We're going to need not just superchargers, but an infrastructure standard. Every car will need to charge from a Tesla supercharger or a Porsche port or a big 4-wire 220V high-voltage standard outlet (+110V, -110V, Neutral, ground) or a straight high-voltage option. The most advantageous would be a high-voltage DC option, because a 220V high-voltage AC going across a transformer to make 600V DC will need 2.75 times the amperage capacity (so a 60A 220V to supply 600V 20A safely)--thicker wiring and heavier sockets--while requiring a transformer in the car or connector itself. Rather than produce millions of heavy transformers using a lot of metal, we can produce a single transformer of the same size (or, really, 2-3 times the size, to reduce operating temperature and increase lifespan) and install it into the base station for the 600V port, leaving a rectifier in the car or even rectifying at the port.
Even then, nobody's really thought to go intermediate. The Volt has a 9.3 gallon gasoline tank powering a generator to power an all-electric drive train, rather than a gasoline combustion engine to provide driving power. It hasn't occurred to anyone to use a smaller diesel engine with higher efficiency as a generator to power the drive train, allowing for a larger battery and a sort of fast-charge option.
The Tesla Model S delivers 3.83 miles per kWh of power, while a 20kW small diesel generator running at full load produces 12.5kWh of electricity per gallon--roughly 47.87 miles per gallon at a fuel consumption of 1.6gal/hr, allowing continuous operation at around 75mph. That means even a 3 gallon diesel tank and a small generator can supply over half the full charge range of the 60kW battery--a full 150 miles--whereas the Volt has gone for a 38 mile plug-in battery that can charge from a 9.3 gallon gasoline engine to get a total 380 mile range. What's more, a diesel hybrid can self-charge while the car is parked, if desired: if the car uses a very small diesel engine and generator with a small tank, it can recharge while parked if desired, allowing the user to periodically top up.
In any case, an electric drive train does weird things. Because a sufficiently large motor is both cheap and high-output, you consistently get these enormous amounts of torque output and extremely high acceleration. Building a 0-to-60-in-3.5-with-a-half-ton-load car is trivial, and the response curve is damn flat. At the same time, large generators--diesel, coal, even wind--cost a lot less than small generators to generate the same output; the 77kWh to run 13 miles costs $6.50 plus taxes, or $8 with solar supply, versus a $38 fill-up.
With taxes, my electricity would cost $13.86 per 300 miles; and yet my per-month consumption would come to 150kWh, so even a 7kW solar array on my roof would probably come close to fully covering my usage--I'd generate about 9,800kWh/year or 800kWh per month, versus my peak summertime use of 880kWh including one window AC running 24/7 as a dehumidifier. Mind you, that's average: I'd generate less in the winter (probably 600kWh) and more in the summer; and switching to split-system heat pump and actually insulating my house (it has drafts and 3/4 inch sheathing, no insulation) would cut my electricity usage down substantially, likely to 700kWh summer, leaving me at 850kWh summer generation and just about break even consumption while powering my electric car.
You can imagine what $50/mo more in every last consumer's pocket would do to the economy.
Notice this follows my theory of wealth quite well: the demands on infrastructure go down due to less labor in the fueling of cars, as the generation of electricity to charge electric cars is incidental and, per kWh unit fuel, less than the production of gasoline and diesel to fuel cars. That reduces working hours--you can call it jobs--leaving the wages in the consumer's pocket. The consumer now has $600 more to spend each year, so we can sell him a $600 gadget every
Nooooooooooooooo! No you fucktard! Computers are important! We must teach programming and computers to first graders! Otherwise they won't magically learn critical thinking--definitely not problem solving by rote to pass their programming classes--and will become more sheeple!
We need to cram computers in every orifice big enough to take a mouse up it in every child in every school in America!
I've seen citations of books and research papers that aren't even available in online sources--sometimes not even in the Library of Congress. They also tend to be old sources, and off their nut. There's still citation of a study (which nobody can find) about honeybees requiring 8 pounds of honey to make 1 pound of wax, while increasing wax production by 600% pounds seems to reduce honey production by 20%; it's acknowledged that measuring how much honey bees require to make wax is hard, because bees constantly move and use a lot of energy maintaining hive temperature.
Would the/. community accept a story on here that announced a new malaria treatment without a link to any further details?
Yes. We do that with cancer treatments and HIV vaccines and shit. Some journalist hypes something up to an unbelievable level of bullshit. Hell, we do that with climate change science--which is filled with political maneuvering and data suppression from every direction, from the politicians trying to push a platform of the seas possibly consuming us to the oil companies buying information showing the temperature isn't even rising, right to the European Union trying to figure out why the earth has been *cooling* for the past 17 years. Then there was that time the climate scientists came out to announce that they lied to us, and global warming is really 10x worse than they've been saying--but that they downplayed the issue and manipulated the numbers because the truth was just too much for us to handle.
Are these few people going to be able monitor the journals and then update all of the Wikipedia entries?
Likely only academics are actually doing that anyway. Professionals in a field don't tend to follow the latest science of the field; we follow the latest engineering--the actual shit people are doing.
Wikipedia will gain the ability to transfer closed knowledge into an open access model, citing back to the non-accessible source, spilling the closed-off knowledge into the open and strengthening us all.
...or else they'll refuse, and instead fill with lower-quality hearsay and loads of faulty common knowledge that's made its way into textbooks.
That's a real thing. Hundreds of years ago, some idiot got it in his head that soaking in epsom salts was good for you, somehow; it eventually was said to "remove toxins", what toxins they may be never specified. Modern medical school repeats this, as many doctors have written their professional medical advice confirming the well-known effects of epsom salt baths on health in their ability to remove toxins from the body. Wikipedia can cite these texts to show that epsom salt baths have a biological cleansing effect, removing toxins from the body by drawing them out through the skin via osmotic pressure.
Too bad it's all bullshit.
A lot of studies carry information in contrary to what even professionals have put down in textbooks from their long heritage of professional knowledge. Much of that knowledge is bullshit, and much of that is known bullshit in the scientific field; too bad we can't access that information readily.
Rather than bringing that information into open access, people want to avoid soiling their hands by contact with a name or ideal they dislike. These are the same people who would let millions of peasants starve because it goes against some inborn moral position of theirs to feed them, for example because the available food is pork and pork is unclean.
It's all above-board. The IRS rules actually say something about "some of" a list of 20 or so rules, so the definition is left flexible. It's another reasonable person thing. "We know it when we see it, or when you've cheated on your taxes or pissed off the Commissioner."
Federal contractors working for the IRS are in fact statutory employees, of the agency which hires them out. There's no such thing as an independent contractor working for the IRS, and the employees' employer is subject to all the normal rules, including paying 1/2 of FICA/Medicare taxes, withholding the other 1/2, submitting, etc, and all the normal rules regarding wages, hours, workers' comp, etc.
You raise an interesting point which hadn't occurred to me.
When I was a contractor, we subcontracted at times, frequently to independent contractors. Some of my coworkers were, in fact, 1099 independent contractors paid by the contracting agency contracting to the government; we paid them no benefits and didn't do their taxes. We did sponsor them for clearance, maintain their clearance, dictate what they must wear, where they must work, and sometimes even that they must be at their desk from 7-9am until 4-6pm, for 8 hours, with a mandatory 30-minute lunch (if you worked all day without a break, that's your fault; you work 8.5 hours and get paid for 8), using an agency-issued laptop or desktop.
That is, of course, once-removed from the situation I described. I didn't differentiate between contractors as a contracting agency and the employees thereof, and contractors as an individual functioning as his own business--essentially a contracting agency with one contractor.
That makes sense; but, if we want to be all lawyery about it:
For example, if a law firm hires an attorney, it is likely that it will present the attorney's work as its own and would have the right to control or direct that work. This would indicate an employer-employee relationship.
Uber doesn't hire drivers and present their work as its own; Uber presents itself as a firm which connects independent drivers to ride seekers. Its entire marketing position is that anyone--you, me, Donald Trump--can be an Uber driver RIGHT NOW by getting the app and accepting hails. Before this whole "Are Uber drivers employees or contractors?" thing, the biggest information campaign against Uber was "Are Uber drivers safe and sufficiently insured, being as they're just random jackasses driving cars and not professional cab drivers hired by a cab company?"
It seems to me that this line of argument doesn't support Uber drivers as employees, and more presents Uber as something akin to Ashley Madison on BDSM: it doesn't sell you whores; it just matches bondage people up based on linking whoever wants to be on top with whoever wants to be on the bottom, and charges a small fee. Uber's letting drivers and passengers find each other, and taking a cut of their services as a finder's fee.
Now, of course, lots of finders have rules and regulations about the clientel they deal with and the products they'll move. Hell, even social clubs specify a field of interest and a code of decorum: sports or fine wines, high-brow or redneck. No frilly-pants liberals here. It seems reasonable to me that Uber could require its drivers to have their cars in proper working order, clean, and so forth; and to not hit on their customers; and to charge the fee schedule Uber is currently charging.
So here we stand in this muddle of people shouting about who is and is not a contractor.
No, it isn't. A lot of people see things differently than you do, myself and multiple judges in California included.
Wrong.
Everyone sees Uber drivers are contracting their services: they're external to the organization, seeing bids for work and taking them. Uber says, "Work available, $2/mile," and they take the bid or pass on it.
The dispute is over whether they're employees or contractors. California judges only work on legal definitions IN CALIFORNIA, which differ from legal definitions IN NEBRASKA, or even Federal definitions: the "California Judges" argument suggests these people are contractors in California, but not in Vermont, which then means Contractor is an imaginary term with no meaning.
Irrelevant. This is about legal definitions, not societal ones.
Ah, the fallback of the bureaucrat who must justify his existence.
Justice is not meted out by popular opinion.
Well in Arizona it was legal in the 90s for a man to have homosexual sexual contact with a 13-year-old boy, but the heterosexual age of consent was 17. Arizona is a weird state; they've since changed those laws.
It seems imprisoning a man for buttfucking a middle school boy is "justice" in Maryland, but is utterly *wrong* in Arizona. Obviously "right" an "Wrong" are legal constructs, not societal ones.
Oh wait, no. No, justice doesn't have to do with legal bureaucracy; it's another one of those meaningless words that nobody can agree on the definition for, but that everyone uses to suit their argument.
Why do you write like you're the final arbiter of these things?
Because I'm right and other people are wrong. I've explained this quite clearly, and I've done it repeatedly, and I've cited great historical philosophers like George Orwell, and I've illustrated the point directly.
Do you have any idea why people see things differently from you?
Political reasons. You see how some people are arguing purely legal basis, others are talking about labor rights, and others are bantering about what makes a contractor a contractor--all with different points of view? Some of them are taking their positions out of convenience--especially the argument that what the *law* defines as a contractor *is* what a contractor is--because that gives them a way to cite some outside definition that suits their purpose. Others are just directly claiming specific facts, dictating themselves as "Final Arbiter" of what a contractor *is*.
In all cases, they have a political agenda--they have an ideal on how the situation should resolve and, specifically, on whether or not Uber drivers should be called contractors or employees, and thus if they should have things like benefits and W2 tax services--and they make their argument to support that. The definition of "contractor" is made flexible to suit this.
Do you have any idea how you come across to people who disagree with you?
Inconvenient, to the sharp, calculating ones.
Most people are base and live in a delusion: they have an agenda, and wrap it in a belief that what they're doing is righteous, just, philanthropic, and correct. Even criminals who murder police will claim what they were doing wasn't wrong--to themselves!--because they honestly believe they didn't do anything bad. Criminals will rob stores because society is so damn *bad* to them, they're poor and hungry and everyone around them is rich as fuck, and honestly believe they're taking what's rightfully theirs.
That being the case, most people honestly believe just about everything they say; so of course anyone who disagrees with you is a moron.
If you can't figure these things out, your attempts to prove yourself right are always going to fail.
Oh I'm aware; but what makes you think I'm trying to persuade? Logic and facts an
You're playing the exact same semantic games that the judge in this case found Uber to be playing. We could just as easily say this is an employer-employee relationship in which the employer requires its employees bid to get paid.
So we come back around to the primary point: we have this word, "Contractor", which is ill-defined. It's legally defined by the IRS, and legally defined by various states; to different legal entities, it has different meanings; and we are arguing as lay-people about its meaning, which we take dozens of views on, producing an immense variation of meanings behind the word "Contractor".
It is plain to see that Uber drivers are contracting their services: they aren't employees, they don't have an employment obligation, they aren't supposed to come to work at particular times, they aren't under the direction of management; they simply select available work and perform it. This is the same as the Amazon Mechanical Turk, which nobody has argued is using employees to carry out tasks; indeed, most people would think it ludicrous to call someone who takes a bid established at a fixed rate per unit work an "employee" of Amazon's Mechanical Turk or of the person who put in the work order.
So now we're at a point where we have people who are contracting, but they're not *really* contracting, wink wink, nudge nudge. and all that. We have arguments over what a contractor *is*, and we have people falling back to legal positions, falling back to moral positions, and falling back to their own ever-changing "common sense" that produces different definitions based on the person and the challenge put to them.
We're looking at dishonest, meaningless political banter.
Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Federal contractors working for the IRS, who ostensibly defines what a contractor is, meet your definition of "...are really employees."
You can't possibly argue that Uber drivers aren't contracting their services. They take bids for work; they're not employed by the company to go out as service providers, but rather take bids for services requested from the company by its clients. They can opt when to drive for Uber, and can decide to drive only where and when convenient for them, and only when the rates are sufficiently high or the job looks good (pick up cute girl at bar, take back home, jackpot!!!).
Your only argument is a bureaucratic argument: can you define "contractor" in some way that doesn't rely on if a person is taking bids for short contract work, but rather relies on some nebulous and flexible ideas of your own which may not exactly match up with any other person's ideas of what a contractor is? The first step, of course, is getting away from this idea that "contract work" means anything, and arguing that a person may take contract work but *technically* be a sort of "employee" even though he's really an obvious contractor.
It's a great way to mislead an argument for the purposes of your political agenda.
Hey, if contractors want to charge me 10% more than I want to pay, I won't hire them. I'll hire their competitors.
Most contractors work on work hours for pay; Uber contractors work on pay for work hours. Today Uber rates are higher? Today I'll work. They're low today? Not worth my time.
It's not only a contracting job; it's an extremely short-term contracting job with an unusual amount of contractor flexibility. How many employees can decide to only come to work when the pay is high enough, and only when they feel like showing up?
Advocating a position that is based on who pays you, without regard to reason or truth or the benefit to mankind, without so much as a notice of your bias, causes massive amounts of harm to the public by sustaining inefficient practices.
Inefficient practices like organic farming?
Also I'd take money to advocate a position I believed from the start anyway.
Breakfast cereal, sugar-coated or not, is a sugar bomb. Sugar-free Cheerios are sugar. Raw oatmeal and granola are almost pure sugar. When that shit hits your saliva, it starts going through the a-amylase reaction, breaking down long-chain starches into short-chain starches. The a-amylase breaks, say, 50-sugar-chain starches down into chains of 2-3 sugars (e.g. maltose). y-amylase in your stomach, operating at a pH of 3.0, breaks sugars off the ends of these, providing GLUCOSE among other monosaccharides.
It's already started conversion to sugar before it's hit your stomach. It's turned into straight sugar by the time it's out of your stomach.
Did you think cornflakes weren't sugar? The only difference between cornflakes and frosted flakes, aside from the extra calories per flake due to the sugar covering, is the taste.
It was stated that a portfolio of diversified, long-term investments was a reliable income. That suggests STRATEGY: DIVERSIFY PORTFOLIO WITH LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS.
Whether you want to interpret it as a different way or not is a matter of politics: you say something your audience will interpret in one way:
You are correct that a million will net about $60k. That's in a diversified portfolio of long-term investments, a fairly reliable income. Actually $600K per ten years is reliable - year to years gains will fluctuate and that's okay - your spending doesn't have to fluctuate to match each year.
Audience: "I should buy a set of diversified investments and keep them so they make money. I've been told that's a good strategy."
Speaker: "What? That was a bad idea? Oh, I uh, I didn't *say* it was a *air quotes* strategy *air quotes* per-se... you know, I don't recall using the word...."
Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Again:
That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
Speaker suggested a strategy. Speaker and others might argue he did no such thing, because it wasn't stated outright; and anyone with at least the better part of half a brain will recognize the wiles of human communication and the political manipulation in statements made to suggest things while giving a person the simultaneous ability to claim credit for the suggestion if it works out or to disclaim responsibility when it doesn't.
It's a common strategic use of language: you say something in such a way as to be able to show it was your idea, but also to show that what you're suggesting isn't what you *meant* because it can be interpreted in a different way. If it works out, you go with the first; if not, you quickly jump to the second.
I am disinclined to let people get away with crap like "you should pray, it will do a lot of good" followed up later with "I didn't say there was any sort of deity listening."
.g. the answer to "WHEN" doesn't have to be an explanation of raymorris' statement. It is supposed to be a time , as you might have studied in 3rd standard, primary school if you went to one.
When did the Oval Office move here from Alpha Centauri 3?
The point I have made, repeatedly, which you've been artfully dodging with all the grace of a drunken pig, is that it's never, NEVER, been an investment strategy. I've said that diversification is a RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, and that "long-term investments" are a bullshit term with no real strategic meaning beyond "Duhhrrrr duhhrrrr I don't know how r stoks working, so I'll just buy shit and hold onto it uhn uhn!" Giving *anyone* the advice to just make up a "diversified portfolio of long-term investments" without an investment strategy--without a way to analyze when to buy in and exit the market, thus making diversification a secondary consideration (a risk consideration, not an investment consideration) and "long-term investments" the stupidest thing you can say (because you get in when it's the right time, and get out when it's the right time)--has been bad advice and patently ludicrous since investing in markets (grain, stocks, etc.) became physically possible.
Diversification is the result of managing risk, not investments. It's managing the risk *of* investments, but it's not a strategy to say, "Well, if I want to make money, I need to have diverse investments"; it's a strategy to say, "Well, if I want to not take the brunt of bad positions, but also not take full advantage of the good ones, I should pick multiple positions I think are good, in the hopes that I'm right about enough of them that I'll make an overall gain more consistently, even though it'll be smaller."
That leaves the question: "How should I invest my money?" Stocks, bonds, options, commodities? Technical analysis, fundamentals, markets? Day trading, swing trading, or trend trading? Big movers, dividend stocks, low-volatility? That's how you construct a strategy. How are you going to buy in, what type of movement are you targeting, and what are your parameters? Are you doing trend trading on technical analysis, restricting your selections to securities with good fundamentals and high dividend yields in market sectors with good performance? Are you doing purely-technical day trading? Swing trading by technical analysis, but only on securities with good fundamentals or with historically broad, stable swings?
You'll notice the strategic consideration determines what securities you purchase and how long you hold them, while the risk consideration determines how many securities you hold. Your multiple holdings may not even be diverse: I was making better than 1% per day for a couple weeks in *only* basic materials, between MHR and GPL, among others, using swing trading with technical analysis. The basic materials market was outperforming the S&P, which is a common market baseline: you divide a sector index (like Basic Materials or Financials) by the S&P500 index to show relative percentage movement. If the sector is growing faster than the S&P, it's a good sector to invest in; if it's growing slower, it's not. If Basic Materials is making a higher percentage gain than the S&P, while Financials is making a lower percentage gain than the S&P, it means money is leaving Financials and going to Basic Materials: people are selling Goldman Sachs and buying Magnum Hunter Resources. That means less buying interest in Financials and more in BM, which means buying BM and holding it while the money flows in will get you some gain--then you sell back out.
Buying Financials as a hedge to "diversify" my portfolio would be a bad buy in that situation, as I'm highly likely to lose money in Financials and highly likely to make money in Basic Materials. Being heavily invested in Basic Materials, on the other hand, will tend to lose me money when the Basic Materials market turns down, an
The first thing you can do is stop using the cringe inducing term "maker" and trying to make it into a way of life instead of something you just do.
How about words like "Democratize"?
The words democracy, socialism, freedom,
patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different
meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a
word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the
attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally
felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it:
consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a
democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it
were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a
consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own
private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something
quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The
Soviet Press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed
to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other
words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly,
are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary bourgeois,
equality.
The term "value" in macroeconomics suffers from this as well (it's used simultaneously with multiple, non-equivalent definitions, and thus most textbook economics and great economic papers--Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" comes to mind--are an exercise in bullshit via the fallacy of equivocation). The term "wealth" was easier to salvage; but I had to fall back on "buying power", "production", and so forth in the end, and intentionally define "wealth" as a meaningless and indeterminate concept.
Circular reasoning is when the proposition being claimed is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise. Begging the question occurs when a conclusion is made on an assumption.
Begging the question happens when you claim Y because X, while assuming X. This can often be a false premise, for example, that the ground is wet, thus it rained recently--we know rain makes the ground wet; but can't other things make the ground wet?
Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning; but we usually only claim circular reasoning directly when you claim Y because X, while claiming X because Y. That's sometimes valid: a battery cell will produce a low voltage when it's not holding a charge (drained or damaged), and a low-voltage off a battery cell indicates it's not holding a charge; claiming that it's simply discharged or that it's damaged, however, is circular reasoning, false premise, etc.
Nuances aside, even I can't keep this shit straight.
0 . "In what manner do you plan to take up their cause?"
Meaningless question.
1. "Which my "original post" exactly?"
I quoted the original context that started this entire thread in the last message, and you're still asking which.
2. "exactly WHEN stock market became completely a bad idea for a "diversified portfolio of long-term investments" ?"
The statement, "That's in a diversified portfolio of long-term investments, a fairly reliable income," is just fluff. It has no meaning, and implies bad advice. IMPLIES. It's a statement made without sufficient context to suggest, at all, that stock market investment requires a strategy; the completely meaningless term "long-term investments" as well implies buy-and-hold strategy, suggesting that investments just magically grow over time, and so you should just buy into a fund and leave your money there to grow--which is bad advice.
You don't invest on term. You don't look at a stock and say, "This is a good stock. I'm going to buy this and hold onto it for years and years. It's going to be a long-term investment." That's not a thing you do unless you're stupid. Similarly, "I'm holding a bunch of different stocks" is a much different statement than "I'm only holding stocks which I believe are going to make gains": diversification of a portfolio is a risk strategy--it protects you in case you're WRONG about any particular investment--and not an investment strategy.
The statement,
You are correct that a million will net about $60k. That's in a diversified portfolio of long-term investments, a fairly reliable income. Actually $600K per ten years is reliable - year to years gains will fluctuate and that's okay - your spending doesn't have to fluctuate to match each year.
Says to close your eyes, shove your money in a bunch of holes that look good, and leave it there "because the market grows and a diversified portfolio always makes money". That's not a strategy; it's the same thing as taking your money to the casino and betting on random horses, roulette positions, slots, and crap shoots. You want to stay away from investments you're not sufficiently certain of and put your money in investments you've built enough knowledge about to reasonably predict gains, and pull your money out when you're no longer certain of gains; if that means holding 2 or 3 different securities, or even exactly one, instead of 5 or 10 or 30 at once, it's still the best strategy. It absolutely *will* mean buying and selling on the *market's* schedule, not yours; you don't get to make "long-term investments" if you're actually trying to not lose your money.
Slashdot Mirror
Electric cars are a strange market.
We're going to need not just superchargers, but an infrastructure standard. Every car will need to charge from a Tesla supercharger or a Porsche port or a big 4-wire 220V high-voltage standard outlet (+110V, -110V, Neutral, ground) or a straight high-voltage option. The most advantageous would be a high-voltage DC option, because a 220V high-voltage AC going across a transformer to make 600V DC will need 2.75 times the amperage capacity (so a 60A 220V to supply 600V 20A safely)--thicker wiring and heavier sockets--while requiring a transformer in the car or connector itself. Rather than produce millions of heavy transformers using a lot of metal, we can produce a single transformer of the same size (or, really, 2-3 times the size, to reduce operating temperature and increase lifespan) and install it into the base station for the 600V port, leaving a rectifier in the car or even rectifying at the port.
Even then, nobody's really thought to go intermediate. The Volt has a 9.3 gallon gasoline tank powering a generator to power an all-electric drive train, rather than a gasoline combustion engine to provide driving power. It hasn't occurred to anyone to use a smaller diesel engine with higher efficiency as a generator to power the drive train, allowing for a larger battery and a sort of fast-charge option.
The Tesla Model S delivers 3.83 miles per kWh of power, while a 20kW small diesel generator running at full load produces 12.5kWh of electricity per gallon--roughly 47.87 miles per gallon at a fuel consumption of 1.6gal/hr, allowing continuous operation at around 75mph. That means even a 3 gallon diesel tank and a small generator can supply over half the full charge range of the 60kW battery--a full 150 miles--whereas the Volt has gone for a 38 mile plug-in battery that can charge from a 9.3 gallon gasoline engine to get a total 380 mile range. What's more, a diesel hybrid can self-charge while the car is parked, if desired: if the car uses a very small diesel engine and generator with a small tank, it can recharge while parked if desired, allowing the user to periodically top up.
In any case, an electric drive train does weird things. Because a sufficiently large motor is both cheap and high-output, you consistently get these enormous amounts of torque output and extremely high acceleration. Building a 0-to-60-in-3.5-with-a-half-ton-load car is trivial, and the response curve is damn flat. At the same time, large generators--diesel, coal, even wind--cost a lot less than small generators to generate the same output; the 77kWh to run 13 miles costs $6.50 plus taxes, or $8 with solar supply, versus a $38 fill-up.
With taxes, my electricity would cost $13.86 per 300 miles; and yet my per-month consumption would come to 150kWh, so even a 7kW solar array on my roof would probably come close to fully covering my usage--I'd generate about 9,800kWh/year or 800kWh per month, versus my peak summertime use of 880kWh including one window AC running 24/7 as a dehumidifier. Mind you, that's average: I'd generate less in the winter (probably 600kWh) and more in the summer; and switching to split-system heat pump and actually insulating my house (it has drafts and 3/4 inch sheathing, no insulation) would cut my electricity usage down substantially, likely to 700kWh summer, leaving me at 850kWh summer generation and just about break even consumption while powering my electric car.
You can imagine what $50/mo more in every last consumer's pocket would do to the economy.
Notice this follows my theory of wealth quite well: the demands on infrastructure go down due to less labor in the fueling of cars, as the generation of electricity to charge electric cars is incidental and, per kWh unit fuel, less than the production of gasoline and diesel to fuel cars. That reduces working hours--you can call it jobs--leaving the wages in the consumer's pocket. The consumer now has $600 more to spend each year, so we can sell him a $600 gadget every
Nooooooooooooooo! No you fucktard! Computers are important! We must teach programming and computers to first graders! Otherwise they won't magically learn critical thinking--definitely not problem solving by rote to pass their programming classes--and will become more sheeple!
We need to cram computers in every orifice big enough to take a mouse up it in every child in every school in America!
I've seen citations of books and research papers that aren't even available in online sources--sometimes not even in the Library of Congress. They also tend to be old sources, and off their nut. There's still citation of a study (which nobody can find) about honeybees requiring 8 pounds of honey to make 1 pound of wax, while increasing wax production by 600% pounds seems to reduce honey production by 20%; it's acknowledged that measuring how much honey bees require to make wax is hard, because bees constantly move and use a lot of energy maintaining hive temperature.
Would the /. community accept a story on here that announced a new malaria treatment without a link to any further details?
Yes. We do that with cancer treatments and HIV vaccines and shit. Some journalist hypes something up to an unbelievable level of bullshit. Hell, we do that with climate change science--which is filled with political maneuvering and data suppression from every direction, from the politicians trying to push a platform of the seas possibly consuming us to the oil companies buying information showing the temperature isn't even rising, right to the European Union trying to figure out why the earth has been *cooling* for the past 17 years. Then there was that time the climate scientists came out to announce that they lied to us, and global warming is really 10x worse than they've been saying--but that they downplayed the issue and manipulated the numbers because the truth was just too much for us to handle.
Are these few people going to be able monitor the journals and then update all of the Wikipedia entries?
Likely only academics are actually doing that anyway. Professionals in a field don't tend to follow the latest science of the field; we follow the latest engineering--the actual shit people are doing.
Wikipedia will gain the ability to transfer closed knowledge into an open access model, citing back to the non-accessible source, spilling the closed-off knowledge into the open and strengthening us all.
That's a real thing. Hundreds of years ago, some idiot got it in his head that soaking in epsom salts was good for you, somehow; it eventually was said to "remove toxins", what toxins they may be never specified. Modern medical school repeats this, as many doctors have written their professional medical advice confirming the well-known effects of epsom salt baths on health in their ability to remove toxins from the body. Wikipedia can cite these texts to show that epsom salt baths have a biological cleansing effect, removing toxins from the body by drawing them out through the skin via osmotic pressure.
Too bad it's all bullshit.
A lot of studies carry information in contrary to what even professionals have put down in textbooks from their long heritage of professional knowledge. Much of that knowledge is bullshit, and much of that is known bullshit in the scientific field; too bad we can't access that information readily.
Rather than bringing that information into open access, people want to avoid soiling their hands by contact with a name or ideal they dislike. These are the same people who would let millions of peasants starve because it goes against some inborn moral position of theirs to feed them, for example because the available food is pork and pork is unclean.
It's all above-board. The IRS rules actually say something about "some of" a list of 20 or so rules, so the definition is left flexible. It's another reasonable person thing. "We know it when we see it, or when you've cheated on your taxes or pissed off the Commissioner."
Federal contractors working for the IRS are in fact statutory employees, of the agency which hires them out. There's no such thing as an independent contractor working for the IRS, and the employees' employer is subject to all the normal rules, including paying 1/2 of FICA/Medicare taxes, withholding the other 1/2, submitting, etc, and all the normal rules regarding wages, hours, workers' comp, etc.
You raise an interesting point which hadn't occurred to me.
When I was a contractor, we subcontracted at times, frequently to independent contractors. Some of my coworkers were, in fact, 1099 independent contractors paid by the contracting agency contracting to the government; we paid them no benefits and didn't do their taxes. We did sponsor them for clearance, maintain their clearance, dictate what they must wear, where they must work, and sometimes even that they must be at their desk from 7-9am until 4-6pm, for 8 hours, with a mandatory 30-minute lunch (if you worked all day without a break, that's your fault; you work 8.5 hours and get paid for 8), using an agency-issued laptop or desktop.
That is, of course, once-removed from the situation I described. I didn't differentiate between contractors as a contracting agency and the employees thereof, and contractors as an individual functioning as his own business--essentially a contracting agency with one contractor.
That makes sense; but, if we want to be all lawyery about it:
For example, if a law firm hires an attorney, it is likely that it will present the attorney's work as its own and would have the right to control or direct that work. This would indicate an employer-employee relationship.
Uber doesn't hire drivers and present their work as its own; Uber presents itself as a firm which connects independent drivers to ride seekers. Its entire marketing position is that anyone--you, me, Donald Trump--can be an Uber driver RIGHT NOW by getting the app and accepting hails. Before this whole "Are Uber drivers employees or contractors?" thing, the biggest information campaign against Uber was "Are Uber drivers safe and sufficiently insured, being as they're just random jackasses driving cars and not professional cab drivers hired by a cab company?"
It seems to me that this line of argument doesn't support Uber drivers as employees, and more presents Uber as something akin to Ashley Madison on BDSM: it doesn't sell you whores; it just matches bondage people up based on linking whoever wants to be on top with whoever wants to be on the bottom, and charges a small fee. Uber's letting drivers and passengers find each other, and taking a cut of their services as a finder's fee.
Now, of course, lots of finders have rules and regulations about the clientel they deal with and the products they'll move. Hell, even social clubs specify a field of interest and a code of decorum: sports or fine wines, high-brow or redneck. No frilly-pants liberals here. It seems reasonable to me that Uber could require its drivers to have their cars in proper working order, clean, and so forth; and to not hit on their customers; and to charge the fee schedule Uber is currently charging.
So here we stand in this muddle of people shouting about who is and is not a contractor.
No, it isn't. A lot of people see things differently than you do, myself and multiple judges in California included.
Wrong.
Everyone sees Uber drivers are contracting their services: they're external to the organization, seeing bids for work and taking them. Uber says, "Work available, $2/mile," and they take the bid or pass on it.
The dispute is over whether they're employees or contractors. California judges only work on legal definitions IN CALIFORNIA, which differ from legal definitions IN NEBRASKA, or even Federal definitions: the "California Judges" argument suggests these people are contractors in California, but not in Vermont, which then means Contractor is an imaginary term with no meaning.
Irrelevant. This is about legal definitions, not societal ones.
Ah, the fallback of the bureaucrat who must justify his existence.
Justice is not meted out by popular opinion.
Well in Arizona it was legal in the 90s for a man to have homosexual sexual contact with a 13-year-old boy, but the heterosexual age of consent was 17. Arizona is a weird state; they've since changed those laws.
It seems imprisoning a man for buttfucking a middle school boy is "justice" in Maryland, but is utterly *wrong* in Arizona. Obviously "right" an "Wrong" are legal constructs, not societal ones.
Oh wait, no. No, justice doesn't have to do with legal bureaucracy; it's another one of those meaningless words that nobody can agree on the definition for, but that everyone uses to suit their argument.
Why do you write like you're the final arbiter of these things?
Because I'm right and other people are wrong. I've explained this quite clearly, and I've done it repeatedly, and I've cited great historical philosophers like George Orwell, and I've illustrated the point directly.
Do you have any idea why people see things differently from you?
Political reasons. You see how some people are arguing purely legal basis, others are talking about labor rights, and others are bantering about what makes a contractor a contractor--all with different points of view? Some of them are taking their positions out of convenience--especially the argument that what the *law* defines as a contractor *is* what a contractor is--because that gives them a way to cite some outside definition that suits their purpose. Others are just directly claiming specific facts, dictating themselves as "Final Arbiter" of what a contractor *is*.
In all cases, they have a political agenda--they have an ideal on how the situation should resolve and, specifically, on whether or not Uber drivers should be called contractors or employees, and thus if they should have things like benefits and W2 tax services--and they make their argument to support that. The definition of "contractor" is made flexible to suit this.
Do you have any idea how you come across to people who disagree with you?
Inconvenient, to the sharp, calculating ones.
Most people are base and live in a delusion: they have an agenda, and wrap it in a belief that what they're doing is righteous, just, philanthropic, and correct. Even criminals who murder police will claim what they were doing wasn't wrong--to themselves!--because they honestly believe they didn't do anything bad. Criminals will rob stores because society is so damn *bad* to them, they're poor and hungry and everyone around them is rich as fuck, and honestly believe they're taking what's rightfully theirs.
That being the case, most people honestly believe just about everything they say; so of course anyone who disagrees with you is a moron.
If you can't figure these things out, your attempts to prove yourself right are always going to fail.
Oh I'm aware; but what makes you think I'm trying to persuade? Logic and facts an
You're playing the exact same semantic games that the judge in this case found Uber to be playing. We could just as easily say this is an employer-employee relationship in which the employer requires its employees bid to get paid.
So we come back around to the primary point: we have this word, "Contractor", which is ill-defined. It's legally defined by the IRS, and legally defined by various states; to different legal entities, it has different meanings; and we are arguing as lay-people about its meaning, which we take dozens of views on, producing an immense variation of meanings behind the word "Contractor".
It is plain to see that Uber drivers are contracting their services: they aren't employees, they don't have an employment obligation, they aren't supposed to come to work at particular times, they aren't under the direction of management; they simply select available work and perform it. This is the same as the Amazon Mechanical Turk, which nobody has argued is using employees to carry out tasks; indeed, most people would think it ludicrous to call someone who takes a bid established at a fixed rate per unit work an "employee" of Amazon's Mechanical Turk or of the person who put in the work order.
So now we're at a point where we have people who are contracting, but they're not *really* contracting, wink wink, nudge nudge. and all that. We have arguments over what a contractor *is*, and we have people falling back to legal positions, falling back to moral positions, and falling back to their own ever-changing "common sense" that produces different definitions based on the person and the challenge put to them.
We're looking at dishonest, meaningless political banter.
You mean someone who doesn't want to be a taxi driver because being an Uber driver is better for labor?
You mean their opening bid is the most generous term they'll accept?
Doesn't look like anything that would help labor.
Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Federal contractors working for the IRS, who ostensibly defines what a contractor is, meet your definition of "...are really employees."
You can't possibly argue that Uber drivers aren't contracting their services. They take bids for work; they're not employed by the company to go out as service providers, but rather take bids for services requested from the company by its clients. They can opt when to drive for Uber, and can decide to drive only where and when convenient for them, and only when the rates are sufficiently high or the job looks good (pick up cute girl at bar, take back home, jackpot!!!).
Your only argument is a bureaucratic argument: can you define "contractor" in some way that doesn't rely on if a person is taking bids for short contract work, but rather relies on some nebulous and flexible ideas of your own which may not exactly match up with any other person's ideas of what a contractor is? The first step, of course, is getting away from this idea that "contract work" means anything, and arguing that a person may take contract work but *technically* be a sort of "employee" even though he's really an obvious contractor.
It's a great way to mislead an argument for the purposes of your political agenda.
Hey, if contractors want to charge me 10% more than I want to pay, I won't hire them. I'll hire their competitors.
Most contractors work on work hours for pay; Uber contractors work on pay for work hours. Today Uber rates are higher? Today I'll work. They're low today? Not worth my time.
It's not only a contracting job; it's an extremely short-term contracting job with an unusual amount of contractor flexibility. How many employees can decide to only come to work when the pay is high enough, and only when they feel like showing up?
Advocating a position that is based on who pays you, without regard to reason or truth or the benefit to mankind, without so much as a notice of your bias, causes massive amounts of harm to the public by sustaining inefficient practices.
Inefficient practices like organic farming?
Also I'd take money to advocate a position I believed from the start anyway.
It's not misleading to say eggs are good for you.
Science isn't sure about trans-fats.
Breakfast cereal, sugar-coated or not, is a sugar bomb. Sugar-free Cheerios are sugar. Raw oatmeal and granola are almost pure sugar. When that shit hits your saliva, it starts going through the a-amylase reaction, breaking down long-chain starches into short-chain starches. The a-amylase breaks, say, 50-sugar-chain starches down into chains of 2-3 sugars (e.g. maltose). y-amylase in your stomach, operating at a pH of 3.0, breaks sugars off the ends of these, providing GLUCOSE among other monosaccharides.
It's already started conversion to sugar before it's hit your stomach. It's turned into straight sugar by the time it's out of your stomach.
Did you think cornflakes weren't sugar? The only difference between cornflakes and frosted flakes, aside from the extra calories per flake due to the sugar covering, is the taste.
It was stated that a portfolio of diversified, long-term investments was a reliable income. That suggests STRATEGY: DIVERSIFY PORTFOLIO WITH LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS.
Whether you want to interpret it as a different way or not is a matter of politics: you say something your audience will interpret in one way:
You are correct that a million will net about $60k. That's in a diversified portfolio of long-term investments, a fairly reliable income. Actually $600K per ten years is reliable - year to years gains will fluctuate and that's okay - your spending doesn't have to fluctuate to match each year.
Audience: "I should buy a set of diversified investments and keep them so they make money. I've been told that's a good strategy."
Speaker: "What? That was a bad idea? Oh, I uh, I didn't *say* it was a *air quotes* strategy *air quotes* per-se... you know, I don't recall using the word...."
Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Again:
That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
Speaker suggested a strategy. Speaker and others might argue he did no such thing, because it wasn't stated outright; and anyone with at least the better part of half a brain will recognize the wiles of human communication and the political manipulation in statements made to suggest things while giving a person the simultaneous ability to claim credit for the suggestion if it works out or to disclaim responsibility when it doesn't.
It's a common strategic use of language: you say something in such a way as to be able to show it was your idea, but also to show that what you're suggesting isn't what you *meant* because it can be interpreted in a different way. If it works out, you go with the first; if not, you quickly jump to the second.
I am disinclined to let people get away with crap like "you should pray, it will do a lot of good" followed up later with "I didn't say there was any sort of deity listening."
.g. the answer to "WHEN" doesn't have to be an explanation of raymorris' statement. It is supposed to be a time , as you might have studied in 3rd standard, primary school if you went to one.
When did the Oval Office move here from Alpha Centauri 3?
The point I have made, repeatedly, which you've been artfully dodging with all the grace of a drunken pig, is that it's never, NEVER, been an investment strategy. I've said that diversification is a RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, and that "long-term investments" are a bullshit term with no real strategic meaning beyond "Duhhrrrr duhhrrrr I don't know how r stoks working, so I'll just buy shit and hold onto it uhn uhn!" Giving *anyone* the advice to just make up a "diversified portfolio of long-term investments" without an investment strategy--without a way to analyze when to buy in and exit the market, thus making diversification a secondary consideration (a risk consideration, not an investment consideration) and "long-term investments" the stupidest thing you can say (because you get in when it's the right time, and get out when it's the right time)--has been bad advice and patently ludicrous since investing in markets (grain, stocks, etc.) became physically possible.
Diversification is the result of managing risk, not investments. It's managing the risk *of* investments, but it's not a strategy to say, "Well, if I want to make money, I need to have diverse investments"; it's a strategy to say, "Well, if I want to not take the brunt of bad positions, but also not take full advantage of the good ones, I should pick multiple positions I think are good, in the hopes that I'm right about enough of them that I'll make an overall gain more consistently, even though it'll be smaller."
That leaves the question: "How should I invest my money?" Stocks, bonds, options, commodities? Technical analysis, fundamentals, markets? Day trading, swing trading, or trend trading? Big movers, dividend stocks, low-volatility? That's how you construct a strategy. How are you going to buy in, what type of movement are you targeting, and what are your parameters? Are you doing trend trading on technical analysis, restricting your selections to securities with good fundamentals and high dividend yields in market sectors with good performance? Are you doing purely-technical day trading? Swing trading by technical analysis, but only on securities with good fundamentals or with historically broad, stable swings?
You'll notice the strategic consideration determines what securities you purchase and how long you hold them, while the risk consideration determines how many securities you hold. Your multiple holdings may not even be diverse: I was making better than 1% per day for a couple weeks in *only* basic materials, between MHR and GPL, among others, using swing trading with technical analysis. The basic materials market was outperforming the S&P, which is a common market baseline: you divide a sector index (like Basic Materials or Financials) by the S&P500 index to show relative percentage movement. If the sector is growing faster than the S&P, it's a good sector to invest in; if it's growing slower, it's not. If Basic Materials is making a higher percentage gain than the S&P, while Financials is making a lower percentage gain than the S&P, it means money is leaving Financials and going to Basic Materials: people are selling Goldman Sachs and buying Magnum Hunter Resources. That means less buying interest in Financials and more in BM, which means buying BM and holding it while the money flows in will get you some gain--then you sell back out.
Buying Financials as a hedge to "diversify" my portfolio would be a bad buy in that situation, as I'm highly likely to lose money in Financials and highly likely to make money in Basic Materials. Being heavily invested in Basic Materials, on the other hand, will tend to lose me money when the Basic Materials market turns down, an
The first thing you can do is stop using the cringe inducing term "maker" and trying to make it into a way of life instead of something you just do.
How about words like "Democratize"?
The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet Press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary bourgeois, equality.
The term "value" in macroeconomics suffers from this as well (it's used simultaneously with multiple, non-equivalent definitions, and thus most textbook economics and great economic papers--Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" comes to mind--are an exercise in bullshit via the fallacy of equivocation). The term "wealth" was easier to salvage; but I had to fall back on "buying power", "production", and so forth in the end, and intentionally define "wealth" as a meaningless and indeterminate concept.
Circular reasoning is when the proposition being claimed is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise. Begging the question occurs when a conclusion is made on an assumption.
Begging the question happens when you claim Y because X, while assuming X. This can often be a false premise, for example, that the ground is wet, thus it rained recently--we know rain makes the ground wet; but can't other things make the ground wet?
Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning; but we usually only claim circular reasoning directly when you claim Y because X, while claiming X because Y. That's sometimes valid: a battery cell will produce a low voltage when it's not holding a charge (drained or damaged), and a low-voltage off a battery cell indicates it's not holding a charge; claiming that it's simply discharged or that it's damaged, however, is circular reasoning, false premise, etc.
Nuances aside, even I can't keep this shit straight.
0 . "In what manner do you plan to take up their cause?"
Meaningless question.
1. "Which my "original post" exactly?"
I quoted the original context that started this entire thread in the last message, and you're still asking which.
2. "exactly WHEN stock market became completely a bad idea for a "diversified portfolio of long-term investments" ?"
The statement, "That's in a diversified portfolio of long-term investments, a fairly reliable income," is just fluff. It has no meaning, and implies bad advice. IMPLIES. It's a statement made without sufficient context to suggest, at all, that stock market investment requires a strategy; the completely meaningless term "long-term investments" as well implies buy-and-hold strategy, suggesting that investments just magically grow over time, and so you should just buy into a fund and leave your money there to grow--which is bad advice.
You don't invest on term. You don't look at a stock and say, "This is a good stock. I'm going to buy this and hold onto it for years and years. It's going to be a long-term investment." That's not a thing you do unless you're stupid. Similarly, "I'm holding a bunch of different stocks" is a much different statement than "I'm only holding stocks which I believe are going to make gains": diversification of a portfolio is a risk strategy--it protects you in case you're WRONG about any particular investment--and not an investment strategy.
The statement,
You are correct that a million will net about $60k. That's in a diversified portfolio of long-term investments, a fairly reliable income. Actually $600K per ten years is reliable - year to years gains will fluctuate and that's okay - your spending doesn't have to fluctuate to match each year.
Says to close your eyes, shove your money in a bunch of holes that look good, and leave it there "because the market grows and a diversified portfolio always makes money". That's not a strategy; it's the same thing as taking your money to the casino and betting on random horses, roulette positions, slots, and crap shoots. You want to stay away from investments you're not sufficiently certain of and put your money in investments you've built enough knowledge about to reasonably predict gains, and pull your money out when you're no longer certain of gains; if that means holding 2 or 3 different securities, or even exactly one, instead of 5 or 10 or 30 at once, it's still the best strategy. It absolutely *will* mean buying and selling on the *market's* schedule, not yours; you don't get to make "long-term investments" if you're actually trying to not lose your money.
Most of us have more melanin than that. You may want to go with SPF50 :P