Actually a centrally planned economy cannot be wealthy because there is no way to determine what people want and need without the free market to set prices.
The reason Cuba is poor is because they are communist. Without changing that they will remain poor. Making US tourism slightly easier won't have a huge effect. It's not like they were hurting because they couldn't access US markets. There are plenty of other markets they could access. Now if they allow private ownership of capital by US companies that will have a much larger effect.
The problem is that of the whole concept of Intellectual Monopolies not Patent Trolls. Patents and Copyrights infringe upon the concept of property rights. The whole reason we have the concept of property rights is to determine who has the best claim over a scarce resource. It pretty much follows the pre-school rule of "I was here first". If a kid picks up a stick in the school yard nobody is using and pretends it's a wizard wand everyone knows that it's wrong to go up and take that stick from her. Now if she abandons it then it's fine for someone else to pick it up to play but there may be a conflict where she claims she just put it down for a second. She can also voluntarily give it or trade it to someone else. Other kids can also pick up unused sticks and pretend they are wands as well. Patents and copyrights are akin to the first kid going around and threatening to punch people if anyone else pretends a stick is a wand. Even if someone owned a stick before the person pretended it was a wand.
The Military has been working on it. The most recent rev to Mil-Std-31000A in 2013 is getting closer. But it's more one way, along the lines of a.pdf where each software writes to a common format that can be read universally.
What the Mechanical Engineering world badly needs is an open Parameteric CAD Standard. Right now it's horrible. Each company uses it's own proprietary file that cannot be easily shared with other software. There are some portable formats but you basically give up all of the engineering data. A CAD file should be an engineering document not just a model of what the perfect part should be. It should contain all of the important parametric data and the tolerances, GTOL's, surface finishes, fabrication notes, etc. It is amazing that this still doesn't exist and the costs of dealing with it are astronomical.
Imagine how little you would need to work without the overhead of HR, legal departments, management, and governments? These are things that can be automated away over time. If you need a task and can just pay for that task everyone would be so much wealthier and have more time.
Most people on a salary job do very little actual work. Lots of time is wasted doing useless things. You could choose more money or leisure. The more specialized we all get the better.
I always thought a good way to run the House would be to have in each district the representative would have the power of the number of votes cast for them. That way both the republican and democrat (along with third parties) would go to Washington DC. To get a bill passed you would need 50% of the total votes cast in that election. So if there were 120 million total votes cast and a congresswoman had 200,000 votes cast for her she would be allocated that many votes and you would need 60,000,001 to pass a bill.
As for the Senate repeal the 17th amendment and turn it back to the state governments.
Everyone confuses the political and economic systems.
Socialism is pretty specific. It means public ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production.
You are confusing Socialism with a welfare state which is at least partially Capitalist because that is what is taxed to provide for the welfare state.
Most of the so-called "Socialist" Scandinavian countries are very Capitalist which is why they started out so wealthy (along with staying out of the world wars for the most part). They are also large welfare states with high taxes.
if you invest in a company that goes bankrupt there are laws that determine who gets paid first from the revenues of the sale of the company. That is the risk you take when buying stock. You don't get steal from people on fixed incomes via inflation. Well I guess you do since that is what happened but I mean you shouldn't be allowed to steal.
Only if you think getting up early commuting to a cubical to spend 8+ hours a day looking at a computer screen only to commute back home and do it again the next day to be a boring life.
The only place I disagree with you is in government because there is no market to correct the discrimination. Since everyone is taxed then quotas should be enforced. It wouldn't be fair or safe to have an all white police deparment (or judges) over a minority community.
Same thing as the "gender pay gap". If it was real all you would need to do is start a company consisting entirely of women and pay them 1/2 the gap to attract the best talent and then undercut your cometition. So if women really make 76% of what men make for the same job just start a company and pay them 88% of what men make and undercut the competition.
The quickest way to increase diversity is to get rid of discrimination protection. It is very risky to hire someone from a protected group. If they are not a good fit for the company there is a substantial legal risk to firing them and overhead for carefully creating a paper trail to CYA. It is much easier to hire people from non-protective groups. If they don't work out you fire them and try someone else. Of course for businesses they like the H1-B's the most because if you fire them they get deported which really puts them in a position of power.
Maybe you just resort to insults because you have no counter argument?
Unlike you I'll make an argument. Let's take the first Anti-competitive parctice in your link.
Dumping, where a company sells a product in a competitive market at a loss. Though the company loses money for each sale, the company hopes to force other competitors out of the market, after which the company would be free to raise prices for a greater profit.
I don't have a problem with this. If a company wants to lower prices to attract customers and drive out competition go ahead and try. It is always a failure which is why it's rarely tried. The only time it works is when the company uses Intellectual Property or some other government granted monopoly.
A perfect example are radio stations. There are many radio stations that change format and try to gain listeners by going commercial free for a while. They have huge ratings while they don't play commercials and once they have a large marketshare they try to monetaize by selling commercials based on their marketshare. But as soon as they start playing commercials they instantly lose marketshare. So the market harshly punishes this tactic.
Another example is if the company is selling below cost a smart business would buy up the supply at below market costs driving them either out of business or forcing them to raise prices.
I don't see an issue with any of these anti-coorporative behaviours as long as they are agreed upon voluntarily by the parties involved. If you want to form a cartel good luck with that. Let's see how long it lasts when it's everyones interest to lie about their own production.
The ones I have issue with are the ones where people use the power of the state to hinder their compeititon like subsidies, regulations, or monopoly including things like Intellectual Property.
A free market is not magical in the it doesn't prevent bad things from happening. What it does do is allocate resources in the most efficient way possible and punish bad actors swiftly and harshly. Put it this way. In 2008 the market was set to punish a bunch of companies for being poorly run, taking risky bets, and paying too much for poor mangement. They would have been liquidated. Instead the regulators came in and rewarded them so that the worst run companies were able to provide the biggest bonuses to their managment. And why not? It doesn't matter if you make a profit by serving your customers or getting tax dollars. It's all profit in the end.
"Here in the US we call that the free market, because the government isn't the one that sets the prices... the corporation"
We have a free market in opiates? Last I checked they were heavily regulated. In my state several doctors lost their licenses for being "pill mills" where they would prescribe pain meds in the doses the patients needed for relief. You know because people can abuse opiates. Meanwhile taking a handful of Tylanol can destroy your liver. Which is why opiates typically are laced with it so that if you take too many your liver is destroyed as a punishment.
Right. I've been studying my kids allergies since they were diagnosed a decade ago. I know much more than a doctor who spends 2 minutes in the room with them. I actually care about my kids and I wouldn't give them a experimental drug for a common ailment. But I have no problem giving them a drug that they have had before and has been around for 60 years.
In all of my time as a parent I've yet to have a doctor do a surprise diagnosis that have helped me or my family. In fact there a couple of times I had to go get lab tests in my own using an inline doctor to write an Rx to get the lab tests for a proper diagnosis.
Sorry but anyone with a basic education can do a much better evaluation than a doctor could if they are allowed access to the diagnosis and lab tools. Mostly because you care about your own health much more than the doctor.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually a centrally planned economy cannot be wealthy because there is no way to determine what people want and need without the free market to set prices.
Depends on if the follow China's lead and allow foreigners to own capital. You know Capitalism?
The reason Cuba is poor is because they are communist. Without changing that they will remain poor. Making US tourism slightly easier won't have a huge effect. It's not like they were hurting because they couldn't access US markets. There are plenty of other markets they could access. Now if they allow private ownership of capital by US companies that will have a much larger effect.
Ping Pong Balls are made of Nitrocellulose. Very fun to light on fire.
Ping Pong Balls are typically nitrocellulose. Which makes them very flammable.
The problem is that of the whole concept of Intellectual Monopolies not Patent Trolls. Patents and Copyrights infringe upon the concept of property rights. The whole reason we have the concept of property rights is to determine who has the best claim over a scarce resource. It pretty much follows the pre-school rule of "I was here first". If a kid picks up a stick in the school yard nobody is using and pretends it's a wizard wand everyone knows that it's wrong to go up and take that stick from her. Now if she abandons it then it's fine for someone else to pick it up to play but there may be a conflict where she claims she just put it down for a second. She can also voluntarily give it or trade it to someone else. Other kids can also pick up unused sticks and pretend they are wands as well. Patents and copyrights are akin to the first kid going around and threatening to punch people if anyone else pretends a stick is a wand. Even if someone owned a stick before the person pretended it was a wand.
The Military has been working on it. The most recent rev to Mil-Std-31000A in 2013 is getting closer. But it's more one way, along the lines of a .pdf where each software writes to a common format that can be read universally.
What the Mechanical Engineering world badly needs is an open Parameteric CAD Standard. Right now it's horrible. Each company uses it's own proprietary file that cannot be easily shared with other software. There are some portable formats but you basically give up all of the engineering data. A CAD file should be an engineering document not just a model of what the perfect part should be. It should contain all of the important parametric data and the tolerances, GTOL's, surface finishes, fabrication notes, etc. It is amazing that this still doesn't exist and the costs of dealing with it are astronomical.
Imagine how little you would need to work without the overhead of HR, legal departments, management, and governments? These are things that can be automated away over time. If you need a task and can just pay for that task everyone would be so much wealthier and have more time.
Most people on a salary job do very little actual work. Lots of time is wasted doing useless things. You could choose more money or leisure. The more specialized we all get the better.
I always thought a good way to run the House would be to have in each district the representative would have the power of the number of votes cast for them. That way both the republican and democrat (along with third parties) would go to Washington DC. To get a bill passed you would need 50% of the total votes cast in that election. So if there were 120 million total votes cast and a congresswoman had 200,000 votes cast for her she would be allocated that many votes and you would need 60,000,001 to pass a bill.
As for the Senate repeal the 17th amendment and turn it back to the state governments.
Everyone confuses the political and economic systems.
Socialism is pretty specific. It means public ownership of the means of production.
Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production.
You are confusing Socialism with a welfare state which is at least partially Capitalist because that is what is taxed to provide for the welfare state.
Most of the so-called "Socialist" Scandinavian countries are very Capitalist which is why they started out so wealthy (along with staying out of the world wars for the most part). They are also large welfare states with high taxes.
Imagine if the nuts never stopped reactor development? We'd have breeder reactors by now with little waste and much better air.
Sorry but expecting lawyers to implant a loser pays system goes against their ethics.
Can we get rid of this nonsense intellectual monopoly concept already?
Actually it was.
http://m.townhall.com/columnis...
if you invest in a company that goes bankrupt there are laws that determine who gets paid first from the revenues of the sale of the company. That is the risk you take when buying stock. You don't get steal from people on fixed incomes via inflation. Well I guess you do since that is what happened but I mean you shouldn't be allowed to steal.
Only if you think getting up early commuting to a cubical to spend 8+ hours a day looking at a computer screen only to commute back home and do it again the next day to be a boring life.
The only place I disagree with you is in government because there is no market to correct the discrimination. Since everyone is taxed then quotas should be enforced. It wouldn't be fair or safe to have an all white police deparment (or judges) over a minority community.
Yes. It's not like we have had 12+ years to teach and train people in our state run schools.
Same thing as the "gender pay gap". If it was real all you would need to do is start a company consisting entirely of women and pay them 1/2 the gap to attract the best talent and then undercut your cometition. So if women really make 76% of what men make for the same job just start a company and pay them 88% of what men make and undercut the competition.
Listen all of y'all it's an Arbitrage!!
The quickest way to increase diversity is to get rid of discrimination protection. It is very risky to hire someone from a protected group. If they are not a good fit for the company there is a substantial legal risk to firing them and overhead for carefully creating a paper trail to CYA. It is much easier to hire people from non-protective groups. If they don't work out you fire them and try someone else. Of course for businesses they like the H1-B's the most because if you fire them they get deported which really puts them in a position of power.
Maybe you just resort to insults because you have no counter argument?
Unlike you I'll make an argument. Let's take the first Anti-competitive parctice in your link.
Dumping, where a company sells a product in a competitive market at a loss. Though the company loses money for each sale, the company hopes to force other competitors out of the market, after which the company would be free to raise prices for a greater profit.
I don't have a problem with this. If a company wants to lower prices to attract customers and drive out competition go ahead and try. It is always a failure which is why it's rarely tried. The only time it works is when the company uses Intellectual Property or some other government granted monopoly.
A perfect example are radio stations. There are many radio stations that change format and try to gain listeners by going commercial free for a while. They have huge ratings while they don't play commercials and once they have a large marketshare they try to monetaize by selling commercials based on their marketshare. But as soon as they start playing commercials they instantly lose marketshare. So the market harshly punishes this tactic.
Another example is if the company is selling below cost a smart business would buy up the supply at below market costs driving them either out of business or forcing them to raise prices.
I don't see an issue with any of these anti-coorporative behaviours as long as they are agreed upon voluntarily by the parties involved. If you want to form a cartel good luck with that. Let's see how long it lasts when it's everyones interest to lie about their own production.
The ones I have issue with are the ones where people use the power of the state to hinder their compeititon like subsidies, regulations, or monopoly including things like Intellectual Property.
A free market is not magical in the it doesn't prevent bad things from happening. What it does do is allocate resources in the most efficient way possible and punish bad actors swiftly and harshly. Put it this way. In 2008 the market was set to punish a bunch of companies for being poorly run, taking risky bets, and paying too much for poor mangement. They would have been liquidated. Instead the regulators came in and rewarded them so that the worst run companies were able to provide the biggest bonuses to their managment. And why not? It doesn't matter if you make a profit by serving your customers or getting tax dollars. It's all profit in the end.
"Here in the US we call that the free market, because the government isn't the one that sets the prices... the corporation"
We have a free market in opiates? Last I checked they were heavily regulated. In my state several doctors lost their licenses for being "pill mills" where they would prescribe pain meds in the doses the patients needed for relief. You know because people can abuse opiates. Meanwhile taking a handful of Tylanol can destroy your liver. Which is why opiates typically are laced with it so that if you take too many your liver is destroyed as a punishment.
Right. I've been studying my kids allergies since they were diagnosed a decade ago. I know much more than a doctor who spends 2 minutes in the room with them. I actually care about my kids and I wouldn't give them a experimental drug for a common ailment. But I have no problem giving them a drug that they have had before and has been around for 60 years.
In all of my time as a parent I've yet to have a doctor do a surprise diagnosis that have helped me or my family. In fact there a couple of times I had to go get lab tests in my own using an inline doctor to write an Rx to get the lab tests for a proper diagnosis.
Sorry but anyone with a basic education can do a much better evaluation than a doctor could if they are allowed access to the diagnosis and lab tools. Mostly because you care about your own health much more than the doctor.