If a country devalues its currency, it's no different from a massive tax on savings and a massive cut in wages.

Except it won't affect the price of domestic products, which typically includes everyday necessities like staple foods and rent. In fact, since imports go up in price, domestic production gets de facto protective tolls to help boost it across the board. And of course exports also become more profitable, giving economy a further boost. So it's almost completely different.

"Austerity" is just an attempt to simulate what would normally happen to a currency when a country goes as badly into debt as they did (average income exceeds average productivity, so the economy has to contract until these two are in balance again).

Austerity fails at that because when a currency devaluates, it makes imports more expensive which increases exports and boosts domestic production. Austerity, on the other hand, decreases all three. It's the exact wrong policy in pretty much every imaginable situation.

Had Greece still been on the Drachma when they went into debt, the value of the Drachma would have fallen against other currencies (much like the Argentine Peso has been doing), and the Greek economy would have shrunk until the artificial "growth" due to their previous (and current) overspending had been erased.

Had Greece still been on the Drachma when they went into debt, the value of Drachma would have fallen against other currencies, making Greek exporters more profitable, making Greece a better destination for tourists, and shielding domestic manufacture from foreign competition, thus quickly and efficiently rebalancing the economy. And of course they wouldn't had gone into debt but simply printed more Drachma's and let inflation deal with tax evasion.

It doesn't really matter anymore, Euro won't survive this crisis since it's its direct cause. The important question is: will the EU survive? If not, then Europe will return to its historical state of constant warfare.

It will be interesting to see how Greece gets out of their mess, when they run out of Euros.

They'll get another bailout, of course. The alternative is to let them leave the Euro, which would likely start a landslide and cause the whole project to collapse. At it's heart, the Euro is an attempt to institutionalize neoliberal economic ideas; as such, it lacks any way to deal with trade imbalances (since those should be automatically dealt with by the free market, according to the theory). And they are being dealt with, however this in practice means destroying the countries which can't compete and starving their population.

Of course no nation will simply stand by and watch this happen, thus the attempts to mitigate the problem with one-off fixes, which basically amount to bailouts. But since the ideology underlaying the Euro forbids admitting the problems are inherent to the system (since every set of countries will always have a weakest link), it also prevents creating any mechanisms to handle the problem long-term. So Greek gets just enough bailouts to keep it afloat, but not enough to pull it to the water, everyone else gets bill after bill, European economy continues spiraling downward, and everyone is getting fed up with being told they must tighten their belts for a project and ideology that's not beneftting them in any way.

Uncontrolled free markets had their day in the 1800's. That world has long since gone, and won't return, since universal suffrage makes it impossible to simply ignore everyone but the richest. Even in their heyday they never brought a golden age, just gilded. And now they can't bring even that.

Liberty has been working very well for Americans, compared to Europe and the rest of the world.

US has the second highest incarceration rate in the world. So please explain exactly what liberty are you talking about?

Basically if you cannot hold your own money in your own hands but government holds it for you (directly or through proxy banks) you are fucked, you have nothing.

If you can't trust the local government, either because it's corrupt or because it doesn't exist, you're fucked anyway. Not only is your cash not safe from theft (or forgery - let's not forget that), but you also can't trade efficiently since there's no way to enforce deals.

If you can't trust the local government to enforce your claims of ownership, they're utterly meaningless.

If an unbalanced gender ratio is all you need to prove sexism, then doesn't it follow that the Nursing and Elementary Education fields are even MORE sexist than STEM (and even more in need of attention)?

If women are underpresented in some field, then of course they must be overpresented in some other, or underpresented in the workforce as a whole. So yes, not having enough men in Nursing and Elementary Education is part of the same problem. And Elementary Education is indeed a more important field to focus on, because it's where children get their first touch with Real World.

By your silly "you must tell all the truth anyone would want to know, regarless of the questions asked" implication, anyone found guilty in court who didn't confess, should have perjury added to their sentence.

Well, isn't that what plea bargains are all about? Confess or your punishment will be increased?

Polygraphs are NOT scams, they are but a tool you can use to try and determine if somebody is lying or not. But like any tool, they have their limitations.

Polygraphs are like e-meters: they measure something, but that something has nothing to do with their stated purpose, making them scams.

End the antiquated requirement for anonymous ballots, and the technical solution becomes very easy.

End anonymous ballots and you end democracy.

But neither should you be able to check an individuals vote anonymously. Coercing or discriminating against someone for their vote needs to become a serious crime before any of this could be put into place though.

How do you prove you were "encouraged" to vote a certain way? You can't, and even an attempt to sue for example your employer will affect your future in sufficiently negative way to make the prospect daunting. Nor can you prove someone wasn't so influenced. So the election result has zero credibility, thus delegitimazing the entire system. Which, of course, is the goal of various non-anonymous voting schemes that people suggest from time to time.

Simply put, if Apple wants A123's tech and it can simply provide key A123 employees an offer they can't refuse,

An offer they can't refuse? Did Apple threaten to break their kneecaps? Or did Apple simply promise to pay more?

A company the size of Apple is able to do this many times over and it simply becomes an unstoppable monopoly which goes against the the whole spirit of capitalism when one company can control everything.

The spirit of capitalism is that resources should go to those who can extract most value out of them, determined by being willing to pay most for them. If Apple can afford to pay those engineers more than A123, then Apple can apparently get more value out of them, and thus should have them.

You don't get to approve when employees have to compete for employers, yet turn around and start whining on the odd occasion when the tables are turned and employers need to compete for employees. Not unless you're willing to abandon even the pretense of fairness and equality before the law. Which, you should note, will eventually lead to a revolution.

The very fact that A123 brought a suit like this is evidence that the system is breaking down and degenerating into feudalism. Property gets "poached". That A123 uses such terms in regards to human beings should get its executives on some kind of watch list.

everyone has a price, and if you have the dollars, you can use the dollars from your monopoly to poach anyone. This isn't an anti-collusion suit; this is a civil suit about monopoly abuses.

And by "monopoly abuse" you mean "paying the best price". But don't worry, I'm sure lobbyists are already busy at work to fix this strange bug in capitalism that caused it to momentarily benefit people, rather than corporations and stockholders.

On 14 February 1989, the day of the funeral of his close friend Bruce Chatwin, a fatwà requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book "blasphemous against Islam" (chapter IV of the book depicts the character of an Imam in exile who returns to incite revolt from the people of his country with no regard for their safety).

So Ayatollah Khomeini was butthurt over his portrayal by proxy, and decided to abuse his power to murder his critic. What does that have to do with Islam, or any religion whatsoever?

This has nothing at all to do with a 'normal distribution', and everything to do with officially sanctioned violence.

Which, in turn, has nothing at all to do with religion. It's state officials - or someone who wishes to replace them - organizing violence using religion as a smokescreen, since it happened to be handy. But any excuse would have served a tyrant, or those wanting to be them.

The real enemy is the memetic complex that combines a hierarchy of power with the idea that violence and violations of everyday morality are okay when done in service to a cause. Whether this blood-soaked pyramid is dressed up as Islamic, Christian, nationalistic or ideological decorations is irrelevant. Not perceiving this underlaying structure is what leads people to give up their freedom and their very selves to act it out in a largely meaningless conflict. Thus 9/11 led to Patriot Act and Iraq War, which then led to ISIS. The real enemy is still there, and will remain until someone figures out how to bomb the noosphere. Until then, it would be wise to avoid feeding it by buying in to the lie and newest $ENEMY.

Violent lunatics - and even or perhaps especially suicide bombers - are not the real enemy. Neither is their nominal cause. What's actually going on is that the idea that this kind of behavior is okay in the service of a cause somehow came to exist and, by an unfortunate accident of cultural evolution, happens to cause behavior that helps perpetuate and escalate conflict, which in turn perpetuates it. Thus we have a cultural virus that basically uses your own power and instincts for self-defence to enslave you. Nasty stuff.

If you change "male" to "female" then that's exactly what feminists were saying back in the 60s. You can fix the problem by adopting feminist ideals. Feminists want the same liberation for men, always have.

No, you can't, because grandparent isn't talking about oppression, he's talking about sexual attraction. I have no idea if he's right, but if he is, you can't (or at least shouldn't) fix being unattractive by changing others. You can change yourself, but you could also use pornography to relieve your urges and go play Distant Worlds or something. And it seems a lot of people are taking the latter option.

This is what they mean by the patriarchy. Not men in charge or dominating, but a society where both men and women feel that they have to be something they are not. Something that existed as an ideal historically, and which needs to be abandoned.

And this is another thing: every society has a limited number of predefined roles people can adapt. "The Patriarchy" might be associated with particularly onerous ones, but getting rid of it won't free people to be themselves, because othe people still expect them to be conservatists, liberals, rock stars, peons, soldiers, or whatever, all of which have their associated stereotypes and official and/or unofficial punishments for violating them. Feminism is promising something it can't possibly deliver here.

"Their standards" in aggregate, and the societal norms, are the same thing. If enough individuals shift their standards, the societal norm for standards shifts in aggregate.

No, because people have no magical way of knowing that aggregate, but must observe other members of the group to learn it. And, being social animals, people tend to hide any action that goes against the perceived norms of the group. Thus you can easily end up in a situation where the societal norms of the group, as perceived by group members, are very different from the standards of any particular individual within it.

It's a shame more people don't understand this and how it affects women's mating strategy.

I understand it means there's no problem: some people get their kicks out of video games and pornography and the rest get them from either having or being part of a harem. Everybody wins.