Yes and no. The problem is that the US needs the capability to mobilize for war, which requires both a large reserve of fossil fuels and a huge metaphorical pipeline for fuel on demand. This is what drives the subsidization, to ensure that the US's wehrmacht capability is there.
Until the military runs on fuels other than fossil, the subsidies aren't going away. Equivalent subsidies for renewable/less-polluting energy resources would be more to my liking.
The problem with that is that the external costs cannot be calculated at a fixed rate per unit. What do you do if there is a geometric relationship between environmental damage (an external cost) and total power consumed? Or how about factoring in the cost of reducing the world's fossil fuel supply? As each unit is consumed, should the increase in price to the rest of the supply be counted as an external cost?
What I would propose is a stepped price scale based on each purchaser's usage for the billing period, with credits for certain necessary high-power appliances (such as certain medical equipment needed for long-term home care).
Of course, this tax would need to be put into the coffers of government for remediation and offset of those external costs, which has its own problems.
Theft of physical property is not covered by trade treaty, and the WTO court has no jurisdiction over non-trade treaties.
US IP rights can be restricted by the WTO, since they exist in other countries only because of trade treaty.
Legally, there is a difference between physical property rights and IP rights, since one has been historically regarded as universal, and there is worldwide debate about the existence and importance of the other.
This is odd. It will be placing the burden of the remedy for US law on private entities.
And how is that any different from any trade agreement? Private companies are affected by trade sanctions, quotas, and subsidies all over the world.
Hollywood and Microsoft benefit from the trade treaties that ensure recognition of US law overseas wrt IP. Under the treaties that govern the WTO, those beneficial to HW/MS treaties are no longer enforceable since the US refuses to fulfill its end of the bargain wrt a treaty it signed.
What you are saying is, why should HW and MS be punished by international legal reaction to US treaty violation?
The flip side of that coin is, why should HW and MS be rewarded by US treaties? Hollywood and Microsoft reap the rewards of US treaties, why should they not have some of that reward taken away when the US breaks those treaties?
So writers are supposed to predict this happening now, and cull from their work usages that Slashdot readers might find objectionable?
No. But it does mean that the wording is unfortunate to those of us who are most familiar with the tech usage. Having fun putting words in my mouth?
generally it refers to a 'friendly' overture that is a disguise for attack or competition.
Out of curiousity, how do you interpret TiVo as an overture to the cable companies in any way, shape, or form? Please, explain. The cable companies are ancillary to the parties TiVo is reaching out to (the viewers).
Vocabulary used should be targeted to your intended audience. I don't think the writer of TFA was writing for a tech audience, but as it ended up on a tech aggregator...
Besides, even with the original usage of Trojan horse, it doesn't quite fit. It's not like TiVo is a gift to the cable companies that hides the source of their downfall.
What is the point of these artificial job-appreciation-days?
Because if you can convince your employees that you really really sincerely appreciate their extra hours and hard work, you can pay them less for it.
No joke. Feeling appreciated at work is worth thousands to many employees, particularly those in support roles
(and lets not kid ourselves, a sysadmin is a support person). Plus, if you have one day set aside for it each year, you never have to show your appreciation other days. It's really a very efficient tool to leverage false appreciation to reduce payroll expense.
Could you elaborate on that? I looked through the article and didn't see any mention of DRM causing problems.
Sure. It's not causing problems now -- but what happens if the cable companies get really pissed by TiVo, since TiVo is entering the movie distribution space? How will the cable companies move to prevent TiVo from taking a large segment of their business? They'll use DRM to lock down content, as HBO experimented with last year. It's coming.
What happens when Cablevision or Comcast start charging a fee to TiVo users for access to their content, over and above sub fees?
Not as far as I can tell now -- there's been a slight but noticeable drop in real estate values around where I live during the course of the summer. (Near Morristown, NJ).
I haven't been noting the current numbers, so I'm a quarter behind. Inventory is up all around, and as of the end of the 1st quarter, prices had only dropped significantly in the top quartile. Good news for me, that prices are dropping among midlle-value homes, as I'm looking to buy a house in a year or two (and sell my condo in Bedminster). Interestingly enough, although condo inventory is up, and they stay on the market longer, prices are still increasing slightly. Last I heard condos in Bedminster (very low taxes, BTW -- I pay under $5k a year prop taxes) are forecasted for 3-5% annual appreciation over the next two years...
TiVo also gets its Trojan horse in the door as a rival TV-related service provider,
That's a really unfortunate turn-of-phrase. Is the writer aware of what Trojan horses are in the tech world?
Two: this is where Wall Street has a darling busted by DRM. It's really too much to hope for, but since TiVo is a household name, maybe finally a few legislators may become personally aware of how over-restrictive media controls really interfere with the consumer's best interests.
The Austrian School typically believes that boom/bust cycles are natural, and occur under both speci-backed currency systems and in inflationary systems. However, their take on it is that they can be avoided sometimes when there is a species standard, but are unavoidable with an inflationary system.
As for the depression of 1837, that was caused by overextended credit and the failure of specie remits to eastern banks. Once the fed stopped accepting bank notes as payment, it precipitated a run a specie which the banks couldn't support due to the previous demand for coin in the west. The inflation in this case was caused by overextension of credit, and little else. Sure, you can ascribe a lot of reasons to the overextension of credit, but I think you put the cart before the horse when you say that inflation causes boom/bust -- it's like saying rain causes thunderstorms.
False again. I'll chase your blatant flasehoods throughout the entire thread, because your misinformation is ridiculous. How about the Tulip bubble? The land bubble of the 1730s? Neither were govnerment created.
In a slow deflation economy, you have two choices: sit on your money until you want/need to spend it, or invest it in something that has a higher risk but may have a higher reward. In a high inflation economy as we've lived in since 1913, you have two choices: sit on your money and let it inflate to worthlessless, or invest it in a risky venture that may only be "profiting" because other suckers with easy credit are also investing there.
False dichotomy. Prudent investing is always possible. However, in a deflationary economy, there is an inequality that rewards those who hoard cash rather than investing.
The truth is that in an inflationary economy, there is a tax on saving. However, speculation is not the only investment strategy (and according to most wise investors, a very poor stretegy). Wise investment strategy includes investing in certain ventures based on real product. Consider IBM, for exmaple -- people invest in blue-chips like IBM because stick price is relatively stable but dividends are high. If what you say about an inflationary economy was true, no one would invest in IBM since it's not high-risk, high-reward. Yet funnily, it consistently returns above inflation. Did you forget that inflation affects returns on investments as well as the value of saved funds?
The Austrians have shown time and again that soft deflation is a good thing
False, wherever did you get that idea? How about a link? The Austrian School maintains that deflation is of no benefit to society, but that price drops due to increased productivity are a good thing. Did you get confused about the definition of deflation again?
Call me crazy, but the grandparent poster doesn't mention the gold standard once in his post.
He's still getting at the same thing, however. "Inflation is evil and it's the evil fed that does it."
The extension is that fiat currency is to blame, and that the gold standard would solve the problem. However, since he's been lambasted so much for his crackpot theories in re: the gold standard, he no longer refers to it by name in his posts.
What are you responding to? I was talking about the boom-bust cycles prior to the GD that you still fail to address. You know, the ones that occurred while we were still on the gold standard? 1837, for example?
Inflation causes the boom-bust cycle as I easily explained in this post and in previous ones in the same threads.
I see, the claims you made that I'm disputing are the counterargument? Give me a break, you're saying "it's fact because I said so". Once again your base definitions are incorrect. Inflation is not the creation of money, it's an increase in the money supply in circulation, which is different. To illustrate this, consider a constant supply of paper money. Inflation can still occur because if people take cash from savings and place it into investments, they have increased the money supply. This is exacerbated by banks extending more credit, since that in effect also increases the money supply. Yes, printing more currency contributes. However, in today's economy, the extension of credit affects the money supply far more than the increase in currency.
You seem to think that speculation cycles only happen because of increased currency in circulation. This is proven false, because no free market is an ideal free market which, as you continue to ignore, requires full knowledge of the market by participants.
In a free market, stocks go up in value because they either pay more dividends, or because the company is truly worth more money now or in the near future.
No. In an ideal free market, this is true. However, the free market you espouse exists only in theory. You confuse free-from-govermnment-action with free as it is intended in "free market" by theorists. In reality, even with fixed money supplies, speculation occurs. However, with a fixed money supply, there is no way to mitigate the bust cycle that follows the boom cycle.
Does this mean that the Fed didn't screw up in the 1920s? No. But this doesn't mean that the Fed is inherently bad, it means that errors were made in policy and in implementation.
Society blossomed during a stable currency base during the Industrial Revolution. Why? Companies and individuals found ways to become more efficient, introduce more products and services to the market, and reduce prices for everyone (deflation).
Once again, correlation != causation. Furthermore, define "society". Let's not mix social terms with economic ones, since one could easily argue that society withered during the industrial revolution, with theretofore unprecedented decreases in quality of life not due to natural disaster.
The dollar has lost 98% of value since 1913, because of inflation/the Fed.
That's a useless statistic, since wages are not the same as they were in 1913. It looks good, makes it seem like there's this huge drastic problem, but in reality, currencies all over the world have experienced similar inflations, and wages have basically kept pace, so unless you think it's important for some arbitrary value to be pegged to the dollar, then it's meaningless. In which case, it's a self-referential maxim anyway -- the dollar must stay at X because if it doesn't, it's no longer at X! The horror of it all!
It's funny that you think the dollar was stable in value prior to the 1910s. It actually fluctuated a very large amount. For example -- inflation from 1900 to 1910 was about 13%. Furthermore, the variance in the wage-to-purchasing power was higher than today, which was a huge problem. The difference is that the delfationary cycles have been much smaller, so the net is an inflated currency -- and the collapse of the economy is forestalled due to proper attention to the money supply.
I don't know why anyone respects your economic misinformation. You consistently use terms improper
Furthermore, even i they did, tiered pricing does not affect CC status (see Fedex shipping rates for 2nd-day vs overnight delivery). All they would have to do is say that each packet in each rate class is handled the same way, and to provide rate-based pricing on equal footing.
Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do
on
$60 Games Are Here To Stay
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Right now, easy credit and easy money have created all the bubbles we've experienced since 1913, including the Great Depression. All these bubbles followed by recession/depression happen because new money is printed, people spend it/invest it, causing prices to rise, giving people the idea that the investment was a good idea because "prices always go up."
You conveniently leave out the causes of the depressions and bubbles that occurred prior to the great depression (hint: speculation does not require fiat currency to occur).
The boom-bust cycle is nothing new, and not a product of inflation. Inflation is part of the boom-bust cycle.
As for the printing of new money being the cause of today's inflation, that's false. The increasing money supply today is dominated by credit offerings, not by currency.
As for deflation being bad for the economy, I'll agree with you. There were a couple studies recently released indicating that recessions rarely follow deflationary cycles. Then again, it's not surprising -- what follows a deflationary cycle is a recovery, typically.
However, all else said, I'll go out on a limb and say that over time, the boom-bust cycle is healthy. It promotes advancement during boom cycles, then weeds out the weak during bust cycles. In the long run, the boom-bust cycle promotes technological advances that result in increased standard-of-living across the board. The key is to mitigate the bust cycles so that the economy doesn't collapse.
It's a press release. Check out ITwire.au, or do a google news search for HSSG. You'll see that the release went out 7/23, with almost everyone publishing on 7/24. This guy was just a day late (7/25).
You might want to re-examine that. Excluding housing, NJ cost of living is higher than CA. Total taxes are the highest in the nation, auto insurance costs are the highest in the nation.
The COL index for CA is 138.9 for 1st qtr 2007, NJ is 130, so they are pretty close in total. Also, if you exclude the nastier parts of NJ (I'm sure the same is true for CA) that cost skyrockets.
Re: housing, the CW is that the CA market has longer to fall when there is a readjustment (or, if no readjustment, price growth will lag behind a lot of other markets, including NJ). NJ real estate is still appreciating except at the very high end, unlike CA.
and not quite as nice IMO
It's subjective, of course, but I agree with you in general. There are parts of CA though that rival the worst of NJ. For natural splendor, CA beats NJ hands-down -- but if you were to look at the a portion of CA the same size as NJ with the same population density, the comparison might tilt in NJ's favor.
I'm not sure you understand the current status of the US internet gambling law. Antigua is fighting the US in the WTO over the fact that the US's restrictions on online gambling are against WTO treaty, since they favor US gambling houses. However, currently the law is in force, and Antiguan casinos cannot wire winnings to the US.
Note that under current US law, restrictions on foreign casinos operating online are tighter than restrictions on domestic casinos operating online. Moving your servers to Antigua doesn't help.
Joining the PPA can help. Not sure how the Antigua policy forum went on Tuesday. Contacting your Senators & Reps can help (marginally).
You have to remember, this is New Jersey they're talking about, the place New Yorkers call "the armpit of America", and nearly everyone I ever met from New York City was an asshole (there have been exceptions).
You obviously are not a New Yorker; they do not refer to NJ as the "armpit of America" -- it's only ignorant midwesterners, westerners, mountain-staters, southerners, and New Englanders who do so.
New Yorkers have far too much wit to call NJ something so last-year as "the Armpit...". What you'll find instead is that as you get closer to NJ, the derogatory terms for it occur less frequently, and discussion of the state becomes more rational.
Of course, I'm quite happy if you and all your other ignorant trashtalking friends stay the hell out of my state -- we don't want you here. Especially those of us who live in the less developed part of the state, with our excellent schools, well educated populace, high incomes, large amount of preserved space, quality services, and restaurants other than your crappy superchains.
I think one reason people resent NJ so much is that they've only seen a small portion of it. The other reason is that when they've seen the nicer parts of it, they are crying sour grapes because they can't afford it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes and no. The problem is that the US needs the capability to mobilize for war, which requires both a large reserve of fossil fuels and a huge metaphorical pipeline for fuel on demand. This is what drives the subsidization, to ensure that the US's wehrmacht capability is there.
Until the military runs on fuels other than fossil, the subsidies aren't going away. Equivalent subsidies for renewable/less-polluting energy resources would be more to my liking.
The problem with that is that the external costs cannot be calculated at a fixed rate per unit. What do you do if there is a geometric relationship between environmental damage (an external cost) and total power consumed? Or how about factoring in the cost of reducing the world's fossil fuel supply? As each unit is consumed, should the increase in price to the rest of the supply be counted as an external cost?
What I would propose is a stepped price scale based on each purchaser's usage for the billing period, with credits for certain necessary high-power appliances (such as certain medical equipment needed for long-term home care).
Of course, this tax would need to be put into the coffers of government for remediation and offset of those external costs, which has its own problems.
Theft of physical property is not covered by trade treaty, and the WTO court has no jurisdiction over non-trade treaties.
US IP rights can be restricted by the WTO, since they exist in other countries only because of trade treaty.
Legally, there is a difference between physical property rights and IP rights, since one has been historically regarded as universal, and there is worldwide debate about the existence and importance of the other.
Hollywood and Microsoft benefit from the trade treaties that ensure recognition of US law overseas wrt IP. Under the treaties that govern the WTO, those beneficial to HW/MS treaties are no longer enforceable since the US refuses to fulfill its end of the bargain wrt a treaty it signed.
What you are saying is, why should HW and MS be punished by international legal reaction to US treaty violation?
The flip side of that coin is, why should HW and MS be rewarded by US treaties? Hollywood and Microsoft reap the rewards of US treaties, why should they not have some of that reward taken away when the US breaks those treaties?
Out of curiousity, how do you interpret TiVo as an overture to the cable companies in any way, shape, or form? Please, explain. The cable companies are ancillary to the parties TiVo is reaching out to (the viewers).
Vocabulary used should be targeted to your intended audience. I don't think the writer of TFA was writing for a tech audience, but as it ended up on a tech aggregator...
Besides, even with the original usage of Trojan horse, it doesn't quite fit. It's not like TiVo is a gift to the cable companies that hides the source of their downfall.
No joke. Feeling appreciated at work is worth thousands to many employees, particularly those in support roles (and lets not kid ourselves, a sysadmin is a support person). Plus, if you have one day set aside for it each year, you never have to show your appreciation other days. It's really a very efficient tool to leverage false appreciation to reduce payroll expense.
/PHB impression
This thread may be of some interest to you.
Sorry for referencing a thread I participated in.
What happens when Cablevision or Comcast start charging a fee to TiVo users for access to their content, over and above sub fees?
Two: this is where Wall Street has a darling busted by DRM. It's really too much to hope for, but since TiVo is a household name, maybe finally a few legislators may become personally aware of how over-restrictive media controls really interfere with the consumer's best interests.
Just a friendly bit of advice from someone who wouldn't want any Slashdotters to end up in the klink in Vegas.
Which is why we need NN or common carrier status for ISPs. Either would do the trick.
The Austrian School typically believes that boom/bust cycles are natural, and occur under both speci-backed currency systems and in inflationary systems. However, their take on it is that they can be avoided sometimes when there is a species standard, but are unavoidable with an inflationary system.
As for the depression of 1837, that was caused by overextended credit and the failure of specie remits to eastern banks. Once the fed stopped accepting bank notes as payment, it precipitated a run a specie which the banks couldn't support due to the previous demand for coin in the west. The inflation in this case was caused by overextension of credit, and little else. Sure, you can ascribe a lot of reasons to the overextension of credit, but I think you put the cart before the horse when you say that inflation causes boom/bust -- it's like saying rain causes thunderstorms.
False dichotomy. Prudent investing is always possible. However, in a deflationary economy, there is an inequality that rewards those who hoard cash rather than investing.
The truth is that in an inflationary economy, there is a tax on saving. However, speculation is not the only investment strategy (and according to most wise investors, a very poor stretegy). Wise investment strategy includes investing in certain ventures based on real product. Consider IBM, for exmaple -- people invest in blue-chips like IBM because stick price is relatively stable but dividends are high. If what you say about an inflationary economy was true, no one would invest in IBM since it's not high-risk, high-reward. Yet funnily, it consistently returns above inflation. Did you forget that inflation affects returns on investments as well as the value of saved funds?
False, wherever did you get that idea? How about a link? The Austrian School maintains that deflation is of no benefit to society, but that price drops due to increased productivity are a good thing. Did you get confused about the definition of deflation again?
The extension is that fiat currency is to blame, and that the gold standard would solve the problem. However, since he's been lambasted so much for his crackpot theories in re: the gold standard, he no longer refers to it by name in his posts.
What are you responding to? I was talking about the boom-bust cycles prior to the GD that you still fail to address. You know, the ones that occurred while we were still on the gold standard? 1837, for example?
I see, the claims you made that I'm disputing are the counterargument? Give me a break, you're saying "it's fact because I said so". Once again your base definitions are incorrect. Inflation is not the creation of money, it's an increase in the money supply in circulation, which is different. To illustrate this, consider a constant supply of paper money. Inflation can still occur because if people take cash from savings and place it into investments, they have increased the money supply. This is exacerbated by banks extending more credit, since that in effect also increases the money supply. Yes, printing more currency contributes. However, in today's economy, the extension of credit affects the money supply far more than the increase in currency.
You seem to think that speculation cycles only happen because of increased currency in circulation. This is proven false, because no free market is an ideal free market which, as you continue to ignore, requires full knowledge of the market by participants.
No. In an ideal free market, this is true. However, the free market you espouse exists only in theory. You confuse free-from-govermnment-action with free as it is intended in "free market" by theorists. In reality, even with fixed money supplies, speculation occurs. However, with a fixed money supply, there is no way to mitigate the bust cycle that follows the boom cycle.
Does this mean that the Fed didn't screw up in the 1920s? No. But this doesn't mean that the Fed is inherently bad, it means that errors were made in policy and in implementation.
Once again, correlation != causation. Furthermore, define "society". Let's not mix social terms with economic ones, since one could easily argue that society withered during the industrial revolution, with theretofore unprecedented decreases in quality of life not due to natural disaster.
That's a useless statistic, since wages are not the same as they were in 1913. It looks good, makes it seem like there's this huge drastic problem, but in reality, currencies all over the world have experienced similar inflations, and wages have basically kept pace, so unless you think it's important for some arbitrary value to be pegged to the dollar, then it's meaningless. In which case, it's a self-referential maxim anyway -- the dollar must stay at X because if it doesn't, it's no longer at X! The horror of it all!
It's funny that you think the dollar was stable in value prior to the 1910s. It actually fluctuated a very large amount. For example -- inflation from 1900 to 1910 was about 13%. Furthermore, the variance in the wage-to-purchasing power was higher than today, which was a huge problem. The difference is that the delfationary cycles have been much smaller, so the net is an inflated currency -- and the collapse of the economy is forestalled due to proper attention to the money supply.
I don't know why anyone respects your economic misinformation. You consistently use terms improper
What common-carrier status?
They don't have it.
Furthermore, even i they did, tiered pricing does not affect CC status (see Fedex shipping rates for 2nd-day vs overnight delivery). All they would have to do is say that each packet in each rate class is handled the same way, and to provide rate-based pricing on equal footing.
The boom-bust cycle is nothing new, and not a product of inflation. Inflation is part of the boom-bust cycle.
As for the printing of new money being the cause of today's inflation, that's false. The increasing money supply today is dominated by credit offerings, not by currency.
As for deflation being bad for the economy, I'll agree with you. There were a couple studies recently released indicating that recessions rarely follow deflationary cycles. Then again, it's not surprising -- what follows a deflationary cycle is a recovery, typically.
However, all else said, I'll go out on a limb and say that over time, the boom-bust cycle is healthy. It promotes advancement during boom cycles, then weeds out the weak during bust cycles. In the long run, the boom-bust cycle promotes technological advances that result in increased standard-of-living across the board. The key is to mitigate the bust cycles so that the economy doesn't collapse.
It's a press release. Check out ITwire.au, or do a google news search for HSSG. You'll see that the release went out 7/23, with almost everyone publishing on 7/24. This guy was just a day late (7/25).
The COL index for CA is 138.9 for 1st qtr 2007, NJ is 130, so they are pretty close in total. Also, if you exclude the nastier parts of NJ (I'm sure the same is true for CA) that cost skyrockets.
Re: housing, the CW is that the CA market has longer to fall when there is a readjustment (or, if no readjustment, price growth will lag behind a lot of other markets, including NJ). NJ real estate is still appreciating except at the very high end, unlike CA.
It's subjective, of course, but I agree with you in general. There are parts of CA though that rival the worst of NJ. For natural splendor, CA beats NJ hands-down -- but if you were to look at the a portion of CA the same size as NJ with the same population density, the comparison might tilt in NJ's favor.
Note that under current US law, restrictions on foreign casinos operating online are tighter than restrictions on domestic casinos operating online. Moving your servers to Antigua doesn't help.
Joining the PPA can help. Not sure how the Antigua policy forum went on Tuesday. Contacting your Senators & Reps can help (marginally).
New Yorkers have far too much wit to call NJ something so last-year as "the Armpit...". What you'll find instead is that as you get closer to NJ, the derogatory terms for it occur less frequently, and discussion of the state becomes more rational.
Of course, I'm quite happy if you and all your other ignorant trashtalking friends stay the hell out of my state -- we don't want you here. Especially those of us who live in the less developed part of the state, with our excellent schools, well educated populace, high incomes, large amount of preserved space, quality services, and restaurants other than your crappy superchains.
I think one reason people resent NJ so much is that they've only seen a small portion of it. The other reason is that when they've seen the nicer parts of it, they are crying sour grapes because they can't afford it.