Again, this is a very good thing, it is a long and ever changing road, but just like the universe this is, as the nature of all things, a move towards less entropy and is natural in any system.
Small quibble, entropy increasing is the natural order of the universe and things.
Am also not sure maximum entropy in economy is a stable/wealthy/better one. (entropy as measure of chaos/disorder)
And this - with a little help from the One-Percenters - is why there will never be a Star Trek style future, where one works due to passion and not subsistence necessity.
No, it's because the Star Trek style future is a bloody utopia.
All I understand from this is Republicans will act toward abolishing minimum wage, but won't campaign over it, just in case you're instincts are right and it's actually something most people in the country really care about and might mobilize them in such numbers as to upset GOP majorities.
Campaign is not a one-shot event, but an ongoing process where a politician attempts to make a career out of winning popularity contests.
So if the slimy politician think it'll cost him an election, he won't act on it, to avoid derailing his paycheck.
Inertia has protected many gov't programs for decades. You don't have to worry for minimum wage at all. You should worry for all the workers who don't have a job because of minimum wage.
Crunching the numbers, it's foolish to delay solar power adoption for even 28K birds a year.
You think solar power adoption will halt climate change?
What's the exact mechanism you're proposing for this, when all climate change temperature fluctuations are miniscule compared to the natural variation of the 4 seasons, or just plain day/night cycles?
for math challenged: this is 43TB of written data, after that your guarantee is VOID and NULL
...
In case you are wondering - Samsung doesnt impose any write limitations on their 3 year guarantee for 840 EVO drives. Both drives look pretty much the same in tests.
Where are you getting this "guarantee VOID and NULL" from? The warranty is "4 years". There is nothing in the AMD press release about the limitations of their warranty.
I looked up OCZ and Samsung's SSD warranties, and did see a blurb about "normal wear and tear" for OCZ's warranty. But even though AMD is using OCZ components, they are not limited to OCZ's warranties.
I will also submit that averaging 30GB/day of writes on an SSD for 4 years straight is not "normal wear and tear".
That money might just as easily have been taken from someone who never worked a day in their life, just like the undeserving poor. Except for having been born to the right parents. You know, the ones that can afford to spoil them with toys instead of teaching them to take care of themselves
Unless you want to argue that all tax money comes from such people, this is not even an argument. "Tax money comes from bad people!" No it doesn't.
As for me, I have "earned" more money getting other people to work for me than ever I did by working myself.
Organizing people to work together to produce value is adding value. It's leadership.
The point is, if wealth is tied up in static resources, it hurts the economy, and if you hurt the economy bad enough, even rich people can suffer. A society filled with envy is not a stable society, nor is one that's full of desperate people. One way or another, money must circulate. Better via "theft" at tax time than via bloody revolution, I think.
Wealthy people don't sit on their money. They use their wealth to buy income-generating assets, like rental property, or stocks, or invest in ideas.
The idea that wealth is generated by moving money is retarded. If that were the case, we should print a trillion dollar bill and pass it around in a circle all day to create the wealthiest society in history!
Wealth is created by building useful things/ideas, and a major driver of that wealth production is voluntary win-win transactions. Involuntary transactions (tax the rich to give to poor) are win-lose, and likely to destroy wealth, in the transfer and in the redirected use of the money.
You don't "love" somebody when you refuse to do anything in the name of not doing something counter-ideological. Or expect someone to step up an volunteer to do it for you. If volunteerism were all that common, then Communism would have been successful. It failed because people wouldn't do enough without being granted incentive.
Your desire to create a society where the "idle poor" are given stuff just because they exist has so much in common with Communism ("from each according to ability, to each according to need"), I'm boggled that you're criticizing that ideology for being impractical.
You love the poor by embracing the impractical and unsustainable? How does that work?
As for the "Standing on Principles" thing, that's made for a really effective government over the last few years, hasn't it?
It's not just having a principle. It's having a correct one - which you will not find by just trying to average two competing solutions without looking at the different assumptions and logic underneath.
"I'm going to do whatever the hell I want" is a principle. That doesn't mean that avoiding all principles, on principle, will solve your problems. That just means you're going to adopt some principles without critically considering them.
Rich people get to enjoy the benefit of having a large manual labor pool available at their whim. When all the truly poor are dead an gone, it will not be very easy to get much work done at the wages the wealthy will command to do stuff like lawn services.
The poor have always been with society, but most of those would laugh at your idea of poor is cable TV and AC. Or that paying for those is necessary for survival, or for someone to be capable of mowing a lawn. (a high school/college student is "poor")
Never lived outside a first world country, I take it?
Providing shelter, food, education and healthcare to everyone is in the best interest of the society and leads to economic and social stability. There are many countries that do that mainly in Scandinavia and they are on top by almost any index measurable. On the other hand, try to visit Detroit for a great example of downward spiral of destruction.
Trillion dollar deficits are not in the best interest of society. Trillion dollar deficits do not lead to economic stability, or social stability.
That you can mindlessly blather GoodWord GoodWord GoodWord does not in fact make your position good or useful.
On the other hand, try to visit Detroit for a great example of downward spiral of destruction.
Socialistic policies destroyed profitability of businesses and drove away human and economic capital. Leaving the poor to be taxed "to provide for the poor" - minus the government's cut.
Socialism runs on Other People's Money. It grows like a cancer until the money runs out, and then you're left with a Detroit. It takes a very special level of intellect and years of schooling to declare, "LET'S IMITATE THAT".
This is a very emotionally appealing "solution". But notice that these "freeloading poor" are contributing to the economy by buying iPhones, $250 Nikes, and cable. Keeping money in circulation and creating jobs.
Broken window fallacy. They didn't earn the money to buy those iPhones, $250 Nikes, or cable.
That money was taken from someone who worked for it, who knew the value of their time and the value of money, and instead given to someone who thinks, "Free stuff!"
The economic contribution of what the original owners would have done with that money is invisible, because it is a lost opportunity that didn't happen - yet it's still a loss. Much like an apple tree cut down before it bears fruit is a loss of future apples.
You see a shiny subsidized iPhone in a poor person's hand and think, "net gain!" Don't get distracted by the shiny stuff you can see, and look at the big picture.
We more or less respect the "idle rich" whose money comes not from working, but from investments, whether direct or inherited.
Maybe we can spare a little love for the "idle poor" as well.
We can respect the ancestors of the "idle rich" for making the choices to secure their children's future. We don't have to respect the ancestors who used underhanded means to do so, and we don't have to respect the idle rich who squander their talents and wealth.
Love for the poor is more than just giving them free stuff. Love for the poor is to attack and destroy the culture that keeps them poor. If you've raised kids, you know it is more than just giving them shiny toys, but developing the right mental habits and a useful bank of knowledge. That is far more loving than to spoil them with toys and leave them incapable of taking care of themselves.
You're thinking about this in the wrong way. Social safety nets are not about altruism, or even making it easy for the poor to get subsidies (it's not). When poor people lose their jobs, they lose their homes and end up on the streets. When large swaths of the population are homeless, you end up with filthy slums where basic necessities are rare and diseases flourish. Walls, police and even social ostracism may be able to keep undesirable people out of your pristine life, but they won't prevent diseases from spreading from poor communities to the rich who've managed to deny them even a damn toilet to shit in.
So welfare is not charity, but a bribe for the poor to stay out of your own life. It is a payment for services rendered - the service of not pillaging and looting your property.
This mentality breeds resentment and ill will. "Rich guy gave me this money because he's afraid of me. I deserve this money because I did not harm him. If he don't pay up, then I can harm him to get what's due to me." Pray that you don't taste the backlash.
Keeping the poor from becoming that poor is a necessity for any civilization.
Civilization is not built by rich people giving hand-outs to poor people. It is built by nations developing cultures that enrich and improve the next generation. It is continuous investment in a nation's people so that the net contribution of each person is higher than the previous generation.
Welfare is not an investment - as you yourself described it, it's to keep them out of your backyard. Ignore how it's spent, they'll act like savages and bring disease and crime to you if you don't use tribute to pacify them. That's not building civilization, that's breeding barbarians next door.
And since keeping someone without shelter, food, healthcare or education is a choice of the society and not a necessity as it used to be, one can easily argue that such choice is amoral.
No, that's not the choice of society, that's the default state of humanity. You come out of the womb naked and poor - then your parents and your family do the best they can to equip and prepare you for your life, and you in turn contribute to that family in kind.
Society is not family. It could be a part of your extended family; but that requires a certain cohesion and ideological homogeneity, or simply blood bonds.
Trying to shoehorn society in the family role results in many problems, because the family model doesn't scale to millions of people easily. People can and do abuse the family bonds; people have and will abuse social welfare modeled after the familial benefits minus the personal relationships and accountability.
Democracies will vote themselves bread and circuses regardless if they can afford it, and all of socialism devolves into that. Politicians buying your vote by promising to give you Other People's Money.
Unless your socialist system is vigilant against that positive feedback loop, it will crash and burn. You can argue it is amoral that make choices that leave some people poor. It is indisputably more immoral to makes choices that send society into a downward spiral that ends in its destruction. There Is No Free Lunch.
Because a pure 100% ideological solution to anything is a recipe for failure. Sometimes a capitalistic approach works. Sometimes a socialistic approach works. Sometimes some other approach entirely works.
Your "pragmatic" ideology is still an "ideological solution". You think that you can take two extremes and always find some superior "moderate" compromise between the two.
Two wolves and a sheep vote on dinner - the two wolves want to eat the sheep, the sheep doesn't want to be eaten - your pragmatic solution is for the wolves to eat half the sheep - or maybe just two legs today, and the rest tomorrow. You haven't found a real compromise, you've given the wolves everything they want under the lie that this is "balanced".
Worshiping compromise does not make your position inherently more balanced. It is in fact a self-negating idea of "never stand firm on principle" - you hold to a principle that all principles as "recipes for failure"
Sometimes principles are the only foundation to work with. Sometimes you do need a "100% ideological solution" - because everything else is instable and self-destructive.
I have no intention of addressing failed business models, in Government or any other business. I'm addressing the fallacious claim that Government cannot create wealth, that it just redistributes it. Any argument for that applies equally to a large number of powerful corporations.
[more_than_value] is a priority to entice an opposing party to voluntarily agree to pay for product/services rendered.
Not so for government, since it can claim its taxes from individuals involuntarily. Where do I get to choose not to pay taxes to stop supporting the current political insanity?
The monopoly you cite on violent force is only a monopoly in recent times. In ye olden days (100 years ago, and less in cases), violent force has been employed with impunity by corporate entities. In my eye, the Government is simply the biggest Corporation on the block, and one we're lucky enough to be able to vote for representation in (ignoring the obvious problems with the electoral process in the US)
Governments have been around for much longer than corporations. They are hardly a reaction to corporate violence.
But I agree that governments are in practice a sort of mega-national-corporation. Which demonstrates the folly of trusting government to reign in corporations - it's asking a wolf to police the wolves. Government is the greatest threat to your liberty; keep it on a short leash.
Microsoft can offer you a crappy OS with every PC you buy, but the government is the one that can put you in jail. Expanding government power to protect you from the Microsofts and Apples of the world is counter-productive.
But don't think they did it without being asked/persuaded (corruption) to.
Men aren't angels, and the ones in government are no exception. Just to clarify that this is not innocent government corrupted by evil corporations, but men in both government and corporations working for their own selfish benefit.
In the complete absence of a representative government, that I can at least vote for, a corporation would form to serve its same function, without representation. We saw this with the earliest corporate charters in the early Age of Exploration empires.
Charters are acquired from some authority. Like a government.
With government's monopoly on force, all corporations that force their customers to buy their products do so by bribing or becoming the government. (rent/buy monopoly on violence)
To get back to wealth creation, the distinction is between the wealth creation of voluntary and involuntary transactions.
Voluntary transactions requires an offer of greater value to entice agreement. Involuntary transactions can resort to strongarm tactics, and so offering greater value is a lesser concern and often skipped. .
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky
