In a later comment he said he went to school in the USSR (his answer to my question of what school he went to).

I chalked it up to a severe reaction against his experience of socialism gone horribly wrong, leading to a full retreat into the opposite end of the spectrum (communism is evil, therefore the opposite of communism must also be the opposite of evil).

That's still collecting tax.

The irony here is that roman_mir grew up in the USSR and is the one arguing in support of capitalism, while I'm the American arguing in support of socialism.

Now that I know you are from Russia, I can start to understand your viewpoint. You saw the absolute worst-case scenario for how communism could turn out, so it's only natural you would embrace the exact opposite of the spectrum.

The real joke of it all is that the US is the worst-case scenario for capitalism.

All the evils you saw in communism growing up, I see those same evils in capitalism. Both systems served to enrich the powerful at the expense of the weak, the only difference was the particular lie they used.

Instead of a small group of men controlling the means of production in the name of the greater good (the communist lie) it's a small group of men doing the exact same thing in the name of individualism and self-betterment (the capitalist lie)

No system of government or economy that humans can create will ever be immune to the slow rot of corruption, the only solution is to tear it down and start over every once in a while (or wait for a war to tear it down for you, which was the whole point of the original article)

I'm not sure you understand what a trade deficit is. It doesn't mean China sent the US stuff and the US never paid for it (like some gigantic unpaid bar tab). It just means that the US bought more stuff from China than China bought from the US, leading to a steady flow of money into China that never comes back. http://www.investopedia.com/te....

The debt that the US owes to China is a totally separate issue, where the US federal government has been constantly borrowing money from China to cover the yearly budget deficit, and is now stuck paying tons of interest on that loan because they can't even begin to pay it off.

As far as taxes being theft like you said before, a government needs money somehow. Every government in the world either collects taxes (Europe, US/Canada, etc) or confiscates natural resources such as oil and gold to sell to other countries. (Middle east and parts of Africa). There is also the 3rd option, which is to just spend nothing on government and let the warlords figure it out (parts of South America and Africa)

If you know of a way a government can pay for itself without collecting taxes or taking natural resources from the people (or simply descending into anarchy), I would love to hear your solution.

Yes, start with insults, that's always a good way to prove that you have the intellectual high-ground

What happens to these goods after they have been produced and exchanged, if there is nobody to consume them.?

It's consumption of non-domestic products that cause a trade deficit, not consumption by itself. You are right that if more money was available, more of it would go to China, but only a very small portion of what you pay for a Chinese-made product actually goes to the Chinese company that produced it, most of it goes to middle-man markup and shipping fees (which is money that stays in the US).

I'm curious which school YOU went to, where you were taught that taxation is theft. It would be ironic if it was a taxpayer funded public school, but judging by your disdain for public schooling, it was probably some fancy-ass private school.

Having most of the wealth concentrated in a few hands is stifling to the economy. There are only so many TVs and cars and houses and food one person can buy.

Having more people with disposable income (even if there is less total wealth) is what grows an economy.

If you give 1 man 1 million dollars, he will spend it on something silly like a yacht, but give 1 million people 1 dollar, and most of them will spend it on groceries or rent.

Which stimulates an economy more, yachts or groceries?

Your right, those homeless people you see begging for money on the street corners are totally paid actors sponsored by the evil left. And those Detroit/NYC/Philly slums they show on TV are all movie sets.

A cardboard box is still technically a roof over their head, and the leftovers from the local dumpster is technically food, so why should they have the right to demand more?

As long as we have a nice house and a nice car, why should we care about anyone else? We got ours. /s

It seems to me that it was Oracle that left Sun's Java business in tatters.

A Cuban medical degree is accepted in many countries (but not the US). Cuban doctors are highly sought-after all over the world.

VR is there to keep the patient distracted from the small amount of pulling/tugging sensation that is left over after the anesthetic kicks in.

It's meant to treat the mental pain of being cut-into while still awake.

If it's anything like my experiences, local anesthetic removes the feeling of pain, but doesn't remove sensation entirely, so you can still feel what the doctor is doing somewhat. Normally your only options are to either watch what they are doing, or close your eyes and try to ignore it all (or the more dangerous 3rd option, sleep through it via general anesthetic). VR fits into the second category, by both blocking hearing and vision, and by making it far easier to ignore everything going on in the outside world.

Have you actually tried the vive or the rift?

If you tried one of the two, and it made you sick, especially if it was immediate sickness, then it's not the headset's fault, you are just one of the small percentage of people that simply can't handle VR (my mom is like this, she gets sick with 30 seconds). You will probably never be able to use VR in your lifetime, regardless of how far the technology advances, unless you either take medication or start building up a tolerance.

It's pretty extreme to say that VR should be banned by the government just because YOU personally don't like it.

A lot of places are like this now. They don't even average the score anymore, they just count the number of 5/5s or 10/10s.

Under this rating, someone who totally sucks (would get a 4/10 on average), would beat someone who is really good most of the time (8/10 average), as long as the first guy gets a few of his friends involved to generate fake 10/10 reviews.

The place I work at had to fire a store manager recently for cooking the books in order to meet his bonus requirements. It took 2 people 3 weeks to double check everything and get real numbers.

I think you just described the already existing active-shutter 3d system.