lol, sure, a few hundred billion tons going up a space elevator over the course of human habitation is going to have an effect on the tilt of the Earth, which weights ~6E+24 kilos.
Christ, and ant just crawled across my foot and sent me spinning into the wall. That impact sent me flying into space!
I don't think you understand the amount of force that would be required to do that. Maybe if the tether got hit by an asteroid the size of Dallas. Nevermind that in the event of such a catastrophe, they could simply cut the cable at the base, and the whole thing goes flying out into space. There would be plenty of time, as it would easily take weeks to fall.
Also, you demonstrate your lack of understanding of the space elevator concept by claiming the fiber needs to extend to low earth orbit. It doesn't. It has to go to GEOSTATIONARY orbit. If you don't know the difference, Geostationary is MUCH further away, and that is the MINIMUM distance. In reality, it needs to extend beyond it to keep the tether taught.
Totalitarian political systems which encompassed the economy in their scope. They are not dissimilar, and certainly not opposites, as is the case between capitalism and corporatism.
If you want to concentrate wealth, then capitalism is terrible, because everywhere it is implemented, it creates a middle class out of the lower classes. What you want is "any other system" if you want to concentrate wealth.
And I wish you were forced to live a few years as a serf farmer, so you could look upon the opportunities afforded by capitalism with the proper perspective. Then you could go work in one of those "terrible" factories for a few years, and watch with pride as your children joined the middle class.
Yeah, for a few years, until auto-oilers became cheaper than child labor (not to mention that capital allowed their parents to leverage their labor into ever more pay). People look at the "horrors" of the industrial revolution and fail to understand that that was BETTER than the system they had before, agrarian serfdom, where not some but MOST children died before they were 5, and not in sudden horrible accidents, but of starvation and disease.
Stop shoving words in people's mouths. The war destroyed markets that were only partially free due to slavery. Capitalism asserted itself after the war, and crated a capital base that was so strong it survived 100 years of creeping fascism. Imagine what would happen if we had maintained that freedom for a hundred years, or even all the way up until today? Flying cars (constantly blocked by the FAA) are barely the start of it.
What part of corporatism was not preceded by government corruption? Not one iota, from the formation of the Federal Reserve (which Woodrow Wilson agreed to sign before becoming president) to the dismantling of Glass-Steagal, to the continuing bank bailouts of today.
I see, so the computer doesn't exist. In reality, there are billions of people with billions of abacuses doing all the calculations that go into making a computer work. You know, because you need "an unlimited population and unlimited resources to pyramid the resources blah blah blah".
Come off it.
Too bad your kind are in charge of our economy. You think that by holding back rising living standards we can achieve a "better" outcome (which you fail to define).
You also utterly fail to understand exactly HOW people concentrate wealth in free market societies. They do it by SERVING OTHERS IN THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY POSSIBLE.
You prefer an ambiguous world, I guess. Go live among dogs then. I, at least, spell out my definitions. You refuse to acknowledge so much as the existence of definitions, much less spell them out.
Well, let's just throw out all definitions and characterize anything we want according to our mood for the day.
If violence is used or threatened, then the choice made by the person on the other end is not an economic one, and inevitably results in a transfer of wealth from the producers to the guys with the guns, in this case, the government.
If they had no bargaining power, they would all be paid minimum wage. But they aren't. They clearly have bargaining power. All you do with the imposition of wage controls is destroy low paying (read entry level) jobs.
Of course. Family units are almost universally communist in nature. But families are also controlling, and often people end up hating each other, likely for that very reason.
Note that even after we lost pure capitalism, we still had nearly 100 years of progress. We don't have to have it all the time, it is just that the more capitalism you have, the better off society will become, and the harder it is to tear down that society back to the level it was at prior to the advent of capitalism.
You need not impose capital requirements on banks. All you have to do is get rid of the Fed, and let the banks stand or fall on their own. Look to the Free Scottish Banking period. There was a similar period in America, but they were never truly free, as banks were limited to a single branch, increasing the likelihood of a bank run. Note that the purely market regulation of the Scottish Banks in that period basically put an end to bank runs, no government intervention required.
It is difficult to compare the financial panics of the late 1800's with the Great Depression or today, simply because we don't have easy access to the records that we have for the latter two. Many of those panics were caused by war, government intervention in monetary policy (ie greenback inflation directly caused the long depression), etc. Those with no apparent cause were very short, less than a year, often only a few days. And, outside of the Long Depression (which was compounded by the destruction of much of the capital in the South), most of the panics were very short, even if they were steep.
There is no such thing as purity in the real world. But you don't need perfect purity with capitalism. That is the beauty of it.
Note that it is corrupt politicians that allowed them to form the Federal Reserve. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Just because it is hard to be vigilant forever does not mean we should simply abandon freedom and resign ourselves to be slaves. It means that if these people start stealing from us, we just have to route them out, as Andrew Jackson did, much to his credit.
You do well to post as anonymous, so that you aren't subjected to continuous ridicule elsewhere.
You are saying the only way to accomplish the voluntary exchange of goods and services to mutual benefit (the definition of capitalism) is to use violence, something expressly forbidden in capitalism.
Clean the earwax out, kid. We don't have capitalism, or anything resembling it. We have corporatism, and your criticism is a perfectly valid one, when leveled at THAT system.
I take it you are entering your text on a telegraph.
Exponential increases in capability are possible. But not when the excess is siphoned off by money printing, and turned to consumption for non-productive workers.
The return on invested money in a free market system comes from consumer spending.
But that is beside the point. Money isn't wealth, nor is it capital. It is a CLAIM on wealth and capital. The labor that you inject into the economy in exchange for your pay is the real wealth, and your decision not to spend all of your money as soon as you get it (or worse, before you get it) is what allows it to linger in the system, finding its way into capital.
For example, if you are a baker, and you trade bread for money from the blacksmith without spending that money at the blacksmith, he has nothing to do, so while he lives off of your bread, he can spend his time improving his shop. Then, when the baker does decide to go back and buy something from the blacksmith, the blacksmith is able to make horseshoes (or whatever) for 10% off. This is the much feared "deflation" that makes central bankers continually shit their pants. It is nothing but the increasing value of money in real terms.
Slashdot Mirror
To make jib comments and cook.
Bork bork bork.
Wow, I didn't know Lord Haldane was still alive.
"The aeroplane will never fly." -- Lord Haldane, Minister of War, Britain, 1907
lol, sure, a few hundred billion tons going up a space elevator over the course of human habitation is going to have an effect on the tilt of the Earth, which weights ~6E+24 kilos.
Christ, and ant just crawled across my foot and sent me spinning into the wall. That impact sent me flying into space!
Something tells me that no-one is going to care about LEO once the cost to GSO is dramatically reduced by the space elevator.
I don't think you understand the amount of force that would be required to do that. Maybe if the tether got hit by an asteroid the size of Dallas. Nevermind that in the event of such a catastrophe, they could simply cut the cable at the base, and the whole thing goes flying out into space. There would be plenty of time, as it would easily take weeks to fall.
Also, you demonstrate your lack of understanding of the space elevator concept by claiming the fiber needs to extend to low earth orbit. It doesn't. It has to go to GEOSTATIONARY orbit. If you don't know the difference, Geostationary is MUCH further away, and that is the MINIMUM distance. In reality, it needs to extend beyond it to keep the tether taught.
Better dreams than cheap travel throughout the solar system?
I guess you want him to dream about warp drives and molecular replicators.
It isn't easy to make the coke or the platinum, or to pry the diamonds from the hands of the diamond cartel.
ITT people posting as anonymous talking about other people's insecurities.
Totalitarian political systems which encompassed the economy in their scope. They are not dissimilar, and certainly not opposites, as is the case between capitalism and corporatism.
If you want to concentrate wealth, then capitalism is terrible, because everywhere it is implemented, it creates a middle class out of the lower classes. What you want is "any other system" if you want to concentrate wealth.
Yeah, except that China got better when they abandoned communist principles, proving my point.
And I wish you were forced to live a few years as a serf farmer, so you could look upon the opportunities afforded by capitalism with the proper perspective. Then you could go work in one of those "terrible" factories for a few years, and watch with pride as your children joined the middle class.
Yeah, for a few years, until auto-oilers became cheaper than child labor (not to mention that capital allowed their parents to leverage their labor into ever more pay). People look at the "horrors" of the industrial revolution and fail to understand that that was BETTER than the system they had before, agrarian serfdom, where not some but MOST children died before they were 5, and not in sudden horrible accidents, but of starvation and disease.
Stop shoving words in people's mouths. The war destroyed markets that were only partially free due to slavery. Capitalism asserted itself after the war, and crated a capital base that was so strong it survived 100 years of creeping fascism. Imagine what would happen if we had maintained that freedom for a hundred years, or even all the way up until today? Flying cars (constantly blocked by the FAA) are barely the start of it.
What part of corporatism was not preceded by government corruption? Not one iota, from the formation of the Federal Reserve (which Woodrow Wilson agreed to sign before becoming president) to the dismantling of Glass-Steagal, to the continuing bank bailouts of today.
I see, so the computer doesn't exist. In reality, there are billions of people with billions of abacuses doing all the calculations that go into making a computer work. You know, because you need "an unlimited population and unlimited resources to pyramid the resources blah blah blah".
Come off it.
Too bad your kind are in charge of our economy. You think that by holding back rising living standards we can achieve a "better" outcome (which you fail to define).
You also utterly fail to understand exactly HOW people concentrate wealth in free market societies. They do it by SERVING OTHERS IN THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY POSSIBLE.
You prefer an ambiguous world, I guess. Go live among dogs then. I, at least, spell out my definitions. You refuse to acknowledge so much as the existence of definitions, much less spell them out.
Well, let's just throw out all definitions and characterize anything we want according to our mood for the day.
If violence is used or threatened, then the choice made by the person on the other end is not an economic one, and inevitably results in a transfer of wealth from the producers to the guys with the guns, in this case, the government.
If they had no bargaining power, they would all be paid minimum wage. But they aren't. They clearly have bargaining power. All you do with the imposition of wage controls is destroy low paying (read entry level) jobs.
Conspiracy is threat, FYI.
What part of "abandoned the free market" don't you understand?
Of course. Family units are almost universally communist in nature. But families are also controlling, and often people end up hating each other, likely for that very reason.
Note that even after we lost pure capitalism, we still had nearly 100 years of progress. We don't have to have it all the time, it is just that the more capitalism you have, the better off society will become, and the harder it is to tear down that society back to the level it was at prior to the advent of capitalism.
You need not impose capital requirements on banks. All you have to do is get rid of the Fed, and let the banks stand or fall on their own. Look to the Free Scottish Banking period. There was a similar period in America, but they were never truly free, as banks were limited to a single branch, increasing the likelihood of a bank run. Note that the purely market regulation of the Scottish Banks in that period basically put an end to bank runs, no government intervention required.
It is difficult to compare the financial panics of the late 1800's with the Great Depression or today, simply because we don't have easy access to the records that we have for the latter two. Many of those panics were caused by war, government intervention in monetary policy (ie greenback inflation directly caused the long depression), etc. Those with no apparent cause were very short, less than a year, often only a few days. And, outside of the Long Depression (which was compounded by the destruction of much of the capital in the South), most of the panics were very short, even if they were steep.
There is no such thing as purity in the real world. But you don't need perfect purity with capitalism. That is the beauty of it.
Note that it is corrupt politicians that allowed them to form the Federal Reserve. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Just because it is hard to be vigilant forever does not mean we should simply abandon freedom and resign ourselves to be slaves. It means that if these people start stealing from us, we just have to route them out, as Andrew Jackson did, much to his credit.
You do well to post as anonymous, so that you aren't subjected to continuous ridicule elsewhere.
You are saying the only way to accomplish the voluntary exchange of goods and services to mutual benefit (the definition of capitalism) is to use violence, something expressly forbidden in capitalism.
Clean the earwax out, kid. We don't have capitalism, or anything resembling it. We have corporatism, and your criticism is a perfectly valid one, when leveled at THAT system.
I take it you are entering your text on a telegraph.
Exponential increases in capability are possible. But not when the excess is siphoned off by money printing, and turned to consumption for non-productive workers.
The return on invested money in a free market system comes from consumer spending.
But that is beside the point. Money isn't wealth, nor is it capital. It is a CLAIM on wealth and capital. The labor that you inject into the economy in exchange for your pay is the real wealth, and your decision not to spend all of your money as soon as you get it (or worse, before you get it) is what allows it to linger in the system, finding its way into capital.
For example, if you are a baker, and you trade bread for money from the blacksmith without spending that money at the blacksmith, he has nothing to do, so while he lives off of your bread, he can spend his time improving his shop. Then, when the baker does decide to go back and buy something from the blacksmith, the blacksmith is able to make horseshoes (or whatever) for 10% off. This is the much feared "deflation" that makes central bankers continually shit their pants. It is nothing but the increasing value of money in real terms.