603 karma · joined March 23, 2011
The way these "disadvantaged ethnic minorities" (ie. "black people") behave might also have something to do with it.
:p
My position is that of common sense.
> In the immediate, S goes up - the "wise little worker ant" effect, if you will. But soon after, companies that create consumption goods reduce production - because nobody needs big stocks of consumption goods.
Again, people will - and should - buy things they need. They may also buy some things they want, if they can afford them. If people stop buying Company X's products, then it will decrease capacity, and possibly go bankrupt, etc. There's nothing wrong with that.
You may decide to start producing and selling buckets of feces, but even though selling three hundred million of them at 50 dollars each would have a positive effect on the economy, it doesn't mean buying one would make any sense for anyone.
Our economies can't keep "growing" exponentially for all eternity, and that's alright. Nothing has been fixed since 2008, and the Status Quo's attempts at whipping up another housing bubble and getting us spending-automatons to spendspendspend are increasingly ineffective.
What's professional is just meaningless uptightery. What actually matters is getting shit done, and treating others well.
If you need a computer right now, you'll buy it now. But overall, people only really need a handful of things, like sustenance, shelter, healthcare etc. No one needs some cheap trinkets from China or whatever. We're just trained to covet Stuff.
Economic theories or policies can't be based on the expectation that people are some kind of spending-automatons that will spendspendspend all the money they have, forever and ever, because inflation encourages them to.
A wise little worker ant will set aside quite a large percentage of his income, just in case a serious need for money arises.
The kind of feedback that has a point?
I wanted to post this to your original comment there, but couldn't be bothered to make an account: "Get over yourself".
The guy was just (quite rightfully) venting about his frustration trying to get Ember to work, and the venting itself was still relatively tame. Besides, it wasn't a personal attack against you.
Pretending you're somehow above the discussion because of "the tone" is just lame, especially when there was nothing wrong with it. So much discussion is suppressed all over the world because people insist on latching on to how something was said, instead of whether there was any merit to it.
But saving makes sense even just to prepare for unexpected expenses. We're not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars here, in most cases, it's not even tens. Barely scraping by might be a bit of an alien concept to someone pulling in $250K/year from programming.
But they keep having to pay more for Stuff. In other words, their purchasing power keeps decreasing, unless their wages rise to compensage for inflation. Deflation "means" an increase in purchasing power, which means getting more stuff for your money, which is.. good? What's not to like?
Do you think people buy stuff because their currency is steadily losing value, or might it be because they need or want stuff?
> When there is high inflation people will spend all their money as soon as possible, before it loses value. Too much inflation is bad too, but some inflation is good.
Your average Joe off the street has no clue about what inflation means or what the current official (understated) rate is. You're talking about a situation where it's obvious to everyone that they just should not hold on to the currency they have. Think hyperinflation.
> With the gold standard the supply of money is completely independent of the need for money.
The need for money? Well, if gold is money, then you don't "need money" because you already have it. There's no need to worry about your money having lots of purchasing power either, that's just a good thing.
> The discovery of a great source of gold will bring inflation;
And conjuring up trillions of quatloos out of thin air will not?
You're saying that the money supply increasing without a corresponding increase in economic activity will cause your currency's purchasing power to dwindle? Well yeah, that's about right. But what exactly is supposed to be the problem you're talking about here?
> an expansion of the economy without a corresponding increase of the money supply will bring deflation.
Yyyep. Again, what's the problem?
> The same would be true with bitcoin and bitcoin mining.
Ditto.
People accept a medium of exchange in exchange for their goods and services because they trust that they can later exchange it for something they want.
The "demand" for a medium of exchange lies in direct bartering being inconvenient, because whoever wants something you have, might not have something you want, right then and there. In this case, instead of a trade not happening, you can just accept a medium of exchange, and use it later to get what you want.
> Why not just use monopoly money, or acorns, or lumps of clay?
If people knew they could exchange lumps of clay for goods and services, they would accept them as payment for goods and services.
> What drives the citizens of a country to use the currency issued or authorized by that country's government?
That very same government?
> this analysis misses the time dimension of money: lending, borrowing and interest [1]. Keynes knew that, and before him Marx, and I bet someone before him too. And in this aspect, I find Bitcoin to be an irreversibly brain-damaged, if interesting, experiment
So we went straight from an analysis (what was it btw?) "missing the time dimension of money" - according to you - to Bitcoin being a brain-damaged experiment. What exactly was the logic there?
> a massively deflationary currency .. that is even today failing to accommodate the mildest exponential growth
How does a currency "accommodate exponential growth", and why should it? Are you saying Bitcoin can't be used for lending etc because it's "deflationary"? Don't you think it would be possible for lenders to estimate the risk involved in using (deflationary?) Bitcoins, and then pricing their loans accordingly?
> When your currency gains value by the hour, actually borrowing and trading and doing capitalist things are losers' propositions.
I can't see a problem with a currency gaining value by the hour. If you hold a currency that keeps gaining value, then your purchasing power keeps increasing. Why is that a bad thing? Everyone would be happy to trade in such a currency.
If it were losing value by the hour, well then, yes, people would be reluctant to trade in it.
> When your economic theory is still getting an erection over the gold standard, like some 19th century robber baron, you know you just don't have the economic chops to do it.
Care to tell us what's wrong with the gold standard, and why is anyone who supports it a robber baron?
> For you all evil's root is either the government or fractional reserve banking, so I'm obviously wrong.
Care to explain why the government and fractional reserve banking are good for us all, then?
Sweet. Nevermind how they can afford all that capacity. Maybe they're a charity, funded by Bill & Melinda?
Of course, but that's bullshit, and they're being immoral. Evoking romantic images of providing for your beloved family is misplaced here. No programmer is left with the choice of either working for evil scumbags or starving.
It doesn't really matter what laws say about that. Your only recourse against wrongdoing by the government is the justice system run by the very same government. It's certainly within its power to decide not to punish itself.
This is perhaps something to think about.
Open is Good. Google is Open. Google is Good. Open open open.
Here's what you can get for 15 euros ($19.5) per month in Finland:
- 2800 minutes.
- 2800 texts (and MMS).
- 1M bandwith with no traffic limit.
- Month by month, cancel any time with no penalties.
- No starting fee.To be fair, this is a discount package from a subsidiary of a big operator, and it surprised me too.
Besides, OS X has moved towards multi-touch gestures, for example, which Safari supports. It makes sense that they'd have to give up on Windows.
So you've never even tried it? If you like YAML, SASS or CoffeeScript, you would like Python's indentation syntax too.
I think it's lovely and elegant, and that meaningful indentation should be used more. It obviates a lot of cruft and makes things clearer and more concise. What's not to love?
Seriously, it's kind of dumb if proudly holding on to your prejudices is preventing you from enjoying a lovely programming language.
Fear is exactly what has kept North-Korea going for ages.
- Take your time! It's not like the "crimes against humanity" have been going on for decades or anything.
It's baffling because it's always meaningless PR-bullshit-we-hope-you-won't-stop-giving-us-money, and people should be aware of that already.
Don't equate smoking marijuana to beating another human being. I've never even tried it, for the record, but I don't see anything wrong with getting high if you want to, as long as you don't cause harm to others.
Of course they're going to post something, and of course they'll make it sound as good as possible. But it's baffling how so many people applaud such meaningless damage control drivel time after time.
Or if you insist on getting a VPS, how about www.gandi.net ?