That's not why they are called extrernalities. They are called externalities because they are the external consequences of actions. They are very much in our control, and if you are going to price any commodity fairly, to make it reflect true market and societal costs, then you have to price those in. Otherwise what you're really doing is subsidizing an industry.
Yes, I wasn't being technical. She's retired and living off her pension + SS.
Yeah, I figured that. My point was just that "fixed" is just an accurate description of my income/budget (and probably yours) as it is of hers. I knew what you meant, I was just pointing out that the terminology we use doesn't make sense.
the value of a cryptocurrency often reflects
The price of a cryptocurrency reflects those things. It's value is zero. Period. There is nothing behind it.
While they are not backed by tangible goods, neither are fiat currencies or many derivatives
No, fiat currencies are backed by debt, meaning that real people and companies have made enforceable legal commitments to do real work to generate the value backing the dollars or whatever. Without getting into the details, every time a dollar is created, that creation is balanced by the creation of a dollar of debt, the commitment of some productive entity to produce value to repay that debt (and thereby destroy that dollar). As a common example, when you borrow money to buy a house, the bank doesn't lend you money [*] that other people deposited, it creates that money out of thin air at the same instant you sign an enforceable contract to repay it, meaning you commit to do some sort of value-producing work to generate the value of those dollars.
Derivatives represent specific legal contracts to perform some action, e.g. buy a fixed amount of stock from the derivative seller on or by a specific date for a specific price, and those contracts get their value from the underlying security. That underlying security can also be some sort of contractual obligation rather than a hard asset, but if you keep digging down the layers you always get to something real. It's always possible, of course, that the layers of repackaging make the actual value hard enough to see that its price becomes divorced from that value (and stock pricing also gets divorced from underlying value to various degrees), but at bottom there must be something of actual substance. Further, if markets were perfectly efficient, it would not be possible for the price to move away from the value.
None of this is true with cryptoassets. Their true value is zero (arguably, negative, since proof of work is a pure sink that generates no utility), so any price above zero represents market inefficiency/insanity.
[*] It used to be that the bank created most of the money under the fractional reserve system, but for quite a while now most of the developed world has abandoned the reserve lending requirements, enabling banks to effectively create all of the money they lend. This might seem like a crazy system, but it's actually pure genius because it allows the money supply to expand and contract with the economy, which along with Keynsian fiscal policy massively reduces the boom and bust cycles we regularly experienced before we switched from metallic to fiat currency.
...blown up aid convoys and hospitals to kill a handful of Hamas people, and other similar war crimes
Per the Law of Armed Conflict, using protected sites, e.g. convoys and hospitals, to stage military operations removes the protected status of the site and makes it a legitimate military target.
Where is the evidence that this was the case, though? When the U.S. has something like that happen, there's a formal inquiry, there's a public documentation trail showing why the actions were taken, and the consensus is that they made the right call more often than not. We're not seeing that from Israel, or if we are, it isn't being reported, and that's disconcerting, particularly given the rate of these incidents.
Hamas is well known for hiding among civilians and using protected sites to run operations in order to show civilian bodies after an attack. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people swallow this propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
Hiding among civilians is not the same thing as using protected sites to run operations. One person in Hamas living in an apartment building with his/her family is not equivalent to storing vast quantities of weapons and munitions in a protected location, which is what that exception was intended to allow.
Blowing up schools with children inside is never okay. Blowing up hospitals with patients still inside is never okay. Giving them enough warning to get innocent people out is an absolute minimum standard of human decency, and failing to do that means that you're deliberately targeting civilians, hence a war crime.
The Netanyahu government can hide behind pedantic interpretations of international law all they want to, but when you look at the big picture, you don't rack up a 10:1 civilian to militant kill ratio if you're operating within the bounds of international law. There's just no way. Typical U.S. wars were less than 1:1 (ignoring any indirect deaths, which are hard to compare). And no U.S. war has ever deliberately prevented aid from getting to the innocent victims of that war. The things that the Israeli government has done are, IMO, nothing short of unconscionable. It isn't just a few incidents; it's a clear pattern of lack of concern for innocent human lives, repeated almost daily.
At this point, the U.N. commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel's actions are clear war crimes and that the intent is tantamount to genocide. There's really no defending the Israeli government's actions. They went way, WAY too far on way, WAY too many occasions to give them the benefit of the doubt. And regardless of what happens with Iran — and mind you, going after Iran's government for their proxy war against Israel is at least arguably a legitimate military action — I think it is still critical to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for war crimes committed in fighting this war, if only to serve as a deterrent to electing similar governments in the future.
My mother on the other hand, who is on a fixed budget
Aside: That phrase "fixed budget" and its twin "fixed income" always strike me as curious. I mean, short of changing jobs, most of us have a fixed income and therefore a fixed budget... and changing jobs isn't necessarily an option.
I guess maybe it's just a euphemism for "small income" or "small budget".
I guess it was a typo and they meant the 15th.
Maybe it was fake, but I know a few Iranians and they all tell me there's widespread hatred of the Islamic Republic regime back in Iran. There have been reports on iranintl.com of Iranians cheering on Netanyahu.
Oh, I'm sure the sentiment is real. Popularity of the current government officially hovers around 50%, with a significant minority very much in favor of setting the whole government on fire (but also a not-small minority that wants to keep the status quo, and they have the guns and soldiers).
What I'm questioning is whether they're angry enough to do something about it and powerful enough to take on the entrenched power structure. After all, those sorts of mass protests in authoritarian countries tend to paint targets on the chests of the participants — in some cases, in a very literal sense (with laser scopes). And more often than not, the power vacuum gets filled with something worse, or with something so weak that it quickly topples in favor of something remarkably similar to the government that was previously in power.
But maybe this time will be different. One can only hope.
The argument only makes sense if you completely discount externalities. Once you factor them in, the costs of fossil fuels are absolutely monumental.
I mean, a bullet to the head cures cancer, but I'm not exactly seeing this being proposed as a medical solution.
Ah yes, reductio ad absurdum.
Twelve Angry Men must have driven you insane
Yeah, if Meta was offering $100M signing bonuses, it wouldn't be an "attempt" to poach, it would be a very successful poaching.
You know, I don't have a panic attack if Macbeth is set in 1920, or if they recast Hamlet as a woman. I'll complain if the acting is shitty, but if the actors, whatever their gender or skin color, can pull off a good King Lear, then that's the only thing that counts.
Comics aren't even sacred to themselves. Probably the most parodied aspect of superhero comics is just how frequently "canon" is thrown into a blender, thrown out, and how new writers will just ignore established canon. Every decade or two, the publishers will make a big deal of reuniting timelines, and act as if it was part of some grand plan. The complexity of the textual history of Green Lantern, as an example, rivals the New Testament.
Physician: One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well. -- Ambrose Bierce
