That can be true for the guns themselves, but by providing cheap reliable guns, it opened up the opportunity for limited resources to be diverted from arms into other items such as food, shelter, or education.

Because we colonists have evolved *beyond* grammar. You understood what OP was saying, so he wins. You should join the winning team, and move on with your life.

It might be distasteful to think so, but most technological developments are created by and for the war machine.

Do you only eat corn? If not, I think your metrics are incorrect. You can't measure food simply acreage of farms. There are specialty crops that aren't being grown on a large scale that could benefit from free land.

Didn't the War in Iraq start in 2003? How many of these nations were in the coalition of the willing? This could be war weariness.

They may get their funding from members and donations, but their policy and leadership is set by the minority that side with gun manufacturers. Example: most NRA members (75%) support sensible gun control whereas the lobbying arm will score against legislators that propose and vote for them (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/28/strong-majority-of-americans-nra-members-back-gun-control)

...on 3D printers than guns. The 3D printing industry is still new, and this will compete with the gun manufacturing industry (NRA). In the end, it's all about the money.

You are right that there are other options, but Oracle has enough income that they can undercut all these offerings when they see a potential client using a competitor. If they can sell your product at a loss to cannibalize the competitor's profits, it is functionally a monopoly.

Sorry to reply to my post, but I neglected to mention that the company *could* give out a dividend to investors instead of doing the buybacks, so there is a real penalty to them for having the CEO salary based on stock options only.

With his company in a near monopoly position, he has incentive to funnel company profits into stock buybacks rather than investing in real growth. The options he has will increase in price, and the shares the company buys from the open market can be set aside to replenish his options that he cashes in. This is only a problem for companies that have grown so large they have no real competition to challenge their profits.

I hear that school is brutal over there. It's not unheard of for a student that has done poorly on one exam to kill themselves.

It's ok to be ignorant, but you shouldn't be so proud about it to make posts like these.

In our current system, a third party will only tilt the favor against the mainstream party that is the exact opposite politically. A liberal third party would split the vote with the Democrats and put a Republican in power. The modern tea party has the better successful model. You don't enter the general election, you have to work through an existing party and come up in the primary.

The profit in developing, buying, and maintaining these machines is factored in to the 4 Luddite cost of the machine in this example. Let's also recognize that this remaining Luddite doesn't have the skills of the previous 10, and is probably only being paid at a fraction of the rate.

In order for capitalism to succeed, you do need multiple robot masters to compete in a market to keep prices and profits low. In our current situation, profits are increasing (record high GDP) cost of goods are increasing (inflation). This would show that the market is not functioning correctly because the owners are taking an extra profit are not lowering prices as you argue. Capitalism doesn't work in monopoly conditions which the economic models suggest we are experiencing.