the 'aiming assitance' or 'auto-aim' or, as real gamers like to call it: fucking cheating is exactly the problem. Of course, a mouse could not outperform auto aiming. The reason for this is that auto aiming is put into the console games to make up for the weakness of the standard controller. Btw, this is something I don't get about the console fps'ers: Why do you even bother to play a game like that if you let the computer do the most important part, aiming? The whole point of FPS is to be faster in reflex and more precise in reaction than your opponent. If you don't want this, why not just watch an action movie?
No, you dodged the illustration of exponential progress for computers on the grounds that businesses adopted before anyone else and pointed out that space tourism is not of interest to business. This is very true but the matter is not about who exactly demands a product but how much money stands behind those demands. This was the point I am making with TVs. The purpose of TVs doesn't even matter much in this argument since TVs where only used to show the progression from luxury to commodity driven by the private-private (not coperations) sector.
The original premise is: in a free-market setting, baring destructive wars etc, availability of products will increase, price decrease and quality increase. What exactly the most profitable use of space travel is, I don't know. But it seems that virgin galactic has already done the calculations and came up with tourism. It is in their best interest to make as much money out of their investment as possible. The amount of money they'll put into this is huge, so I'll just trust their judgement. Appearantly, for all they know, space tourism they can offer is in higher demand than space travel they could offer.
If you see this differently, you should instead of pointing to some imaginary historical law of product progression like: radio=news, tvs descentant of radio = news therefore planes = travel, SS0 descentant of plane must be used to travel (where = means useful for) do the cost/performance calcuations, organize some money and hop into the space-travel-travel business.
Also a note on the 'deemed necessary by the public' part. This is quite misleading. It is true that appearantly a majority of individuals found it in there best intersst to buy a radio. Yet this is true for most all products. The higher the price of those products, the more so. Actually 'deemed necessary by the public' coupled with 'scare supply' is the reason that a thing becomes a product in the first place.
Yeah, volatile indeed. The problem is not one of astethics. It's a matter of life and death. Agriculture has changed the enviroment (I do not feel in the position to claim 'damaged') but change it self isn't bad. It happens all the time in nature. Btw, this is a great beef I take with the original article about alien species. Who is to say what is etnernally 'good for nature' and 'bad for nature'? Anyways, nature isn't paradise. Nature does not 'provide' for us on it's own. Our technology enables us to live independent of floods and draughts, of good years and bad ones. The question isn't 'would you like your enviorment to be, by some arbitrary standard, better or worse'. It is 'Would you like to starve or not?'.
The soil? Groundwater? Neighboring flora and fauna? What of the pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers used to nourish these crops?
You don't fertilize GM crops with plutonium, you know. What about the soil? No difference, it's a plant for gods sake. What about the flora and fauna? I don't know but it wont be different from the usual wheat field effects. Pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers? Thats the whole point of GM: make more with less: Pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers...
1) Whats your business 'allowing' people to go to space? The US is not all socialistic yet, private property and liberty is still pretty well protected (comparitivly). Pursuit of your happiness is a constitutional right. With what justification will you forbid anyone from going to space?
2) Basically if you gave a state like say, the US, free reign to go into space as they pleased, do you think they would be more concerned with:
a) lobbing nuclear warheads at other countries and doing useless research (dust collection, completely unremarkable stones from the moon etc. etc. pp) and putting spy satelites there that could tell you in detail about the health of your hair
b) doing something people actually care for (the kind of 'caring' you do with your wallet instead of with your mouth)
3) Millions of dollars are spend to find ways to precisly target advertisement. The departure from mass exposure has long been going on. Advertisers would most want to be able to show you *just* the ads you actually want (and don't tell me that there never was an ad that actually informed you that there was something availabe that you would need but weren't aware of). Don't you agree that a continent sized, multi billion ad banner would be a radically turn from the direction advertisment is going today?
How long before every shuttle is as littered with badges as a Nascar is?
It's far better to make all tax payers pay for your pet project, right? I mean, those ad badges are so terrible, it justifies taking the lifelyhood of people that don't care jack shit about space flight. Elitist asshole.
jesus... why don't you just take the blind folds of. TVs as an example then... the same starting conditions, the same exponential development. And other but private-private uses just came way later (schools) and most businesses don't even own TVs today besides maybe the one in the cafeteria.
Business is the other way around: find out what price you could charge to, as an example, have one passenger for each day so one spaceship is 100% utilized. Then estimate if you would be able to turn a profit at all (expenses income). As with any emerging industry where demand hugly outweighs supply, the profit margins will be enormous. The 100.000$ price tag does not represent risk or cost in anyway (hell, development of SSO has only cost 10 million dollars in effect, a new car is probably more expensive in this respect) but balances demand against supply. Lets say the profit margin then is 50%, other investors will say 'well, 45% margin is enough for us' so the next competitor will only charge 95000$. As with all goods before, this circle will continue until the margins are so ridiculosly low that huge profits can only be archieved through mass market appeal.
there should be a new moderator option: Reduntant fear mongering
Yeah, genetical engineering is so dangerous. We have only 2000 years of expierince with it and see what catastrophes happened because of it. Thank your fucking deity that you life in a part of the world where planting, raising and harvesting food crops is the easiest thing to do.
Disclaimer: I am an avid reader and spend at least two hours per day reading real books
Why do you think that one medium (books) is supperior to an other (computer, tv) for an other person? If it concerns you, no problem, suit yourself. But how can you claim that reading a book is better for him too? I hope I don't need to remind you of the times where 'pop' literature emerged. Back then, people would blaim all sorts of mental defects (real or imangined) and amoral behaviour on novels.
not your solution then. But government funding is a solution. I was refering to that.
I doubt anyone could afford to travel if only the travelers had to pay for what they used
This is as unsensical as saying: I doubt anyone could afford eating, housing, clothing, electronics if only the respective users had to pay up.
Transportation has become a mass market because people desire mobility. Almost universal demand and economics of scales indicates that this good must become pretty cheap with time.
The postal service sucks? I wasn't aware of that. Care to provide some proof? I've always been fairly happy with the USPS.
Well, I thought that the USPS had an universally bad reputation for being way to expensive, unreliable, unfriendly, slow and hugly buerocratic. I am not from the states actually so sorry if this seems to be wrong from your perspective. In germany, the government run postal service is the exact same as I described the USPS above. No matter, I am sure you will agree that not many believe that those services provided by the government can in anyway compete with similar services provided by the private sector.
right. Because the X-15s technology and specs as well as the collected flight data, frame calculations, composition, flight control systems and all the blinking LEDs are now available under the open source license. Basically, all you had to do was to rebuild the thing at 0$ costs. Man, I wonder why they went through all the trouble then.
you just discovered that all governments of all times where wasteful beyond imagination? Welcome to the club. Earn extra credit and find out why this is (and must be) so.
your post fails to explain why government funds tend to make things suck (roads, amtrak, postal service etc.). You can't make an abstract, almost unproveable claim like yours and ignore pressing factual and physical manifest problems that arose because of your solution.
That's your description, not mine, my description of the current Lib party is very simple: "too extremist to ever win an election".
yeah, because we all know that compromise is the best way to reach good decisions.
'Sir, would you like your car green or yellow?' 'Hmm, maybe a little of both?'
'Would you like to go by boat or plane?' 'I'm not extremist either way. I want a compromise'
'Would you prefer to be dead or alive?' 'Decision, Decisions. Maybe a coma is best?'
I am not sure how people got the idea that 'extremisn' is something to be avoided. But you are right, something 'new' does not go over well with the voters, especially if they feel there votes would go wasted if only a minority would be voting the same way.
Companies aren't emotional but rational, therefore your explanation is 100% correct. From an emotional standpoint though, I, personally, would refuse to trade with people (or peoples) that keep constantly bashing me.
I know how the market operates. I was jesting to prompt the reader to imagine a europe without MS. Yes, my position is debatable, but surely, the consequences in the short run would be disasterous. There is a reason Windows is such a sucess and it isn't about being uncompetitive but the exact opposite: windows is, and was for a long time, the best offer on the OS market for the PC segment. This directly translates into usefulness and comfort or whatever traits people value in operating systems. Withdrawing the prefered product from the market, conversely, means that the consumers are able to buy less of what they 'desire'. If you really think this somehow makes us 'better' of, take the conclusion to the logical consequences and withdraw everything people desire from the market and see if we are still 'better' of.
I wish they had just stopped selling all MS products in europe. It'd be a second stone age. They have been harrased so much on unfair grounds. I'd go: 'fine, you don't like me much. I'll grant your wish and just piss off.'.
Not vs. coperations but for buying anything I just need to know about my needs and how the product relates to them. I don't need to know how my car was 'built' or what components it is made out of. I just want it to be good looking, fast and as cheap as possible.
Microsoft is not trading with the EU but with their customers. One of them would be me. It is the EUs mistake to assume they are right to set the conditions for me trading with Microsoft. Microsoft shouldn't comply at all.
> I think that if you appeal in a corporate case such as this and you lose the damages should be
> increased. You can justify this by lost interest due to the money sitting for in Microsoft's bank > and not the EUs bank account for duration of the appeal process plus a surcharge for wasting
> everybody's time
Nice try in eroding civil liberties. Lets just cut all appeals right away and do away with due process too. It's just wasting time and money and everyone just knows and agrees that the government is benevolent and would never try anyone unless they where truly guilty. I bet you have a thin mustache too.
yeah, because they can prep so well the rules of debate had been changed to being a joint press conference. No follow ups, no direkt questions between the canditates etc. etc.. They don't have anything but 'propaganda', empty words which could mean anything or nothing but invoke a warm, fuzzy feeling in the voter. The libertarians (and greens probably) got actual principals, a sharp contrast to the opportunism of the large parties. They would lose every 'free' debate because they haven't got the answers to the hard questions like 'how do you finance this', 'why should a country founded on the principals of individual liberties elevate equality to the highest goal', 'how can the fed.government dare to do anything other than the consitution provisions for' and so forth. How will you prep against questions you can't answer without either appearing as a liar (because of past actions) or as repressive (because you don't honour the constitution)?
what the hell do you need an other centrist party for? Arn't the dems and reps enough anymore? how far to the common center of statist, socialist and enviromentalism do they need to move for you to be content? Would you even know a republican from a democrat if they wouldn't show the little 'D' and 'R' right next to their names?
The libertarian party is exactly what you describe: it draws the free marketeers, smaller government republicans and the pro civil liberties and anti war democrats.
Re:Of course the candidates are in favor!
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 1
And yet- the stack is also a resource, as important to the process as air is to a human being. Delete the stack- or even merely "pollute" it with junk data, and the process will die- usually very loudly and painfully. So no, your example actually fails. Deny the process all resources, and it will die. Deny the human being all resources, and that human being will die.
I still think there is a distinction, but it might be too subtle to matter.
But so few humans do so- you don't for instance, you're limited by your myth of independance to step up to the next level of efficiency. You're limited by both your programming (the basic axioms) and your physical world. The first can be destroyed easily, just as with a computer program- all that is needed is a change of the properties, a change of the point of view. The second is harder- but workarounds do exist.
This is the first time efficency has stepped into the picture. I thought we where discussing morals. Well, suit yourself. I think the burden of proof that your 'system' must be more efficient lies on you. Believe me, I'm comfortable in my ablities to support the efficiency of capitalism both by experience and deduction.
As for man vs. machine: The distinction could but rarely does vs can not and does never is quite important and is fundamental in understanding the differences of mind vs machine.
And unlike what the economists claim- it's not an infinite ability. One cannot create without paying a cost. And that's where the zero sum game lies- in that cost. Governments and economic systems can hide the cost- but they cannot eliminate it.
Well, again, the universe is also not infinite (depending on which side of the kantian argument you look at;) but for us it doesn't and will never matter. The term zero sum game is not meant as opposing the 2nd TD law at all. All it means is that my wealth must not and for the most part does not
deprive you of anything.
Ah, but it was usefull to us- we just didn't know it. Without forests, we wouldn't have useable air to breathe- the wood was absorbing carbon and releasing oxygen, all along. How shortsighted of us to burn it as fuel without replenishing it! That's what I mean by a zero sum game- the economics may hide it, but there is ALWAYS a cost to the use of resources- and resources are made up of matter and energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed by human methods. Just because the basic axioms and myths have hidden the costs does NOT mean that the costs don't exist.
Well, how fortunate that it was discovered that the main player in the process are algea. Trees actually play quite a small role in it. And using wood doesn't necessarily imply killing trees either. Enough of them die. And it doesn't imply that you deplete the forest. This is actually a very good utilitarian argument for property. The owner of a forest has a long term interest in maintaining the ecosystem, raising new trees for those that where cut down. In an analogy, the value of a functioning TV plant is usually assigned to me more than an equally large structure filled with TVs. As for the costs of production, the single significant form of energy on this planet is solar. Be it fossile fuel or even wind mills, those are all results of the energy released by the 4H->1He process. For our purposes this energy output is steady. We can either make use of it and so make our lifes easier or we could stop and let it all go to waste. This is the part of which I say it is not zero sum. The amout of energy within the universe will stay the same anyways and always. We should be solely concerned with the things that concern us and this is identifing (and thereby creating them) resources (silicon is a prime example) and making use of them.
Slashdot Mirror
hehe :-) of course, sorry I tend to be heretical (backwards) ...
the 'aiming assitance' or 'auto-aim' or, as real gamers like to call it: fucking cheating is exactly the problem. Of course, a mouse could not outperform auto aiming. The reason for this is that auto aiming is put into the console games to make up for the weakness of the standard controller. Btw, this is something I don't get about the console fps'ers: Why do you even bother to play a game like that if you let the computer do the most important part, aiming? The whole point of FPS is to be faster in reflex and more precise in reaction than your opponent. If you don't want this, why not just watch an action movie?
second world is moon .. third world would be mars, or venus whatever tickles your fancy ;)
No, you dodged the illustration of exponential progress for computers on the grounds that businesses adopted before anyone else and pointed out that space tourism is not of interest to business. This is very true but the matter is not about who exactly demands a product but how much money stands behind those demands. This was the point I am making with TVs. The purpose of TVs doesn't even matter much in this argument since TVs where only used to show the progression from luxury to commodity driven by the private-private (not coperations) sector.
The original premise is: in a free-market setting, baring destructive wars etc, availability of products will increase, price decrease and quality increase. What exactly the most profitable use of space travel is, I don't know. But it seems that virgin galactic has already done the calculations and came up with tourism. It is in their best interest to make as much money out of their investment as possible. The amount of money they'll put into this is huge, so I'll just trust their judgement. Appearantly, for all they know, space tourism they can offer is in higher demand than space travel they could offer.
If you see this differently, you should instead of pointing to some imaginary historical law of product progression like: radio=news, tvs descentant of radio = news therefore planes = travel, SS0 descentant of plane must be used to travel (where = means useful for) do the cost/performance calcuations, organize some money and hop into the space-travel-travel business.
Also a note on the 'deemed necessary by the public' part. This is quite misleading. It is true that appearantly a majority of individuals found it in there best intersst to buy a radio. Yet this is true for most all products. The higher the price of those products, the more so. Actually 'deemed necessary by the public' coupled with 'scare supply' is the reason that a thing becomes a product in the first place.
Yeah, volatile indeed. The problem is not one of astethics. It's a matter of life and death. Agriculture has changed the enviroment (I do not feel in the position to claim 'damaged') but change it self isn't bad. It happens all the time in nature. Btw, this is a great beef I take with the original article about alien species. Who is to say what is etnernally 'good for nature' and 'bad for nature'? Anyways, nature isn't paradise. Nature does not 'provide' for us on it's own. Our technology enables us to live independent of floods and draughts, of good years and bad ones.
...
The question isn't 'would you like your enviorment to be, by some arbitrary standard, better or worse'. It is 'Would you like to starve or not?'.
The soil? Groundwater? Neighboring flora and fauna? What of the pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers used to nourish these crops?
You don't fertilize GM crops with plutonium, you know. What about the soil? No difference, it's a plant for gods sake. What about the flora and fauna? I don't know but it wont be different from the usual wheat field effects. Pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers? Thats the whole point of GM: make more with less: Pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers
there is so much wrong with your post:
1) Whats your business 'allowing' people to go to space? The US is not all socialistic yet, private property and liberty is still pretty well protected (comparitivly). Pursuit of your happiness is a constitutional right. With what justification will you forbid anyone from going to space?
2) Basically if you gave a state like say, the US, free reign to go into space as they pleased, do you think they would be more concerned with: a) lobbing nuclear warheads at other countries and doing useless research (dust collection, completely unremarkable stones from the moon etc. etc. pp) and putting spy satelites there that could tell you in detail about the health of your hair b) doing something people actually care for (the kind of 'caring' you do with your wallet instead of with your mouth)
3) Millions of dollars are spend to find ways to precisly target advertisement. The departure from mass exposure has long been going on. Advertisers would most want to be able to show you *just* the ads you actually want (and don't tell me that there never was an ad that actually informed you that there was something availabe that you would need but weren't aware of). Don't you agree that a continent sized, multi billion ad banner would be a radically turn from the direction advertisment is going today?
How long before every shuttle is as littered with badges as a Nascar is?
It's far better to make all tax payers pay for your pet project, right? I mean, those ad badges are so terrible, it justifies taking the lifelyhood of people that don't care jack shit about space flight. Elitist asshole.
I am so happy that there will be a space ship called 'enterprise' that isn't a brick with fancy wires in it within my lifetime.
jesus ... why don't you just take the blind folds of. TVs as an example then ... the same starting conditions, the same exponential development. And other but private-private uses just came way later (schools) and most businesses don't even own TVs today besides maybe the one in the cafeteria.
Business is the other way around: find out what price you could charge to, as an example, have one passenger for each day so one spaceship is 100% utilized. Then estimate if you would be able to turn a profit at all (expenses income). As with any emerging industry where demand hugly outweighs supply, the profit margins will be enormous. The 100.000$ price tag does not represent risk or cost in anyway (hell, development of SSO has only cost 10 million dollars in effect, a new car is probably more expensive in this respect) but balances demand against supply. Lets say the profit margin then is 50%, other investors will say 'well, 45% margin is enough for us' so the next competitor will only charge 95000$. As with all goods before, this circle will continue until the margins are so ridiculosly low that huge profits can only be archieved through mass market appeal.
Go read 'Brave new world' and see where your kind of thinking could lead.
Community, Identity, Stability! Yeah for wellfare tyranny.
there should be a new moderator option: Reduntant fear mongering
Yeah, genetical engineering is so dangerous. We have only 2000 years of expierince with it and see what catastrophes happened because of it. Thank your fucking deity that you life in a part of the world where planting, raising and harvesting food crops is the easiest thing to do.
Disclaimer: I am an avid reader and spend at least two hours per day reading real books
Why do you think that one medium (books) is supperior to an other (computer, tv) for an other person? If it concerns you, no problem, suit yourself. But how can you claim that reading a book is better for him too? I hope I don't need to remind you of the times where 'pop' literature emerged. Back then, people would blaim all sorts of mental defects (real or imangined) and amoral behaviour on novels.
I never proposed any "solution"
not your solution then. But government funding is a solution. I was refering to that.
I doubt anyone could afford to travel if only the travelers had to pay for what they used
This is as unsensical as saying: I doubt anyone could afford eating, housing, clothing, electronics if only the respective users had to pay up.
Transportation has become a mass market because people desire mobility. Almost universal demand and economics of scales indicates that this good must become pretty cheap with time.
The postal service sucks? I wasn't aware of that. Care to provide some proof? I've always been fairly happy with the USPS.
Well, I thought that the USPS had an universally bad reputation for being way to expensive, unreliable, unfriendly, slow and hugly buerocratic. I am not from the states actually so sorry if this seems to be wrong from your perspective. In germany, the government run postal service is the exact same as I described the USPS above. No matter, I am sure you will agree that not many believe that those services provided by the government can in anyway compete with similar services provided by the private sector.
right. Because the X-15s technology and specs as well as the collected flight data, frame calculations, composition, flight control systems and all the blinking LEDs are now available under the open source license. Basically, all you had to do was to rebuild the thing at 0$ costs. Man, I wonder why they went through all the trouble then.
you just discovered that all governments of all times where wasteful beyond imagination? Welcome to the club. Earn extra credit and find out why this is (and must be) so.
your post fails to explain why government funds tend to make things suck (roads, amtrak, postal service etc.). You can't make an abstract, almost unproveable claim like yours and ignore pressing factual and physical manifest problems that arose because of your solution.
That's your description, not mine, my description of the current Lib party is very simple: "too extremist to ever win an election".
yeah, because we all know that compromise is the best way to reach good decisions.
'Sir, would you like your car green or yellow?' 'Hmm, maybe a little of both?'
'Would you like to go by boat or plane?' 'I'm not extremist either way. I want a compromise'
'Would you prefer to be dead or alive?' 'Decision, Decisions. Maybe a coma is best?'
I am not sure how people got the idea that 'extremisn' is something to be avoided. But you are right, something 'new' does not go over well with the voters, especially if they feel there votes would go wasted if only a minority would be voting the same way.
Companies aren't emotional but rational, therefore your explanation is 100% correct. From an emotional standpoint though, I, personally, would refuse to trade with people (or peoples) that keep constantly bashing me.
I know how the market operates. I was jesting to prompt the reader to imagine a europe without MS. Yes, my position is debatable, but surely, the consequences in the short run would be disasterous. There is a reason Windows is such a sucess and it isn't about being uncompetitive but the exact opposite: windows is, and was for a long time, the best offer on the OS market for the PC segment. This directly translates into usefulness and comfort or whatever traits people value in operating systems. Withdrawing the prefered product from the market, conversely, means that the consumers are able to buy less of what they 'desire'. If you really think this somehow makes us 'better' of, take the conclusion to the logical consequences and withdraw everything people desire from the market and see if we are still 'better' of.
I wish they had just stopped selling all MS products in europe. It'd be a second stone age. They have been harrased so much on unfair grounds. I'd go: 'fine, you don't like me much. I'll grant your wish and just piss off.'.
Not vs. coperations but for buying anything I just need to know about my needs and how the product relates to them. I don't need to know how my car was 'built' or what components it is made out of. I just want it to be good looking, fast and as cheap as possible.
Microsoft is not trading with the EU but with their customers. One of them would be me. It is the EUs mistake to assume they are right to set the conditions for me trading with Microsoft. Microsoft shouldn't comply at all.
> I think that if you appeal in a corporate case such as this and you lose the damages should be > increased. You can justify this by lost interest due to the money sitting for in Microsoft's bank > and not the EUs bank account for duration of the appeal process plus a surcharge for wasting > everybody's time
Nice try in eroding civil liberties. Lets just cut all appeals right away and do away with due process too. It's just wasting time and money and everyone just knows and agrees that the government is benevolent and would never try anyone unless they where truly guilty. I bet you have a thin mustache too.
yeah, because they can prep so well the rules of debate had been changed to being a joint press conference. No follow ups, no direkt questions between the canditates etc. etc.. They don't have anything but 'propaganda', empty words which could mean anything or nothing but invoke a warm, fuzzy feeling in the voter. The libertarians (and greens probably) got actual principals, a sharp contrast to the opportunism of the large parties. They would lose every 'free' debate because they haven't got the answers to the hard questions like 'how do you finance this', 'why should a country founded on the principals of individual liberties elevate equality to the highest goal', 'how can the fed.government dare to do anything other than the consitution provisions for' and so forth. How will you prep against questions you can't answer without either appearing as a liar (because of past actions) or as repressive (because you don't honour the constitution)?
what the hell do you need an other centrist party for? Arn't the dems and reps enough anymore? how far to the common center of statist, socialist and enviromentalism do they need to move for you to be content? Would you even know a republican from a democrat if they wouldn't show the little 'D' and 'R' right next to their names?
The libertarian party is exactly what you describe: it draws the free marketeers, smaller government republicans and the pro civil liberties and anti war democrats.
house resolution = will of the people
And yet- the stack is also a resource, as important to the process as air is to a human being. Delete the stack- or even merely "pollute" it with junk data, and the process will die- usually very loudly and painfully. So no, your example actually fails. Deny the process all resources, and it will die. Deny the human being all resources, and that human being will die.
I still think there is a distinction, but it might be too subtle to matter.
But so few humans do so- you don't for instance, you're limited by your myth of independance to step up to the next level of efficiency. You're limited by both your programming (the basic axioms) and your physical world. The first can be destroyed easily, just as with a computer program- all that is needed is a change of the properties, a change of the point of view. The second is harder- but workarounds do exist. This is the first time efficency has stepped into the picture. I thought we where discussing morals. Well, suit yourself. I think the burden of proof that your 'system' must be more efficient lies on you. Believe me, I'm comfortable in my ablities to support the efficiency of capitalism both by experience and deduction.
As for man vs. machine: The distinction could but rarely does vs can not and does never is quite important and is fundamental in understanding the differences of mind vs machine.
And unlike what the economists claim- it's not an infinite ability. One cannot create without paying a cost. And that's where the zero sum game lies- in that cost. Governments and economic systems can hide the cost- but they cannot eliminate it.
Well, again, the universe is also not infinite (depending on which side of the kantian argument you look at
Ah, but it was usefull to us- we just didn't know it. Without forests, we wouldn't have useable air to breathe- the wood was absorbing carbon and releasing oxygen, all along. How shortsighted of us to burn it as fuel without replenishing it! That's what I mean by a zero sum game- the economics may hide it, but there is ALWAYS a cost to the use of resources- and resources are made up of matter and energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed by human methods. Just because the basic axioms and myths have hidden the costs does NOT mean that the costs don't exist.
Well, how fortunate that it was discovered that the main player in the process are algea. Trees actually play quite a small role in it. And using wood doesn't necessarily imply killing trees either. Enough of them die. And it doesn't imply that you deplete the forest. This is actually a very good utilitarian argument for property. The owner of a forest has a long term interest in maintaining the ecosystem, raising new trees for those that where cut down. In an analogy, the value of a functioning TV plant is usually assigned to me more than an equally large structure filled with TVs. As for the costs of production, the single significant form of energy on this planet is solar. Be it fossile fuel or even wind mills, those are all results of the energy released by the 4H->1He process. For our purposes this energy output is steady. We can either make use of it and so make our lifes easier or we could stop and let it all go to waste. This is the part of which I say it is not zero sum. The amout of energy within the universe will stay the same anyways and always. We should be solely concerned with the things that concern us and this is identifing (and thereby creating them) resources (silicon is a prime example) and making use of them.