206 karma · joined June 8, 2012
> Capitalism has not empowered people and does not uplift people from poverty.
Alright. So this is a definite statement. A conclusion. hmm interesting, lets's continue reading to see what reasoning this follows from.
> We're able to produce thousand times as much goods per worker as in the 1700s, and yet do we live (and by we I mean all the workers, not just us with high-level jobs in rich countries) that much better than at that time?
Ok so, capitalism created RICH countries, yet it did not uplift people form poverty. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If I were you, I would try to state my position a bit better because you sound completely self-contradicting. What you mean to say is that capitalism have created a lot of wealth, but it hasn't evenly distributed it.
>I do agree that capitalism is a system that has had a significant impact on our ability to produce more goods, and that in some countries we can see a positive impact
ooh look. That IS the EXACT OPPOSITE statement to the first one you made. Wow...
See, the reason I hate debating leftists is that they start by rejecting your statement and move on to actually PROVE IT but provide some context in which it does not satisfy what they deem to be "fair". Well, here is the thing chap. If the Congo had capitalism, the Congo would reap the benefits of that capitalism as you PROVED above that it has. It just so happens that the poorest places in the world at the least capitalistic ones. Must be a coincidence right?!
> And look at recent years too, with poverty skyrocketing even in the most "advanced" countries.
facepalm
Like... are you honestly so fucking lacking in integrity that you could not bother looking this shit up before puking this garbage here?
> over like $10 mill
This number is PURE bullshit. That's not how it worked. Read here: here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_history_of_the_United...
> CEO's would instead pay their employees more, or hire new ones and grow the company instead of pad their pockets.
Stop puking whatever your college professor shoved into your head and think for yourself for a minute.
Take 100% of every Fortune 5000 CEO's income and divide that number by the number of people they collectively employ. How much more money do you think each employee would get? 1000 dollar more / month? 10 000 per year? If you believe so then you are as lost as your friend Bernie. Plenty of economists have made those calculations and once you look into them you realize that this argument makes no fucking sense and it is just a talking point to rally you into voting for democrats. The average worker would get no substantial or life-changing increase in income if you distribute the CEO income by the number of employees their corporations have.
> This is what I hoped for when Bernie Sanders lost
Bernie didn't lose. Bernie sold you out. He repackaged, shuffled and sold you to the most corrupt politician of modern times. Yet here you are shouting THIS THIS THIS. You are being fingered by your candidate. The sooner you realize that the better you'll be able to sleep.
> Trump is king, and America's going to shit pretty darn fast
No it won't. The president doesn't change much. It's a democracy not an autocracy. Get fucking real already and stop with the hyperbolic bullshit.
Sunde was one of my heroes growing up in Sweden when I was a socialist and believed in the collective's ability to fight for the sake of what is deemed as "good". But, like every child, I had to eventually grow up and realize that most things are about trade-offs in this world - which is far better of a deal than most think it is.
> "I'm a socialist. I know Marx and communism did not work before, but I think in the future you have the possibility of having total communism and equal access to everything for everybody."
I realize now, looking back at the ideas Sunde holds and in turns the ideas that I held for a long time, that I was naive. Sunde, like everyone else in that camp fails to realize what is right in front of their eyes. Capitalism will not self-destruct. Socialism prevented capitalism from self-destructing and instead empowered it by showing everyone that capitalism, with all its flaws and disgusting habits, is the only system that is able to empower and uplift more people from poverty than all other systems COMBINED.
I understand his position yet I can't help but facepalm every time I hear someone say "equal access to everything for everybody". This statement is perhaps, one of the stupidest things that have EVER been uttered by a human yet it is something that I used to deeply believe in.
Makes me kidna wonder where I would be today had I kept believing in fairy tales...
You could run such a thing as a microservice using a headless browser or PhantomJS. There are probably better ways to do this but that's one of the first things that popped into my head!
What exactly do you mean by that if you don't mind me asking?
source?
Seriously, get a grip and stop being self-absorbed. Read history before you long for something you've never actually truly experienced!
yea, just toss an opinion aside as blind because you don't like it. That will get people listening to your point of view!
It would be if the gains were on the level that would justify the adoption of whatever was/is proposed. Give me any tech, green or not, with 10x improvement on what currently exist and I can bet you anything that no amount of capital or vested interest will be able to oppose it - there are exceptions ofc but I would argue that those are far from the norm (if they weren't no progress would ever take place which we know is not true).
>If you view progress as some kind of struggle of the species, like a force of nature, then yes it is indeed grand.
I believe indeed in this former view you describe here. We could argue which of the two views you present is more true than the other, but I think there is plenty that speaks for both. I choose to believe in this version as long as there is evidence to support it.
> But so does "economics is a science like physics". While the former is obnoxious, the latter is dangerous.
I could not agree more. In fact, I think you are the kind of guy who I could sit with and talk to for hours and we'd get somewhere. I don't believe economics is like physics. In fact, I believe economics, like politics, are more like religion. Case and point being the clusterfuck that is the rule of Keynesian economics for the past 80 years or so.
When I say economics I refer to the rational human ability to understand trade-offs. Not all agents are equally capable of it and not all care as much. But, with that said, it does not take a genius to understand what I wrote above (which you originally replied to).
I firmly believe that most of these hippie green suckers wouldn't want to live in the world they themselves describe as ideal. I think they vastly underestimate the prices of things and how much of their living standard is dependent on energy as a whole. It is short-sightedness that pisses me off. You see people complain about living cost being too high in one thread and later on see the same person talk about how we should be greener regardless of cost. This cognitive dissonance buggs me to no end...
Being able to see the trade-offs beyond what is in front of you is what, in my book, classifies as economics. Perhaps I should have been clearer in my definition. But I hope that this clarifies to you where I stand on the matter!
Man this pseudo spiritual hippie bullshit annoys me to no end. This philosophical shift toward absurdism is infuriating and every time I read something like this my blood boils. I have nothing against you personally but lets be honest here; the ONLY reason you can say this crap is simply because people competed, lost, got ahead and in process elevated your living standard so much that you can now sit behind a computer screen today and be pretentious and ungrateful about what society have achieved so far.
You being an observer of what is does not lead to anything meaningful. And if you find meaning in that, then great. More power to you! But to claim that iPhones, planes and supermarkets are not things to be proud of is a sign of nothing other than ignorance. You clearly can't see the level of pain and suffering that had to be endured for us as a species to get to this point. That's why you can make such claims. You simply lack perspective.
If overcoming your own biological limitations (flying) is not enough of a miracle for you, then... I dunno wtf is.
Edit:
Just take a look at the replies below to see what I mean. People lack perspective. Most haven't read enough history to understand that we are making one of the BEST trade-offs humanity has ever seen. The question never was IF environmental degradation is okay, which they think it is. Instead, the question has always been HOW MUCH is okay and what do we get back in return?
In these people's minds, virtue signaling far outweighs the alleviation of human suffering. They do not understand that the trade-offs we are making is what allows them the freedom to speak their mind and gives them the ability to effectively communicate using the medium they are currently utilizing. Rather than focusing on solving a problem, they instead praise mushroom eating as the way forward.
The problem with the green movement as a whole is that they do not understand economics or trade-offs. If they could communicate and argue from a reasonable and realistic position, there is no doubt in my mind that the green movement would have been embraced by all.
I didn't know about this. Thanks for the link.
I just took on a problem that I found to be simple to understand yet for some reason is still unsolved. Simple to understand turned out to be crucial because when I started I had no idea how much "I did not know" and for that reason I underestimated the problem which is a GOOD thing. It allowed me to slowly grow with the problem over time and learn more about what I need to do to get to where I want to.
The most important part for me is to find a problem that is interesting enough that will keep sucking you back in. Prime factorization is a great example because it is a simple problem so you will continuously make progress and actually feel/see your personal math improvement from week to week.
Initially, I started off by writing down all the numbers up to N to see if I could find some pattern. 20 mins in after some HTML and PHP I had this: https://imgur.com/a/7EhdI (primes in blue, everything else in white)
If you look closely you can see the diagonal shape of the primes. If you try changing the number of columns from 5 to any other number, you will get a distinct shape. The shapes sucked me in, why do they occur? wtf is up with them?! this is so cool yet random.
After having my curiosity tickled, I opened up an excel sheet and started experimenting by throwing these numbers/positions/order/whateverICanThinkOf together in an attempt to find some pattern. Currently, I have an excel file that consists of 35 sheets with different experiments on each sheet. Most experiments and ideas will fail, some will give you a result. But one thing is for sure, I have learned something from each one of them, especially when it comes to algebra. I just get an idea and try it. If I need some help I ask around or google for some info.
The latest idea/experiment that I did showed me that composite numbers do not occur in a random position along the axis of numbers. In fact, numbers come in chains that are related to each other "geometrically".
That's it really. It's like throwing whatever you can think of at a problem to see what sticks. While attempting to do that I slowly learned algebra, a bit of genometry, a bit of statistics and then some. Been fun really and that's all that counts :D
edit: sorry for the wall of text!
Like I said, I don't expect to reach any tangible goal. However, I am not looking for an extended "search" algorithm. I am looking for a "solution" or at least a solution in say O(log(n)) to begin with. That's the goal I put up as a challenge. I will most likely not be able to do that but still fun to try :D
Edit: Forgot to say thanks!
Here is the challenge I am working toward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge
I've Been working on it for 3 years now and It's getting more and more fun every day. In fact, I have rediscovered so many things on my own that I thought never existed. My biggest "Eureka" moment was when I discovered factorization via the difference of squares method on my own by using 2D geometry. I previously did not know that such a method existed nor that GNFS is based on it. Later on I discovered that a composite number is actually a perfect square less a function of a triangular number which lead me to develop a method of factorization that is rather cool but unfortunately still not good enough. I have had literally dozens of these moments where I find a certain relationship between numbers that I later on find out is some sort of rule/conjecture that was made hundreds of years ago by some mathematician!
To some of you these might be really trivial and well known facts that you learned in school. For me however, it is something I take pride in as math was by far my worst subject growing up and I actually dropped out of college because of math. The last math course I took was in high school over 10 years ago.
I have a new found love for mathematics and algebra in general and I would encourage anyone reading this to pick a problem and try working on it just for the fun of it :D
apologies, I don't know your background nor do I have an insight as to what goes on in your head. All I wanted to point out is that it's actually not a surprising growth rate. And while yes, you are right about the "speed" of the function. However that is not "unexpected". At least I don't find that to be the case personally!
I used a chrome plugin called "Full Page Screen Capture". You can use similar extension for FF if you are using that!
The table itself is a long html page! :D
> 50% of integers are have a factor under 3
every other number is divisible by 2, that is literally half.
> 73% - under 6
Well I think about it this way: every other number is divisible by two, every third number is divisible by 3 and every fifth number is divisible by 5. It just so happens that some of the numbers that are divisible by 2 are also divisible by 3 or 5 such as 10 for instance. Thus the 73% is nor rly surprising.
1/2 + 1/3rd of what remains + 1/5 of what remains - the intersections!
> but then it slows down to a trickle. 88% under 100, and just 92% under 1000.
I honestly expected it to be a bit lower than 92 but I am clearly wrong about this. Here is an interesting quick visualization I made. Blue are primes, whites are composites!
Edit: you can clearly notice a diagonal shape in the pic above. If you however change the table from 5 cols to any N cols, you will get a distinct shape for each N. It's pretty cool to play with actually. There are a ton of shapes that have been known and used for centuries. I'd highly recommend googling around and reading a bit about them on wikipedia!
Ever stopped to think about that? I get that you believe that society's role is to take from X and give to Y. But what IF that belief is wrong? aren't you then responsible for all the pain and suffering that is to take place due to your beliefs?