But they don't quack. Tokens do not represent a share of anything, nor any right to present or future anything, nor do the companies selling them ever claim such. They are disconnected from the success or failure of the underlying venture in a way that other stock-like instruments never have been. Indeed, the quoted paragraph specifically excludes currencies.
I read a scientific american article (or blurb if i recall) about boids when I was a kid. I wanted to have boids so badly after reading it, I stayed up on school nights teaching myself java. Haven't stopped hacking since -- still stay up on work nights, still trying to learn java...
anyways, just thought i'd share that little piece of nostalgia, how it all began for me
This study draws conclusions about very coarse grain (month to month) multitasking, which I don't think is the common interpretation of the term. Multitasking to me is doing multiple things either simultaneously or within an hour time span or so. The two are very different things, so I would be careful extrapolating this to finer grain multitasking.
Is it not the case that as money moves around the economy from one person to another it is taxed over and over again many times? Why do some people only think of capital gains as "double taxation"?
ummm, you can't use observational data to draw conclusions like these. period. you can use them to hint at causations and effects of changes, but you absolutely cannot make conclusive statements like those made in this paper. REALLY bad science.
Obviously any kind of discrimination sucks, but I have a hard time getting worked up over age discrimination. It is not like sex or race where you are hampered from the start and never have a chance to show your potential. Everyone is young then gets old. Systematic age discrimination just creates a market opportunity for businesses willing to hire old people. You could say the same opportunity exists in the sex and race cases, but they have the potential to be self-fulfilling prejudices--people locked out of the workforce from the start--whereas the age one doesnt really perpetuate itself.
this is a statistical blog post written by someone who has no idea how to do statistics. and even when told how to do it properly by a commenter, fails to accept the simple and overwhelming conclusion. why is this on the front page?
Perhaps because the data is interesting and we can draw the contrary conclusion: that there is no reason to suppose the data has been tampered with or fabricated?
The real risk is that they accidentally "update" my files out of existence or revert them to some point way in the past in a way that can't be undone. The change might push to all my devices before I realized it. I periodically tar my dropbox and put it on a backup disk.
Half isn't getting paid from tax receipts for the other half. Everyone paying taxes is also getting benefits for what they put in. It's not as simple as just rich people paying for poor people. It's more that people kick in different amounts into the pool and then it's redistributed back out based on need. Wealth redistribution is necessary for a stable society.
I didn't say anything about benefits. I was talking about money.
All government services are paid by taxes of one kind or another, yes?
If 50% of the GDP is government spending, therefore, the other 50% is by definition non-government activity.
Half of the population is paying for the other half to live. It matters not that a public servant pays taxes - that money goes straight back into the government, and pays him back.
I disagree with you strongly that wealth distribution is <em>required</em> for a stable society. I would say that forced wealth redistribution leads to unstable societies, as it all degenerates into what is fair and unfair, of which everyones idea is different. As soon as the route to wealth becomes one of obtaining power and influence rather than hard work, you're on the road to Greece and riots in the streets. Or total collapse of government/society such as former communist countries, which were based by definition on wealth redistribution. The concept of fairness should apply only to being able to keep the bulk of the wealth created by onesself.
Government services are necessary for a stable society, no doubt. Government services in a lot of cases increase the wealth of society by providing natural monopolies such as roads, ports, police and defense. We all benefit from government services.
I'll put it into an analogy. 10 people are on a deserted island, and there are tasks to be done to survive, which is fish, collect coconuts and fresh water. If 5 people are collecting coconuts, fish and fresh water, and sharing it to the other 5, then it doesn't matter what the other 5 are doing, whether painting pictures, snoozing in the sun, formulating foreign policy or building rafts to invade the neighbouring island, you can't escape the fact that one half of the island is working to provide for the other half. When they invade the other island and find a fridge full of beer, the total wealth and benefits for the island go up, but 50% of the people are still living off the work of the other 50%.
Anyway you slice it, if you're working for the government in any way, you're getting paid by tax receipts. And when 50% of the economy is government services, one half of the economy is paying for the other half. It's not a perfect analogy but is intended to get people thinking about the size of government. The only exceptions are where governments own money-creating investments like net positive sovereign wealth funds, and they are few and far between, and usually identified by having low or no taxes.
You know the problem with simple analogies, they're simple, the world isn't.
> I didn't say anything about benefits. I was talking about money.
Of course you didn't because you think it's about money, but it isn't. So lets complicate your analogy a bit.
> 10 people are on a deserted island, and there are tasks to be done to survive, which is fish, collect coconuts and fresh water. If 5 people are collecting coconuts, fish and fresh water, and sharing it to the other 5, then it doesn't matter what the other 5 are doing.
It most certainly does matter because reality isn't that simple. If the other 5 people, in exchange for those fish, coconuts, and fresh water, also provide in exchange other necessary services to those workers such as medical care, law enforcement, and education then they most certainly are not parasites living off the backs of the productive as you wrongly imply.
It matters not whether you pay a private company via income or government via taxes if they are providing the same useful services to you; those services don't come free. The difference is a philosophical one of whether you have a choice in the matter. One half is not supporting the other, both halves are mutually supporting each other, the flow of money is irrelevant.
Your mistake is in wrongly saying the government workers are not doing anything productive or contributing in any way and that's simply not the case.
Collectivism tends to benefit the weak the most and the whole group overall while disadvantaging the strong. Individualism benefits the strong the most, benefits the collective some, and disadvantages the weak massively. As the strong are always going to be outnumbered by the average and the weak, it's only natural that any democracy tends to eventually slightly favor the collective rather than let the few dominate. But swing to far to either extreme and everything falls apart. You can't let the strong take too much or the collective rebels and you can't let the collective take too much or the strong rebel.
Redistribution of wealth through social policy maintains this balance and prevents the fall back to serfdom which is what happens when the strong get too much power/money and pass it down one generation to the next. Not taking too much and letting the individuals still accumulate a decent amount of wealth prevents the fall to communism which destroys any incentive to be productive. It's a balancing act, and it's not at all simple.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, because I'm not into endless thread debates. I'm going to restate my thoughts, feel free to disagree, but this is to clarify my position one more time. Anyone who ever stumbles across the thread in the future can make up their own mind.
" they most certainly are not parasites living off the backs of the productive as you wrongly imply"
You have projected speech onto me, probably from what you think my political views are : that's not what I said at all. In my island example, I don't doubt that the other half of the island are doing something productive, I just said that, in order for them to exist, the half collecting the food and water have to provide for them. It's not a chicken and egg situation : the first half have to be productive before the second half can share in the results. The analogy is that one half of the population is creating things, people are paying money for those things, and the other half is living off the excess value or money created. Government services are mostly by definition a net consumer of money, this is obvious otherwise the government would be self-funding by now.
Again, I'm talking about money, not benefits. Of course people benefit from government services, however, I'm talking about the measurement of GDP : which is a measurement of money, not benefits.
At least we agree that you can't just take from the people who produce endlessly and distribute it around. And I'm a big supporter of social safety nets like welfare and medical services. I just don't like to see the government becoming larger than the private sector in any economy.
