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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The **exact same** problem exists when arguing, "Historically, there are
> a lot of examples of people resisting governments." Yes, there are, but
> most of them haven't been governments with access to nearly limitless
> high technology.
So, you mean the fact that the USA hasn't actually accomplished very many of
our military goals doesn't count? Viet Nam wasn't up against nearly
limitless high technology? Bin Laden isn't up against nearly limitless high
technology?
> its fairly rare for *enlightened* people to be doing the resisting.
Ignoring, you mean, China and Egypt, say?
It always amazes me when you make these arguments ignoring what's in the
headlines world-wide even as you type them. It makes it hard to have any
sort of reasonable discussion with you, when you start saying things like
"you'll never see a spontaneous revolution against a dictatorship clamoring
for democracy" while an entire country is, even as we speak, doing exactly that.
(You did the same thing with an argument about a national fiat currency
never collapsing even as Iceland was starving because their fiat currency
had just collapsed.)
> do so tend not to be someone who wants to create/defend a democracy.
> basically little more than an Oligarchy, with pretenses at universal
> distribution of goods and services.
You really should ask some chinese people what they think of Mao.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
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On 2/6/2011 4:48 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> The **exact same** problem exists when arguing, "Historically, there
>> are a lot of examples of people resisting governments." Yes, there
>> are, but most of them haven't been governments with access to nearly
>> limitless high technology.
>
> So, you mean the fact that the USA hasn't actually accomplished very
> many of our military goals doesn't count? Viet Nam wasn't up against
> nearly limitless high technology? Bin Laden isn't up against nearly
> limitless high technology?
>
The limitation is in the willingness to destroy the state you are trying
to save. We are losing there because a) we didn't go in with a clear
goal of doing one thing, b) didn't supply enough to make that happen,
and c) drew back what was needed, and changed mission. Nam.. Its often
been said that had we been truly serious about stopping the north, we
had the means to level the whole population, but opted instead to treat
it as a "police" situation. The mission wasn't to end it, it was to help
someone else end it, and those people where not in a position to do so.
The result was lots of people dead on all sides, a complete stalemate,
which broke the country in half, and an eventual decision that the cost
of trying to win without flat out crushing the north, and risking a war
with China in the process, was too high to continue.
You got me as to why the F%$@ we didn't do what was needed in
Afghanistan from the start, instead of letting the ass move into some
place we couldn't, again, effectively deal with, get into without
pissing off neighboring countries, or effectively bomb hard enough to be
sure we got the guy. Even then, we have had dozens of times we might
have gotten him, or someone close, and decided not to, purely for
political reasons, or uncertainty, and, until the recent semi-secret
drone attacks, almost *0* results. Interestingly, it seemed to be an
unwillingness to step on certain toes, do certain things, or take
certain steps. Now.. 90% of our options are gone, because of the stupid
choices made right from the start.
Had different choices been made then, we wouldn't be talking about a
hand full of people with a few RPGs, hiding in caves, resisting the US
military. Short of nuking the whole mountain range between countries,
and invading the next country, to root out Bin Laden, its not going to
happen, given the current conditions.
>> its fairly rare for *enlightened* people to be doing the resisting.
>
> Ignoring, you mean, China and Egypt, say?
>
> It always amazes me when you make these arguments ignoring what's in the
> headlines world-wide even as you type them. It makes it hard to have any
> sort of reasonable discussion with you, when you start saying things
> like "you'll never see a spontaneous revolution against a dictatorship
> clamoring for democracy" while an entire country is, even as we speak,
> doing exactly that.
>
Most of the people in Egypt are not putting up armed resistance, just
resistance. And, with some limited exception, the army hasn't opted to
institute total suppression either. As for China.. Seriously? Most of
the stuff going on there is cyber war, spreading information, and stuff
like they did at Tienanmen, which, in case you forgot, wasn't armed
citizens resisting tanks, it was **unarmed** people doing so, and the
army refusing to shoot them. What armed resistance is taking place is in
outlying lands, which didn't consider themselves part of China in the
first place, but where the West has opted to not step in and help. Guess
what... they are losing, for the most part.
> (You did the same thing with an argument about a national fiat currency
> never collapsing even as Iceland was starving because their fiat
> currency had just collapsed.)
>
Not sure which comments you are referring to there.. That said, they can
fail, if the banks take complete control over them. But, basing it on
commodities, of any sort, isn't going to help either, since you can't
guarantee that the commodity will always stay at, or rise, in price
either. (Not to mention someone managing to spill of lot of it into the
pool, undermining the price.) If I said never, then I would be wrong.
What I may have said is that basing it on something with no set price is
nearly, if not more, stupid.
>> do so tend not to be someone who wants to create/defend a democracy.
>
>> basically little more than an Oligarchy, with pretenses at universal
>> distribution of goods and services.
>
> You really should ask some chinese people what they think of Mao.
>
Which ones, the ones toeing the party line, or the ones neck deep in
smog that is worse than anything in LA, something that happened
***after*** China started shifting from a communist economy, rather than
just government, to a capitalist one, but failed to comprehend that you
can't do that, since it leaves decisions, like environmental issues, in
the hands to people the least effected, least interested in addressing
them, and least competent to have a solution (or interested in ordering
people to find one)? Mao failed. They may pretend otherwise, but China
today is not the one Mao attempted, and given 50-100 years more, even
their government is likely to more resemble ours than Mao's. Heck, a lot
of China is changing and, as I said, not via armed people, but the
spread of information. Its why the #1 thing China is worried about,
outside of outlying recent "acquisitions", like Taiwan, and even to a
great extent *in* those places, is, "Don't let anyone hear, see, read,
or think anything we don't want them to."
Mind.. Given the sort of borderline misogynistic, party serving, greedy,
anti-environmental, freaks we have in certain parties right now in the
US... it wouldn't take a whole hell of a lot to get there. You know that
Minnesota has a Republican law up for possible passage, which, in the
process of trying to mess with a bunch of social services, as usual,
also tries to repeal the law requiring that employees **pay** women the
same as men, in the same job position? Supposedly its a "small
government" thing, since all that bureaucratic keeping track of who is
trying to cheat the law costs money. Much better to just go libertarian
(that's the small 'l', conservative version) and just let the system fix
it itself, like it used to back when certain people where only 3/5s a
citizen, and more than 50% of the rest couldn't even *have* a job...
Or, as one person put it, "The modern republican party, boldly leading
us forward into the 18th century."
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 2/7/2011 8:13 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Not sure which comments you are referring to there.. That said, they can
> fail, if the banks take complete control over them. But, basing it on
> commodities, of any sort, isn't going to help either, since you can't
> guarantee that the commodity will always stay at, or rise, in price
> either. (Not to mention someone managing to spill of lot of it into the
> pool, undermining the price.) If I said never, then I would be wrong.
> What I may have said is that basing it on something with no set price is
> nearly, if not more, stupid.
>
Mind, here is my reasoning in this.
Commodity based economy:
You - own a $10 note that says it is worth 10oz of the commodity.
Someone else - owns 10oz of the actual commodity.
The price goes up 10x. You now own the right to 1oz of the commodity,
which is now worth $10. They own $100 worth, i.e., the same 10oz.
Economic collapse happens - You - now have a $10 note that isn't worth
0.0001oz of the commodity. They still own 10oz, what ever that may be
worth to someone else, whose money is still worth something.
Fiat based economy - Everyone owns a $10 note, some just have a lot more
of them, which claims to be worth what ever that will buy. I.e., if
things go wrong, everyone gets screwed.
Thus, the only real difference, unless you go around carrying coins that
actually can be spent, made of the commodity, and can thus be melted and
sold to someone that will take them, is that you and me get screwed
***no matter** if the money is backed by gold/silver/tin or dog shit.
For us, its just as valuable to have the $10 note if the economy fails.
But, for the 5% of the people that where either paranoid enough to
change it all into the commodity, or had a lot of it in a vault some
place... those people *might* find themselves falling from high
privilege to middle class in a single stroke, instead of from middle
class to complete poverty. For the other 95% of society, its irrelevant
whether or not its a fiat system or not, they are still *all* screwed.
In principle, this means everyone has something to lose, and some care
may be taken to keep things controlled. In practice, some idiots have to
screw the system up badly enough to result in laws being passed to do
that. In a non-fiat system, however, the incentive for the ones that are
left with anything at all to fix the problem, regardless of how broken
it ends up being, is much lower. After all, they got through it, so they
will the next one too, right?
In the end, unless you are running around with bags of gold dust, or
diamonds, *every* system, even the ones that used coins made from
metals, where, at least locally, fiat systems. That is just the reality
of how such systems end up, once you say, "this stands for some value of
that, unless the rarity of that changes significantly, and then your
coin, no matter what the damn things is made of, isn't what it says it is."
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Mind, here is my reasoning in this.
I'll simply note that I disagree with your reasoning as oversimplified and
just leave it at that. You're not taking account of the relative ease with
which some people (i.e., the treasury) can manipulate the amount of fiat
currency floating around, nor are you taking account of the fact that there
are multiple fiat currencies so manipulable.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
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On 2/8/2011 10:01 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Mind, here is my reasoning in this.
>
> I'll simply note that I disagree with your reasoning as oversimplified
> and just leave it at that. You're not taking account of the relative
> ease with which some people (i.e., the treasury) can manipulate the
> amount of fiat currency floating around, nor are you taking account of
> the fact that there are multiple fiat currencies so manipulable.
>
This is true, but that is merely one of the things that alters the
valuation, perhaps more drastically than otherwise. However, going back
a few centuries, you find people using promissory notes, and the like,
which may not have always been valued as, "X amount of Y", though this
is perhaps more common, but could have been written as, "the value of X
amount of Y", or some such.
Of course its simplified. But the point isn't wrong. As long as you are
using some form of currency to *stand in* for the value of something
else, there is no certainty that your gold coin from Upper Vib isn't
going to be worth less in Lower Vob, nor than a sudden influx of gold
into Vib won't suddenly law waste to the presumed value of the same coin
in Vib as well.
Case in point, if you want to talk inflation. I have been reading one of
Samuel Clemens books, in which he is describing the silver rush in
Comstock mines, at Virginia City. You could probably, at the time, buy a
newspaper for two pennies in some place like NY, but if you wanted a
copy of the paper in and around the silver mines, you had to pay,
according to him, something like $50. Everyone had stocks, or coins, in
pocket, in amounts staggering to normal people, any place else, and they
handed about bits of stock between them like tissue paper, but
everything cost stupid amounts of money too, and it didn't much matter
if you had $500 cash, or $500 stock, both where near worthless in the
city. The only difference was that it was US dollars, so, once you got
out of the city, that $500 meant something. But, no one was eating
silver, or otherwise using it for much, other than coin, so had,
somehow, the rest of the country suffered something that had devalued
the dollar to the point of being worth less than 0.04 cents (the value
difference between a $50 paper and a 2 cent one), what would the value
of all those silver coins been? By my math, roughly 20 cents. (Well,
unless you sold them to some place where it was still worth something to
someone.)
Everything is, as I said, fait. If you can't eat it, wear it, ride it,
build with it, or take shelter in it, its a fiat currency. And the value
is entirely dependent on what someone is willing to trade for it,
whether its some fool spending a $50 'metal value' silver coin, for a $1
candy bar, or the fed inflating the amount of coins on the market until
the cost of making a penny is 20% higher (or what ever the ratio is)
than what you can buy with it. And, in the end, if things really go bad,
you might be better off with a 10 gallon jug of nickle based pennies,
for the metal value, than you would with the equivalent paper money, but
the nickle from them will *still* come no where close to repaying the
loss of having your $200, or what ever the fiat value of those coins
was, dropping to the purchasing power of $2.50, due to a complete
collapse of the currency.
I suppose.. You might be able to sew the paper money together and make
clothes though, so.. maybe it could be "worn", in the above definition
of non-fait. lol
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Everything is, as I said, fait. If you can't eat it, wear it, ride it,
> build with it, or take shelter in it, its a fiat currency.
I don't think you understand the word "fiat" there. Gold coins aren't a fiat
currency, even though they're subject to inflation or other disruptions due
to gold supply or due to the general populace changing their mind about how
much currency is worth.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
Post a reply to this message
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On 2/9/2011 10:29 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Everything is, as I said, fait. If you can't eat it, wear it, ride it,
>> build with it, or take shelter in it, its a fiat currency.
>
> I don't think you understand the word "fiat" there. Gold coins aren't a
> fiat currency, even though they're subject to inflation or other
> disruptions due to gold supply or due to the general populace changing
> their mind about how much currency is worth.
>
Enlighten me how they are not then. Because, as near as I can tell, the
only distinction seems to be that you can melt them down and recast them
into something else. Kind of harder to manage that with paper money,
but.. In the end, the value is what you can spend it on. If no one wants
it, there isn't any difference in value between a $1 coin and a $1 piece
of paper.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Enlighten me how they are not then.
Fiat currency is when someone says "Accept this otherwise worthless item as
money, or we will hurt you."
> In the end, the value is what you can spend it on. If no one wants
> it, there isn't any difference in value between a $1 coin and a $1 piece
> of paper.
No, that's exactly the difference. If nobody wants dollar bills, you still
have to accept them, as a matter of law, as legal tender. You don't get to
say "Sorry, I don't think this piece of paper is worth a dollar."
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
Post a reply to this message
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On 2/10/2011 11:13 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Enlighten me how they are not then.
>
> Fiat currency is when someone says "Accept this otherwise worthless item
> as money, or we will hurt you."
>
>> In the end, the value is what you can spend it on. If no one wants it,
>> there isn't any difference in value between a $1 coin and a $1 piece
>> of paper.
>
> No, that's exactly the difference. If nobody wants dollar bills, you
> still have to accept them, as a matter of law, as legal tender. You
> don't get to say "Sorry, I don't think this piece of paper is worth a
> dollar."
>
Ah.. I see.. So, this differs how from say.. a king ages back declaring,
"Use the money stamped with my image, or else."? Still not seeing how
you have any kind of trade using money, without it being fiat. Someone,
someplace, has a press, or a mine, or *something*, which at which they
define the currency, and using something else isn't generally considered
a good idea. Something about it turning worthless, or possibly even
getting you killed in some cases, if you cross a border and try to spend
the wrong state's, countries, or what ever, coin/paper money, or what ever.
Money is money. The only thing that isn't is an actual commodity, and
unless you think we should be going back, as one wacko in the last
elections suggested, to trading chickens for dental work...
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 12-2-2011 20:10, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> chickens for dental work...
Nah, their beaks are much to big and their necks are not flexible enough.
--
Apparently a dictator costs less than 10 cents per citizen per day.
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