In other words, some prices rise, some fall. For some products it might make (microeconomic) sense to delay buying, leading to the (macroeconomic) reduced overall demand, furthering the deflation problem. It's not like there's a line where the government's averaging method says "zero inflation" and suddenly everything collapses, it's a transition where deflation can at some point become self-reinforcing.

Can you point me to this offer? I only found this, http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005... which is close to what you say, but there's no explicit offer of copyright assignment, only a feeling that the community would go along with it. The thread went nowhere, and I don't see RMS weighing in. Boy, would I have wished for a GPL'ed LLVM!

But as I said: GCC is not inferior to LLVM even after all these years, so I wouldn't exactly call it a loss to GCC. A setback yes, as now Xcode isn't free, Objective C isn't well-supported in gcc anymore, lots of people badmouth GCC (just look at the comments on this story), the resources Apple threw into LLVM are lost for GCC development etc.

Oh, and I see that I made an editing error in my original mail: I somehow dropped the part where I said that the mail by RMS that made this story was actually a response to ESR's factually challenged e-mail.

Factually incorrect: LLVM was started at the University of Illinois (see wikipedia). Apple essentially bought it when they decided that they didn't want to go GPLv3 (probably out of fear that the patent clauses would make it harder for them to sue Samsung or something, I would really love if someone could explain to me what's wrong about the GPLv3. Tivoization?). Now the biggest company on Earth has been pumping money into it for several years, and GCC is still as good or ahead. Perhaps GCC's structure isn't as bad as people make it out to be ... Imagine if there wouldn't have been LLVM perhaps Xcode would be Free?

Concerning this story it might be worth pointing out that ESR tried to start a flamewar on the GCC lists with a factually incorrect rant (factoids that people around here also seem to believe are true, like "llvm error messages are better" -- gcc did a lot of work in that regard, "GCC doesn't want to be modular" -- actually, they're working on that, "GCC doesn't allow plugins or being plugged in" -- nonsense, anecdotal evidence about better optimization in LLVM etc.)

ESR's two rants can be found here and here (didn't take him too long to use a gun metaphor), replies from the gcc communities are downthread. There you will also find the most common myths about GCC and LLVM disspelled.

There are economists out there who don't believe that the market always knows The Answer.

There are good econometrists in Chicago, but when it comes to the broader economy, or even policy recommendations, they seem to fail as much as Minnesota economists. Or, as Larry Summers put it:

"There'd be a set of economists who would sit around explaining that electricity was only 4% of the economy, and so if you lost 80% of electricity you couldn't possibly have lost more than 3% of the economy, and there'd be people at Minnesota and Chicago who would be writing that paper, but it would be stupid!"

He apparently never asked for the results of the traffic study. Given that his former job was as a prosecutor, he's been doing a really bad job investigating.

An interesting theory, but I think it goes to prove once more that Christie doesn't like the fact that people commute to New York for work. Remember when he shut down a financed infrastructure project that would have helped the economy immensely and would have reduced road traffic -- well, until he shut it down based on fake reasons and outright lies? I'm talking about the second railway tunnel crossing the Hudson, for those to ADS to remember.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/nyregion/report-disputes-christies-reason-for-halting-tunnel-project-in-2010.html

You missed the parts where suicide rates sank in Australia (when guns became heavily regulated), in Switzerland (when laws were changed such that military rifles had to be stored disassembled and without ammo) and in Israel (when soldiers no longer had to take their rifles home with them on weekends off). The last item specifically with the intent of lowering suicide rates, so not everybody is as dense as you pretend to be.

Best regards.

I'm curious as to what subcultures you're referring to?

You may find this article interesting: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/12/gun_ownership_causes_higher_suicide_rates_study_shows.html

Yes, less guns means less suicides, as everybody who has ever talked to anyone whose suicide attempt failed will understand.

Its value is that you can pay taxes with it. Have fun figuring out VATs when doing business in bitcoin.

Yeah, like Apple would forgo an opportunity to earn money, simply because they also earn money elsewhere. They may not be desperate to make money from the data they collect, but they would be stupid (in the "maximum shareholder value" frame of reference) not to benefit from it as much as possible.

Well, who pumped money in there first?

Cannot blame anybody for playing along.

That's wrong. If a company buys assets, then it's profits decrease, but it definitely doesn't make your stake in the company any less valuable. Since stock prices reflect both the current assets of the company (after all stocks express owenrship on these assets) and the expectation of future gains (that's the speculative part), it is quite sensible for the stock price to go up for a company that invests instead of making profits.

Suppose that were true (I don't know) ... who could fix it?

1) The states by setting up exchanges. I mean, they wouldn't be so spiteful as to punish the poor because they don't like a federal law.
2) The house by passing legislation that fixes this gap. Representatives from states without exchanges wouldn't want to punish the poor in their states, and most others should also be willing to fix the unescapable slight gaps in large legislation.

Oh wait ...