Why do we create our children the way we do?

Why do you expect it to be different for a god?

Don't you think that in 1,000,000 years your descendants will be effectively gods? How will they raise their children?

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?"
* God doesn't prevent "evil" for the same reason you allow you child to fall sometimes. Kids have to fall in order to learn how to walk.

. Then he is not omnipotent.
* The only thing that can stop him is himself - just like a child's view of a parent.

Is he able, but not willing?
. Then he is malevolent.
* Is it malevolent to not give your child candy before dinner? To let your child play soccer and get his leg broken? To fail a math exam because he didn't study?

Is he both able and willing?
. Then whence cometh evil?
* "Evil" is unfortunately a prerequisite for learning. One of the most important things to learn in this life is that many things a child sees as "evil" are in fact "good".

Is he neither able nor willing?
. Then why call him God?"
* Like most parents, I doubt he really cares that much what you call him. But he does occasionally need to swat your bottom...

No, the real issue is that under the "gold standard", the money supply is related to gold finds - which are random events. It's not like the supply of gold is actually fixed. So someone could find a huge gold vein tomorrow, and crash the world economy. Just like printing money, but done by individuals!

Also, there is simply the unavoidable result of a fixed currency:

Country X says "my dollars are worth exactly 1 Y", for any option of Y. You take your money, and short lots of X dollars. Then you counterfeit X's currency (or wait for someone else to counterfeit it). Now your "short" position is worth more than you paid for it. Country X's only hope is to deflate their currency voluntarily each year, to account for counterfeiting.

This happened to the US several times, and that is why we are now off the gold standard. It's amazing how few people bother to figure that out before advocating the gold standard!

In this way, it is much like Communism: "It only doesn't work because no one does it right!" The fact is, expecting a government entity to impose limits on itself in order to make a plan work is tautologically identical to saying it doesn't work.

Interestingly enough, the normal drag paradigm does not apply, however.

It is more accurate to look at it as if the air molecules wander over, attach to the satellite for a while, and then wander away. The key difference being that the side of the object facing orthogonal to the orbit "drags" almost as much as the front. So a cube is actually better than a cylinder or cone! (Not better than a sphere, though)

Weird stuff!

Obviously you do not understand Emacs - nor do you understand the laws of physics.

Any claim the economic output can be divorced from physical resource constraints is fantasy

Ok, I will prove this wrong. I invent the cheese dog.

I have not changed anything physically. I took existing cheese, and an existing dog. I assembled them in a new way, and created value! Before, there was only boring hot dogs, now there is infinite flavor.

As we get more stuff, the possible combinations of that stuff increases exponentially. Forever. Regardless of limits on amount of stuff. Infinite complexity.

Economy is not the amount of stuff we have. It is the value of that stuff to humans.

No, it depends on the quality of the design/plan. A perfect design would require only that a butterfly flap its wings, and the umbrella would fall out of a mountain, fully formed.

An economy is NOT a circle of bankers doing anything. It is a circle of engineers. One says, lets add a button to the umbrella, to make it stay open easier. The next says, lets add a loop, to hold it shut when not needed.

As a businessman, it really bugs me when people assume that an economy is made by bankers et al. The bankers simplify some transactions, that is all.

But the value of the umbrella is not proportional to the energy it takes to make it. That is the point.

This is complete BS. The basic assumptions are incorrect. The economy is not driven by efficiency or energy. The economy is driven by humans getting better at helping other humans. Sometimes that's energy or efficiency based, but most often it is knowledge based. Umbrellas use no energy, but improve life dramatically.

The classic one is slavery - you cannot sell yourself into slavery because of constitutional law.

No one alive stole it. No one alive was stolen from. Let it go.

You won't find oxygen in an atmosphere without life already on the planet. Oxygen is too reactive.

While Japan presumably does not need money, they do need help. For example, they need experienced teams of rescue workers scouring the countryside finding still-living victims. They need food, water, and supplies delivered to areas suddenly unreachable through normal means. They need crews to rip apart buildings to rescue those trapped inside.

Those teams are predominately run by volunteer organizations such as the Red Cross, LDS Church, etc. Japan will not pay those organizations for the help they receive - just as no one else has to pay. So those organizations will need additional funds to cover operations in Japan.

So in answer to your question, "does Japan need the money?"

Japan, no. Red Cross, yes.