These people aren't Luddites. Luddites were blue-collar workers whose jobs were threatened by machines which could do more in less time with less capital expenditure, thus increasing the ability to realize opportunity gains and decreasing operational costs. They had a big problem with automatic mechanical looms in the textile industry.

the hippocratic oath also bans abortion, which is where the abortion debate breaks down for me.

Thanks. One day I need to actually study economics; most of my economic theory comes from inappropriately abusing the part of my brain that handles absolutely perfect rendering of physics. Essentially I can track full, completely known systems by rapid abstraction. So I can't predict how a basketball is going to bounce off a surface when thrown, but I can predict exactly how a basketball would bounce off a complex surface with specific abstract amounts of air density and theoretical material defects if thrown a certain way. Sometimes (ESPECIALLY with complex leverage simulations) I get results I don't understand and can't account for until someone else explains WHY THAT IS HAPPENING to me.

Economics is roughly similar. For example, the "trickle up" theory above is a gross simplification. Here's another gross simplification of the same: a front-line employee (retail, cashier, burger flipper) is also a consumer for the same business they work for. That consumer gets paid $100. Ten of these such consumers from other businesses (an abstract pool) spend $100 each at the store, bringing in $1000 of revenue. From that $1000, $100 goes to the employee and $900 goes up. It looks from this blunt analysis that money trickles down, since some of that $900 is spent elsewhere at the front line.

The trick is that $10 from each of these people goes to that employee, and $90 goes up--that employee gets paid $100, then spends $100 and gets $10 back. Another 9 $10 come back to give him $100. When you expand this out, then abstract it, you get an obvious fact: A business brings in a chunk of revenue, shears off part of that, and pays wages. Expand this: the entire consumer economy moves revenue exclusively to businesses, and that entire mass of monetary movement shears off a chunk that goes back to the consumer.

The remaining chunk moves up into the hands of upper-level management (shear more off to the consumer), who spend the same way. If you continue this out, you find that all money is spent, and again arrive at trickle-down economics.

However, as I pointed out, it concentrates. Rich people--the executives--buy yachts and jets, specialty things. This means some of that money gets concentrated into specialty businesses, not spent in general. Further, businesses spend for business services and supplies--especially energy, which eventually comes down to fuel (silicone and doping chemicals for solar panels) and steel (which *is* fuel for windmills--steel, copper, aluminum) (I told you I abstract the model).

Eventually all that money goes back into the economy; but it trickles down in bulk to the oil, coal, and basic materials companies. Because lending and debt are so integral to our economy, a lot of that trickles down in bulk to the bankers as well. Since these are the big job creators--"the rich", and yeah "the rich" aren't people--that money is trickling *up*, not *down*. Bankers, same model: a portion of the business' expenses go to paying debt, which goes *directly* to bankers. Even the people the banks buy services from are operating with some debt, so the banks get a discount because part of the money they spend is returned to them when it comes time to pay your loans.

It moves up faster than it moves out. The simulation starts as discrete movements, actions, specifications; it becomes blobs that are sheared and cut and manipulated, representing those actions. But economics is huge: it factors in human motivation, it factors in the real creation of wealth--itself a complex topic--it factors in scarcity and imaginary concepts. What seems so simple in my head, even when 100% correct, requires endless amounts of discussion with thousands of caveats and explanations tacked on. I mean it takes hours to explain healthcare as a vehicle to explain wealth, and it's not as simple as "PRIVATE BAD PUBLIC GOOD" or "PUBLIC BAD PRIVATE GOOD". Each discrete action, each particular facet of a public healthcare plan has an impact on wealth--two impacts: a negative (increased taxes destroying wealth) and a positive (social services creating wealth), and then it comes down to if you're creating more wealth than you're destroying, and that can take forever to explain.

I need to go get some theory in my head. All my economics talks are Buffy-speak. :|

I'm on the fence over whether shopping locally weakens the economy or not.

In general, spending more money for the same value is wealth destroying: money trickles up by nature, through a process I'd rather not outline--it involves specialization of services such that a certain portion of money moving through a business always goes to a very small subset of businesses, the most notable examples being energy (oil) and steel. More spending extracts more money from the consumer base in general, and concentrates it in a smaller consumer base.

Based on these assertions, it's reasonable to assume that shopping locally and buying the same kabocha for $15 would make a community more poor than shipping in kabocha from elsewhere for $5. This is a good example: Kabocha needs to be harvested ripe and stored for 3 months to develop flavor; it's no good right off the vine. That means there's no compromises such as harvesting green bananas and ripening them on truck, versus a local supplier harvesting ripe bananas. So what you get is a bunch of people who spend $15 and get 1 kabocha instead of 3 kabocha, as well as a local farmer or retailer who is either a rich feudal lord or beholden to his lords (oil...).

If it's easier for the local farmer to grow apples, but difficult due to soil and climate to grow kabocha, then the most wealth-generating solution here is for the local farmer to grow apples and export them, and the local community buy some of those apples because they're cheaper than growing apples elsewhere and shipping them in. Elsewhere, where a Kabocha can be grown for $2, a farmer will grow a Kabocha and sell it for $2.50 to a distributor who spends hundreds on bulk shipping that comes down to $1.00 per kabocha, and then puts a mark-up of $1.00 on it and sells it to you for $5. Since it would cost your local farmer $14.50 to grow the same kabocha and you'd pay him $15 for it, you should buy imported Kabocha and get your farmer to grow apples.

Books, electronics, and a lot of other stuff have become more of an import item, ordered online and shipped in. Consequentially, Best Buy, CompUSA, and Circuit City have failed. Your community would be served best by then changing tactic: close down those defunct electronic stores, open up something else. MicroCenter is attacking the problem by coming close to, meeting, or beating most online retailers in electronics prices; if you come close enough, the ability to engage in tactile shopping with no shipping delays is a value-add worth several dollars. Many people will go to Barnes & Noble and find a $35 book they like, then order it for $11 on Amazon; but if the book is $35 and the Amazon book is $33.76 with free 5 day super saver shipping, they'll probably pay the extra $1.24 and buy the book immediately.

I've taken to ordering personal care items from Amazon. Liquid starch, $500 ironing boards (with built-in vacuum--the polymer bonds in organic fibers de-link when you get them hot and wet, and then rotate freely until you get them cool and dry, so vacuum lets you rapidly set sharp creases like at the dry cleaner), laundry detergent, shave soap, and so on. Even a $500 serger, although I get the thread locally, and then I order decent clothing online and tailor it to get that final fit. Some of these things are hard to find locally, or cost $300 more.

I keep saying the same about education. The rich can afford to take an incorrect career path, or predict that their career path will be... MBA so they can be an executive of daddy's company. The poor have to speculate on what's going to be hot in 4-6 years, shell out cash, and hopefully get a job. The businesses profit from this: They get a flooded market and can pay $40k salaries for skilled laborers because there's as many of those as there are McDonalds workers.

If the public education system didn't make any effort to support people in getting vocational training, we'd be back to the days when programmers made $200k. Businesses would do better hiring an entrant for $40k and paying $160k/year for training... or hiring 3 entrants for $40k and paying $20k/year for their vocational education. They would want to raise these salaries to above cost: rather than $60k, they'd bump to $75k or thereabouts, so that other businesses would find it cheaper to pay $40k+$20k to train new entrants.

These entrants are the poor who can't afford college, who get government loans and then sit around with no jobs and crushing debt being poor. There are only so many rich kids to hire for menial labor as programmers, graphics artists, HTML technicians, Windows admins, and lower managers.

So your argument against the control of export of the product of labor is that the labor applied elsewhere would produce a different thing? i.e. your argument that the author of a program is irrelevant is that the author of a program is actually relevant?

Money is poor motivation and costs more than my time.

I suggest to you that you should now rewrite Microsoft Office from scratch. Since computer programs work the same everywhere it doesn't matter that you have to originate the code yourself instead of having it shared with you (for a fee, and in binary form) from some vendor.

My gut flora is fine. I drink a lot of lassi. My blood pressure, when sedentary, is usually 123/81 or thereabouts, up to 125/83, with a heart rate of 90-95 resting. When active--bicycling 200-400 miles per month--my heart rate eventually drops as low as 70-73 resting. I've hit 68 once. I maintain a weight between 142 and 158 at a height of 69 inches. Food-born illness has minor effect for 3-5 hours--I once ate raw ground meat, two burgers worth, which had been developing a rather ripe aroma for about two weeks... it gave me stomach pain for 5 very long hours, unlike raw chicken which gives me a headache and terrible gas when I'm unlucky--and influenza has once put me near-comatose for two to three days, otherwise been a relatively nasty head cold (I never vaccinate for seasonal illness; I am, however, overdue for tetanus and need to get that).

I consider myself in marginally fair physical health. Mental health is not something I can internally judge well; however, I have a mild obsession with rational evaluation, including a minor obsession with numbers and an odd tendency to be a bit too precise when possible. When psychotic, I dissociate into a directed collective consciousness to stay relatively stable; afterwards I make firm note not to let the doctors prescribe shit like Prednizone and Methylphenedate anymore, as it turns out I'm highly susceptible to drug-induced psychosis and that's less than thrilling. My indiscretion with what I eat stems from repeatable lack of consequences and thus an analysis of low risk, although every time I've had poorly-cooked chicken it's been because I tried to cook it right and simply failed; beef and fish simply haven't caused me too much trouble.

Are you trying to deny that various races are physiologically different? The fact that we can identify an Asian man or a black man from skeletal structure doesn't strike you as odd at all? How about the well-known fact that negroes have better heat tolerance and denser muscle structure, providing for better strength without so much bulk? Hell, even the hair--caucasians and asians have straight linked proteins, but only caucasians carry lighter pigmentation; negro hair is denser, and the cuticle links unevenly, which causes the curls and frizzy structure. Modern society of course has decided that negroes are uncomfortable, and so tried to Europeanize them--to the point that a radio host was fired after a customer complained that she should be more "normal" and put stuff into her hair to make it straight instead of frizzy.

Physiological differences from regional selection pressure. Dietary differences from regional selection pressure. Genetic mixing, mutations, normal chance selection. Environmental impacts causing normal variations in development. These create permanent, inherent differences in each person on the planet; some are small, and some are quite striking. Some are common and even normalized to an ethnic group; others are random and only significant on an individual level.

It's not absurd if it's true. Peoples' dietary needs and tolerances are highly variable; I know people who are vegetarian because they can't eat meat, it actually makes them physically ill on the level of a medical emergency (I suspect a red meat allergy, but I am not a doctor). I don't have a dietary fiber requirement--my optimum level of fiber is strikingly close to zero, and some 4 grams of dietary fiber without a substantial amount of animal grease in a day causes severe constipation. I don't need to avoid plants; I just need to avoid salad.

It's absurd that you think that people on one side of the world have the same dietary requirements as people on the other side of the world; it's still absurd that you think people on one side of the street have the same dietary requirements as their neighbors. In some parts of India, people are largely vegetarians; some of them eat insects as well, which is meat. Neanderthal man required at least 5000 calories per day to sustain, and had an incredibly long digestive tract; caucasian, asian, and negro man are quite physiologically different, and within these groups there are hundreds of variances. Some caucasians--a group largely raised on dairy, i.e. Europeans--are lactose intolerant by some damnable magic.

Those fallafels and rice cakes and red bean paste dishes and sweet potatoes are all nutrient rich, even protein rich, but they don't manage to give enough of what I need in a way that I can absorb it. Bioavailability of choline from soy is exceedingly poor--lack of choline will stunt neural development and reduce the amount of brain activity you can sustain. B12 is extremely rare in plants, but common in meat. Amino acids are readily available in meat, but they're available in different amounts and in different protein chains in plants--chains that don't always break down as effectively as those in meat. Fat is hard to find--avocados have plenty of it, that's about it.

The point is that "all the pieces are there" in the same way that all the pieces of a house are in the house next to mine, which was just demolished after tearing them down. Bricks, lumber, and mortar are readily useful; however I would have to scrape mortar from the bricks from the old house--doable--and use chemical resins and reagents to process wood and mortar into useful material--I'm not equipped for that. And of course much of the material is damaged (burned wood, contaminants, etc.), so I can't access it in any useful way at all.

Your haughty idea that we can slop the same nutrient-rich gruel in front of anyone and expect them all to grow up equally as healthy with no deviant impacts from their diet is pure delusion. It doesn't match with science, it doesn't match with anecdote, it doesn't match with the world around you if you stand back and look for a minute. You may as well claim the world is flat while you're at it.

Yes, but did he drive his car into a steel pylon at 100mph for ethical reasons? Are you going to be ethical and do the same, to decrease the damaging human population?

If I went vegan, I'd die. Slowly. Like someone dying of AIDS and leprosy at the same time.

You're actually fundamentally wrong. Linux used to have a 4/4 split hack, but it's been 3/4 on x86 forever. 4/4 was added as an option, and hardly ever used--RedHat published a special kernel for it for a while.

-fPIE requires the use of 1 additional register in many contexts, and they're scarce on x86. The performance impact is real. That said, it only affects the main executable--it affects /bin/ls but not all the libraries it loads--and the libraries are PIC anyway. The argument from Theo was basically that 99.8% of the code executed on the system (measured by time spent executing, not code volume) could be PIC but making that last 0.2% PIC would be an extreme performance hit.

Theo did that once. The result was embarrassing. Like a retarded farmer arguing vehemently about how to spell 'diary kaw'.

Now that I go back and look, post-flamewar, there's release notes for OpenBSD talking about importing a lot of fixes for stuff found by Coverity run against OpenBSD tools that were included in NetBSD, which got a Coverity report. It looks like there's a fair pile of improvements in OpenBSD kernel, OpenSSH, OpenSMTPD, and other OpenBSD projects that now come from static analysis.

I guess Theo was wrong then too.

He's been wrong every time we've gotten into an argument. Two samples isn't statistically significant, though; and I tend to only pick technical arguments where I have more complete knowledge than professionals.

My god, it was pre-2006. Well that makes sense: I was 19 at the time. How did this much time go by without me noticing? And who made these people swallow their own stupidity while I wasn't looking?

Marcus Ranum bragged about OpenBSD and got hacked running Apache on OpenBSD. I generally feel that they have less understanding about security and more loud voices and marketing. OpenBSD secure is like MacOSX secure.