Nice attempt to move the goalposts.

The number includes those killed in the years between the Revolution and Stalin coming to power, and deaths after he left, which is why it says Stalin/Russia. But he owns the lion's share for the starvation and deaths cause by deportations, gulag, systematic political purges. etc.

I did not include deaths by war, soldiers take that risk.

And yes, the numbers swing wildly. The holocaust is estimated at 6 to 12 million. That is a lot of margin, and it exists for other events as well. The starvation events in China are estimated from 40 to 100 million, that is a big margin of error.

Then again, the Nazi's have killed anyone lately, but North Korea and China are still killing people today.

BTW, if the Nazi's were the National Socialist Party, are they communists?

Ah, thanks. You are correct. But, it's silly to say that Coca-Cola paid nothing for their brand... in fact, some (foreign?) advertising budgets get accounted for as assets and depreciation over time.

I'm not saying psychic powers exist. I'm saying the Randi challenge is dumb.

Also, your response is dumb.

1. You're assuming there are not stable populations that are psychic, possibly with taboos against breeding outside the group. (See, some rumors about gypsies)
2. You assumed that this hypothetical psychic ability is genetic.
3. You assume that this survival trait would lead to more children. In reality, it would lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies. Further, with the ability to avoid pregnancies lethal to the mother/child and the ability to avoid dangers, you would need far fewer children to ensure X reach adulthood.
4. You assume that a competitive advantage would not reach equilibrium. See how lefthandness conveys and advantage in a right-handed world, and yet remains consistent at 10%
5. You assume that people want to reproduce.
6. You assume that psychic ability doesn't channel ectoplasm through your genitals and sterilize you.

It's not suggestive at all.

That said, I don't think it exists. You know, because of how physics seems to work.

The lottery uses balls that flip around willy-nilly. Telekineses would be really helpful.

But all the Randi challenge proves is that some abilities with low alternate value don't exist. But I don't even know what those abilities would be. For instance, buying land with water rights in the desert, and then reselling it (or oil, if that's what you can dowse for), would be extraordinarily profitable. But if everyone knew, you would never be able to buy anything.

Villainized, sure.

But the hard facts are Communists make the Nazi's look like punters.

Mao: 70 Million
Pol Pot: 3 Million
North Korea: 1.5 Million
Stalin/Russia: 61 Million

Nazi's? 20 million in the various Concentration Camps and starvation campaigns. They do get "points" for being so efficient and doing it in such a short time I guess.

Supply and demand. Fracking petroleum increased supply, so price falls. Economics can't predict discoveries, and can only give good guesses that at certain prices levels previously uneconomic supplies would slowly come to market, driving down prices.

That bit sounds easy, but there are lots of things going on in the world, and they interact. Some long term trends can be predicted by honest, intelligent, and informed economists, but many things are outside of good prediction. What these good economists can do is point out that certain types of government policy will tend to cause what types of results.

Book value is the amount the company could expect to sell its assets for, assuming odd things like "goodwill" being something you can auction off. Other subcategories of book value eliminate the non-transferable or intangible.

Q is based on how much it would cost to replace a company if you had to start from scratch.

These are different. In art, for instance, the cost a specific Picasso was determined at auction to be 180 million. That's its book value. I have no idea how it's replacement value is determined. Is it the few grand it would take to hire an accomplished painter to recreate it pretty well? The 55 grand it takes to use that machine reproduction thing some museums have experimented with? Or the cost of buying and holding a sufficient number of paintings such that in 75 years you had a seminal work of a major artist (minus the liquidation value of the rest of the works)?

First, you have to define inflation. Classical economics defines inflation as any increase in the money supply. It would not be unreasonable to modify that to read that inflation is an increase in the money supply beyond the increase in population. Modern misinformation says that something like the cost of living index is inflation. Note that the CPI, for example, is a measure requiring much calculation and subject to political pressure, which is a strong argument for not using it.

For money to be a store of value, the rate of inflation must be very close to zero. This is more important than any illusory economy boosting that comes from large amounts of inflation, and inflation always creates political pressure for more and faster inflation. However, the damage caused by negative inflation probably exceeds the damage caused by an equal amount of positive inflation.

My judgement is that the target value for inflation, strictly enforced, should be that the money supply should increase between 0% and 0.5% faster than the population.

Oh come on, it is easy:

The number of slaves need to row the ship becomes too great.

Cover everything with mirrors?

Liberace called, he wants his mirror encrusted missile cruiser back.

I call it the Humpty Dumpty argument:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”