"A more accurate scenario, however untenable, would be, "You're on a plane and you know something is going to go horribly wrong, at some point. Do you start hunting terrorists at any cost (agw assumption), do you perform a lengthy inspection of all the mechanical subsystems on the plane (nature assumption), or do you try to determine the cause and nature of the problem before you do either?"
You can't really fix something if you don't know what's causing a problem, or if you're even able to "fix" it. That said, there are a number of common, environmentally horrifying practices that should be fixed either way... and we should do those now."
And suppose you've done this, and you've done it for forty or so years. Meanwhile, every check you've done on the mechanicals shows no intrinisc problem, the logs are all good, all sensors are showing green, etc etc.
And then you find a huge nest of *snake* eggs and lots of and lots of shedded snakeskins, behind almost every m'f'ing seat. You go back and look, over and over, and there are more snake eggs every time you look.
What's your best assessment as to what's gonna happen?
"In other words, he'll create an environment where we still have to pay for all of the government institutions and their contracts, but we won't receive any of the services. Awesome."
That's the end game of the right wing. They know they can't actually shut things down, but they can sabotage, and use the result as affirmation of their world view "see government can't do anything right" (which is false) "so vote for my people again".
"Food products sold in Mexico use the NOM-051-SCFI-1994 "Información nutrimental" product labelling standard (which is very similar to "Nutrition Facts" in the U.S.). The Official Mexican Standard, or NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana), was developed by the Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Promotion (Secretaría de Comercio y Fomento Industrial, or SCFI), now a part of the Secretary of the Economy (SECOFI). It entered into effect on January 24, 1996,[6] and defines "General specifications for labelling foods and pre-bottled non-alcoholic beverages".[7] [edit]"
"Why does the Federal government have to be the one doing all the spending?"
Because the problems the government addresses are national-scale, the expertise for specific problems is not distributed uniformly across states, and the benefits accrue to the nation in its entirety. And because believe it or not, Federal employees, especially in scientific R&D areas, are much smarter and more ethical than most State employees.
"You do realize that there are several other federal agencies that could take over that role, right? For example, the military depends on accurate weather forecasts. Why not turn the responsibility over to them?"
Why should all other agencies perform redundant functions outside their core mission when one group with the concentrated expertise can do it for the whole nation?
Weather doesn't obey any state or national lines and requires large scale investment and coordination and influences a wide variety of human activities. It's prime subject matter for a dedicated federal effort.
"Congress could pass the 9-9-9 plan tomorrow and shrink the IRS 90%. But it wont."
How would it possibly shrink the IRS?
All the complexity of the tax code is in defining what exactly is and is not income---the rates are a trivial lookup-table. Ever get a K1 form from a partnership? Some of the complexity can be lowered, of course, but much of it is actually there to prevent fraud----translating by trickery what should be income into non-taxable anything. That's what drives the complexity of the code and IRS.
Now, add in a national sales tax---the federal government now has to define and enforce exactly what are sales. It will need auditors and IT systems for an entirely new kind of tax which it has never collected in its history. The IRS is going to shrink too?
"Because lord knows without the Fed.gov no one would ever have bothered to build computers (and all base technologies) and it is only through the guiding light that is the government that such miracles could be wrought."
Government sponsored basic R&D and early-stage development make such miracles much faster. And many miracles depend on lots of other miracles already happening. Some product or idea may have commercial applications but depends on another advance which, in its original stage only had military application.
"Do you really believe that no one would have bothered coming up with semiconductors and all that if there hadn't been a fed.gov market for it? Really? "
There wouldn't have been anywhere near the money and intensity of development. Almost all the semiconductor physics advances from 1945 to 1980's were sponsored by Bell Labs, universtities, IBM (who had huge military contracts for the most advanced systems of course) and military funding and military contracts. At that time Bell Labs counted economically as a government agency---in return for being granted the telephone system monopoly, Bell had to spend a large amount of money on R&D.
"The government financed research was a slim minority of the market at that time,"
That is so preposterously and utterly false. Silicon Valley was built on Cold War military & NASA R&D until about 1990.
"and the Palo Alto Research Center had not one dime of public investment, and that is where arguably the biggest innovations came from."
Innovations came from a far wider and diverse set of companies, especially in hardware. Almost every fundamental innovation had roots in university basic research (all government funded) and early-stage development was from military R&D (because the products were too expensvie to be acceptable to the consumer).
"If I want to find something on the web, chances are it's at wikipedia, facebook, youtube, flickr, or amazon (or yelp, twitter, tumblr, livejournal, etc)" And in a few years the something might also be at fribble, yumlicks, blinckey! and zunebar.
Wouldn't it be cool if there were a single way to find something at all those different sites?
"And I think the system that succeeds will be one in which both the protocol is secure and the system is usable by Joe the Plumber."
Joe the Plumber has no idea whether the new software you wrote is actually secure and real, or just happens to look identical but is riddled with backdoors connecting directly to Romania.
On the other hand, Joe the Plumber knows that a piece of paper or a coin is not on the internet.
In commodities, the side selling is often a producer, and not a speculator. The producer has an interest in guaranteeing enough sales at a certain price level to cover fixed costs, because it helps manage their business better.
Options may be more applicable for this case, but in effect one side is more risk-averse (the producer) and the other is willing to take the risk.
To be concrete, the executive at the mining company is more likely to be fired for losing a certain percent of money vs the speculator, because the investors/managers in the company have a different attitude towards fluctuations of a certain size than investors in a commodity fund.
Speculators produce predictions of some property of the future, and act on them today, and bring that prediction to light publically.
This prediction can result in changes in the world today.
For instance if certain speculators predict oil will be increasing soon because of X,Y,Z (hurricanes, production problems, war) in the future, they will buy instruments which, in aggregate, will increase the 'forward' price.
Other people working now may see this and fill up some empty tankers and wait a few months and sell the oil then, thereby transferring the oil from a time when it was in less demand to one when it is in more demand. The speculative market and public signals make how to do this strategy readily apparent.
The Federal Reserve is indeed federal of course. Its existence and powers are a consequence of an Act of Congress. What Act of Congress created JP Morgan? None of course. The President nominates and Congress approves the Federal Reserve Board of governors, the same thing happens for say CIA, NASA, EPA, and many other non-cabinet agencies. The Federal Reserve governors are obligated to report to Congress as a matter of law, and, I believe, are subject to impeachment. The Federal Reserve has regulatory power over private banks backed by the force of law. Finally, income in excess of expenses is returned to the US Treasury.
Ownership means in reality, control of management and beneficiary of profits. By both measures the US Government owns the Federal Reserve.
"It is the top money men, many from Goldman Sachs. In fact you'll see a revolving door between GS and the fed going back decades."
There's a revolving door between the banking industry and all parts of the government going back decades, but so what? It doesn't meant that the government agencies aren't government agencies.
"Once you have decided that the rules will change or dont matter, you can make all sorts of silly bullshit claims. The fact remains that our federal government is not in control of the money supply.
I understand that you didnt know this, and I understand that the error that your ignorance generated is embarrassing to you. Instead of venturing into the land of make believe in order to continue to justify hastily made conclusions based on wrong information, you should instead re-evaluate your conclusion."
Again, it's unwise to be insulting and incorrect.
In current practice the policies of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve system very strongly influence the money supply to the degree that if there is any "control" it is there. The board members are nominated by the President and approved by Congress, and report to Congress regularly. There is some level of independence in that the director is not a clearly political cabinet appointee of the President. This isn't that much different from the CIA or NASA, and nobody thinks they are not Federal agencies. The existence and the powers of the Federal Reserve are determined by acts of Congress. Congress could impeach and remove Ben Bernanke if it had reason to.
To me, and I think most of the planet, this counts as federal control of the money supply to me than not-federal control of the money supply.
"The federal government, in the case of America, cannot print money. It can borrow money, even from those with the power to print it, but it cannot print money itself nor can it order the printing of money. Period."
Sure it can. It did so before.
"Come back when you know whats actually going on in the world."
It's unwise to be insulting and incorrect.
There exist instruments known as United States Notes, distinct from Federal Reserve Notes. For example:
According to Wikipedia: "The difference between a United States Note and a Federal Reserve Note is that a United States Note represented a "bill of credit" and was inserted by the Treasury directly into circulation free of interest. Federal Reserve Notes are backed by debt purchased by the Federal Reserve, and thus generate seigniorage, or interest, for the Federal Reserve System, which serves as a lending intermediary between the Treasury and the public."
Economically US Notes are equivalent to 0% zero-coupon treasury notes. They add the same legal tender status as Federal Reserve Notes.
At present US Notes are not effectively in circulation (most likely all have been destroyed or are at the Federal Reserve banks) but they remain legal money.
The federal government, with a new or revised act of Congress, could restart the issuance of US Notes at will. US Notes are not considered subject to the statutory debt limit.
"No, this is a good thing. Hopefully people wake up to this new form of democracy."
It's not a "new form of democracy", it's a legal owner exerting its right to have a say in how its investment ought to be managed. Why are all the crazed shills against shareholder rights and shareholder value now?
If this owner believes that doing sleazy unethical things are bad for its investment or just because they're immoral, then so what? It's not "fox news", it's the phone hacking and the falsifying the european circulation with various schemes etc which give good cause to believe the current management is a danger to its long-term investment.
"At the moment, the growing crisis appears to be between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, in no small part because of Ahmadinejad's extremist language surrounding foreign policy. It's got to the point where Khamenei is even proposing to do away with an elected president."
And the problem Khameinei has is that Ahmadinejad is pissing off the 'conservatives'. Khameinei is more dangerous and less moderate than the President, and the Revolutionary Guards have captured essentially all the power. And they're dangerously nuts. Ahmadinejad has no control or probably knowledge about the nuclear weapons program---that's run by Khamenei and the RG's.
"His most far reaching idea that is almost in reach now was in a story he easily wrote 30 or so years ago where you carried a small object with you that would slot into any computer of its futuristic day and completely remap the keyboard and system to your own language."
Far reaching idea?
Why do you need an object and a slot? Just start talking in your own language and the computer knows what language you're speaking like a multi-lingual person. Google can probably do this today. With a little phoneme processing and a large data base, detecting language is probably a very easy machine learning task (the categories will be very well separated).
Slashdot Mirror
Like the difference between a republic and a people's republic.
"A more accurate scenario, however untenable, would be, "You're on a plane and you know something is going to go horribly wrong, at some point. Do you start hunting terrorists at any cost (agw assumption), do you perform a lengthy inspection of all the mechanical subsystems on the plane (nature assumption), or do you try to determine the cause and nature of the problem before you do either?"
You can't really fix something if you don't know what's causing a problem, or if you're even able to "fix" it. That said, there are a number of common, environmentally horrifying practices that should be fixed either way... and we should do those now."
And suppose you've done this, and you've done it for forty or so years. Meanwhile, every check you've done on the mechanicals shows no intrinisc problem, the logs are all good, all sensors are showing green, etc etc.
And then you find a huge nest of *snake* eggs and lots of and lots of shedded snakeskins, behind almost every m'f'ing seat. You go back and look, over and over, and there are more snake eggs every time you look.
What's your best assessment as to what's gonna happen?
In other nations, less capitalism in medicine results in lower costs.
"The entirety of human history has been dominated by overbearing governments. Libertarianism has never been given a fair chance. "
You'll always have Somalia.
"In other words, he'll create an environment where we still have to pay for all of the government institutions and their contracts, but we won't receive any of the services. Awesome."
That's the end game of the right wing. They know they can't actually shut things down, but they can sabotage, and use the result as affirmation of their world view "see government can't do anything right" (which is false) "so vote for my people again".
Mexico has no food labeling standard?
"Food products sold in Mexico use the NOM-051-SCFI-1994 "Información nutrimental" product labelling standard (which is very similar to "Nutrition Facts" in the U.S.). The Official Mexican Standard, or NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana), was developed by the Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Promotion (Secretaría de Comercio y Fomento Industrial, or SCFI), now a part of the Secretary of the Economy (SECOFI). It entered into effect on January 24, 1996,[6] and defines "General specifications for labelling foods and pre-bottled non-alcoholic beverages".[7]
[edit]"
"Why does the Federal government have to be the one doing all the spending?"
Because the problems the government addresses are national-scale, the expertise for specific problems is not distributed uniformly across states, and the benefits accrue to the nation in its entirety. And because believe it or not, Federal employees, especially in scientific R&D areas, are much smarter and more ethical than most State employees.
"You do realize that there are several other federal agencies that could take over that role, right? For example, the military depends on accurate weather forecasts. Why not turn the responsibility over to them?"
Why should all other agencies perform redundant functions outside their core mission when one group with the concentrated expertise can do it for the whole nation?
Weather doesn't obey any state or national lines and requires large scale investment and coordination and influences a wide variety of human activities. It's prime subject matter for a dedicated federal effort.
"For example, the DOE didn't exist until 1980. "
Sure, it was called the Atomic Energy Commission.
"Congress could pass the 9-9-9 plan tomorrow and shrink the IRS 90%. But it wont."
How would it possibly shrink the IRS?
All the complexity of the tax code is in defining what exactly is and is not income---the rates are a trivial lookup-table. Ever get a K1 form from a partnership? Some of the complexity can be lowered, of course, but much of it is actually there to prevent fraud----translating by trickery what should be income into non-taxable anything. That's what drives the complexity of the code and IRS.
Now, add in a national sales tax---the federal government now has to define and enforce exactly what are sales. It will need auditors and IT systems for an entirely new kind of tax which it has never collected in its history. The IRS is going to shrink too?
"Because lord knows without the Fed.gov no one would ever have bothered to build computers (and all base technologies) and it is only through the guiding light that is the government that such miracles could be wrought."
Government sponsored basic R&D and early-stage development make such miracles much faster. And many miracles depend on lots of other miracles already happening. Some product or idea may have commercial applications but depends on another advance which, in its original stage only had military application.
"Do you really believe that no one would have bothered coming up with semiconductors and all that if there hadn't been a fed.gov market for it? Really? "
There wouldn't have been anywhere near the money and intensity of development. Almost all the semiconductor physics advances from 1945 to 1980's were sponsored by Bell Labs, universtities, IBM (who had huge military contracts for the most advanced systems of course) and military funding and military contracts. At that time Bell Labs counted economically as a government agency---in return for being granted the telephone system monopoly, Bell had to spend a large amount of money on R&D.
"The government financed research was a slim minority of the market at that time,"
That is so preposterously and utterly false. Silicon Valley was built on Cold War military & NASA R&D until about 1990.
"and the Palo Alto Research Center had not one dime of public investment, and that is where arguably the biggest innovations came from."
Innovations came from a far wider and diverse set of companies, especially in hardware. Almost every fundamental innovation had roots in university basic research (all government funded) and early-stage development was from military R&D (because the products were too expensvie to be acceptable to the consumer).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Cave_troll.jpg
http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u46173/steve-ballmer.jpg
"If I want to find something on the web, chances are it's at wikipedia, facebook, youtube, flickr, or amazon (or yelp, twitter, tumblr, livejournal, etc)"
And in a few years the something might also be at fribble, yumlicks, blinckey! and zunebar.
Wouldn't it be cool if there were a single way to find something at all those different sites?
"And I think the system that succeeds will be one in which both the protocol is secure and the system is usable by Joe the Plumber."
Joe the Plumber has no idea whether the new software you wrote is actually secure and real, or just happens to look identical but is riddled with backdoors connecting directly to Romania.
On the other hand, Joe the Plumber knows that a piece of paper or a coin is not on the internet.
In commodities, the side selling is often a producer, and not a speculator. The producer has an interest in guaranteeing enough sales at a certain price level to cover fixed costs, because it helps manage their business better.
Options may be more applicable for this case, but in effect one side is more risk-averse (the producer) and the other is willing to take the risk.
To be concrete, the executive at the mining company is more likely to be fired for losing a certain percent of money vs the speculator, because the investors/managers in the company have a different attitude towards fluctuations of a certain size than investors in a commodity fund.
Speculators produce predictions of some property of the future, and act on them today, and bring that prediction to light publically.
This prediction can result in changes in the world today.
For instance if certain speculators predict oil will be increasing soon because of X,Y,Z (hurricanes, production problems, war) in the future, they will buy instruments which, in aggregate, will increase the 'forward' price.
Other people working now may see this and fill up some empty tankers and wait a few months and sell the oil then, thereby transferring the oil from a time when it was in less demand to one when it is in more demand. The speculative market and public signals make how to do this strategy readily apparent.
"The treasury may only print notes at the request of the central banks"
or U.S. Congress.
The Federal Reserve is indeed federal of course. Its existence and powers are a consequence of an Act of Congress. What Act of Congress created JP Morgan? None of course. The President nominates and Congress approves the Federal Reserve Board of governors, the same thing happens for say CIA, NASA, EPA, and many other non-cabinet agencies. The Federal Reserve governors are obligated to report to Congress as a matter of law, and, I believe, are subject to impeachment. The Federal Reserve has regulatory power over private banks backed by the force of law. Finally, income in excess of expenses is returned to the US Treasury.
Ownership means in reality, control of management and beneficiary of profits. By both measures the US Government owns the Federal Reserve.
"It is the top money men, many from Goldman Sachs. In fact you'll see a revolving door between GS and the fed going back decades."
There's a revolving door between the banking industry and all parts of the government going back decades, but so what?
It doesn't meant that the government agencies aren't government agencies.
"Once you have decided that the rules will change or dont matter, you can make all sorts of silly bullshit claims. The fact remains that our federal government is not in control of the money supply.
I understand that you didnt know this, and I understand that the error that your ignorance generated is embarrassing to you. Instead of venturing into the land of make believe in order to continue to justify hastily made conclusions based on wrong information, you should instead re-evaluate your conclusion."
Again, it's unwise to be insulting and incorrect.
In current practice the policies of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve system very strongly influence the money supply to the degree that if there is any "control" it is there. The board members are nominated by the President and approved by Congress, and report to Congress regularly. There is some level of independence in that the director is not a clearly political cabinet appointee of the President. This isn't that much different from the CIA or NASA, and nobody thinks they are not Federal agencies. The existence and the powers of the Federal Reserve are determined by acts of Congress. Congress could impeach and remove Ben Bernanke if it had reason to.
To me, and I think most of the planet, this counts as federal control of the money supply to me than not-federal control of the money supply.
"The federal government, in the case of America, cannot print money. It can borrow money, even from those with the power to print it, but it cannot print money itself nor can it order the printing of money. Period."
Sure it can. It did so before.
"Come back when you know whats actually going on in the world."
It's unwise to be insulting and incorrect.
There exist instruments known as United States Notes, distinct from Federal Reserve Notes. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_$5_1963_USN.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Notes
According to Wikipedia: "The difference between a United States Note and a Federal Reserve Note is that a United States Note represented a "bill of credit" and was inserted by the Treasury directly into circulation free of interest. Federal Reserve Notes are backed by debt purchased by the Federal Reserve, and thus generate seigniorage, or interest, for the Federal Reserve System, which serves as a lending intermediary between the Treasury and the public."
Economically US Notes are equivalent to 0% zero-coupon treasury notes. They add the same legal tender status as Federal Reserve Notes.
At present US Notes are not effectively in circulation (most likely all have been destroyed or are at the Federal Reserve banks) but they remain legal money.
The federal government, with a new or revised act of Congress, could restart the issuance of US Notes at will. US Notes are not considered subject to the statutory debt limit.
"No, this is a good thing. Hopefully people wake up to this new form of democracy."
It's not a "new form of democracy", it's a legal owner exerting its right to have a say in how its investment ought to be managed. Why are all the crazed shills against shareholder rights and shareholder value now?
If this owner believes that doing sleazy unethical things are bad for its investment or just because they're immoral, then so what? It's not "fox news", it's the phone hacking and the falsifying the european circulation with various schemes etc which give good cause to believe the current management is a danger to its long-term investment.
"At the moment, the growing crisis appears to be between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, in no small part because of Ahmadinejad's extremist language surrounding foreign policy. It's got to the point where Khamenei is even proposing to do away with an elected president."
And the problem Khameinei has is that Ahmadinejad is pissing off the 'conservatives'. Khameinei is more dangerous and less moderate than the President, and the Revolutionary Guards have captured essentially all the power. And they're dangerously nuts. Ahmadinejad has no control or probably knowledge about the nuclear weapons program---that's run by Khamenei and the RG's.
" I think it is a reasonable assertion that computational power will will continue to grow exponentially, electrical power requirements will shrink."
I don't think it is a reasonable assertion. Already we should have 40 GHz single cores, but we don't.
"His most far reaching idea that is almost in reach now was in a story he easily wrote 30 or so years ago where you carried a small object with you that would slot into any computer of its futuristic day and completely remap the keyboard and system to your own language."
Far reaching idea?
Why do you need an object and a slot? Just start talking in your own language and the computer knows what language you're speaking like a multi-lingual person. Google can probably do this today. With a little phoneme processing and a large data base, detecting language is probably a very easy machine learning task (the categories will be very well separated).