I don't know why you got hung up on the word "the", when the point was to refute the assertion that a middleman is worthless. I never said it was a currency middleman or an asset middleman... and I don't disagree with your analysis... but that makes no difference to my argument.
From what I'm seeing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M..., the Federal Reserve did appear to create a larger amount of money than normal during that period, but not on the scale I meant with "enormous". I was talking about doubling the money supply in a year or two (or worse).
I agree that inflation helps the economy by driving people to spend money instead of hoarding it. A little more inflation during a depression is needed to offset the effects of the depression. But that only works to a certain degree. At any time if the currency inflates too much, other currencies will become more attractive (at least in the bank).
For all its faults, fiat currency is way more stable over time than bitcoin and its derivatives.
Are you seriously comparing the length of time most government currencies have been around to a virtual currency 5 years old?
Besides, government-backed currencies aren't immune to crashing. In particular, if the government thinks it's a good idea to create itself an enormous amount of new money, that currency will likely fail. (Something that doesn't happen with Bitcoin and derivatives because, by design, supply will be limited over time.)
We should never forget: Even if you feel the sitting President is the messiah in the flesh, can never do any wrong, and is sincerely and intelligently capable of making decisions that are the absolute best in every situation...
The powers you grant this President will be provided to the next. And the next one may not be so good.
And yet there are people who believe it so fervently as to dismiss rational thought and criticize those who are not in lockstep with believers. They turn to logical fallacies and hold ideals such as "You can't see it, you can't reasonably measure it, but it's coming and by then you'll be too late and you'll be doomed!"
I understand what you're getting at, but I can't think of a single case that adding or increasing a tax has led to more demand (when accounting for other factors such as lowering supply). Your example of gasoline tax is good for showing that percentage of price isn't the only way, but at the same time it is still derived (based on the volume sold). I don't pay the same tax on 1 gallon as I do on 20 gallons. LIkewise, if ice cream were taxed per ounce, more ice cream would have more tax.
I suppose that's not to say it's impossible to have a flat dollar amount tax no matter the amount you purchase, which would lead to the result you mentioned earlier (people would tend to buy as much of the expensive stuff as possible, instead of less of the cheap stuff). This same model is why retailers often have buy-1-get-1 half off sales. They might get the profit off the first item and sell the second at cost, which is better than the customer not buying anything at all. (And it's also better than making things 25% off, which is the same result on 2 items but the customer has the option to buy 1 item resulting in half the profit.)
But coming from a tax? I doubt that would be popular with either consumers or the government. I don't know... I'll credit you that it's an interesting thought experiment at the least.
Not nearly as weird as what you said. Since when is sales tax generally applied as a dollar amount? Why would we be paying a flat $10 per item? That makes no sense at all. That would mean a 10 cent piece of gum would cost 100x more, while a car might cost 0.05% more.
Practically all general sales tax is a percentage. A tax like this would be applied as a percentage, say 300% (and I remind you, this is completely unreasonable). That means that a $3 ice cream would cost $12 with tax, and a $6 ice cream would cost $24 with tax. So no, the better item wouldn't suddenly do better in the market. (Quite the contrary, the market would be racing for the bottom trying to sell crappy $0.25 ice cream so it would be $1 with tax, hoping to increase demand to the point that sales would again be profitable.)
a certain class of product (Veblen Goods [wikipedia.org]) is actually more desirable based if sold at a higher price.
Ice cream, being nondurable, is not a good candidate as a Veblen good. The same applies for most foods.
I'm absolutely positive that if you went up to the cashier and said "I would like to pay 3x as much in order to enjoy it more," he would be glad to oblige.
So, why don't you?
Why is it that you will only pay more if everyone pays more? If you truly believe what you are saying, what does how much I pay have to do with it?
This reminds me of buffet vs. a la carte expenses, just applied to insurance. If eating ice cream were to cost $0.50 extra each time (or I were to "save" 50 cents when I didn't eat ice cream), I might be more conscious about that cost and decide to not eat any than if that cost were figured in and distributed among all users buffet-style.
This may result in a healthier population, I would imagine. But given percentage profit caps due to the ACA (at least in the US), I suspect that profits would go down as a result. So, the plan backfires.
Combined with the negativity associated with charging a "tax" on eating tasty food, I doubt this really goes anywhere.
When the instruments are gone (somehow), the pilot would certainly rather have windows than not. It provides a very good chance of survivability where no windows means practically no chance.
I'm not getting on a plane that has no backup plan.
There are numerous ways a view screen could be disabled (object smashed it, software error, etc.) even though the plane is perfectly fit for flying otherwise.
I was under the impression that anesthesia doesn't work like a painkiller. It only reduces consciousness. The patient receives painkillers prior to the anesthesia wearing off in order to manage pain after becoming conscious. Since this would only take place of anesthesia, it would still be reasonable to provide painkillers before waking the patient up.
You're right, it probably isn't the ultimate solution. Perhaps someone should also be in charge of such a mailing list and double-check anything that comes through.
True, but at least there are corporate policies in place at most companies to manage such a situation.
Want to keep your job and not be subject to criminal prosecution? Don't share any emails with trade secrets or other private info.
Besides, since we are talking about better systems, let's go ahead and make it more difficult to accidentally send mail to mailing lists. "This message will be sent to 'GS Employees', a mailing list with 32,912 users. Are you sure?"
But it would be nice to have something like "google circles" for corporate email, and have them enforced on the client -- that is, you cannot send an email to an individual without having first classified their address as having a specific relationship to you, and then you must click through a "send this to everyone with that relationship?" dialog before being able to send to the individual.
Of course, then you get into the issue of list cleaning, but this could also have the benefit of being able to encrypt the message against "group keys" -- something that would be transparent for internal mail, and would involve a one-time setup for external mail. Anything not at least doing key *signing* would be flagged for review prior to release; this would fix a large swathe of data leakage issues currently experienced by pretty much every company with an intranet out there.
All of this was good and I highly agree that this kind of thing would be beneficial to all kinds of messaging protocols including email.
Email clients don't send messages to unknown addresses; the address was obviously known to the sender and had been the recipient of emails from them in the past.
What? This doesn't make sense one bit. I can email practically any email address on the planet.
I'm talking about the billions of other email users around the globe who don't understand what PGP means or TLS or SMTP or anything that isn't the Send button. I'm talking about users who, like this guy, make very simple and understandable mistakes that could put many people and their possessions at risk.
Slashdot Mirror
You totally missed the point of my post.
I don't know why you got hung up on the word "the", when the point was to refute the assertion that a middleman is worthless. I never said it was a currency middleman or an asset middleman... and I don't disagree with your analysis... but that makes no difference to my argument.
From what I'm seeing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M..., the Federal Reserve did appear to create a larger amount of money than normal during that period, but not on the scale I meant with "enormous". I was talking about doubling the money supply in a year or two (or worse).
I agree that inflation helps the economy by driving people to spend money instead of hoarding it. A little more inflation during a depression is needed to offset the effects of the depression. But that only works to a certain degree. At any time if the currency inflates too much, other currencies will become more attractive (at least in the bank).
For all its faults, fiat currency is way more stable over time than bitcoin and its derivatives.
Are you seriously comparing the length of time most government currencies have been around to a virtual currency 5 years old?
Besides, government-backed currencies aren't immune to crashing. In particular, if the government thinks it's a good idea to create itself an enormous amount of new money, that currency will likely fail. (Something that doesn't happen with Bitcoin and derivatives because, by design, supply will be limited over time.)
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well.
Where is the strawman you are arguing against that said the word "only"?
If anything, this demonstrates another example of how bitcoin will never catch on as an actual currency. It's a middleman at best
"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services. So I guess dollars will never catch on either.
And the next one may not be so good.
And by this, I meant the next one may be another Hitler.
(In before "But Godwin!"... talk of Hitler is perfectly logical when the subject is dictatorship.)
We should never forget: Even if you feel the sitting President is the messiah in the flesh, can never do any wrong, and is sincerely and intelligently capable of making decisions that are the absolute best in every situation...
The powers you grant this President will be provided to the next. And the next one may not be so good.
And yet there are people who believe it so fervently as to dismiss rational thought and criticize those who are not in lockstep with believers. They turn to logical fallacies and hold ideals such as "You can't see it, you can't reasonably measure it, but it's coming and by then you'll be too late and you'll be doomed!"
No, doesn't sound like a religion at all.
Sure, except Microsoft officially announced that the Start menu was coming back.
I guess I shouldn't expect an iOS 8 or Android L either.
Using that analogy, I feel like the question isn't whether the data is currently held on foreign soil, but whether it has ever been on US soil.
Of course, if the data is the subject of a domestic court case then it almost certainly was transmitted to or through a domestic system.
I understand what you're getting at, but I can't think of a single case that adding or increasing a tax has led to more demand (when accounting for other factors such as lowering supply). Your example of gasoline tax is good for showing that percentage of price isn't the only way, but at the same time it is still derived (based on the volume sold). I don't pay the same tax on 1 gallon as I do on 20 gallons. LIkewise, if ice cream were taxed per ounce, more ice cream would have more tax.
I suppose that's not to say it's impossible to have a flat dollar amount tax no matter the amount you purchase, which would lead to the result you mentioned earlier (people would tend to buy as much of the expensive stuff as possible, instead of less of the cheap stuff). This same model is why retailers often have buy-1-get-1 half off sales. They might get the profit off the first item and sell the second at cost, which is better than the customer not buying anything at all. (And it's also better than making things 25% off, which is the same result on 2 items but the customer has the option to buy 1 item resulting in half the profit.)
But coming from a tax? I doubt that would be popular with either consumers or the government. I don't know... I'll credit you that it's an interesting thought experiment at the least.
capital punishment
Well that's one way to rewrite the story. Why don't we just go ahead and say he driving an electric chair?
Isn't economics weird?
Not nearly as weird as what you said. Since when is sales tax generally applied as a dollar amount? Why would we be paying a flat $10 per item? That makes no sense at all. That would mean a 10 cent piece of gum would cost 100x more, while a car might cost 0.05% more.
Practically all general sales tax is a percentage. A tax like this would be applied as a percentage, say 300% (and I remind you, this is completely unreasonable). That means that a $3 ice cream would cost $12 with tax, and a $6 ice cream would cost $24 with tax. So no, the better item wouldn't suddenly do better in the market. (Quite the contrary, the market would be racing for the bottom trying to sell crappy $0.25 ice cream so it would be $1 with tax, hoping to increase demand to the point that sales would again be profitable.)
a certain class of product (Veblen Goods [wikipedia.org]) is actually more desirable based if sold at a higher price.
Ice cream, being nondurable, is not a good candidate as a Veblen good. The same applies for most foods.
"What is intelligence?"
If it behaves intelligently, then it is intelligent.
"What is intelligent behavior?"
I'm absolutely positive that if you went up to the cashier and said "I would like to pay 3x as much in order to enjoy it more," he would be glad to oblige.
So, why don't you?
Why is it that you will only pay more if everyone pays more? If you truly believe what you are saying, what does how much I pay have to do with it?
This reminds me of buffet vs. a la carte expenses, just applied to insurance. If eating ice cream were to cost $0.50 extra each time (or I were to "save" 50 cents when I didn't eat ice cream), I might be more conscious about that cost and decide to not eat any than if that cost were figured in and distributed among all users buffet-style.
This may result in a healthier population, I would imagine. But given percentage profit caps due to the ACA (at least in the US), I suspect that profits would go down as a result. So, the plan backfires.
Combined with the negativity associated with charging a "tax" on eating tasty food, I doubt this really goes anywhere.
Oblig xkcd.
When the instruments are gone (somehow), the pilot would certainly rather have windows than not. It provides a very good chance of survivability where no windows means practically no chance.
I'm not getting on a plane that has no backup plan.
There are numerous ways a view screen could be disabled (object smashed it, software error, etc.) even though the plane is perfectly fit for flying otherwise.
I was under the impression that anesthesia doesn't work like a painkiller. It only reduces consciousness. The patient receives painkillers prior to the anesthesia wearing off in order to manage pain after becoming conscious. Since this would only take place of anesthesia, it would still be reasonable to provide painkillers before waking the patient up.
You're right, it probably isn't the ultimate solution. Perhaps someone should also be in charge of such a mailing list and double-check anything that comes through.
True, but at least there are corporate policies in place at most companies to manage such a situation.
Want to keep your job and not be subject to criminal prosecution? Don't share any emails with trade secrets or other private info.
Besides, since we are talking about better systems, let's go ahead and make it more difficult to accidentally send mail to mailing lists. "This message will be sent to 'GS Employees', a mailing list with 32,912 users. Are you sure?"
But it would be nice to have something like "google circles" for corporate email, and have them enforced on the client -- that is, you cannot send an email to an individual without having first classified their address as having a specific relationship to you, and then you must click through a "send this to everyone with that relationship?" dialog before being able to send to the individual.
Of course, then you get into the issue of list cleaning, but this could also have the benefit of being able to encrypt the message against "group keys" -- something that would be transparent for internal mail, and would involve a one-time setup for external mail. Anything not at least doing key *signing* would be flagged for review prior to release; this would fix a large swathe of data leakage issues currently experienced by pretty much every company with an intranet out there.
All of this was good and I highly agree that this kind of thing would be beneficial to all kinds of messaging protocols including email.
Email clients don't send messages to unknown addresses; the address was obviously known to the sender and had been the recipient of emails from them in the past.
What? This doesn't make sense one bit. I can email practically any email address on the planet.
*facepalm* I'm not talking about me.
I'm talking about the billions of other email users around the globe who don't understand what PGP means or TLS or SMTP or anything that isn't the Send button. I'm talking about users who, like this guy, make very simple and understandable mistakes that could put many people and their possessions at risk.
In this case you are correct, and modern versions of Outlook and Exchange help warn users when sending outside the domain.
My complaint is more general, including personal mail. Email security in general use is little better than 20 years ago.