Making energy, making food, operating trucks and planes and cars, building roads and houses, practising medicine, using electricity, are all dangerous. Ricky would be safer without any of those scary things.
Unfortunately, gold is mainly a vehicle for speculation. Coupling the dollar to gold is no guarantee of value or stability.
I used to think of Mao as a bloodthirsty maniac. Now I think of him as just another well-intentioned social engineer (with our guys doing a lot of the same things).
Big Government creates single-point catastrophic failures that distributed societies don't have.
Distributed, free societies have a bunch of more redundant, more adaptable systems that respond to local conditions. That's inherently more robust.
(E.g., a free society wouldn't need years for government permission to stop killing sparrows.)
Cheers, James Arthur
To use slave labor to build V2 rockets to kill civilians in London.
On a sunny day (Sun, 6 Dec 2015 08:10:36 -0800 (PST)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in :
OK, well I was just watching some college by professor (dunno his name, just forgot) on migration. Every week the cable company for free sends 5 lectures with some professor on some subject. I noticed this professor should not work in computers, as he could not count to four, in fact he stated that there were only 3 possibilities related to government and immigrants having benefit, and clearly left out the one where both suffered. I have seen better presentations, I would not pay the guy for what he stated, although you always learn something, But it is the same way, you can only learn here about electronics if you know the basics. He went to some extent into the Amish I think it was not integration but coming from Europe, and some other groups, this related to what we see now here in Europe with Muslims... And Syrian refugees. Who benefits, etc, well too long to tell it all here.
Yes, I do believe people should have the right to chose their own care. Maybe or for sure there should be some safety net, even if it was just to prevent people not getting treatment for say tuberculosis, or whatsit today; ebola and aids etc, that system that 0bama is trying to copy from over here has now an 'own risk' of hundreds of dollars, that will happen with 'bananacare too, and then those people will shy away from doctors as they cannot afford it, and the whole thing will not work. Anyways medical services here, unless you have private insurance, are way below what I consider 'good'. You become just a number, and the doctors are no longer selected or _can_ no longer be selected by the patients, and so no more competition, and any complete idiot can keep practicing as he will be assigned patients, even if most of those die or suffer for the rest of their life from the incompetence of these doctors. So, nothing new. And as far as other things are concerned government controls them and forbids things to the point that people grow up totally like dummies, and finally all will die because of whatsit 'Darwin Awards' because they learned not how to live in a real world. Now take away the guns, hey they just found an other way to pester kids here, you know those airboards? Now forbidden, so dangerous, No knives, no sulfer, no ? lead!!! LOL, no well, it is just a bunch of clowns making rules, MAYBE with good intentions but how stupid can you get to take one incident to enforce rules 'to protect every other sane person',
OK, I think we agree, if I had a choice I would vote Trump, not only is he more fun, than some old women who cannot even handle her own email, but I always had a good relationship with real business people, as I can understand their logic. Will stop here...
He could do math all right. He was just dishonest.
I *was* the manager. The President of our division was trying to make our losses look smaller to corporate headquarters, far away in another state.
(That goes to my point about it being hard to control an empire from some distant ivory tower. The people on the scene always know more, and first. What's obvious to them is often completely out of the ivory tower's view.)
By counting me as an expense at my actual salary, rather than as burdened labor at 3x my salary, he was cooking the books. (Except technically not-- he *had* oredered me not to work, so I actually *was* 100% overhead as far as he knew.)
Anyway, corporate sent over a trouble-shooter to diagnose our division's woes, we staff exposed the PHB (who was fired), and the products were built.
Cheers, James Arthur
That *is* scary.
I bought 440 lbs of steel yesterday, not even considering it might have been made otherwise than by a lone craftsman working in an organic straw hut, much less by a corrupt, evil, corporation. Whoddathunkit?
I'd think about burning all the horrible life-ruining things I have made by corporations, except I've got no way to start a fire without using one of them. (E.g., the stove I just bought.)
Cheers, James Arthur
Yikes, that's a lot of steel. I know a guy who has a house full of off-road truck engines and suspensions and stuff, literally tons. There's a guy in Sacramento who collects old military vehicles, like tanks. I hoard old acorn tubes and tunnel diodes and the occasional Tek 547 scope.
All the libs are now attacking Exxon and the other energy companies for being evil enough to conspire to make energy and pollute the Earth with CO2. Criminal charges are suggested.
How do those greenies have the time to walk to their conferences, and how can they show their PowerPoints without electricity?
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
- Pogo
Well, they're all descendants of the Golgofrinchan 'B' ark, so what do you expect?
;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
So should we condemn everyone involved in killing civilians in war? Who was responsible for firebombing Dresden 3 months from the end of fighting in Europe? It was clear that the war was coming to a fast end and there was little military value to Dresden. The few things present were not in the city center which was the primary target. The only rational was to kill civilians supporting the war effort even though they had no choice.
-- Rick
Not much different than what happens when government is not involved. We tried to kill of the birds by introducing DDT. The harm was becoming very widespread and only government intervention prevented the same sort of damage as was seen in China.
Then there are many events caused by people all doing what is best for the individual. The potato famine in Ireland is an example. A good government might have pushed for more diversity in crops which would have prevented widespread famine. Can you think of any others that disprove your premise that totally "free societies" are always better than governments?
-- Rick
That's a core problem for any large business. When information flows from the front line to the top via multiple layers, what's heard is of too low quality.
NT
Nobody intended to harm birds with DDT.
Nobody's ever verified this. As with any environmental topic, opinion varies. But this:
is relatively effective, I think. It's probably biased, but I've never found a truly dispassionate address of the subject.
If you read "Silent Spring" it's clearly propaganda. My youngest is a bird-professional* - they are tough little buggers. Simply put, DDT would have to be in pretty high concentrations to cause a universal failure of populations.
*she's switched to dogs, so..But Carson's rhetoric resonated with all the "not a sparrow falls" types.
Keep telling yourself that.
it's a lousy example. As it turns out, very little if anything could have been done. I learned this by losing the argument you're putting forward. It's another myth.
When people have put pen to paper, the non-potato crops that could have stood as a replacement for potatoes was simply inadequate in quantity. And the time required for such a pivot, even if it could have been done, was way outside what was feasible.
Form a standpoint of advocating Ricardian land rents control & certain land-tax regimes, it's a great story. But as a nutritional story, it's rather bleak.
The real criminal :) was Physiocracy, in which agriculture was given an exalted status. But since this was before mechanized farming, it's completely understandable.
People had no idea of such a thing in general then. You're deep into the Presentism fallacy.
Potatoes were insidious - they increased the carrying capacity of Ireland for humans to an extent that there really wasn't a replacement.
If we agree to define terms rigorously and stick to those definitions, it *generally* works out that free is better. "Free" is roughly "an absence of Royal Patent trading systems". That's all it really means. I know other people invest it with other meanings, but I can't help that.
And to that - when the power-hungry use the term "free market" they're generally lying. Makes my position harder, but I'll stick to it.
Of course various failures occur anyway, in either system. But not having to engineer top-down diktat is an advantage. Top-down diktat derived from flawed assumptions is even worse. It's all just too *slow* and had no *bandwidth*.
I say "various failures" but what I do not mean is the generally accepted "market failure". Those are surprisingly rare. Unless, you know, somebody has a royal patent on a good...
It's interesting that diversity in Nature is considered an unalloyed good, but diversity in human activity is not. "Free" vastly oversimplified, improves diversity of supply.
-- Les Cargill
What could and should have been done was aid after the crop failure. Britain has lived with its atrocious response ever since.
NT
No one *tried* to kill birds.
How would the government have known beforehand?
It's roughly harmless to mammals, persistent, but breaks down over time.
Free societies don't *always* make better choices, but they have a much higher probability, and much less exposure if something goes wrong. Millions of people exploring, experimenting, cooperating can vet ideas much more quickly.
Most experiments the millions try will fail but no one failure has much negative affect on the whole, and any success is quickly recognized and exploited.
That's how we thrive. When an Uber *can* easily start, *can* exist, etc.
To answer your question, there are many situations where a government is better. Fifty states each separately having to declare war would be a disaster. Governments are needed to protect the rights of minorities. But 90% voting to strip the rights or property of a 10% minority--pure democracy--is mob rule. That has to be prevented. Which is why we have a Constitution that places limits on what the government can do, and guarantees citizens certain rights...
Cheers, James Arthur
I thought I was going to have to dig to find out what this was about. I got as far as the "about" page on the site...
21st Century Science Associates, 60 Sycolin Road, Suite 203, Leesburg, VaI live near there and I know who that is. I suggest you dig it up. It's hard to believe anything that comes from this source. Still, I should give it a try...
He starts off complaining that the dedication to Albert Schweitzer with a quote is misleading. Amazingly thin for a factual analysis of the book.
Page 16. He complains that he can read between the lines implying she seeks to associate DDT with chemical warfare. Still very thin for a factual based analysis.
Page 16 again. He points out a factual mistake of including organic pesticides pyrethrum and rotenone when she had mentioned that "pre-war insecticides were simple inorganic insecticides". Is there any significance to this?
Page 17. He claims that she implicates DDT as horribly deadly, but doesn't seem to quote the actual statement. Still, it is not as if the substance is as safe as table salt which he implies, "Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse affects." In reality it may not be a horribly deadly poison, but it is not something you want around your children.
"This endocrine disrupting activity has been observed in mice and rat toxicological studies, and available epidemiological evidence indicates that these effects may be occurring in humans as a result of DDT exposure."
Many other sources cite other effects.
Page 18. He takes exception with Carson's use of the term, "agents of death". Not really an important issue really.
Page 21. He refutes Carson's claims of bio-accumulation which is a well known issue for lipophilic substances. In humans DDT has a half life of six years or more.
Page 22. He quotes Carson, ?... we know that the average person is storing potentially harmful amounts.? Then says it isn't true. Based on what?
Page 23. He disputes Carson's claim that pesticides are banned in milk by saying there is a 0.5 ppm limit. Not sure what his point is. He he saying that pesticides are safe because they are *allowed* in milk?
Page 24. Carson talks about a person dying because she spilled a 25% chlordane solution on herself. He appears to be claiming foul because it was actually a 33% solution.
Page 28. He reads into her mention of organophosphates being discovered by Gerhard Schrader, in the late 1930s as somehow implying they were used as insecticides at that time. How is this even an issue???
He goes on and on with similar complaints about Silent Spring. At the bottom of the page is a link titled "Read Editorial: Bring Back DDT!" I didn't read the page, but the poisoning of the environment is not the only reason why DDT was all but banned. There are many effective replacements and... wait for it... wait... mosquitoes develop resistance. :(
DDT has not been banned world wide. It is still used where it makes sense and where the upside outweighs the downside. So in effect, the doctor doth protest too much, methinks.
You call Silent Spring propaganda, but you accept the noise from Dr. J. Gordon Edwards as truth?
Great fact based argument.
You mean *after* the famine struck? Yeah, a bit late that. But a government could have encouraged diversity *before* the famine.
Ok, if that what you have been trying to discuss, I don't care to continue.
Which "free" are you talking about now?
-- Rick
If you read this and concluded it is "roughly harmless" you can't read...
"in rats, oral doses of 7.5 mg/kg/day for 36 weeks resulted in sterility"
"In rabbits, doses of 1 mg/kg/day administered on gestation days 4-7 resulted in decreased fetal weights and 10 mg/kg/day on days 7-9 of gestation resulted in increased resorptions"
"In mice, doses of 1.67 mg/kg/day resulted in decreased embryo implantation and irregularities in the estrus cycle over 28 weeks"
I found a report of 16 mg/kg dose resulted in convulsions. Bottom of page 60.
Remember that it accumulates in fat and does *not* break down very quickly. I think I just read the half life is on the order of 6 years. So any DDT passing through your system is stored in fatty tissues. This can cause acute effects when various toxins are released into the rest of the body when undergoing weight loss.
Most of us understand all that. What's your point? By property, are you talking about taxation or fees? Unfortunately that is a necessity of government.
-- Rick
That is a massive dose. For those of us who can multiply, 36 weeks * 7.5mg per day = 1.9 g/kg, equal to a 70kg human eating 132g.
[...]Cheers, James Arthur
More directly to Rick's point, Wiki says it was the *federal government* that introduced DDT into commercial use, after WWII. Whoopsie.
After the uproar they *delisted* it, which suggests the feds had previously listed / approved it.
Cheers, James Arthur
That got you drugged up truck drivers doing 20(?) hour shifts and the swill milk scandal.
-- \_(?)_
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.