grondilu

46 ms·

421.
by grondilu 9y ago
> Businesses that can't pay workers a living wage should have to shut down. This should emerge as a natural consequence of economic reality. If workers can't earn a living from a business, they are supposed to either resign or
422.
by grondilu 9y ago
Minimal wage is nothing but an instance of price control[1] and "Although price controls are sometimes used by governments, economists usually agree that price controls don't accomplish what they are intended to do and are general
423.
by grondilu 9y ago
Those are tech companies I have more than one share of: NVIDIA, AMD, IBM, Intel. And those are companies I just have one share of (because why not?): Tesla, Google (Alphabet A & C), Amazon, Texas Instruments I wish I had bought more o
424.
by grondilu 9y ago
That may be an accurate comparison.
425.
by grondilu 9y ago
I doubt it. In texture mapping cuts are allowed, so it is not origami.
426.
by grondilu 9y ago
> The economic system we collectively create absolutely "gives" and "takes" from different groups, all the time. The notion that it's fine for one group to shift the rules to help themselves and harm others, but
427.
by grondilu 9y ago
> If you can't give people a decent living first, they will revolt Nobody is supposed to "give them" anything. They are supposed to be responsible adults, and as such they are supposed to earn their living themselves. If
428.
by grondilu 9y ago
Many people have, but putting them in practice usually leads to totalitarism.
429.
by grondilu 9y ago
> Musk is doing SOMETHING, at least. If only he was planning on doing that with his own money, I'd be fine with it. People are free to waste their money however they want. But he can't. He plans on using public funds for this.
430.
by grondilu 9y ago
> Funny how there are people with much more money than Musk, who do absolutely nothing useful with it, but Musk draws criticism for details. There are other billionaires that do useful stuff. If they grab less attention it's proba
431.
by grondilu 9y ago
> If something planet-scale happens while we wait on a single planet, the entire species would not make it. I suspect even Musk doesn't believe this. I've never read/heard him talk about our species being wiped out. He us
432.
by grondilu 9y ago
I'm sorry, but I really don't see the point. Most of the things you would do on mars, you could do them on Earth for much less effort. Exceptions are studying mars of course, and enjoying low-gravity. I don't see either one
433.
by grondilu 9y ago
> Colonizing Mars is just the next step for our species. Not quite. The next step is colonizing Earth. I agree we can do it if we really want to, and Dubai is a valid example. We may colonize mars in the future, but to me it doesn&#x
434.
by grondilu 9y ago
"Because its there" is the argument of mountain-climbers[1]. That can be an argument for an Apollo-style mission, not for a colonization project. 1. Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why did you w
435.
by grondilu 9y ago
> You don't think a colony would have scientists? Not a million of them. And if its purpose was scientific it wouldn't have to be "self-sufficient". Science is not Musk's goal. He wants to put people there fo
436.
by grondilu 9y ago
We're talking about colonization, not manned exploration.
437.
by grondilu 9y ago
I think nobody can deny that, all other things being equal, short-term occurring events tend to matter more than long-term ones. Therefore, no matter how bad one can feel about the prospect of humanity being wiped out, that feeling can be m
438.
by grondilu 9y ago
That sounds like a morally questionable attitude. Like people selling drugs or weapons. "I'm just selling the stuff, whether it's good or not for my customers is none of my business".
439.
by grondilu 9y ago
Again, we're not talking about going to mars for the sake of it, like someone climbing the Everest because nobody has ever done it. There's even a saying : "nobody remembers the second person who climbed the Everest". We
440.
by grondilu 9y ago
I'm no astrophysicist, but I think I can answer this one. No, it is not plausible. Most bodies in the solar system easily fit into a hundred astronomical unit radius sphere. The nearest star is four light-years away, and a light year
441.
by grondilu 9y ago
> You can't always know, so have as many backups as you can afford. A backup on mars is basically the most ludicrously expensive backup you can imagine. It's as if when I make a backup for my hard-drive in Europe, I rent a saf
442.
by grondilu 9y ago
"doesn't mean that's the way it has to be" Sure, but it does show how speculative Musk's plan for a "self-sustaining city" is. There is no such city on Earth. What makes him think it would work on mars?
443.
by grondilu 9y ago
NASA doesn't have the same objectives than Musk regarding mars. And I did not call Musk an idiot. Look, I understand people can have dreams that I neither understand nor approve. As you correctly pointed out, as long as they don&#x27
444.
by grondilu 9y ago
> there is no self-sustaining city on earth Indeed. That's an other concept that I'm not sure Musk is fully aware of. Economies, industrial production systems are highly inter-dependent on Earth. In our "technological c
445.
by grondilu 9y ago
There are plenty of places on Earth that people explored, tried to colonize, and failed. Australia for instance, is mostly empty for this very reason[1]. Why would mars be easier to colonize than Australia? 1. http://www.dailyma
446.
by grondilu 9y ago
> We already spend significant amounts of taxpayer money sending random probes to other planets. I tend to think scientific research deserves public funding. What musk advocates is not for scientific research, it's basically an ext
447.
by grondilu 9y ago
> People climb Everest for the challenge, not because its most convenient mountain. Notice that once they reach the summit, they don't stay very long. They don't plan on building a home there and plant potatoes. Musk is not j
448.
by grondilu 9y ago
If we are capable to live on mars, we can live on Earth no matter what could plausibly happen to it. Mars as a contingency plan is a weird idea. Whatever you plan on doing on mars to save mankind, you can do it much easier and for less mon
449.
by grondilu 9y ago
> Love, in many ways, is completely irrational At least I know what love is. So when someone does something foolish for love, I understand. But when someone tells me he wants to spend billions to live in a small box on a cold, airless d
450.
by grondilu 9y ago
> But it's theirs to waste. Not quite, since as Musk admits in this paper, he expects this madness to be "a huge public–private partnership". So yeah, he expects tax-payer money to contribute.

More ›