It's price fixing. You see, supply and demand applies to loans just as much as any other commodity. Just take the traditional model and replace "money" with "guarantee of money" and "product/service" with "money".
Naturally, in a truly free market, the interest rate on loans would be a function of supply and demand. In the current system, it is not.
The Federal Reserve sets their interest rate. They lend to banks, banks lend to other banks, and banks lend to people.
Most multimedia devices require FireWire, especially due to the lower latency.
Yeah, FireWire sucks and is glitchy, but when you're trying to record tight drum beats I've heard that the difference between, say, 20ms and 50ms could be a major factor.
That said, if you're using that kind of FireWire equipment then you probably aren't going to buy a new MacBook.
Actually, my company's founder/CEO often makes those types of decisions. A good leader's job is to instill hope and empower appropriate people to make decisions. That leaves the leader to do other things... like interior decorating, forming company vision, etc.
That said, choosing a computing platform is not a trivial matter (like toilet paper), and a good leader with no technical expertise would ideally empower someone with technical expertise to make the decision. Even with my bitter outlook about this election, I have to agree that Obama is better at delegating those decisions than McCain is.
I think we're going about this all wrong. We're trying to mechanize nature.
What we should be doing is making the cows' nature more convenient, rather than trying to control it.
We should genetically modify cows so that they don't have legs or organs. They should just be growing pieces of meat that don't move. Then we should fill up skyscrapers with them!
You mean you never had one of those days where you get curious and you screw up something that's important and then you end up rebooting 20 times until your system's not quite as good as it was but it's better than it was after you started experimenting?
Unfortunately, the Republicans are in virtual lockstep with the current administration so of course they opposed the Democrats every chance they get
And that's why the Democrats are for this bailout bill that the administration proposes, but the Republicans are the ones causing delays, right?
I think I know what the problem with Democrats is. They just can't drop a freakin' bill. They have to toy with it and find the silver lining and then sign it. They feel like they HAVE to do something. No! You don't have to consider every stupid proposal in front of your face!
The war funding, FISA, and now the bailout: all examples of bills that should have just been stopped since the Democrats took office. All things the administration wanted. All happily accepted by Democrats.
The best music was made in the 80s? Please don't tell me you like all that synth pop crap from the "me" generation.
Unlike such myopic views, my perspective is that music sucked in the 80s, came around in the 90s, is sucking again, and will unsuck soon. It's the cycle of life. I'm not old enough to speak for the decades of 1960 and 1970 but I'm sure there was a suck and unsuck cycle in there as well.
While I agree that's pretty fucked up, I think most of it is politicians covering their asses, and the government's ass. They don't want to say "we fucked up". They want to say "We fucked up because we don't have this process in place, but we're going to put it in place."
It's basically what happens in my workplace every time something goes wrong. "We need a system in place..." "We are putting a system in place that will..." Just more idiotic bureaucracy to cover up for failures.
Most people don't even pay attention to the terror warning level anymore. They've got Terror Alert Fatigue.
I actually see it somewhat orthogonal to that. In many ways, the democrats are optimists while the republicans are pessimists.
I disagree completely. Republicans are the optimists! They tend to think that:
- private charities will be enough to help the poor
- abstinence education is the best sex education
- people know how to best manage their own money
- terrorists can be contained and killed-off
If pulled off properly, communism is the ideal economic system.
Communism takes away many freedoms, and is only "perfect" from an authoritarian perspective. Perfect to MANY people would be a world in which everyone gets along without a strong government to impede.
As much as Democrats and Libertarians are different, they're closer than Republicans, meaning that 2 "liberal" candidates in an area would essentially split themselves to a loss.
Except the most famous libertarian of this election cycle, Ron Paul, is a Republican.
And Bob Barr is a former Republican...
And libertarians tend to swing Republican at election time...
Actually, it's really funny that you think Democrats are closer to Libertarians than Republicans are. Go read Daily Kos and you'll get a different perspective on things. But hey, that's what's nice about liberty - everyone loves it.
While that would be beautiful, I won't hold my breath.
You really think Obama is different, don't you? I'm hoping he gets elected just because so that many young people become disillusioned and cynical when he doesn't do much of anything he promised.
Also, McCain would not bow out even if Obama did. The stakes are too high.
And how is it fair that the other parties did the same to Barr in other states?
And how will it fuck up the election? You need a majority of electoral votes, not 270. The math changes when more than two candidates get electoral votes.
When we missed our deadline in West Virginia (a month before Republicans and Democrats were required to file I might add), we were forced off of the ballot. The law is clear and belonging to the Republican or Democrat party does not exempt you from its rule.
The Republicans tried to remove Barr's name from the PA ballots. Except that using a placeholder in Pennsylvania is legal, and not so much in Texas, if I understand correctly. You can get more details on Bob Barr's website. http://www.bobbarr2008.com/
I'm sure they'll weasel their way out of removing Obama and McCain from the TX ballot, but we'll see! In most court cases involving third parties, the judges side against them regardless of the law, so... good luck Bob Barr!
What really annoys me is when they don't let you make up your own questions. Like I'm supposed to remember my best friend or favorite color from 2005... jeesh!
I wasn't going to respond to this, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.
The "war on drugs" is a bipartisan thing.
Only because it's political suicide to legalize drugs. If the Democrats could take a liberal position on them without being called addicts, druggies, and terrorists, they would. Look at California.
Far more is spent on hand-outs, despite the "current Republicans" being in power for so long.
Which re-emphasizes my point that they're as worthless as Democrats. If the current Republicans can only increase spending, what's the damn point of being Republicans?
Quite evidently, some foreigners were pissed at you on September 10th, 2001...
And they were pissed about us mucking about in other country's affairs, which has been done by Democrats and Republicans alike for the last 60 or so years.
we both reviewed the Defense spending, and both concluded, that it is a relatively small part of the budget.
Actually, I concluded that the difference between defense spending and social security spending, according to your graphs, was very negligible. They're both equally absurd amounts of money. Also, if you look at my graph, defense is an even larger part because it removes social security trusts from the picture of where our taxes actually go to.
So, no, the ignobility of pulling out too early would not help the budget much and is likely to end up costing even more.
When we're spending $200 million a day in Iraq, I fail to see how it would end up costing more. Like I said, I doubt Obama would pull out anyway because everyone likes managing wars. "Bush couldn't do it, but I can!" It's an ego trip.
Obama is revolting because he is a Socialist - he wants to increase taxes on the rich (never mind, that they already pay far more than others) so as to be able to buy the votes of the "middle class".
I've looked at Obama's proposed tax increase, and I don't fall under it, so I don't really mind that much. If/when I make that much money, I possibly will! Also, I think calling him a socialist is a stretch at best. But let's talk about the hidden tax of inflation. You can lower taxes all you want, but the more money the government borrows to pay our bills, the more inflation there will be. That's what we've seen under Bush.
You are right, that the next President is unlikely to undo the existing travesties completely, but Obama is likely to introduce new ones — beginning with the socialized medicine
Eh, any sort of socialized medicine plan that comes out is going to be half-assed because of compromising. Also, I believe his plan allows us to keep our current private insurance, unlike true socialized medicine. I'd even be gung-ho about it if they took the money out of the defense budget and didn't have to raise taxes.
On the other hand, I have no reasons to worry, that McCain and Palin will try to force me to shoot bears, and if my daughter ever needs an abortion, I'm confident, she'll be able to get one, even if the Federal law guaranteeing access to it (a.k.a. "Roe vs. Wade") is overturned.
I'm sorry, but there are more civil liberties than abortion that the Republicans have been attacking lately. Habeus corpus, warrantless wiretapping,... how about the interior roadside checks (not on the border)?
If we were talking about the Republican Party of 10 or 20 years ago, I might agree with you that a libertarian should vote Republican. However, any civil libertarian who is up on his news should not vote for any of the current Republicans.
To me, this election is lost. I plan on doing what any self-respecting libertarian should do - vote Libertarian to help with ballot access and gain momentum for next time around.
In 2007 — 7 years into the rule of "the current Republicans" — we were still spending more on Social Security alone (without Medicare, Medicad, transportation, etc.) than on the entire Defense (wars and all). 2006 is about same.
Firstly: Even the war on drugs?
Secondly: $40 billion out of a $2.8 trillion budget isn't much of a difference between social security and defense. Do you really think that justifies voting Republican over Democrat or vis versa?
Ya know, I'd be perfectly happy to vote Republican if they were strong on defense at home where it counts, instead of mucking about the world wasting my money and getting foreigners pissed at me.
Hell, if I were smart I'd vote for Obama since the easiest way to cut the budget is to pull right out of Iraq (although I doubt he'll do that, even though he said he would). You can't cut off Social Security that drastically. Therefore, if someone is going to make a big difference in spending it will be a Democrat.
Slashdot Mirror
How the hell did he get a .gov domain in 3 days?
And how can get get a .gov domain without actually being in charge of anything yet?
Technically, that's allocating government resources, which he does not have the power to do. So what the hell is going on?
I'd like to know how long that site's been up.
Anyone who can't program a VCR probably can't program much else, nor follows instructions very well. I agree with the OP.
It's price fixing. You see, supply and demand applies to loans just as much as any other commodity. Just take the traditional model and replace "money" with "guarantee of money" and "product/service" with "money".
Naturally, in a truly free market, the interest rate on loans would be a function of supply and demand. In the current system, it is not.
The Federal Reserve sets their interest rate. They lend to banks, banks lend to other banks, and banks lend to people.
Government centralizes power so that it can be more efficiently corrupted.
Most multimedia devices require FireWire, especially due to the lower latency.
Yeah, FireWire sucks and is glitchy, but when you're trying to record tight drum beats I've heard that the difference between, say, 20ms and 50ms could be a major factor.
That said, if you're using that kind of FireWire equipment then you probably aren't going to buy a new MacBook.
Actually, my company's founder/CEO often makes those types of decisions. A good leader's job is to instill hope and empower appropriate people to make decisions. That leaves the leader to do other things... like interior decorating, forming company vision, etc.
That said, choosing a computing platform is not a trivial matter (like toilet paper), and a good leader with no technical expertise would ideally empower someone with technical expertise to make the decision. Even with my bitter outlook about this election, I have to agree that Obama is better at delegating those decisions than McCain is.
I think we're going about this all wrong. We're trying to mechanize nature.
What we should be doing is making the cows' nature more convenient, rather than trying to control it.
We should genetically modify cows so that they don't have legs or organs. They should just be growing pieces of meat that don't move. Then we should fill up skyscrapers with them!
Yeah, but you don't get people calling and writing their representatives to ban H2O. You don't get DOS'd email servers and full voice mail boxes.
Further, a USA Today poll showed ~70% people FOR the bailout. It all depends on how you phrase the question and what agenda you're trying to push.
You mean you never had one of those days where you get curious and you screw up something that's important and then you end up rebooting 20 times until your system's not quite as good as it was but it's better than it was after you started experimenting?
Yeah, neither have I.
Oh yeah, but people still dual boot.
Unfortunately, the Republicans are in virtual lockstep with the current administration
so of course they opposed the Democrats every chance they get
And that's why the Democrats are for this bailout bill that the administration proposes, but the Republicans are the ones causing delays, right?
I think I know what the problem with Democrats is. They just can't drop a freakin' bill. They have to toy with it and find the silver lining and then sign it. They feel like they HAVE to do something. No! You don't have to consider every stupid proposal in front of your face!
The war funding, FISA, and now the bailout: all examples of bills that should have just been stopped since the Democrats took office. All things the administration wanted. All happily accepted by Democrats.
The best music was made in the 80s? Please don't tell me you like all that synth pop crap from the "me" generation.
Unlike such myopic views, my perspective is that music sucked in the 80s, came around in the 90s, is sucking again, and will unsuck soon. It's the cycle of life. I'm not old enough to speak for the decades of 1960 and 1970 but I'm sure there was a suck and unsuck cycle in there as well.
Medicare - gotta be over 65!
GET OLDER
Medicaid - heaven help me if I earn over USD 15,907 and live in NY State with wife and three kids - too much income!
MOVE
SCHIP - be careful, you might earn too much (greater than ca. 3.5 x the poverty level) and then your access would be severely cut.
STOP EARNING MONEY
While I agree that's pretty fucked up, I think most of it is politicians covering their asses, and the government's ass. They don't want to say "we fucked up". They want to say "We fucked up because we don't have this process in place, but we're going to put it in place."
It's basically what happens in my workplace every time something goes wrong. "We need a system in place..." "We are putting a system in place that will..." Just more idiotic bureaucracy to cover up for failures.
Most people don't even pay attention to the terror warning level anymore. They've got Terror Alert Fatigue.
I actually see it somewhat orthogonal to that. In many ways, the democrats are optimists while the republicans are pessimists.
I disagree completely. Republicans are the optimists! They tend to think that:
- private charities will be enough to help the poor
- abstinence education is the best sex education
- people know how to best manage their own money
- terrorists can be contained and killed-off
If pulled off properly, communism is the ideal economic system.
Communism takes away many freedoms, and is only "perfect" from an authoritarian perspective. Perfect to MANY people would be a world in which everyone gets along without a strong government to impede.
I tend to think of Democrats as being afraid of things unrelated to defense.
If you're afraid that you can't afford adequate health care for your children, you'll want socialized medicine.
Then there's fear of unregulated capitalism by the more wealthy Democrats.
And on and on. Use your imaginations.
Heck, most people vote based on the fear of what "the other side" will do if elected.
So I'm skeptical as well about these findings.
As much as Democrats and Libertarians are different, they're closer than Republicans, meaning that 2 "liberal" candidates in an area would essentially split themselves to a loss.
Except the most famous libertarian of this election cycle, Ron Paul, is a Republican.
And Bob Barr is a former Republican...
And libertarians tend to swing Republican at election time...
Actually, it's really funny that you think Democrats are closer to Libertarians than Republicans are. Go read Daily Kos and you'll get a different perspective on things. But hey, that's what's nice about liberty - everyone loves it.
While that would be beautiful, I won't hold my breath.
You really think Obama is different, don't you? I'm hoping he gets elected just because so that many young people become disillusioned and cynical when he doesn't do much of anything he promised.
Also, McCain would not bow out even if Obama did. The stakes are too high.
And how is it fair that the other parties did the same to Barr in other states?
And how will it fuck up the election? You need a majority of electoral votes, not 270. The math changes when more than two candidates get electoral votes.
Also, for information about this specific case, see here:
http://campaign.blog.bobbarr2008.com/2008/09/18/bob-barr-rides-again-in-texas/
When we missed our deadline in West Virginia (a month before Republicans and Democrats were required to file I might add), we were forced off of the ballot. The law is clear and belonging to the Republican or Democrat party does not exempt you from its rule.
The Republicans tried to remove Barr's name from the PA ballots. Except that using a placeholder in Pennsylvania is legal, and not so much in Texas, if I understand correctly. You can get more details on Bob Barr's website. http://www.bobbarr2008.com/
I'm sure they'll weasel their way out of removing Obama and McCain from the TX ballot, but we'll see! In most court cases involving third parties, the judges side against them regardless of the law, so... good luck Bob Barr!
naturally curious
Check!
and socially well-adjusted
Fail. :(
What really annoys me is when they don't let you make up your own questions. Like I'm supposed to remember my best friend or favorite color from 2005... jeesh!
I wasn't going to respond to this, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.
The "war on drugs" is a bipartisan thing.
Only because it's political suicide to legalize drugs. If the Democrats could take a liberal position on them without being called addicts, druggies, and terrorists, they would. Look at California.
Far more is spent on hand-outs, despite the "current Republicans" being in power for so long.
Which re-emphasizes my point that they're as worthless as Democrats. If the current Republicans can only increase spending, what's the damn point of being Republicans?
Quite evidently, some foreigners were pissed at you on September 10th, 2001...
And they were pissed about us mucking about in other country's affairs, which has been done by Democrats and Republicans alike for the last 60 or so years.
we both reviewed the Defense spending, and both concluded, that it is a relatively small part of the budget.
Actually, I concluded that the difference between defense spending and social security spending, according to your graphs, was very negligible. They're both equally absurd amounts of money. Also, if you look at my graph, defense is an even larger part because it removes social security trusts from the picture of where our taxes actually go to.
So, no, the ignobility of pulling out too early would not help the budget much and is likely to end up costing even more.
When we're spending $200 million a day in Iraq, I fail to see how it would end up costing more. Like I said, I doubt Obama would pull out anyway because everyone likes managing wars. "Bush couldn't do it, but I can!" It's an ego trip.
Obama is revolting because he is a Socialist - he wants to increase taxes on the rich (never mind, that they already pay far more than others) so as to be able to buy the votes of the "middle class".
I've looked at Obama's proposed tax increase, and I don't fall under it, so I don't really mind that much. If/when I make that much money, I possibly will! Also, I think calling him a socialist is a stretch at best. But let's talk about the hidden tax of inflation. You can lower taxes all you want, but the more money the government borrows to pay our bills, the more inflation there will be. That's what we've seen under Bush.
You are right, that the next President is unlikely to undo the existing travesties completely, but Obama is likely to introduce new ones — beginning with the socialized medicine
Eh, any sort of socialized medicine plan that comes out is going to be half-assed because of compromising. Also, I believe his plan allows us to keep our current private insurance, unlike true socialized medicine. I'd even be gung-ho about it if they took the money out of the defense budget and didn't have to raise taxes.
On the other hand, I have no reasons to worry, that McCain and Palin will try to force me to shoot bears, and if my daughter ever needs an abortion, I'm confident, she'll be able to get one, even if the Federal law guaranteeing access to it (a.k.a. "Roe vs. Wade") is overturned.
I'm sorry, but there are more civil liberties than abortion that the Republicans have been attacking lately. Habeus corpus, warrantless wiretapping, ... how about the interior roadside checks (not on the border)?
If we were talking about the Republican Party of 10 or 20 years ago, I might agree with you that a libertarian should vote Republican. However, any civil libertarian who is up on his news should not vote for any of the current Republicans.
To me, this election is lost. I plan on doing what any self-respecting libertarian should do - vote Libertarian to help with ballot access and gain momentum for next time around.
In 2007 — 7 years into the rule of "the current Republicans" — we were still spending more on Social Security alone (without Medicare, Medicad, transportation, etc.) than on the entire Defense (wars and all). 2006 is about same.
Firstly: Even the war on drugs?
Secondly: $40 billion out of a $2.8 trillion budget isn't much of a difference between social security and defense. Do you really think that justifies voting Republican over Democrat or vis versa?
Third: Our taxes don't really correlate to the budget the way you think. See here: http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
Ya know, I'd be perfectly happy to vote Republican if they were strong on defense at home where it counts, instead of mucking about the world wasting my money and getting foreigners pissed at me.
Hell, if I were smart I'd vote for Obama since the easiest way to cut the budget is to pull right out of Iraq (although I doubt he'll do that, even though he said he would). You can't cut off Social Security that drastically. Therefore, if someone is going to make a big difference in spending it will be a Democrat.
Constitution Party?