Exactly what uses has gold had historically? I don't know of any other than ornament. Currently we use gold industrially and scientifically in negligible amounts.
You seem to fundamentally misunderstand where the value of gold comes from--it is valued as a rare thing that can't be easily produced, but can be easily subdivided and hoarded without harming the economy (versus something like like diamonds,which can't be easily subdivided, or platinum, which is used heavily as a catalyst, etc).
Gold is valued as a means of transaction, something it is currently not used for at all. The total value of all the gold in the world is not nearly enough to satisfy the need for transactions on ANY scale. Not without a massive revaluation upwards. But hey, you drink that Kool-aid they serve in Keynes Klown Kollege. I hear it's grape flavored.
I don't need luck, all I need is crazy people in office and running the central bank.
Note that I would trade it all, 100%, for sane people in office who would dismantle the central bank and slide the scale of our mixed economy back towards a free market. I would rather live in a free market as a middle class person than be rich in an apocalyptic post-Keynesian hellhole.
Please illustrate which third world policies have "hands off" policies when it comes to economics. 90+% of third world countries have confiscory tax regimes, or are politically unstable, allowing gangs to act like mini-governments and steal from the people. On the contrary, 100% of all economic powers either have hands off policies, or had them until relatively recently, or have access to vast amounts of mineral wealth.
Ok, you have made a false assumption here. Think about what minimum wages are, and more importantly WHO takes a minimum wage job. Here's a hint: they aren't heads of households.
I worked minimum wage as a boy, even worked my way up to higher wages, and was able to save and help to pay the household bills (I lived in a poor household) AND helped to pay for my own schooling (with the balance made up with merit scholarships and student loans). Now, out of college for four years, and I have saved up a year's salary. I could have bought a nice house, or a nice car, or whatever, but I chose not to, preferring to save for the future. Luckily, I put those savings outside of the reach of monetary authorities by buying gold and silver.
Why do liberals assume that everyone only makes minimum wage? It is a persistent idea that seems to come from nowhere other than their own egos, ie "I'm helping hard working people by voting to increase the minimum wage" when in reality all they are doing is destroying entry level positions. Prior to the institution of minimum wage laws, restaurants hired people to wash the dishes. Now they buy dishwashers, because minimum wage laws made a machine cheaper than a person. Now those kids who would normally start their lives working entry level have one fewer option. Instead, they are forced to go to college, and graduate with a huge student loan debt, which forces them to take the first job that they get, and causes them to live in mortal fear of losing said job.
It is a terrible situation, and it was created by mixed markets.
Might want ot actually learn some history before you bash his take. Read about the currencies that preceded and followed the French Revolution, and you will find that what he says is quite true.
What, and you think regulatory compliance costs negative money? Are you stupid or something? The tiny amount of start up funds required to start a business in a free market is not a barrier when a company is charging two or three times their costs for some product.
You are the one that didn't look closely. The price of kerosene on the date that Standard Oil WAS BROKEN UP was 1/10th of what it was on the day it was founded.
If you can't see the truth after all this, then your bias is beyond reach. You should go live in the worker's paradise of North Korea.
WHAT? I guess a life of backbreaking labor on the farm must have been paradise? You know, where most of the kids died before their twelfth birthday? You know, the farms that STILL EXISTED then, and that they could have just as easily gone back to if they had wanted, but went to the factories because they saw a way to get a better life for themselves and their children? And surprise, surprise, they were right, as the middle class emerged from their efforts.
Or maybe you prefer for the kids to be forced into prostitution, or simply starve? Child labor was ENDEMIC prior to industrialization. Once it was complete, it was GONE. And this was BEFORE child labor laws were enacted, by the way.
But hey, you just ignore the fact that that was the period during which the middle class emerged. Nevermind that there was none before, and that now, under the "super duper hunky dory" regulatory regime you love so well that it is shrinking, and will soon DISAPPEAR, right back into the shackles of Feudalism that were once broken by the free markets you hate so much.
I like how you ignore the fact that capitalism was facilitating the transfer of world economic systems from the utter brutality of slavery and feudalism to what we have today, as if going back to a free market would suddenly cause all the bosses of the world to put on leather chaps and break out the whips.
The behavior you describe is a symptom of the transition from slavery to freedom--nothing more, nothing less. The same thing can be seen in ANY society where such a transition has been made, and it is a SLIDING SCALE. As you approach free market conditions, the brutality disappears, because you have a skilled workforce that won't put up with that crap. This is why Henry Ford paid three times the going wage for his factory workers. Something you conveniently ignore.
Pinkertons were also regularly prosecuted for their actions. Are you saying that current corporations can't hire mobsters or thugs to beat up striking workers? Or do you only like it when unaccountable police forces do that?
BS. Anyone who has cash flow can save money. Or they are dying of starvation. The likelihood of someone having literally only exactly enough to "survive" is practically zero. One can ALWAYS sacrifice current consumption for future gain. Whether that means eating rice instead of bread, or living with your parents instead of your own apartment, or making extra effort to pick up discarded cans for recycling (sacrificing leisure time).
Further, the existence of such a class of people (marginal) means only that the debtors are in total control and have looted the economy to the point that there is nothing left for those without capital. And even if they did exist in reality, they would be so few that it wouldn't affect macroeconomics.
True. But America isn't capitalist, and hasn't been for 98 years. We became a mixed market in 1913, and have been sliding from free market to communism/fascism during that time.
So tell me how does a company keep out competition while providing low quality service at a high price in a free market?
During the implementation of Standard Oil's 90% market monopoly, the price was driven down 90%, and it stayed there until it was broken up. How EXACTLY is that bad?
Further note that free market monopolies were SUPER RARE, and 100% positive of the consumer due to free market pressures. On the other hand, monopolies are common or even the norm in mixed market/socialist scenarios, and as a result, service is crappy and expensive. As an example, AT&T was GRANTED a monopoly by the US government, and as a result sucked donkey balls for years while forcing the people to pay for those balls like they were caviar. Then the government broke up Ma Bell into regional monopolies, and nothing got better. It wasn't until cell phones came onto the scene that change was forced onto those companies.
Thing is, free markets don't have to be "perfect" to work. Look at the US between the end of Reconstruction and 1913. That was an imperfect free market, but very close to an ideal embodiment. It's just that there WAS a government, and that government did some nasty things even during that time. But even with its imperfection, the economy grew in a sustainable fashion and at a rate greater than any other sustainable boom in human history. We went from being a backwater to a simple industrial retooling away from a superpower during that time.
The fact that communism has to be perfect to work is what means that it will never work. The fact that an economy will prosper in direct proportion to its compliance with free market philosophy is what makes the free market superior to all other economic ideologies. No need for central control. No need for special (re)education. No need for perfection of any type. IT JUST WORKS.
However, when you undermine its foundation with a central bank, you set yourself up for failure.
Compare the results from the implementation of each between the time they were started and the time they ended. Libertarian philosophy was practiced (imperfectly) in the US from the end of Reconstruction through 1913 (the implementation of a central bank removed the foundation of libertarianism, the time after that was a mixed market, and the results could not be blamed on either ideology, though it seems obvious that the less free the economy became, the worse things got). The result was the greatest period of economic progress in any nation's history. Between the (imperfect) implementation and fall of Communism in Russia, tens of millions of people were killed, and everyone other than high ranking party members were impoverished.
The author identifies the fundamental flaw with Marx's theory--he used a false premise. The author here starts a corrected premise and proceeds to give a very interesting history lesson, one which applies quite strongly to today's economic environment.
Nothing, because the human population will peak around 2050, and decline back to around current levels (or slightly below) after that, according to demographic trends.
The only way to keep the population growing is to keep it poor. The liberals of the world are doing a great job there, but the depression is likely to eat their political careers before they can have much effect.
Why do these idiots have a monopoly on first class mail now? They can't even operate at a profit. Kill the monopoly, kill all funding to the USPS and let the market decide. If they shape up their act, then they will survive and continue to provide the "high quality" service they are known for (snort). If not, then we didn't really need them, and more likely some other company would do a better job anyways. After all, there is NO REASON for it to cost the same to mail something in the same town as it does to mail across the country. It is stupid decisions like that that keep these guys coming back, hat in hand looking for bailouts.
Maybe if they fired the top 10% of the USPS bureaucracy every time they got a bailout, things would change for the better.
I would expect to see it in about 5 years or so, given the recent advances in mass production technology in the lab (ie methods for cheaply producing continuous sheets of graphene limited only by the size of the production facility).
Longer if the government decides to get involved. Possibly never at that point, just like how they got involved in aviation and killed the flying car (like six separate times).
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly what uses has gold had historically? I don't know of any other than ornament. Currently we use gold industrially and scientifically in negligible amounts.
You seem to fundamentally misunderstand where the value of gold comes from--it is valued as a rare thing that can't be easily produced, but can be easily subdivided and hoarded without harming the economy (versus something like like diamonds,which can't be easily subdivided, or platinum, which is used heavily as a catalyst, etc).
Gold is valued as a means of transaction, something it is currently not used for at all. The total value of all the gold in the world is not nearly enough to satisfy the need for transactions on ANY scale. Not without a massive revaluation upwards. But hey, you drink that Kool-aid they serve in Keynes Klown Kollege. I hear it's grape flavored.
You have never seen a fiat currency collapse, I take it?
Uh-huh, and what was the state of farm labor in those places?
I thought so.
Uh-huh, so worst possible case scenarios exist, therefore NO-ONE can work and save money.
Also funny that you think that a soft money debtor regime would make it easy to be a hard money saver.
I don't need luck, all I need is crazy people in office and running the central bank.
Note that I would trade it all, 100%, for sane people in office who would dismantle the central bank and slide the scale of our mixed economy back towards a free market. I would rather live in a free market as a middle class person than be rich in an apocalyptic post-Keynesian hellhole.
Please illustrate which third world policies have "hands off" policies when it comes to economics. 90+% of third world countries have confiscory tax regimes, or are politically unstable, allowing gangs to act like mini-governments and steal from the people. On the contrary, 100% of all economic powers either have hands off policies, or had them until relatively recently, or have access to vast amounts of mineral wealth.
Ok, you have made a false assumption here. Think about what minimum wages are, and more importantly WHO takes a minimum wage job. Here's a hint: they aren't heads of households.
I worked minimum wage as a boy, even worked my way up to higher wages, and was able to save and help to pay the household bills (I lived in a poor household) AND helped to pay for my own schooling (with the balance made up with merit scholarships and student loans). Now, out of college for four years, and I have saved up a year's salary. I could have bought a nice house, or a nice car, or whatever, but I chose not to, preferring to save for the future. Luckily, I put those savings outside of the reach of monetary authorities by buying gold and silver.
Why do liberals assume that everyone only makes minimum wage? It is a persistent idea that seems to come from nowhere other than their own egos, ie "I'm helping hard working people by voting to increase the minimum wage" when in reality all they are doing is destroying entry level positions. Prior to the institution of minimum wage laws, restaurants hired people to wash the dishes. Now they buy dishwashers, because minimum wage laws made a machine cheaper than a person. Now those kids who would normally start their lives working entry level have one fewer option. Instead, they are forced to go to college, and graduate with a huge student loan debt, which forces them to take the first job that they get, and causes them to live in mortal fear of losing said job.
It is a terrible situation, and it was created by mixed markets.
Might want ot actually learn some history before you bash his take. Read about the currencies that preceded and followed the French Revolution, and you will find that what he says is quite true.
What, and you think regulatory compliance costs negative money? Are you stupid or something? The tiny amount of start up funds required to start a business in a free market is not a barrier when a company is charging two or three times their costs for some product.
You are the one that didn't look closely. The price of kerosene on the date that Standard Oil WAS BROKEN UP was 1/10th of what it was on the day it was founded.
If you can't see the truth after all this, then your bias is beyond reach. You should go live in the worker's paradise of North Korea.
WHAT? I guess a life of backbreaking labor on the farm must have been paradise? You know, where most of the kids died before their twelfth birthday? You know, the farms that STILL EXISTED then, and that they could have just as easily gone back to if they had wanted, but went to the factories because they saw a way to get a better life for themselves and their children? And surprise, surprise, they were right, as the middle class emerged from their efforts.
Or maybe you prefer for the kids to be forced into prostitution, or simply starve? Child labor was ENDEMIC prior to industrialization. Once it was complete, it was GONE. And this was BEFORE child labor laws were enacted, by the way.
But hey, you just ignore the fact that that was the period during which the middle class emerged. Nevermind that there was none before, and that now, under the "super duper hunky dory" regulatory regime you love so well that it is shrinking, and will soon DISAPPEAR, right back into the shackles of Feudalism that were once broken by the free markets you hate so much.
I like how you ignore the fact that capitalism was facilitating the transfer of world economic systems from the utter brutality of slavery and feudalism to what we have today, as if going back to a free market would suddenly cause all the bosses of the world to put on leather chaps and break out the whips.
The behavior you describe is a symptom of the transition from slavery to freedom--nothing more, nothing less. The same thing can be seen in ANY society where such a transition has been made, and it is a SLIDING SCALE. As you approach free market conditions, the brutality disappears, because you have a skilled workforce that won't put up with that crap. This is why Henry Ford paid three times the going wage for his factory workers. Something you conveniently ignore.
Pinkertons were also regularly prosecuted for their actions. Are you saying that current corporations can't hire mobsters or thugs to beat up striking workers? Or do you only like it when unaccountable police forces do that?
BS. Anyone who has cash flow can save money. Or they are dying of starvation. The likelihood of someone having literally only exactly enough to "survive" is practically zero. One can ALWAYS sacrifice current consumption for future gain. Whether that means eating rice instead of bread, or living with your parents instead of your own apartment, or making extra effort to pick up discarded cans for recycling (sacrificing leisure time).
Further, the existence of such a class of people (marginal) means only that the debtors are in total control and have looted the economy to the point that there is nothing left for those without capital. And even if they did exist in reality, they would be so few that it wouldn't affect macroeconomics.
Methinks you are a debtor, sir.
True. But America isn't capitalist, and hasn't been for 98 years. We became a mixed market in 1913, and have been sliding from free market to communism/fascism during that time.
So tell me how does a company keep out competition while providing low quality service at a high price in a free market?
During the implementation of Standard Oil's 90% market monopoly, the price was driven down 90%, and it stayed there until it was broken up. How EXACTLY is that bad?
Further note that free market monopolies were SUPER RARE, and 100% positive of the consumer due to free market pressures. On the other hand, monopolies are common or even the norm in mixed market/socialist scenarios, and as a result, service is crappy and expensive. As an example, AT&T was GRANTED a monopoly by the US government, and as a result sucked donkey balls for years while forcing the people to pay for those balls like they were caviar. Then the government broke up Ma Bell into regional monopolies, and nothing got better. It wasn't until cell phones came onto the scene that change was forced onto those companies.
Thing is, free markets don't have to be "perfect" to work. Look at the US between the end of Reconstruction and 1913. That was an imperfect free market, but very close to an ideal embodiment. It's just that there WAS a government, and that government did some nasty things even during that time. But even with its imperfection, the economy grew in a sustainable fashion and at a rate greater than any other sustainable boom in human history. We went from being a backwater to a simple industrial retooling away from a superpower during that time.
The fact that communism has to be perfect to work is what means that it will never work. The fact that an economy will prosper in direct proportion to its compliance with free market philosophy is what makes the free market superior to all other economic ideologies. No need for central control. No need for special (re)education. No need for perfection of any type. IT JUST WORKS.
However, when you undermine its foundation with a central bank, you set yourself up for failure.
Compare the results from the implementation of each between the time they were started and the time they ended. Libertarian philosophy was practiced (imperfectly) in the US from the end of Reconstruction through 1913 (the implementation of a central bank removed the foundation of libertarianism, the time after that was a mixed market, and the results could not be blamed on either ideology, though it seems obvious that the less free the economy became, the worse things got). The result was the greatest period of economic progress in any nation's history. Between the (imperfect) implementation and fall of Communism in Russia, tens of millions of people were killed, and everyone other than high ranking party members were impoverished.
Everyone who wants to discuss Marx should read this first: http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2010/07/debtors-and-savers.html
The author identifies the fundamental flaw with Marx's theory--he used a false premise. The author here starts a corrected premise and proceeds to give a very interesting history lesson, one which applies quite strongly to today's economic environment.
Nothing, because the human population will peak around 2050, and decline back to around current levels (or slightly below) after that, according to demographic trends.
The only way to keep the population growing is to keep it poor. The liberals of the world are doing a great job there, but the depression is likely to eat their political careers before they can have much effect.
Why do these idiots have a monopoly on first class mail now? They can't even operate at a profit. Kill the monopoly, kill all funding to the USPS and let the market decide. If they shape up their act, then they will survive and continue to provide the "high quality" service they are known for (snort). If not, then we didn't really need them, and more likely some other company would do a better job anyways. After all, there is NO REASON for it to cost the same to mail something in the same town as it does to mail across the country. It is stupid decisions like that that keep these guys coming back, hat in hand looking for bailouts.
Maybe if they fired the top 10% of the USPS bureaucracy every time they got a bailout, things would change for the better.
Fuck you, I care. Graphene is the future of humanity. You go live in the past if you want to.
If you need me, I'll be making the spool for my space elevator.
I would expect to see it in about 5 years or so, given the recent advances in mass production technology in the lab (ie methods for cheaply producing continuous sheets of graphene limited only by the size of the production facility).
Longer if the government decides to get involved. Possibly never at that point, just like how they got involved in aviation and killed the flying car (like six separate times).
I'm pretty sure 56K modems aren't optical communications devices.
Why is this modded troll? Did I fall into an alternate dimension where unites for Fahrenheit were larger than Celsius? If so, how do I get back?
Sometimes for nothing at all!