Good luck trying to convince anyone. I'd go farther than you and say that value is completely subjective and if someone was willing to buy a house for those prices it was because it was worth that much to them at the time. But people's values change all of the time and prices reflect that.
As a technical person you know there is a risk and reward to everything we do. Let's say there is a small, 1% a year, risk of an individual nuke plant from having a major release of radioactivity like Fukushima where you cause say $10B in damages to third parties. Now say each year you operate you make $100M in profit and distribute it in dividends. Also lets say the net value of the company is only $5B. You can have the owners/stockholders of a company take the dividends in every year while the plant runs safely. In 50 years you will have distributed $5 Billion to the shareholders. Let's say then an accident happens and the company is forced to pay the $10B in damages. They go bankrupt and liquidate everything and only raise $5B. Shouldn't those that received the previous $5B in dividends be on the hook?
This is a much different scenario than if a company just defaulted on it's creditors. The creditors and the corporation would have signed a contract that limited the companies loss to the value of the company. So in the case of bankruptcy the creditor knows they will only get what the company is worth.
Exactly. Imagine if the only commercial planes we could fly in were De Havilland Comets? They were good planes for the day. They had some problems but figured out most of them. But anyone that has built any complicated system knows you would never build the next generation from the same way. With each generation you have a lessons learned and the next one is typically better. If we had a new generation every 20 years we would be 3-4 generation more advanced than we are now and it would be a non issue.
As a libertarian one area I am still researching is damage to third parties and who is responsible for the victims. I am moving towards eliminating the concept of limited liability for stock owners when dealing with third party damages. If you own 1/1,000,000th of a power company that owns a reactor that causes $10B in damages in excess of what the company is worth you should personally be on the hook for $10k. Limited liability should only exist when dealing with second parties where they acknowledge that this limited liability exists. A third party never acknowledges it. Of course to attract investors a company would most likely maintain sufficient liability insurance to offset any damages but then at least that cost would be included in the costs to the company and not spread out to society.
Many companies that employee lower skilled workers realize that there isn't room in the company for everyone to advance. They make these benefits available to attract people that want an education and need a job to help pay their way through school. The know that even having someone on board for 4 years both can benefit. The company gets someone that is stable and they can count on for 4 years. The employees get paid and tuition.
Police are supposed to have the same rights as citizens. They are just more highly trained in the area of law enforcement. Citizens and police should be held to the same standards of conduct. In Florida for instance a police officer out of his jurisdiction has the same rights as a citizen to make arrests. They can hold the suspect until the sheriff arrives to take the person into custody. When the case gets to trial you have to show up. If you break the law during the arrest you can be sued as well. Every move police make should be filmed since they are supposed to be experts.
Great points. I think my strongest quality is my ability to learn. I spend most of my leisure learning new thing or improving my skills. I get annoyed when people say your so lucky because your handy. BS instead of watching sports or getting drunk I am online researching new things. Luck has nothing to do with it. Why waste your time on fantasy when there is so much interesting stuff out there in the real world waiting to be learned.
I would think a combination of Wikipedia and Khan would be great. Have competing videos of the different subjects all online and let the viewers rank them. As for him making mistakes, so what? Are critics saying that professional teachers never make mistakes? How many would be willing to put their school year online for criticism? At least with Khan Academy you have people who know watching and commenting. That lets people track down errors.
I've always said that lectures are a waste of time. You say the same thing over every semester. If it was a produced lecture you could keep improving the quality of it and use class time more productively for hands on activities and interaction.
I'm a mechanical engineer and I'm excited because I'm getting a laptop for my next machine that is capable of running the software I need to work. Now I can work form home. If I had my way my schedule would be to go into work twice a week to handle meetings and other BS and spend 3 days at home in isolation doing actual design. I don't know if it is common for technical people but I need to be left alone when I'm really thinking. I have a routine where I work straight for about 2 hours than take a 30 minute break when I feel like it to catch up on e-mail and take a break. Also if I'm doing complicated analysis I do it much better after 10pm when the kids are asleep and the house is quiet.
I was attempting to include a caveat that there is rightful indignation of those that acquire riches through fraud, but it seems those that acquire wealth legitimately get lumped together.
I think the base problem is envy. If you gave a top 10%er of 1700 the chance to live like a bottom 10% today I think they would take you up on it. You can live better now on the hand me downs of our economy than you could working your ass off back then. The problem is that people are envious of the over achievers. It's not fair they get their huge houses and expensive cars and vacations. Now I agree there are many that get rich through fraud in the financial industry.
There is always a trade off between leisure and labor. I think 40 hours might be near where most people make that trade. They want enough money to be able to do something with their leisure. They see expensive things and are willing to labor to afford it. I'm fine with that. I can't see spending money on a far off vacation that is over in a week. I'd rather spend that money on something for my house that I can enjoy forever. But I don't begrudge people that want the vacation but I don't appreciate when they are envious of my possessions. They don't see the vacations I didn't take or the yard work I do every week or the meals my wife cooks at home when we didn't go out to eat.
This is progress. An individual human only has so much time to learn and gain experience. You can't be an expert in everything these days. Back when you lived off the land everyone pretty much knew how to hunt, gather, farm, build a shelter, fire, ect. You spent so much time doing all these things you didn't have much time to improve.
Economic specialization allows for people to become experts in what they do if other people value it. As a mechanical engineer I could design my own screws and threads for each application but I instead buy a standard drill, tap, and screws. Someone else has spent their lives figuring out how to make these things cheap and readily available so I can get on with my job.
If you have more money than space I highly recommend Festool products for wood working. I've been using them for years and the quality is amazing. You can use their track saw for anything you can use a table saw for plus it's smaller and safer.
We recently bought an Xbox 360. I downloaded some demos and one was Bulletstorm. I was playing it and my 10 year old son was watching. My 7 year old walks in, watches for 3 seconds, and says "I don't think this game is appropriate for kids". Just then I finished the level and the guy in the game said something where he drops the f-bomb. My daughter walks out saying "Yeah, definitely not appropriate". I said "yeah I think you are right.
You haven't been paying attention. They a doing everything they can to prop up the price of housing,
This investment in automation at a time of massive unemployment is a result of the Feds low interest policy, minimum wage laws, and 99 weeks of unemployment. When's business looks at the economics of manufacturing automation the goal is to maximize profit. But buying automation equipment is capital intensive. When you look at the cost benefit analysis the one big variable is the interest rate. In a free market a low interest rate is because people are saving more and consuming less. This means it's a good time to borrow and try to increase capacity. When savings are low interest rates are high and people are consuming more than they are producing. This makes it more expensive to borrow for large capital expenditures and it makes mo sense to hire more people to increase capacity.
Now the federal reserve is artificially keeping rates low. This causes the calculations to show its better to invest in expensive automation and not hiring people. If we want to get rid of unemployment stop manipulating interest rates, stop bailouts, and stop paying people to be out of work.
Instead of the gun/anti-gun debate I think it would be more appropriate to talk about if we want to live in a surveillance state where our every action and word is scoured to see if we are a threat. I would prefer to have the police and courts concentrate on catching, prosecuting, and detaining people that have already committed a crime. The reason these types of crimes receive attention is because of how random and pointless they seem. But many more lives could be saved more cheaply if we would concentrate our efforts on keeping people behind bars that have been convicted of a violent crime and release everyone convicted of non-violent offenses.
Although a shooting scares people more just as much carnage could be inflicted with a pickup truck driving through people waiting in line outside. It is the price you pay for freedom. You CANNOT stop a person that never committed a crime and decides to do this type of evil act. Unless you want to live in a complete police state and everyone under lock and key.
In addition to that in the US if you want a "good" public school it means moving to an area where other parents care as well. Even with the most caring and attentive parent it will be difficult if you live in an area where other parents don't share your attitude.
That's funny but also a good point. Landfills are just temporary. We fill them up with things that aren't worth recycling. But someday when material prices get high enough it make make economic sense to mine the landfills. A smart owner would at least try somewhat to segregate the waste to different pits so that they are easier to mine.
In the not so distant future recycling will be done at a molecular level and this will all go away.
Poaching is the act of taking another persons livestock. The use of the word in this context means the author considers people the equivalent of livestock to the corporate ranchers.
My 6 year old daughter asked her older brother a rhetorical question. He started to answer and she stopped him and said "It was a retardical question!"
Sorry but your are wrong. A good indicator something is wrong is when people start doing things for themselves. When food prices get to high people start a garden. When labor prices get too high they maintain their own lawn. This is an indicator there is a problem because it's a failure in the system of the specialization of labor. A doctor should only do what he has spent years doing and not manual labor unless she considers it leisure. This occurs when the cost of doing business is too high because of taxes and regulations. Heck I'm growing a garden and I make a decent living because prices of fresh produce is so high. What a waste of my time because I'm not very good at it.
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Good luck trying to convince anyone. I'd go farther than you and say that value is completely subjective and if someone was willing to buy a house for those prices it was because it was worth that much to them at the time. But people's values change all of the time and prices reflect that.
As a technical person you know there is a risk and reward to everything we do. Let's say there is a small, 1% a year, risk of an individual nuke plant from having a major release of radioactivity like Fukushima where you cause say $10B in damages to third parties. Now say each year you operate you make $100M in profit and distribute it in dividends. Also lets say the net value of the company is only $5B. You can have the owners/stockholders of a company take the dividends in every year while the plant runs safely. In 50 years you will have distributed $5 Billion to the shareholders. Let's say then an accident happens and the company is forced to pay the $10B in damages. They go bankrupt and liquidate everything and only raise $5B. Shouldn't those that received the previous $5B in dividends be on the hook?
This is a much different scenario than if a company just defaulted on it's creditors. The creditors and the corporation would have signed a contract that limited the companies loss to the value of the company. So in the case of bankruptcy the creditor knows they will only get what the company is worth.
Exactly. Imagine if the only commercial planes we could fly in were De Havilland Comets? They were good planes for the day. They had some problems but figured out most of them. But anyone that has built any complicated system knows you would never build the next generation from the same way. With each generation you have a lessons learned and the next one is typically better. If we had a new generation every 20 years we would be 3-4 generation more advanced than we are now and it would be a non issue.
As a libertarian one area I am still researching is damage to third parties and who is responsible for the victims. I am moving towards eliminating the concept of limited liability for stock owners when dealing with third party damages. If you own 1/1,000,000th of a power company that owns a reactor that causes $10B in damages in excess of what the company is worth you should personally be on the hook for $10k. Limited liability should only exist when dealing with second parties where they acknowledge that this limited liability exists. A third party never acknowledges it. Of course to attract investors a company would most likely maintain sufficient liability insurance to offset any damages but then at least that cost would be included in the costs to the company and not spread out to society.
Many companies that employee lower skilled workers realize that there isn't room in the company for everyone to advance. They make these benefits available to attract people that want an education and need a job to help pay their way through school. The know that even having someone on board for 4 years both can benefit. The company gets someone that is stable and they can count on for 4 years. The employees get paid and tuition.
Concrete gets stronger the longer it cures. Metals tend to corrode and fatigue.
Although the age they were built does help. They didn't have as advanced analysis as we do today so they tended to overbuild things to compensate.
Police are supposed to have the same rights as citizens. They are just more highly trained in the area of law enforcement. Citizens and police should be held to the same standards of conduct. In Florida for instance a police officer out of his jurisdiction has the same rights as a citizen to make arrests. They can hold the suspect until the sheriff arrives to take the person into custody. When the case gets to trial you have to show up. If you break the law during the arrest you can be sued as well. Every move police make should be filmed since they are supposed to be experts.
Great points. I think my strongest quality is my ability to learn. I spend most of my leisure learning new thing or improving my skills. I get annoyed when people say your so lucky because your handy. BS instead of watching sports or getting drunk I am online researching new things. Luck has nothing to do with it. Why waste your time on fantasy when there is so much interesting stuff out there in the real world waiting to be learned.
I would think a combination of Wikipedia and Khan would be great. Have competing videos of the different subjects all online and let the viewers rank them. As for him making mistakes, so what? Are critics saying that professional teachers never make mistakes? How many would be willing to put their school year online for criticism? At least with Khan Academy you have people who know watching and commenting. That lets people track down errors.
I've always said that lectures are a waste of time. You say the same thing over every semester. If it was a produced lecture you could keep improving the quality of it and use class time more productively for hands on activities and interaction.
I'm a mechanical engineer and I'm excited because I'm getting a laptop for my next machine that is capable of running the software I need to work. Now I can work form home. If I had my way my schedule would be to go into work twice a week to handle meetings and other BS and spend 3 days at home in isolation doing actual design. I don't know if it is common for technical people but I need to be left alone when I'm really thinking. I have a routine where I work straight for about 2 hours than take a 30 minute break when I feel like it to catch up on e-mail and take a break. Also if I'm doing complicated analysis I do it much better after 10pm when the kids are asleep and the house is quiet.
I was attempting to include a caveat that there is rightful indignation of those that acquire riches through fraud, but it seems those that acquire wealth legitimately get lumped together.
I've built some nice cabinetry with it. The saw is so good you can saw any sheet goods without splintering.
Now if I had the room I'd have a wood shop but Festool is pretty close and it all fits in a small closet when you are done.
I think the base problem is envy. If you gave a top 10%er of 1700 the chance to live like a bottom 10% today I think they would take you up on it. You can live better now on the hand me downs of our economy than you could working your ass off back then. The problem is that people are envious of the over achievers. It's not fair they get their huge houses and expensive cars and vacations. Now I agree there are many that get rich through fraud in the financial industry.
There is always a trade off between leisure and labor. I think 40 hours might be near where most people make that trade. They want enough money to be able to do something with their leisure. They see expensive things and are willing to labor to afford it. I'm fine with that. I can't see spending money on a far off vacation that is over in a week. I'd rather spend that money on something for my house that I can enjoy forever. But I don't begrudge people that want the vacation but I don't appreciate when they are envious of my possessions. They don't see the vacations I didn't take or the yard work I do every week or the meals my wife cooks at home when we didn't go out to eat.
This is progress. An individual human only has so much time to learn and gain experience. You can't be an expert in everything these days. Back when you lived off the land everyone pretty much knew how to hunt, gather, farm, build a shelter, fire, ect. You spent so much time doing all these things you didn't have much time to improve.
Economic specialization allows for people to become experts in what they do if other people value it. As a mechanical engineer I could design my own screws and threads for each application but I instead buy a standard drill, tap, and screws. Someone else has spent their lives figuring out how to make these things cheap and readily available so I can get on with my job.
If you have more money than space I highly recommend Festool products for wood working. I've been using them for years and the quality is amazing. You can use their track saw for anything you can use a table saw for plus it's smaller and safer.
We recently bought an Xbox 360. I downloaded some demos and one was Bulletstorm. I was playing it and my 10 year old son was watching. My 7 year old walks in, watches for 3 seconds, and says "I don't think this game is appropriate for kids". Just then I finished the level and the guy in the game said something where he drops the f-bomb. My daughter walks out saying "Yeah, definitely not appropriate". I said "yeah I think you are right.
You haven't been paying attention. They a doing everything they can to prop up the price of housing,
This investment in automation at a time of massive unemployment is a result of the Feds low interest policy, minimum wage laws, and 99 weeks of unemployment. When's business looks at the economics of manufacturing automation the goal is to maximize profit. But buying automation equipment is capital intensive. When you look at the cost benefit analysis the one big variable is the interest rate. In a free market a low interest rate is because people are saving more and consuming less. This means it's a good time to borrow and try to increase capacity. When savings are low interest rates are high and people are consuming more than they are producing. This makes it more expensive to borrow for large capital expenditures and it makes mo sense to hire more people to increase capacity.
Now the federal reserve is artificially keeping rates low. This causes the calculations to show its better to invest in expensive automation and not hiring people. If we want to get rid of unemployment stop manipulating interest rates, stop bailouts, and stop paying people to be out of work.
If it is someone that can actually make changes be honest. If its an HR person forget it.
Instead of the gun/anti-gun debate I think it would be more appropriate to talk about if we want to live in a surveillance state where our every action and word is scoured to see if we are a threat. I would prefer to have the police and courts concentrate on catching, prosecuting, and detaining people that have already committed a crime. The reason these types of crimes receive attention is because of how random and pointless they seem. But many more lives could be saved more cheaply if we would concentrate our efforts on keeping people behind bars that have been convicted of a violent crime and release everyone convicted of non-violent offenses.
Although a shooting scares people more just as much carnage could be inflicted with a pickup truck driving through people waiting in line outside. It is the price you pay for freedom. You CANNOT stop a person that never committed a crime and decides to do this type of evil act. Unless you want to live in a complete police state and everyone under lock and key.
In addition to that in the US if you want a "good" public school it means moving to an area where other parents care as well. Even with the most caring and attentive parent it will be difficult if you live in an area where other parents don't share your attitude.
That's funny but also a good point. Landfills are just temporary. We fill them up with things that aren't worth recycling. But someday when material prices get high enough it make make economic sense to mine the landfills. A smart owner would at least try somewhat to segregate the waste to different pits so that they are easier to mine.
In the not so distant future recycling will be done at a molecular level and this will all go away.
Poaching is the act of taking another persons livestock. The use of the word in this context means the author considers people the equivalent of livestock to the corporate ranchers.
My 6 year old daughter asked her older brother a rhetorical question. He started to answer and she stopped him and said "It was a retardical question!"
If you are interested in another point of view I reccomend this book.
http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf
Sorry but your are wrong. A good indicator something is wrong is when people start doing things for themselves. When food prices get to high people start a garden. When labor prices get too high they maintain their own lawn. This is an indicator there is a problem because it's a failure in the system of the specialization of labor.
A doctor should only do what he has spent years doing and not manual labor unless she considers it leisure. This occurs when the cost of doing business is too high because of taxes and regulations.
Heck I'm growing a garden and I make a decent living because prices of fresh produce is so high. What a waste of my time because I'm not very good at it.