The examples you are giving are not the right ones. For example, a educational institution could be non-profit or for profit. The right examples would be Profit, Non-Profit, and Not-For-Profit.

Without reading the article I am going to guess Not-For Profit which has some internal sense. Not-For-Profits are when people come together to pull their resources. Examples would be Co-ops and Credit Unions. I would think farm co-ops would be semi on point. Famers (for profits) come together to pull their resources together to increase their purchasing power and other shared resources. Kind of like how for profit corporations come together to support a shared resource, Apache.

You are technically correct when the exchange clears its own trades (i.e. has a clearing house) and fully insulates traders from each other and from counterparty risk. Even then the clearing house would bear counterparty and operational risk (the amount of risk depends on how it is being run.). However, this is not true for Over-The-Counter (OTC) trades. Here the people you are exchanging with are risking their own capital and inventory.

And here we may be entering the real of metaphysics. What is an exchange? You are prying apart the exchange into 2 separate entities, the trading floor and the traders. They are two separate legs but without those two separate legs the system would not stand up. The traders are normally partners (in the legal sense) or members. As volatility increases, the cost of holding inventory gets higher, the cost of trading gets higher. If volatility gets too high the trades will leave. The exchange would solvent and would be up and running but what is the point of there is no trading to be done?

Out of curiosity, when you are referring to exchanges, exactly which exchanges are you talking about? I am looking at Coinbase and from the outside I would guess that they would have some inventory of BitCoin.

I am thinking about the exchanges where one can exchange BitCoins for other currency. If one can exchange BitCoins for US Dollars, Euros, etc., somebody has to be willing to be on the other side of those transactions, and spend US Dollars, Euros, etc. to hold an inventory of BitCoins. If we are talking about "wallets", they would not have that exposure.

I will admit that I am extending my deep and technical knowledge of other trading exchanges (commodity, FX, bond, stock) to BitCoin but I can't see any technical way to get around the fact that somebody (exchange, bank, middlemen, speculator) has to hold inventory and that their profits and losses will not just be dictated by not just be the trading fees made but also by the appreciation / deprecation in value of their inventory of BitCoins.

Actually, most of banking (and accounting, financial options, etc.) comes from Italian city states from the Middle Ages, and thus Catholic. See Florence and Venice. They heavy into trading. See the Medici family as a classic example. They predate the Quakers.

While there are a few special products that increase in value with risk (such as the VIX Index), the higher the risk the lower the price. Of course one has to separate out the upside risk against the downside risk and those could be very different risks. That is, a dot com stock's risk is asymmetrical – it could go up by 1,000% or go down by 100%. Currency risk tends to be more symmetrical.

Personally, I can't point to any rational reason why increased volatility would increase BitCoins value. Irrational reasons – a.k.a. speculation – the sense of excitement, etc. Maybe.

Except that most exchanges are "long" on bit coins. That is they have a inventory of bit coins. If the market crashes so does the value of inventory. Some volatility encourages trading but they are still interested in the long term health and stability of BitCoins. Wild swings tends to shut the markets down.

You want rationality in fear mongering? o.k. – I will try.

Sony feels big. Everybody knows them and almost everybody has bought a Sony product at one time or another.

You want to make it look like it is big bad corporation against the little, helpless, city hall. So you want Uber to look as big as possible. Using market cap, as discussed, is about as distortive as one can get.

But people have a hard time knowing what a 17b dollar company looks like. How big is that? So you find some other company to compare. What other companies are out there that are also about 17b in size? One could use Dollar General or Chipotle, but they don't feel that big. Could Dollar General really take down city hall? One could use Omnicore but who the hell knows about them?

And I can "sigh" right back at you. The earth's temperature has risen slower than climate models suggest but in the artic has risen much faster than expected.

It is probably because climate modelsoverestimated the effect of snow's albedo. Areas that where traditionally covered by snow in spring are not. These areas absorb more heat during spring, are covered by less snow, less heat is reflected back into space, resulting in warmer ground and less snow cover. A positive feedback look that we have seen over the past 10 years.

Climate change is complex and does not lend itself to simple answers.

I believe it is a disingenuous statement to mislead. It is technically true. However, there is an important but subtle distention between the value of a company and market capitalization.

Sony is a much larger company. However, from accounting 101, Assets – Liabilities = Equity. If we use assets as a proxy for company size (which is not quite true but good enough for this post), as one increases liabilities, equity gets smaller. Sony has lots of liabilities, so its market capitalization is much smaller than it size.

In addition, market capitalization does not care about the companies' current profitability (which is actually a better term than size) but its future profitability. Sony is a big average company. Because of its size it would need multiple home runs to really change its probability. Uber offers the prospect of large growth and large future profits. It is that tempting hope that makes Uber more valuable than Sony. That being said, maybe Uber is not worth 17b. For some hard numbers, see

http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...

But would alternative fuels help prevent climate change?

I have seen studies that suggest that planting trees in northern latitudes for biofuels would actually increase global warming. Grasslands covered in snow does a pretty good job of reflecting heat back into space – trees less so. Also, changing the mega flora changes the microorganism in the soil, resulting in a greater emissions of methane – a much strong greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Pull one string of the web and unintended consequences abound. Normally I am a "faster, faster" type of person but for climate change, due to its complexity and unknowns, I tend to be "more study, more research."

I would like you to reread your comments, think about it the logic and costs behind it, and realize that I may be more compassionate than you think.

Integrating refugees is a expensive proposition. While I would like to increase the number of refugees coming to America (let's say between x2 and x5) we just can't turn on the tap and let everybody in. Given a choice between Syrian refugees and Mexican refugees I would pick Syrian. The Mexicans, while in a unhappy situation, have a functioning government to appeal too and other places in Mexico to go. The Syrians don't have that option.

I will admit it is a subject, sliding measure. I have been friends, work with, and known immigrants and refuges from around the world. Upper crust doctors leaving cocaine torn Columbia and Communist Nicaragua. Late 80s, bad situation, but neither in immediate threat? Do these people take a higher level of precedence over the Somalia immigrants I volunteer with? I would say no – Somalia's get first crack at our limited resources. (I would still take the doctors, but those would be on economic grounds, not asylum grounds.).

I would argue this is the more compassionate stance. While subjective, take the refugees who are in the worst shape.

Oddly not a liberal. And the thread is on legal immigration, not illegal.

The case for legal immigrants is clear. They contribute far more, more in fact than the average native.

For illegal immigrants the case is a bit more murky. Hard to get good data on illegal activities. However the evidence is still suggest that they are net contributes. While they may not be the best educated, they do have “get up and go”, tend to be young, healthy, in the most productive years of their lives, and use social services (welfare, hospital, prison, etc.) at a lower rate than natives.

As you state liberals tend to be a bit mushy on the facts and logic. I am not a liberal.

http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

http://balanceofeconomics.com/...

http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.e...

http://www.cato.org/blog/herit...

1. I share some of your opinions on Social Security. The problem is that we promised the baby boomers a specific retirement, the baby boomers have mostly paid in, and the baby boomers are the demographic bulge. A suggestion 30 years too late for the current batch of retirees.

2. I would argue that it is too soon to tell for South Africa but it has worked remarkably well for the US. WASP, the ethnic group that built and founded this country, have been in a minority since 1850.

3. I would look at Japan again. Japan, one of the most xenophobic nations on earth, is seriously debating about tripling the number of immigrants to fix their demographic issue.

America has lots of room compared to the rest of the world (no issue of overcrowding) and we have a slight demographic issue with too many retirees and the associated social security payments.

In a more general sense, it is because we want America to remain a strong vibrant country. That small dip in your paycheck today ensures that your child will live in a great economy.

Routinely the best and the brightest of foreign nations come to the United States. We get the cream of the crop. They come here, build, reinvigorate, and rejuvenate. They form dynamic networks allowing the US to sit in a privileged seat in the center.

Does America produce enough smart, dynamic people? Sure – why not. Can you ever have too many smart, dynamic people? No. Study and study has shown that immigrants contribute more than they take.

Hispanics are less of a mixed bag than you think. Older Hispanics tend to be mixed with a strong influence on where they came from. Young Hispanics skew heavily democratic. And it is the young Hispanics that is the faster growing group. As a Republican, I am very sad at how the Republican leadership (in particular the last presidential primary) are wooing the older white voters with the boggy man of illegal immigrants.