Don't worry, I think the failing dollar will do that regardless of what the politicians tell people to feel or do.
Gas is up to damn near $3 again, but this time, people don't have jobs. Environmentalists wanted to reduce our energy use, and they are going to get it. Hopefully we can avoid the starvation and poverty normally associated with reductions in energy use.
I sure can't think of any public services that are better than private equivalents, at least prior to the government enforcing rules and regulations to prevent competition with the government in such sectors.
Generally, the arguments brought up against private services include use of patently illegal tactics that were rarely if ever used by the industry in question, and for which any failure to prosecute was the fault of the government, not the industry. For example, we have private firemen starting fires, well, there are plenty of examples of firemen starting fires today. This is done by gloryhounds. Other people bring up the issue of murders or assaults by Pinkertons. The Pinkertons who committed such acts were forced to answer for their behavior in court, and were dealt with particularly harshly. Police, not so much.
Hell, I won't even call the police, because they are more likely to kill me, a member of my family, or my dogs as they are to arrest any lawbreakers in the area. In my own hometown, the police responded to a guy who was suicidal, where the wife said there was a gun in the house. He didn't have the gun in his hand, but it was at the bottom of the closet, disassembled with no bullets. The police surrounded the house, and opened fire, leaving some 300 bullet holes in the house. One policeman was killed (or injured, I don't recall) by a bullet that went through the house. Turns out it was fired by another officer. They tried to pin it on the guy, who they put in the hospital with some half dozen gunshot wounds. He was only let off when they found out where the gun was, and proved that the bullet that struck the officer came from a rifle rather than a handgun. There are huge numbers of incidents like this, but we let the police get away with it because they are authority figures.
The same is the case with most any other government organization, whether it be the DMV, the IRS (who now have shock troops, by the way), or Homeland Security. They all stand in the way of freedom and real progress. Why do you think we don't have flying cars yet? Is it because technology is not advancing as fast as we thought it would back in the 50's? NO! It's because the FAA refuses to change its policies, leaving us stuck in the same situation we were in when they were formed. Further, the costs they impose create monolithic corporations that commingle with regulatory agencies to the ends of disaster for all (see BP).
To fully illustrate the scope of this problem, think of the United States in the year 1900. Economically, we were the most powerful nation on the planet. Militarily, we were a bit of a backwater, but that's ok, we didn't need to kill brown people (we still don't, but we keep doing it for some reason). We did have strong border defenses, especially with Poncho Villa wreaking havoc along the border. We had a respectable navy, and a strong merchant marine corp. Total government spending was 2% of GDP. 2%!
Today it's 40%! We have military bases all around the world, are engaged in three wars, and our economy is crumbling. Everything is being nationalized, from student loans, to banking, to car companies, to the stock market. Clearly, more government spending is not what we need. But we're going to get it, no matter what us "little people" think about it. This is not a matter of left or right. Both the left and the right have conspired over the last hundred years to increase their own power and wealth, while selling the freedoms of the American people down the river. They have promoted these very form of thinking that says that "governments can compete with private industry", and that they can somehow "save the free market" while fully ignoring its principles. Well screw that. We don't need ANY government "services", and we certainly don't need 95% of the crap they shovel down our throats, whether they are war, empire, or bankrupt social programs set up like Ponzi schemes.
Also, mouseover tells you the name of the program associated with the icon, and unlike Windoes, pops up instantly, and goes away instantly as soon as you move away from it.
I recently got a netbook with Windows, and I must say, I remember why I switched. You get a damn pop-up every five seconds telling you something or another that I don't care about. Luckily, it came with a mini-OS that just does internet browsing chat, skype, music, and photos. I'm only interested in browsing on that little thing, so it works well enough. Another plus is that it only takes a few seconds to boot into that.
The really odd part is that he apparently had insurance. Why didn't the insurance company force him to have fire coverage, or drop his policy (or refuse to pay when the cause of loss is a fire)?
The insurer is the one that screwed the pooch here, by my reckoning. But then, this type of thing probably doesn't happen that often.
Would it be simpler to use a sheet of graphene to build a space elevator rather than carbon nanotubes? It certainly seems to have the tensile strength for it...
The summery is wrong as usual. The MASS of the exoplanet is 2-3 times that of Earth, but the gravity at the surface is likely only about 10-20% higher than that of Earth, as it's diameter will be larger as well.
This will be a planet unlike any that I have ever read about in science fiction. A world in eternal twilight caught between a land of fire and a land of ice. No North or south, only lightward and darkward. And life only able to survive in a ring that is perpendicular to the star.
I figure if we send a probe today, it can probably get there in 200 years, assuming we can average.1 C. Time's a'wastin.
You have things exactly backwards. The problem was that governments wanted to spend more money than they had. They can do that with fiat currencies, but the result is always and in 100% of cases a collapse of said currency, and often brutal revolution. The US dollar has been fully fiat for 40 years. The longest a fiat currency has lasted in known history is 60 years. What does that tell you?
I know what it tells me--don't save in fiat. It is nothing more than a tool for the government and/or non-governmental entities to steal from you.
Who watches the money managers? What's to stop them from printing more for themselves, or for their pet projects? What do you do when all that printing exhausts all of the real goods that exist in society?
So you're saying that gold never circulated under a gold standard?
What are you smoking?
Your "tokens" WILL circulate, but only at the correct price. If a token is worth two goats instead of one, but sellers of goats demand a whole token in exchange, you will sit on the token until you find a more reasonable seller. If you don't find one, then you will eventually realize that maybe they aren't as valuable as you thought. Conversely, if you are selling goats, but want a token per goat, rather than a token per two goats, you will quickly find yourself out of business if everyone else is charging half as much.
People have this weird notion that money has some sort of intrinsic value beyond what we assign to it. It doesn't. You can't stick a gold coin in the ground and expect two goats to pop out. It is simply a medium of exchange. If your tokens are made of gold, well, gold is hard to come by, and it isn't used up, so over time, the supply becomes very steady. It doesn't decay, so people can hold on to it if they want to, and buy something later. All this business about "hoarding" hurting the economy is only in your head (and in the heads of the witch doctors in charge of our economy). "Hoarding" gold only means that you have provided some good or service to the economy. If you got a bit of silver for a fish, and sat on it the rest of your life, then someone got a free fish, because you provided a good to the economy without consuming anything in return. The economy will take that free bit of food, and use it to feed someone who is, say, building a factory, allowing him to work longer, rather than having to work a half day, then run out and catch his own fish. Put enough small contributions like this together, and you get a factory out of the deal. Said factory can produce more and better goods for said fisherman, so he can now trade his silver for more goods than if he had simply turned around and spent it. This is how economies grow. Consumer spending does NOT grow an economy, it merely destroys savings. This is exactly why we are going from being the number one nation in the world to being a middling empire, all under the watch of the "spend more on consumption" crowd.
Your conclusion is correct. If your first two sentances were correct, no-one would ever buy computers, which have been going down in price and getting better for decades. No-one ever complains about deflation in electronics.
Deflation is GOOD. It rewards savers (who contribute labor to the economy in exchange for a shiny, where the economy takes their saved labor and invests it in capital goods, like factories), and encourages the use of one's own money as capital rather than borrowing to spend. Absent the occassional government intervention during wartime, the 1800's in the US were a perfect example of this. We went from being a backwoods hillybilly nation to a metropolitan near superpower, and all during a slight, yet persistent deflation.
Perhaps the most apt metaphor is that of bloodletting. As the "doctors" drained the blood, the patients got progressively worse, leading them to prescribe more bloodletting. It's a vicious cycle perpetuated by economic ignorance.
Ignore, laugh, fight, win. These are the four stages of victory as laid out by Ghandi. Apparently, we are somewhere between stage 2 and 3, as I am being modded troll and funny on these things.
I don't know about that, having missed the article. You should know that actual, physical gold does trade at a great premium to an ounce somewhere in a 400 ounce bar held in some bullion repository, much like a loaf of bread trades for a premium over an equivalent amount of nutrition in a granary.
The smaller the amount of gold, the more it costs, because the assay costs are the same regardless of the size. Certain coins from national mints have guaranteed purity, and so trade at an even higher premium. American gold eagles regularly go for $100 more than the spot price for gold. You get the premium back when you sell it. Basically, it amounts to a couple of percent leverage, as the premium is usually a certain percentage of spot price, though it changes depending on supply and demand for a given type of bullion.
Only when you look at the dollar part of that equation.
There is no such thing as a gold bubble, there is only gold as a currency, or gold that is not a currency. There was an aborted transition in 1980, and it looks like there is another attempt at a transition coming now.
They did compensate people for seized gold. They just promptly devalued the dollars they paid for them with.
And considering the massive failure that was the last gold seizure (they only got 500 tons total), and the fact that we aren't on a gold standard, so they can devalue the dollar just fine as is, there is no need and little likelihood of future seizure of gold. Your retirement accounts will probably be nationalized long before your gold is seized.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's about suggesting that people murder those who disagree with them, jokingly at first, to gauge the reaction, then seriously.
I'm sure someone in Hitler's cabinet thought it would be funny if they "just killed all the Jews". Yes. Totally hilarious.
Don't worry, I think the failing dollar will do that regardless of what the politicians tell people to feel or do.
Gas is up to damn near $3 again, but this time, people don't have jobs. Environmentalists wanted to reduce our energy use, and they are going to get it. Hopefully we can avoid the starvation and poverty normally associated with reductions in energy use.
We don't have THAT much oil. Not exactly Saudi Arabia here.
And besides, even if that were the case, then why haven't Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington State, and Wyoming burned down yet?
You ARE the missing link.
I sure can't think of any public services that are better than private equivalents, at least prior to the government enforcing rules and regulations to prevent competition with the government in such sectors.
Generally, the arguments brought up against private services include use of patently illegal tactics that were rarely if ever used by the industry in question, and for which any failure to prosecute was the fault of the government, not the industry. For example, we have private firemen starting fires, well, there are plenty of examples of firemen starting fires today. This is done by gloryhounds. Other people bring up the issue of murders or assaults by Pinkertons. The Pinkertons who committed such acts were forced to answer for their behavior in court, and were dealt with particularly harshly. Police, not so much.
Hell, I won't even call the police, because they are more likely to kill me, a member of my family, or my dogs as they are to arrest any lawbreakers in the area. In my own hometown, the police responded to a guy who was suicidal, where the wife said there was a gun in the house. He didn't have the gun in his hand, but it was at the bottom of the closet, disassembled with no bullets. The police surrounded the house, and opened fire, leaving some 300 bullet holes in the house. One policeman was killed (or injured, I don't recall) by a bullet that went through the house. Turns out it was fired by another officer. They tried to pin it on the guy, who they put in the hospital with some half dozen gunshot wounds. He was only let off when they found out where the gun was, and proved that the bullet that struck the officer came from a rifle rather than a handgun. There are huge numbers of incidents like this, but we let the police get away with it because they are authority figures.
The same is the case with most any other government organization, whether it be the DMV, the IRS (who now have shock troops, by the way), or Homeland Security. They all stand in the way of freedom and real progress. Why do you think we don't have flying cars yet? Is it because technology is not advancing as fast as we thought it would back in the 50's? NO! It's because the FAA refuses to change its policies, leaving us stuck in the same situation we were in when they were formed. Further, the costs they impose create monolithic corporations that commingle with regulatory agencies to the ends of disaster for all (see BP).
To fully illustrate the scope of this problem, think of the United States in the year 1900. Economically, we were the most powerful nation on the planet. Militarily, we were a bit of a backwater, but that's ok, we didn't need to kill brown people (we still don't, but we keep doing it for some reason). We did have strong border defenses, especially with Poncho Villa wreaking havoc along the border. We had a respectable navy, and a strong merchant marine corp. Total government spending was 2% of GDP. 2%!
Today it's 40%! We have military bases all around the world, are engaged in three wars, and our economy is crumbling. Everything is being nationalized, from student loans, to banking, to car companies, to the stock market. Clearly, more government spending is not what we need. But we're going to get it, no matter what us "little people" think about it. This is not a matter of left or right. Both the left and the right have conspired over the last hundred years to increase their own power and wealth, while selling the freedoms of the American people down the river. They have promoted these very form of thinking that says that "governments can compete with private industry", and that they can somehow "save the free market" while fully ignoring its principles. Well screw that. We don't need ANY government "services", and we certainly don't need 95% of the crap they shovel down our throats, whether they are war, empire, or bankrupt social programs set up like Ponzi schemes.
Property taxes, generally. Sales taxes could be used as well.
Uhhh, command+tab works fine for me.
Also, mouseover tells you the name of the program associated with the icon, and unlike Windoes, pops up instantly, and goes away instantly as soon as you move away from it.
I recently got a netbook with Windows, and I must say, I remember why I switched. You get a damn pop-up every five seconds telling you something or another that I don't care about. Luckily, it came with a mini-OS that just does internet browsing chat, skype, music, and photos. I'm only interested in browsing on that little thing, so it works well enough. Another plus is that it only takes a few seconds to boot into that.
Texas doesn't have an income tax either, and we manage not to burn down.
The answer isn't always more government.
The really odd part is that he apparently had insurance. Why didn't the insurance company force him to have fire coverage, or drop his policy (or refuse to pay when the cause of loss is a fire)?
The insurer is the one that screwed the pooch here, by my reckoning. But then, this type of thing probably doesn't happen that often.
Richard Branson might have something to say about that.
You'll need some sort of robotic politician from the future to pull that off.
Oh SHI-
Would it be simpler to use a sheet of graphene to build a space elevator rather than carbon nanotubes? It certainly seems to have the tensile strength for it...
The summery is wrong as usual. The MASS of the exoplanet is 2-3 times that of Earth, but the gravity at the surface is likely only about 10-20% higher than that of Earth, as it's diameter will be larger as well.
.1 C. Time's a'wastin.
This will be a planet unlike any that I have ever read about in science fiction. A world in eternal twilight caught between a land of fire and a land of ice. No North or south, only lightward and darkward. And life only able to survive in a ring that is perpendicular to the star.
I figure if we send a probe today, it can probably get there in 200 years, assuming we can average
You have things exactly backwards. The problem was that governments wanted to spend more money than they had. They can do that with fiat currencies, but the result is always and in 100% of cases a collapse of said currency, and often brutal revolution. The US dollar has been fully fiat for 40 years. The longest a fiat currency has lasted in known history is 60 years. What does that tell you?
I know what it tells me--don't save in fiat. It is nothing more than a tool for the government and/or non-governmental entities to steal from you.
Who watches the money managers? What's to stop them from printing more for themselves, or for their pet projects? What do you do when all that printing exhausts all of the real goods that exist in society?
So you're saying that gold never circulated under a gold standard?
What are you smoking?
Your "tokens" WILL circulate, but only at the correct price. If a token is worth two goats instead of one, but sellers of goats demand a whole token in exchange, you will sit on the token until you find a more reasonable seller. If you don't find one, then you will eventually realize that maybe they aren't as valuable as you thought. Conversely, if you are selling goats, but want a token per goat, rather than a token per two goats, you will quickly find yourself out of business if everyone else is charging half as much.
People have this weird notion that money has some sort of intrinsic value beyond what we assign to it. It doesn't. You can't stick a gold coin in the ground and expect two goats to pop out. It is simply a medium of exchange. If your tokens are made of gold, well, gold is hard to come by, and it isn't used up, so over time, the supply becomes very steady. It doesn't decay, so people can hold on to it if they want to, and buy something later. All this business about "hoarding" hurting the economy is only in your head (and in the heads of the witch doctors in charge of our economy). "Hoarding" gold only means that you have provided some good or service to the economy. If you got a bit of silver for a fish, and sat on it the rest of your life, then someone got a free fish, because you provided a good to the economy without consuming anything in return. The economy will take that free bit of food, and use it to feed someone who is, say, building a factory, allowing him to work longer, rather than having to work a half day, then run out and catch his own fish. Put enough small contributions like this together, and you get a factory out of the deal. Said factory can produce more and better goods for said fisherman, so he can now trade his silver for more goods than if he had simply turned around and spent it. This is how economies grow. Consumer spending does NOT grow an economy, it merely destroys savings. This is exactly why we are going from being the number one nation in the world to being a middling empire, all under the watch of the "spend more on consumption" crowd.
Your conclusion is correct. If your first two sentances were correct, no-one would ever buy computers, which have been going down in price and getting better for decades. No-one ever complains about deflation in electronics.
Deflation is GOOD. It rewards savers (who contribute labor to the economy in exchange for a shiny, where the economy takes their saved labor and invests it in capital goods, like factories), and encourages the use of one's own money as capital rather than borrowing to spend. Absent the occassional government intervention during wartime, the 1800's in the US were a perfect example of this. We went from being a backwoods hillybilly nation to a metropolitan near superpower, and all during a slight, yet persistent deflation.
What makes you think they haven't already?
It hasn't been audited in 60 years.
Perhaps the most apt metaphor is that of bloodletting. As the "doctors" drained the blood, the patients got progressively worse, leading them to prescribe more bloodletting. It's a vicious cycle perpetuated by economic ignorance.
Ignore, laugh, fight, win. These are the four stages of victory as laid out by Ghandi. Apparently, we are somewhere between stage 2 and 3, as I am being modded troll and funny on these things.
I don't know about that, having missed the article. You should know that actual, physical gold does trade at a great premium to an ounce somewhere in a 400 ounce bar held in some bullion repository, much like a loaf of bread trades for a premium over an equivalent amount of nutrition in a granary.
The smaller the amount of gold, the more it costs, because the assay costs are the same regardless of the size. Certain coins from national mints have guaranteed purity, and so trade at an even higher premium. American gold eagles regularly go for $100 more than the spot price for gold. You get the premium back when you sell it. Basically, it amounts to a couple of percent leverage, as the premium is usually a certain percentage of spot price, though it changes depending on supply and demand for a given type of bullion.
Only when you look at the dollar part of that equation.
There is no such thing as a gold bubble, there is only gold as a currency, or gold that is not a currency. There was an aborted transition in 1980, and it looks like there is another attempt at a transition coming now.
Yeah, that's the ticket. We can lose our debts, our government, and our lives as we starve to death in the streets as trillionaires.
lol, you think hoarding worthless metal is stopping the creation and circulation of real goods?
It must be opposite day in modland.
No, you get to stay in yours. You know, where your purchasing power is continuously diluted by inflation and "Quantitative Easing" ie money printing.
Enjoy your Zimbabwe.
They did compensate people for seized gold. They just promptly devalued the dollars they paid for them with.
And considering the massive failure that was the last gold seizure (they only got 500 tons total), and the fact that we aren't on a gold standard, so they can devalue the dollar just fine as is, there is no need and little likelihood of future seizure of gold. Your retirement accounts will probably be nationalized long before your gold is seized.