Actually, we generate 3 phase just like everyone else. We just don't run all three to each house. Industrial and commercial users do commonly get 3 phase.

220v is mostly in single or duplex residential settings. Otherwise, it's often 208v (convieniantly available by connecting to two phases of 3 phase power).

Nice way to toss in an insult just to prove what a bright light you aren't.

Were you a brighter bulb, you would realize that PS rating and actual consumption often have little to do with each other. In fact it doesn't draw half of what you think it does and electricity doesn't cost as much as you think where I have the box.

Meanwhile, who said my usage was typical? Certainly not me.

It is used only for administration, serial console for a few devices, crunch some log files, etc. It used to be a backup mail server as well. All well within it's capabilities. It isn't likely to run at high load very often. The run like a tank feature is it's primary reason to be. Since it is the machine used to diagnose problems, it's helpful that it is unlikely to be the machine with a problem.

Sometimes, old used equipment is exactly the right answer, sometimes it's a terrible idea. The production servers are much newer machines.

I picked up a Sunfire v20 for $20. I would have to run it for 8 years non-stop for the electricity cost to add up to the cost of a new more efficient machine of equivalent capability.

"Ownership of the means of production" is just a high-falutin' Marxist way of saying property rights. If I'm some peasant in a feudal society, the "means of production" boils down to my hoe and the patch of dirt where I grow vegetables.

Property "rights" in feudal societies generally boils down me keeping what little I have mainly because its of so little value nobody has bothered expending any effort to take it from me, not because I manage to maintain physical possession of it. It stays in my possession not because of any rights I have, only because entropy has a tendency to keep objects at rest where they are.

The fact that my liege can take anything away from my anytime he wants to creates an uncertainty of possession and is a major disincentive to productivity -- why work beyond a subsistence level if you have no idea (or every idea) when it will be taken away from me.

Doesn't that put them dangerously close to criminal like the guys that sell zero days to the Russian mob?

I'm thinking yes but it will be ignored because their customers include bad guys within the U.S. government.

The proper conclusion is that SOME combination of rampant surveillance by the government, totalitarianism, socialism, and poverty in East Germany lead to a greater willingness to lie and cheat. They have not even attempted to control for the confounding factors sufficiently to pin it on socialism.

Honestly, were I to make a guess, I would rank socialism as the least likely among those conditions to be the actual cause of the measured difference. I would place the fact that the Stasi employed a full third of the population to tattle on the other two thirds near the top of the list. Why not lie to someone who is 33% likely to report you to the authorities if you tell the truth?

If they really want to draw a solid conclusion, they need to compare with other populations as well.

So in other words, they very much care who I am.

Getting targeted ads is creepy. It's like having my own 24/7 personal stalker. I notice the advertisers often aren't that anxious to share their own details with me. Too often, they can't even manage to be honest about the products they're advertising.

I would rather get ads for irrelevant products and services. Or just ads that are relevant in a generic sort of way based on a few demographic observations.

Usually capitalism is associated with private property which implies property rights and rights implies some kind of constitutional government which implies government rule by consent of the governed which usually implies democracy.

I think most of this is academic theory because it fails to account for consumer market economies in places like China where there are no rights per se and property ownership seems to be at the whim of the government.