matthewmarkus

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 by alleviating poverty have backfired, said Duffy. For example, one program in Ghana was intended to decrease poaching by paying a premium on crops, on the theory that hunter-poachers would focus instead on farming. They did for a period, but then used the money they’d earned to buy more sophisticated weapons that they used to shoot more lucrative species [1]."

Beyond that, everyone seems to ignore the inflationary nature of BI. What will happen to the economy in real, not nominal, terms?

[1] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/22/zambia-poach...

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 and run and administered by a collective (i.e., Bitcoin) is worth vis-à-vis USD. Something is most definitely being created.

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 competition to other central banks. Also, that's Bitcoin's core value proposition. Everything else (e.g., transaction speed) is secondary. Bitcoin will be a store of value as long as people believe its rules for creating Bitcoin are sound.

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, bird deaths due to wind power have been growing at 34% annually. That may make wind power one the fastest growing bird killers on the planet! It's especially worrisome if the birds affected are disproportionately large birds. I'm not quite ready to give the technology a free pass.

[1] https://m.phys.org/news/2017-06-farms-bird-slayers-theyre-be...

[2] http://gwec.net/global-figures/wind-in-numbers/

[3] http://windenergyfoundation.org/about-wind-energy/faqs/

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 kittiwakes [1]."

Many birders and environmentalists are very concerned about this issue [2]. The video footage of a bird attracted to a turbine's blades is fascinating.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/20/scotland-bir...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMfyJmSuOGM

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/

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 purpose: repressing resistance to Sovietization policies in Lithuania and providing free labor in sparsely inhabited areas of the Soviet Union."

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 annual property taxes on REOs post foreclosure [1].

[1] https://www.quora.com/Does-the-bank-pay-annual-property-taxe...

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 archive of changes somewhere! Anyway, I suppose one can hope that the third iteration will be even better.

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 solely feature.

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 of 2016, I had addressed many of those complaints elsewhere [1]. By April of 2016, a respected anti-wildlife trafficking NGO even declared that "it would be rash to rule out the possibility that trade in synthetic rhinoceros horn could play a role in future conservation strategies [2]." Things have only improved from there [3]. Yet, "what's controversial" turns into "what's false" on Snopes. After seeing how the sausage is made, there is no way I'll ever trust them.

[1] https://sosv.com/why-pembient-is-confident-in-synthetic-rhin...

[2] http://www.traffic.org/traffic-bulletin/traffic_pub_bulletin...

[3] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.06.003

Take a look at:

http://www.wildlifeworks.com/saveforests/when_a_tree_stands....

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 existence does not make them inherently valuable.

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" isn't necessarily "valuable work," simply start digging holes in your backyard. It is hard work. At the end of the day, though, you'll have constructed nothing of value (unless you appreciate the value of holes).

But, as you see, value is a subjective concept. Communism believes it to be objective. But what's valued in communism is simply the biases of its architects. Resources, then, aren't allocated through an objective pricing system weighing conflicting values, but through waits, favors, loyalties, and fiat. Eventually, the system becomes so corrupted it fails.

We've objectively seen the failure of the communist system across cultures over the last 100 years. By now, there should be no doubt about its inherent ills.

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.

"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 it is not a given that household consumption always increases.

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 "he" in sex-indeterminate situations was codified by Ann Fisher, "an 18th-Century schoolteacher and the first woman to write an English grammar book." Now, every time I see "he," I think of her.

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, mammoth ivory is an extractive process, like mining, so it is unclear if the price could be brought down and kept there for an extended period. Still, it is more than likely that mammoth ivory has had a protective effect on elephants; although, I know of no studies examining the issue.

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.

Yes, that McDonald's was fighting an uphill battle.

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 the corporation has way more opportunity cost than the franchisee.

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 will cease. Even if a McDonald's is profitable, something else may be even more attractive when costs change.

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, but the mother has to shoulder the entire economic burden while they play Xbox or cause trouble. Pricing people out of jobs and thereby denying them mentorship opportunities and people skills does not leave them better off.

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 to pay the price of a latte for a cheeseburger.

Admittedly, though, it is just an anecdote.

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 year, and that McDonald's is now a hole in the ground and a new fancy high rise is going up in its place.

If the cost of an activity exceeds its value, that activity will cease. Of course, if the cost can be passed on it will be passed on. So, if you raised the minimum wage to $1M per hour, a hamburger would cost $300k (or more).

The problem is that people are long education and short learning. Learning is free and useful. We should all do more of it.

There is a great little startup in the EU working to biosynthesize LAL:

http://sothicbio.science/

It's a RebelBio (née IndieBio EU) company.

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.nytimes.com/1983/03/14/opinion/what-marx-hid.html

Thanks for the reply. It does sound like you're thinking these things through. Good luck!

I'm not going to deny the existence of comparative advantage. At the same time, I'm not going to claim we live in a passionless universe either. If a hedge fund manager desires to beat the market, she is going to study the financials, etc. If she is also passionate about boiler chickens, why would she outsource that to someone else? Unless, of course, her passion for the market is greater than her love for boiler chickens. And, if that's the case, can you say she cares for boiler chickens or only wishes to care for boiler chickens. There is a huge difference. As they say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

As far as HSUS is concerned, I'm viewing the issue from my context. EAF wanted feedback, and I gave it. More than likely I'm wrong and perhaps the greater good is being served; although, it would help if that were being measured in some way.

Finally, from what I've seen, I do believe many non-profits could use a hand from people with quantitative backgrounds. If those people ascribe to EA, they'll never join a non-profit.