This is just a possiblility, I've no proof, but it's my default opinion until convinced otherwise:
Schools are held accountable for students' measurable educational progress. This is wrong since students and parents should be ultimately accountable for that. You can lead a horse to water...
So, if a student isn't educable by the means commonly employed, the school looks bad. The incentive is to shift blame by diagnosing the student with a disorder such as a learning disability or adhd, or some such.
Once there is something to blame other than the school, and they would say other than the student or the parent ( it's nobody's fault the student has a disability ) then the pressure is off. The student ends up not being educated to the same standards as other children, and the school can concentrate on rendering the 'normals' into cash.
Suppose SSDs were to improve so that external disks offered NO advantages in price, performance or capacity. How would this effect what sorts of databases there might be? I wonder if there are certain types of uses/queries/softwared that just don't happen/doesn't exist because it would involve alot of slow random access on large data. If this were to become very cheap for great performance, what new goodies / opportunities might this bring?
Lately I've taken a new approach to privacy. I used to try and keep most everything private unless I wanted to share it, but nowadays I've adopted a bland public persona that I don't mind if the world knows about. Then when I want to do something I don't want public, I just invest time and inconvenience commensurate with the criticality of keeping my activity private to make sure it stays private.
I just skimmed this paper, and after 20 minutes, I can say that I don't understand it, and that I would have to read up on a zillion different things, each a monumental undertaking for me to begin to really understand it. However it seems plausable that it's main contribution will be to attract the attention of experts in diverse fields encouraging those experts to better inform themselves about areas that they might not have known were related to their subject. Because (if the proof is correct) the diverse areas ARE deeply related, then this crosspollination will likely be fruitful.
What we need now is a chess rating system rating system. Then chess rating systems can compete with each other and be rated as to how well they rate chess.
Maybe even sillier than that. Maybe the post selection method allows us to catch God in a lie, forcing her to pull a ret-con or a deus ex machina, and this becomes the means by which the Infinite Improbability Drive is implemented.
Suppose the universe were being simulated on a single processor single thread computer. The sequence of processor actions is logged, and causation is one way from beginning to end of the execution. Why couldn't the output of that computer be a 'universe' where causation appeared to be freaky to it's inhabitants? Inhabitants of the universe may not even be able to percieve the 'true' causal chain of events even though it exists. Time may move differently for the computer simulating the universe than it does for the universe.
That is, maybe the computer writes the story of the universe by jumping around and filling in the gaps.
For VoIP I love my Ooma phone I bought at Best Buy. $15.99/year for taxes and no other fees whatsoever. It's a landline, with 100% the quality one would expect from a landline, and my computer doens't need to even be on. It's a one time investment of a couple of hundred bucks that has already paid for itself in less than a year. It calls phones, not computers, for free, and can call internationally for rates comparable to skypes. No videophone, but come on 99% of the time that's not what you want. When it is you can sit down at your computer and use one of the myriad videophone apps. Sorry for the ad-like post, but this is such a great deal, and a quality product, I can't understand why it's not in every home. ( I have no connection with Ooma Phone btw, other than as a happy user )
One thing that happens to my parents is that the connector gets wiggled so that the plugin disconnects from the motherboard. The motherboard is layered so that it cannot be soldered. Basically, the laptop is toast because the connector won't consistently provide power to the motherboard. It would be SO easy for manufacturers to solder the connector to a tiny inexpensive and easily replacable seperate board and then have internal wires that lead to the motherboard inside, but they rightly figure that the connector won't go until a year or so. This has happened to two laptops of theirs so far ( about once a year ) and they are on their third.
It pretty much sucks to be North Korean. What has not already been perpetrated on the populace that has not already been? If there was going to be a final straw, then it was about 500 bales ago.
The oppressed are not going to revolt. They can't because they are oppressed. The power cards are stacked against them. The only way North Korea would fall apart would be if the upper classes were to attempt to cease power for themselves. However the hierarchical structure ensures that those with the means to make trouble have enough to lose by doing so that they don't risk it.
Weaponry makes the masses less powerful and less able to mount a resistance enforced by numbers. Because modern weaponry is so powerful, there need be only a few well weaponed ( and well cared for ) folks to preserve a comfortable armament differential between the oppressors and the oppressed.
The ugly fact is that people can be oppressed indefinitely and there's nothing they can do about it. The question is whether systems of oppression can survive indefinitely. I can think of quite a few that lasted quite a while.
I have no idea how many were sold but I bet it's alot, but these are the first McGlasses I've ever bought, and I bought all four. The glass itself is really nice and thick, and you can get your whole hand in there to wash it out, and they are not too tall, with a hefty bottom to prevent spills. And they're Shrek.
Unfortunately, the next day I hear they are poisonous and threw them all out. I thought about the collector's market, but come on, there's got to have been gazillions.
If it were just me, I would have kept the glasses - the paint is on the outside of the glass, but I am not the only one who drinks out of them.
I BET this is just a bunch of wankers complaining about something that isn't really all that dangerous, but what's the prize if I am right? 8 bucks worth of kitch. Not worth the risk.
If oil prices don't rise, then those resources won't be exploited
True. If for instance Mr. Fusion were invented, then there would be no need, however technological civilization is dependent on energy. Barring Mr. Fusion, the price of energy will rise relative to other factors sufficiently to guarantee that extraction takes place, however this might be by the price of everything including energy falling with energy prices falling slower than other prices. I am not saying this will or won't be what happens, just that you can't count on energy prices rising. You probably CAN count on the purchasing power of a unit of energy rising over the long term however, at least until renewables have replaced declining nonrenewables.
As for cellphones and reverse osmosis, cellphones mean that development is cheaper than it was with landlines, and reverse osmosis converts energy into fresh water. It does not generally imply affordable water in a regime of declining energy.
There's lots of oil deposits that are too costly to exploit at the moment, but will become profitable as oil prices rise.
There is debate as to whether prices for oil will actually rise as much as one might first expect. When the economy tanks, so does the price of oil. Though I think the current economic mess was inevitable even without resource constraints, the high price of oil may have been like a pin to an inflating baloon.
Another scenario would be if as uses for oil become priced out, PEOPLE become priced out. Why is it that people earn what they earn? Why do they have the standard of living they do? Continuing industrial civilization for fewer people allows industrial civilization to continue nonetheless at a smaller scale. If high energy prices and limited oil make aluminum too costly to use in soda cans and plastic too costly to use in soda bottles ( at their current price ) then rather than stopping all soda bottling, the manufacturers are forced to raise the price even if that means they will be bottling less soda. Less soda IS demanded at the new higher price. Some Soda bottlers lose their jobs. The unemployment depresses wages, yet soda bottling continues and higher priced soda continues to be available at the higher price. Maybe this is slow enough that nobody actually loses their jobs, but nobody gets a raise either to keep up with inflation.
So more tap water gets drunk and less soda. That seems like a good thing. How long until the price of clean tap water gets out of reach for everyone? The point is that less soda is a small example of the scope of modern convenience shrinking. It will shrink to match the available resources.
Slowly the comparative advantage the developing world has in terms of labor disappears. Why develop the developing world to use resources that just aren't there?
Modern technological civilization continues on for an ever decreasing few until renewable energy sources can grow faster than nonrenewable use shrinks ( if renewables can ever feasibly form the basis of a technological society which I think they can ). ( this future world might look much like a solar/wind powered Charles Dickens novel ).
At some point when we're all slaves of the machine, a mad scientist invents Cybermen and Doctor Who appears to save the day.
Fiat money always starts with being
tied to something of value, there is
no money without some value. Real
value only comes out of production.
You are right. And government has the power of confiscation ( taxation ). They could collect taxes in chickens, but they accept currency instead. Because non-failed-states have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within their borders, they ultimately have control over ALL productive capacity within their borders. Fiat money has value because it is accepted in payment for taxes. Ultimately money is used to make the tax man not confiscate your other stuff ( although you may have to choose which of your other stuff to sell to get the money to pay the tax man ).
This is why the productive capacity of a country is important to the value of a currency. Nobody has a need to pay taxes in Gargamailians because the Republic of Gargamailia is a 50 sq ft artificial island composed of just sand barely above sea level and has one citizen and no productive capacity. So a Gargamailian isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Printing money is the ultimate power to take
products of labor from people. Of-course there is also borrowing,
which is a chapter in itself.
No that's taxation is that ultimate power. Consider that all money is debt. When you accept money for a good, you are foregoing having an item to hold it. At a later date you can exchange it for an item or service. Currency (even gold) is a debt the entire economy owes you. You might say: Nobody HAS to sell anything to me for money. True, but since everyone owes taxes, they all need money eventually, and will have to sell something of value to obtain it. Taxes due are a debt everyone owes the government. This also goes for gold when gold is used as money. Gold used as money, not for it's industrial uses, is also a debt. It's recent price rise is due to increased demand for it's use as money.
If the government spends money taken in as taxes, they are shifting resources from the ends of the taxed to public ends. If the government borrows, then they are shifting resources from whatever investment the bondholder would have made towards public ends. If the government prints money then resources are shifted from holders of money toward public ends.
When government spending is malinvestment then it is inflationary. If the economy would have grown more without the spending then it decreases production of goods relative to the money in circulation. This is true however the government comes by the currency whether through taxation, borrowing, or money printing. Taxation shifts resources from the taxed to the government ends, borrowing shifts resources from bondholders to government ends, and money printing shifts resources from money holders to government ends. If production increases sufficiently as a result of government expenditure, then the expenditure has the potential to be deflationary in a good way. If production falls because the expenditure was malinvestment then the expenditure is inflationary. With sufficient deflation because of increase production the real rate of return for bond holders rises. Prices for bonds rise, yeilds fall. With inflation because of lower production, real rates of return fall, prices fall, yeilds rise.
Of course there can be growth despite malinvestment and shrinkage despite wise investment because of external factors. Cheap availability of easily exploitable resources vs those resources becoming harder to find/use for example. Natural disasters or unusual lack of them for another.
Gold certainly can be used in complex financial trades, but that
does not diminish the value of gold.
That's precisely what is done when gold is used in fractional reserve banking. At a reserve ratio of 1/10. then 10000 gold pieces become 100000 of 'money' denominated in gold. This makes the 'supply' of gold 10 times what it would be without all the 'virtual gold', and because physical gold and virtual gold are interchangeable, this has the effect of inflating the prices of goods with respect to gold, i.e. diminishing the value of gold.
All currencies start with a fixed value to gold, then they diverge...
I can heap up some sand in a shallow spot in the middle of the ocean and call my new country Gargamailia. I can print 10000 Gargamailians but their value with respect to gold is zero since my island is just 50 square feet of sand barely sticking up above the waves and I am the only citizen. As you said below value is tied to production.
"Gold is THE actual measure of value" ( Emphasis mine )
HAH! Says who? The value of ANYTHING is relative to other goods. There is not and never will be a meaningful 0,0,0 .
People have this false perception that because gold is a physical thing that it can not be used in complex financial shell games. The truth is that it most certainly can be used in complex financial shell games.
The history of the abandoning of gold is the history of the pain caused by various complex financial shell games causing the need for quantitative easing as a band-aid. Is quantitative easing the cause of the problem? No, it's a band-aid. Is the ability to print money the cause? No it's the ability to apply a type of band-aid. The cause of the pain is the damage done by complex financial shell games enabled by the mother of all complex financial shell games, the financial shell game that ultimately finances most of the other games, fractional reserve banking. ( which was first done when goldsmiths created virtual gold to lend into circulation increasing the 'money supply' of gold to many times the physical gold in existence )
Why not decrease the M2 money supply by raising the reserve ratio, simultaneously paying off much national debt with newly printed money in the same amount that was lost from the money supply due to raising the reserve ratio? In the US this is about half the national debt. This NON-Inflated money would flow into the hands of bondholders who would be forced to invest or purchase goods with it or else be stuck with non interest bearing currency.
What effect would this have on the M3 money supply? What importance (if any) does the M3 money supply have? Anyone?
At the expense of each other - it serves the wankers right. If you ignore these high frequency traders and trade on a longer term based on analysis then you will not be effected. As Cramer from Mad Money says: Use limit orders.
Walk to the beat of your own drummer, and the rest is just noise.
I was bullied constantly in 7th 8th and 9th grades. If you asked someone in my grade to list the top 5 worst bullied kids, my name would likely be there. I was a social pariah. I dropped out early from 9th grade. I ALWAYS stood up regardless of size. Let me tell you that standing up makes it worse in every possible way. The best thing to do is be the guy who never gets in fights because they aren't known for it, the guy who is never noticed. Don't stand up ever. Then it becomes no fun, no glory to pick on you. I envied these people but I was stuck at my school having already gotten the wrong reputation. Instead, be known as someone who will never stand up but who will always go to the authorities.
What happens if you stand up to a bully?
You fight and win, and get in trouble. If you win, then the bully was your size, or maybe even smaller than you, or you were a superior fighter. The most likely way you were a superior fighter was to be the more vicious fighter.
You were able to inflict enough pain to end the fight without going to jail. The bully was probably smaller than you because you were able to kick their ass. No glory for you. A bigger bully knows you're good for a fight and kicks your ass to prove they are still one higher on the pecking order than you.
You crushed their skull with the bowling ball in your book bag, they are dead, and you get to spend the rest of your school career in juvinile hall getting bullied by REAL scary bullies.
You fight and lose and get in trouble.
Fists flew and you hit the ground. You get up, and you are beaten down again. They beat on you until you humiliate yourself. Nobody thinks well of you because you caved. The beating doesn't stop until you do. If you are lucky, there's a teacher around. Probably not.
Fists flew, and the fight escalated. If you used a weapon, it ends up being used on you with reckless abandon. Maybe the bully was psycho, and crushed your skull on the pavement or cement floor. You're in a hospital, possibly damaged for life.
You know it isn't in your interest to kick the ass of a shrimpy bully.
So the shrimpy bullies spend all day shouting insults at you because they know you won't really beat them down. They do this because they are shrimpy and it makes them look tough to insult someone of your stature. Some of the bullies are your size or larger. These also may punch you once or twice hoping you'll punch back.
Losing your temper ( which happens ) means you aren't among the worthless targets. You have enough pride to be mocked. LOSE THIS PRIDE and become uninteresting. Let it go that the bullies keep you out of the places you want to go.
When you stand up to one weight class of bully, you don't join the club of respected folks. Winning in one weight class just puts you in the next higher weight class. You get to fight bigger bullies until you lose.
Physical health, beefy musculature, and stature also help...
It could also be that people who are bullied and don't stand up (because they are unable_ become harmed by the repeated experience.
We're looking for juicy steak, and we will select the best, but only after all the beef has passed through this meat grinder. If it's no good for making hamburger then how could it possibly make a good steak?
Almost all the radiation ends up in the skin. Other radiation in total may be higher for a flight, but it is of differing kinds and is absorbed by other parts of body.
I would let them scan me because I hardly ever fly, but I'd be concerned if I had to walk through one of these every few days.
Don't like it? Make a video explaining your views, and put it on your website. Of course nobody will watch it because it will take a million years to download. Comcast's propaganda will however load quite speedily, and they will contribute to the incumbent's campaign fund. Net neutrality is a 'minor issue' so few will mind much that their favorite congressperson is taking money from Comcast.
People figure politians need to take money from somewhere right? How else would campaigns be funded? People figure politicians can just take money from the corps whose positions naturally match what their own views were anyway. People think that because companies compete that there must be a campaign contributing company somewhere that will give your politician money no matter what their views are so that politicians are effectively free from influence.
This is false because all the companies in an industry tend to want their industry to be more profitable and tend to bend their influence toward the same goals. While often no one company gets an advantage over another, those with the means to pay for campaigns tend to get served 'as a group'.. Those without such means are less important.
Wait a minute, you might say, business being profitable IS good since it creates jobs and more thneeds for everyone. Jobs and thneeds can cause profitablity, but profitability doesn't imply more jobs and thneeds. Other things besides public prosperity can cause profitablility, for instance if everyone gave me a dollar, then I'd be rich, but it wouldn't increase the public's prosperity a bit. Almost nobody would be against general prosperity, that being a fairly uncontroversial end (though the right to be contrarian should be maintained!) but the tendency is to fallaciously conflate profitablility with general prosperity.
Net neutrality is an easy way to put good ideas on a more equal footing with well funded ones. Often this is impractical, luckily on an net neutral web, it's natural. The audience is completely in charge of who gets their eyes/ears, and who gets play. Net neutrality is REALLY good for democracy. It's just the sort of medicine needed most right now, and should be preserved.
I agree that them doing a pre-emptive strike is more convincing than them wanting our 'resources'.
I mean what resources would Earth have that would interest such a species that uninhabited planets lack? If they landed here, they'd very likely be brought down by microbes. They would probably stay away from Earth completely and pillage the rest of the solar system instead.
On the other hand they might very well be intelligent robotic life. Maybe such life would be confident that they were immune to our germs, but maybe not. Still, what would be so special about Earth to living robots that Mars could not provide?
I think that germs are the biggest thing to think about if ever humans are to visit there. My gut ( I've nothing more to base it on ) says that there's a 50% chance of there being live microbes there. We probably don't want them on earth. Even if astronaughts live there for a year with no ill effects, they might still be harboring microbes that would devastate the environment on earth. ( What if they had something that killed all spiders, or that targeted rice? Maybe a martian phage that infected only the cellulose processing bacteria in termites.
Since every NP complete problem can be reduced to any other one, then maybe time spent on one NP complete problem can be applied towards solving others. Can one tabulate found solutions to one NP hard problem and apply the experience to other problems? Maybe the fun-ness is the joy in adding to our life's experience in a way we
(perhaps instinctually) know is worthwhile.
Or maybe not. Just wondering...
Slashdot Mirror
Bad software probably does....
This is just a possiblility, I've no proof, but it's my default opinion until convinced otherwise:
Schools are held accountable for students' measurable educational progress. This is wrong since students and parents should be ultimately accountable for that. You can lead a horse to water...
So, if a student isn't educable by the means commonly employed, the school looks bad. The incentive is to shift blame by diagnosing the student with a disorder such as a learning disability or adhd, or some such.
Once there is something to blame other than the school, and they would say other than the student or the parent ( it's nobody's fault the student has a disability ) then the pressure is off. The student ends up not being educated to the same standards as other children, and the school can concentrate on rendering the 'normals' into cash.
Suppose SSDs were to improve so that external disks offered NO advantages in price, performance or capacity. How would this effect what sorts of databases there might be? I wonder if there are certain types of uses/queries/softwared that just don't happen/doesn't exist because it would involve alot of slow random access on large data. If this were to become very cheap for great performance, what new goodies / opportunities might this bring?
Lately I've taken a new approach to privacy. I used to try and keep most everything private unless I wanted to share it, but nowadays I've adopted a bland public persona that I don't mind if the world knows about. Then when I want to do something I don't want public, I just invest time and inconvenience commensurate with the criticality of keeping my activity private to make sure it stays private.
I just skimmed this paper, and after 20 minutes, I can say that I don't understand it, and that I would have to read up on a zillion different things, each a monumental undertaking for me to begin to really understand it. However it seems plausable that it's main contribution will be to attract the attention of experts in diverse fields encouraging those experts to better inform themselves about areas that they might not have known were related to their subject. Because (if the proof is correct) the diverse areas ARE deeply related, then this crosspollination will likely be fruitful.
What we need now is a chess rating system rating system. Then chess rating systems can compete with each other and be rated as to how well they rate chess.
Maybe even sillier than that. Maybe the post selection method allows us to catch God in a lie, forcing her to pull a ret-con or a deus ex machina, and this becomes the means by which the Infinite Improbability Drive is implemented.
Suppose the universe were being simulated on a single processor single thread computer. The sequence of processor actions is logged, and causation is one way from beginning to end of the execution. Why couldn't the output of that computer be a 'universe' where causation appeared to be freaky to it's inhabitants? Inhabitants of the universe may not even be able to percieve the 'true' causal chain of events even though it exists. Time may move differently for the computer simulating the universe than it does for the universe.
That is, maybe the computer writes the story of the universe by jumping around and filling in the gaps.
Smokes another SLIM JIM.
For VoIP I love my Ooma phone I bought at Best Buy. $15.99 /year for taxes and no other fees whatsoever. It's a landline, with 100% the quality one would expect from a landline, and my computer doens't need to even be on. It's a one time investment of a couple of hundred bucks that has already paid for itself in less than a year. It calls phones, not computers, for free, and can call internationally for rates comparable to skypes. No videophone, but come on 99% of the time that's not what you want. When it is you can sit down at your computer and use one of the myriad videophone apps.
Sorry for the ad-like post, but this is such a great deal, and a quality product, I can't understand why it's not in every home. ( I have no connection with Ooma Phone btw, other than as a happy user )
One thing that happens to my parents is that the connector gets wiggled so that the plugin disconnects from the motherboard. The motherboard is layered so that it cannot be soldered. Basically, the laptop is toast because the connector won't consistently provide power to the motherboard. It would be SO easy for manufacturers to solder the connector to a tiny inexpensive and easily replacable seperate board and then have internal wires that lead to the motherboard inside, but they rightly figure that the connector won't go until a year or so. This has happened to two laptops of theirs so far ( about once a year ) and they are on their third.
It pretty much sucks to be North Korean. What has not already been perpetrated on the populace that has not already been? If there was going to be a final straw, then it was about 500 bales ago.
The oppressed are not going to revolt. They can't because they are oppressed. The power cards are stacked against them. The only way North Korea would fall apart would be if the upper classes were to attempt to cease power for themselves. However the hierarchical structure ensures that those with the means to make trouble have enough to lose by doing so that they don't risk it.
Weaponry makes the masses less powerful and less able to mount a resistance enforced by numbers. Because modern weaponry is so powerful, there need be only a few well weaponed ( and well cared for ) folks to preserve a comfortable armament differential between the oppressors and the oppressed.
The ugly fact is that people can be oppressed indefinitely and there's nothing they can do about it. The question is whether systems of oppression can survive indefinitely. I can think of quite a few that lasted quite a while.
I have no idea how many were sold but I bet it's alot, but these are the first McGlasses I've ever bought, and I bought all four. The glass itself is really nice and thick, and you can get your whole hand in there to wash it out, and they are not too tall, with a hefty bottom to prevent spills. And they're Shrek.
Unfortunately, the next day I hear they are poisonous and threw them all out. I thought about the collector's market, but come on, there's got to have been gazillions.
If it were just me, I would have kept the glasses - the paint is on the outside of the glass, but I am not the only one who drinks out of them.
I BET this is just a bunch of wankers complaining about something that isn't really all that dangerous, but what's the prize if I am right? 8 bucks worth of kitch. Not worth the risk.
True. If for instance Mr. Fusion were invented, then there would be no need, however technological civilization is dependent on energy. Barring Mr. Fusion, the price of energy will rise relative to other factors sufficiently to guarantee that extraction takes place, however this might be by the price of everything including energy falling with energy prices falling slower than other prices. I am not saying this will or won't be what happens, just that you can't count on energy prices rising. You probably CAN count on the purchasing power of a unit of energy rising over the long term however, at least until renewables have replaced declining nonrenewables.
As for cellphones and reverse osmosis, cellphones mean that development is cheaper than it was with landlines, and reverse osmosis converts energy into fresh water. It does not generally imply affordable water in a regime of declining energy.
There is debate as to whether prices for oil will actually rise as much as one might first expect. When the economy tanks, so does the price of oil. Though I think the current economic mess was inevitable even without resource constraints, the high price of oil may have been like a pin to an inflating baloon.
Another scenario would be if as uses for oil become priced out, PEOPLE become priced out. Why is it that people earn what they earn? Why do they have the standard of living they do? Continuing industrial civilization for fewer people allows industrial civilization to continue nonetheless at a smaller scale. If high energy prices and limited oil make aluminum too costly to use in soda cans and plastic too costly to use in soda bottles ( at their current price ) then rather than stopping all soda bottling, the manufacturers are forced to raise the price even if that means they will be bottling less soda. Less soda IS demanded at the new higher price. Some Soda bottlers lose their jobs. The unemployment depresses wages, yet soda bottling continues and higher priced soda continues to be available at the higher price. Maybe this is slow enough that nobody actually loses their jobs, but nobody gets a raise either to keep up with inflation.
So more tap water gets drunk and less soda. That seems like a good thing. How long until the price of clean tap water gets out of reach for everyone? The point is that less soda is a small example of the scope of modern convenience shrinking. It will shrink to match the available resources.
Slowly the comparative advantage the developing world has in terms of labor disappears. Why develop the developing world to use resources that just aren't there?
Modern technological civilization continues on for an ever decreasing few until renewable energy sources can grow faster than nonrenewable use shrinks ( if renewables can ever feasibly form the basis of a technological society which I think they can ). ( this future world might look much like a solar/wind powered Charles Dickens novel ).
At some point when we're all slaves of the machine, a mad scientist invents Cybermen and Doctor Who appears to save the day.
You are right. And government has the power of confiscation ( taxation ). They could collect taxes in chickens, but they accept currency instead. Because non-failed-states have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within their borders, they ultimately have control over ALL productive capacity within their borders. Fiat money has value because it is accepted in payment for taxes. Ultimately money is used to make the tax man not confiscate your other stuff ( although you may have to choose which of your other stuff to sell to get the money to pay the tax man ).
This is why the productive capacity of a country is important to the value of a currency. Nobody has a need to pay taxes in Gargamailians because the Republic of Gargamailia is a 50 sq ft artificial island composed of just sand barely above sea level and has one citizen and no productive capacity. So a Gargamailian isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
No that's taxation is that ultimate power. Consider that all money is debt. When you accept money for a good, you are foregoing having an item to hold it. At a later date you can exchange it for an item or service. Currency (even gold) is a debt the entire economy owes you. You might say: Nobody HAS to sell anything to me for money. True, but since everyone owes taxes, they all need money eventually, and will have to sell something of value to obtain it. Taxes due are a debt everyone owes the government. This also goes for gold when gold is used as money. Gold used as money, not for it's industrial uses, is also a debt. It's recent price rise is due to increased demand for it's use as money.
If the government spends money taken in as taxes, they are shifting resources from the ends of the taxed to public ends. If the government borrows, then they are shifting resources from whatever investment the bondholder would have made towards public ends. If the government prints money then resources are shifted from holders of money toward public ends.
When government spending is malinvestment then it is inflationary. If the economy would have grown more without the spending then it decreases production of goods relative to the money in circulation. This is true however the government comes by the currency whether through taxation, borrowing, or money printing. Taxation shifts resources from the taxed to the government ends, borrowing shifts resources from bondholders to government ends, and money printing shifts resources from money holders to government ends. If production increases sufficiently as a result of government expenditure, then the expenditure has the potential to be deflationary in a good way. If production falls because the expenditure was malinvestment then the expenditure is inflationary. With sufficient deflation because of increase production the real rate of return for bond holders rises. Prices for bonds rise, yeilds fall. With inflation because of lower production, real rates of return fall, prices fall, yeilds rise.
Of course there can be growth despite malinvestment and shrinkage despite wise investment because of external factors. Cheap availability of easily exploitable resources vs those resources becoming harder to find/use for example. Natural disasters or unusual lack of them for another.
That's precisely what is done when gold is used in fractional reserve banking. At a reserve ratio of 1/10. then 10000 gold pieces become 100000 of 'money' denominated in gold. This makes the 'supply' of gold 10 times what it would be without all the 'virtual gold', and because physical gold and virtual gold are interchangeable, this has the effect of inflating the prices of goods with respect to gold, i.e. diminishing the value of gold.
I can heap up some sand in a shallow spot in the middle of the ocean and call my new country Gargamailia. I can print 10000 Gargamailians but their value with respect to gold is zero since my island is just 50 square feet of sand barely sticking up above the waves and I am the only citizen. As you said below value is tied to production.
HAH! Says who? The value of ANYTHING is relative to other goods. There is not and never will be a meaningful 0,0,0 .
People have this false perception that because gold is a physical thing that it can not be used in complex financial shell games. The truth is that it most certainly can be used in complex financial shell games.
The history of the abandoning of gold is the history of the pain caused by various complex financial shell games causing the need for quantitative easing as a band-aid. Is quantitative easing the cause of the problem? No, it's a band-aid. Is the ability to print money the cause? No it's the ability to apply a type of band-aid. The cause of the pain is the damage done by complex financial shell games enabled by the mother of all complex financial shell games, the financial shell game that ultimately finances most of the other games, fractional reserve banking. ( which was first done when goldsmiths created virtual gold to lend into circulation increasing the 'money supply' of gold to many times the physical gold in existence )
Why not decrease the M2 money supply by raising the reserve ratio, simultaneously paying off much national debt with newly printed money in the same amount that was lost from the money supply due to raising the reserve ratio? In the US this is about half the national debt. This NON-Inflated money would flow into the hands of bondholders who would be forced to invest or purchase goods with it or else be stuck with non interest bearing currency.
What effect would this have on the M3 money supply? What importance (if any) does the M3 money supply have? Anyone?
What could be rarer ( and more valuable ) than a geek who bullshits well? Typically ability in one area causes the other area to atrophy.
At the expense of each other - it serves the wankers right. If you ignore these high frequency traders and trade on a longer term based on analysis then you will not be effected. As Cramer from Mad Money says: Use limit orders.
Walk to the beat of your own drummer, and the rest is just noise.
I was bullied constantly in 7th 8th and 9th grades. If you asked someone in my grade to list the top 5 worst bullied kids, my name would likely be there. I was a social pariah. I dropped out early from 9th grade. I ALWAYS stood up regardless of size. Let me tell you that standing up makes it worse in every possible way. The best thing to do is be the guy who never gets in fights because they aren't known for it, the guy who is never noticed. Don't stand up ever. Then it becomes no fun, no glory to pick on you. I envied these people but I was stuck at my school having already gotten the wrong reputation. Instead, be known as someone who will never stand up but who will always go to the authorities.
What happens if you stand up to a bully?
You know it isn't in your interest to kick the ass of a shrimpy bully. So the shrimpy bullies spend all day shouting insults at you because they know you won't really beat them down. They do this because they are shrimpy and it makes them look tough to insult someone of your stature. Some of the bullies are your size or larger. These also may punch you once or twice hoping you'll punch back.
Losing your temper ( which happens ) means you aren't among the worthless targets. You have enough pride to be mocked. LOSE THIS PRIDE and become uninteresting. Let it go that the bullies keep you out of the places you want to go.
When you stand up to one weight class of bully, you don't join the club of respected folks. Winning in one weight class just puts you in the next higher weight class. You get to fight bigger bullies until you lose.
Physical health, beefy musculature, and stature also help...
It could also be that people who are bullied and don't stand up (because they are unable_ become harmed by the repeated experience.
We're looking for juicy steak, and we will select the best, but only after all the beef has passed through this meat grinder. If it's no good for making hamburger then how could it possibly make a good steak?
Almost all the radiation ends up in the skin. Other radiation in total may be higher for a flight, but it is of differing kinds and is absorbed by other parts of body.
I would let them scan me because I hardly ever fly, but I'd be concerned if I had to walk through one of these every few days.
Don't like it? Make a video explaining your views, and put it on your website. Of course nobody will watch it because it will take a million years to download. Comcast's propaganda will however load quite speedily, and they will contribute to the incumbent's campaign fund. Net neutrality is a 'minor issue' so few will mind much that their favorite congressperson is taking money from Comcast.
People figure politians need to take money from somewhere right? How else would campaigns be funded? People figure politicians can just take money from the corps whose positions naturally match what their own views were anyway. People think that because companies compete that there must be a campaign contributing company somewhere that will give your politician money no matter what their views are so that politicians are effectively free from influence.
This is false because all the companies in an industry tend to want their industry to be more profitable and tend to bend their influence toward the same goals. While often no one company gets an advantage over another, those with the means to pay for campaigns tend to get served 'as a group'.. Those without such means are less important.
Wait a minute, you might say, business being profitable IS good since it creates jobs and more thneeds for everyone. Jobs and thneeds can cause profitablity, but profitability doesn't imply more jobs and thneeds. Other things besides public prosperity can cause profitablility, for instance if everyone gave me a dollar, then I'd be rich, but it wouldn't increase the public's prosperity a bit. Almost nobody would be against general prosperity, that being a fairly uncontroversial end (though the right to be contrarian should be maintained!) but the tendency is to fallaciously conflate profitablility with general prosperity.
Net neutrality is an easy way to put good ideas on a more equal footing with well funded ones. Often this is impractical, luckily on an net neutral web, it's natural. The audience is completely in charge of who gets their eyes/ears, and who gets play. Net neutrality is REALLY good for democracy. It's just the sort of medicine needed most right now, and should be preserved.
I agree that them doing a pre-emptive strike is more convincing than them wanting our 'resources'.
I mean what resources would Earth have that would interest such a species that uninhabited planets lack? If they landed here, they'd very likely be brought down by microbes. They would probably stay away from Earth completely and pillage the rest of the solar system instead.
On the other hand they might very well be intelligent robotic life. Maybe such life would be confident that they were immune to our germs, but maybe not. Still, what would be so special about Earth to living robots that Mars could not provide?
I think that germs are the biggest thing to think about if ever humans are to visit there. My gut ( I've nothing more to base it on ) says that there's a 50% chance of there being live microbes there. We probably don't want them on earth. Even if astronaughts live there for a year with no ill effects, they might still be harboring microbes that would devastate the environment on earth. ( What if they had something that killed all spiders, or that targeted rice? Maybe a martian phage that infected only the cellulose processing bacteria in termites.
Since every NP complete problem can be reduced to any other one, then maybe time spent on one NP complete problem can be applied towards solving others. Can one tabulate found solutions to one NP hard problem and apply the experience to other problems? Maybe the fun-ness is the joy in adding to our life's experience in a way we (perhaps instinctually) know is worthwhile. Or maybe not. Just wondering...