A Christian Scientist is a synonym for "total idiot". If the one-way Mars missions weren't so horribly expensive, I would add them to the list of pseudo-scientists I'd love to send on a one-way mission to really anything that's far enough away to guarantee the "one-way" part.
I do not understand at all the rage over Pluto's demotion from planetary status.
It's not rage, it's confusion.
If an object does not change at all, but you from now on supposed to call it something different, that causes a period of adjustment during which you will experience cognitive dissonance, which is an awkward emotion.
I just don't get why people are so upset.
Because that is one of the usual reactions to cognitive dissonance. The others are denial and acceptance, with the later one still incuring a mental cost. The adaptation doesn't happen just because your conscious accepts it, it will shift into the unconscious where for a while it will simply take some additional energy.
Think about it like a redirector function or a redirect on Wikipedia - it takes additional processing time and network requests each time you access it until all the references have been updated.
What I love about/. is that a topic like this can get almost 200 comments (at the time of this posting).
Most of my friends, even the geekier ones, would go "uh, ok, so what?". Because today "geek" has become to be limited to computers and that was never the gist of it until recently.
The difficult question is how much of that progress is thanks to MS, and how much would have happened anyway, and, basically, how much more or less would have happened without MS.
We will never know, we can only speculate.
However, what we do know for a fact is that monopolistic business practices do damage to the economy. Specifically, the monopolist extracts a monopoly rent from the market by being able to shift the price point above the optimal market point. And you can do the math to prove that the loss to the economy is higher than the gain for the monopolist. The difference is economic damage.
That is so simple and so well known that it is the reason we have laws like the Sherman Act. Monopolies need to be broken up if they appear, because they are so damaging to everyone else.
The meaning of "monopoly" is literally "single seller".
The defining attribute of a monopoly is market power, i.e. the ability to affect prices. What you define is the "pure monopoly". There are many situations that are effectively a monopoly, even though there are multiple sellers. That is why the number of sellers is not the question at hand when it comes to deciding if a company has a monopoly or not, in the legal sense (e.g. Anti-Trust actions), but the market power.
So continue to go through the motions because everyone else does it even though we can't make it work any more?
Do you have a better solution? Not in your head or on paper, one that actually works better, not just sounds better? Are you really sure that nobody else has thought of it before?
When everyone does the same thing, there are usually two reasons. One, everyone is making the same mistake or two, everyone has figured out that this is the best way to do it. The burden of proof that it is one lies with the one making the claim.
It's still private ownership of capital and hence, part of capitalism. Same goes for the family and the chess club.
Sorry, you just fell into the trap. Families existed long before capitalism, or even the idea of capital or private or even ownership existed.
Back a little ways, it was nominally to protect against the communist countries, several which were notoriously aggressive militarily. Nowadays? It seems more to generate profit for military contractors, which is just as pointless as most of the social programs in my view.
The US military exists to guard the american way of life and the US access to the resources it needs for its economy. That's not a conspiracy theory, that is pretty much the official doctrine (in other words, but that's the essence nonetheless).
Even during the cold war, nobody sane was seriously afraid of a communist invasion of the US mainland. The "protecting our people from evil communism" was played out in western Europe.
The US educational system isn't progressing anywhere. Might as well save a buck, if that system can't be bothered to do its job.
True. But if you look around the modern world, you will find that the well-educated countries all have public school systems. So step out of your little USA bubble for a second and realize that not a single advanced country in the world has a purely private school system. Not one.
Name a third system of ownership then. Keep in mind that capitalism is merely ownership of capital by private sources, ie, anything that isn't government.
So you are now re-defining the words so they fit? Sorry, not acceptable. Capitalism is not "anything that isn't government". Your local church, for example, is neither a company nor a government. Nor is your family. Nor is your chess club. There are many, many ways to organize a society that follows other rules than "free market".
Well, how much enforcement do you need to maintain a capitalist economic system?
The most massive military machine on the planet, judging by real-life facts instead of stupid theories. What else do you think the US military is guarding you against? An invasion by the Canadians?
Art? Are you F***ing kidding? You're saying that painting, sculpture, theater, music and film would cease to exist without the power of governments?
This needs a seperate answer.
Art can not exist in a purely capitalistic world.
Never in the history of the world has art worked according to a free market system. In the very early times, art was a by-product of people making a living doing something else. Later on, wealthy people paid artists for their works. In the entertainment era, it is at best a pseudo-market, controlled by organisations like the RIAA or MPAA, its print-product equivalents or media cartels. The closest thing that art has come to a free market is the guy selling his paintings on the sidewalk in your city center.
And this time it's not the fault of the copyright industry. Without copyright, the price of artworks would (business economics 101) fall to the price of reproduction, so basically nothing.
Capitalism would do a better job with education, housing and healthcare if government would stop introducing massive distortions in the market.
That's religious dogma, not truth. What evidence we have runs counter to what you claim. The most unregulated health care market (until recently) in the western world was the USA. Every other 1st world country has some kind of public health care. End result: The best, yes, and also the by far most expensive health care in the world.
Education? You really want to go back to times when the general public couldn't afford schooling? You know, before the government stepped in, made it mandatory and picked up the tab? If you check history, you might notice that those weren't exactly the most progressive times.
Art? Are you F***ing kidding? You're saying that painting, sculpture, theater, music and film would cease to exist without the power of governments?
...speaking of which, I see that education has failed you. Nowhere in my original posting did the word "government" even appear.
You seem to be stuck in a world where only two things exist: Capitalism and Government. And you seem to think they are opposed. Please don't wake up and never look outside, you would die from the shock.
Here's a funny thought for you: Capitalism wouldn't exist without a government enforcing it. Because the poor wouldn't respect the food or water prices. They would hit the merchant over the head with sticks and take what they need.
Tell you what, give me 100 times more money than I could ever spend in my lifetime even if I bathed in champagne each morning, paid my kitchen maid escort fees and never used the same helicopter twice - and I wouldn't even flinch when you ask me to part with half of it.
Now give me an average family that barely makes ends meet and has been saving for a new car for two years, and tell me again that they are not charitable if they give as much as a buck.
Who gave more in absolute terms? The rich guy. Who gave more in relative wealth? The rich guy. Who actually felt the loss?
Look, let's get away from Gates, who quite frankly is an asshole who abuses even his Foundation to drive out competition and control markets, and let me say that I do think rich people giving to charity is a good thing.
I just don't think that it deserves headlines when many people sacrifice more to give to others and don't get any mention in the news.
What I dislike is how they actually manage to turn themselves into heroes when they are not. How everyone acts as if that money suddenly appears in the sky thanks to the gracious Gates.
And forgets that if it hadn't been sucked out of the economy by a monopoly many years ago, what else could have been accomplished with it in the meantime. The millions that are now "coming back into the economy" - how many times could they have changed hands in the time they've sat there?
I do agree that giving the money to philanthropy is probably the one good thing Bill Gates has done in his life.
I just haven't forgotten that he doesn't create it, and that if you follow the charity statistics of the non super-rich, it would have probably found its way into the economy and into charity several times over in the two decades that he has spent accumulating it.
You are welcome to do a study to examine the validity of your ideas.
Until then, how about we go by the studies that have been done and their results? Your ideas are interesting, but untested. The fact that the rich aren't charitable is verified and has actual numbers to it.
Politicians are just faces that speak for that force.
Wrong. That is part of the whole picture. A single politician is just a face. But their entire profession is that force.
It's not an accident that in most western countries the two major parties have become pretty much identical. It's not a coincidence that they get closer and closer to an even split in votes. This is the system that guarantees them the maximum reliability and predictability.
Her solution for the problems of the world: kill humans. It's terrible
Actually, it's only scaled badly. A lot of the problems of the world would disappear if we killed about half the population. But that's not a very popular position to take, because nobody wants to be in that half.
But one thing this world does not need is more humans. As you must be one of those religious nutjobs for the position you hold, maybe you can go back and ask your $deity if the "go forth and multiply" sentence was maybe cut short because he can not possibly have intended unlimited growth. Being an all-knowing being and all, I'm sure basic math such as exponential growth didn't elude him (her, it, whatever).
So if we agree that the planet can not sustain an infinite number of human beings - and let's not argue the details such as whether the limit is 7, 8 or maybe 20 or 50 billion, let's just say that, say, 2000 billion certainly is too much, just so we agree that there is a "too much". If we agree on that, then we need a way to limit growth.
Since people do naturally multiply, i.e. there is a constant input, there is exactly ony way to reach an equilibrium: Balance input and output.
Output means death. So unless you propose something else that basically means killing people, I assume you are not willing to modulate the output function.
Which leaves modulating the input function as the only option. Which means either no sex or contraception.
I know many of the religious nutjobs prefer the "no sex" option, but seriously, most of you don't even manage that for yourselves, so how about not asking of others what you can't even do on your own? I'm sure there's probably a smart sentence just like that in your holy book. Throwing the first stone comes to mind.
I know this is/. and this is necessarily short and not well-sourced and could use some rhethorical polishing, but there in a nutshell you have the - to the best of my knowledge - unassailable argument for why you are either pro-contraception or you are a fucking moron who is a danger to world peace, human life and everything else that holds any value whatsoever.
Or an alien whose solution to the output equation is to harvest humans at regular intervals.
The Gates are a positive example, among the rich. Relatively speaking, they aren't that much more charitable than the 99%. So your question is addressed at the wrong audience.
Realizing that capitalism is an economic system, not a religion. It does not cover all of human existence nor all of societies needs. It covers the production and distribution of for-profit goods and services, and that is it.
Art, health care, police, firefighters and other disaster prevention, education, public transport, communications, housing and other basics (energy, water, food, etc.) go beyond what capitalism can provide. This is where the better mix is some parts capitalism, some parts something else - whatever you want to call it.
Unless, of course, you agree that people dying of thirst in the streets because the market has set an optimal price point for water above what they can afford is the kind of world you want to live in. Or that the thieves go free if they pay the police more than you do.
If you are right about the tax shelter, though, part of the Gates charity bill will be footed by you because those missing taxes have to come from somewhere. Guess who that's going to be.
So, if you were in the Gate's position, how would YOU spend your money for the common good?
Give it back to the people I stole it from through monopoly rent and hope that at least some of the additional damage I've done to the economy can still be undone.
Do Economy 101 again and listen carefully on the part about monopolies.
Robber barons have long played this scam, and there are still people falling for it? You're probably also a friend of drug trade, forced prostitution and shooting people, because the Mafia is known to support the local churches and in the USA the italian communities, yes?
Gates' riches are ill-gotten. That a large part of them is now given to charity is a PR stunt, but most importantly, it does not offset the damage, because monopoly rent causes more damage than it generates in profit for the monopolist.
The "look, our robber baron has turned philanthrop, all hail him" mentality is the same stupidity that still believes in "trickle down", even though it's been shown not to work for decades. And poor people actually give more to charity than wealthy people. So it stands to argue that if all those billions hadn't been robbed through monopoly rent from the general public, as much or more of it would have ended up going to charity.
The Gates aren't heroes, you moron. They robbed your farm and slaughtered your pigs and you applaud them for donating your goat to the poor neighbours down the road? They "show the best side of capitalism" in the same sense that the mafia don who donates to his local church shows the best side of organized crime.
Slashdot Mirror
This is such a cool toy - I wish I had something I need it for. I really do. Suggestions?
I'm pretty sure anywhere in Europe, parent would've been modded +5 Funny instead of -1 Troll.
A christian scientist I can accept.
A Christian Scientist is a synonym for "total idiot". If the one-way Mars missions weren't so horribly expensive, I would add them to the list of pseudo-scientists I'd love to send on a one-way mission to really anything that's far enough away to guarantee the "one-way" part.
I do not understand at all the rage over Pluto's demotion from planetary status.
It's not rage, it's confusion.
If an object does not change at all, but you from now on supposed to call it something different, that causes a period of adjustment during which you will experience cognitive dissonance, which is an awkward emotion.
I just don't get why people are so upset.
Because that is one of the usual reactions to cognitive dissonance. The others are denial and acceptance, with the later one still incuring a mental cost. The adaptation doesn't happen just because your conscious accepts it, it will shift into the unconscious where for a while it will simply take some additional energy.
Think about it like a redirector function or a redirect on Wikipedia - it takes additional processing time and network requests each time you access it until all the references have been updated.
What I love about /. is that a topic like this can get almost 200 comments (at the time of this posting).
Most of my friends, even the geekier ones, would go "uh, ok, so what?". Because today "geek" has become to be limited to computers and that was never the gist of it until recently.
The difficult question is how much of that progress is thanks to MS, and how much would have happened anyway, and, basically, how much more or less would have happened without MS.
We will never know, we can only speculate.
However, what we do know for a fact is that monopolistic business practices do damage to the economy. Specifically, the monopolist extracts a monopoly rent from the market by being able to shift the price point above the optimal market point. And you can do the math to prove that the loss to the economy is higher than the gain for the monopolist. The difference is economic damage.
That is so simple and so well known that it is the reason we have laws like the Sherman Act. Monopolies need to be broken up if they appear, because they are so damaging to everyone else.
The meaning of "monopoly" is literally "single seller".
The defining attribute of a monopoly is market power, i.e. the ability to affect prices. What you define is the "pure monopoly". There are many situations that are effectively a monopoly, even though there are multiple sellers. That is why the number of sellers is not the question at hand when it comes to deciding if a company has a monopoly or not, in the legal sense (e.g. Anti-Trust actions), but the market power.
So continue to go through the motions because everyone else does it even though we can't make it work any more?
Do you have a better solution? Not in your head or on paper, one that actually works better, not just sounds better? Are you really sure that nobody else has thought of it before?
When everyone does the same thing, there are usually two reasons. One, everyone is making the same mistake or two, everyone has figured out that this is the best way to do it. The burden of proof that it is one lies with the one making the claim.
It's still private ownership of capital and hence, part of capitalism. Same goes for the family and the chess club.
Sorry, you just fell into the trap. Families existed long before capitalism, or even the idea of capital or private or even ownership existed.
Back a little ways, it was nominally to protect against the communist countries, several which were notoriously aggressive militarily. Nowadays? It seems more to generate profit for military contractors, which is just as pointless as most of the social programs in my view.
The US military exists to guard the american way of life and the US access to the resources it needs for its economy. That's not a conspiracy theory, that is pretty much the official doctrine (in other words, but that's the essence nonetheless).
Even during the cold war, nobody sane was seriously afraid of a communist invasion of the US mainland. The "protecting our people from evil communism" was played out in western Europe.
Thanks a ton for that link. I didn't know that and now that I do I consider it a big hole in my knowledge.
The US educational system isn't progressing anywhere. Might as well save a buck, if that system can't be bothered to do its job.
True. But if you look around the modern world, you will find that the well-educated countries all have public school systems. So step out of your little USA bubble for a second and realize that not a single advanced country in the world has a purely private school system. Not one.
Name a third system of ownership then. Keep in mind that capitalism is merely ownership of capital by private sources, ie, anything that isn't government.
So you are now re-defining the words so they fit? Sorry, not acceptable. Capitalism is not "anything that isn't government". Your local church, for example, is neither a company nor a government. Nor is your family. Nor is your chess club. There are many, many ways to organize a society that follows other rules than "free market".
Well, how much enforcement do you need to maintain a capitalist economic system?
The most massive military machine on the planet, judging by real-life facts instead of stupid theories. What else do you think the US military is guarding you against? An invasion by the Canadians?
If people value things for something else than its economic value, then it's not a pure capitalism.
Art? Are you F***ing kidding? You're saying that painting, sculpture, theater, music and film would cease to exist without the power of governments?
This needs a seperate answer.
Art can not exist in a purely capitalistic world.
Never in the history of the world has art worked according to a free market system. In the very early times, art was a by-product of people making a living doing something else. Later on, wealthy people paid artists for their works. In the entertainment era, it is at best a pseudo-market, controlled by organisations like the RIAA or MPAA, its print-product equivalents or media cartels. The closest thing that art has come to a free market is the guy selling his paintings on the sidewalk in your city center.
And this time it's not the fault of the copyright industry. Without copyright, the price of artworks would (business economics 101) fall to the price of reproduction, so basically nothing.
Capitalism would do a better job with education, housing and healthcare if government would stop introducing massive distortions in the market.
That's religious dogma, not truth. What evidence we have runs counter to what you claim. The most unregulated health care market (until recently) in the western world was the USA. Every other 1st world country has some kind of public health care. End result: The best, yes, and also the by far most expensive health care in the world.
Education? You really want to go back to times when the general public couldn't afford schooling? You know, before the government stepped in, made it mandatory and picked up the tab? If you check history, you might notice that those weren't exactly the most progressive times.
Art? Are you F***ing kidding? You're saying that painting, sculpture, theater, music and film would cease to exist without the power of governments?
...speaking of which, I see that education has failed you. Nowhere in my original posting did the word "government" even appear.
You seem to be stuck in a world where only two things exist: Capitalism and Government. And you seem to think they are opposed. Please don't wake up and never look outside, you would die from the shock.
Here's a funny thought for you: Capitalism wouldn't exist without a government enforcing it. Because the poor wouldn't respect the food or water prices. They would hit the merchant over the head with sticks and take what they need.
It all depends on how you skin the cat.
Tell you what, give me 100 times more money than I could ever spend in my lifetime even if I bathed in champagne each morning, paid my kitchen maid escort fees and never used the same helicopter twice - and I wouldn't even flinch when you ask me to part with half of it.
Now give me an average family that barely makes ends meet and has been saving for a new car for two years, and tell me again that they are not charitable if they give as much as a buck.
Who gave more in absolute terms? The rich guy.
Who gave more in relative wealth? The rich guy.
Who actually felt the loss?
Look, let's get away from Gates, who quite frankly is an asshole who abuses even his Foundation to drive out competition and control markets, and let me say that I do think rich people giving to charity is a good thing.
I just don't think that it deserves headlines when many people sacrifice more to give to others and don't get any mention in the news.
I do agree that the Gates could've done worse.
What I dislike is how they actually manage to turn themselves into heroes when they are not. How everyone acts as if that money suddenly appears in the sky thanks to the gracious Gates.
And forgets that if it hadn't been sucked out of the economy by a monopoly many years ago, what else could have been accomplished with it in the meantime. The millions that are now "coming back into the economy" - how many times could they have changed hands in the time they've sat there?
I do agree that giving the money to philanthropy is probably the one good thing Bill Gates has done in his life.
I just haven't forgotten that he doesn't create it, and that if you follow the charity statistics of the non super-rich, it would have probably found its way into the economy and into charity several times over in the two decades that he has spent accumulating it.
You are welcome to do a study to examine the validity of your ideas.
Until then, how about we go by the studies that have been done and their results? Your ideas are interesting, but untested. The fact that the rich aren't charitable is verified and has actual numbers to it.
Oh please. The same old strawman troll again? It was old 10 years ago, and it hasn't aged well.
You don't need 100% market share to be a monopoly. Really, do go back to Economics 101.
Politicians are just faces that speak for that force.
Wrong. That is part of the whole picture. A single politician is just a face. But their entire profession is that force.
It's not an accident that in most western countries the two major parties have become pretty much identical. It's not a coincidence that they get closer and closer to an even split in votes. This is the system that guarantees them the maximum reliability and predictability.
Her solution for the problems of the world: kill humans. It's terrible
Actually, it's only scaled badly. A lot of the problems of the world would disappear if we killed about half the population. But that's not a very popular position to take, because nobody wants to be in that half.
But one thing this world does not need is more humans. As you must be one of those religious nutjobs for the position you hold, maybe you can go back and ask your $deity if the "go forth and multiply" sentence was maybe cut short because he can not possibly have intended unlimited growth. Being an all-knowing being and all, I'm sure basic math such as exponential growth didn't elude him (her, it, whatever).
So if we agree that the planet can not sustain an infinite number of human beings - and let's not argue the details such as whether the limit is 7, 8 or maybe 20 or 50 billion, let's just say that, say, 2000 billion certainly is too much, just so we agree that there is a "too much". If we agree on that, then we need a way to limit growth.
Since people do naturally multiply, i.e. there is a constant input, there is exactly ony way to reach an equilibrium: Balance input and output.
Output means death. So unless you propose something else that basically means killing people, I assume you are not willing to modulate the output function.
Which leaves modulating the input function as the only option. Which means either no sex or contraception.
I know many of the religious nutjobs prefer the "no sex" option, but seriously, most of you don't even manage that for yourselves, so how about not asking of others what you can't even do on your own? I'm sure there's probably a smart sentence just like that in your holy book. Throwing the first stone comes to mind.
I know this is /. and this is necessarily short and not well-sourced and could use some rhethorical polishing, but there in a nutshell you have the - to the best of my knowledge - unassailable argument for why you are either pro-contraception or you are a fucking moron who is a danger to world peace, human life and everything else that holds any value whatsoever.
Or an alien whose solution to the output equation is to harvest humans at regular intervals.
Wrong assumption there, buddy. Turns out that poor people give more to charity than rich people.
The Gates are a positive example, among the rich. Relatively speaking, they aren't that much more charitable than the 99%. So your question is addressed at the wrong audience.
And the solution to capitalism is?
Realizing that capitalism is an economic system, not a religion. It does not cover all of human existence nor all of societies needs. It covers the production and distribution of for-profit goods and services, and that is it.
Art, health care, police, firefighters and other disaster prevention, education, public transport, communications, housing and other basics (energy, water, food, etc.) go beyond what capitalism can provide. This is where the better mix is some parts capitalism, some parts something else - whatever you want to call it.
Unless, of course, you agree that people dying of thirst in the streets because the market has set an optimal price point for water above what they can afford is the kind of world you want to live in. Or that the thieves go free if they pay the police more than you do.
If you are right about the tax shelter, though, part of the Gates charity bill will be footed by you because those missing taxes have to come from somewhere. Guess who that's going to be.
Why are mega rich people altruistic? Because they can be.
Everyone can be. In fact, studies have shown (I just posted a link in another comment) that the poor are generally more altruistic than the rich.
So, based on the numbers in that article, if the money that Gates made had instead been made by the 99%, twice as much would've gone to charity.
So your point was?
So, if you were in the Gate's position, how would YOU spend your money for the common good?
Give it back to the people I stole it from through monopoly rent and hope that at least some of the additional damage I've done to the economy can still be undone.
Do Economy 101 again and listen carefully on the part about monopolies.
You're a fucking moron. I'm seriously angry.
Robber barons have long played this scam, and there are still people falling for it? You're probably also a friend of drug trade, forced prostitution and shooting people, because the Mafia is known to support the local churches and in the USA the italian communities, yes?
Gates' riches are ill-gotten. That a large part of them is now given to charity is a PR stunt, but most importantly, it does not offset the damage, because monopoly rent causes more damage than it generates in profit for the monopolist.
The "look, our robber baron has turned philanthrop, all hail him" mentality is the same stupidity that still believes in "trickle down", even though it's been shown not to work for decades.
And poor people actually give more to charity than wealthy people. So it stands to argue that if all those billions hadn't been robbed through monopoly rent from the general public, as much or more of it would have ended up going to charity.
The Gates aren't heroes, you moron. They robbed your farm and slaughtered your pigs and you applaud them for donating your goat to the poor neighbours down the road? They "show the best side of capitalism" in the same sense that the mafia don who donates to his local church shows the best side of organized crime.