First off: read the whole page linked from the comment you're responding to. "proven reserves" are just the stuff we know is around and know how to get out. Until we start running low on the existing "proven reserves", there's very little incentive to go looking for more. Hence, "proven reserves" will always seem like it'll run out in a century or two at most. Which in no way implies we'll actually "run out of oil" then - it just means we'll just have to "prove" some more reserves between now and then. Which we will! Secondly, average world economic growth does not map directly into an equivalent amount of oil demand. A lot of economic growth comes from using resources more efficiently, not just using them faster or more intensively. But the main thing is that counting up the "proven reserves" is about as useless as counring the cans of beans on your supermarket shelf and predicting when they'll run out of beans, ignoring that this shelf gets regularly restocked from a warehouse somewhere else.

The radius of the observable universe is about 14Gly, not 14Gpc; only off by a factor of Pi (not exact, but a handy mnemonic), but still, like the old saying goes "Off by a factor of Pi is still wrong."

--MarkusQ

And yes, the post office IS faster than Fedex...the First Class Mail package will arrive 1 and maybe 2 days earlier

Ah, so when you say it's "faster" you're not talking about the fastest available option being faster. Not "faster at any price", just "faster, given the small amount I'm willing to spend". Got it.

When I use FedEx it's generally because I want something to arrive the next morning at, say, 10:30am. And they manage to do it. I had kind of been wondering how the post office managed to be faster that that while still obeying the laws of physics. :-)

and what is the hurrcan plan?

Three options:

(1) locate in a part of the ocean that doesn't get hurricanes
(2) be somewhat mobile, and move/drift out of the area during hurricane season.
(3) Build sturdy enough to survive hurricanes.

I'm pretty sure (1) and (2) are the current plan. For instance, the latest venture involves being off the coast of northern California; that area doesn't get hurricanes.

If you really mean "Somalia", that has a bunch of traditional governments fighting over it already. And "warlords" supported by both sides, not to mention the US has one of our torture prisons there. Not a nice or a safe place; also not particularly anarchic.

If you mean "Somaliland", (the top part), that is much more promising. It has a clan-based legal system. Some libertarians *have* seriously considered establishing businesses there and/or moving there. Unfortunately, the main advocate for doing so passed away in 2002 and nobody else has since stepped forward with quite as much public enthusiasm. The War on Terror made things a little tricky. It does seem like a fascinating place, though. Some background here: http://mises.org/daily/2066

Wasn't one of the characters in Atlas working in a diner? ...wikipedia powers: activate!...yup. Philosopher Hugh Akston:

He now works as a cook in a roadside diner, and proves extremely skillful at that. When Dagny tracks him down, and before she discovers his true identity, he rejects her enthusiastic offer to manage the dining car services for Taggart Transcontinental.

So they do know someone who knows how to cook. And many others who know how to work hard - that was kind of a fetish with Rand, people using their muscles to build and dig and hammer and stuff. So on the evidence, the Angry Flower hasn't read the book. :-)

I use the Post Office quite often with my small business, and it actually works quite well. It's faster than Fedex, and much cheaper too for small (less than 2 pounds or so) packages. For $1.75, I can ship a 3-ounce package across the country to someone's home in 3 days, sometimes faster. Let's see Fedex do that.

FedEx can't do that because it is legally prohibited from charging less than the post office, and is prohibited from carrying non-urgent mail.

However, you should know that FedEx carries all the Post Office's urgent/priority mail. Which means by definition the post office is not faster than FedEx and (at least for urgent packages) the post office isn't cheaper than FedEx is capable of providing that service for.

I use the Post Office quite often with my small business, and it actually works quite well. It's faster than Fedex, and much cheaper too for small

Um, you do realize that the Post Office subcontracts their Express Mail and Priority Mail business to FedEx? So pretty much by definition it can't be faster to send something from the post office than via FedEx.

(It might be cheaper if they're passing along some sort of volume discount and/or accepting a lower service priority level than the FedEx default. But faster seems unlikely.)

quote:"In 2001, FedEx Express signed a 7-year contract to transport Express Mail and Priority Mail for the United States Postal Service. This contract allowed FedEx to place drop boxes at every USPS post office. In 2007, the contract was extended until September 2013. USPS continues to be the largest customer of FedEx Express."

Also, unless he builds it in international waters too (using money he has yet to allocate), how is he going to manage to get it through territorial waters into international waters to begin with?

Build it in a shipyard and float it out to where you want it to be, same as you'd do for an oil platform or a flotel or a floating runway or any other large floating structure. If it needs to be flagged for the journey, fly a flag of convenience during the trip. Liberia or Panama would do fine for the construction and initial move.

Probably work fine afterwards too, for most purposes - it depends on what you want to do with the thing.

The overhead of paying taxes to the existing government is small change compared to the running costs of an off-shore sea platform.

A big cost of doing business on land is that you have to pay the Government Tax. A big cost of doing business on the ocean is that you have to pay the Sea Tax.

The Government Tax is political. It's roughly proportional to your income and the tax rate tends to increase over time. So as time goes on and your business grows, the Government Tax keeps getting more expensive in absolute terms.

The Sea Tax is technological. A large fraction of it is a one-time investment and there are huge economies of scale, meaning the more space you need at sea, the cheaper it gets per square foot to provide it. Technological advances keep reducing the cost of the Sea Tax - every year it's a bit less expensive than it was the previous year to provide an equivalent level of comfort and services at sea. The Sea Tax is very expensive but keeps getting cheaper in absolute terms.

Currently the Sea Tax is hefty, but over time as the Sea Tax declines and the Government Tax continues to maintain or increase, eventually it'll make economic sense to literally "offshore" some businesses. Even if it doesn't make sense just yet, it will.

You don't need sovereignty to accomplish the "office park" idea, all you need for that is a flag of convenience. Any flag of convenience. The exact same thing that lets cruise ships offer gambling when in international waters also lets a boat or platform be an offshore office park, given sufficient demand for that service. There's very little practical difference between a floating outpost "being its own nation" or just flying under the flag of some random nation that doesn't mind letting it do what it wants.

How about NYC taxi medallions? That's a currency that expands even *less* than bitcoins - there are fewer medallions now than in 1937 so the value of one is roughly $600,000 USD. If only you could spend fractions of one...

Only if there is no scrubber at the power plant. Modern coal power plants are quite clean.

Wrong. Scrubbers don't stop the release of radioactivity from a coal fired power plant. You'd essentially have to go to CO2 sequestration for that.

--MarkusQ

soft skills are perceived as more valuable in a manager than technical expertise. To me, that's something that's stupendously obvious.

I agree. Soft skills are perceived as more valuable than technical expertise. Further, your arguments have convinced me that you not only share this perception but do indeed think it is stupendously obvious. If we were having this chat in person I would offer to buy you a drink and suggest we play a diverting little game of chance I happen to know in which soft skills are more valuable that technical expertise.

-- MarkusQ