You should read "Player Piano" by Vonnegut if you haven't already. While some things like really rich engineers and of course the obligatory 50's reference to a computer with a massive # of vacuum tubes didn't come to pass, his depiction of what we do with the "excess" people is spot on. The basics are that they either go into the Army or join the "Reaks and Recs", basically a gang of workers that isn't needed, but gets employed by the government to do meaningless jobs so they can "earn" a paycheck. Honestly it's the most accurate prediction of modern society I have seen in any book that was written more than 50 years ago.

You really think that this kind of shit doesn't go on in other countries? The biggest difference between them and the NSA is that they either a) openly admit to spying on their own citizens(China) or b) Are much better at covering their ass.

You are ignoring things like asymmetric risk. If I buy a kit and cannot sell it for more than I paid for it, I can return it*. If Oculus Rift builds more dev kits than people are willing to buy, they can't just go back to the component manufacturers and say, "I bought too many of these, please give me back my money". So no, it's not "capitalism", if it were pure capitalism then we wouldn't have any consumer protection laws and they couldn't return any un-used merchandise(which would probably put the kibosh on these kinds of shenanigans but at a cost that isn't worth it).

I'm assuming there is a return policy, laws in most countries would probably support the consumer if they tried to return an unopened product in a reasonable time window.

I give you an 8.7, your argument is logical and you made it passionately, but your posture is terrible and you didn't sell it with your body language. Improve on those points and you might qualify for the state championship!

By your logic then this morning what I saw rummaging through my garbage was a black dinosaur. However it wasn't nearly as scary as those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. For starters it's roar sounded more like a "caw caw", and it was afraid of a broom....

For a lot of reasons really. First of all, the article doesn't say where in Chiba prefecture this find was made, while there is a small part of Chiba prefecture that is close to Tokyo(including the part that is home to Tokyo Disney), the prefecture itself is quite large and includes a large peninsula that is quite a long distance from Tokyo.

Secondly, even in Tokyo proper if you travel to any point in the city that is more than a 10-15 minute walk from a station(and there are plenty of them) you will find plenty of run-down and abandoned buildings. Property in Tokyo seems to follow an inverse square law, the value is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the closest station.

probably because the title talks about big black holes and a "smashup".....

Not only do they tend to be loudmouths, there are certain segments of the population in the United States that seem to laud ignorance..... I've lived on 3 different continents and enjoy hanging around in dive bars, you get to meet fascinating people, and one thing that I've discovered is that while there are idiots everywhere, (anecdote alert) only in the US do people BRAG about being ignorant.....

The company I worked for didn't pay overtime, and would constantly cut bonuses, so it's not just unions that are pushing OT.

To see how workaholism saps productivity and rarely leads to better results, look at Japan. Overtime is sacrosanct in Japan, at the company I worked at previously it was a badge of honor that the average amount of overtime was 60 hours a month. Japan has the lowest per-hour output in the G7, and it's a small wonder why. Managers will often times not buy hardware that can increase productivity because hey, you can simply make the workers work longer hours for free, whereas hardware costs money. The result is a populace that is unhappy, unhealthy, and well dying. The low birth rate is well known, what is less well known is that the Japanese have the least amount of sex in the developed world. The technology industry that everyone once thought would rule the world has come to be dominated by the west because managers have very little incentive to innovate, to increase productivity. And as the cherry on the shit sundae, the low productivity means that wages in Japan are lower, i.e. longer hours for less money. Trust me, you don't want to go down this route.

Nice astroturfing, you get paid by the CCP to post this bullshit? You really think China is transparent? HAHAHAHHAHA, what a fucking tool. Guess what, you are being fucked over by the CCP. Also, this economic progress is not "unheard of in human history", you are copying the Japanese model, right down to the bad loans. It's just on a bigger scale, and frankly you are doing it slower than Japan did it, which is saying something. Probably due to all the corruption by the CCP.

Actually it does because Vietnam is even more isolated, thus it will have a very hard time forming regional alliances against China, esp. if China bribes Thailand and Laos with either cheap oil or jobs on the rigs.

Well the problem will persist basically as long as the Chinese Communist Party does.... The CCP is deeply unpopular in pretty much every arena save for how it is handling the economy, if the economy starts to go south you may see Tienamen-like events erupting all over the country. In order to combat this the CCP has to keep the economy humming along and large #s of migrants from the countryside employed. They have done a decent job thus far, but there are some major cracks in the Chinese economy on the horizon. Long story short they copied the Japanese model, right down to the bad loans.

If China's economy does not keep on expanding you are looking at a potential financial crisis that would make the whole Lehman thing seem tame by comparison. The reason they are getting so bold is because to the CCP, exploiting these resources may literally be a life-or-death situation, as most dictators don't tend to just end up retired in a villa somewhere, they end up with their heads being separated from their necks.

There is a reason bullies tend to pick on weak loners, it's because they are unable to defend themselves and unable to get enough support from friends to overpower the bully.

The thing about Vietnam is that it it's a small country that doesn't have a lot of allies(Laos and Thailand have had armed conflicts with Vietnam in the not so distant past, and of course the whole French/US thing). China may be betting on Vietnam basically being forced to deal with China, since China is the dominant economic force in the area.