But voluntary unions, no. Voluntary unions (which allow employees the option - rather than be forced - to join) are simply the "board of directors" on the labor side of the economic equation, rather than the management side.
Labor has unions; management has a well-to-do board of directors. The two sides fight, reach an agreement, and nobody goes home completely-satisfied -- that's how it *ought* to be (otherwise, one side is taking advantage of the other).
Individuals standing up and telling their boss they are overworked either get fired to let the next guy in, or else are ignored because their voice is simply a baying-in-the-woods. Only the force of voluntary cooperation among laborers has the impact to put the company's bottom line on the line.
(look at it like taxes: nobody is going to pay for a public good unless everybody else does too. But not everybody wants to pay for that good. Hence, the government steals the output of our work in the form of income taxes to pay for things we may or may not individually want; it's not a voluntary arrangement. Neither is an involuntary labor union. But a voluntary labor union would be analogous to a consumption tax: you pay your taxes according to how much you consume, so you have a choice as to how much you pay in taxes...)
If you're pro-security and anti-centralization, you should support this administration's efforts.
What, like Bush's signing of the bill which created the Dept. of Homeland Security, intended to create a security information and response clearinghouse for all the security agencies (FBI, CIA, DEA, BATF, etc.)? You know, the largest re-centralization of government in 50 years?
Bush is no decentralizer. He is, in fact, the antithesis of decentralization supporters.
Your post was a good one until your last sentence...
TFA doesn't indicate that the engineer accounts for silencers/suppressors, stating only:
The device is listening for the entire sound pattern of the gunshot, not just the initial explosion, which makes it much less likely to mistake other loud noises for shooting.
A specially configured computer system (a "directional analyzer") accurately calculates any authenticated gunshot's location - using the difference in the time the sound arrives at the different microphones on a SENTRI acoustic unit.
Fine, so it detects the sound. Minimize the volume of the sound, or change the profile of that sound, and the shot becomes less-likely to be detected. A suppressor would help in the former, but I'm not sure about the latter (any experts?).
Predictions: 1) monitoring devices get destroyed and/or hacked, and/or 2) suppressors increase in popularity, and/or 3) alternate means of killing (knives, swords, blowguns, etc.) increase in popularity
or,
4) nothing changes, except more shooters are detected
Anyway, just because the microphone's input is piped to a neural-net program which detects gunshots does not mean the input cannot *also* be outputted to a file, or to speakers on a computer, etc..
I play DDR. It's really a ton of fun once you get into it. The songs provide a good challenge, even on the "light" mode, and it's a great way to get exercise (seriously, you will sweat like crazy after an hour of playing).
Or, more-realistically, oust the neocon fascists currently running the Republican party and our government in favor of highly-visible, well-respected, libertarian-leaning candidates like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ron Paul...
Point being, the LP will *never* amount to anything. It has yet to break the 1% popular voting mark, whereas even socialist Eugene Debs achieved over 6% back in 1919. Ross Perot got 18% in 1996 only because the 2 candidates were not outstanding and the nation was in a fairly-neutral mood -- and, also, Perot had $3 billion in net worth to run a campaign with. Not to mention that he didn't sound completely-wacko, overly-simplistic and dogmatic like the Libertarian Party does.
The idea that *anybody* in america actually benefitted from 9/11 is a complete farce. We were all hurt by this, emotionally and economically. Any increase in spending on this or that pales in comparison to the amount of money everybody lost in the WTC collapse and it's far reaching economic effects.
So you mean to say that construction companies building new towers in place of the WTC don't benefit? They aren't getting paid to build new towers?
Come on...
Now, I grant you, the *vast* majority of Americans didn't benefit from the 9/11 attacks. But you cannot deny that there are certain subsets of the population who do benefit -- even if they may not desire to benefit (after all, who really wants to kill thousands of people for their own personal benefit? Besides leaders of former Soviet-bloc nations and dictators, I mean), they do so indirectly.
Indeed. But Freenet hasn't been useable for what, over a year now? I'm amazed they continue to get any donations at all, and I think Ian Clarke (Sanity) has long since lost interest. Sadly, Freenet seems to have collapsed under its own weight of extreme complexity.
Entropy was pretty good while it worked and still had a community, but I think concerns about the strength of its encryption kept it from being too popular (not to mention lack of advertising), and IIRC, ultimately the developer(s) lost interest.
At this point, AFAIK there really is no good "anonymity layer" pseudo-protocol (conceptually, a distributed, encrypted datastore w/ routing on each node) like Freenet or Entropy that works at all. i2p is supposed to be Entropy's successor, but I haven't messed w/ it yet.
If I were half as sharp as Clarke or developers of any other similar systems, I'd write my own, probably in C++ (for space and speed; Freenet runs in Java and last I checked chewed up tons of RAM and CPU time, whereas Entropy, written in C, didn't). I have some ideas for routing based on legal and geographic boundaries I'd like to implement...
It's on my to-do list someday. But ultimately, I'm nowhere near bright enough to think I could pull it off. *shrug*
Besides, the key legal argument Freenet and the like rest on is that of plausible deniability; that if you can't know for certain what is being trafficked, you can't be prosecuted for it. I think that's a weak argument though. I suspect a judge would take one look at Freenet or other such systems and say that finding "illegal stuff" (be it child porn in the U.S., anti-communist papers in China, photos of bare womens' faces in Iran, etc.) is easy enough to "reasonably" conclude there was knowledge of its traffic, and in fact, that was -- arguably -- the whole point of running Freenet in the first place. No judge is going to believe that such software is running so you can anonymously download photos of fluffy bunnies...
So I'm not convinced that even if the technology were solid, that the legal basis for it is built on much more than quicksand... It's far-better than nothing in terms of initial detection is concerned, sure, but also, IMO, far from perfect once that detection has occurred. But I can't conceive of a better tech+legal defense system either.
Ideally, I think we need a whole new *physical* layer Internet, separate from the existing Internet or Internet2 and devoid of participation by any and all governmental agents and anybody else who is significantly on the government payroll (defense contractors, etc.). Something like a wireless (or perhaps wired, where suitable), fully privately-owned mesh network on which only community-approved (based on the agreement of a certain number of surrounding and already-participating node-owners, much like with WASTE, except in meatspace) private nodes may communicate, over which all traffic is encrypted, possibly multiple times, possibly in hardware...
Oh well, I can dream of a freer world, can't I?:-)
You claimed: "People are inherently lazy and greedy.", and I used an extreme example to take you to task for it, and the discussion went downhill from there.
The discussion did indeed go downhill from there, because your "example" was not phrased in any way as an example at all. It was a question, and one which asked why we could not do what has already been done in socialist and communist countries -- namely, sterilize people and/or genetically-engineer the traits we don't like out of people.
You seem to be backpedaling at this point...
Yep- because they're simply not required. This doesn't mean that we kill them- this means that we shunt them off and don't let them participate in the free market.
Yet you've failed to answer why they *do* continue to participate in the free market. We have an official 5.5% unemployment rate, and I've seen some more-pessimistic estimates which suggest about a 9% unemployment rate (which slightly-above what official numbers state is unemployment for some European nations). So at worst, 91% of the people are still participating in the American free-market exchange of labor for wages.
Whether you think people are required or not for a given work area is irrelevant; the labor market says right now that some 91-95% of all Americans are necessary. Moreover, most unemployment is not permanent. It's not structural, it's cyclical, and where structural unemployment is a concern (like in IT), it's because there were too many unqualified people doing the work anyway (witness the paper MCSE's who had never touched a computer before in their lives, for example).
No- a few LOCAL elites know better than most people- and there should be barriers between the elites.
Barriers between elites = restriction of freedom too you know.
Local elites usually know better their own local situation better than state, federal, or global elites, that's true. But that does not make them experts either; for example, a city councilman does not know as well as a local shopowner how, exactly, that shop operates, because the councilman doesn't work there.
The advice of local experts should be weighted more-heavily than that of completely-uninvolved non-experts, certainly. And depending on the scenario, it may often be weighted more-heavily than that of state and federal experts as well. But they are far from being a silver bullet in terms of governance.
Yes- and my system is more bazaar-like than your central-power-all-in-the-stock-market system.
Central power in the stock market? Who are you kidding?
There's more than 1 stock market. There are 2 primary national stock markets NYSE and the NASDAQ. But there are also local stock markets as well -- markets for local businesses to sell stocks to local investors. Investors who look at companies outside the bigger stockmarket to invest in. Rather than investing in IBM, they invest in a local computer shop, for instance...
Thus, such investment is a decentralized system.
Try using The real numbers instead of the ones the White House wants the DOL to release.
Yay, I got you to cite a source!:)
The numbersusa.com site, of course, is biased against overpopulation. As if efficiency gains mean nothing, and therefore the pie of resources cannot be spread out amongst more than X number of people.
Let's look at that Census report you cite. You note in your journal:
According to This rather outdated government document, which was by it's own admission based on pre-recession numbers, even in the relatively good times of 1996-1999, 34% o
But you don't see mass-sterilization and prevention of somebody from bearing their own children against their own will as evil?
Exactly why I had #1 as well- that is obviously the WRONG path. And I was trolled into taking it.
What #1? Go back to the post where you support mass-sterilization. The discussion went:
I've yet, however, to see people who willingly would cooperate to, say, clean each others' toilets or take out the trash or do any one of a number of other unappealing jobs -- and do them for free in the name of the "public good."
Ever live in a family? Or a commune? I've been there, done it. Of course- it becomes much easier when the more unappealing jobs are automated, though- that's where technology comes into play.
After all, why should I clean your toilet if I can just wait for some other sucker to do it instead?
Because it's also your toilet? Better yet, why don't you simply invent a toilet cleaning robot- then no human being has to do it.
People are inherently lazy and greedy.
SOME people are. Others don't have these genes. There's no reason whatsoever that we can't choose to use eugenics to remove greed, sloth, and the other 7 deadly sins from the human genome.
There is no #1. You only said in response to my statement that people are inherently lazy and greedy that "some people are" and for those who are, we can breed out that gene via eugenics.
How wonderfully-totalitarian of you. Do you have your children goose-step around the house wearing mustaches too?
Sorry- you misunderstood. This is a relatively new meme- only 160 years old. In Guttenberg's day, if they weren't printing, they could still farm. 98% of the people were needed just to survive. Thus the economical lessons of that time are not applicable to TODAY.
I see. So most people aren't necessary to survive.
Why do they survive then? Why is it that the economy has -- from your 160 year-old starting point -- continued to provide for over 3 generations of people?
We were better off with the elite well educated aristocracy- at least they could think for themselves instead of worshiping economists who have nothing worthwhile to say about our time.
Ahh, I see. A few global elites know better than most people.
Doesn't that violate your tenet that the economy should be decentralized then? That centralization of power is evil? (which it is)
You've just contradicted yourself, quite-bluntly.
Nevermind the fact that virtually every study of the market (the "bazaar") has proven the market to be more-effective, accurate, and efficient than centralized systems (the "cathedral").
And yet- there's no evidence that this is sustainable- or that ever increasing levels of technology will ALWAYS require more people. In fact, the lesson has been quite the opposite for the last 160 years if you look at the labor utilization rate of the United States. Once it was 100%- these days we're lucky if it hits 66%, and that's considered a boom time.
Wrong again on the facts. Try about 90-100% (it's been above 80% since 1984, so where your 66% figure comes from is beyond me) -- in spite of our being in an increasingly-automated society.
Also, even if the 66% figure you claim (without sources) were correct, we have an unemployment rate of 5.5% to render irrelevant that labor-utilization figure.
It's actually an old business- and it wouldn't need to exist because I'd be profitably having my time engaged elsewhere. But that wouldn't necessarily be true either- you're thinking I want to wind back the clock, when in reality I want to move FORWARD with it.
By eliminating technology in order to reduce society back to an agrarian age? This is the opposite of progress.
That would be incorrect- because I reject the basic theories of economics and the religion of Ada
Which planet did you come from? Thanksgiving is an american holiday.
One on which American *families* get together to enjoy their time off, enjoy each others' company, and maybe even celebrate the discovery of the American land.
2. I believe it is our DUTY as human beings to fight against evil, not co-operate with it- that freedom to do evil is worthless. That's why the carrot is so unappealing to me.
But you don't see mass-sterilization and prevention of somebody from bearing their own children against their own will as evil?
You do not see slavery as evil?
You do not see physical violence and coercion as evil?
Seriously, how do you justify such generally-accepted-to-be-evil things on the basis of human freedom? How can you literally sit here and tell me that "freedom is slavery"? It's absolutely incomprehensible.
On a completely-unrelated note, what do you think of non-Catholics?
That has been becoming more true every year for 160 years now- and in the next 20 it will lead to 80% unemployment in the United States.
Based on... what analysis? You said you took econometrics: prove it.
Unless we see an explosion of robotic assistants -- something Popular Mechanics has said is Coming Real Soon Now for the last 60 years -- I highly doubt you'll see very many people lose their jobs to technology. Heck, even if we *do* have so many more bots, look at history -- unemployment rates have largely dropped since the 1800s, in spite of our every-increasing technological advancement. Why?
Because improved technology leads to increased complexity; increased complexity leads to increased amount of thought and work necessary to maintain the technology; and increased amounts of thought and work necessary to maintain that technology requires more people to do so.
Moreover, you're ignoring the fertility rate, a.k.a. population growth. Do you know which way the fertility rate has gone over the last 150 years? It has dropped. The replacement rate is 2.1 children per mother. In the first half of the U.S. century, the fertility rate was around 3.5 or so. In the 1980s, it was down around 1.7 or 1.8. Today it is about 2.0-2.1 -- i.e., only enough children are being born to replace their parents -- and no more. That means that population growth is slowing. And this is a global trend on virtually every continent except Africa.
What does this mean? It means there will be fewer workers for the available work to be done, which means more scarcity of labor, which means more demand for that labor, which means increased pay for that labor. It's not rocket science; it's market economics.
Thus, encouraging people to do EXTRA, to do a good job, is no longer a good thing for society as a whole- every little extra thing you do is taking away a job from somebody else.
Bullshit. Go read the history surrounding the Gutenberg printing press. Peoples' old jobs were indeed lost -- those who used to manually copy texts -- and they were re-employed into the field of implementing the printing press around the world.
They benefited from having their hard, brainless work of manual copying done for them, and were freed to work on ensuring that greater volumes of books could be printed via the printing press. That is why it is now possible for virtually everybody on Earth to own at least a couple books (often the Bible, for which the printing press was originally invented to mass-produce), rather than an elite, well-educated aristocracy.
Today, some 500 years after the Gutenberg press was invented, armies of people *still* work in the printing industry (one of my friends does, in fact). This, despite the fact that people lose their jobs because of improved technology. Why do those people continue working though? Quite simply, it's because labor has always been re-allocated to new work after the technology has been introduced (often in the same or similar field, since that is where their experience lies; in that case, they don't lose their jobs at all - they instead adapt to the changing world) whenever new technology is developed.
Your society takes us back to a neanderthal agrarian economy, in which we would not be having t
You've stated a conclusion without showing us the data points, assumptions, or calculations. Are we simply to take your word on it? What about people that make $30/hr? $100,000/yr? What increase to the deficit would their be? Or do we just ignore that?
As I noted here, I would like to do just that. I haven't gotten around to it, however (I have other homework which eats my time -- this sales tax calculation is something I made in my free time. My original calculation was merely for my own personal justification, and to that end - in looking forward 5 or 10 years - the question of whether a NST would continue to work for me is still up in the air.
But you are quite right that if we are to accept such a tax, that other levels of income need to be accounted-for as well, from the poorest people on minimum-wage to Bill Gates and everybody in-between. Your skepticism is perfectly-valid: I never claimed that there wasn't more work to be done on this. My remarks were off-the-cuff, not intended as a thorough policy analysis...
Automation certainly does- to some extent- take away jobs. However, while this is a problem in capitalism, it's NOT a problem in communism- because if your basic needs are taken care of you don't necessarily NEED a steady job to survive.
Sure you do -- because by your own admission, those who do not work are physically-harmed.
Again, why work if you can expect some other sucker to work for you? What's the difference between working and not working -- unless there is a carrot or a stick? Under capitalism, there is a carrot: higher wages. Under communism, there is a stick: punishment, as you suggested.
Which one is less-coercive? Which one is more-free? The answer is above.
And thus we end up loosing freedom.
Only if the people -- the public, the community, whatever you call it -- *wants* to lose freedom. However, it is not forced upon them; it occurs of their own free will.
You picked a couple of bad examples for your side here- not only is there very little competition left among auto manufacturers, they even share factories these days. An Escort rolling off the line one car- a Turcel rolling off the line the next car- same car, different sticker.
How ignorant are you? Ford does not produce Tercels; Toyota does not produce Escorts (or Focii, the new model to come out from Ford 5 years ago).
They may share some parts, but they are by no means the same car. Toyota and Ford have no business alignment.
Mazda and Ford do, however. The Focus Ford builds uses a Mazda engine, and, IIRC, Mazda transmission. However, the chassis is still all-Ford, and it handles like it's on rails due to Ford's European arm, Mondeo, doing the chassis and suspension design.
But Mazda is still a separate corporate entity, with models they produce which Ford does not - even though Ford owns a substantial share of Mazda (and Volvo, and Aston Martin, and Jaguar, and Lincoln). Just as GM owns Cadillac, Chevy, Pontiac, and several other domestic carmakers, along with Saab (Swedish). But at the end of the day, those companies still operate as relatively-independent business units.
But to compare Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota, and Honda -- they are are all *very* distinct companies (each with business units hanging off of them, as I mentioned above), with little sharing between them. GM and Toyota teamed up for the Chevy Nova/Toyota Corolla back in the late 1980s, then teamed up again on the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix in the last couple years. But that really is about the extent of their cooperation. GM's Suburban and Tahoes have no parts shared with any of Toyota's SUVs.
Not that I can tell- they all offer the same high rates and are owned by the same people.
Visa, MC, and Discover -- owned by the same people?
Now I *KNOW* you are talking out of your ass, because I have personal, direct knowledge of the credit card industry. Thanks for playing along with my experiment; you served quite well.
Discover is owned by Morgan Stanley Dean-Witter, a major investment banking firm. Discover was formerly owned by Sears Roebuck (which, if you notice, is doing so badly now that it is merging with KMart). Discover is the only consumer credit card company which also acts as its own bank. Other card companies offer their cards through 3rd-party banks, such as MBNA.
American Express, Visa, and MC are likewise separate, competing corporate entities. Visa is based in CA, MC is based in IL; I'm not sure where AMEX is based. Visa and MC are owned by the individual banks which issue their cards. It's a more-decentralized system than Discover has.
Clearly, they are separate entities. (large entities, yes, but still separate)
No- what that proves is that the Japanese bought out the American companies and are running the American fact
Since the free market by it's very definition has no regulations to prevent these parasites from gaining power, their rise is inevitable and a fatal flaw in the system.
The regulation of monopolies and other distasteful business variants (ones with racist owners, etc.) is called "the consumer."
Example: Wal-Mart. I personally am not a fan of Wal-Mart for their labor practices, their shoddy, low-quality goods, and their faceless servce. Unless they sell something nobody else in the area sells - like car floor mats - I make a daily conscious attempt to avoid them. And I encourage others to do the same.
Black people back during the Civil Rights movement shut down many businesses in the south by avoiding and boycotting stores which were racist; some Woolworth's stores have been one example (and where is Woolworth's now? IIRC, they were bought up by Montgomery Wards back in late-80s/early 90s, which likewise is basically dead). Black people proceeded to setup their own businesses, such as the "Fredom Ride" bus system to counter the whites-biased busing system in place in Alabama.
Moral of the story learned by businessmen? Don't hate your customers! In this regard, the free-market clearly promoted increased tolerance and liberalism.
That said, boycotts have been less-effective than in years past, though, because of 2 reasons: 1) market diversification -- companies expand themselves into other markets, e.g. China, India, EU nations, etc. So there's less incentive for them to care about what happens in any single market 2) increasing apathy on the part of the public and/or lack of directly-influenced reason to care -- In my Civil Rights era example, blacks had a common, direct reason to care: they were black and racist business operations harmed their ability to get service. Today, however, the main chimeras of the left are things like child labor and environmental damage, neither of which directly affects people like being black did. So it's harder to get a "coalition of the willing," because the effects simply aren't so strong that such a coalition is deemed necessary by the market. So, if the market says it's not a big enough problem, then until it becomes one, the market isn't going to care. And since people don't think it's enough of a problem, why *should* it be considered one anyway?
There's one other factor you've ignored: that politicians, as government agents, should not accept corporate bribes. The sole responsibility of the corporation is to turn a profit for its shareholders; that's it. One should expect corporations to try to buy off politicians. But we expect politicians to rise above such things -- and as you note, they have not.
Ultimately, the buck stops with the politician, and we, along with other politicians seeking to promote themselves over other politicians, need to hold them accountable for it.
However, that efficiency has a tendency to put people out of work, thus removing people from participating in the economic system at all. Remember- for every person you put out of work, you've removed a consumer who can buy from you.
The printing press put manual-labor copiers out of business. And yet we now have far-more people working in the printing business than before. Why? Because the business became more-complex; that increased complexity requires more brains and more physical labor to work on them -- and that requires more people.
The combustion engine put for-hire horse-drawn carriage operators out of business. What do their great-grandchildren do now? They drive taxis in major metropolitan areas, for those people who don't have their own car readily-available. Moreover, because the population has grown since then, there's more city streets to cover - another increase in complexity - and, of course, there's more people to service too. Again, people remain employed by these "employment-destroying" devices.
In fact (since you have taken so much in economics, as indicated by yo
Agreed, but since no corporation on the planet follows those laws anymore they've become largely meaningless. In fact, once a group of corporations gains governmental power and starts using it to raise the barrier of entry to their little niche, the whole idea of a free market largely goes out the window.
Since when does a "free market" exist when governments give special favors to corporations? That's better-defined as "fascism" or "crony capitalism".
Not that that isn't happening here in the U.S. under Bush (ha ha)... witness the 90% steel tariffs, anything the RIAA and MPAA have done in the last 5 years, etc...
Agreed on that score- but I guess what it really comes down to is why do we want to bother trading with our neighbors at all, let alone people halfway around the world? To me- it's to enable both myself and my neighbor to survive the chaos of the natural world. Why would I want to add the chaos of a totally invented and artificial market to that? Isn't the weather chaotic enough for you?
Indeed the weather is plenty chaotic. I mean, it's snowing (blizzard-like, in fact) where I am right now, and it's not even Thanksgiving yet!:-)
In a way, I'm glad it's so chaotic -- variety is the spice of life. I like California's weather, but I'm not sure I could take 300 days/year of nothing but sunshine and 60-90F temperatures. I think it'd make me go soft...
Why trade with other nations? For at least 2 reasons:
* economic efficiency -- everybody has their own sets of skills and abilities. Japanese people tend to do better-quality engineering than us Americans, for example, while French people make better food. And Americans seem more-competitive at building the businesses to do those things. Latin Americans have land that is fertile for fruits and vegetables (watermelons, for example), so they can produce those for more time than we in the U.S. can.
* individual freedom -- I am freer to choose the way I live by having a choice between Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Toyota, Honda, BMW, etc. than I am by having the single state-owned carmaker, Volga (this was Russia's only automobile manufacturer they allowed the public to buy. Of course, top-level officials could have Mercedes instead, b/c they were "special"). Especially given that the Volga is a poorly-built car compared to all of the above, which have improved in quality due to Japanese competition.
The trouble with government control of trade is, at least partly, the administrative costs that come with controlling trade. There is always a tax levied which raises the price of the product, which prevents people in the importing nation from buying as much of it as they otherwise could -- this is particularly-bad for poorer people who desire an inexpensive, quality product (like a cheap Toyota)... So, government involvement necessarily introduces a level of inefficiency -- a middleman between the trader and tradee. It's simply unavoidable.
Free trade is one of those few things that a large majority (though not all - after all, we are talking about a random distribution of people whose thoughts necessarily differ, so you have to expect some extrema) economists agree is good for everybody.
Same with in most communal systems- just not the ones you are used to.
In *true* communal systems -- yes. But *true* communism has never existed in reality, outside perhaps of Indian tribes (I'm not enough of an expert to comment on the economics of American Indian tribes prior to their practical elimination though; I just understand that they all shared their land, animals, harvests, etc. believing they were all part of a single, cooperative society). Soviet Russia, China, Vietnam, N. Korea -- they all were/are distinctly-socialist, due to their large, bureaucratic central governments which (not coincidentally) happen to be rather oppressive as well.
That said, communism fails for the same reason socialism does -- lack of incentive to wo
Good points about the card vs. rebate check question. I'm inclined to agree w/ you overall; it probably would cost more than mailing out checks. *Especially* in terms of fraud-detection and prevention; I think that would more-than likely create the need for an agency like the Secret Service (or else, use the existing SS to enforce anti-fraud methods)... After all, who wouldn't want to have a tax-cut card??:P (there's also the "free-rider" problem here of non-cardholders using cardholders' cards to gain tax cuts they weren't supposed to receive. Imagine Larry Ellison in the grocery line, asking the wife of the unemployed bum if he can use her card to save himself money!)
I think the determination of "who gets what rate" could be pretty easily automated. We set a base minimum (as with a negative income tax, as proposed by Milton Friedman. In a way, the FairTax seems like an adaptation of the NIT to a consumption tax -- a problem I've been wrestling with in my mind for a while, actually) for qualification for a rebate - probably around the poverty level. From that, we still need a way to determine one's yearly income -- this would need to be reported by employers to some agency (basically, what remains of the IRS). Most employers could do this online, although, there would still be a need (whether w/ a rebate card or check) to have people to process those forms from employers who don't file online...
Anyway, those values are sent to some beastly mainframe in Washington, processed, and those people who qualify have their rebate card rates calculated and the cards processed, manufactured, and mailed back to them automatically -- just like credit card companies do. It'd all be automated batch-processing w/ mainframes and such, so there's little need for human intervention, and therefore, little in the way of administrative costs besides system updates, rate-calculation changes, and such.
Still, in my mind, the fraud potential (and the privacy implications resulting as you note) are too-great to ignore, thus effectively sinking the rebate card idea.:-/
IIRC the FairTax calls for monthly rebates, which I think is about right.
The FairTax does call for monthly rebates, which seems reasonable. Provided annual inflation is kept low (i.e. < 5%, and preferably < 3% like it has been for several years, though with the current admin's unbelievable deficit spending, well - there's only so many Treasury bonds that investors will soak up (even foreign investors, though I suspect they'll tire out long after domestic investors do) before the Fed has to start buying them, by pushing their printed money out into the economy, raising the money supply and increasing inflation as a result), the loss on the value of those checks due to rebate-transmission lag would be close to nil.
And regardless, monthly rebate checks would be far-superior to yearly rebate checks, as is currently the case.
True, of course very few people even understand the concept of opportunity costs. And really, we have the same situation today. Several times I've listened to people expounding on their brilliant financial maneuver of increasing their income tax withholding so they'd get a bigger refund on April 15. My attempts to explain the time value of money were futile. (Them: "But if they didn't take it out of my paycheck I'd just spend it!" Me: Kif-style sigh).
It's amazing, isn't it? Seems to be a common problem and misconception... It's really almost like a tax on the people who don't know any better.:-)
Like Yahoo or other web-directories do. Sort of. For example:
~/bin ~/scripts (for occasionally-used scripts not in your $PATH, so as to avoid cluttering TAB-completed executable namespace) ~/economics (for us Econ nerds) ~/code (for personal programming projects) ~/texts (for various textfiles. Make subdirs for categories here too, e.g. tech, lovelife, journal, etc.) ~/pr0n (guess... also subcategorize by vids and pics) ~/kismet_dumps (for wardriving) ~/school (or ~/work - for things related to your boss (whether a professor or manager))
And so on.:-)
It just has to "work" for you to keep clutter to a minimum. To do that, you really have to figure out how to categorize all your clutter into groups, and move those groups into appropriately-named directories.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't agree more.
:(
I have a final tomorrow morning. I should be asleep now. Instead, I'm replying to your message...
This apparently explains why my grades will suck so much this semester...
Involuntary unions, yes.
But voluntary unions, no. Voluntary unions (which allow employees the option - rather than be forced - to join) are simply the "board of directors" on the labor side of the economic equation, rather than the management side.
Labor has unions; management has a well-to-do board of directors. The two sides fight, reach an agreement, and nobody goes home completely-satisfied -- that's how it *ought* to be (otherwise, one side is taking advantage of the other).
Individuals standing up and telling their boss they are overworked either get fired to let the next guy in, or else are ignored because their voice is simply a baying-in-the-woods. Only the force of voluntary cooperation among laborers has the impact to put the company's bottom line on the line.
(look at it like taxes: nobody is going to pay for a public good unless everybody else does too. But not everybody wants to pay for that good. Hence, the government steals the output of our work in the form of income taxes to pay for things we may or may not individually want; it's not a voluntary arrangement. Neither is an involuntary labor union. But a voluntary labor union would be analogous to a consumption tax: you pay your taxes according to how much you consume, so you have a choice as to how much you pay in taxes...)
Behold, the power of the market working as it should -- labor and management duking it out for an agreeable work arrangement.
This, as opposed to labor sitting on its hands and letting management dictate, top-down, how things should be run.
If you're pro-security and anti-centralization, you should support this administration's efforts.
What, like Bush's signing of the bill which created the Dept. of Homeland Security, intended to create a security information and response clearinghouse for all the security agencies (FBI, CIA, DEA, BATF, etc.)? You know, the largest re-centralization of government in 50 years?
Bush is no decentralizer. He is, in fact, the antithesis of decentralization supporters.
Your post was a good one until your last sentence...
Fine, so it detects the sound. Minimize the volume of the sound, or change the profile of that sound, and the shot becomes less-likely to be detected. A suppressor would help in the former, but I'm not sure about the latter (any experts?).
Suppressors are not difficult to manufacture, after all, although it's a felony to do so (or to possess one), in violation of the 1934 National Firearms Act...
Predictions:
1) monitoring devices get destroyed and/or hacked, and/or
2) suppressors increase in popularity, and/or
3) alternate means of killing (knives, swords, blowguns, etc.) increase in popularity
or,
4) nothing changes, except more shooters are detected
Anyway, just because the microphone's input is piped to a neural-net program which detects gunshots does not mean the input cannot *also* be outputted to a file, or to speakers on a computer, etc..
I play DDR. It's really a ton of fun once you get into it. The songs provide a good challenge, even on the "light" mode, and it's a great way to get exercise (seriously, you will sweat like crazy after an hour of playing).
:-)
Plus, chicks dig DDR. No joke!
Or, more-realistically, oust the neocon fascists currently running the Republican party and our government in favor of highly-visible, well-respected, libertarian-leaning candidates like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ron Paul...
Point being, the LP will *never* amount to anything. It has yet to break the 1% popular voting mark, whereas even socialist Eugene Debs achieved over 6% back in 1919. Ross Perot got 18% in 1996 only because the 2 candidates were not outstanding and the nation was in a fairly-neutral mood -- and, also, Perot had $3 billion in net worth to run a campaign with. Not to mention that he didn't sound completely-wacko, overly-simplistic and dogmatic like the Libertarian Party does.
The idea that *anybody* in america actually benefitted from 9/11 is a complete farce. We were all hurt by this, emotionally and economically. Any increase in spending on this or that pales in comparison to the amount of money everybody lost in the WTC collapse and it's far reaching economic effects.
So you mean to say that construction companies building new towers in place of the WTC don't benefit? They aren't getting paid to build new towers?
Come on...
Now, I grant you, the *vast* majority of Americans didn't benefit from the 9/11 attacks. But you cannot deny that there are certain subsets of the population who do benefit -- even if they may not desire to benefit (after all, who really wants to kill thousands of people for their own personal benefit? Besides leaders of former Soviet-bloc nations and dictators, I mean), they do so indirectly.
What, you mean prayer doesn't actually help the blind to see, the deaf to hear, or the paraplegic to walk again?
You mean the solutions to these problems are found in *science* and *medicine*, not in religious voodoo and mysticism? Incredible! God forbid!
Indeed. But Freenet hasn't been useable for what, over a year now? I'm amazed they continue to get any donations at all, and I think Ian Clarke (Sanity) has long since lost interest. Sadly, Freenet seems to have collapsed under its own weight of extreme complexity.
:-)
Entropy was pretty good while it worked and still had a community, but I think concerns about the strength of its encryption kept it from being too popular (not to mention lack of advertising), and IIRC, ultimately the developer(s) lost interest.
At this point, AFAIK there really is no good "anonymity layer" pseudo-protocol (conceptually, a distributed, encrypted datastore w/ routing on each node) like Freenet or Entropy that works at all. i2p is supposed to be Entropy's successor, but I haven't messed w/ it yet.
If I were half as sharp as Clarke or developers of any other similar systems, I'd write my own, probably in C++ (for space and speed; Freenet runs in Java and last I checked chewed up tons of RAM and CPU time, whereas Entropy, written in C, didn't). I have some ideas for routing based on legal and geographic boundaries I'd like to implement...
It's on my to-do list someday. But ultimately, I'm nowhere near bright enough to think I could pull it off. *shrug*
Besides, the key legal argument Freenet and the like rest on is that of plausible deniability; that if you can't know for certain what is being trafficked, you can't be prosecuted for it. I think that's a weak argument though. I suspect a judge would take one look at Freenet or other such systems and say that finding "illegal stuff" (be it child porn in the U.S., anti-communist papers in China, photos of bare womens' faces in Iran, etc.) is easy enough to "reasonably" conclude there was knowledge of its traffic, and in fact, that was -- arguably -- the whole point of running Freenet in the first place. No judge is going to believe that such software is running so you can anonymously download photos of fluffy bunnies...
So I'm not convinced that even if the technology were solid, that the legal basis for it is built on much more than quicksand... It's far-better than nothing in terms of initial detection is concerned, sure, but also, IMO, far from perfect once that detection has occurred. But I can't conceive of a better tech+legal defense system either.
Ideally, I think we need a whole new *physical* layer Internet, separate from the existing Internet or Internet2 and devoid of participation by any and all governmental agents and anybody else who is significantly on the government payroll (defense contractors, etc.). Something like a wireless (or perhaps wired, where suitable), fully privately-owned mesh network on which only community-approved (based on the agreement of a certain number of surrounding and already-participating node-owners, much like with WASTE, except in meatspace) private nodes may communicate, over which all traffic is encrypted, possibly multiple times, possibly in hardware...
Oh well, I can dream of a freer world, can't I?
Just for integrity's sake, I want to correct a math error I made where I wrote:
That factor alone leaves you with 13.26% of the labor force to say was not utilized, for one reason or another.
That should actually be 20.74%, not 13.26%...
The discussion did indeed go downhill from there, because your "example" was not phrased in any way as an example at all. It was a question, and one which asked why we could not do what has already been done in socialist and communist countries -- namely, sterilize people and/or genetically-engineer the traits we don't like out of people.
You seem to be backpedaling at this point...
Yep- because they're simply not required. This doesn't mean that we kill them- this means that we shunt them off and don't let them participate in the free market.
Yet you've failed to answer why they *do* continue to participate in the free market. We have an official 5.5% unemployment rate, and I've seen some more-pessimistic estimates which suggest about a 9% unemployment rate (which slightly-above what official numbers state is unemployment for some European nations). So at worst, 91% of the people are still participating in the American free-market exchange of labor for wages.
Whether you think people are required or not for a given work area is irrelevant; the labor market says right now that some 91-95% of all Americans are necessary. Moreover, most unemployment is not permanent. It's not structural, it's cyclical, and where structural unemployment is a concern (like in IT), it's because there were too many unqualified people doing the work anyway (witness the paper MCSE's who had never touched a computer before in their lives, for example).
No- a few LOCAL elites know better than most people- and there should be barriers between the elites.
Barriers between elites = restriction of freedom too you know.
Local elites usually know better their own local situation better than state, federal, or global elites, that's true. But that does not make them experts either; for example, a city councilman does not know as well as a local shopowner how, exactly, that shop operates, because the councilman doesn't work there.
The advice of local experts should be weighted more-heavily than that of completely-uninvolved non-experts, certainly. And depending on the scenario, it may often be weighted more-heavily than that of state and federal experts as well. But they are far from being a silver bullet in terms of governance.
Yes- and my system is more bazaar-like than your central-power-all-in-the-stock-market system.
Central power in the stock market? Who are you kidding?
There's more than 1 stock market. There are 2 primary national stock markets NYSE and the NASDAQ. But there are also local stock markets as well -- markets for local businesses to sell stocks to local investors. Investors who look at companies outside the bigger stockmarket to invest in. Rather than investing in IBM, they invest in a local computer shop, for instance...
Thus, such investment is a decentralized system.
Try using The real numbers instead of the ones the White House wants the DOL to release.
Yay, I got you to cite a source!
The numbersusa.com site, of course, is biased against overpopulation. As if efficiency gains mean nothing, and therefore the pie of resources cannot be spread out amongst more than X number of people.
Yet, this is a failed claim, as economist Julian Simon showed. He won a famous bet with biologist Paul Ehrlich back in the 1980s that the price of 5 different metals would decrease in inflation-adjusted terms.
But let's get on with it.
Let's look at that Census report you cite. You note in your journal:
But you don't see mass-sterilization and prevention of somebody from bearing their own children against their own will as evil?
Exactly why I had #1 as well- that is obviously the WRONG path. And I was trolled into taking it.
What #1? Go back to the post where you support mass-sterilization. The discussion went:
I've yet, however, to see people who willingly would cooperate to, say, clean each others' toilets or take out the trash or do any one of a number of other unappealing jobs -- and do them for free in the name of the "public good."
Ever live in a family? Or a commune? I've been there, done it. Of course- it becomes much easier when the more unappealing jobs are automated, though- that's where technology comes into play.
After all, why should I clean your toilet if I can just wait for some other sucker to do it instead?
Because it's also your toilet? Better yet, why don't you simply invent a toilet cleaning robot- then no human being has to do it.
People are inherently lazy and greedy.
SOME people are. Others don't have these genes. There's no reason whatsoever that we can't choose to use eugenics to remove greed, sloth, and the other 7 deadly sins from the human genome.
There is no #1. You only said in response to my statement that people are inherently lazy and greedy that "some people are" and for those who are, we can breed out that gene via eugenics.
How wonderfully-totalitarian of you. Do you have your children goose-step around the house wearing mustaches too?
Sorry- you misunderstood. This is a relatively new meme- only 160 years old. In Guttenberg's day, if they weren't printing, they could still farm. 98% of the people were needed just to survive. Thus the economical lessons of that time are not applicable to TODAY.
I see. So most people aren't necessary to survive.
Why do they survive then? Why is it that the economy has -- from your 160 year-old starting point -- continued to provide for over 3 generations of people?
We were better off with the elite well educated aristocracy- at least they could think for themselves instead of worshiping economists who have nothing worthwhile to say about our time.
Ahh, I see. A few global elites know better than most people.
Doesn't that violate your tenet that the economy should be decentralized then? That centralization of power is evil? (which it is)
You've just contradicted yourself, quite-bluntly.
Nevermind the fact that virtually every study of the market (the "bazaar") has proven the market to be more-effective, accurate, and efficient than centralized systems (the "cathedral").
And yet- there's no evidence that this is sustainable- or that ever increasing levels of technology will ALWAYS require more people. In fact, the lesson has been quite the opposite for the last 160 years if you look at the labor utilization rate of the United States. Once it was 100%- these days we're lucky if it hits 66%, and that's considered a boom time.
Wrong again on the facts. Try about 90-100% (it's been above 80% since 1984, so where your 66% figure comes from is beyond me) -- in spite of our being in an increasingly-automated society.
Also, even if the 66% figure you claim (without sources) were correct, we have an unemployment rate of 5.5% to render irrelevant that labor-utilization figure.
It's actually an old business- and it wouldn't need to exist because I'd be profitably having my time engaged elsewhere. But that wouldn't necessarily be true either- you're thinking I want to wind back the clock, when in reality I want to move FORWARD with it.
By eliminating technology in order to reduce society back to an agrarian age? This is the opposite of progress.
That would be incorrect- because I reject the basic theories of economics and the religion of Ada
That the European welfare states are collapsing-- but they just keep plugging along.
But not as well as Britain after Britain made their economy more market-oriented.
Which planet did you come from? Thanksgiving is an american holiday.
One on which American *families* get together to enjoy their time off, enjoy each others' company, and maybe even celebrate the discovery of the American land.
2. I believe it is our DUTY as human beings to fight against evil, not co-operate with it- that freedom to do evil is worthless. That's why the carrot is so unappealing to me.
But you don't see mass-sterilization and prevention of somebody from bearing their own children against their own will as evil?
You do not see slavery as evil?
You do not see physical violence and coercion as evil?
Seriously, how do you justify such generally-accepted-to-be-evil things on the basis of human freedom? How can you literally sit here and tell me that "freedom is slavery"? It's absolutely incomprehensible.
On a completely-unrelated note, what do you think of non-Catholics?
That has been becoming more true every year for 160 years now- and in the next 20 it will lead to 80% unemployment in the United States.
Based on... what analysis? You said you took econometrics: prove it.
Unless we see an explosion of robotic assistants -- something Popular Mechanics has said is Coming Real Soon Now for the last 60 years -- I highly doubt you'll see very many people lose their jobs to technology. Heck, even if we *do* have so many more bots, look at history -- unemployment rates have largely dropped since the 1800s, in spite of our every-increasing technological advancement. Why?
Because improved technology leads to increased complexity; increased complexity leads to increased amount of thought and work necessary to maintain the technology; and increased amounts of thought and work necessary to maintain that technology requires more people to do so.
Moreover, you're ignoring the fertility rate, a.k.a. population growth. Do you know which way the fertility rate has gone over the last 150 years? It has dropped. The replacement rate is 2.1 children per mother. In the first half of the U.S. century, the fertility rate was around 3.5 or so. In the 1980s, it was down around 1.7 or 1.8. Today it is about 2.0-2.1 -- i.e., only enough children are being born to replace their parents -- and no more. That means that population growth is slowing. And this is a global trend on virtually every continent except Africa.
What does this mean? It means there will be fewer workers for the available work to be done, which means more scarcity of labor, which means more demand for that labor, which means increased pay for that labor. It's not rocket science; it's market economics.
Thus, encouraging people to do EXTRA, to do a good job, is no longer a good thing for society as a whole- every little extra thing you do is taking away a job from somebody else.
Bullshit. Go read the history surrounding the Gutenberg printing press. Peoples' old jobs were indeed lost -- those who used to manually copy texts -- and they were re-employed into the field of implementing the printing press around the world.
They benefited from having their hard, brainless work of manual copying done for them, and were freed to work on ensuring that greater volumes of books could be printed via the printing press. That is why it is now possible for virtually everybody on Earth to own at least a couple books (often the Bible, for which the printing press was originally invented to mass-produce), rather than an elite, well-educated aristocracy.
Today, some 500 years after the Gutenberg press was invented, armies of people *still* work in the printing industry (one of my friends does, in fact). This, despite the fact that people lose their jobs because of improved technology. Why do those people continue working though? Quite simply, it's because labor has always been re-allocated to new work after the technology has been introduced (often in the same or similar field, since that is where their experience lies; in that case, they don't lose their jobs at all - they instead adapt to the changing world) whenever new technology is developed.
Your society takes us back to a neanderthal agrarian economy, in which we would not be having t
You've stated a conclusion without showing us the data points, assumptions, or calculations. Are we simply to take your word on it? What about people that make $30/hr? $100,000/yr? What increase to the deficit would their be? Or do we just ignore that?
As I noted here, I would like to do just that. I haven't gotten around to it, however (I have other homework which eats my time -- this sales tax calculation is something I made in my free time. My original calculation was merely for my own personal justification, and to that end - in looking forward 5 or 10 years - the question of whether a NST would continue to work for me is still up in the air.
But you are quite right that if we are to accept such a tax, that other levels of income need to be accounted-for as well, from the poorest people on minimum-wage to Bill Gates and everybody in-between. Your skepticism is perfectly-valid: I never claimed that there wasn't more work to be done on this. My remarks were off-the-cuff, not intended as a thorough policy analysis...
Somebody point me to a Chinese OEM, quick!
Automation certainly does- to some extent- take away jobs. However, while this is a problem in capitalism, it's NOT a problem in communism- because if your basic needs are taken care of you don't necessarily NEED a steady job to survive.
Sure you do -- because by your own admission, those who do not work are physically-harmed.
Again, why work if you can expect some other sucker to work for you? What's the difference between working and not working -- unless there is a carrot or a stick? Under capitalism, there is a carrot: higher wages. Under communism, there is a stick: punishment, as you suggested.
Which one is less-coercive? Which one is more-free? The answer is above.
And thus we end up loosing freedom.
Only if the people -- the public, the community, whatever you call it -- *wants* to lose freedom. However, it is not forced upon them; it occurs of their own free will.
You picked a couple of bad examples for your side here- not only is there very little competition left among auto manufacturers, they even share factories these days. An Escort rolling off the line one car- a Turcel rolling off the line the next car- same car, different sticker.
How ignorant are you? Ford does not produce Tercels; Toyota does not produce Escorts (or Focii, the new model to come out from Ford 5 years ago).
They may share some parts, but they are by no means the same car. Toyota and Ford have no business alignment.
Mazda and Ford do, however. The Focus Ford builds uses a Mazda engine, and, IIRC, Mazda transmission. However, the chassis is still all-Ford, and it handles like it's on rails due to Ford's European arm, Mondeo, doing the chassis and suspension design.
But Mazda is still a separate corporate entity, with models they produce which Ford does not - even though Ford owns a substantial share of Mazda (and Volvo, and Aston Martin, and Jaguar, and Lincoln). Just as GM owns Cadillac, Chevy, Pontiac, and several other domestic carmakers, along with Saab (Swedish). But at the end of the day, those companies still operate as relatively-independent business units.
But to compare Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota, and Honda -- they are are all *very* distinct companies (each with business units hanging off of them, as I mentioned above), with little sharing between them. GM and Toyota teamed up for the Chevy Nova/Toyota Corolla back in the late 1980s, then teamed up again on the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix in the last couple years. But that really is about the extent of their cooperation. GM's Suburban and Tahoes have no parts shared with any of Toyota's SUVs.
Not that I can tell- they all offer the same high rates and are owned by the same people.
Visa, MC, and Discover -- owned by the same people?
Now I *KNOW* you are talking out of your ass, because I have personal, direct knowledge of the credit card industry. Thanks for playing along with my experiment; you served quite well.
Discover is owned by Morgan Stanley Dean-Witter, a major investment banking firm. Discover was formerly owned by Sears Roebuck (which, if you notice, is doing so badly now that it is merging with KMart). Discover is the only consumer credit card company which also acts as its own bank. Other card companies offer their cards through 3rd-party banks, such as MBNA.
American Express, Visa, and MC are likewise separate, competing corporate entities. Visa is based in CA, MC is based in IL; I'm not sure where AMEX is based. Visa and MC are owned by the individual banks which issue their cards. It's a more-decentralized system than Discover has.
Clearly, they are separate entities. (large entities, yes, but still separate)
No- what that proves is that the Japanese bought out the American companies and are running the American fact
Since the free market by it's very definition has no regulations to prevent these parasites from gaining power, their rise is inevitable and a fatal flaw in the system.
The regulation of monopolies and other distasteful business variants (ones with racist owners, etc.) is called "the consumer."
Example: Wal-Mart. I personally am not a fan of Wal-Mart for their labor practices, their shoddy, low-quality goods, and their faceless servce. Unless they sell something nobody else in the area sells - like car floor mats - I make a daily conscious attempt to avoid them. And I encourage others to do the same.
Black people back during the Civil Rights movement shut down many businesses in the south by avoiding and boycotting stores which were racist; some Woolworth's stores have been one example (and where is Woolworth's now? IIRC, they were bought up by Montgomery Wards back in late-80s/early 90s, which likewise is basically dead). Black people proceeded to setup their own businesses, such as the "Fredom Ride" bus system to counter the whites-biased busing system in place in Alabama.
Moral of the story learned by businessmen? Don't hate your customers! In this regard, the free-market clearly promoted increased tolerance and liberalism.
That said, boycotts have been less-effective than in years past, though, because of 2 reasons:
1) market diversification -- companies expand themselves into other markets, e.g. China, India, EU nations, etc. So there's less incentive for them to care about what happens in any single market
2) increasing apathy on the part of the public and/or lack of directly-influenced reason to care -- In my Civil Rights era example, blacks had a common, direct reason to care: they were black and racist business operations harmed their ability to get service. Today, however, the main chimeras of the left are things like child labor and environmental damage, neither of which directly affects people like being black did. So it's harder to get a "coalition of the willing," because the effects simply aren't so strong that such a coalition is deemed necessary by the market. So, if the market says it's not a big enough problem, then until it becomes one, the market isn't going to care. And since people don't think it's enough of a problem, why *should* it be considered one anyway?
There's one other factor you've ignored: that politicians, as government agents, should not accept corporate bribes. The sole responsibility of the corporation is to turn a profit for its shareholders; that's it. One should expect corporations to try to buy off politicians. But we expect politicians to rise above such things -- and as you note, they have not.
Ultimately, the buck stops with the politician, and we, along with other politicians seeking to promote themselves over other politicians, need to hold them accountable for it.
However, that efficiency has a tendency to put people out of work, thus removing people from participating in the economic system at all. Remember- for every person you put out of work, you've removed a consumer who can buy from you.
The printing press put manual-labor copiers out of business. And yet we now have far-more people working in the printing business than before. Why? Because the business became more-complex; that increased complexity requires more brains and more physical labor to work on them -- and that requires more people.
The combustion engine put for-hire horse-drawn carriage operators out of business. What do their great-grandchildren do now? They drive taxis in major metropolitan areas, for those people who don't have their own car readily-available. Moreover, because the population has grown since then, there's more city streets to cover - another increase in complexity - and, of course, there's more people to service too. Again, people remain employed by these "employment-destroying" devices.
In fact (since you have taken so much in economics, as indicated by yo
Agreed, but since no corporation on the planet follows those laws anymore they've become largely meaningless. In fact, once a group of corporations gains governmental power and starts using it to raise the barrier of entry to their little niche, the whole idea of a free market largely goes out the window.
:-)
Since when does a "free market" exist when governments give special favors to corporations? That's better-defined as "fascism" or "crony capitalism".
Not that that isn't happening here in the U.S. under Bush (ha ha)... witness the 90% steel tariffs, anything the RIAA and MPAA have done in the last 5 years, etc...
Agreed on that score- but I guess what it really comes down to is why do we want to bother trading with our neighbors at all, let alone people halfway around the world? To me- it's to enable both myself and my neighbor to survive the chaos of the natural world. Why would I want to add the chaos of a totally invented and artificial market to that? Isn't the weather chaotic enough for you?
Indeed the weather is plenty chaotic. I mean, it's snowing (blizzard-like, in fact) where I am right now, and it's not even Thanksgiving yet!
In a way, I'm glad it's so chaotic -- variety is the spice of life. I like California's weather, but I'm not sure I could take 300 days/year of nothing but sunshine and 60-90F temperatures. I think it'd make me go soft...
Why trade with other nations? For at least 2 reasons:
* economic efficiency -- everybody has their own sets of skills and abilities. Japanese people tend to do better-quality engineering than us Americans, for example, while French people make better food. And Americans seem more-competitive at building the businesses to do those things. Latin Americans have land that is fertile for fruits and vegetables (watermelons, for example), so they can produce those for more time than we in the U.S. can.
* individual freedom -- I am freer to choose the way I live by having a choice between Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Toyota, Honda, BMW, etc. than I am by having the single state-owned carmaker, Volga (this was Russia's only automobile manufacturer they allowed the public to buy. Of course, top-level officials could have Mercedes instead, b/c they were "special"). Especially given that the Volga is a poorly-built car compared to all of the above, which have improved in quality due to Japanese competition.
The trouble with government control of trade is, at least partly, the administrative costs that come with controlling trade. There is always a tax levied which raises the price of the product, which prevents people in the importing nation from buying as much of it as they otherwise could -- this is particularly-bad for poorer people who desire an inexpensive, quality product (like a cheap Toyota)... So, government involvement necessarily introduces a level of inefficiency -- a middleman between the trader and tradee. It's simply unavoidable.
Free trade is one of those few things that a large majority (though not all - after all, we are talking about a random distribution of people whose thoughts necessarily differ, so you have to expect some extrema) economists agree is good for everybody.
Same with in most communal systems- just not the ones you are used to.
In *true* communal systems -- yes. But *true* communism has never existed in reality, outside perhaps of Indian tribes (I'm not enough of an expert to comment on the economics of American Indian tribes prior to their practical elimination though; I just understand that they all shared their land, animals, harvests, etc. believing they were all part of a single, cooperative society). Soviet Russia, China, Vietnam, N. Korea -- they all were/are distinctly-socialist, due to their large, bureaucratic central governments which (not coincidentally) happen to be rather oppressive as well.
That said, communism fails for the same reason socialism does -- lack of incentive to wo
Didn't you know there is a difference between government and the public sector?
Actually, there's not.
It's very simple: if it's funded by tax revenues, it's part of the government, and therefore, publicly-owned, and therefore, "public sector."
"Private sector" means the entity is free of government funding.
Good points about the card vs. rebate check question. I'm inclined to agree w/ you overall; it probably would cost more than mailing out checks. *Especially* in terms of fraud-detection and prevention; I think that would more-than likely create the need for an agency like the Secret Service (or else, use the existing SS to enforce anti-fraud methods)... After all, who wouldn't want to have a tax-cut card?? :P (there's also the "free-rider" problem here of non-cardholders using cardholders' cards to gain tax cuts they weren't supposed to receive. Imagine Larry Ellison in the grocery line, asking the wife of the unemployed bum if he can use her card to save himself money!)
:-/
:-)
I think the determination of "who gets what rate" could be pretty easily automated. We set a base minimum (as with a negative income tax, as proposed by Milton Friedman. In a way, the FairTax seems like an adaptation of the NIT to a consumption tax -- a problem I've been wrestling with in my mind for a while, actually) for qualification for a rebate - probably around the poverty level. From that, we still need a way to determine one's yearly income -- this would need to be reported by employers to some agency (basically, what remains of the IRS). Most employers could do this online, although, there would still be a need (whether w/ a rebate card or check) to have people to process those forms from employers who don't file online...
Anyway, those values are sent to some beastly mainframe in Washington, processed, and those people who qualify have their rebate card rates calculated and the cards processed, manufactured, and mailed back to them automatically -- just like credit card companies do. It'd all be automated batch-processing w/ mainframes and such, so there's little need for human intervention, and therefore, little in the way of administrative costs besides system updates, rate-calculation changes, and such.
Still, in my mind, the fraud potential (and the privacy implications resulting as you note) are too-great to ignore, thus effectively sinking the rebate card idea.
IIRC the FairTax calls for monthly rebates, which I think is about right.
The FairTax does call for monthly rebates, which seems reasonable. Provided annual inflation is kept low (i.e. < 5%, and preferably < 3% like it has been for several years, though with the current admin's unbelievable deficit spending, well - there's only so many Treasury bonds that investors will soak up (even foreign investors, though I suspect they'll tire out long after domestic investors do) before the Fed has to start buying them, by pushing their printed money out into the economy, raising the money supply and increasing inflation as a result), the loss on the value of those checks due to rebate-transmission lag would be close to nil.
And regardless, monthly rebate checks would be far-superior to yearly rebate checks, as is currently the case.
True, of course very few people even understand the concept of opportunity costs. And really, we have the same situation today. Several times I've listened to people expounding on their brilliant financial maneuver of increasing their income tax withholding so they'd get a bigger refund on April 15. My attempts to explain the time value of money were futile. (Them: "But if they didn't take it out of my paycheck I'd just spend it!" Me: Kif-style sigh).
It's amazing, isn't it? Seems to be a common problem and misconception... It's really almost like a tax on the people who don't know any better.
Like Yahoo or other web-directories do. Sort of. For example:
:-)
~/bin
~/scripts (for occasionally-used scripts not in your $PATH, so as to avoid cluttering TAB-completed executable namespace)
~/economics (for us Econ nerds)
~/code (for personal programming projects)
~/texts (for various textfiles. Make subdirs for categories here too, e.g. tech, lovelife, journal, etc.)
~/pr0n (guess... also subcategorize by vids and pics)
~/kismet_dumps (for wardriving)
~/school (or ~/work - for things related to your boss (whether a professor or manager))
And so on.
It just has to "work" for you to keep clutter to a minimum. To do that, you really have to figure out how to categorize all your clutter into groups, and move those groups into appropriately-named directories.