Presenting this as a purely perceptual price is creating a false dilemma argument.
Sure, in double blind experiments, much more people prefer Walmart Cola over Coca Cola than control groups who can see the labels. Same with Walmart shoes vs. Nike shoes if you excuse me for using Walmart as an example for a generic non-brand of acceptable physical quality.
And there are experiments with two absolutely identical products, where one carried a brand name and the other did not. Subjects were told these products were identical, came from the same factory and that they willfully omitted the labelling step in manufacturing. Yet people would still prefer the products with the brand name. Nike shoes with a visible Swoosh would therefore probably outsell unmarked Nike shoes.
So we know that prices and preference are influenced or even even dominated by psychological components.
But then again - not all price components are psychological - for the buyer, psychological components are worth real money, if only for signalling "I am rich" to other people - it is hard to differentiate between psychological and non-psychological price components.
As women and men are much more different than two brands of cola, with obvious differences in phsyique and behavior, we WILL have a different perception of performance and therefore a different average wage for employees.
Men and women probably have very different strengths and weaknesses and evolution is reason enough that the much lower average physical strength of women is offset by other qualities.
Factually, we have different skillsets of men and women. Factually, different skillsets are differently valued. The politically correct claim that two entirely different skillsets are incidentally worth exactly same to all buyers is hard to prove without invoking several fallacies. At the very least, it's pretty improbable to have them identical in penny and cent.
If we now declare them to be the same by law, we do price fixing for political reasons.
You elected another president who did not promise to balance the budget.
Just like we do over here in Europe. People who balance the budget, curtail spending or even remotely think of NOT increasing the gargantuan national debts is simply not elected.
The entire Western World has regressed to childhood and wants to eat their cake and have it. We only elect people who want to spend more money on good causes, not people who want to reduce spending on the least noble ones.
Everyone and their grandma has now recognized that we (The West) will never be able to repay any of our national debts, the French, the German, the US-American, the Belgian etc. etc. and that the whole shebang is going to crash on us. Since everybody has at least subconsciously realized that our Titanic is going down no matter what, we have all the looting going on as you'd expect. Since we will all have to defect our loans and debts, we can as well go all-in and hope we keep some of the physical property we bought for all this paper money.
Of course everyone has a different idea of entertainment, but I cannot think of anything that is shallower than betting x Dollars on a number to be selected on a roulette wheel.
There sure are a lot of other shallow amusements, I could think of, but all of them are a tiny bit more individual and may even produce some results - drinking to get drunk - you could fraternize with people of whatever group you're in - smoking to get high - you could produce new art, as most art is somehow connected to drugs - spraypainting your name on a subway car - you could improve your artistic talent - bungee jumping - you could improve your self-esteem or beat anxiety - beating soccer fans of the other team - no idea why, but usually the fans of the other team do just the same so at least it's mutual and reciprocal.
Throwing away money for fun is not bad per se, but there are a ton of other opportunities where there is small but evident chance of a personal, individual, mental or bodily gain. Even Poker has some potential for personal and emotional development. But what of that is in there for gambling? Am I to greedy in demanding a return on any investment, at least in calories and alcohol percentage?
Maybe I should set aside some 50 bucks and try it myself:)
Exactly. Everything else is expropriation and/or forced labour.
Now what if 99% of all the customers AND the owner preferred only people of a certain skin color to be in the bar? Can we force 99% of KKK dudes to accept a black guest? Can we force 99% of black gangbangers to accept a white college guy?
What if 99% of the regular customers would stay away forever if they saw that one person of the "other" skin color is served in "their" community restaurant? Are we willing to bankrupt the owner for political reasons?
If supply and demand teaches us anything, lower pay for women tells us that women are either in greater supply or in lower demand than men for a particular job. Either that or it means most women don't negotiate as successfully as men, which would not be discriminatory, because if some men don't negotiate well, they also get less pay.
As men and women are close to 50:50 of our population, it seems that employers prefer people of gender XY over people with gender XX. I don't know if that's fair, but I am not socialist and therefore cannot judge what a particular person or skill is worth or even guess why this disparity exists at all. It just seems that XX people are valued less by employers resulting in lower pay for equal supply.
Result: the female workforce earns less per person than the male workforce.
Over here in Europe, women and men get the same pay for the same jobs. By law.
Now if we take the laws of supply and demand again as the basis for price and exchange rate determination, we would conclude that in a situation, where supply is equal and price is equal, we probably get a lower demand. And what do you think? For all equal pay and stuff, our employers here in Europe surely prefer men over women when they have to pay them the same amount of money.
Result: the female workforce earns less per person than the male workforce. They're now just divided into fully-paid employees and non-employees that lost against a male candidate. Which is arguably worse for the individuals that got passed on the job.
Price fixing leads to all kinds of bad stuff happening. Every time.
And that anti-discrimination thing is probably equally immoral as being discriminatory in the first place. Because taken down to the personal property level, it is forced labour and jackbooted totalitarism. It just wears a velvety pink coat with a large collar of feelgood.
Example: a small time bar owned by a truly despisable, brutish KKK extremist. All his customers are white, equally racist KKK dudes that gather every saturday night to brag about the white pride and consume large amounts of cheap beer. Assuming further there were no crimes committed at any time and no one was even threatened. It's just that black people will not be served, not even a glass of water, nothing. The KKK owner who is also the bartender will simply ignore them, not speak anything to them, pretend not to hear anything they say.
Now it's thursday at noon, the bar is open but empty. A black customer enters and demands a beer. The owner looks away, doesn't react and surely doesn't serve a beer. The customer repeats its request a few times then becomes upset and leaves. That sure as hell was immoral and depraved, and probably spot on for racism. But can you deem it illegal?
Remember: illegal things are prosecuted and lead to fines, punishment and jail. Will the police now beat him for not working? Will he go to jail for not working? Will he lose the bar or license because he dares to select his customers?
What if he put a sign on that said "Whites only"? Can we forcefully break his will and jackboot him to serve all customers? Does that make us better people in a better country?
What if he just preferred to serve white people, so black people would get their beer eventually, but only after everyone else is served. Is that also racism?
What if he preferred heterosexual, white, blonde, non-handicapped women aged 18 to 28 and always serves them first. Would that be homophobic, racist, ageist and sexist? Would be jackboot him to serve old, black, homosexual handicapped people equally? Do we think that's possible and/or desireable?
You probably won't go to jail because you never get to play in the first place. But if there's a clearly visible rule that says "no computers allowed", then you do go to jail because you're trespassing.
Well, it is their house, isn't it? Would you keep guests at home that you don't like? Guests that overextend their stay, cost you money and steal the booze? Who would NOT throw them out?
The fact that you invited them in doesn't change a bit. Everyone could invite anyone at their home but kick them out a second after they've arrived. It's not going to win any friendships, it's pretty crazy and probably immoral - but we already knew casino owners were an immoral bunch, didn't we?
People who play at casinos don't really deserve some sympathy. Everyone knows that the house always wins, anyone with half a brain can figure out the odds and should not play.
Why people play with their money against clearly unfavorable odds is beyond me. For some, it may be because they have so much wealth that they don't really have any other challenges in life. For others, it may be craziness or the simple thrill of gambling. But to me it seems worse than investing in real estate property in suburban Detroit.
And dude, you really DON'T want to be there, especially after sunset. It's pretty suspense to even be in the metro trains (the RER in Paris) coming from and to these areas after sunset.
You can claim there's no such thing as no-go areas in any of Western Europes capitals, but that doesn't make them vanish. Repeating, shouting or hammering on a rebuttal or denial doesn't make that point stronger, you could as well plug your ears and dismiss everything with "lalalala-i-cant-hear-you"
But then I thank God that I'm fully entitled to my own opinion and the right to write it down.
This is not widespread, but it's going on daily. On several occasions, these "youths" have publicly uttered Holocaust-like ambitions towards Western Europe and they filmed it themselves. This is an unpleasant fact, but it won't go away anytime soon.
Well, judging from the choice of your words, you're either quick to anger, actively denying or even part of the rioters.
I believe what I see, in the news, on YouTube or similar services and with my own set of eyes. Cars torched, thousands of protesters set out to protest against Neo-Nazis turning violent and smashing shop windows by the dozens, long hours after the last Nazi and the last cop left the scene.
If you don't believe it, that's fine. If you cannot muster enough willpower to query or question the mainstream and niche news sites from Indymedia to right wing blogs, well that's fine as well.
Insulting people based on their opinion is not. And since you do insult people because of their opinion, I think you're part of the problem.
These videos present only a part of the real situation, both in good and in bad directions. Nonetheless, the events shown are current, real and serious. Even if no other events than the ones shown on these short films would have happened, it would've been enough rioting for all of us - but it's probably worse.
When you're in the Eastern part of Europe, then yes, socialism is pretty unpopular right now.
We in Western Europe have higher taxes, higher social security, higher welfare than ever before. State expenditures are four to fourty times higher than two decades ago, all while our national debts are higher than the moon. (though not as high as the US's)
And we have whole districts in each of our capitals, where neither police nor regular Joes will go without three SWAT teams backing them up. And we have thousands of cars torched, hundreds of stabbings every year by so-called "youths" in "socially disadvantaged suburbs". These incidents have doubled since the last two years. This is true for the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden.
It's not civil war yet, you could call it low-level, but sustained riots, or more appropriate "Intifada", regarding the origin and motive of these "youths". But it's not regular crime as in "personal gain through unjust means", but pretty outright directed at destroying other's property and health.
To reevaluate your quote on bad behaviour reinfocement:
We taxpayers in today's semi-socialist Europe are constantly told that social security, unemployment benefits, welfare (and of course taxes) MUST be that high to keep poor people from starving - and rioting.
So we are told we're pacifying potential rioters by giving them money. Actual riots are always treated with more money. Most parties on the left and right tell us that all violence and problems will simply go away when we give poor people more money.
We basically do the candy vs. violence experiment in real-time, on a continent-wide scale and with no control group and no backout plan. And they're rioting daily in Malmo, Paris, Berlin and all other cities of at least a million people. They're burning cars, preferably BMW and Mercedes of the rich of course, in these cities, and they've totaled several thousand cars in this year alone. And yet we don't do anything about it other than pouring money in "good causes" for them.
I guess we should invest in arms manufacturers now.
You either don't have to pay for electricity or you're not as honest as you claim you are.
How anybody would use a PC as a backup HDD is beyong my imagination, when USB or NAS enclosures are as dirt cheap as they are, use less than a quarter of electricity, produce less than a tenth of noise and occupy only a fraction of the house, living room or desk. USB drives could use a native Linux filesystem and NAS boxen could operate wirelessly all around the house...
The electricity for driving the full-sized PC probably costs as much as half the price of a new NAS unit with a built-in printserver AND a new printer. Not including the time and effort spent to keep that damn thing running and properly configured.
And who in their right mind would use Windows as the basis for a backup?
How many computers do you want to manage as a hobby? For web browsing, any computer that can run Firefox is good enough, I suggest - and I know for all real documents, photos and stuff you need, there's probably a NAS unit involved. But either everything just works and you don't need a second unit or you're going to have a several settings, tweaks and tunings to do because it doesn't.
With unlimited free time and a load of cash, I'd rather manage one computer and a flock of hookers.
I understand your hint at socialism, for which socialists usually claim it was just implemented wrongly, when a few million people died in the Gulag, from hunger or simply disappeared by the thousands.
Yet I can easily imagine a hundred real-world examples of a win:win trade scenario, but not a single form of socialism that is not totalitarian and oppressive.
Trade and liberty always restrict their scope, leaving decisions beyond a certain point up to the people directly involved. You can easily limit, divide, partition or escape liberty. No matter how foolish it could be, I could always join an oppressive cult or quit my job. Or just lie flat on the beach.
But you can never have only a little bit of socialism and still escape from it once it's established. Socialism never limits it's scope, no problem is "their problem", no decision is "their choice".
You cannot implement this properly without a country-sized prison. I was on the wrong side of the Berlin wall before it came down, I know a bit about it.
A lot of people don't think a CEO creates the wealth and that it is their moral right to judge upon other's choices.
Firstly, the choice of the CEO and their pay is solely the owner's. It's owner's money, so they can pay the CEO whatever they like to, including their firstborn, if they want.
Secondly, there are literally a million potential CEOs out there, almost as many as we have armchair quarterbacks. Out of a dozen candidates, the company owners chose that particular CEO, in spite of other contenders demanding a few million less. Why would a sensible company owner decide for wasting a few millions on a CEO when a cheaper person could do the same job?
Thirdly, no one is forced to work for that company. No one is forced to buy at McDonalds. When the company flourishes like it does, it does mean that all customers are mentally ill or the cooks and the CEO probably did their jobs well.
Fourthly, the cook doesn't create wealth and the CEO doesn't create wealth. The CEO alone is an empty suit and the cook alone would be selling hot-dogs for a few pennies.
I would rather say it is stupid to not understand the premises of trade and to think it would be a zero-sum game. But either you can't understand much about it or are simply a run-of-the-mill racist.
I seriously doubt that it is possible to simplify the political and commercial situation of the entire African continent into "robber barons make money while the poor suffer" and even less that Western money is complicit in doing so.
As military interventions in Africa are now decried by left and right wing of all parties, we have only three options or strategies outlined in my post:
-trade with market prices -trade with "fair" prices -do not trade.
When optimizing the situation of an average African, all other strategies perform worse than "trade with market prices", which means the Invisible Hand scenario should be the rational choice.
Given that we have African nations with and without much resources that may or may not be failed states or in a relatively prosperous situation, we cannot conclude that trade and resource export are the primary factor or reason for disarray and failure of states, we'd find a counterexample for all such hypotheses.
Decrying an unpleasant situation is insufficient, when the alternatives are worse.
Assuming we really do buy rare elements only from Africa and not also from China, Russia and Argentina which have a lot of them as well. Our alternatives then would be:
A) We don't buy rare earth elements from Africa: Western standard of living: lower, prices for goods are higher, some goods are infeasible. African standards of living: less exports, less jobs for average Joes, less warlord financing, probably more diverse criminal activity and stability. Example: cell phones are available only for the very top of society in Africa, prices are too high for everyone else.
B) We pay "fair trade" prices for rare elements from Africa: (assuming someone can properly the "fair" price of anything) Western standard of living: lower, prices for goods are higher, some goods are infeasible. Example: Cell phones are expensive African standards of living: less exports, less jobs for average Joes, probably equal warlord financing, criminal activity and stability remains constant. Cell phones become expensive that new models are only available to a smaller percentage of African people.
C) We pay whatever the market price for rare earth elements is: Western standard of living: as high as the market prices allow African standards of living: more exports, more jobs for average Joes, more financing for warlords, a broader middle class, less diverse criminal activity, more stability. Cell phones are an ubiquitous commodity for a large part of the population.
Trade benefits both parties or it's not trade. Trade between totally unequal partners can benefit both. Economics 101. Do your research.
While you will find some egregious examples where the First World truly exploited the Third, your arguments implicitly rely on a false assumption. You assume that
"Some person/country's wealth is predominantly the result of some other person/country's poverty" or simplified "The sum of all wins is equal to the sum of all losses"
This is the definition of a zero-sum game, like a sports tournament.
But trade is no zero-sum game, not even close. Trade ideally is a win:win-situation.
Step one: if you bought a ready made computer, you probably don't have a clean Windows CD, or even no recovery CD at all. Immediately produce a recovery CD if possible or buy Acronis or Ghost if not and then store the factory freshest image possible.
Step two: leave Windows services alone unless you you are damn well sure you know what you are doing. Make sure your backups are up to date, though.
Step three: uninstall all really unneeded applications that you are sure are not required to utilize a particular hardware function or USB device.
Step four: use anti-spyware and anti-virus software from any trusted, well-known brand maybe except Symantec, they probably slow down the system more than real spyware:)
Or just cut corners and install the max amount of physical RAM your system can handle, 4 GB are recommended and use an SSD instead of a HDD. Don't skip the anti virus thing, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Presenting this as a purely perceptual price is creating a false dilemma argument.
Sure, in double blind experiments, much more people prefer Walmart Cola over Coca Cola than control groups who can see the labels. Same with Walmart shoes vs. Nike shoes if you excuse me for using Walmart as an example for a generic non-brand of acceptable physical quality.
And there are experiments with two absolutely identical products, where one carried a brand name and the other did not. Subjects were told these products were identical, came from the same factory and that they willfully omitted the labelling step in manufacturing. Yet people would still prefer the products with the brand name. Nike shoes with a visible Swoosh would therefore probably outsell unmarked Nike shoes.
So we know that prices and preference are influenced or even even dominated by psychological components.
But then again
- not all price components are psychological
- for the buyer, psychological components are worth real money, if only for signalling "I am rich" to other people
- it is hard to differentiate between psychological and non-psychological price components.
As women and men are much more different than two brands of cola, with obvious differences in phsyique and behavior, we WILL have a different perception of performance and therefore a different average wage for employees.
Men and women probably have very different strengths and weaknesses and evolution is reason enough that the much lower average physical strength of women is offset by other qualities.
Factually, we have different skillsets of men and women. Factually, different skillsets are differently valued. The politically correct claim that two entirely different skillsets are incidentally worth exactly same to all buyers is hard to prove without invoking several fallacies. At the very least, it's pretty improbable to have them identical in penny and cent.
If we now declare them to be the same by law, we do price fixing for political reasons.
By now it's rich Russians all over, from St. Tropez over Val d'isere to Monaco.
You elected another president who did not promise to balance the budget.
Just like we do over here in Europe. People who balance the budget, curtail spending or even remotely think of NOT increasing the gargantuan national debts is simply not elected.
The entire Western World has regressed to childhood and wants to eat their cake and have it. We only elect people who want to spend more money on good causes, not people who want to reduce spending on the least noble ones.
Everyone and their grandma has now recognized that we (The West) will never be able to repay any of our national debts, the French, the German, the US-American, the Belgian etc. etc. and that the whole shebang is going to crash on us. Since everybody has at least subconsciously realized that our Titanic is going down no matter what, we have all the looting going on as you'd expect. Since we will all have to defect our loans and debts, we can as well go all-in and hope we keep some of the physical property we bought for all this paper money.
Of course everyone has a different idea of entertainment, but I cannot think of anything that is shallower than betting x Dollars on a number to be selected on a roulette wheel.
There sure are a lot of other shallow amusements, I could think of, but all of them are a tiny bit more individual and may even produce some results
- drinking to get drunk - you could fraternize with people of whatever group you're in
- smoking to get high - you could produce new art, as most art is somehow connected to drugs
- spraypainting your name on a subway car - you could improve your artistic talent
- bungee jumping - you could improve your self-esteem or beat anxiety
- beating soccer fans of the other team - no idea why, but usually the fans of the other team do just the same so at least it's mutual and reciprocal.
Throwing away money for fun is not bad per se, but there are a ton of other opportunities where there is small but evident chance of a personal, individual, mental or bodily gain. Even Poker has some potential for personal and emotional development. But what of that is in there for gambling? Am I to greedy in demanding a return on any investment, at least in calories and alcohol percentage?
Maybe I should set aside some 50 bucks and try it myself :)
Exactly. Everything else is expropriation and/or forced labour.
Now what if 99% of all the customers AND the owner preferred only people of a certain skin color to be in the bar? Can we force 99% of KKK dudes to accept a black guest? Can we force 99% of black gangbangers to accept a white college guy?
What if 99% of the regular customers would stay away forever if they saw that one person of the "other" skin color is served in "their" community restaurant? Are we willing to bankrupt the owner for political reasons?
If supply and demand teaches us anything, lower pay for women tells us that women are either in greater supply or in lower demand than men for a particular job. Either that or it means most women don't negotiate as successfully as men, which would not be discriminatory, because if some men don't negotiate well, they also get less pay.
As men and women are close to 50:50 of our population, it seems that employers prefer people of gender XY over people with gender XX. I don't know if that's fair, but I am not socialist and therefore cannot judge what a particular person or skill is worth or even guess why this disparity exists at all. It just seems that XX people are valued less by employers resulting in lower pay for equal supply.
Result: the female workforce earns less per person than the male workforce.
Over here in Europe, women and men get the same pay for the same jobs. By law.
Now if we take the laws of supply and demand again as the basis for price and exchange rate determination, we would conclude that in a situation, where supply is equal and price is equal, we probably get a lower demand. And what do you think? For all equal pay and stuff, our employers here in Europe surely prefer men over women when they have to pay them the same amount of money.
Result: the female workforce earns less per person than the male workforce. They're now just divided into fully-paid employees and non-employees that lost against a male candidate. Which is arguably worse for the individuals that got passed on the job.
Price fixing leads to all kinds of bad stuff happening. Every time.
And that anti-discrimination thing is probably equally immoral as being discriminatory in the first place. Because taken down to the personal property level, it is forced labour and jackbooted totalitarism. It just wears a velvety pink coat with a large collar of feelgood.
Example: a small time bar owned by a truly despisable, brutish KKK extremist. All his customers are white, equally racist KKK dudes that gather every saturday night to brag about the white pride and consume large amounts of cheap beer. Assuming further there were no crimes committed at any time and no one was even threatened. It's just that black people will not be served, not even a glass of water, nothing. The KKK owner who is also the bartender will simply ignore them, not speak anything to them, pretend not to hear anything they say.
Now it's thursday at noon, the bar is open but empty. A black customer enters and demands a beer. The owner looks away, doesn't react and surely doesn't serve a beer. The customer repeats its request a few times then becomes upset and leaves. That sure as hell was immoral and depraved, and probably spot on for racism. But can you deem it illegal?
Remember: illegal things are prosecuted and lead to fines, punishment and jail. Will the police now beat him for not working? Will he go to jail for not working? Will he lose the bar or license because he dares to select his customers?
What if he put a sign on that said "Whites only"? Can we forcefully break his will and jackboot him to serve all customers? Does that make us better people in a better country?
What if he just preferred to serve white people, so black people would get their beer eventually, but only after everyone else is served. Is that also racism?
What if he preferred heterosexual, white, blonde, non-handicapped women aged 18 to 28 and always serves them first. Would that be homophobic, racist, ageist and sexist? Would be jackboot him to serve old, black, homosexual handicapped people equally? Do we think that's possible and/or desireable?
You probably won't go to jail because you never get to play in the first place. But if there's a clearly visible rule that says "no computers allowed", then you do go to jail because you're trespassing.
Well, it is their house, isn't it? Would you keep guests at home that you don't like? Guests that overextend their stay, cost you money and steal the booze? Who would NOT throw them out?
The fact that you invited them in doesn't change a bit. Everyone could invite anyone at their home but kick them out a second after they've arrived. It's not going to win any friendships, it's pretty crazy and probably immoral - but we already knew casino owners were an immoral bunch, didn't we?
Where do you draw the line for what actually is considered "gambling"?
At Roulette? Blackjack? Poker? Horse racing? And what about World of Warcraft, there are people on there pissing years of their life and marriage?
What is done to prevent illegal casinos from operating?
Prohibition only makes an addiction worse, IMHO. And it doesn't even work well.
People who play at casinos don't really deserve some sympathy. Everyone knows that the house always wins, anyone with half a brain can figure out the odds and should not play.
Why people play with their money against clearly unfavorable odds is beyond me. For some, it may be because they have so much wealth that they don't really have any other challenges in life. For others, it may be craziness or the simple thrill of gambling. But to me it seems worse than investing in real estate property in suburban Detroit.
In France, they call them like this:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_urbaine_sensible
And dude, you really DON'T want to be there, especially after sunset. It's pretty suspense to even be in the metro trains (the RER in Paris) coming from and to these areas after sunset.
You can claim there's no such thing as no-go areas in any of Western Europes capitals, but that doesn't make them vanish. Repeating, shouting or hammering on a rebuttal or denial doesn't make that point stronger, you could as well plug your ears and dismiss everything with "lalalala-i-cant-hear-you"
Here's another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzLECtFT4aU
But then I thank God that I'm fully entitled to my own opinion and the right to write it down.
This is not widespread, but it's going on daily. On several occasions, these "youths" have publicly uttered Holocaust-like ambitions towards Western Europe and they filmed it themselves. This is an unpleasant fact, but it won't go away anytime soon.
Well, judging from the choice of your words, you're either quick to anger, actively denying or even part of the rioters.
I believe what I see, in the news, on YouTube or similar services and with my own set of eyes. Cars torched, thousands of protesters set out to protest against Neo-Nazis turning violent and smashing shop windows by the dozens, long hours after the last Nazi and the last cop left the scene.
If you don't believe it, that's fine. If you cannot muster enough willpower to query or question the mainstream and niche news sites from Indymedia to right wing blogs, well that's fine as well.
Insulting people based on their opinion is not. And since you do insult people because of their opinion, I think you're part of the problem.
Backup evidence in case you're not convinced and fuming:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RJElADFXyQ (Berlin, Germany)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbKCGoUb4y0 (Malmö, Sweden)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iQyXXsBBQ0 (London, UK - before the Israeli Embassy, not less)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IIN9_YdYxw
(Brussels, Belgium - where it is the worst, with quarters of total lawlessness and rioters really assaulting a police precint)
These videos present only a part of the real situation, both in good and in bad directions. Nonetheless, the events shown are current, real and serious. Even if no other events than the ones shown on these short films would have happened, it would've been enough rioting for all of us - but it's probably worse.
When you're in the Eastern part of Europe, then yes, socialism is pretty unpopular right now.
We in Western Europe have higher taxes, higher social security, higher welfare than ever before. State expenditures are four to fourty times higher than two decades ago, all while our national debts are higher than the moon. (though not as high as the US's)
And we have whole districts in each of our capitals, where neither police nor regular Joes will go without three SWAT teams backing them up. And we have thousands of cars torched, hundreds of stabbings every year by so-called "youths" in "socially disadvantaged suburbs". These incidents have doubled since the last two years. This is true for the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden.
It's not civil war yet, you could call it low-level, but sustained riots, or more appropriate "Intifada", regarding the origin and motive of these "youths". But it's not regular crime as in "personal gain through unjust means", but pretty outright directed at destroying other's property and health.
To reevaluate your quote on bad behaviour reinfocement:
We taxpayers in today's semi-socialist Europe are constantly told that social security, unemployment benefits, welfare (and of course taxes) MUST be that high to keep poor people from starving - and rioting.
So we are told we're pacifying potential rioters by giving them money. Actual riots are always treated with more money. Most parties on the left and right tell us that all violence and problems will simply go away when we give poor people more money.
We basically do the candy vs. violence experiment in real-time, on a continent-wide scale and with no control group and no backout plan. And they're rioting daily in Malmo, Paris, Berlin and all other cities of at least a million people. They're burning cars, preferably BMW and Mercedes of the rich of course, in these cities, and they've totaled several thousand cars in this year alone. And yet we don't do anything about it other than pouring money in "good causes" for them.
I guess we should invest in arms manufacturers now.
You either don't have to pay for electricity or you're not as honest as you claim you are.
How anybody would use a PC as a backup HDD is beyong my imagination, when USB or NAS enclosures are as dirt cheap as they are, use less than a quarter of electricity, produce less than a tenth of noise and occupy only a fraction of the house, living room or desk. USB drives could use a native Linux filesystem and NAS boxen could operate wirelessly all around the house...
The electricity for driving the full-sized PC probably costs as much as half the price of a new NAS unit with a built-in printserver AND a new printer. Not including the time and effort spent to keep that damn thing running and properly configured.
And who in their right mind would use Windows as the basis for a backup?
How many computers do you want to manage as a hobby? For web browsing, any computer that can run Firefox is good enough, I suggest - and I know for all real documents, photos and stuff you need, there's probably a NAS unit involved. But either everything just works and you don't need a second unit or you're going to have a several settings, tweaks and tunings to do because it doesn't.
With unlimited free time and a load of cash, I'd rather manage one computer and a flock of hookers.
Did you really state that the number of households having a mac and a PC is equal to the number of households having a PC and a mac?
And then declared the first number to be exactly 9 times higher than the second?
A=A
or
A=9*A
Make up your mind. And they're not ordered pairs, BTW :)
I understand your hint at socialism, for which socialists usually claim it was just implemented wrongly, when a few million people died in the Gulag, from hunger or simply disappeared by the thousands.
Yet I can easily imagine a hundred real-world examples of a win:win trade scenario, but not a single form of socialism that is not totalitarian and oppressive.
Trade and liberty always restrict their scope, leaving decisions beyond a certain point up to the people directly involved. You can easily limit, divide, partition or escape liberty. No matter how foolish it could be, I could always join an oppressive cult or quit my job. Or just lie flat on the beach.
But you can never have only a little bit of socialism and still escape from it once it's established. Socialism never limits it's scope, no problem is "their problem", no decision is "their choice".
You cannot implement this properly without a country-sized prison. I was on the wrong side of the Berlin wall before it came down, I know a bit about it.
A lot of people don't think a CEO creates the wealth and that it is their moral right to judge upon other's choices.
Firstly, the choice of the CEO and their pay is solely the owner's. It's owner's money, so they can pay the CEO whatever they like to, including their firstborn, if they want.
Secondly, there are literally a million potential CEOs out there, almost as many as we have armchair quarterbacks. Out of a dozen candidates, the company owners chose that particular CEO, in spite of other contenders demanding a few million less. Why would a sensible company owner decide for wasting a few millions on a CEO when a cheaper person could do the same job?
Thirdly, no one is forced to work for that company. No one is forced to buy at McDonalds. When the company flourishes like it does, it does mean that all customers are mentally ill or the cooks and the CEO probably did their jobs well.
Fourthly, the cook doesn't create wealth and the CEO doesn't create wealth. The CEO alone is an empty suit and the cook alone would be selling hot-dogs for a few pennies.
I would rather say it is stupid to not understand the premises of trade and to think it would be a zero-sum game. But either you can't understand much about it or are simply a run-of-the-mill racist.
I seriously doubt that it is possible to simplify the political and commercial situation of the entire African continent into "robber barons make money while the poor suffer" and even less that Western money is complicit in doing so.
As military interventions in Africa are now decried by left and right wing of all parties, we have only three options or strategies outlined in my post:
-trade with market prices
-trade with "fair" prices
-do not trade.
When optimizing the situation of an average African, all other strategies perform worse than "trade with market prices", which means the Invisible Hand scenario should be the rational choice.
Given that we have African nations with and without much resources that may or may not be failed states or in a relatively prosperous situation, we cannot conclude that trade and resource export are the primary factor or reason for disarray and failure of states, we'd find a counterexample for all such hypotheses.
Decrying an unpleasant situation is insufficient, when the alternatives are worse.
Assuming we really do buy rare elements only from Africa and not also from China, Russia and Argentina which have a lot of them as well. Our alternatives then would be:
A) We don't buy rare earth elements from Africa:
Western standard of living: lower, prices for goods are higher, some goods are infeasible.
African standards of living: less exports, less jobs for average Joes, less warlord financing, probably more diverse criminal activity and stability. Example: cell phones are available only for the very top of society in Africa, prices are too high for everyone else.
B) We pay "fair trade" prices for rare elements from Africa: (assuming someone can properly the "fair" price of anything)
Western standard of living: lower, prices for goods are higher, some goods are infeasible. Example: Cell phones are expensive
African standards of living: less exports, less jobs for average Joes, probably equal warlord financing, criminal activity and stability remains constant. Cell phones become expensive that new models are only available to a smaller percentage of African people.
C) We pay whatever the market price for rare earth elements is:
Western standard of living: as high as the market prices allow
African standards of living: more exports, more jobs for average Joes, more financing for warlords, a broader middle class, less diverse criminal activity, more stability. Cell phones are an ubiquitous commodity for a large part of the population.
Trade benefits both parties or it's not trade. Trade between totally unequal partners can benefit both. Economics 101. Do your research.
While you will find some egregious examples where the First World truly exploited the Third, your arguments implicitly rely on a false assumption. You assume that
"Some person/country's wealth is predominantly the result of some other person/country's poverty" or simplified "The sum of all wins is equal to the sum of all losses"
This is the definition of a zero-sum game, like a sports tournament.
But trade is no zero-sum game, not even close. Trade ideally is a win:win-situation.
Introduced some fixes for you:
Step one: if you bought a ready made computer, you probably don't have a clean Windows CD, or even no recovery CD at all. Immediately produce a recovery CD if possible or buy Acronis or Ghost if not and then store the factory freshest image possible.
Step two: leave Windows services alone unless you you are damn well sure you know what you are doing. Make sure your backups are up to date, though.
Step three: uninstall all really unneeded applications that you are sure are not required to utilize a particular hardware function or USB device.
Step four: use anti-spyware and anti-virus software from any trusted, well-known brand maybe except Symantec, they probably slow down the system more than real spyware :)
Or just cut corners and install the max amount of physical RAM your system can handle, 4 GB are recommended and use an SSD instead of a HDD. Don't skip the anti virus thing, though.