What are you talking about? They have HUGE market share on Brown/30 GB/Freescale i. MX31L processor ARM Core/3 Inch QVGA LCD screen(320×240) MP3 players!
It's a PDF so I can't cut and paste and If you are not going to read it, I'm not taking the time to retype the conclusion page.
I Can:
12.7. Conclusions
Our analysis has been performed on six organizations in different European countries.
The majority of them are public bodies. The organizations have followed different types of
migration on the base of their context.
We have investigated the costs of migration, and the cost of ownership of the old and
the new solution differentiating them between the costs of purchasing and the costs of
ownership of the software solutions. Special attention has been put on the intangible nature of
the costs. Costs have been classified in categories defined trough existing studies and selected
by a top down approach called Goal Question Metric. This instrument has been also used to
define the questionnaires used to collect the data.
Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports
of savings on the long term - costs of ownership of the software products.
Costs to migrate to an open solution are relevant and an organization needs to
consider an extra effort for this. However these costs are temporary and manly are budgeted
in less than one year. The major factor of cost of the new solution - even in the case that the
open solution is mixed with closed software - is costs for peer or ad hoc training. These are
the best example of intangible costs that often are not foreseen in a transition. On the other
hand not providing a specific training may cause and adverse attitude toward the new
technology. Fortunately those costs are limited in time and are not strictly linked to the nature
of the new software adopted.
We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft office and
OpenOffice.org. Office suites are widely used and are a good test bed and representative for a
comparison on issues like effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the
task deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organization's management. Our
findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of
OpenOffice.org.
12.7.1. Considerations
With our analysis we achieve a good level of understanding of the costs, benefits and
productivity of a transition. The following are the considerations we have drawn upon.
1. Before buying, upgrading proprietary office software one needs consider that:
OpenOffice.org has all the functionalities that public offices need to create
documents, spreadsheets, and presentations
Upgrading office programs is time-consuming and expensive. It requires installation
time, potential document conversions, and new training. It also poses a risk because some
documents containing code or macros may not be readable anymore
OpenOffice.org is free, extremely stable, and supports the ISO Open Document
Standard.
3. It is not always justified to base the migration on the promise of lower license costs,
although in our study initial purchasing costs are lower for the OSS (they includes
deployment and customization for the first run of the configuration). This is because these
costs are too much influenced
Exactly as I said. They wanted to have more dollars in circulation without having the gold to back it up. You seem to think there are altruistic reasons for this... What, pray tell, would they be? I only see excuses for manipulating the currency markets to their benefit.
As i said, if your money is backed by something else, the value of money itself disappears in the collective consciousness, this means that when things start to go bad, people want their Gold back, and the whole financial system crashes which brings the society in a "Great Depression". The whole monetary and financial system is based around trust from the people in the value of their currency, call it manipulation if you will, but unless you find a better way to trade goods, it is by far the best system for everyone.
Inflation does not diminish purchase power in the long term, since salaries are supposed to adjust themselves to the inflation, now if the salaries don't, then, indeed, you have a problem. But this has nothing to do with inflation or the monetary system, it's a direct cause of lack of social protection.
By the way, I'm a student in Economics, mastering in finance, so I'll soon become a banker, and believe me, my vision of the world is far from being "monetarist, greedy and no social protection", I'd give 45% of my income any day if it can guarantee that the people that were born without my luck get medi-care and some form of guaranteed living income. But this doesn't change the fact that going back to a Gold standard is 1) Impossible, 2) Quite Stupid and 3) will in no way guarantee that the labor class will live a better life (actually it will probably be the opposite since interest rates and inflation are one of the natural economic safeguards when things go bad).
Anyways, I doubt you'll still read my reply since it has fallen from page 1 AND 2:-)
well, "most"/.ers don't use IE either, that doesn't mean that what IE does or doesn't format correctly has no impact on them. It can be argued easily that email rendering is less of a problem, and it most certainly is, however, it's quite annoying that the company enjoying a near-monopoly in Browsers and Email clients cannot manage to support a well defined standard such as HTML and CSS, if not completely, at least in a consistent way...
I've done my share of web designing, and it's quite annoying that for such an easy language as HTML/CSS, you spend so much time practicing trial and error in order to get your design "work" (in the sense it's acceptable) on all browsers you decided to support.
For some reason, the idea of a "standard" seems to elude Microsoft, it kind of resembles yesterday's metric vs imperial debate, but imagine if the 1000 B = 1 K or 1024 B = a K translated into science and you had no idea of knowing which standard was used unless you did trial and error to find out... you'd spend more time on trying to achieve compatibility then doing the work itself, which is EXACTLY what is happening in web design today...
Your linked article even says that the Phillips Curve has largely been discredited, and that economists that do use it are known to fudge their numbers to get it to work. So basically, that means they're making it up as they go along. GREAT idea! Then you can just embrace the status quo and shrug your shoulders if something goes wrong. Color me unimpressed.
The fact that the Philips Curve has been discredited has nothing to do with the absence of trade-off, the criticisms are mainly based on the too simplistic approach, the curve itself still explains the short term trade-off between inflation and employment, although it cannot measure it exactly.
Your history lesson is a complete joke. You seem unaware that, first off, the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression. Milton Friedman is one among those questioning the Fed's role in that debacle. And then, as the country languished in agony, the Fed and its instruments in government, including Roosevelt, used the moment to get us off the Gold Standard. Why? So he could use inflation to stimulate the economy!! In fact, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, which confiscated every American's gold! Read up on it if you don't believe me. It's referenced in the second linked article. Also, as that article makes clear, it wasn't until 1971 that the gold standard was totally banished, but that was just so we could keep inflating the money supply.
Well I wasn't speaking of the Great Depression of the United States, if you read anything I said, the whole context happened in Europe, not in the US, but the events in Europe are still the starting point to the whole thing (as it is mentioned in your link). Milton Friedman (RIP) was a monetarist, although one of the most influential theoreticians in macroeconomics in the 20th century, he used to blame every economic problem on monetary regulation... His views on economy are far from being universal... And anyways, if you take Milton Friedman as a reference for your economic views, you have MUCH more ultra-liberal views on economics then I do... Indeed, as I said, they abolished the gold standard in the 70s, and it was, as i said, because the demand for dollars was so high that keeping such large gold reserves became impossible...
Because our economy is basically ruined already trying to bring back the gold standard without adequate control would indeed result in chaos. But allowing runaway inflation to continue indefinitely is also insane. I say we make the painful fix for our children's sake.
"Our" economy is far from being ruined, most indicators are pretty optimistic, although some say markets may be a little too optimistic, but that's another discussion... And inflation can continue infinitely, as it has been doing for the past 60 years, as you said in your first post, money is symbolic, so whether theres a 0 more or less doesn't change the game much...
Basically, if the US and other major governments were all on a gold standard (and actually lived up to its requirements) there never would have been a Great Depression. The sneaky moves of the UK, Weimar Republic Germany and the US undermined the gold standard and sent us spiraling into a depression. But if we were on a stable, universally accepted gold standard then the rich wouldn't be able to play their little inflationary games would they? And they wouldn't be able to make money simply by playing the always-volatile currency exchanges, would they? Nope. The rich like the Fed and the lack of the gold standard because it gives them so much more flexibility in manipulating our economy... to their own benefit of course.
Well the US financial world was quite a mess in the 20-30s, and the understanding of financial business was far from our understanding today... In fact the real reasons for the Great depression (in the US) are not so clear, but speculation around the gold standard were indeed a probable factor, and this problem is exactly the problem i was talking about in my prev
Their stated goal is reducing inflation. They are lying. It's that simple. If they really wanted to end inflation they would be able to do so within a few days, I imagine. After all, they are the ones managing our economy, right? Inflation is their goal. They often say they're trying to "reign in" inflation or "keep it under control" but they never talk about ending it. They would never want to end it; it's not in their interests.
Yes, they could, just raise the interest rate, and it's done. Oh, but then of course there that little trade-off between inflation and employment thing. And of course an economy without inflation would mean an economy where Aggregate demand remains the same, since inflation after all is the result of a growing demand for liquid money, with an ever increasing economy, that would result in generalized poverty... GREAT idea!
Inflation is not natural. Inflation is not gravity or a rainbow or the weak nuclear force. Inflation is a flaw in a man-made system. In the Fed's case, I believe it to be an intentional flaw, that they deliberately avoid correcting. If you're operating on the gold standard there really isn't much inflation, because the gold supply remains relatively constant, mostly because we've already found and extracted most of it. Given that, the Fed looks to be responsible for inflation, especially since they were instrumental in getting us off the gold standard in the first place.
Why would anyone want inflation? This means that people _have_ to keep investing their capital in order not to lose money... It would be much easier for everyone if inflation didn't exist... And the reason why the Fed abolished the Gold standard is because it had no reason to exist anymore, let's go back in history...
Act1: Post-WW1
After WW1, the whole economy was crippling in Europe, mainly because of the high War debt the Germans had to repay (they kept producing more and more to repay their debt, and dumped the European market with cheap goods, the other European countries couldn't compete and Germany wasn't even better for it since all the money they gained from their dumping where brought back into the production cycle in order to repay their debt and the cycle went on). Now with most of Europe (and the US as well by the way) crippled with commercial deficits, and everyone using the pound sterling as a reference currency, the UK had the great idea to devaluate their money, which would lessen their exterior debt since they had to repay in foreign currencies anyways... Every other countries sees that and boom develuates their money in turn, every money devaluates, hyperinflation, and welcome to the glorious age of the Great Depression!
END of ACT1
ACT2: After the nazis got their asses kicked
So, here we are a couple of years later, Europe just coming out of another big war, but this time, the US realized that overcharging the losing nations with huge war debts wasn't going to be good for anyone, and that they had to solve the whole Currency devaluation problem... So they set the US Dollar (which in the first part of the 20th century didn't even exist as a stable currency) as the standard for everyone. They put in place a global fixed rate currency market, where only currencies could only be exchanged for dollars, with a fixed rate, and every dollar was backed by Gold in the Central Banks... And all was well again.
END of Act2
Act 3: Damnit didn't think of that
But, as the world economies were slowly but surely rising again, the central bankers in the developped countries realized it was stupid for them to keep gold in their reserve, since every currency's value was guaranteed by the US federal bank anyways... So, they abolished the gold standard, and, in place, kept US government bonds, which not only were easily stored (compared to gold), but also had granted interest! And all was good for everyone (well except the US, which had to stockpile tons of gold with ever
First of all, i would like to know the source of all these statistics... And check out the methodology....
Second: The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Yeah, but how much living space could they afford in those cities... Hell, I bet the average poor has more living space then people living in downtown Manhattan, that comparison is completely absurd.
According to this, 15% of Americans don't have Medical Care Coverage... so if 35 million people are poor in the US and 15% don't have Medical Coverage which is about 45 million people, how on earth can the average "poor" person "able to obtain medical care". I'm sorry to break this to you, but you're little fact sheet sounds a lot like bullshit to me.
It doesn't matter whether dollars are backed by gold or not, as long as people have enough faith in their money. Inflation is also pretty irrelevant, since as you said it well, it's imaginary. The problem with inflation comes when it exceeds a certain limit and people start loosing confidence in the imaginary wealth. Fact is without money, you'd exacerbate poverty, since trading is a very bad way to exchange products... You'd spend more time trying to find someone willing to trade your goods for something you need rather then producing anything. Also, the Fed's main goal is to push growth while maintaining inflation to a decent level, so you attack inflation then attack the government's agency which tries to keep that same inflation under control? Granted you could expect the main goal of the Fed to be first inflation, then growth, like the European Central Bank, but i don't see how that would change the equality problem in the US... Oh and by the way, the banking system in the US is comparatively tiny (70% of the GDP) compared to the European one (300% of the GDP), and where banks do give loans based on your deposits, they are obligated to give to back to you, with interest... Would you rather have a system solely based on markets, where the margins are higher but you risk loosing everything all year long?
Quite frankly, if you want to intellectually combat a Capitalist society, attacking inflation (natural phenomenon), the Fed (which tries to keep the integrity of the monetary market) and banks (which have by far more contributed to lowering crimes then any other agency/sector/social reform), I'm afraid you'll only make a fool of yourself.
Well in the end it at comes down to what you believe is best for humanity:
a) The Neo-Liberal viewpoint where everyone just wants to minimalize pain and maximalise pleasure, in other words where every individual does everything only to his own profit. The Selfish society model. In this case you vote republican and yes the inequalities will grow, and a permanent Matthew effect system will naturally come to place.
or
b) You believe in a Nashian "Game Theory" world where everyone has to try to make the best decisions for himself, but taking the others into account. This will mean a society with smaller numbers of symbolic goods (aka money), but a society with less tensions and probably a lot less crime.
In the end, it all comes down to morality, would you rather have more assets and more poverty, or less assets and more equality...
I wonder where this fascination for being ultra-rich comes from, is it the fear of having nothing that makes people want so much? Or is it because a Societal Matthew effect is already in place and people that are rich are seen as better, more worthy then others...
If its possible to stream just the video out over a wireless connection... Imagine putting a small transmitter through the spare VGA out of your computer, and having it connect wirelessly with a receiver hooked to your TV through various ports...
Now that i would buy... Not a new computer just to spare me the hassle to put my laptop close enough to my TV...
Anyways, home server will dominate the market? Tagged Bullshit.
Well those arguments are easily debatable at best. First of all the market for Coffee is in a sort of Oligopsony, where producers don't have much to say and the large buyers can set the price, quantity and quality demanded. Coffee producers don't chose the company who buys them their beans, the exporters chose them! There is also a total asymmetry of information, where 99% of the producers have no idea how their market actually work. Also, the main problem with the coffee trade are the absolutely ridiculous margins the exporters get out of their business. "Fair trade" producers on their own are marginal in the market, but their existence have huge impacts on corporate responsibility. The real benefit of "fair trade" agencies is that people are starting to care, and maybe just maybe the margins will drop with a few cents and help develop third world economies.
And it's quite funny that Mr Harford points out that those are indirect subsidies, knowing the tens of billions of dollars/euros/pounds/Yen that developed countries' subsidies cost developing countries every year.
Those arguments are typical of economic theories, where such things as public perception or corporate responsibility pressures are completely set aside.
PS: Please don't see in me a "anti-globalisation and anti-corporate type", I just believe that the benefits of globalisations should be slightly better distributed amongst the production chain.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't Care?
I know of easier ways to make your clothes smell like alcohol, ways that actually allow for consumption (although not digestion).
But maybe there should be a rule about not allowing links to Articles full of Advertisement that span over 7 pages with about 100 words/page...
Actually, every point in the Universe is at the center of the universe...
Just like every point on the planet is the center of the planet.
Plato rules!
So, when is Service Pack 1 coming out?
Yes, the models change, hopefully the subthreshold leakage goes way down, but you've still got the G,D,S,B paradigm... right?
riiiiight!
if ($userid >= 4 digits)
{
FuckWith($user) = false;
}
There, now we can all agree!
E-Stone-ia? A drugged up extremely high-tech nation?
Man, I need to move there!!!
That's a lot...
What are you talking about? They have HUGE market share on Brown/30 GB/Freescale i. MX31L processor ARM Core/3 Inch QVGA LCD screen(320×240) MP3 players!
With all my excitement over Zune, I actually didn't realize it wasn't even on sale...
It's a PDF so I can't cut and paste and If you are not going to read it, I'm not taking the time to retype the conclusion page.
I Can:
12.7. Conclusions
Our analysis has been performed on six organizations in different European countries. The majority of them are public bodies. The organizations have followed different types of migration on the base of their context.
We have investigated the costs of migration, and the cost of ownership of the old and the new solution differentiating them between the costs of purchasing and the costs of ownership of the software solutions. Special attention has been put on the intangible nature of the costs. Costs have been classified in categories defined trough existing studies and selected by a top down approach called Goal Question Metric. This instrument has been also used to define the questionnaires used to collect the data.
Our findings show that, in almost all the cases, a transition toward open source reports of savings on the long term - costs of ownership of the software products.
Costs to migrate to an open solution are relevant and an organization needs to consider an extra effort for this. However these costs are temporary and manly are budgeted in less than one year. The major factor of cost of the new solution - even in the case that the open solution is mixed with closed software - is costs for peer or ad hoc training. These are the best example of intangible costs that often are not foreseen in a transition. On the other hand not providing a specific training may cause and adverse attitude toward the new technology. Fortunately those costs are limited in time and are not strictly linked to the nature of the new software adopted.
We also investigated the productivity of the employees in using Microsoft office and OpenOffice.org. Office suites are widely used and are a good test bed and representative for a comparison on issues like effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the task deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organization's management. Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org.
12.7.1. Considerations
With our analysis we achieve a good level of understanding of the costs, benefits and productivity of a transition. The following are the considerations we have drawn upon.
1. Before buying, upgrading proprietary office software one needs consider that: OpenOffice.org has all the functionalities that public offices need to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations Upgrading office programs is time-consuming and expensive. It requires installation time, potential document conversions, and new training. It also poses a risk because some documents containing code or macros may not be readable anymore OpenOffice.org is free, extremely stable, and supports the ISO Open Document Standard.
2. In our study the motivations to transit to OSS are: the exchange of documents in an open shared format (ODS), reuse of old hardware in some cases, and being independent of software vendors even when creating a distribution or an application for local needs. Employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products or changing operating model to OSS is problematic. Economic impact of FLOSS on innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector © 2006 MERIT. Prepared on November 20, 2006 284 To overcome these pre-conception it is recommended to adopt a policy of both ad hoc and periodic training to fill the lack of knowledge/experience in relation to what OSS products are appropriate and how they might be deployed.
3. It is not always justified to base the migration on the promise of lower license costs, although in our study initial purchasing costs are lower for the OSS (they includes deployment and customization for the first run of the configuration). This is because these costs are too much influenced
The whole truth? Man you've been watching X-files too much!
Try "explanation".
Exactly as I said. They wanted to have more dollars in circulation without having the gold to back it up. You seem to think there are altruistic reasons for this... What, pray tell, would they be? I only see excuses for manipulating the currency markets to their benefit.
:-)
As i said, if your money is backed by something else, the value of money itself disappears in the collective consciousness, this means that when things start to go bad, people want their Gold back, and the whole financial system crashes which brings the society in a "Great Depression". The whole monetary and financial system is based around trust from the people in the value of their currency, call it manipulation if you will, but unless you find a better way to trade goods, it is by far the best system for everyone.
Inflation does not diminish purchase power in the long term, since salaries are supposed to adjust themselves to the inflation, now if the salaries don't, then, indeed, you have a problem. But this has nothing to do with inflation or the monetary system, it's a direct cause of lack of social protection.
By the way, I'm a student in Economics, mastering in finance, so I'll soon become a banker, and believe me, my vision of the world is far from being "monetarist, greedy and no social protection", I'd give 45% of my income any day if it can guarantee that the people that were born without my luck get medi-care and some form of guaranteed living income. But this doesn't change the fact that going back to a Gold standard is 1) Impossible, 2) Quite Stupid and 3) will in no way guarantee that the labor class will live a better life (actually it will probably be the opposite since interest rates and inflation are one of the natural economic safeguards when things go bad).
Anyways, I doubt you'll still read my reply since it has fallen from page 1 AND 2
well, "most" /.ers don't use IE either, that doesn't mean that what IE does or doesn't format correctly has no impact on them. It can be argued easily that email rendering is less of a problem, and it most certainly is, however, it's quite annoying that the company enjoying a near-monopoly in Browsers and Email clients cannot manage to support a well defined standard such as HTML and CSS, if not completely, at least in a consistent way...
I've done my share of web designing, and it's quite annoying that for such an easy language as HTML/CSS, you spend so much time practicing trial and error in order to get your design "work" (in the sense it's acceptable) on all browsers you decided to support.
For some reason, the idea of a "standard" seems to elude Microsoft, it kind of resembles yesterday's metric vs imperial debate, but imagine if the 1000 B = 1 K or 1024 B = a K translated into science and you had no idea of knowing which standard was used unless you did trial and error to find out... you'd spend more time on trying to achieve compatibility then doing the work itself, which is EXACTLY what is happening in web design today...
Your linked article even says that the Phillips Curve has largely been discredited, and that economists that do use it are known to fudge their numbers to get it to work. So basically, that means they're making it up as they go along. GREAT idea! Then you can just embrace the status quo and shrug your shoulders if something goes wrong. Color me unimpressed.
The fact that the Philips Curve has been discredited has nothing to do with the absence of trade-off, the criticisms are mainly based on the too simplistic approach, the curve itself still explains the short term trade-off between inflation and employment, although it cannot measure it exactly.
Your history lesson is a complete joke. You seem unaware that, first off, the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression. Milton Friedman is one among those questioning the Fed's role in that debacle. And then, as the country languished in agony, the Fed and its instruments in government, including Roosevelt, used the moment to get us off the Gold Standard. Why? So he could use inflation to stimulate the economy!! In fact, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, which confiscated every American's gold! Read up on it if you don't believe me. It's referenced in the second linked article. Also, as that article makes clear, it wasn't until 1971 that the gold standard was totally banished, but that was just so we could keep inflating the money supply.
Well I wasn't speaking of the Great Depression of the United States, if you read anything I said, the whole context happened in Europe, not in the US, but the events in Europe are still the starting point to the whole thing (as it is mentioned in your link). Milton Friedman (RIP) was a monetarist, although one of the most influential theoreticians in macroeconomics in the 20th century, he used to blame every economic problem on monetary regulation... His views on economy are far from being universal... And anyways, if you take Milton Friedman as a reference for your economic views, you have MUCH more ultra-liberal views on economics then I do... Indeed, as I said, they abolished the gold standard in the 70s, and it was, as i said, because the demand for dollars was so high that keeping such large gold reserves became impossible...
Because our economy is basically ruined already trying to bring back the gold standard without adequate control would indeed result in chaos. But allowing runaway inflation to continue indefinitely is also insane. I say we make the painful fix for our children's sake.
"Our" economy is far from being ruined, most indicators are pretty optimistic, although some say markets may be a little too optimistic, but that's another discussion... And inflation can continue infinitely, as it has been doing for the past 60 years, as you said in your first post, money is symbolic, so whether theres a 0 more or less doesn't change the game much...
Basically, if the US and other major governments were all on a gold standard (and actually lived up to its requirements) there never would have been a Great Depression. The sneaky moves of the UK, Weimar Republic Germany and the US undermined the gold standard and sent us spiraling into a depression. But if we were on a stable, universally accepted gold standard then the rich wouldn't be able to play their little inflationary games would they? And they wouldn't be able to make money simply by playing the always-volatile currency exchanges, would they? Nope. The rich like the Fed and the lack of the gold standard because it gives them so much more flexibility in manipulating our economy... to their own benefit of course.
Well the US financial world was quite a mess in the 20-30s, and the understanding of financial business was far from our understanding today... In fact the real reasons for the Great depression (in the US) are not so clear, but speculation around the gold standard were indeed a probable factor, and this problem is exactly the problem i was talking about in my prev
Their stated goal is reducing inflation. They are lying. It's that simple. If they really wanted to end inflation they would be able to do so within a few days, I imagine. After all, they are the ones managing our economy, right? Inflation is their goal. They often say they're trying to "reign in" inflation or "keep it under control" but they never talk about ending it. They would never want to end it; it's not in their interests.
Yes, they could, just raise the interest rate, and it's done. Oh, but then of course there that little trade-off between inflation and employment thing. And of course an economy without inflation would mean an economy where Aggregate demand remains the same, since inflation after all is the result of a growing demand for liquid money, with an ever increasing economy, that would result in generalized poverty... GREAT idea!
Inflation is not natural. Inflation is not gravity or a rainbow or the weak nuclear force. Inflation is a flaw in a man-made system. In the Fed's case, I believe it to be an intentional flaw, that they deliberately avoid correcting. If you're operating on the gold standard there really isn't much inflation, because the gold supply remains relatively constant, mostly because we've already found and extracted most of it. Given that, the Fed looks to be responsible for inflation, especially since they were instrumental in getting us off the gold standard in the first place. Why would anyone want inflation? This means that people _have_ to keep investing their capital in order not to lose money... It would be much easier for everyone if inflation didn't exist... And the reason why the Fed abolished the Gold standard is because it had no reason to exist anymore, let's go back in history...
Act1: Post-WW1
After WW1, the whole economy was crippling in Europe, mainly because of the high War debt the Germans had to repay (they kept producing more and more to repay their debt, and dumped the European market with cheap goods, the other European countries couldn't compete and Germany wasn't even better for it since all the money they gained from their dumping where brought back into the production cycle in order to repay their debt and the cycle went on). Now with most of Europe (and the US as well by the way) crippled with commercial deficits, and everyone using the pound sterling as a reference currency, the UK had the great idea to devaluate their money, which would lessen their exterior debt since they had to repay in foreign currencies anyways... Every other countries sees that and boom develuates their money in turn, every money devaluates, hyperinflation, and welcome to the glorious age of the Great Depression!
END of ACT1
ACT2: After the nazis got their asses kicked
So, here we are a couple of years later, Europe just coming out of another big war, but this time, the US realized that overcharging the losing nations with huge war debts wasn't going to be good for anyone, and that they had to solve the whole Currency devaluation problem... So they set the US Dollar (which in the first part of the 20th century didn't even exist as a stable currency) as the standard for everyone. They put in place a global fixed rate currency market, where only currencies could only be exchanged for dollars, with a fixed rate, and every dollar was backed by Gold in the Central Banks... And all was well again.
END of Act2
Act 3: Damnit didn't think of that
But, as the world economies were slowly but surely rising again, the central bankers in the developped countries realized it was stupid for them to keep gold in their reserve, since every currency's value was guaranteed by the US federal bank anyways... So, they abolished the gold standard, and, in place, kept US government bonds, which not only were easily stored (compared to gold), but also had granted interest! And all was good for everyone (well except the US, which had to stockpile tons of gold with ever
First of all, i would like to know the source of all these statistics... And check out the methodology....
Second: The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Yeah, but how much living space could they afford in those cities... Hell, I bet the average poor has more living space then people living in downtown Manhattan, that comparison is completely absurd.
According to this, 15% of Americans don't have Medical Care Coverage... so if 35 million people are poor in the US and 15% don't have Medical Coverage which is about 45 million people, how on earth can the average "poor" person "able to obtain medical care". I'm sorry to break this to you, but you're little fact sheet sounds a lot like bullshit to me.
It doesn't matter whether dollars are backed by gold or not, as long as people have enough faith in their money. Inflation is also pretty irrelevant, since as you said it well, it's imaginary. The problem with inflation comes when it exceeds a certain limit and people start loosing confidence in the imaginary wealth. Fact is without money, you'd exacerbate poverty, since trading is a very bad way to exchange products... You'd spend more time trying to find someone willing to trade your goods for something you need rather then producing anything. Also, the Fed's main goal is to push growth while maintaining inflation to a decent level, so you attack inflation then attack the government's agency which tries to keep that same inflation under control? Granted you could expect the main goal of the Fed to be first inflation, then growth, like the European Central Bank, but i don't see how that would change the equality problem in the US... Oh and by the way, the banking system in the US is comparatively tiny (70% of the GDP) compared to the European one (300% of the GDP), and where banks do give loans based on your deposits, they are obligated to give to back to you, with interest... Would you rather have a system solely based on markets, where the margins are higher but you risk loosing everything all year long?
Quite frankly, if you want to intellectually combat a Capitalist society, attacking inflation (natural phenomenon), the Fed (which tries to keep the integrity of the monetary market) and banks (which have by far more contributed to lowering crimes then any other agency/sector/social reform), I'm afraid you'll only make a fool of yourself.
Well in the end it at comes down to what you believe is best for humanity:
a) The Neo-Liberal viewpoint where everyone just wants to minimalize pain and maximalise pleasure, in other words where every individual does everything only to his own profit. The Selfish society model. In this case you vote republican and yes the inequalities will grow, and a permanent Matthew effect system will naturally come to place.
or
b) You believe in a Nashian "Game Theory" world where everyone has to try to make the best decisions for himself, but taking the others into account. This will mean a society with smaller numbers of symbolic goods (aka money), but a society with less tensions and probably a lot less crime.
In the end, it all comes down to morality, would you rather have more assets and more poverty, or less assets and more equality...
I wonder where this fascination for being ultra-rich comes from, is it the fear of having nothing that makes people want so much? Or is it because a Societal Matthew effect is already in place and people that are rich are seen as better, more worthy then others...
If its possible to stream just the video out over a wireless connection... Imagine putting a small transmitter through the spare VGA out of your computer, and having it connect wirelessly with a receiver hooked to your TV through various ports...
Now that i would buy... Not a new computer just to spare me the hassle to put my laptop close enough to my TV...
Anyways, home server will dominate the market? Tagged Bullshit.
Strangely, most comments i read were quite critical if not negative of this initiative...
Must be a different slashdot "crowd" you're talking about...
Well those arguments are easily debatable at best. First of all the market for Coffee is in a sort of Oligopsony, where producers don't have much to say and the large buyers can set the price, quantity and quality demanded. Coffee producers don't chose the company who buys them their beans, the exporters chose them! There is also a total asymmetry of information, where 99% of the producers have no idea how their market actually work. Also, the main problem with the coffee trade are the absolutely ridiculous margins the exporters get out of their business. "Fair trade" producers on their own are marginal in the market, but their existence have huge impacts on corporate responsibility. The real benefit of "fair trade" agencies is that people are starting to care, and maybe just maybe the margins will drop with a few cents and help develop third world economies.
And it's quite funny that Mr Harford points out that those are indirect subsidies, knowing the tens of billions of dollars/euros/pounds/Yen that developed countries' subsidies cost developing countries every year.
Those arguments are typical of economic theories, where such things as public perception or corporate responsibility pressures are completely set aside.
PS: Please don't see in me a "anti-globalisation and anti-corporate type", I just believe that the benefits of globalisations should be slightly better distributed amongst the production chain.
well, they never blow up or anything...
Maybe they should ask Nasa for some PR advice...
looks like some people are trying to get enough money to grab a PS3... man why didn't I think of that!