My big fear is what happens after Ellison's eventual death. Inherited riches traditionnally do not long more than one generation, and even if the island prospers quietly until then, the legacy will turn into a mess of lawsuits spread across local and remote jurisdictions.
Fortunately (for him) he also owns the airport, so he can just refuse to allow the 3rd party airline to fly there.
He can't really afford to deny operation for most 3rd party airline that services destinations his own airline does not service, for one.
Of course this competing airline could start their own airport, but that's likely prohibitively expensive.
Only if you assume the islanders are the only people on Earth who might want to compete. I'm reasonably sure other airlines around the area, and I mean the Pacific by that, could get another airport started if it really came to that. And let's not forget that other means of transportation do compete with airplanes in many cases - like boats.
The inhabitants of this island are, for all intents and purposes, indentured peasants to Larry Ellison.
No they're not. They do not require his personal permission to sell off their stuff and move away, contrary to actual indentured peasants. No extra paperwork involved in moving to another island - you try changing country of residence as easily...
He has an effective monopoly on their food
No he has not. He owns half of the grocery stores, and that's at least a couple light-years away from "having a monopoly on their food". He does not own the farms that produce the food sold there (much of it being imported, BTW), and he needs the one grocery store he owns to keep on performing as before and keep on meeting the locals' purchasing expectations, and he needs it to do so in accordance to local and national regulations of such commerce. He's at their service in this market, and more at their disposal than the other way around.
One may say the state of North Korea has a monopoly on its inhabitants' food, and even that is not 100% - maybe it's 70 to 80% in my limited experience of it.
housing, and transport off the island, and they have only as much say in how he runs things as he feels like letting them have. If you honestly think that's a good way to live, then I'll be happy to purchase your house and vehicle from you and let you pay me rent (at a rate that I choose, of course).
Only if you limit the transportation to airplanes. Agreed on the housing. We'll see how that pans out over time, and I suspect it'll go much the same way as with private ownership of housing elsewhere on tropical islands - meaning that the structures will be properly maintained but that some people will very likely end up being priced out of this market. I also suspect there'll be no homeless on the island, if there even are any to begin with.
Plenty of people are fine renting a home. In many cases this is preferable to owning real estate. I'm trying to sell off my apartment, for example, mostly because it's tying me down in an area I don't want to live in anymore and because the property values are soon to crash.
You seem very convinced that Larry Ellison has no incentive or need to listen to the tenants... but that's just not the situation here, or in any housing markets I know of. Unhappy tenants leave, and often can destroy capital value, if you try to gouge them or interfere with their way of life.
For certain classes of things like roads, water/sewer lines, and probably electric, the amount of space and planning required makes it prohibitive to build multiple competing services. You can't have a city based on TWO separate street grids
Why would there even be a need to make two seperate street grids in the first place ? The state didn't invent and impose standardization and interoperability, they happened on their own. Also, thinking of these infrastructures in term of big, national-wide grids is misguided, in many cases providing power / water only requires localized structures.
And if anyone wonders why all the federal agencies always get bigger, more expensive and more intrusive over time, here's why: because the one who pays (the taxpayer) is denied any right to say no. It's as simple as that. Anyone can always find more and more things to tray and build and implement in pursuit of these agencies' purposes. Moreover in the case of DHS and NSA and FBI and BATF, the taxpayer is also the suspect, making any attempt at getting these agencies under control automatically become a kind of dangerous activity which should be suppressed.
The system is biased towards tyranny, all because of one simple principle of operation lying at its foundation: you are compelled to pay for it. This principle is the systematic root of its evil.
If I have nothing to hide then no one has legitimacy or even moral ground to stand on and spy on me.
The proper way to find and punish criminal/terrorist activity is to first prove reasonable suspicion of crime THEN investigate by gathering incriminating evidence, and not the opposite of fishing for incriminating stuff then slap criminal intent on it hoping it'll stick.
With the very recent forceful closing of the BitFloor BitCoin exchange, and the inavailability of bitcoin-24, another (european) exchange, there seems to be a crackdown on BitC exchanges going on.
What is needed, is a decentralised method for trading BitCs for other currencies, or else BitCoins can be made to be worthless by shutting down the current centralised, easily identified exchanges. I'd suggest Ripple but that technical solution seems to be going nowhere at the moment, alas.
Whether your money loses its value or the assets you can invest it in lose value, amounts to the same in the end: you get poorer. We're stuck between a rock (threat of inflation) and a hard place (a very real deflation and its conjoined-twin sister insolvency).
The analogy is sounds, but not at all for the reasons you try to expose.
Bulb tulips were a popular way for investors to save their welth from massive devaluation caused by the practice of clipping gold coins, combined with the special rules of the dutch banking system (free coinage) and the massive influx of precious metals from newly discovered America: gold would flow into the dutch banks, get deposited at facial value in exchange for full(er) coins - or certificates of value which end up buying bullion for minting into fresh new coins, and get shipped back for more clipping and recycling by the princes of Europe. Buying bulbs and bulb stock was one way to escape the madness, much like buying bitcoins today is one way to escape the monetary madness. You can read more here about it.
I'm really wondering if the current French government even cares about France being seen as a serious country.
As a french citizen, I can assure you that the last few years have definitely demonstrated that our politicians will squander every last shred of credibility France still has, as long as it can even potentially give them a single vote back.
I mean, seriously... the very existence of Hadopi and its millions of euros worth of budget for nought ? The Florange debacle ? The Peugeot mess ? High-profile Minister posing in marinière with kitchen implements in hands on the cover of a magazine ? Government officials contradicting each other in matter of national policies ? The Twitterweiler communication mishap ? The list goes on and on and on...
Pretty much every member of our governments of the past decades has amounted to little more than a bad clown with delusions of grandeur, much to the population's pain and shame.
It is true, as duly reported by athropologists, like theo ne I cited above. Within the same regions, the primitive farmers are more often victims of famine than their hunter-gatherer cousins living next door.
then why was agriculture even invented?
Because it allowed for planning and higher population density, in particular a much higher number of children.
how did agriculture based communities overtake hunter-gatherers in population, if there was no scarcity of food?
See the previous point. More population growth leads to morel and needed to sustain it, which is why agricultural peoples spread themselves, conquering the lands of hunter-gatherers until they had pushed them all onto least useable land.
Do you think people would spend that much energy if food was plentiful?
Surveys done by anthropologists show that both hunter-gatherers and primitive farmers spend about 20-24 hours of their week working at "producing" food, with a slight advantage in raw number of calories (2140 daily average) and much bigger advantage in terms of food diversity (upwards of 70 different plant and animal sources) going for the hunter-gatherers.
Switching to farming is not a matter of work spent (apart from the food diversity it's pretty much the same), it's a matter of being able to plan for the future and especially plan for feeding more children as well as securing food supplies in case of a catastrophe such as the Great Thawing Up of 15000 B.C.
I remember playing V-O back in 2004, for several months (as "Sacred Chao"). Back then we were already promised capships, player-owned space stations and sectors, and PVP-determined domination over the war sectors between the blue and red factions. There was some progress, at one point we could land aboard the automated frigates that would tour the galaxy, and man its turrets.
But, after all these years, there has been no more progress ? I'm underwhelmed.
Seconded. Most non-gaming wives don't play videogames solely because of some prejudice or plain fear of the unknown. When my wife started playing LoL from her own initiative, she wondered "why didn't I start playing such games earlier ?".
No male I know that has younger kids and an 'equal' marriage has time for video games.
So I'm the exception then ? Along with every married male colleague I ever had in a little under ten years of career in IT ? That or, more probably, you are just full of s_.
Slashdot Mirror
My big fear is what happens after Ellison's eventual death. Inherited riches traditionnally do not long more than one generation, and even if the island prospers quietly until then, the legacy will turn into a mess of lawsuits spread across local and remote jurisdictions.
Let's examine your claims more closely.
He can't really afford to deny operation for most 3rd party airline that services destinations his own airline does not service, for one.
Only if you assume the islanders are the only people on Earth who might want to compete. I'm reasonably sure other airlines around the area, and I mean the Pacific by that, could get another airport started if it really came to that. And let's not forget that other means of transportation do compete with airplanes in many cases - like boats.
No they're not. They do not require his personal permission to sell off their stuff and move away, contrary to actual indentured peasants. No extra paperwork involved in moving to another island - you try changing country of residence as easily...
No he has not. He owns half of the grocery stores, and that's at least a couple light-years away from "having a monopoly on their food". He does not own the farms that produce the food sold there (much of it being imported, BTW), and he needs the one grocery store he owns to keep on performing as before and keep on meeting the locals' purchasing expectations, and he needs it to do so in accordance to local and national regulations of such commerce. He's at their service in this market, and more at their disposal than the other way around.
One may say the state of North Korea has a monopoly on its inhabitants' food, and even that is not 100% - maybe it's 70 to 80% in my limited experience of it.
Only if you limit the transportation to airplanes. Agreed on the housing. We'll see how that pans out over time, and I suspect it'll go much the same way as with private ownership of housing elsewhere on tropical islands - meaning that the structures will be properly maintained but that some people will very likely end up being priced out of this market. I also suspect there'll be no homeless on the island, if there even are any to begin with.
Plenty of people are fine renting a home. In many cases this is preferable to owning real estate. I'm trying to sell off my apartment, for example, mostly because it's tying me down in an area I don't want to live in anymore and because the property values are soon to crash.
You seem very convinced that Larry Ellison has no incentive or need to listen to the tenants... but that's just not the situation here, or in any housing markets I know of. Unhappy tenants leave, and often can destroy capital value, if you try to gouge them or interfere with their way of life.
Why would there even be a need to make two seperate street grids in the first place ? The state didn't invent and impose standardization and interoperability, they happened on their own. Also, thinking of these infrastructures in term of big, national-wide grids is misguided, in many cases providing power / water only requires localized structures.
See for example the p
I don't want to live on this planet anymore. You people have turned it into a collection of zoos for humans.
Nice strawman. Enjoy your gulag of a country.
Haven't you heard, dude ? The terrorists have won... the elections.
And if anyone wonders why all the federal agencies always get bigger, more expensive and more intrusive over time, here's why: because the one who pays (the taxpayer) is denied any right to say no. It's as simple as that. Anyone can always find more and more things to tray and build and implement in pursuit of these agencies' purposes. Moreover in the case of DHS and NSA and FBI and BATF, the taxpayer is also the suspect, making any attempt at getting these agencies under control automatically become a kind of dangerous activity which should be suppressed.
The system is biased towards tyranny, all because of one simple principle of operation lying at its foundation: you are compelled to pay for it. This principle is the systematic root of its evil.
I guess through a VPN hosted in, say, Sweden.
Maybe you should, too.
If I have nothing to hide then no one has legitimacy or even moral ground to stand on and spy on me.
The proper way to find and punish criminal/terrorist activity is to first prove reasonable suspicion of crime THEN investigate by gathering incriminating evidence, and not the opposite of fishing for incriminating stuff then slap criminal intent on it hoping it'll stick.
His short(ish) novel "The blue world" can't get old, as it is mainly an intemporal replay of much of man's history.
No they don't. They're living an exciting life with ups and downs.
We humans are smart enough to convene agreements, and one almost universal such agreement is "I won't try to eat you if you don't either".
Thank you. I was born on September the 30th in 1980.
Multiverses can interact !
With the very recent forceful closing of the BitFloor BitCoin exchange, and the inavailability of bitcoin-24, another (european) exchange, there seems to be a crackdown on BitC exchanges going on.
What is needed, is a decentralised method for trading BitCs for other currencies, or else BitCoins can be made to be worthless by shutting down the current centralised, easily identified exchanges. I'd suggest Ripple but that technical solution seems to be going nowhere at the moment, alas.
Whether your money loses its value or the assets you can invest it in lose value, amounts to the same in the end: you get poorer. We're stuck between a rock (threat of inflation) and a hard place (a very real deflation and its conjoined-twin sister insolvency).
This explosion appears very similar to that of the AZF chemical plant near Toulouse in France, though (thankfully) smaller in damage and victims.
Fire and ammonium nitrate deposits... like match and dynamite.
The analogy is sounds, but not at all for the reasons you try to expose.
Bulb tulips were a popular way for investors to save their welth from massive devaluation caused by the practice of clipping gold coins, combined with the special rules of the dutch banking system (free coinage) and the massive influx of precious metals from newly discovered America: gold would flow into the dutch banks, get deposited at facial value in exchange for full(er) coins - or certificates of value which end up buying bullion for minting into fresh new coins, and get shipped back for more clipping and recycling by the princes of Europe. Buying bulbs and bulb stock was one way to escape the madness, much like buying bitcoins today is one way to escape the monetary madness. You can read more here about it.
...and which one it is, depends on the time period considered.
... it's a sticker that reads "bullshit", you slap it on the screen permanently.
Joke aside, who will debunk the dunkers ? Everything we know is false, for vaster and more elaborate definitions of "false" as science progresses.
As a french citizen, I can assure you that the last few years have definitely demonstrated that our politicians will squander every last shred of credibility France still has, as long as it can even potentially give them a single vote back.
I mean, seriously... the very existence of Hadopi and its millions of euros worth of budget for nought ? The Florange debacle ? The Peugeot mess ? High-profile Minister posing in marinière with kitchen implements in hands on the cover of a magazine ? Government officials contradicting each other in matter of national policies ? The Twitterweiler communication mishap ? The list goes on and on and on...
Pretty much every member of our governments of the past decades has amounted to little more than a bad clown with delusions of grandeur, much to the population's pain and shame.
It is true, as duly reported by athropologists, like theo ne I cited above. Within the same regions, the primitive farmers are more often victims of famine than their hunter-gatherer cousins living next door.
Because it allowed for planning and higher population density, in particular a much higher number of children.
See the previous point. More population growth leads to morel and needed to sustain it, which is why agricultural peoples spread themselves, conquering the lands of hunter-gatherers until they had pushed them all onto least useable land.
Surveys done by anthropologists show that both hunter-gatherers and primitive farmers spend about 20-24 hours of their week working at "producing" food, with a slight advantage in raw number of calories (2140 daily average) and much bigger advantage in terms of food diversity (upwards of 70 different plant and animal sources) going for the hunter-gatherers.
Switching to farming is not a matter of work spent (apart from the food diversity it's pretty much the same), it's a matter of being able to plan for the future and especially plan for feeding more children as well as securing food supplies in case of a catastrophe such as the Great Thawing Up of 15000 B.C.
I remember playing V-O back in 2004, for several months (as "Sacred Chao"). Back then we were already promised capships, player-owned space stations and sectors, and PVP-determined domination over the war sectors between the blue and red factions. There was some progress, at one point we could land aboard the automated frigates that would tour the galaxy, and man its turrets.
But, after all these years, there has been no more progress ? I'm underwhelmed.
Seconded. Most non-gaming wives don't play videogames solely because of some prejudice or plain fear of the unknown. When my wife started playing LoL from her own initiative, she wondered "why didn't I start playing such games earlier ?".
So I'm the exception then ? Along with every married male colleague I ever had in a little under ten years of career in IT ? That or, more probably, you are just full of s_.
That, and all the recent discovery in epigenetics teaches us that the exact same DNA can express itself with much variation.