I don't know if I'd quote the article on something like that, it was really a fluff piece with some whining and ranting thrown in. It could ban the future sale of DVRs, but I don't think they can make it unlawful to use what you already have. I think they plan to change their method of selling video to a format that stamps recorded video so they can tell who copied and distributed it.
Weren't the laws she was breaking eventually found to be unconstitutional? If that is the case, she wasn't really breaking the law, since the laws themselves were eventually ruled to be invalid. I'd doubt you will find courts ruling that antitrust law is unconstitutional any time soon.
Then you should probably know that the governor of Nevada agreed (albeit a long time ago) to accept the site's placement because of the money it would bring into the state. The only condition was that a second long term facility would be built east of the mississippi river before the amount stored in Yucca Mountain exceed 80 thousand metric tons of spent fuel. Things have changed since then, but Nevada should keep to it's agreement.
If you want a good example of what you're talking about, look at cosmetic surgery. The cost of cosmetic surgery has consistently declined while the quality has increased. This is simply not true of the rest of the rest of the industry, which is heavily subsidized (even in the US).
When you bring things out to that level of abstraction, you really need to begin considering what all of those words mean. It seems that people, assuming I'm not imagining them in the first place, ascribe meaning to the world around them. That is to say that meaning is something we create, and the universe doesn't give meaning to itself.
When you describe "swirling masses of atoms inside peoples' heads" you are merely trying to assign meaning things that you've experienced. If some one else, when observing the same phenomena, see "intelligence", "souls", or "magic", is isn't wrong, it's just different. The important question is which meaning will allow us to make the predictions that will ultimately result in interaction with our environment in a way that is most beneficial to us.
So, as a neuroscientist, it may be the most beneficial for you to you to understand the brain as you do. That doesn't necessary mean that it is best for other people to view it that way. Indeed, a lot of what you've said wouldn't have meaning for someone outside the sciences. On the other hand, the idea of "intelligence" is pretty easy to understand. Basically, intelligence is just the process by which an object (something to which we have ascribed meaning) promotes a specific goal or set of goals. I'm not trying to say that this is a universal definition, but it works well for me. So in the case of evolution, one could see a particular class of organisms as the object, and survival as the goal being promoted. It's easy to see why people would ascribe intelligence to a number of "natural" processes. We are simply projecting aspects of ourselves onto the world around us so that we may better understand it.
The problem with the view you espouse (and, hopefully, you can tell from comment that I don't really disagree with you) is that people are gregarious. We are horribly afraid of being alone, and like to believe that there something fundamental connecting us to the rest of the universe. For this reason, people like the believe that the intelligence they've ascribed to other people, and to the rest of the universe, is real (whatever that means). I don't know if there's anything wrong with that interpretation. Indeed, if the natural processes going on inside your body (assuming the processes and your body are real) have given rise to your own (real) intelligence (such as you understand it) there's no reason to believe that the intelligence you assign to other people and objects is any less real.
I'm not talking about treating employees well, there's no reason you can't do that. What I mean is that if a company falls on hard times, they will lay off employees or hand out pay-cuts. Failure do do so will result in bankruptcy. Laying off your employes is not being loyal to them, but it has to happen.
This is what I don't understand. If you feel that a pay-cut is unfair, why do you stay with the company? I mean, if you think your time is worth more, why are you pissing it away working for less than you are worth? The fact of the matter is that companies can't be loyal to their employees and remain competitive. If your employer is not going to be loyal to you, you should not be loyal to him.
The whole principle of a free-market economy is fair exchange where both parties feel that they are getting back an equal or greater amount of value than what they put in. If you're not getting that out of an exchange, you shouldn't be participating in it.
Managers can do whatever the hell they want, a company run by morons is going to go bankrupt in short order, and it's the shareholders who will pay for their stupidity. That's one of the risks of investment, and it is also why many shareholders keep a close eye on what is happening with their investment. If you feel like your boss/the leadership of a company you've invested in is making stupid decisions, for god sake get out now or they'll take you down with them.
Were you pre-announcing the validity of your argument so that we could safely avoid reading the rest of your comment? I guess I'll never know because I refuse to read any comment that begins with the word "strawman".
I don't know. It seems like any country should be capable of getting it's shit together within two generations. The problem as I see it is western interference. Promoting "peace" in these countries may actually prevent people from actually resolving their conflicts. Furthermore, providing "aid" to these countries may give failing governments the resources they need to keep failing.
Well, I live in the USA, and I can say that my government respects the rule of law (our own laws, international law is not binding). My country has a very stable economy, no one I know has any real financial problems. My country upholds human rights for its citizens (depending on what you consider human rights, and when you are or are not entitled to them). I don't know anyone how lives in fear of disappearing in the middle of the night because of the kind of books they've been taking out of the library (or for any other reason, for that matter). I've never been able to find an example of that happening in real life. I think the risk of that happening is, therefore, extremely overstated.
Well, they do have two-dimensional scrolling (just touch both fingers to the track-pad, and it scrolls instead of pointing). The don't have multiple button functionality, though.
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$750 for a 1.6 GHz G5 iMac with a built in 17" monitor? That's pretty damn cheap. Shit, I'm thinking about buying it and I already have two macs (non are G5 class though).
"As a counter example,engineers on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission found their equipment could be kept functioning well past their orignial goals and decided to keep them doing science until they die."
Okay, but no one is suggesting that we do away with automated space missions. What they are saying is that there are things people can do which robots can't. That means that a policy strictly excluding manned space flight does not make sense scientifically. Obviously a mixed approach makes the most sense.
Apparently you can't tell the difference between some half-baked defense department plan and official government policy. The defense department comes up with a lot of bone-headed ideas, that's why we don't let them make all the decisions.
Military people just don't think right sometimes, I'd doubt the military commanders of rest of the worlds armies make better judgment calls on this sort of matter. What else would you expect from someone whose job is to resolve problems by force? It's just par for the course I'm afraid. It's as a great american once said "war is to important to be left to the generals."
Well, I just happen to have a first year college economics textbook in front of me. It is Macroeconomics by McConnell and Brue the fifteenth edition. On page 33 it describes various economic systems, including capitalism. It defines an economic system as: a particular set of institutional arrangements and a coordinating mechanism to respond to the economizing problem. It describes the economizing problem on page 22 by noting two fundamental facts
1) Societies economic wants are virtually unlimited and insatiable.
2) Economic resources are limited or scarce
It goes on to define resources on page 23 as: Land, Capital, Labour, and Entrepreneurial Ability
Therefore we can say that any economic system (including capitalism) is a method for allocating scarce resources, and that the scarce resources in question are those listed above. It never states that an economic system is a "mode of production".
I think you're reading too much into the "perfect competition" thing. It basically assumes that no seller or buyer has the market power to influence prices in the market. Achieving this is the goal of antitrust law, which I have no problem with. So save you breath.
"Without each and every one of those assumptions, neoclassical supply/demand price theory doesn't work. If any single one does not hold, then supply/demand price theory doesn't hold. I'm not the one making those assumptions up. Those are the assumptions that neoclassical economic theory states must hold for perfect competition to exist. They can be found in any basic economic text book. They have zero empirical support for their existence in the real world."
Again, you are going way overboard on this point. These assumptions not being true simply means that the market is not as efficient as possible. Of course, a market economy with the proper safeguards is still much more efficient than a command economy.
"Be that as it may, I can empirically demonstrate that the markets fail in several key sectors: insurance, health care, education, security, consumption smoothing, and poverty relief. Whatever the inefficiency introduced by government run health care, as but one example, one has to consider that in the US, the market takes a standard profit of over 30%. Even if a government system functioned at only 2/3 the efficiency of the market in the US, the US populace would be no worse off."
No, the problem here is that you are looking at a small piece of the economy and assuming it is unattached to the rest of the economy. What you fail to realize is that profits go somewhere. They don't simply disappear. If one medical care provider is able to provide the same service more efficiently, they will lower prices and increase their own profit simultaneously. The lower prices increase the accessibility to the public as a whole, while the profits are generally re-invested into the economy (unless they take it out in cash and bury it). In the case of a medical company, this means expanding operations and further increasing accessibility. The only way these profits could be considered "wasted" is if the person made the money and then wasted it. This doesn't happen much because usually people who make a lot of money now how to put it to good use.
On the other hand, if the government hand done it 2/3 as efficiently, those resources really were wasted (in the form of someone wasting their own time carrying out unnecessary labour when they could have been doing something useful and productive). So any inefficiency is bad.
"Not to mention `excessive' is a value judgment. If we're going to be objective about this discussion, value judgments have no place."
That's ridiculous, we must make value judgments in order to make decisions. Or are you one of those people who just sits around and talks all day. In any case, simply because you are unwilling to make value judgments doesn't mean I am not allowed to make them. E-bay works fine without any barriers to entry, therefore any new barriers
I don't know, the scientist in the article himself said that commercial products are at least a decade off. The problem is that just producing the amino acid is only part of the problem of making a useful product. There are unresolved questions about whether or not this will be be a good material for making shoes, or prosthetics, and if it does have good properties (like wear resistance as they have postulated) they will still need to find a way to form it and make it hold its form, and keep the water from leaking out. Of course, if it does have good properties, they have to be enough better to justify the added expense of producing this stuff instead of just rubber or whatever cheap-ass polymer they'll be using by then.
I'll admit, it has a much better chance than carbon nano-tubes and the space elevator, it is by no means a done deal.
"Capitalism is a theory of production, not a theory of retail or professional services." Capitalism is a method of allocating a resources, that includes all labour, as well as production resources, and even intellectual property. There is no difference whether the resources be "professional services", as you call them, "retail" related activities, cogs, gears or prostitutes. It's all the same crap, resources that need to get from whoever produces them to whoever wants them.
"Many businesses don't produce anything in the sense of the word used by economists."
How is that possible? Have you seen the definitions listed in an economics textbook. They're usually extremely inclusive. You would be hard pressed to find a business that does not produce a good or perform a service.
"Show me a single market of concrete goods for which all the assumptions of perfect competition hold."
Well, since you don't define "perfect competition" that would be hard. But I can certainly provide numerous examples of situations where government regulation prevent competition, and thereby reduce overall efficiency. That's really what we're talking about here. The government is taking a highly efficient, inclusive method of commerce, and ruining it for not good reason. How can you even begin to justify such stupidity?
"In the real world, all markets have barriers to entry"
That doesn't mean you need to make new ones. That's like saying "well, people die every day, so killing a few people isn't really that bad". It is bad, and I don't see any reason the government should be generating excessive barriers to entry.
Sure, anything that can be done in the lab can be done on a larger scale. But they don't know whether or not this kind of thing would be economically feasible when done on a larger scale. That's why it's called research, because we don't already know. It might be feasible, but the truth is we won't really know until it's happened.
Furthermore, these kind of things usually don't pan out. Even it it does, it won't be practically available to the general public for decades because of the secondary technology that needs to be developed first to make it feasible. Scientists like to make grandiose claims about what their research will lead to because it helps bring in funding for continued research. That doesn't mean they will pan out, only that the scientist thinks they might.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if I'd quote the article on something like that, it was really a fluff piece with some whining and ranting thrown in. It could ban the future sale of DVRs, but I don't think they can make it unlawful to use what you already have. I think they plan to change their method of selling video to a format that stamps recorded video so they can tell who copied and distributed it.
You can't retroactively make something illegal.
Weren't the laws she was breaking eventually found to be unconstitutional? If that is the case, she wasn't really breaking the law, since the laws themselves were eventually ruled to be invalid. I'd doubt you will find courts ruling that antitrust law is unconstitutional any time soon.
Then you should probably know that the governor of Nevada agreed (albeit a long time ago) to accept the site's placement because of the money it would bring into the state. The only condition was that a second long term facility would be built east of the mississippi river before the amount stored in Yucca Mountain exceed 80 thousand metric tons of spent fuel. Things have changed since then, but Nevada should keep to it's agreement.
Speaking of povpod, isn't that a link form the article? I believe it also said something about SuicideGirls. RTFA?
If you want a good example of what you're talking about, look at cosmetic surgery. The cost of cosmetic surgery has consistently declined while the quality has increased. This is simply not true of the rest of the rest of the industry, which is heavily subsidized (even in the US).
"I've heard that you could get a kidney in India for around $20,000. Which, of course, means that most people in the US couldn't afford it anyway."
Yeah, because most people in the US can afford things like SUVs, and houses. Oh wait, yes they can.
When you bring things out to that level of abstraction, you really need to begin considering what all of those words mean. It seems that people, assuming I'm not imagining them in the first place, ascribe meaning to the world around them. That is to say that meaning is something we create, and the universe doesn't give meaning to itself.
When you describe "swirling masses of atoms inside peoples' heads" you are merely trying to assign meaning things that you've experienced. If some one else, when observing the same phenomena, see "intelligence", "souls", or "magic", is isn't wrong, it's just different. The important question is which meaning will allow us to make the predictions that will ultimately result in interaction with our environment in a way that is most beneficial to us.
So, as a neuroscientist, it may be the most beneficial for you to you to understand the brain as you do. That doesn't necessary mean that it is best for other people to view it that way. Indeed, a lot of what you've said wouldn't have meaning for someone outside the sciences. On the other hand, the idea of "intelligence" is pretty easy to understand. Basically, intelligence is just the process by which an object (something to which we have ascribed meaning) promotes a specific goal or set of goals. I'm not trying to say that this is a universal definition, but it works well for me. So in the case of evolution, one could see a particular class of organisms as the object, and survival as the goal being promoted. It's easy to see why people would ascribe intelligence to a number of "natural" processes. We are simply projecting aspects of ourselves onto the world around us so that we may better understand it.
The problem with the view you espouse (and, hopefully, you can tell from comment that I don't really disagree with you) is that people are gregarious. We are horribly afraid of being alone, and like to believe that there something fundamental connecting us to the rest of the universe. For this reason, people like the believe that the intelligence they've ascribed to other people, and to the rest of the universe, is real (whatever that means). I don't know if there's anything wrong with that interpretation. Indeed, if the natural processes going on inside your body (assuming the processes and your body are real) have given rise to your own (real) intelligence (such as you understand it) there's no reason to believe that the intelligence you assign to other people and objects is any less real.
I'm not talking about treating employees well, there's no reason you can't do that. What I mean is that if a company falls on hard times, they will lay off employees or hand out pay-cuts. Failure do do so will result in bankruptcy. Laying off your employes is not being loyal to them, but it has to happen.
More like when the shareholders look around and say:
"I see the problem, it's our dumb-ass CEO"
Remember, ultimately the person putting up the capital is the boss, upper management is just management.
This is what I don't understand. If you feel that a pay-cut is unfair, why do you stay with the company? I mean, if you think your time is worth more, why are you pissing it away working for less than you are worth? The fact of the matter is that companies can't be loyal to their employees and remain competitive. If your employer is not going to be loyal to you, you should not be loyal to him.
The whole principle of a free-market economy is fair exchange where both parties feel that they are getting back an equal or greater amount of value than what they put in. If you're not getting that out of an exchange, you shouldn't be participating in it.
Managers can do whatever the hell they want, a company run by morons is going to go bankrupt in short order, and it's the shareholders who will pay for their stupidity. That's one of the risks of investment, and it is also why many shareholders keep a close eye on what is happening with their investment. If you feel like your boss/the leadership of a company you've invested in is making stupid decisions, for god sake get out now or they'll take you down with them.
"Um, strawman argument."
Were you pre-announcing the validity of your argument so that we could safely avoid reading the rest of your comment? I guess I'll never know because I refuse to read any comment that begins with the word "strawman".
I don't know. It seems like any country should be capable of getting it's shit together within two generations. The problem as I see it is western interference. Promoting "peace" in these countries may actually prevent people from actually resolving their conflicts. Furthermore, providing "aid" to these countries may give failing governments the resources they need to keep failing.
Well, I live in the USA, and I can say that my government respects the rule of law (our own laws, international law is not binding). My country has a very stable economy, no one I know has any real financial problems. My country upholds human rights for its citizens (depending on what you consider human rights, and when you are or are not entitled to them). I don't know anyone how lives in fear of disappearing in the middle of the night because of the kind of books they've been taking out of the library (or for any other reason, for that matter). I've never been able to find an example of that happening in real life. I think the risk of that happening is, therefore, extremely overstated.
Well, they do have two-dimensional scrolling (just touch both fingers to the track-pad, and it scrolls instead of pointing). The don't have multiple button functionality, though.
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$750 for a 1.6 GHz G5 iMac with a built in 17" monitor? That's pretty damn cheap. Shit, I'm thinking about buying it and I already have two macs (non are G5 class though).
He may be a troll, but he is still right.
This is basically why the government rarely does anything of consequence. It's a shame.
"As a counter example,engineers on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission found their equipment could be kept functioning well past their orignial goals and decided to keep them doing science until they die."
Okay, but no one is suggesting that we do away with automated space missions. What they are saying is that there are things people can do which robots can't. That means that a policy strictly excluding manned space flight does not make sense scientifically. Obviously a mixed approach makes the most sense.
Apparently you can't tell the difference between some half-baked defense department plan and official government policy. The defense department comes up with a lot of bone-headed ideas, that's why we don't let them make all the decisions.
Military people just don't think right sometimes, I'd doubt the military commanders of rest of the worlds armies make better judgment calls on this sort of matter. What else would you expect from someone whose job is to resolve problems by force? It's just par for the course I'm afraid. It's as a great american once said "war is to important to be left to the generals."
Well, I just happen to have a first year college economics textbook in front of me. It is Macroeconomics by McConnell and Brue the fifteenth edition. On page 33 it describes various economic systems, including capitalism. It defines an economic system as: a particular set of institutional arrangements and a coordinating mechanism to respond to the economizing problem. It describes the economizing problem on page 22 by noting two fundamental facts
1) Societies economic wants are virtually unlimited and insatiable.
2) Economic resources are limited or scarce
It goes on to define resources on page 23 as: Land, Capital, Labour, and Entrepreneurial Ability
Therefore we can say that any economic system (including capitalism) is a method for allocating scarce resources, and that the scarce resources in question are those listed above. It never states that an economic system is a "mode of production".
I think you're reading too much into the "perfect competition" thing. It basically assumes that no seller or buyer has the market power to influence prices in the market. Achieving this is the goal of antitrust law, which I have no problem with. So save you breath.
"Without each and every one of those assumptions, neoclassical supply/demand price theory doesn't work. If any single one does not hold, then supply/demand price theory doesn't hold. I'm not the one making those assumptions up. Those are the assumptions that neoclassical economic theory states must hold for perfect competition to exist. They can be found in any basic economic text book. They have zero empirical support for their existence in the real world."
Again, you are going way overboard on this point. These assumptions not being true simply means that the market is not as efficient as possible. Of course, a market economy with the proper safeguards is still much more efficient than a command economy.
"Be that as it may, I can empirically demonstrate that the markets fail in several key sectors: insurance, health care, education, security, consumption smoothing, and poverty relief. Whatever the inefficiency introduced by government run health care, as but one example, one has to consider that in the US, the market takes a standard profit of over 30%. Even if a government system functioned at only 2/3 the efficiency of the market in the US, the US populace would be no worse off."
No, the problem here is that you are looking at a small piece of the economy and assuming it is unattached to the rest of the economy. What you fail to realize is that profits go somewhere. They don't simply disappear. If one medical care provider is able to provide the same service more efficiently, they will lower prices and increase their own profit simultaneously. The lower prices increase the accessibility to the public as a whole, while the profits are generally re-invested into the economy (unless they take it out in cash and bury it). In the case of a medical company, this means expanding operations and further increasing accessibility. The only way these profits could be considered "wasted" is if the person made the money and then wasted it. This doesn't happen much because usually people who make a lot of money now how to put it to good use.
On the other hand, if the government hand done it 2/3 as efficiently, those resources really were wasted (in the form of someone wasting their own time carrying out unnecessary labour when they could have been doing something useful and productive). So any inefficiency is bad.
"Not to mention `excessive' is a value judgment. If we're going to be objective about this discussion, value judgments have no place."
That's ridiculous, we must make value judgments in order to make decisions. Or are you one of those people who just sits around and talks all day. In any case, simply because you are unwilling to make value judgments doesn't mean I am not allowed to make them. E-bay works fine without any barriers to entry, therefore any new barriers
I don't know, the scientist in the article himself said that commercial products are at least a decade off. The problem is that just producing the amino acid is only part of the problem of making a useful product. There are unresolved questions about whether or not this will be be a good material for making shoes, or prosthetics, and if it does have good properties (like wear resistance as they have postulated) they will still need to find a way to form it and make it hold its form, and keep the water from leaking out. Of course, if it does have good properties, they have to be enough better to justify the added expense of producing this stuff instead of just rubber or whatever cheap-ass polymer they'll be using by then.
I'll admit, it has a much better chance than carbon nano-tubes and the space elevator, it is by no means a done deal.
"Capitalism is a theory of production, not a theory of retail or professional services." Capitalism is a method of allocating a resources, that includes all labour, as well as production resources, and even intellectual property. There is no difference whether the resources be "professional services", as you call them, "retail" related activities, cogs, gears or prostitutes. It's all the same crap, resources that need to get from whoever produces them to whoever wants them.
"Many businesses don't produce anything in the sense of the word used by economists."
How is that possible? Have you seen the definitions listed in an economics textbook. They're usually extremely inclusive. You would be hard pressed to find a business that does not produce a good or perform a service.
"Show me a single market of concrete goods for which all the assumptions of perfect competition hold."
Well, since you don't define "perfect competition" that would be hard. But I can certainly provide numerous examples of situations where government regulation prevent competition, and thereby reduce overall efficiency. That's really what we're talking about here. The government is taking a highly efficient, inclusive method of commerce, and ruining it for not good reason. How can you even begin to justify such stupidity?
"In the real world, all markets have barriers to entry"
That doesn't mean you need to make new ones. That's like saying "well, people die every day, so killing a few people isn't really that bad". It is bad, and I don't see any reason the government should be generating excessive barriers to entry.
Sure, anything that can be done in the lab can be done on a larger scale. But they don't know whether or not this kind of thing would be economically feasible when done on a larger scale. That's why it's called research, because we don't already know. It might be feasible, but the truth is we won't really know until it's happened.
Furthermore, these kind of things usually don't pan out. Even it it does, it won't be practically available to the general public for decades because of the secondary technology that needs to be developed first to make it feasible. Scientists like to make grandiose claims about what their research will lead to because it helps bring in funding for continued research. That doesn't mean they will pan out, only that the scientist thinks they might.
Then don't buy it, duh! Just because you don't want it doesn't mean no one else does!