You are talking about super regulated markets, markets where governments are heavily involved and declaring that the way they are regulated and corrupted by the governments is something that would prevent a bakery from changing prices on the fly should their market conditions change, for example a giant influx of consumers wouldn't change the market conditions for bakery enough to change prices. I showed that as market conditions change the producers quickly modify their behaviour. I don't know what you are even trying to say, however comparing stable and predictable market conditions to changing market conditions and declaring that changing market conditions do not cause producers to changing prices is too silly.

Yeah, I get the in universe explanation, what I question is why this was an issue in the first place. A mech carrying around a giant pistol should be all the inspiration you need to get from point a to point b , and it's not like it's a big engineering challenge given that you already managed to modularize the thing into a pistol form factor to begin with (especially when you civilization is keeping FTL travel going with spot and balling wire... You've got to have some seriously talented engineers).

Maybe they just had really aggressive patent attorneys in the star league era? Like "on the internet" patents turned into "on a battlemech" patents and ComStar held the IP with multi century terms, while the clans were the actual successor (no pun intended) in interest... The whole battle of Tukayyid thing was actually over who owned the omnimech rights, which is why they called it a trial. Make about as much sense as the actual storyline, I guess.

Do you reviewers understand!?

If buying a $40 3DBluray sure, but $5 movie, no.

Teens use their friends as guides, "Hey I saw this, you gota see it", or "X was so so sad, dont waste your money"

Yes up your butthole, or swallowed.

But data is being sneaker netted everywhere in NK, there are docos to show how they do it.

How do they get it in? Well, even the ones in the military smuggle stuff in, actually, they are the ones most often with the money and friends outside who can do it.

Eventually, it trickles down to the ultra poor, who might want that USB stick more desperately than food, it at least can be copied/traded for food.

There are a few cities that are one side china, one side NK. I am sure they have smuggled 3G devices in so people in NK can download from China. Put USBs on drones or baloons, or floated.

Taxes and store prices have nothing to do with CC theft, the money is recouped by the bank purely from the interest rates.
However what I think you are trying to say is that; - the "working poor" are the people who end up paying interest because they can't afford to keep the CC balance at zero, they can't "just say no" to the CC debt because they also can't afford not to fix the car that takes them to work.

Easier said than done if you're always broke before the next payday. And no, that scenario doesn't automatically mean you're a lazy or that you squander your money. Quite the opposite, it generally means you work 60-80hr weeks in retail or some other minimum wage (or less) industry. When the shit-box car that takes you to work dies a CC is normally the only way it can be revived/replaced.

The vast majority of the "working poor" know it's a financial trap when they get the card, but sometimes in life deliberately walking into a trap is the best option you have, thankfully I haven't been in that position for over 20yrs now.

I use a CC with a low limit specifically for internet purchases, I repay it straight away so I pay zero interest/fees. Over the last couple of decades I have known several people who have had their DC/CC emptied by hackers, in every case the bank was quick to accept blame and take the financial hit. It's in the bank's interest to do so because (like banknotes) CCs work on trust, if nobody trusts them nobody will use them. Nobody has ever emptied my CC (other than the ex-wife) but on a couple of occasions I have had a phone call from the bank telling me that my CC was being replaced by the bank because "it was involved in a data breach".

Dependency: Of course the people who can't afford to keep their CC balance at zero end up paying for my peace of mind via increased interest rates. Ultimately CC's are an unfair burden on the "working poor" and become "just another bill" when they inevitably hit their limit (been there, done that). The sad fact is that if everyone at every point in their life could afford to keep the balance at zero nobody would pay interest and CCs would not exist.

Never understood why the omnimech was supposed to be such a big deal... The battle master carried a ppc around in its hand for centuries.

I get the feeling that the programmers who are finding it difficult to find work at the moment are those with mediocre skills

Well, enjoy that feeling. It's worth every penny you paid for it.

As for Musk, he's a big corporate player. Calling him a "programmer" these days is pretty silly. Using him to justify outsourcing basically the majority of programming jobs is also pretty silly.

Note that my employer isn't farming out jobs to foreigners because they're trying to cut costs, but because it is genuinely difficult to find the skills

Yes, it does become difficult if "too old, too unhealthy, no degree, overqualified, wrong state, bad credit" are used as stacked pre-filters. But to argue that unemployed programmers in the US are "mediocre" isn't just silly, it's ridiculous.

You are either a full or a liar, Henry Ford's model was not to pay workers so that they would 'buy' anything, his model was to pay more to his employees to reduce turn over of highly specialised professionals, who were becoming very efficient but leaving the company once they achieved proficiency to go work somewhere with less stress. So he doubled people's salary and reduced turnover, keeping the trained employees and doubling his productive output in a very short time after that.

He was NOT paying his people to buy anything, he was paying his people so that they would have hard time quitting the jobs.

The reality is that globalisation requires a real free market environment and that is something people really hate - competing and allowing the best competitors to become much wealthier while raising the overall standard of living in the economy.

You are growing statism, fascism and nazism and you are destroying individual freedoms with every new regulation, law, tax, barrier to entry, license, newly printed paper dollar and you think you can create a prosperous economy based on any of that, well you cannot and the time is proving that you cannot. No amount of natzism (national socialism) will help you because you are asking the wrong question, the answer doesn't matter.

The real question is what is virtue and not how to divide a shrinking pie. The virtue is in non-initiation of force and in allowing true free market economy based on capitalist principles to destroy the old guard, the fascism, the nazism, the socialism, those are self-destructing, corrupt principles that arise from position of desire to dictate to others. What is virtue is the only real question. Virtue is non-initiation of force and it leads to voluntary exchange and freedom, which is the only way to have a cooperative environment, where each works for himself, for his own profits, but the result is a robust wealthy economy.

Your example is false because it does not address real situations that a bakery can face that are caused by changing market conditions, you are looking at stable market environment and deduce that because bakeries in stable market environments can operate without changing prices that it means that those very bakeries would not change prices quickly if market environments changed quickly.

How about I kick in your front door and steal all your stuff? After all, you didn't put in place absolutely perfect security, so it's really your own fault for allowing me into your home.

Or a better analogy. I park a big rig in your driveway so you can't get into your home. That's what a DDOS is, basically. And if the "enemy" has enough resources, a DDOS is nearly impossible to prevent.

...when every programmer (and tech support person, and manufacturing person) in the US can get a job, that's the time for US operations to be looking for foreign help.

But since age, health, formal schooling, in-country location, and credit score are widely and consistently used to deny highly skilled US programmers jobs -- I am very confident in saying that Mr. Graham has not even come close to identifying the "programmer problem" from the POV of actual US programmers. All he's trying to do here is save a buck, while screwing US programmers in the process.

Do it his way, and the US economy will suffer even further at the middle class level as decent jobs go directly over our heads overseas, while, as per usual, corporations thrive.

This is exactly the kind of corporate perfidy that's been going on for some time. Graham should be ashamed. He represents our problem. Not any imaginary lack of US based skills.

Graham pretends that there hasn't been massive fraud in guest worker visas.

Why should anyone pay any attention to him on the issue of immigration at all?

The abuses of immigration statutes mean one thing and one thing only: Shut down immigration and repatriate those that were let in during the period of systemic fraud -- then after we've put our own house in order to a level of prudence commensurate with the history of fraud in this area, reconsider.

If you live in a hydro state, electricity is even cheaper (I think 6 or 7 cpkwh).

With shopping and 6 month contracts (instead of 3 year), you can get 8.3 cpkwh right now.

Short contracts are cheap,
1-2 year are more expensive.
And 3 year are less expensive but more expensive than short term contracts.

To be honest, going to LED's is a much better payoff than solar power cells right now and will probably be for several more years. They all pay for themselves within 6 months. But you have to stick with the 3100k bulbs otherwise you get wierd shades of pink and orange or intense blue white (which will keep you up at night).