Felix

Good Lord! That's Winnie Cooper. I was in love with her when I was little and watched Wonderful Years. And it turns out she's smart and even became more beautiful. That's the kind of woman I like.

Richard Branson now started a new project that will make entering space available for 200.000$. I guess that once he has shown that space flight is a profitable business, competition will appear and prices will drop. There is one idea I have that may be worth dropping here: When my great-grandma was born, the best means of transportation was a horsewagon. When she died it was a space-shuttle. When I was born, the best means of transportation was the space shuttle. I look forward to what will come.

OOPS! Seems like I picked the wrong quote. But the comment still fits.

I guess you mean my post. Just ask me directly. I don't bite. I even gave you a reference where everything is explained. I'll try again. What does it mean for an economy to grow? It produces more than it did before. That's what growth means. The questions at hand now are: How does this happen? And why does it happen so well under free capitalism? My explanation for this was that capitalism either grows or breaks down which may have been what has puzzled you. In economics most production is pre-financed. That means that the entrepreneur doesn't have the money for production costs himself but has to borrow it from someone else. Just look at the business report of any company. The problem for the entrepreneur begins right at that point. He has taken on debt. He has received money and now he has to pay the money back (which he could) AND pay back the interest on that money (which he can't). Therefore he has to produce goods (which was what he has intended to do in the first place but now he is forced to do so or he goes bankrupt) and sell them over production costs. Companies have to sell over production costs because production is pre-financed. So just to break even he has to "make a profit" (even though this profit goes directly to the lender). Now the money available in the market is limited. Let's say: There is an amount of X $ available. Now every company tries to make a profit, or at least to break even. But to do any of this, the company has to take more money out of the market that it put inside in the first place. And here's where the fun starts: X $ is the amount of money previously put into the market. Let's forget state deficit spending and we see that all money was put into the market by previous companies. These companies all want to take more money out - just to survive. They cannot all do that due to simple math. X$ does not equal X$ plus interest (let's say X$ * 5%). Where in the world do these 5 percent come from? They don't exist - yet. This is the fundamental problem in every economy. There is a lack of money, generally called a lack of demand. No matter how productive all these companies are, some of them would lose out if the amount of money was fixed. Now where does the money come from? It comes from other companies just starting. They take on new debt. They put new money into the market and the old companies can pay off their debt, interest and even make a decent profit. Now the problem is on the new companies' shoulders. And this goes on indefinitely. There is no end in human imagination. And there is no end in his demand for hot new products. The only problem is that there is not enough money to buy all that stuff. This amount of money only grows steadily and along with it grows the amount of goods because all companies have to produce to pay off their debt. So there is no inflation because every cent of new money is backed up by new products that are actually sold (and therefore have real value to someone in the marketplace). The problem starts (as always) when the state appears. Not only does it make life harder for entrepreneurs, by taking away their money, which forces them to produce even more, which is a fact very well criticized by the members of this forum. The real problem is the state deficit. This is the cancer of this credit system. A company borrows money to produce and it intends to pay it back (and it is likely to do so or the bank won't give any money). The state borrows money but it doesn't produce, that is: it doesn't try to pay it back (plus interest). No politician would ever do that. He would have to raise taxes and in the end take more money out of the market that the state put in initially. Soon nobody would allow the state to do this. But the state has a trick. Well, actually it has a gun. Government bonds of so-called trustable states all have triple A ratings, the highest rating there is saying that this is one of the safest investments you could make. Why on earth does anyone trust money to a state? Because of the gun. If you give your money to a company, it has to get that money (plus interest) back by means of free trade. The state doesn't have to rely on this. It has a gun and can raise taxes. It can - in the end - legally steal the money back. This make it a secure investment. But the state never pays back for said reasons. In Germany, for example, since western Germany had its birth, public debt was rising at an exponential rate. And it only can do this if the state doesn't pay back but pays old debt with more new debt (to pay the interest). This drives interest rates way up. Why give it to a company for 4% with risk if I can give my money to the state and get 5% with no risk? Keynes always calculated with 2% interest for state bonds. This was before his stupid theory was implemented. All this capital bound in state debt (which is lost in consumption) means that this money has not been used by entrepreneurs (usually the only way to make more money "without work"- I know it's still work!). Therefore it didn't create jobs. It didn't create products corresponding to the rise in available money. This means we have a rising amount of money but no rising amount in goods. This is inflation. And it only appears if there is a debtor who doesn't pay - the state. You can look at the unemployment rate and the debt rate of any country and see that the curves look remarkably alike. The only countries where this is not the case is USA (and maybe Japan - haven't seen them). Here you have no rise in unemployment even though Bush spends more money than he (could and therefore) should. The reason for this is the breakdown of Japan's economy and the downfall of interest rates down there (meaning that nobody is stupid enough to borrow money at any rate). The only people borrowing money buy american bonds with it. So the American state deficit is worsening Japan's economy even more but it keeps the US from having to deal with the unemployment. Of course reality will fight back. And this is what I fear. Since you can't fuck with reality without being punished, all this debt has to be paid. This can happen in two ways: All states on earth return to the gold standard by changing the value of the dollar accordingly and paying back all their debt with all the gold they have and stay out of the finance market. This won't happen. Therefore the second possibility will become reality. That is deflation. Usually this deflation happens piecewise. First a small inflation because the entrepreneur puts money in the market, then a small deflation because he puts up products to sell, causing a little deflation. Now we had an inflation for about half a century. Imagine what happens. A little hint: It's not good. So that's my theory in short. Hell, I think it's long enough so I don't want to explain what deflation will result in. I hope anyone reads this (and replies) since I am eager to hear your opinion on this.

True, but if the economy is going down the tubes all the freedom in the world won't make you start a company and hire people.

No being lives "in piece with his environment". At least not the way you put it. Lions hunt for zebras. Ants eat insects. Cats play with their prey before they kill it. Cows eat grass and grass therefore evolved to be inedible by cows but didn't make it. So much for the harmony. Second: Dolphins don't even have the means for polluting the environment. How smart is that? What I meant was the capacity for intelligence. Yup, when I go to the mall I am indeed highly pissed by the stupidity of my fellow human beings. But that's because their nature allows them to be smart in principle. And the fact that I can write you a message on a computer through the internet, the fact that you can read it and that you have a monitor in front of you and a computer to read it from, even the mouse in your hand is direct proof of human intelligence. Man can. Dolphins can't. Man's smarter.

Thanks, I already added a post.

Debt is money. The only reason for a gold standard is that gold doesn't perish. It doesn't rot. Therefore it is the ultimate collateral for debt. The fact that the banks can lend money means that they create money where there was none before. They multiply the money they have by giving it to other people as credit without mentioning it to the person "actually having that money in the bank". This creates debt for the people who borrowed it but it also gives them money in the amount of the debt. The debt rises and the money stays the same, but this is the debtor's problem. How do you think we would have any economical growth if debt wasn't money. We don't live in an exchange economy. Never did. The reason we have inflation is not banks giving away money they don't have. They all do that. In fact that's how a bank works. They tell their customers that they still have the money but give it away for interest. No problem here. Additional money is created but the corresponding goods are created by the poor sucker who has the debt on his shoulders and works it off. And if he doesn't he goes bankrupt and the bank just gets no additional money from him and the debt (=money) is erased. Period. No inflation either way. Inflation comes if money is created but no services or goods. This only works when the government makes public debt. And instead of paying off the debt, it just adds it up by paying the old debt and the interest with new debt. Nobody works and we have more and more money (in the hands of the people who borrowed money to the state) but nobody works for it. That is inflation. The other way of increasing the amount of money is perfectly legal. No fraud. In the end, this is just how capitalism and economic growth works. And you won't find any of it in an economics textbook.

You are right, of course. In Germany nobody believes in capitalism and those who do are looked at as freaks. I tend to maintain discussions with other people on these issues and the best I get is: This is good in theory but it won't work in practice. Which is stupid too, but this is as good as it gets. There is currently no chance for free capitalism in Germany. Altruism has a firm grip on this country. When I said widely believed, I meant widely believed in this forum. I mean that they will try to cut spending and raise taxes to pay off the debt. This is good in principle, but they won't reach their goal. If the state maintains a balanced budget, your statement is true. Lowering taxes increases freedom and therefore increases wealth and jobs. This is not the case if there is high state deficit. Here the job of the state would be to raise taxes to pay off the debt (and get out of the entrepreneur's way again). It would have to pay the debt plus interest. If it didn't, the debt would rise and since capital is bound in this useless debt, it is not used to create jobs. Capitalism, to survive, needs to grow. That means that the amount of money available needs to grow. Since the law of double bookkeeping states that for every asset there is an equal debt, it means that what capitalism needs to persist is a rise in debt. This is why deficit financing works in the short range. Capitalism is not about exchanging goods, but about making contracts of debt. Since you live in Germany, I recommend reading Paul C. Martin's book: Kapitalismus, ein System, das funktioniert (It's available on ebay for 1 Euro or 2) It is the best theory of capitalism I have found up to date. In there, everything is explained in detail. But to make my point and explain my theory: Capitalism is based on property rights. Property can be used as a collateral for debt. That is its function in capitalism. In countries, where this is not the case, capitalism is not possible. Here I must refer to Hernando de Soto's brilliant book: The mystery of capital. A simple example: Most small companies are started by the money you get for a mortgage on your house. If this is not possible, you're stuck. Especially if it is not sure if that house is legally yours. This is one of the two main reasons most poor countries are poor. The second being, of course, lack of entrepreneurial freedom. Once these two conditions are met, capitalism can flourish. The entrepreneur is drowning in debt and time works against him. Once he has accepted his debt, he has to pay off interest. And he has to pay off more the longer he waits. This fact is nonexistent in common economical theory. The problem is this: Companies put a certain amount of money into the market. Then they all try to get more money out of the market(otherwise they are bankrupt). This is only possible if some companies lose out or if the amount of money available in the market rises. No matter how productive they are. This amount of money can only be raised if new entrepreneurs appear and make more debt, take the money and give it to their employees who then can buy the other companies' products so they can pay off their debt. But now these new entrepreneurs are loaded with debt that can't be paid off with the amount of money currently available in the market. It is interest that drives capitalism. There is never enough money in the market to pay off all the debt, because time has passed and due to interest the amount of debt rises over the amount of money. This is the problem. Capitalism isn't about exchange of goods. Money is not a means of making exchange easier. In fact, in the beginning of capitalism, all the different currencies actually made the exchange more difficult. Money is debt. And all production is done to pay off debt. This is what entrepreneurs do: They take debt and use it to make others take on more debt, so he can pay off his debt plus interest and even make a decent profit. Up until now in Germany this next debtor was the state. It made new debt all the years making life easier for entrepreneurs in the short range, but leading to the destruction of production and total bankruptcy in the long range. Siemens now holds a big bunch of german bonds instead of investing the money. It's easier and they don't see how they can make that much profit elseway, they say. I know that this is a new theory and that it contradicts the supply-side idea that every supply creates its demand. The reason for this is that this idea is false.

That's what I meant. I believe they will have a majority next time for the following reasons: 1. During the current elections a party will very likely be elected which is trying to cut off government spending(CDU). Being a good thing in principle this will surely cause - or to put it better: severe the current deflationary trend. 2. This will lead to many companies closing and thus to an increase in unemployment 3.Unemployed people tend to vote for socialist parties To explain point 1: It is widely believed that all the government has to do is to stop interference with the market and everything will turn out fine. This is true. Unfortunately this is not what the state does. It has a debt that cannot be paid off with the current Gross national product (and it rises faster!). Therefore the state is practically bankrupt. But since no one can believe that the big automobile manufacturing country Germany can be bankrupt this will keep for a while. This debt is the cause of the current unemployment rate. Usually when you invest money someone takes it on as a debt and creates jobs to handle the workload to pay the debt off. This person is the entrepreneur. The state does this too, but it does't create jobs with the money. It spends it on crap or gives it to people who then spend it on crap. The result is: no jobs. The state doesn't pay the money back by raising taxes or something. This happened for about fifty years - since the beginning of western Germany. Therefore nobody's working to pay off the debt. That's unemployment. If the state now tries to save money, it will -being the only one pumping money into the market- cause a lack of demand. Therefore many companies will go down. This causes a decrease in the amount of money circulating (That's deflation) Nobody is stupid enough to start a new company during a deflation. So - in the end we're stuck. Unemployment rising. Desparation rising. And idiots voting the left parties. I have fear of Lafontaine especially. He could be our next Hitler.

You can kill hume's problem by refering to its self reference. What hume said is you can't know anything. How did he know that? That's the problem with all theories trying to attack reason or logic or knowledge. Trying to prove it doesn't exist. How do you prove it? Without reason or logic. You can't destroy a hammer with that very same hammer. And you can't destroy reason by using reason. There is no way for your reasoning faculty ever to be impaired as long as you keep your integrity.

What's Russell's paradox?

I live in Germany and right now I fear a new breakout of facism here. We have a socialist party here which reaches 12% by now. It will reach majority next time. I live in a country which is overloaded with debt. Therefore we have a high unemployment rate. And it's rising. The state can no longer finance the 'social system' it has established. The problem, as it is said in the media is, of course capitalist pigs and their greed, closing down German factories to build ones in other states. No one understands that this is utter nonsense down here. I fear an outbreak in the next 10 years from now. This is - by the way - how Hitler attained power. The state goes bankrupt, because it has too much debt and the people vote anticapitalist extremists whose theories cannot stand thirty seconds of rational analysis. History repeats itself if we don't learn our lessons. I wonder where I should move once I have my engineering degree. I don't just fear this development for Germany only, but for world capitalism. I wonder what your opinion is on that.

Does anyone have an idea for a place in Europe?

I got the same from just reading the book. Which shows that it's a good idea to spend as much money as you can on interesting books, which is a policy I live by. Books are the biggest bargain on earth. You get a whole bunch of new information for little more than the printing cost. And: Investment in your education yields the best dividends. (Ben Franklin)

If what you mean is that society needs stupid people then I must object. No one needs stupid people. Stupid people need others.

Objectivism isn't elitist. It believes that good people should just get their fair share, i.e. everything they produced. That's all. About Eddie and Galt: I believe Eddie was outside to show how an honest person feels when the world around him perishes. It was a plot issue, I guess. Galt had truck drivers and children in his gulch. It wasn't elitism. He just wanted to stop the motor of the world and that meant the most productive people. He could even have left Dagny out there and the world would have still perished. What use is transportation if nothing is produced anymore?

To get this straight: 1.The measure of morality is human life. Good human life that is. 2. If I want to kill animals and am reasonably convinced that I should eat meat I have all right to do so. 3.If I believe that eating meat is harmful to me I have the right to stop eating meat and live on veggies alone. I might even become a vegan. But I am not allowed to forbid eating meat to other people. I've been a vegan once, believing it was healthy(The only valid reason for veganism). I was young and influencable back then and read the wrong book. But I was smart. So I found out that man was a predatory animal. I found out that too much carbs increase your insulin levels (I checked this with these ketosis-sticks) and checked what I read about insulin in dietbooks in textbooks. It proved valid. I learned not to fear cholesterol in my diet and then all objections were set. Since then I eat lots of meat (as far as my student budget allows for it - once I'm a full-blown engineer I'll start living on meat and veggies) and feel fine. I feel better than when being a vegan although I didn't feel lousy back then. I now believe that man is meant to eat meat. That it's the main part of his diet. Unless anthropology finds out that man didn't leave the woods and walked on two feet through the grasslands to hunt animals I won't leave this position. It is a well-known fact among biologists that the predatory animal is smarter that its prey because it has to outsmart it. Since man is the smartest animal on earth it stands to reason that he is one of the best hunters. In fact the evolution of our brain, meat consumption and tool creation increased one another in a positive feedback loop until man even extinguished (!!!) huge Bear species for meat consuption(!!!). Archeologists today check out how old the human they found is by checking his bones. If his bones are fragile it is sure that he lived under 10.000 years from now. Anthropologists now wonder why we started agriculture in the first place. I have my own theory by now: Man bred so well that he populated almost all of earth. Then the place to live shortened in the best parts of earth leading to land ownership. It was the starting point of formal property rights and therefore capitalism.

Yup! That's it. Arithmetic. Never thought about it, but you're right! I'm an engineering student and took a course on fuzzy logic and even programmed a robot and wrote a simulation of ants (which is going to be published ) with fuzzy logic, plus I supervised practical exercises on fuzzy and explained it. I know this stuff. And in the end ... this is it. At least the part of identifying what's going on in the world (called fuzzification to make it sound complicated). Then follows inference (processing in a 'fuzzy' way) and defuzzification so you get a clear number out. But in the end it's just a clear mathematical formula. The reason people like fuzzy logic so much is because it allows you to model simple human behavior and get a clear mathematical formula without having to do much modeling. It's an easy way to build an efficient control mechanism. You just say: if the fish is not cooked, then apply heat. And since it is fuzzy this also means that you apply less and less heat the more the fish is cooked. This is just a simple version, but in the end ... that's how it works.

Hey, I always wanted to know someone who took a photoreading course. What do you do there? What do they teach? What did you learn? Did this photoreading work at least once?

Fuzzy logic is not an attack on A is A. You can't attack it. It's just that if you only have two choices like 'The fish is raw' and 'The fish is cooked', then you cannot put a half-cooked fish into one of the two possibilities you have created. It is neither cooked nor raw. Saying a half-cooked fish is cooked is false. Saying a half-cooked fish is raw is false. A half-cooked fish is a half-cooked fish. A is A. Period. What Fuzzy Logic does is to try to put the half-cooked fish somewhere into the realm of cooked and raw. But then still it is clearly defined in fuzzy logic, since you don't keep it in floppy language but say: The fish is 80% cooked and 20% raw. Clear numbers that can be true or false. It is neither fully cooked nor fully raw. It just allows you to fully allocate the areas in between your categories. It doesn't deny reality. The problem is that you don't have enough categories to fully categorize it. And fuzzy allows you to do just that. Precisely say to which degree the fucking fish is cooked. That's not bad, that's good.

I just did the test and I read at 497 wpm with 91% comprehension. This is pretty good, I think. I took a speed reading course once, and did a bit of training on the task. So you can really increase your reading speed, I suppose. Advanced Speed reading isn't really reading faster, it's more like intelligent skimming as it was mentioned above. There is something called pareto's principle and it applies to this task just as well as to anything else: 80% of what you read won't give you useful information, so you might just as well skim it and only read the important part. I tried this speed reading with a book my little sister gave me and I had it 'read' in about half an hour, cover to cover. I could then tell her the basic plot of the book. I could not give her a detailed analysis, but I understood quite a lot. I was very impressed myself. I think this is the real key to Speed Reading: Skimming. You try to find out what the author thought while reading to find out what to (really) read next. The skimmed text just flows through your brain mainly unprocessed. But you can learn to make this fast processing better and therefore increase your reading speed since you don't have to read that much in detail. I once heard a speed reading joke that explains were this can end if you overdo it: I just speed read "War and peace". It's about Russia. This subconcious mind stuff is not of much value as far as I am concerned. I read a book called photo reading where you are promised that you can read at 25000 wpm. This is of course all done subconciously. So in the end you subcounciously read a book and you don't know shit about it's content. They say it's then easier to understand, but how can one know this is true? Well, it may help you understand better but you don't see the difference to not having photoread it before. Nevertheless the book contained another interesting idea. That reading should start with the structure and go deeper into the content when necessary. So you only read the parts of the book that you really need. This is the best advice I would give after my long experience with speed reading techniques. I once gave it to a friend who only had little time to finish a paper for college. He called be because I am a learning freak and a learning techniques freak, too. So he told me his problem and the answer was simple: Don't read it all. Just don't read entire parts of the text. Skim it first to understand what topics are covered. Then pick some topics you want to write about in your paper. Then just read these thoroughly and finish your paper on time. He did and received an A since he had enough time he could write it well and go over the text once more. This sounds cheesy, I know, but it's true. So there is value to this speed reading stuff. I think you can double your normal reading speed and not go much further except on occasion but then you will trade understanding for speed and it's not fun to do it. For more I would recommend using pareto's law and forget the rest. That's what I do and it has served me well.

I live in Germany and right now I fear a new breakout of facism here. We have a socialist party here which reaches 12% by now. It will reach majority next time. I live in a country which is overloaded with debt. Therefore we have a high unemployment rate. And it's rising. The state can no longer finance the 'social system' it has established. The problem, as it is said in the media is, of course capitalist pigs and their greed, closing down German factories to build ones in other states. No one understands that this is utter nonsense down here. I fear an outbreak in the next 10 years from now. This is - by the way - how Hitler attained power. The state goes bankrupt, because he has too much debt and the people vote anticapitalist extremists whose theories cannot stand thirty seconds of rational analysis. History repeats itself if we don't learn our lessons. I wonder where I should move once I have my engineering degree. I don't just fear this development for Germany only, but for world capitalism. I wonder what your opinion is on that.

I've taken a long time to become convinced by Objectivism and have been a existentialist before (and suffered from it ). So maybe I can give you a little help. Existentialists stress freedom of choice. This is true. Unfortunately inside their universe this is of little value since you live in a universe you can't understand. So they have to say things like: You have freedom, but you have to do the good even though it is no use anyway. And then not say what 'the good' actually is. I read a bit of existentialist literature. And the point where it is wrong is clearly epistemology. They believe that science has proven that the mind is worthless. Therefore everyone believing his mind is an idiot. This is a logical conclusion. Unfortunately it also contradicts itself. It is just utter nonsense once you look at it with a bit of criticism. The difference between objectivist ethics and existentialist ethics (which is nothing but the nonexistence of ethics), the problem you have with subjectivity vs. objectivity is that in objectivism you have a real world that you can know and therefore you can learn how to live in it (ethics). You ultimately have the freedom of choice, but reality will punish you if you work against it. THAT's the objective part. Reality. And out of it flows the right way to live. Subjectivity means that there is no reality, only opinions. And if you believe that you can have your cake and eat it, too, then that is a claim as valid as the claim of the person who says this is impossible. Existentialists believe that they can ignore reality and get away with it, because they believe that reality is just a social belief system. I've been there about four years ago, before I read Ayn Rand. And looking back, I see how stupid it was. But it was an error of knowledge, not an ethical one. Many objectivists claim that he who is irrational is evil on purpose. I can say for myself that I was as honest as I could be back then. I was just stupid. To come back to your point, in Anthem you have the right to be different on your own term and for yourself and on your own risk. This goes into the area of politics where -in capitalism - your freedom just goes as far as where your neighbors freedom starts. That's the freedom you have according to objectivism. To tackle the world your own way. The freedom you have (well not you, actually everyone but you) in any other system goes beyond that. One person can ignore reality and let others suffer for his erroneous thinking. This is why you can get highly pissed once you find out about it. (I did ) Because in that system (which is the system we live in right now) the sucker is the person with the working brain. That's the difference between rational and irrational egoism. One accepts reality as an absolute and the other one doesn't. I hope this has helped a bit.