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Comment Re:The End (Score 1) 187

Ugh... Accelerationism is the worst.

It basically boils down to, "Quick, we need more unjust outcomes in the short term in the hopes that maybe it will piss people off enough to solve the problem." Only there's no guarantee we won't just get stuck at the worse level, what there is a guarantee for is that we'll get the unjust outcomes that might power that phantom revolution.

Comment Re:If I had to guess (Score 1) 418

Hmmm.... I wonder if you got hit with a false positive whether you could go after the ISP and the RIAA surrogate for libel, slander, or defamation, since they're in effect claiming you've committed a criminal offense. It might be hard to hit the ISP due to mandatory arbitration clauses, though I'm not sure they'd cover a non-contractual tort, but it might be possible to try and drown the RIAA surrogate in a substantial number of small claims libel suits.

Comment GAO Report Misleading (Score 1) 943

The GAO report is misleading in the same way that many GAO reports are. This is largely because the GAO essentially acts like a computer and answers the question with the parameters its given. In this case what is the savings of switching to coins assuming a 1:1 conversion.

This is misleading because in practice coins have much lower circulation rates than bills. There are a number of reasons for this such as weight, the need for different holding arrangements than the rest of the high denomination units, etc. What this means is that in order to meet the circulation needs you need more coins than the number of bills you are replacing. For example, in the United Kingdom after the switch over they found they needed 1.6 coins for each bill removed. Once you factor in this non-trivial increase in the amount of currency to match current levels of circulation, dollar coins actually cost more than the bills they are replacing.

NPR's Planet Money covered this brilliantly, and should be required listening for anyone who wants to comment on this debate:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money
and
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/30/166253822/episode-364-should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill

tl;dr: Bills are cheaper than coins when you measure actual amounts needed in circulation.

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