mustang19
mustang19
Post rating:
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Here it is at last. I started this thread mainly because I want to settle this question once and for all. So, all those who have an axe to grind against the Democratic Party please post your examples of dishonorable and or illegal or just plain douchey conduct here. Time to put up or shut up.
...
Rockets Over Gaza - The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict Heats Up
I understand why terrorism scares people, it's much the same phenomenon we've seen here with anxiety over spree shootings, but from what I can gather the actual risk of having your bus blown up in Israel (or otherwise victimized by a terrorist attack) is pretty slim.
I'd totally visit Israel, if not for the whole time and money thing.
It looks like the total number of Israelis killed by terrorists was only 9 this year. It's a small number so it fluctuates a lot year to year. Since that's out of a population of 7.9 million, that means an individual Israeli citizen's odds of being killed by terrorists was about 1 in 1 million this year. That's significantly below the long term average though.
It's so low now it's only a tiny component of the overall murder rate which is more like 24 per million population.
How many Americans have been killed within the US over the last 10 years? Off the top of my head I have a couple spree shootings and that is it. Feel free to correct me (anyone, not just my quoted poster).
Foreign Policy: The Three State Solution
I've long that that attempting to treat the West Bank and Gaza as a unified entity, when they're anything but, wasn't helping matters.
I agree, but I think a single state that includes all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza has the best prospects for long-term stability. If everybody was an Israeli citizen, what would be the issue?
If everybody was an Israeli citizen, what would be the issue?
Israel would no longer be a jewish state?
In what way would that be a bad thing?
Sectarian violence would break out between Jewish settlers who think Israel is their god given right and Hamas who think their land should be reclaimed. It'll be like Northern Ireland except there won't be a separate mainland to recruit neutral soldiers. I suspect the IDF itself would remain neutral though I think some political parties won't be and use the IDF to take sides. There'll still be donations by US citizens on one side and supplies by Iran on the other but more so.
The world is only becoming more globalized. The idea of a sovereign state based upon religion and ethnicity has no long term future. Without a political solution, their increasingly expensive and expansive security apparatus and disjointed demographics will compromise the viability of their democracy.
Revolution has come to Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and soon perhaps to Iran and Jordan. Israel's may take a bit longer.
Maybe we can discuss the merits/criticisms of Israel and its neighbors in this thread?
This thread has produced hundreds of comments in the past couple of years, but appears no closer to resolving the central issues plaguing our economy. Someone even suggested that wealth was free and that the real problem was the availability of money. It amazes me that the economy is talked about without addressing the fundamental input of energy, so allow me to respond to one of the early posts:
InThane wrote:
In this case our economic problems are based on one root cause: There isn't enough circulation of wealth, since it's been all focused in the hands of a small group of people on top.
There are two solutions: Inflate the money supply by giving money to the people on the bottom, and make it more difficult for the people on top to retain that wealth, either by forcing them to reinvest it via pushing inflation, or by taxing it away from them and using it to offset the long-term consequences of deficit spending. If the slowdown weren't a direct consequence of their actions, the latter wouldn't be good policy, but the real issue we're experiencing is a direct result of almost outright fraud and graft on an epic level.
So yeah, it's possible to reconcile the need to raise taxes during a recession; we need to recapture and redistribute some of the wealth that was captured and redistributed upwards. Treating the symptoms aren't going to cure the disease, and the disease is runaway upwards wealth transfer.
What happens if we take all of the wealth in the world and evenly distribute it among the world's population? Will we reasonably raise energy-per-capita to a sustainable level? The short answer to this is: no way!
Our economy has a fundamental relationship that seems to have been ignored by most economists: surplus energy feeds economic activity. This is wealth. Nearly all of our surplus is coupled to carbon emissions (which increases the thickness of our global insulating "blanket") and that surplus has been decreasing with an increase in the cost of energy (has anyone here noticed that we are in the middle of a transition from cheap conventional to more expensive unconventional fossil fuels?). It follows from this that in order to improve economic conditions, we must lower the cost of clean energy. So how might we do that?
The prevailing wisdom of those who support responding to global warming is to buy time by trying to develop politically acceptable forms of energy, namely the traditional renewables of: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, tidal, etc. The problem here is not only that it ties economic activity to copious land use (merely hundreds of watts per square meter can be captured under the best conditions), all of the extra infrastructure needed at scale severely impacts surplus energy. As a consequence, this approach to energy production is not only not relevant to addressing global warming, it encourages wealth disparity.
Nuclear bonds hold over a million times as much energy as what we've based our economy on. Unfortunately, the nuclear industry remains rather immature with less than 400 GWe of global production (total energy consumption is about 17 TW) using very inefficient light water reactors. Furthermore, it suffers from poor public support due to a few major industrial accidents. Perhaps there are better technologies that can be developed which can significantly lower the cost of nuclear energy while making it safer? Back in the 1960s, Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a liquid fuel nuclear reactor that ran for thousands of hours demonstrating the viability of this approach. Today there are scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs waiting to pick up where we left off so long ago. Why?
The degree of global poverty today strongly suggests that the cost of energy is far too high today. Projected energy demand by 2050 is somewhere around 2-3 times what we consume today, though that figure is dependent upon cost. So, how do we produce around 50 TW of low cost clean energy by 2050 (~5 kW per person)? That is 50 thousand 1 GWe reactors produced globally at over 1 thousand machines a year. This is somewhat comparable to airliner manufacturing. A thermal spectrum molten salt reactor fueled with thorium requires about a ton of fissile for startup (dramatically lower than fast or light water reactors). There is merely a few thousand tons of fissile in global stockpiles today. The dominant method for producing fissile is through mining and enrichment, though it is also possible to breed. There are ways to produce the required materials so that we can scale up production of this type of machine.
Not only can MSRs use fissile very efficiently, they operate at high enough temperatures that this process heat can be used for many chemical manufacturing processes including energy carrier synthesis. High temperatures also increase efficiency allowing for the option of dry cooling. Low pressure operation (the molten salt might be compared to lava) is a nice feature meaning that all non-gaseous fission products are secured within the salt (the gases are captured and stored until they become stable), which will flow with gravity in the event of a leak. These systems will not explode, overheat, or melt down, greatly reducing the liability of having one of these things close to population centers. The high heat capacity of the salt allows the machine to be significantly smaller per capacity than any of the other nuclear machines, reducing material costs and making it easier to deliver and install.
Meanwhile, poor regulation and public ignorance of the nature of our economic problems continue to impede development of a class of nuclear machines that can bring about a new industrial era, address global warming, and eliminate poverty. It is likely inevitable that this technology is developed and utilized somewhere, perhaps in lowering the cost of synthetic fuels from the tar sands. Waiting for this to happen would be very imprudent.
...
Rockets Over Gaza - The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict Heats Up
I understand why terrorism scares people, it's much the same phenomenon we've seen here with anxiety over spree shootings, but from what I can gather the actual risk of having your bus blown up in Israel (or otherwise victimized by a terrorist attack) is pretty slim.
I'd totally visit Israel, if not for the whole time and money thing.
It looks like the total number of Israelis killed by terrorists was only 9 this year. It's a small number so it fluctuates a lot year to year. Since that's out of a population of 7.9 million, that means an individual Israeli citizen's odds of being killed by terrorists was about 1 in 1 million this year. That's significantly below the long term average though.
It's so low now it's only a tiny component of the overall murder rate which is more like 24 per million population.
How many Americans have been killed within the US over the last 10 years? Off the top of my head I have a couple spree shootings and that is it. Feel free to correct me (anyone, not just my quoted poster).
Foreign Policy: The Three State Solution
I've long that that attempting to treat the West Bank and Gaza as a unified entity, when they're anything but, wasn't helping matters.
I agree, but I think a single state that includes all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza has the best prospects for long-term stability. If everybody was an Israeli citizen, what would be the issue?
If everybody was an Israeli citizen, what would be the issue?
Israel would no longer be a jewish state?
In what way would that be a bad thing?
Sectarian violence would break out between Jewish settlers who think Israel is their god given right and Hamas who think their land should be reclaimed. It'll be like Northern Ireland except there won't be a separate mainland to recruit neutral soldiers. I suspect the IDF itself would remain neutral though I think some political parties won't be and use the IDF to take sides. There'll still be donations by US citizens on one side and supplies by Iran on the other but more so.
The world is only becoming more globalized. The idea of a sovereign state based upon religion and ethnicity has no long term future. Without a political solution, their increasingly expensive and expansive security apparatus and disjointed demographics will compromise the viability of their democracy.
Revolution has come to Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and soon perhaps to Iran and Jordan. Israel's may take a bit longer.
Maybe we can discuss the merits/criticisms of Israel and its neighbors in this thread?
This thread has produced hundreds of comments in the past couple of years, but appears no closer to resolving the central issues plaguing our economy. Someone even suggested that wealth was free and that the real problem was the availability of money. It amazes me that the economy is talked about without addressing the fundamental input of energy, so allow me to respond to one of the early posts:
InThane wrote:
In this case our economic problems are based on one root cause: There isn't enough circulation of wealth, since it's been all focused in the hands of a small group of people on top.
There are two solutions: Inflate the money supply by giving money to the people on the bottom, and make it more difficult for the people on top to retain that wealth, either by forcing them to reinvest it via pushing inflation, or by taxing it away from them and using it to offset the long-term consequences of deficit spending. If the slowdown weren't a direct consequence of their actions, the latter wouldn't be good policy, but the real issue we're experiencing is a direct result of almost outright fraud and graft on an epic level.
So yeah, it's possible to reconcile the need to raise taxes during a recession; we need to recapture and redistribute some of the wealth that was captured and redistributed upwards. Treating the symptoms aren't going to cure the disease, and the disease is runaway upwards wealth transfer.
What happens if we take all of the wealth in the world and evenly distribute it among the world's population? Will we reasonably raise energy-per-capita to a sustainable level? The short answer to this is: no way!
Our economy has a fundamental relationship that seems to have been ignored by most economists: surplus energy feeds economic activity. This is wealth. Nearly all of our surplus is coupled to carbon emissions (which increases the thickness of our global insulating "blanket") and that surplus has been decreasing with an increase in the cost of energy (has anyone here noticed that we are in the middle of a transition from cheap conventional to more expensive unconventional fossil fuels?). It follows from this that in order to improve economic conditions, we must lower the cost of clean energy. So how might we do that?
The prevailing wisdom of those who support responding to global warming is to buy time by trying to develop politically acceptable forms of energy, namely the traditional renewables of: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, tidal, etc. The problem here is not only that it ties economic activity to copious land use (merely hundreds of watts per square meter can be captured under the best conditions), all of the extra infrastructure needed at scale severely impacts surplus energy. As a consequence, this approach to energy production is not only not relevant to addressing global warming, it encourages wealth disparity.
Nuclear bonds hold over a million times as much energy as what we've based our economy on. Unfortunately, the nuclear industry remains rather immature with less than 400 GWe of global production (total energy consumption is about 17 TW) using very inefficient light water reactors. Furthermore, it suffers from poor public support due to a few major industrial accidents. Perhaps there are better technologies that can be developed which can significantly lower the cost of nuclear energy while making it safer? Back in the 1960s, Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a liquid fuel nuclear reactor that ran for thousands of hours demonstrating the viability of this approach. Today there are scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs waiting to pick up where we left off so long ago. Why?
The degree of global poverty today strongly suggests that the cost of energy is far too high today. Projected energy demand by 2050 is somewhere around 2-3 times what we consume today, though that figure is dependent upon cost. So, how do we produce around 50 TW of low cost clean energy by 2050 (~5 kW per person)? That is 50 thousand 1 GWe reactors produced globally at over 1 thousand machines a year. This is somewhat comparable to airliner manufacturing. A thermal spectrum molten salt reactor fueled with thorium requires about a ton of fissile for startup (dramatically lower than fast or light water reactors). There is merely a few thousand tons of fissile in global stockpiles today. The dominant method for producing fissile is through mining and enrichment, though it is also possible to breed. There are ways to produce the required materials so that we can scale up production of this type of machine.
Not only can MSRs use fissile very efficiently, they operate at high enough temperatures that this process heat can be used for many chemical manufacturing processes including energy carrier synthesis. High temperatures also increase efficiency allowing for the option of dry cooling. Low pressure operation (the molten salt might be compared to lava) is a nice feature meaning that all non-gaseous fission products are secured within the salt (the gases are captured and stored until they become stable), which will flow with gravity in the event of a leak. These systems will not explode, overheat, or melt down, greatly reducing the liability of having one of these things close to population centers. The high heat capacity of the salt allows the machine to be significantly smaller per capacity than any of the other nuclear machines, reducing material costs and making it easier to deliver and install.
Meanwhile, poor regulation and public ignorance of the nature of our economic problems continue to impede development of a class of nuclear machines that can bring about a new industrial era, address global warming, and eliminate poverty. It is likely inevitable that this technology is developed and utilized somewhere, perhaps in lowering the cost of synthetic fuels from the tar sands. Waiting for this to happen would be very imprudent.
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
+
what
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
Post rating:
+
goldmine
mustang19
mustang19
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+
First off let's clear things up, my definition of singularity is much more realistic than the average transhumanist.
tentativelurkeraccount
tentativelurkeraccount
Post rating:
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looks like you missed one babyhuey . . .
babyhueypnewton
babyhueypnewton
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gyrofry posted:glodmine
mustang19
mustang19
Post rating:
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uranus mine
Proposal for founding a "Department of Offense"
This department would be responsible for any and all offensive military operations that take place outside of United States and allied soil. For example, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be conducted by the Department of Offense, while the National Guard and the Coast Guard would be part of the Department of Defense.
The fundamental problem with the current state of affairs is that we have a Department of Defense that supervises all agencies and functions of government that are related to the US military. The reason this is a problem is because lumping everything under the term "defense" sabotages critical thinking when it comes to politics and budget allocation. The vast majority of operations the DoD conducts are not defensive in nature. It is not defending against enemy invasions.
If we split it into two parts, then we might finally see that the vast majority of DoD's budget is actually offensive in nature, and therefore the name Department of Defense is not appropriate for it.
I find it eerie at some level because it is akin to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984, which had the sole function of spreading lies and propaganda.
Proposal for founding a "Department of Offense"
This department would be responsible for any and all offensive military operations that take place outside of United States and allied soil. For example, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be conducted by the Department of Offense, while the National Guard and the Coast Guard would be part of the Department of Defense.
The fundamental problem with the current state of affairs is that we have a Department of Defense that supervises all agencies and functions of government that are related to the US military. The reason this is a problem is because lumping everything under the term "defense" sabotages critical thinking when it comes to politics and budget allocation. The vast majority of operations the DoD conducts are not defensive in nature. It is not defending against enemy invasions.
If we split it into two parts, then we might finally see that the vast majority of DoD's budget is actually offensive in nature, and therefore the name Department of Defense is not appropriate for it.
I find it eerie at some level because it is akin to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984, which had the sole function of spreading lies and propaganda.
Edited by mustang19 ()
prohairesis
prohairesis
Post rating:
+
mustang19 posted:First off let's clear things up, my definition of singularity is much more realistic than the average transhumanist.
this post makes me miss spambot. r.i.p boris, transhumanist russian liberal anticommunist transwoman
Crow
Crow
Post rating:
+
THeyre good as shit
[account deactivated]
[account deactivated]
Crow
Crow
Post rating:
+
mustang19
mustang19
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Ars Technica is really ass on head retarded, then again Rhizzone comes off the same way because everyone trolls.
[account deactivated]
NoFreeWill
NoFreeWill
Post rating:
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what do you expect from a website noted for techworshipping.
mustang19
mustang19
Post rating:
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Whim worshipping, more like.
I'd much more spend my time doing this.
I'd much more spend my time doing this.
commodiusvicus
commodiusvicus
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+
Some of us haven't forgotten what they did to Debs.
SariBari
SariBari
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+
oh i thought this was gonna be a cool gossipstop for people who had done terrible things on behalf of the party like hide affairs and pedophilia, take bribes, or act as prostitutes for unions.
littlegreenpills
littlegreenpills
Poronto
Post rating:
+
heh, fucking nerds putting all their faith in arcane specialist knowledge that's incomprehensible to an outsider and has zero connection to real life *reads Lacan*
mustang19
mustang19
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Overregulation of nuclear power plants prevents innovation in nuclear reactor design.
Crow
Crow
Post rating:
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littlegreenpills posted:heh, fucking nerds putting all their faith in arcane specialist knowledge that's incomprehensible to an outsider and has zero connection to real life *reads Lacan*
any and all cults are bad, yo ufilthy pagan
peepaw
peepaw
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some young dem lady who ran a fundraising org for house members got stabbed to death yesterday over one of the employees fudging numbers
TG
TG
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george wallace was a democrat
Superabound
Superabound
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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whenever my mom yells at me to hurry up and come eat dinner i try to explain to her that Alton Brown says youre supposed to let the meat rest for a while but she wont fucking listen!!
[account deactivated]
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
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alton brown said comedy golden brown and delicious think hes a gooooo
mustang19
mustang19
Post rating:
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This is my beef with the Democratic Party.
VoxNihili
VoxNihili
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the Fathead Belt
Superabound
Superabound
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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gum control
mustang19
mustang19
Post rating:
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The Revolution will be on Facebook -- Fight for 15 and low income unionization
For those who don't know, many workers in Chicago at various fast food and retail stores walked out this morning and started picketing over the incredibly low wages that these jobs pay. Growing on the momentum created by fast food strikes in New York City and the Walmart Worker's Strike on Thanksgiving last year, I think we're reaching a point where we can start calling these strikes a trend. Obviously five hundred people walking out in Chicago isn't going to change the economic trajectory of the United States, but I suspect that this isn't the last we're going to see on this front. I personally support the right of these workers to organize, and I hope that within a decade we'll have national fast food and retail workers organizations that can help these jobs turn into the kinds of places that pay a living wage in the same way that factory workers unions turned factories into the kind of place you can live on in the 1950's. Economic history shows that high levels of unionization provide for huge benefits to the middle class they help to create, which is something that I think most posters on the 'Box agree is a good thing.
I know that I'm ready to see things change. What about you? Are you ready to pay eight bucks for a Big Mac meal so that your servers can make a living wage and have health insurance?
The cost of fast-food meals has increased pretty substantially in the past few years, it's not far from $8 as it is. It's getting to the point where sit-down restaurants with at-table service cost nearly the same as fast-food, excepting the tip.
That's not an argue for or against, just an observation.
I was thinking about that while I wrote this post. Anecdotally, I've heard second-hand that the highest cost of running things like coffee shops and fast food restaurants isn't the employee costs, but rather the food costs. Obviously, if we start to see low-income unionization gain a foothold in a number of different sectors, we'll see costs rise across the board, but based on current economic indicators and how I understand them, that's not necessarily a bad thing (and I invite any actual economists to jump in).
I also recognize that this unionization might not be a good thing in the long run. Just as unionization in the factory space helped to contribute to the trend of mechanization, it's entirely possible that we'll see unionization in the fast food space increase the trend toward mechanization there, as well.
For those who don't know, many workers in Chicago at various fast food and retail stores walked out this morning and started picketing over the incredibly low wages that these jobs pay. Growing on the momentum created by fast food strikes in New York City and the Walmart Worker's Strike on Thanksgiving last year, I think we're reaching a point where we can start calling these strikes a trend. Obviously five hundred people walking out in Chicago isn't going to change the economic trajectory of the United States, but I suspect that this isn't the last we're going to see on this front. I personally support the right of these workers to organize, and I hope that within a decade we'll have national fast food and retail workers organizations that can help these jobs turn into the kinds of places that pay a living wage in the same way that factory workers unions turned factories into the kind of place you can live on in the 1950's. Economic history shows that high levels of unionization provide for huge benefits to the middle class they help to create, which is something that I think most posters on the 'Box agree is a good thing.
I know that I'm ready to see things change. What about you? Are you ready to pay eight bucks for a Big Mac meal so that your servers can make a living wage and have health insurance?
The cost of fast-food meals has increased pretty substantially in the past few years, it's not far from $8 as it is. It's getting to the point where sit-down restaurants with at-table service cost nearly the same as fast-food, excepting the tip.
That's not an argue for or against, just an observation.
I was thinking about that while I wrote this post. Anecdotally, I've heard second-hand that the highest cost of running things like coffee shops and fast food restaurants isn't the employee costs, but rather the food costs. Obviously, if we start to see low-income unionization gain a foothold in a number of different sectors, we'll see costs rise across the board, but based on current economic indicators and how I understand them, that's not necessarily a bad thing (and I invite any actual economists to jump in).
I also recognize that this unionization might not be a good thing in the long run. Just as unionization in the factory space helped to contribute to the trend of mechanization, it's entirely possible that we'll see unionization in the fast food space increase the trend toward mechanization there, as well.
VoxNihili
VoxNihili
Post rating:
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where'd you copy that from?
mustang19
mustang19
Post rating:
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http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewforum.php?f=24
Not really worth reading teh rest.
Not really worth reading teh rest.