit in with your perception of the world.
If you really don't think they're all playing for the same team, trudge over to opensecrets.org and read who's donating to the different candidates in the presidential race this year. You'll notice that McCain, Clinton, and Obama all receive donations from and are owned by the same companies.
I would say this country doesn't need more education, as much as better education.
Education produces smart citizens.
That is debatable. We've all met dumb people who are 'educated' to one degree or another.
Smart citizens are good for the economy (smart consumers don't start dot com or housing bubbles),
The business cycle has been around since before public schools in the US. The dot.com and Housing bubbles weren't caused by 'dumb' people, unless you consider the fed dumb.
good for business (intelligent employees streamline processes and reduce overhead), but above all they are good for the country. Like it or not, reputation matters - would you rather the U.S. be known as a nation of idiots, or would you rather we be respected as a nation of intelligence and honour?
Throwing more money into the public school system will not get the results you state above (but it sure sounds like a good excuse, right!).
As for welfare, you can't call yourself a Christian nation if you don't believe in helping your fellow man. See: Luke 4:18-19, 18:18-30, 14:13 Matthew 19:16-30, 25:31-46, Mark 8:1-13, 6:30-44, 10:17-31 (or just read the Bible). We're a so-called "Christian" country, that cherry picks the Old Testament and ignores the teachings of Christ (at least until the indictments come down - when that happens, Jesus is suddenly the man).
Nonsense, Jesus did not advocate taking money by force from everyone to help the poor. He advocated you PERSONALLY help your fellow man. There is a big difference. I don't think I've ever called America a Christian nation, but you're no better than the people who do, because you're simply twisting the bible to support policies you think would improve things.
So, yes. I'd gladly pay more taxes to improve the lot of my fellow men, women and children. I'd even go so far as to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should consider spending far less on defense. The money we save there could go to education and social security - programs that improve our lives as opposed to destroying others. And the best part is: we wouldn't even have to raise taxes.
No problem with less on defense. I'm glad you are willing to pay more taxes for whatever government programs you think are needed. How about an 'opt in/opt out' tax system then? Would you be ok with that?
Or do you want to legislate your morality into law so everyone must follow what you believe is 'right'?
And which of the parties' presidential candidates is beating the drum of war and playing the security-panic card? I think that would, again, be the Republicans.
and which party was voted into power in 2006 to stop them, but failed to live up to their promises?
Both party's are awful, and the Bush/Clinton dynasty sold America out in the name of 'globalism'. Instead of realizing this, Americans will likely spend the next few recession years arguing about which parties fault it is.
The Bush administration doesn't speak for every Republican or Conservative in America. You might have noticed his dismal approval rating...to get that low he ticked off a lot of Republicans too.
As far as the original point of the story. The fourth amendment doesn't apply to 'domestic military operations' because the whole idea was to NOT have domestic military operations against regular citizens.
It's been about 2-3 years since I was on those sites. If I recall correctly, the sign up fee is like $15 a month. If you are good looking enough, and you write an email that is interesting, women will spend the money to talk to you.
Yes, women get more messages than men. This is due to the ratios. The main problem with the OP's theory of "criteria", is that the most important criteria on a dating website is your picture. Yes, women list things like "I want a guy that is at least 5'10, makes x amount of dollars, doesn't smoke, likes kittens, etc", but being attractive and interesting in your initial email is much more important than the boilerplate criteria.
You just emphasized the difference that gpp was trying to portray: the "weak" (terrorists) cannot go head to head with a sophisticated "strong" army.
Yes and no. Take for example 9/11. The terrorists successfully attacked the pentagon, and would have likely hit the White House if the plane in Pennsylvania didn't go down. Those were military targets that were successfully hit by a very weak group of terrorists (morons with box cutters). Other military targets could have been hit, but civilian ones were hit instead for the psychological effect they'd have.
The IRA was actually pretty good at this in their later years. They'd only hit government buildings, and they'd call in before doing so, that way everyone would get out of the building. I don't agree with their actions, or have sympathy for them, but they pretty much ran an insurgent campaign against a powerful country and didn't kill civilians in the later years because they either had a conscience or realized it was bad PR.
It's just that simple. It's amazing how people can cry for capital punishment with the argument "What if it was your child that was murdered?" and not understand the mindset of a terrorist, who is basically in the same camp.
The difference in modern warfare is that nation-states don't go out of their way to target civilians, terrorists do. Of course, nation-states often kill civilians by accident but does intent matter? It probably should, but if you're kid is killed I guess it doesn't.
Two out of five questions have nothing to do with technology. And, one of the three is only marginally about technology.
Seriously, from now on we should have more tech oriented questions. Like:
1. Implement a linked list in x86 assembler. Be prepared to explain your code.
2. How do you feel about Richard Stallman not using a web browser...at all.
3. Would you give federal subsides to Ziff Davis to get Tech TV back on the air?
4. Which do you feel is superior, VI or Emacs, and why?
5. If you had to pull a Lewinisky, who would you pick between Kate Botello and Veronica Bellmont?
BONUS QUESTION: Name three design patterns and how you'd implement them in any language.
Oh geez, someone has been drinking the Gold Standard Kool-Aid.
Man, I love it when people make original insults like 'drinking the kool-aid!' rather than debating the subject at hand. I usually know there is a lot of bunk coming afterwards.
Do you know why we got away from the gold standard? Because it was one of the major causes of the Great Depression.
Umm, no. The gold standard might have made it harder to handle the great depression (because the government couldn't inflate their way out of it), but it certainly didn't cause the great depression. Wikipedia lists several causes, but really the federal reserve, created in 1913, inflated the money supply, leading to looser lending standards. From Wikipedia:
Americans consumers and businesses relied on cheap credit, the former to purchase consumer goods such as automobiles and furniture and the later for capital investment to increase production. This fueled strong short-term growth but created consumer and commercial debt. People and businesses who were deeply in debt when price deflation occurred or demand for their product decreased often risked default. Many drastically cut current spending to keep up time payments, thus lowering demand for new products. Businesses began to fail as construction work and factory orders plunged.
Massive layoffs occurred, resulting in unemployment rates of over 25%. Banks which had financed a lot of this debt began to fail as debtors defaulted on debt and bank depositors became worried about their deposits and began massive withdrawals.
The Austrian school of economics, which Paul subscribes to, predicted this would happen prior to the crash.. Ron Paul was saying there would be a recession or worse back during the first debates when everyone was talking about the strength of the Bush economy. Once again, the Austrian school is ahead of the curve. It's not that hard to predict really. In the 1920's you had a housing boom with easy to obtain credit which lead people and businesses to spend beyond their means. We've had the same thing in the 1990's through today, with the small recession around 9/11 which Greenspan inflated his way out of, which just ended up causing a larger bubble.
It is also far less flexible than the monetary systems we use today such that an attempt to go back to it would cause a major deflation in the currency while skyrocketing the value of gold
Ron Paul doesn't want to go back to the gold standard, but he does want to create a new currency backed by gold, so you could hold your 'dollars' in whichever currency you prefer. So once again, you are misstating his position.
. Oh, and guess who has a lot of holding in gold? You guessed it, Ron Paul. The Wikipedia article alone has some rather compelling reasons why return to the Gold Standard is a bad idea.
Yeah, and if he were elected, and he created a gold backed currency the price of gold would likely DROP. The only reason gold is priced so high since 9/11 is because of our irrational fiscal and foreign policies. Gold is a hedge vs inflation, so implementing a rational fiscal policy would actually hurt gold's value.
He keeps saying he's for free trade, but whenever a vote comes up he votes protectionist.
Once again, you are mindlessly smearing the man, based on something you probably read from one website. If someone votes against NAFTA and CAFTA but says 'we should trade with no restrictions with every nation on earth' they are not a protectionist.
States rights is a familiar dodge for people who rooted for the South in the Civil war but don't want to give the appearance of being pro-slavery. In here it appears to be a way to dodge for uncomfortable social issues
Slashdot Mirror
If you start by looking at the Drake Equation and the assumption that Earth like planets with intelligent civilizations are not that uncommon
There's a whole lot of life on earth, and only one life form is intelligent enough to be reading slashdot. We often conclude that maybe the aliens are much smarter than us and hiding, but what if intelligence is super-rare?
Maybe we're a evolutionary fluke.
"why is the US going backwards in the last decade? who is gaining from this dumbing down of the population??"
All of this darwin talk, and nobody brings up Dysgenics? It's not just the US population, some scientists think it's a worldwide effect.
A certain percentage of the US population is black, therefore it is expected that an equivalent percentage of American game developers are too. If they are not, it indicates some sort confounding variable that might (and in this case almost certainly does) indicate some sort of social inequity that needs to be addressed.
I hope you're not going to get around to addressing the lack of male nurses.
Maybe we can put all the ex-civil servants to work with sledgehammers and pickaxes destroying the interstate highway system, the space program, the Internet, and a load of other infrastructure and programs that either were funded by federal tax increases post-1890, or derived from programs that were...
Cool, you named 3 good things, but probably ignored the 2 billion bad ones.
I hate to say this, but Americans are very undertaxed relative to govt spending. The only thing worse than heavy taxes and heavy spending is light taxes and heavy spending (i.e. what we have now), because it WILL have to be repaid... with interest! Our deficit spending is killing the dollar, sending gas prices (and all imports) sky high.
What is killing the dollar is that its losing its place as the reserve currency of the world. This has a little bit to do with spending, but more to do with oil being traded in different denominations now.
At the risk of getting burned at the stake, I do see a problem with the mentality that it's "our money" implying we deserve to pay no taxes. We drive on the roads, we expect the fire dept and police to show up if necessary, we cheer on the troops - then we expect it all to be free.
With the exception of the troops and interstate highways, those are local issues. They don't excuse the high federal taxes. Yes we do 'drive on roads', but you should pay for that via a usage tax, (ie tolls) so that the people who use the roads pay for the maintenance. Yes, local people want local police and fire departments. That has nothing to do with federal taxes. The argument that we get all these 'great services' from the government in the US is shortsighted since most of the services we care about are handled, or best handled on a local level.
Could we disband public education and save a few bucks in tax money?
Again, you have to think about federal vs state in the US. The Dept of Education gets 68.6 billion dollars. 8% of that actually goes to schools. Now, the federal government sometimes does pass decent laws (NCLB was a mixed bag) that help, but not EVERY tax dollar you spend on education is used efficiently.
Sure, in the short run, but about 20 years later the GDP would fall by many times the amount "saved."
There is no proof of this. The reality is, if you disbanded public schools, you'd end up with a private system. Most kids probably would get a better education, but the poor would likely be left behind.
Sometimes taxing and spending is worthwhile.
That isn't a good excuse for overspending.
I think we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This idea has come and gone many times, such as Grahm/Rudman, and later Ross Perot advocated it. Our current course, especially since Reagan, is nothing short of robbing our children and grandchildren.
I think it's a good idea. I don't think Reagan 'robbed our grandchildren', and I do think the military spending was justified at the time. I don't think it is now.
Whether the deficit is resolved by cutting spending or increasing taxes, at least it would force us to be honest. We have proven beyond doubt that we're not capable of using the good times to repay deficits incurred during slowdowns.
I don't see how we'll ever repay the deficit. If it ever comes to that, expect a 'do over'.
I do agree that some taxation is needed for services on the local level. I can even live with the federal government taxing for interstate highways, the military, and possibly some income redistribution. I really think a balanced budget amendment and a 'war tax' would go a long way. The main philosophical problem I have with high federal taxes is that they're hard to get changed. At least when it comes to state and local taxes your voice can be heard, when something gets passed on a federal level, the odds of your congressional representative giving a shit about your point of view are slim.
WoW PvP will never be 'good' or balanced. Hell it was more balanced at 60 than 70.
All I get from this expansion's release is that Blizzard is actually somewhat worried about Conan/WAR.
They don't care about other games, blizzards plan since before TBC was to do 1 expansion pack a year. With blizzards usual dev cycle, that means one will be out every 1.5 to 2 years.
Conan looks pretty sweet.
1 (800) 592 5499
Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction"
$15 dollars is like 1000 gold I can make that in a few hours. I might turn tricks for epics though. Do you have a purple in your pants?
I'm not living in America, but I had to ask: if that's what's happening then why is nobody trying to change it?
When there is a high standard of living, people tend to overlook governmental abuse. When there is no more steak on joe 6 pack's table, then people might start looking for 'change' greater than our current list of pathetic candidates for president.
Increased broadband penetration made MMO's more playable. EQ was released in 1999, UO was before that. Five years after Everquest, WoW came out (late 2004). By then everyone and their brother had broadband. There was simply a bigger player base. This, along with lower barriers of entry that you mentioned, and a well known franchise is what led blizzard to success.
I'm just suspicious of this rather convenient "oh, both parties are just as bad" cliche that pops up after stories like these. I don't know any serious observers who claim that a Gore or Kerry administration would have gotten us into the predicament.
I'm a pretty serious observer, and I can tell you that neither you nor I know what Gore or Kerry might have gotten us into. Leadership has been pretty bad since the end of the cold war from both parties. If you think 'the parties are just as bad' is cliche, that's fine, but I really see little difference in the corporate/warfare/nanny state party and the nannystate/corporate/warfare party. They all favor the same shit, just in a different order. It's sad that you need to marginalize my comment as that from an 'non-serious' observer because it does not fit in with your perception of the world.
If you really don't think they're all playing for the same team, trudge over to opensecrets.org and read who's donating to the different candidates in the presidential race this year. You'll notice that McCain, Clinton, and Obama all receive donations from and are owned by the same companies.
Gladly. This country needs more education.
I would say this country doesn't need more education, as much as better education.
Education produces smart citizens.
That is debatable. We've all met dumb people who are 'educated' to one degree or another.
Smart citizens are good for the economy (smart consumers don't start dot com or housing bubbles),
The business cycle has been around since before public schools in the US. The dot.com and Housing bubbles weren't caused by 'dumb' people, unless you consider the fed dumb.
good for business (intelligent employees streamline processes and reduce overhead), but above all they are good for the country. Like it or not, reputation matters - would you rather the U.S. be known as a nation of idiots, or would you rather we be respected as a nation of intelligence and honour?
Throwing more money into the public school system will not get the results you state above (but it sure sounds like a good excuse, right!).
As for welfare, you can't call yourself a Christian nation if you don't believe in helping your fellow man. See: Luke 4:18-19, 18:18-30, 14:13 Matthew 19:16-30, 25:31-46, Mark 8:1-13, 6:30-44, 10:17-31 (or just read the Bible). We're a so-called "Christian" country, that cherry picks the Old Testament and ignores the teachings of Christ (at least until the indictments come down - when that happens, Jesus is suddenly the man).
Nonsense, Jesus did not advocate taking money by force from everyone to help the poor. He advocated you PERSONALLY help your fellow man. There is a big difference. I don't think I've ever called America a Christian nation, but you're no better than the people who do, because you're simply twisting the bible to support policies you think would improve things.
So, yes. I'd gladly pay more taxes to improve the lot of my fellow men, women and children. I'd even go so far as to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should consider spending far less on defense. The money we save there could go to education and social security - programs that improve our lives as opposed to destroying others. And the best part is: we wouldn't even have to raise taxes.
No problem with less on defense. I'm glad you are willing to pay more taxes for whatever government programs you think are needed. How about an 'opt in/opt out' tax system then? Would you be ok with that?
Or do you want to legislate your morality into law so everyone must follow what you believe is 'right'?
If Gore was president, we wouldn't be in Iraq. That "grass" is real, and it's fucking green enough for me.
Yeah we'd be in Darfur instead. Which probably wouldn't be as bad, but would still be pretty stupid.
And which of the parties' presidential candidates is beating the drum of war and playing the security-panic card? I think that would, again, be the Republicans.
and which party was voted into power in 2006 to stop them, but failed to live up to their promises?
Both party's are awful, and the Bush/Clinton dynasty sold America out in the name of 'globalism'. Instead of realizing this, Americans will likely spend the next few recession years arguing about which parties fault it is.
Only if it's the second amendment, apparently.
The Bush administration doesn't speak for every Republican or Conservative in America. You might have noticed his dismal approval rating...to get that low he ticked off a lot of Republicans too.
As far as the original point of the story. The fourth amendment doesn't apply to 'domestic military operations' because the whole idea was to NOT have domestic military operations against regular citizens.
I'll go one further. Anybody that supports the war should volunteer to pay more taxes to finance it.
Then how about anyone who is for the department of education, welfare, etc pay more in taxes to support those programs?
Paul hasn't dropped out, although he can not win at this point.
Sounds like take 2 is gonna get JACKED.
You hurt my feelings, Mr LithiumX.
It's been about 2-3 years since I was on those sites. If I recall correctly, the sign up fee is like $15 a month. If you are good looking enough, and you write an email that is interesting, women will spend the money to talk to you.
Yes, women get more messages than men. This is due to the ratios. The main problem with the OP's theory of "criteria", is that the most important criteria on a dating website is your picture. Yes, women list things like "I want a guy that is at least 5'10, makes x amount of dollars, doesn't smoke, likes kittens, etc", but being attractive and interesting in your initial email is much more important than the boilerplate criteria.
You just emphasized the difference that gpp was trying to portray: the "weak" (terrorists) cannot go head to head with a sophisticated "strong" army.
Yes and no. Take for example 9/11. The terrorists successfully attacked the pentagon, and would have likely hit the White House if the plane in Pennsylvania didn't go down. Those were military targets that were successfully hit by a very weak group of terrorists (morons with box cutters). Other military targets could have been hit, but civilian ones were hit instead for the psychological effect they'd have.
The IRA was actually pretty good at this in their later years. They'd only hit government buildings, and they'd call in before doing so, that way everyone would get out of the building. I don't agree with their actions, or have sympathy for them, but they pretty much ran an insurgent campaign against a powerful country and didn't kill civilians in the later years because they either had a conscience or realized it was bad PR.
It's just that simple. It's amazing how people can cry for capital punishment with the argument "What if it was your child that was murdered?" and not understand the mindset of a terrorist, who is basically in the same camp.
The difference in modern warfare is that nation-states don't go out of their way to target civilians, terrorists do. Of course, nation-states often kill civilians by accident but does intent matter? It probably should, but if you're kid is killed I guess it doesn't.
I'm sure once They realize how comic their attempts to justify their jobs are, they will return all the tax money and do something productive.
The study was probably funded by a few people at DHS who want to be able to play their night elf hunters at work.
Two out of five questions have nothing to do with technology. And, one of the three is only marginally about technology.
Seriously, from now on we should have more tech oriented questions. Like:
1. Implement a linked list in x86 assembler. Be prepared to explain your code.
2. How do you feel about Richard Stallman not using a web browser...at all.
3. Would you give federal subsides to Ziff Davis to get Tech TV back on the air?
4. Which do you feel is superior, VI or Emacs, and why?
5. If you had to pull a Lewinisky, who would you pick between Kate Botello and Veronica Bellmont?
BONUS QUESTION: Name three design patterns and how you'd implement them in any language.
Oh geez, someone has been drinking the Gold Standard Kool-Aid.
Man, I love it when people make original insults like 'drinking the kool-aid!' rather than debating the subject at hand. I usually know there is a lot of bunk coming afterwards.
Do you know why we got away from the gold standard? Because it was one of the major causes of the Great Depression.
Umm, no. The gold standard might have made it harder to handle the great depression (because the government couldn't inflate their way out of it), but it certainly didn't cause the great depression. Wikipedia lists several causes, but really the federal reserve, created in 1913, inflated the money supply, leading to looser lending standards. From Wikipedia:
Americans consumers and businesses relied on cheap credit, the former to purchase consumer goods such as automobiles and furniture and the later for capital investment to increase production. This fueled strong short-term growth but created consumer and commercial debt. People and businesses who were deeply in debt when price deflation occurred or demand for their product decreased often risked default. Many drastically cut current spending to keep up time payments, thus lowering demand for new products. Businesses began to fail as construction work and factory orders plunged. Massive layoffs occurred, resulting in unemployment rates of over 25%. Banks which had financed a lot of this debt began to fail as debtors defaulted on debt and bank depositors became worried about their deposits and began massive withdrawals.
The Austrian school of economics, which Paul subscribes to, predicted this would happen prior to the crash.. Ron Paul was saying there would be a recession or worse back during the first debates when everyone was talking about the strength of the Bush economy. Once again, the Austrian school is ahead of the curve. It's not that hard to predict really. In the 1920's you had a housing boom with easy to obtain credit which lead people and businesses to spend beyond their means. We've had the same thing in the 1990's through today, with the small recession around 9/11 which Greenspan inflated his way out of, which just ended up causing a larger bubble.
It is also far less flexible than the monetary systems we use today such that an attempt to go back to it would cause a major deflation in the currency while skyrocketing the value of gold
Ron Paul doesn't want to go back to the gold standard, but he does want to create a new currency backed by gold, so you could hold your 'dollars' in whichever currency you prefer. So once again, you are misstating his position.
. Oh, and guess who has a lot of holding in gold? You guessed it, Ron Paul. The Wikipedia article alone has some rather compelling reasons why return to the Gold Standard is a bad idea.
Yeah, and if he were elected, and he created a gold backed currency the price of gold would likely DROP. The only reason gold is priced so high since 9/11 is because of our irrational fiscal and foreign policies. Gold is a hedge vs inflation, so implementing a rational fiscal policy would actually hurt gold's value.
He keeps saying he's for free trade, but whenever a vote comes up he votes protectionist.
Once again, you are mindlessly smearing the man, based on something you probably read from one website. If someone votes against NAFTA and CAFTA but says 'we should trade with no restrictions with every nation on earth' they are not a protectionist.
States rights is a familiar dodge for people who rooted for the South in the Civil war but don't want to give the appearance of being pro-slavery. In here it appears to be a way to dodge for uncomfortable social issues