matthewmarkus

9 ms·

31.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
My opposition is to funding both the DEA et al. and the dealers.
32.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Wouldn't the most logical thing be for people to reinvest their BI in the illegal drug trade? It's not like there isn't precedent for that kind of thing happening elsewhere: "And some projects aimed at reducing poaching
33.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
In FX trading people are putting up capital to create exchange ratios, which is information. Right now people are putting up capital to determine how much coin issued by a central bank with a "deflationary" bias written in code an
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by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Bitcoin IS a central bank. It is an "alternative" central bank with a "deflationary" bias written in code and run and administered by a collective. Is that a good thing? Probably, from the perspective of providing compet
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by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Let's assume a turbine kills 4 birds per year [1]. Globally, 341,320 turbines are spinning around the world as of 2016 [2]. That's 1,365,280 deaths per year to generate roughly 4% of the world's energy [3]. Put another way, b
36.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
That chart is based on data from 2003! Recently, for one Scottish installation, government reports indicated "that more than 1,000 gannets would perish in the turbines each week, along with a similar number of puffins and hundreds of k
37.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
If it is a distraction to the latter, then shouldn't it come down? Next, you're going to defend the Gandhi statue on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, I suppose! http://www.gandhism.org/san-francisco/
38.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
As a Lithuanian-American, I'm appalled that you would shrug off the hate implicit in that statue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Lithu... "Deportations of the civilians served a double
39.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
I have a hard time believing that banks are "exempt from paying municipal property taxes" as a blanket rule. Surely, that would depend on a given locality's laws. Further, it seems that, in general, banks are liable for annua
40.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
The whole article is an argument from authority with no countervailing facts. To be fair, though, it is much better than the original article, which isn't in the Wayback Machine for some reason. You would think they would keep an archi
41.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
I thought I made it pretty clear in the comment that I had an iron in the fire. Apologies to those who missed that point. Please note that my conflict is not with Snopes, it is with the NGOs and their statements, which Snopes chose to solel
42.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
You're right not to trust them. To wit: http://www.snopes.com/3d-printed-rhino-horn-developed/ They run through a litany of NGO complaints, basically presenting one side of the debate. However, as early as January
43.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Take a look at: http://www.wildlifeworks.com/saveforests/when_a_tree_stands....
44.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
At one point those contracts were subjectively valuable to the parties involved. The assumptions under which they were made turned out to be false, and now they're valueless. The point is that the labor expended to put them into existe
45.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Your comment contains a germ of why communism is a failed concept: "Hard work." Hard work does not imply valuable work. You've conflated the two, as have all the thinkers you cite. If you want proof that "hard work"
46.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Monopoly is a board game in which you shuffle around finite resources. Capitalism is the reason why there isn't a single copy of the board game Monopoly.
47.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
"American households use less electricity than they did five years ago." http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2017/05/08/evidence-of-a-decline-i... Will there be a rebound effect? It is too soon to tell, but i
48.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
I discovered this article a while ago: Avoiding Sexism in Legal Writing—The Pronoun Problem https://lawyerist.com/49433/avoiding-sexism-in-legal-writing... It has some solid advice, but it also notes that the use of &q
49.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
The situation only holds when the market price of mammoth ivory is roughly the same as that for elephant ivory. If mammoth ivory was much cheaper than elephant ivory, then killing elephants wouldn't be economical. Unfortunately, mammot
50.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
I never said that minimum wage = fewer jobs in all contexts. It will definitely destroy certain employment opportunities in certain circumstances. I suppose I would consider it an accelerant for automation.
51.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Yes, that McDonald's was fighting an uphill battle.
52.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Yes, I purposely simplified things. In the case of the corporation, it has to look at the rent it can squeeze from the franchisee versus selling or repurposing the land. In that case, it is even more likely the store will be shut down since
53.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
To simplify things, let's say the McDonald's owner owns the property. If his profit drops to $1.25 million per year, but he can sell the property and invest the proceeds so that he earns $1.3 million per year, then the activity wi
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by matthewmarkus 9y ago
The minimum wage slowly boils away jobs. If it boils them away too quickly, problems result. https://www.epionline.org/minimum-wage/minimum-wage-teen-une... It's why you might have a house full of teenagers now, b
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by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Well, the Starbucks next door is still there, so one business was able to pass on its costs, the other was not. Also, the McDonald's mainly served the elderly and those on fixed incomes, so clearly their customer base wasn't going
56.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
Once, when I was in Seattle, I witnessed a volunteer cajoling a McDonald's employee to sign up for her Fight for 15 campaign. I was going to tell the fellow that he was about to commit economic suicide, but I let it go. Fast forward a
57.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
The problem is that people are long education and short learning. Learning is free and useful. We should all do more of it.
58.
by matthewmarkus 9y ago
There is a great little startup in the EU working to biosynthesize LAL: http://sothicbio.science/ It's a RebelBio (née IndieBio EU) company.
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by matthewmarkus 9y ago
This phenomenon has nothing to do with capitalism. It has to do with the fact that some human beings are incapable of forming healthy, loving relationships. Heck, even Karl Marx exploited his maid for sex [1]. [1] http://www.nyti
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by matthewmarkus 10y ago
Thanks for the reply. It does sound like you're thinking these things through. Good luck!

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