firstOrder

16 ms·

61.
by firstOrder 13y ago
You said you went to a top-tier college. Most of them charge over $40k a year. So that $150k pays for less than your tuition costs. You are worth $150k a year (which means your boss is making $160k, $165k etc. off of you, they hire you t
62.
by firstOrder 13y ago
...and the US government does and always has supported the right wingers in Pakistan who are bemoaned in this article. Who do you think the US supported - the PPP and the Bhuttos? The PPP, whose founding manifesto was written by the self-
63.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful? Well let us look at these rich people, on the
64.
by firstOrder 13y ago
The important concept is surplus. People do the work to feed themselves, plus extra surplus effort to feed others. Obviously the tribe nurses children who can not feed themselves, and perhaps older parents too weak to feed themselves. Ma
65.
by firstOrder 13y ago
You're certainly correct, he invents ideas, puts them in Marx's mouth, then knocks them down.
66.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> He thought we should abolish private property. People should not be allowed to own things. Marx had very little interest in discussing property or things. He called focus on property and things "commodity fetishism". Marx t
67.
by firstOrder 13y ago
I am not confusing exchange value with use value. Everything you said is correct, except for the bit about scarcity. If scarcity is needed for value, then how are write-once read many commodities worth anything? Mp3's, software, elec
68.
by firstOrder 13y ago
Currency is a commodity, just like any other commodity. Why have certain commodities, such as gold, often become currencies over the past millennia? Because certain commodities like gold are durable, divisible, portable, uniform etc. and
69.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> have value, and that value is preserved through scarcity Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Thomad Malthus, David Ricardo, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill etc. and all the early economists did not believe value was pre
70.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> I'm just hoping to forestall another goofy HN conspiracy theory; the idea that w00w00 is, like, the Internet's "Skull & Bones". That's true. The Internet's "Skull & Bones" of black hat,
71.
by firstOrder 13y ago
Reagan's justification for invading Grenada was that he was protecting the hundreds of American medical students studying in Grenada. The Crimea was part of Russia until 1954. It had, and still has, a massive Russian military base the
72.
by firstOrder 13y ago
The Crimea was part of Russia until 1954. there is a very large Russian military base there. In 1992 the Ukrainian government ceded that the Crimea was almost completely autonomous of Ukraine. How is Russia invading when it already has a
73.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> We set up riots there Just looking at pictures of what was going on in Kiev, it was fairly obvious. Nothing is going on and suddenly thousands of people are bussed into Kiev. Large video screens are set up and professional placards a
74.
by firstOrder 13y ago
You mean like the thousands of mystery troops that showed up without any logos in Kiev, took over government buildings, the airport, etc. without any identification, simply guns to insist "do as we say"? Which means they had this
75.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> scan the press and find...Nothing. Ah the old, "there's a conspiracy to suppress what my side thinks in the news". Ten months ago, Maduro was elected president by the majority of the country. Some of the opposition trie
76.
by firstOrder 13y ago
The last major study on US inheritance that I know of was done in conjunction with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics ( http://www.bls.gov/ore/pdf/ec110030.pdf ). That study considers inheritance for all Americans,
77.
by firstOrder 13y ago
Absolutely. It starts off talking about Downey, who has been working as an actor since the age of five, studying, honing his craft, and then working for months on a project to make a 142 minute film of which he is on screen much of the tim
78.
by firstOrder 13y ago
What a surprise that the first example given is someone who spends years honing his craft and then months on a movie set like Robert Downey Jr., as opposed to say, the Walton heirs. Mankiw is arguing with a wall. I'd much prefer Downe
79.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> we have the centrally planned systems of Communism and Marxism, not particularly effective, as it turns out. Sure, China only has the second biggest economy in the world. Also for the USSR, once the civil war ended and the American so
80.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a party army, the armed wing of the Chinese Communist
81.
by firstOrder 13y ago
> Technology makes wealth inequality worse by giving people leverage and compounding differences in ability and amount of work. It also often replaces human jobs with machines. A long time ago, differences in ability and work ethic had
82.
by firstOrder 13y ago
Exactly. I can't think of a more inane comment to an article on how companies are colluding together to prevent their workers from getting better opportunities than "vote with your feet". How exactly do you "vote with
83.
by firstOrder 13y ago
The typical response I hear to the idea of more widespread labor unions or AMA-like professional associations for programmers and network/systems/storage/database administrators is that if someone is really talented, they can
84.
by firstOrder 13y ago
If anyone saw the movie "A Serious Man", you may remember that the protagonist's employer received anonymous poison pen letters regarding himself. I know someone that happened to in real life. His name is Louis Proyect. He
85.
by firstOrder 13y ago
"a soft target. There is essentially zero chance of reprisal or consequence." Yes, because people are looking for hard targets. Cops don't carry guns because if they confront someone they want the odds to be "even stev
86.
by firstOrder 13y ago
"Someone threw fliers with a smiley face logo and the message disrupt google into the air." Hilarious! Disrupt Google! Lots of posts here "there's more constructive ways to deal with this". How constructive is a b
87.
by firstOrder 13y ago
Hopefully someday we'll see hearings on Americans massacring South Korean civilians some day ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre ). We even have written orders and memoes showing it was U.S. policy
88.
by firstOrder 13y ago
The U.S. has secret travel bans with "ideological exclusion provisions" as well. Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan's had his H1-B visa to be a professor at Notre Dame revoked due to the Patriot Act's "ideological exclusio
89.
by firstOrder 13y ago
The idea of comparative advantage for trade between countries was first spelled out in 1817 by David Ricardo in "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation". He used the example of the Portuguese trading their wine for E
90.
by firstOrder 13y ago
You have a lot of excuses for why the post-coup economy had problems - the price of copper changed, currency was pegged to the dollar (and who decided that policy?) Chile's GDP in 1969 was 7 billion. 1970 Allende becomes president it

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