Yep, sounds like the attitude most people have nowadays. Nothing is ever the fault of the individual; it's always the environment that caused his actions.

By that logic, any company taking investor money is a ponzi scheme: the early adopters (i.e. initial investors) are heavily rewarded if and only if they can convince latecomers that the company actually has value (otherwise cashing out -- selling their stock -- becomes hard).

-Steve jobs, 1996 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/16/1550206/nsa-building-uss-biggest-spy-center -- c'mon /. editors.

I'm not sure how this post got a +4 insightful -- he provided no reasoning to support his claim. I counter: hedge funds do not take money out of other people's wallets (they're not the government :D ). Rather, they are like entrepreneurs; they search for misallocated resources in the markets, and exploit any such misallocations to make money. For instance, sometimes they add extra liquidity to the markets (i.e. through high frequency trading), and sometimes they find undervalued companies and give them the necessary resources to continue operating. It's not that they are taking money from others -- rather, they are creating value and offering a valuable service to the economy as a whole. Remember: it's not a zero sum game -- if someone makes money by providing me a service, I am not poorer. In fact, I am richer because they are providing me with something I deem useful.

Keynesian theory is more certainly not akin to Newton's theories. Keynesianism differs significantly from other prominent schools such as the Chicago School, the Austrian School, etc. If you read up on the different approaches, you'll see that economists disagree a lot about some pretty basic things and we're really far away from a consensus.

Not all economists view their study in this empirical manner. For instance, the Austrians view the subject more like mathematics; they deduce their principles from basic axioms. The Keynesians (e.g. Krugman) study it in that way you just described.

This difference, though seemingly trivial, does in fact have important implications. For example, the minimum wage debate is fundamentally based on the distinction: the Austrians think that a lower bound on wages will create unemployment because all those whose value (technically, marginal revenue product) falls below the minimum wage will be unemployed, while the Keynesians require empirical evidence to support the claim that minimum wage laws have adverse effects on the economy.

I'm sick and tired of this fallacy being bandied around, day in day out, by those who don't seem to understand what Capitalism is. How do capitalists exploit people when the economic system is fundamentally based on voluntary, free trade? Sure, they employ the labor of others in order to advance our businesses... Indeed, sometimes workers think their wages are "unjust"... But that is a far cry from exploitation or coercion, words which the ignorant tend to throw around without really understanding the economic system of capitalism.

And this comment about human corruption by wealth and power demonstrates that you don't understand the nature of human beings. Of course humans try to obtain more wealth! Of course they want more power to satisfy their desires! To deny this fact is to deny the existence of the evolutionary struggle in which each animal / human being tries to best exploit their environment in order to live. This is a fundamental fact of life that no one (not even the socialists/communists/marxists) can deny.

But I do not blame you, OP. You are simply spewing out platitudes which you have heard repeated so many times that they seem to gain an air of truth. I don't think you truly believe these terrible fallacies.

"ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#"

Mandatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/936/

It will 'hit the economy'; why would the government create new fiat money if they weren't going to use it?

If an attacker can act as the gateway for a victim (man in the middle), he can use this attack. sslsniff works by intercepting requests between the server and the victim, and it removes all HTTPS tags/references/links. In effect, the victim doesn't know there was supposed to be an SSL connection. I don't see how they can patch this with the current technology..

This is fallacious -- the taxpayer never comes out ahead financially (excluding the ones who are subsidized by the government). The author of that article is implying that, somehow, the taxpayer is gaining money -- an idea totally contrary to taxation.

Maybe not having a poverty rate of over 16% would be a way?

How much does gas cost where you live?!

Wtf, why'd you have >$1000 in bitcoins?