But when you push on a negative mass, it accelerates in the opposite direction.
That's only if you work on the premise that "inertial" mass (the one used in F=m*a) and gravitational mass are the same thing. Of course, pretty much all of current physics uses this premise, but then again, we haven't found anything that would require an update. If we find that particles with a negative gravitational mass and a positive inertial mass exist, that would require an update.
All we need to do is create an engine that generates as much energy as there was present in the entire universe a few nanoseconds after the big bang...
No no no. We don't want to move significant portions of the universe faster than light - only the small bubble that contains our payload. Hence, we only need to generate an equivalent energy density, not an equivalent absolute energy.
Even Libertarians believe in (limited) government regulation of contracts between private parties. For instance, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Libertarian in support of indentured servitude, even though this is a contract between two private parties.
Libertarians believe that contracts are always for the benefit of all involved parties, and parties would not enter contracts that are not beneficial to them (and that government should absofrickinlutely not decide what's beneficial and what's not). Contracts involving indentured servitude would not need to be regulated by the government, since no one would enter them freely.
Libertarian does not equal anarchist.
I'm not disputing that, but it's irrelevant to the question. Libertarians have no problem with the government having a monopoly on using force, as long as force is only used to back up violations of existing rights (e.g. life or property) and contracts (e.g. to enforce civil court rulings). In an anarcho-capitalist system, such functions would be handled by private institutions (probably the good old-fashioned squad of hired goons).
It's not exactly duress, but it's not the (largely imaginary) ideal of a contract freely negotiated between two equally powerful parties, either.
The free market only cares about the "freely negotiated" part, not about the "equally powerful" one, since that would require (fairly heavy) government intervention to achieve, and result in the market being not free anymore.
Striving to equalize the power levels of the parties involved will result in limitations to the freedom of contract.
I'm almost always in favor of more open markets over regulation and control, so, IMHO, non-competes are stupid and a restraint of fair trade.
Non-competes are neither regulation nor control. Only the government can do either of the two. Non-competes are a contract between two parties. Very important difference here. If the government declares non-competes unenforceable (or explicitly makes them illegal), then that would be regulation and control.
It's not duress this way. Duress would be "Sign this or we'll harm you/your family/your dog/etc". There are always options in the other case. You may not like them, but they exist.
A part of me wonders if someone did sign it, and if a company states that signing it is a requirement for continued employment, if that's considered signing an agreement under duress?
That depends on the appropriate labor laws. If they're "at-will employment", then no. Employees can quit or be terminated at any time, for pretty much any reason.
Firstly, I would say that the company implementing non-compete clauses would immediately have to increase salaries
Why? Why do they have to increase salaries? They can just throw the paperwork at existing employees and say "sign this or be terminated". Same goes for any prospective employee - "sign this or don't get hired". Getting compensation for this undoubtly unfavorful clause in the contract is up to the employee, e.g. by saying "ok, no one mentioned this stuff. Up my salary by 25% or pay me for the time I'm not allowed to compete, or I'm not signing".
Anybody else with a libertarien/free market approach?
Non-competes are a facet of a liberatarian/free market approach. More specifically, they are a representation of the freedom of economic parties to enter contracts without government interference. Don't like a contract? Don't sign it.. Don't whine for the government to ban it if you're really a libertarian.
Fortunately for me the power output of the sun varies as much as 0.3% without so much as 5 minutes warning. (a "relatively large" sunspot)
Which part of static case do I have to explain to you? Because when we talk about climate, we're not interested in 5-minute transients.
Those -random, extremely short term- variations would, according to the Boltzmann law, cause short term variations of nearly 1 degree celcius, with the aforementioned 5 minute warning.
Once again, which part of static case do I need to explain to you? Or is it a general reading
comprehension issue?
Also, your math is wrong. Temperature is proportional to fourth root of thermal radiation power. Increasing solar power output by 0.3% would therefore increase Earths surface temperature (again: static case) by 280K*(1.003)^(1/4), or about 0.2K.
So every now and then, out of nothing, global warming gets applied to earth, and disappears a little slower (generally 3-4 days). The longer term cycles of the sun are much more powerful...
I'd like some form of evidence about the latter. But until you can at least even get basic math right, I don't think we need to continue this discussion. Frankly, I'll believe any climate change skeptic who can follow some simple rules, like getting basic math right and observing basic principles of physics. You don't fall in that category just yet, sorry.
In the prediction process? Yes, pretty much as different as you can get.
In 100 years that means that the temperature would rise 6 degress +- 87% (in kelvin, of course).
There's no such thing as a degree Kelvin. It's either a degree (Celsius, Fahrenheit, Rankine, take your pick), or a Kelvin.
So what the model really predicts in 100 years, which you'll never ever hear, is "a temperature between -220 degrees celcius and 240 degrees celcius" (of course with merely 95% certainty).
Not quite sure how you arrive at those numbers. Care to elaborate on that?
Bzzzt *wrong*. An increase in solar radiation does NOT translate in a direct increase or decrease of earth temperatures.
Hold on for a second - you were talking about _temperature_ of the sun first, and now you're switching to power output. Power output is function of the fourth power of the surface temperature.
I need to do the calculations again, but for a completely static sun and earth this would lead to something like between half and 1 degree rise.
See the link above. For the black-body model, Earths surface temperatue is proportional to photosphere temperature. Increase photosphere temperature by 0.0001%, and Earths surface temperature rises by 0.0001%, given that all the other conditions (radius of the sun, distance between Earth and sun) are unchanged.
Japan has lots of medical colleges and only a few law schools - and despite everything else costing twice what it does in the USA, medical care is much better AND cheaper.
Japan also has a completely "socialized" healthcare system, while the US (at least officialy) doesn't.
Especially if one might state the trivial argument that we can't reliably predict weather 1 week out, and we're making huge claims over the weather in 100 years.
Schools should teach some basic statistics. This includes the difference between statistically analyzing a random variable (climate science) and trying to predict the outcome of a single instance of the random variable (weather prediction), and why the two are fundamentally different.
There are other arguments, like that the sun is a 1400 petawatt nuclear reactor, and a 0.0001% variation is solar temperatures will make a hell of a lot more difference to earth temperatures than 1000 years of coal burning.
Schools should teach the Stefan-Boltzmann law in physics class. It gives a good first approximation of the impact of a 0.0001% variation of photosphere temperature on Earths surface temperature (it's, um, 0.0001%, or about 280 uKelvin. Good luck finding a thermometer that's that accurate).
You can do as much semantic gymnastics as you like, but a program where the government takes responsibility for providing for the welfare of its citizens like that (health care, education, welfare, etc.) is a socialist agenda.
I'm not doing semantic gymnastics, you are arbitrarily redefining terms.
A government providing for the welfar of its citizens is following a social agenda. A government that aims to own most of the means of production and distribution of goods and services is following a socialist agenda.
It doesn't mean that the state has (or necessarily will) devolve into some sort of communist / fascist dictatorship (in the North Korean / Cuban sense), but you cannot claim that what you're defining as "social states" is in fact the blending of socialist policies into those societies.
None of the states I would consider "social states" are following or even considering a policy where the government owns most of the means of production. In fact, sufficient economic freedom is essential for their social policies, since that's the only way to actually fund these policies.
I'd just rather take my side on the free market. Unlike the government that gets corrupted, private industy cannot by force of law and threat of imprisonment, take my money, my freedom or my life.
Force of law means nothing if there's no government to back it up. And if government is inevitably corrupt, then private industry should be easily able to circumvent, ignore or abolish the laws that bar them from messing with whomever they don't like.
Socialism is a "light" form of centrally planned production economies such as you find under Communist rule.
Ok, here's the cheat sheet:
Social state: has limited government interference with the market, has programs like public schools/health insurance/pension/welfare/unemployment assistance. Examples: basically any first-world industrialized country, to some degree.
Socialist state: State owns the means for production, does central planning, whatnot. Examples: USSR and their satellite states (historical), Cuba, North Korea, etc.
Communism: "Everyone" owns/shares the means for production. Hypothetical situation that should evolve from a socialist state. Examples: None. Any state attempting to get there usually gets stuck in the socialist stage, because government doesn't want to give up all the stuff it grabbed before.
If you are taken away in an ambulance, it goes where it goes and you have no choice.
There are many other scenarios in which your choices are severely limited or your ability to chose is severely impaired.
Going uninsured is precisely how the powerless people get ripped off.
You can negotiate or take your business elsewhere, even if you're uninsured. No one forces you to accept any treatment. Of course, that might mean that you end up permanently disabled, in severe pain, or dead, but the free market doesn't really care about that.
Your analysis of my beliefs is flawed on so many levels I don't know where to begin.
I am not analyzing your beliefs, I am pointing out that your statements are inconsistent.
. Insurers and the government bully the providers into cost-shifting to the "powerless" uninsured.
So? Under a free market system, the correct relief for this situation would be to take your business elsewhere, not ask anyone to set up a mandatory universal price policy. (Btw, where I live, there is such a policy, and you probably can't imagine how much this simplifies medical billing for the patient (and probably also for the doctor) compared to the US. I think it's one of the pillars of setting up a sane, transparent healthcare system in any country, even more than government-provided or -mandated health insurance).
Again, quite wrong. If the pharma industry wants to sell drugs to other countries for a fraction the price, why not re-import the product from less expensive distributors? Is that not the definition of the free market at work?
Not if drug prices are controlled in some form by the government in those other countries. Then you're basically just leaving the nasty government interference to the other country. Claiming that this is the free market at work is hypocritical at best - if you want drug prices controlled, at least be frank about it and do it in your own country.
Slashdot Mirror
But when you push on a negative mass, it accelerates in the opposite direction.
That's only if you work on the premise that "inertial" mass (the one used in F=m*a) and gravitational mass are the same thing. Of course, pretty much all of current physics uses this premise, but then again, we haven't found anything that would require an update. If we find that particles with a negative gravitational mass and a positive inertial mass exist, that would require an update.
The only gasses more important in maintaining our temperature are dihydrogen-monoxide and methane.
Tetrahydrogen carbide, please.
..our future spacecraft are going to be powered by dilithium crystals, so why don't we just get on with mining the stuff?
The closest source of dilithium crystals will always be just 50 lightyears away.
An actual nuclear reactor.
Usually, getting fired for gross misconduct is excluded.
All we need to do is create an engine that generates as much energy as there was present in the entire universe a few nanoseconds after the big bang...
No no no. We don't want to move significant portions of the universe faster than light - only the small bubble that contains our payload. Hence, we only need to generate an equivalent energy density, not an equivalent absolute energy.
Libertarians believe that contracts are always for the benefit of all involved parties, and parties would not enter contracts that are not beneficial to them (and that government should absofrickinlutely not decide what's beneficial and what's not). Contracts involving indentured servitude would not need to be regulated by the government, since no one would enter them freely.
Libertarian does not equal anarchist.
I'm not disputing that, but it's irrelevant to the question. Libertarians have no problem with the government having a monopoly on using force, as long as force is only used to back up violations of existing rights (e.g. life or property) and contracts (e.g. to enforce civil court rulings). In an anarcho-capitalist system, such functions would be handled by private institutions (probably the good old-fashioned squad of hired goons).
The free market only cares about the "freely negotiated" part, not about the "equally powerful" one, since that would require (fairly heavy) government intervention to achieve, and result in the market being not free anymore.
Striving to equalize the power levels of the parties involved will result in limitations to the freedom of contract.
They can't do that unilaterally.
Fire you.
That's what they have to do if the employee doesn't agree to take the pay cut.
Pay you your year's salary (omg $12! I'm rich!)
Since the pay cut never went into effect, employee gets paid one year of his most recent salary.
Non-competes are neither regulation nor control. Only the government can do either of the two. Non-competes are a contract between two parties. Very important difference here. If the government declares non-competes unenforceable (or explicitly makes them illegal), then that would be regulation and control.
What about the recipe for Coca Cola?
It's not duress this way. Duress would be "Sign this or we'll harm you/your family/your dog/etc". There are always options in the other case. You may not like them, but they exist.
A part of me wonders if someone did sign it, and if a company states that signing it is a requirement for continued employment, if that's considered signing an agreement under duress?
That depends on the appropriate labor laws. If they're "at-will employment", then no. Employees can quit or be terminated at any time, for pretty much any reason.
Why? Why do they have to increase salaries? They can just throw the paperwork at existing employees and say "sign this or be terminated". Same goes for any prospective employee - "sign this or don't get hired". Getting compensation for this undoubtly unfavorful clause in the contract is up to the employee, e.g. by saying "ok, no one mentioned this stuff. Up my salary by 25% or pay me for the time I'm not allowed to compete, or I'm not signing".
Anybody else with a libertarien/free market approach?
Non-competes are a facet of a liberatarian/free market approach. More specifically, they are a representation of the freedom of economic parties to enter contracts without government interference. Don't like a contract? Don't sign it.. Don't whine for the government to ban it if you're really a libertarian.
3) Quit
4) Find out that the "keep getting paid" clause only applies if you didn't quit.
5) No profit. Sucks to be you.
Which part of static case do I have to explain to you? Because when we talk about climate, we're not interested in 5-minute transients.
Those -random, extremely short term- variations would, according to the Boltzmann law, cause short term variations of nearly 1 degree celcius, with the aforementioned 5 minute warning.
Once again, which part of static case do I need to explain to you? Or is it a general reading comprehension issue?
Also, your math is wrong. Temperature is proportional to fourth root of thermal radiation power. Increasing solar power output by 0.3% would therefore increase Earths surface temperature (again: static case) by 280K*(1.003)^(1/4), or about 0.2K.
So every now and then, out of nothing, global warming gets applied to earth, and disappears a little slower (generally 3-4 days). The longer term cycles of the sun are much more powerful ...
I'd like some form of evidence about the latter. But until you can at least even get basic math right, I don't think we need to continue this discussion. Frankly, I'll believe any climate change skeptic who can follow some simple rules, like getting basic math right and observing basic principles of physics. You don't fall in that category just yet, sorry.
And now, manufacturing takes place in countries where workers are rewarded for performance and hard work.
In the prediction process? Yes, pretty much as different as you can get.
In 100 years that means that the temperature would rise 6 degress +- 87% (in kelvin, of course).
There's no such thing as a degree Kelvin. It's either a degree (Celsius, Fahrenheit, Rankine, take your pick), or a Kelvin.
So what the model really predicts in 100 years, which you'll never ever hear, is "a temperature between -220 degrees celcius and 240 degrees celcius" (of course with merely 95% certainty).
Not quite sure how you arrive at those numbers. Care to elaborate on that?
Bzzzt *wrong*. An increase in solar radiation does NOT translate in a direct increase or decrease of earth temperatures.
It does, in the static case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law#Temperature_of_the_Earth
If the energy gain would rise by 0.0001%
Hold on for a second - you were talking about _temperature_ of the sun first, and now you're switching to power output. Power output is function of the fourth power of the surface temperature.
I need to do the calculations again, but for a completely static sun and earth this would lead to something like between half and 1 degree rise.
See the link above. For the black-body model, Earths surface temperatue is proportional to photosphere temperature. Increase photosphere temperature by 0.0001%, and Earths surface temperature rises by 0.0001%, given that all the other conditions (radius of the sun, distance between Earth and sun) are unchanged.
Japan also has a completely "socialized" healthcare system, while the US (at least officialy) doesn't.
Schools should teach some basic statistics. This includes the difference between statistically analyzing a random variable (climate science) and trying to predict the outcome of a single instance of the random variable (weather prediction), and why the two are fundamentally different.
There are other arguments, like that the sun is a 1400 petawatt nuclear reactor, and a 0.0001% variation is solar temperatures will make a hell of a lot more difference to earth temperatures than 1000 years of coal burning.
Schools should teach the Stefan-Boltzmann law in physics class. It gives a good first approximation of the impact of a 0.0001% variation of photosphere temperature on Earths surface temperature (it's, um, 0.0001%, or about 280 uKelvin. Good luck finding a thermometer that's that accurate).
Or integer arithmetics in general. Ever written a function to compute a square root or a binary logarithm using only integer? Fun stuff.
I'm not doing semantic gymnastics, you are arbitrarily redefining terms.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism
A government providing for the welfar of its citizens is following a social agenda. A government that aims to own most of the means of production and distribution of goods and services is following a socialist agenda.
It doesn't mean that the state has (or necessarily will) devolve into some sort of communist / fascist dictatorship (in the North Korean / Cuban sense), but you cannot claim that what you're defining as "social states" is in fact the blending of socialist policies into those societies.
None of the states I would consider "social states" are following or even considering a policy where the government owns most of the means of production. In fact, sufficient economic freedom is essential for their social policies, since that's the only way to actually fund these policies.
Force of law means nothing if there's no government to back it up. And if government is inevitably corrupt, then private industry should be easily able to circumvent, ignore or abolish the laws that bar them from messing with whomever they don't like.
Ok, here's the cheat sheet:
Social state: has limited government interference with the market, has programs like public schools/health insurance/pension/welfare/unemployment assistance. Examples: basically any first-world industrialized country, to some degree.
Socialist state: State owns the means for production, does central planning, whatnot. Examples: USSR and their satellite states (historical), Cuba, North Korea, etc.
Communism: "Everyone" owns/shares the means for production. Hypothetical situation that should evolve from a socialist state. Examples: None. Any state attempting to get there usually gets stuck in the socialist stage, because government doesn't want to give up all the stuff it grabbed before.
There are many other scenarios in which your choices are severely limited or your ability to chose is severely impaired.
Going uninsured is precisely how the powerless people get ripped off.
You can negotiate or take your business elsewhere, even if you're uninsured. No one forces you to accept any treatment. Of course, that might mean that you end up permanently disabled, in severe pain, or dead, but the free market doesn't really care about that.
Your analysis of my beliefs is flawed on so many levels I don't know where to begin.
I am not analyzing your beliefs, I am pointing out that your statements are inconsistent.
. Insurers and the government bully the providers into cost-shifting to the "powerless" uninsured.
So? Under a free market system, the correct relief for this situation would be to take your business elsewhere, not ask anyone to set up a mandatory universal price policy. (Btw, where I live, there is such a policy, and you probably can't imagine how much this simplifies medical billing for the patient (and probably also for the doctor) compared to the US. I think it's one of the pillars of setting up a sane, transparent healthcare system in any country, even more than government-provided or -mandated health insurance).
Again, quite wrong. If the pharma industry wants to sell drugs to other countries for a fraction the price, why not re-import the product from less expensive distributors? Is that not the definition of the free market at work?
Not if drug prices are controlled in some form by the government in those other countries. Then you're basically just leaving the nasty government interference to the other country. Claiming that this is the free market at work is hypocritical at best - if you want drug prices controlled, at least be frank about it and do it in your own country.