Value is subjective. If it weren't nobody would trade anything for anything, because everyone would value everything exactly the same as everyone else did.
Rather than itemize them and then debunk each one, I'll instead recommend you read a good book or two on economics intended for the general audience.
And also ask you consider the possibility that if something isn't any damn good -- which you have concluded is the case for bitcoin -- people won't use it. (Just like the Zimbabwe dollar, though for a very different reason.) The "problem" you see isn't a problem.
It's a shame people in the US don't have that option when it comes to US dollars.
A notion straight out of the late 19th and early 20th century. With it comes the assumption that people quit being people once they start to draw a government paycheck after being elected, appointed, or hired. Somehow they no longer respond to incentives, other than the official and explicit ones.
Ferguson has non-partisan elections, as do many smaller municipalities in Missouri. (St. Louis City has de facto single-party elections, though there have been sightings of Republicans, and even an occasional Libertarian or Green, from time to time. On the ballot, that is. Not in City Hall.) No parties on the Ferguson ballot.
Hey! Leave me out of it! I'm no Democrat, and I'm not a Republican.
There's a lot of that going around these days.
Most folks are not on Team Donkey or Team Elephant, though they don't go so far as to support some other party (like I do). (My electronic ballot thingus when I went to vote absentee was marked with a purple band, not red, not blue.)
On issue after issue that matters to me, the Blue Team and the Red Team just about always agree with each other -- and disagree with me.
Nate Silver, in his book on prediction, notes that local weather forecasters pretty routinely intensify the bad news in their predictions. The know they'll catch less flak for crying wolf than they will for under-predicting calamity, and skew their forecasts accordingly.
Ever since technological change started happening faster than people were growing old and dying, we've had people becoming technologically unemployed. When a better version of a plow (or of draft animal harnessing or whatever) appeared and slowly spread, the workers reliant on the old ways died before they could become obsolete. Their children or their neighbors' children grew up with the new ways of plowing a field, and of making plows and draft animal tack.
When the pace of innovation and the ease of spreading innovations grew, we got unemployed lace-makers and blacksmiths and telegraph operators and magnetic tape hangers. Some of them adapted to the new situation, and got work in lace factories or fixing horseless carriages or in the telephone industry or deploying software to production environments. Or went into entirely different lines of work.
Technological unemployment is a centuries-old phenomenon. The concept of the intersecting supply and demand curves is a centuries-old, too.
You'd think we've kinda have it figured out by now, and wouldn't be vulnerable to the whole "creating jobs" and "destroying jobs" fallacy. Or the claims that "this time it's different".
Personally, I'm skeptical, as it would require a higher level of organization and a greater commitment to the long term than I think they could manage.
I will remain skeptical of the sincerity of those who claim the earth is getting warmer and it's due to human activity until significant numbers of them are willing to bet a modest amount of money on the accuracy of those climate models.
Someone who is eager to have government impose significant costs on billions of people for years and years but isn't willing to risk the cost of dinner for two at a chain restaurant with cloth napkins of their own money one time strikes me as inconsistent. (To put it gently.)
I'm not sure what would be "significant numbers" but it's certainly greater than zero, which is number I've found so far.
If a neighborhood is in decline, with businesses leaving or going bankrupt, and new businesses (if any) being ones like payday loans and pawnshops, and residences deteriorate, unsurprisingly, rents and real estate values go down. It is called a name like "urban decay" or "urban blight", and it's a bad thing.
If people reverse the process -- fixing up existing buildings or replacing them, starting new businesses that create a lot of value for their customers -- unsurprisingly, rents and real estate values go up. it's called "gentrification" and it's a bad thing.
By a lot of the same people.
I guess some people just don't like change.
And they call other people "conservative". Go figure.
There are lots of folks with at least one "emotional attachment to a position that lacks evidence".
Suggest to one of them that their favorite governmental approach to something they care about (take your pick) is counterproductive and actually accomplishes the opposite of what they want, and see what happens. You won't get a request to cite evidence or to explain your reasoning. You'll be informed in quite heated terms that you are a horrible person.
(I'd given an example or three, but I've already been informed of what a horrible person I am.)
Whereas thinking that a huge and hugely complex system can be accurately modeled is not naive? Especially when so many of those models have been off in their predictions by a factor of two?
Slashdot Mirror
Value is subjective. If it weren't nobody would trade anything for anything, because everyone would value everything exactly the same as everyone else did.
Wow. So much wrong.
Rather than itemize them and then debunk each one, I'll instead recommend you read a good book or two on economics intended for the general audience.
And also ask you consider the possibility that if something isn't any damn good -- which you have concluded is the case for bitcoin -- people won't use it. (Just like the Zimbabwe dollar, though for a very different reason.) The "problem" you see isn't a problem.
It's a shame people in the US don't have that option when it comes to US dollars.
"everyone with boring lives are securing all their communication all the time"
Challenge accepted!
"Government by science!"
A notion straight out of the late 19th and early 20th century. With it comes the assumption that people quit being people once they start to draw a government paycheck after being elected, appointed, or hired. Somehow they no longer respond to incentives, other than the official and explicit ones.
No, thank you.
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=public.choice.economics
After a problem occurs or is uncovered: "Fix the blame, not the problem"
Doesn't happen in all workplaces, or all parts of the ones where it does. But it's a human tendency that needs to be deliberately diligently thwarted.
On a raft.
Ferguson has non-partisan elections, as do many smaller municipalities in Missouri. (St. Louis City has de facto single-party elections, though there have been sightings of Republicans, and even an occasional Libertarian or Green, from time to time. On the ballot, that is. Not in City Hall.) No parties on the Ferguson ballot.
Here's the vote count for the most recent mayoral election: http://www.stlouisco.com/porta.... Note the lack of party labels.
Guess this means Ferguson is already as good as it gets, eh?
It's not clear (at least to me) what you mean by the petrodollar, as distinct from the US dollar.
The Wikipedia article was no help clarifying your meaning.
Could you mean what the article referred to as "petrocurrencies"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And by releasing it before the end of the year, Sony makes it eligible for Oscars.
Hey! Leave me out of it! I'm no Democrat, and I'm not a Republican.
There's a lot of that going around these days.
Most folks are not on Team Donkey or Team Elephant, though they don't go so far as to support some other party (like I do). (My electronic ballot thingus when I went to vote absentee was marked with a purple band, not red, not blue.)
On issue after issue that matters to me, the Blue Team and the Red Team just about always agree with each other -- and disagree with me.
That also works when there are toddlers in the house.
Kids of any age, actually. It's just a question of what type of mischief they are up to.
Nate Silver, in his book on prediction, notes that local weather forecasters pretty routinely intensify the bad news in their predictions. The know they'll catch less flak for crying wolf than they will for under-predicting calamity, and skew their forecasts accordingly.
Ever since technological change started happening faster than people were growing old and dying, we've had people becoming technologically unemployed. When a better version of a plow (or of draft animal harnessing or whatever) appeared and slowly spread, the workers reliant on the old ways died before they could become obsolete. Their children or their neighbors' children grew up with the new ways of plowing a field, and of making plows and draft animal tack.
When the pace of innovation and the ease of spreading innovations grew, we got unemployed lace-makers and blacksmiths and telegraph operators and magnetic tape hangers. Some of them adapted to the new situation, and got work in lace factories or fixing horseless carriages or in the telephone industry or deploying software to production environments. Or went into entirely different lines of work.
Technological unemployment is a centuries-old phenomenon. The concept of the intersecting supply and demand curves is a centuries-old, too.
You'd think we've kinda have it figured out by now, and wouldn't be vulnerable to the whole "creating jobs" and "destroying jobs" fallacy. Or the claims that "this time it's different".
There's a book about it, "Three Felonies a Day".
Don't know that the author says it's deliberate.
Personally, I'm skeptical, as it would require a higher level of organization and a greater commitment to the long term than I think they could manage.
It comes down to, will it be like the LED, or will it be like practical fusion power?
So far, it's looking more like practical fusion power. But less expensive.
I will remain skeptical of the sincerity of those who claim the earth is getting warmer and it's due to human activity until significant numbers of them are willing to bet a modest amount of money on the accuracy of those climate models.
Someone who is eager to have government impose significant costs on billions of people for years and years but isn't willing to risk the cost of dinner for two at a chain restaurant with cloth napkins of their own money one time strikes me as inconsistent. (To put it gently.)
I'm not sure what would be "significant numbers" but it's certainly greater than zero, which is number I've found so far.
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=allison's.precept . http://www.murphyslaws.net/edi...
Got me beat.
If a neighborhood is in decline, with businesses leaving or going bankrupt, and new businesses (if any) being ones like payday loans and pawnshops, and residences deteriorate, unsurprisingly, rents and real estate values go down. It is called a name like "urban decay" or "urban blight", and it's a bad thing.
If people reverse the process -- fixing up existing buildings or replacing them, starting new businesses that create a lot of value for their customers -- unsurprisingly, rents and real estate values go up. it's called "gentrification" and it's a bad thing.
By a lot of the same people.
I guess some people just don't like change.
And they call other people "conservative". Go figure.
The firing part. They have a union, and management (the politicians) have little incentive to push back.
If they're new but not better, you've not gained any ground.
There are lots of folks with at least one "emotional attachment to a position that lacks evidence".
Suggest to one of them that their favorite governmental approach to something they care about (take your pick) is counterproductive and actually accomplishes the opposite of what they want, and see what happens. You won't get a request to cite evidence or to explain your reasoning. You'll be informed in quite heated terms that you are a horrible person.
(I'd given an example or three, but I've already been informed of what a horrible person I am.)
Ah. So this legislation apparently harms bigger firms less than smaller ones. It's not without precedent.
I wonder if the bigger ones supported the legislation? It's not without precedent.
Whereas thinking that a huge and hugely complex system can be accurately modeled is not naive? Especially when so many of those models have been off in their predictions by a factor of two?
A guy who uses the word "narrative" has no business complaining that someone else is using "mumbo jumbo buzzwords".
"Large, complex systems on whose function lives will depend should be checked and tested in at least one realistic run"
I wasn't going to mention the healthcare.gov website, but since you brought it up ...
Well, libertarians knew about it.
Oh. I guess that kinda proves your point.
There are multiple versions of this Milton Friedman anecdote, about the time an official in an Asian country gave him a tour.
I'll give a short flavorless one here. You might like the others better.
Friedman: What are they doing?
Government Official: Digging a canal.
Friedman: Oh. Why are they using shovels instead of heavy machinery?
Government Official: This is also a jobs program.
Friedman: Oh. Why are they using shovels instead of spoons?
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/
http://tarpon.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/milton-friedman-shovels-vs-spoons/
http://humanevents.com/2012/07/31/milton-friedman-and-the-economy-of-spoons/ (penultimate paragraph)
http://watchdogonwallstreet.com/archived-articles/archived-politics-articles/digging-with-spoons/
http://thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2010/07/milton-friedman-and-green-spoons.html
http://moot.typepad.com/what_if/2011/06/spoons-instead-of-shovels.html