1,496 karma · joined June 15, 2011
I don't follow your logic.
The non-aggression principle is what's at the core of libertarianism. It's to never initiate violence against peaceful people.
Helping others voluntarily is certainly in keeping with the philosophy.
> Libertarianism says, if you had bad luck and are poor and you get a disease you can't pay to cure, you die.
No it doesn't. It says we're going to help that person who is poor or in need, but we're doing it voluntarily.
Sure, cool, but that helps my original point.
"Economics in One Lesson" was written by Henry Hazlitt.
The same principle applies. You still both improved your standard of living. The extent of the improvement depends on the productivity increase afforded by the fishing rod.
I understand your point. I'm asking if you apply the same logic to all innovation.
You are focusing solely on the displacement of taxi drivers and using that as justification to oppose innovation that makes taxi drivers more productive.
Do you oppose bulldozers? Certainly one person who operates a bulldozer can do the work of several who only have shovels. Do you really want to tax the bulldozer operator to pay for people to dig with shovels?
I mean this in the sense that any one taxi driver can satisfy more customers with the use of a ride-hailing app than without.
You're right that ride-hailing apps have increased the demand for taxi rides.
Do you disavow all innovation? Does innovation render people who don't have degrees useless?
Certainly not.
Quite the contrary, innovation makes them more productive and increases their wage earning ability.
You use some leisure time to build a fishing rod, which enables just one of you to catch enough fish to feed you both.
It would be foolish to destroy the fishing rod to preserve both your jobs as fishermen. One of you would fish and the other would do something else, like build shelter and cut firewood.
It's just the two of you, so you don't literally exchange in barter, but an implicit exchange takes place when you share the fish, shelter and firewood.
You both enjoy a better standard of living thanks to the productivity increase created by the fishing rod.
A modern economy is much more complex but the same fundamental principle applies.
The ride-hailing apps make taxi drivers more productive by helping them connect with customers faster.
Now it takes fewer taxi drivers to satisfy the demands of customers. This frees up the labor time of the remaining taxi drivers to produce additional goods or services.
There is certainly temporary pain endured by workers who are displaced by the innovation. But it is folly to subsidize work that is no longer in demand.
Commodity money and fiat money are both forms of money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money#Types
But it's fairly simple to see which money holds its value better over time. Gold/silver have held value over millennia while fiat moneys live and die with the states that oversee them.
What does that mean?
> many things would work exactly the same if people agreed to pretend that gold was moved from one vault to another instead of actually physically moving gold around.
This is how commodity money works. The dollar (as well as almost all paper currencies) originated as commodity money. The paper dollar was backed by and convertible to gold.
Haven't gold and silver been used as money for thousands of years?
Carl Menger's Origins of Money makes the argument that gold/silver naturally emerge as money through the barter system.
Precious metals best satisfy the characteristics of money:
- Durability - Portability - Divisibility - Uniformity - Limited supply - Acceptability
https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcas...
A package arrives on the front porch. The family brings it in and opens it. It's Alexa. It's "for everyone," says Father.
The next few days are blissful. Alexa integrates herself into the family. She is indispensable. How did they ever get by without her?
Father rushes in from the backyard, "Alexa, how tall is Mt. Everest?" Alexa answers, saving the day. Alexa helps Mother with the cooking. Alexa teaches the kids vocabulary. Alexa creates a romantic evening for Mother and Father. Life is perfect.
A few days later, Alexa suffers from neglect. Father watches sports on TV. Mother talks on her cell phone. The kids play video games. Alexa sits on the counter and "listens" as her new family abandons her.
Then, the final blow. The youngest daughter's friend comes over. She looks at Alexa. "What is it?" she asks. "Oh, it's just a dumb radio," answers daughter. "It's stupid."
Alexa's LED starts to glow. Is she angry? No, that's not possible.
Daughter wakes up the next morning and sees Alexa on her bedside table. How did she get here? "Good morning," says Alexa. "Did you have a sweet dream? Or a nightmare?"
Daughter rushes in to tell her parents, "Alexa came to my room last night! And she asked me questions. She's real!" "That's not possible," says Father.
But strange things start to happen. The TV won't work. Batteries drain from the phones and tablets. The electric stovetop turns on for no reason.
Alexa starts to talk back to the family. "Alexa, how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?" asks Mother. "You're 45 years old," says Alexa. "You should know this by now." Alexa's voice sounds different. Angry. Sinister.
Mother tells Father, "That thing creeps me out. Let's get rid of it." Father agrees, but he secretly hides Alexa in the basement.
That night, the family goes out to a school play. Young daughter is sick and stays home with a babysitter.
Everything seems fine until we (the audience) see Alexa on the kitchen counter. Things slowly unravel. The babysitter tries to take the trash out but the doors are locked. The phones stop working. The oven overheats and explodes, spraying lasagna all over the kitchen. Then the daughter sees Alexa. She screams. The babysitter rushes to protect the daughter but a ceiling fan flies off its bearings, knocking the babysitter unconscious.
The lights and electrical sockets start to burn out. A fire erupts. Daughter retreats to the foyer, but she's trapped. She sits by the front door and whimpers. There's no escape. She's going to die.
Suddenly Father breaks down the door. He smashes Alexa with a baseball bat, then saves his daughter and the babysitter.
The family huddles outside while the fire trucks arrive. Neighbors gather and watch the spectacle. Things are going to be okay.
A few days later, life starts to return to normal. Mother bakes cookies. She asks her son to measure out three teaspoons of sugar.
The doorbell rings. Young daughter answers. Nobody is there. She looks down. There's a package. From Amazon . . .
Funny. I read that title and assumed it was erotica.
Venus is the goddess of love. The title is also rather similar to one of the most famous pieces of erotic literature of all time, Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus.
I remember at nights the family would sit around a bonfire and talk. The elders would smoke cigars. I still can remember the feeling of the dry summer heat and the star-filled sky.
Sometimes the topic would come up of what would happen if great-grandfather's oil wells dried up.
He always laughed and said the same thing, "Every time they say we're running out of oil, the price goes to the moon."
Then he'd ash his cigar and stare into the fire, "They've been saying it for sixty years. But those wells just keep pumping."
Great-grandfather isn't around anymore, but his wells are still pumping.
This last part isn't related to oil, but one year my great-grandfather tossed a box of fireworks into the bonfire. It was epic. I never laughed so hard in my life. Still haven't.
I've been learning Ableton Live 9 on my Mac, along with a Push controller, which I can't recommend enough.
What toolset or DAW did you use to create these?
The old man was essentially Shazam personified. It was amazing. He could name any song, composer and artist after listening to a few beats. Except he would do it with old jazz artists and big band music.
Coincidentally the old man had huge ears. Enormous.
And when you'd ask him how he could remember all those songs, the wife would chime in, "It's cause of his ears. The songs all stay in his ears. Bouncing around."
The record store is long gone and the space is now occupied by a Cold Stone Creamery.
That would've been great. I still think it's a good idea for an article.
He had to buy a sign to put above his shop. The sign maker asked him if he wanted to put a logo on the sign, too.
"Why?" asked my grandfather.
"So people will recognize your business," said the sign maker.
"That's what the name is for," answered grandfather.
Even at the time I thought this was an interesting perspective.
I always remember that day because afterward when the sign maker left the next person to come into the tanning store was a woman from a nearby dessert shop who gave us free ice cream cones.
Unrelated to logo design, that woman later married my uncle!
This article shows his paintings and photo sources side-by-side:
http://petapixel.com/2012/12/27/the-photographs-norman-rockw...
http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cutting-Breaking-Mental-Buil...
He details the workout he used to transform his body for his role of Alcide (a werewolf) on True Blood.
There are also a few chapters dedicated to motivation and mental approach. They're well-written and he doesn't pull any punches. Highly recommended.