npts2020

Why not just torture everyone you pick up then? Any individual "might" have that piece of information you need to prevent "disaster" and save umpteen lives.

None in particular but it seems that if Obama can influence who her replacement is in any way, that a supportive junior senator would be a better senatorial ally than a more senior senator who may or may not be completely on your side. After all it is usually the senate that gets legislation tied up or passed more than the house.

How about waterboarding (something people have been prosecuted for as torture by the American government since the Civil War) or just good old fashioned beating to death? Are those getting a little closer to the "level" of a terrorist? The problem is that some of the methods used have been clearly defined as torture for many years. In eight years (or over 7 years if you only want to consider since 9/11) what laws have been proposed to change those definitions? Every interrogater I have heard interviewed or read (at least a dozen if they are actually all different people) has stated that they got better information without torture than with. If you apply enough pain to someone they will tell you whatever they think you want to hear. If torture was efficacious and needed, why would it be wrong to torture everyone you picked up off of the street since anyone might have a small piece of information you could use?

Maybe Hillary was seen as an impediment to the Obama agenda if left in the senate to promote other interests?

It does seem unlikely anytime soon but if humans are around long enough to learn to do something like that, I think it is inevitable someone will at least try to do it.

I agree with AIP that usable superconducting wires would be the most immediately useful thing on the list. IMO the LHC shouldn't even be on the list.....yet (once it does what it was built to do is an entirely different matter).

You have to remember, at the end of the day Obama is still leader of the Business Party. Agreed he is a liberal businessman but a businessman nonetheless.

ecoli; Is the failure to keep corporations from behaving badly more due to lack of law enforcement or lack of laws? I do not agree with your assertion that government based on majority rule is the problem rather than an economic system based solely on greed. If you wish to claim that the two are incompatible, we may find some common ground but I am not sure I entirely agree with even that. Show me some data that points toward everyone being wealthier because of capitalism. Unless you mean that only capitalists are everyone and nobody else counts, you cannot. Additionally, I believe that several tens of millions of Chinese who lived lives on the verge of starving to death before their revolution might disagree about government redistribution of wealth never being successful. How much lower was their per capita standard of living in say 1970 (before the current economic boom) compared to during or right before their revolution? I agree that environmental degradation is caused by failure of government to regulate a "free" market (regulating corporate freedom vis a vis societal and individual rights and freedoms). Yet you and others argue the market is not free enough! Another thing I fail to understand is, why the actions of a single person would be easier to obfuscate and keep secret than the dealings of many. Even the authors of the link you provided don't make the claim that millions of people were killed because of any market considerations (they were killed because they opposed the soviets). To get an idea of the standard of living 6.6 billion people could expect, divide total world gdp (about $45 trillion) by that number of people and you come up with about $6,800 per person if the wealth is distributed evenly. Finally, which corporations have decided to adopt Google's corporate philosophy?

The problem is that cleanup of environmental damage frequently (I would say more often than not) costs more than the individual or corporation causing it could possibly pay.

Whether or not your energy source is domestic is only important if you hope to control costs and where the money goes.

If businesses had a "code of ethics" of any sort that they were required to follow in order to do business in America, I might have as much faith as you do in the "free market". Unfortunately, even the few rules (laws) that exist concerning corporate activities only peripherally address any ethical considerations in doing business and most of those are fairly easily ignored or gotten around. Malthus didn't (probably couldn't have) take all of the factors into account but he was basically correct about running up against resource limits at some point. What I see the "free market" doing today is destroying the planet for the rest of us in the name of accumulating wealth for some. If even only a few of the studies I have read about deforestation, coral reef die-offs, fishery depletion, pollution of groundwater sources, global warming, etc. are true, there is a debt being built that will make the current financial market debt look like peanuts. Personally I kind of like the idea of a central czar making sure supply keeps up with demand, if I can see transcripts of his business activivties and vote them out of office if I don't like what he is doing (some would call that democracy), a situation that does not exist with the Treasury Secretary and the current bailout. The part I highlighted seems a pretty fair description of our situation today, so is it democracy, the market, or what that is not working? You kind of skirted the issue of standard of living for 6.6 billion humans but I would be interested in anyones opinion of what specific standard of living that many could realistically expect? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Thanks for proving my point about Google being atypical of corporate America (somehwere in there they talk about the corporation being like no other in America). Whether the corporation claims or even lives by this and how many of their users actually know or care are completely unrelated.

I believe you and that is a big part of the reason I use them as well. I am skeptical as to whether the majority of their users could even articulate that "doing no evil" was part of Google's corporate philosophy, however.

Why has this never been observed? You also state that radioactive decay of uranium changes with gravity, where has this ever been observed? I am not sure what kind of forum you are used to but it seems to me that you are a very fortunate person to have gotten the answers you did.

At least it is big enough that you shouldn't get seasick. I know that the Nimitz needed 8-10 foot swells just to notice you were at sea.

I think what swansont is trying to point out, is that direction is uniform as well as speed and you have to account for it. e.g. planets do not follow the curvature of space but have uniform (relatively) motion.

Would I be out of line saying that energy is a national security issue and should be addressed by the federal government? IMO The production of energy causes more strife in the world politically, ecologically, and economically than any other activity of the "market". It seems to me to be a no-brainer which method does the most to solve those problems, but then I guess the "market" is handling this energy thing pretty well on its own, eh?

ecoli; Explain to me how in a putative democracy, a government is any more corruptable than a corporation? Altruism is only part of capitalism insofar as it increases the bottom line (or certain entrepreneurs buck the tenets of capitalism). It seems to me that most people do business with Google because it is free, more than having anything to do with the philosophy of its founders. While it is true that there are successful companies that have followed business models similar to Google, I would assert with some confidence that these are not the majority of corporations (especially large ones) out there. Most of your problem with government spending it seems to me relates to how to make government accountable for what it spends, a concern of mine as well. My problem with the so-called "free" market is similar, in how to not allow greed to supercede all other considerations. The problem with the market is that there are so few rules that, in general, nobody is accountable to anyone for anything other than making money. I do agree that the current stimulus package is largely a waste and is probably being stolen even as we type. jackson33; It seems to me that your problem with government spending is similar to ecoli. I completely agree that the bailout is not transparent and will not work (I believe I have stated that in this forum since we first posted about it, before the legislation was passed). The problem of misdirected government spending should not be taken lightly but the reality is that there are some things that government does and into the forseeable future will continue to spend money on. The trick is to get some actual "value" for the money spent, something the American government in particular has been inept at for a long time now (possibly having something to do with where most of it is spent). In order to keep the current diatribe from becoming exponential in size, allow me to leave a proposition and ask a question about it. Proposition: The planet can already support 6.6 billion people. Question: At what standard of living do you wish to support them?

The aliens probably will tell us "so long and thanks for all the fish". Seriously though, anyone here would probably like to see any reliable evidence of what you are claiming. Hollywood has thousands of pictures and films of aliens and their craft, too.

I was not thinking of any time constrictions, but I have seen first hand that zinc anodes rust in heat exchanger intake and discharges on board ship, even when the only waters they have been in are barely above freezing. You are right, of course, about noticing little change over the course of a few hours since those zinc anodes only require replacement on an annual or longer basis.

What you are aking to be defined is an oxymoron. Temperature by definition has to include substance.

Part of the instability in the economy is the instability of energy prices. By converting to constant sources (wind, solar, tide etc.) this instability should be greatly ameliorated. Knowing your approximate energy costs five years hence would be a boon to planners.

The Chinese may be sorry they ever let "Tricky Dick" come to their country. On the other hand they will soon "own" America.

ecoli; So I can take from what you have written that the sole activities you believe government should be involved in are legislating and enforcing laws and maintaining an armed forces? I guess we will have to disagree about whether or not expanding corporate freedoms infringes on societal and individual freedoms but I can't think of any cases off hand where they do not. By your description of a free market, it seems to me that without advocating corporate anarchy, all markets are free since anyone who can meet the requirements of a particular market is free to compete in that market. I would not disagree that capitalism has been the best system for production of wealth but completely disagree with the implied premise that accumulation of wealth is the sole measure of a society or individual. If this premise were true, why would anyone post on this forum instead of doing some other activity more likely to increase their bottom line? For that matter, how many scientists have you ever met who are doing their job primarily because of the amount of money it pays relative to something else they could be doing? While there are things like philanthropy, altruism, and corporate environmentalism, they are not part of capitalism and run directly counter to what capitalism is all about. The social improvements you refer to IMO are more due to people who are not capitalists, using the capitalist system to do so. I am not so sure that your choice of living in medieval Europe or working in a sweat shop producing goods for Wal-Mart is really arguing in favor of your case, as neither seem to be an attractive option in comparison to what is possible. ParanoiA; I agree 100% that large multinational corporations are more of an impediment to progress and competition than a benefit. The problem is in deciding exactly how big is too big. IMO needing a government bailout is certainly a good indicator of being too big. jackson33; just two main points. Firstly, I do not disagree at all that state and local governments should be better than the federal government at determining the needs of their citizens. What I fail to understand about your argument is why the economy would make any distinction, whatsoever, between the levels of government doing spending on a given project? Secondly, I think most people would see a big difference between having acid rain caused by Mt. Pinatubo and acid rain caused by a power plant upwind from where they live. The difference being that one is very preventable. The debate about who gets to set limits is rather contentious, but it seems to me that allowing industries to set their own limits is a prescription for disaster, since many companies don't even live within the relatively few limits that exist now.

Blue Man Group. All I can say is they are very different.

ecoli; I am missing something in your argument. You seem to say on the one hand that strong (but appropriate) regulation is necessary to avoid the negative consequences of unfettered capitalism, yet say there is too much regulation of the market? If the market is "free" there can be no such thing as illegal behavior only immoral or unethical behavior. The problem with allowing the market to control behavior, is that it is assumed that consumers have some way of finding out how a given corporation conducts business and have the wherewithal and alternatives to act on that information. IMO you are not going to weed out corruption and cronyism simply by making the market "free". It seems to me, the real argument is about degree and areas of regulation and not whether the market should be free or not. Having said that, I would be very interested in hearing what you or others arguing that the market isn't free enough would consider to be appropriate regulation and if there is any economic activity the government should be involved in. I would argue that the fact most people in America ever improved their economic situation had more to do with fighting capitalists tooth and nail than any consequence of the way capitalism works. Also, last time I checked we still had capitalism in the U.S. yet there has been little economic improvement for those in the middle or lower classes, but a vast improvement of accumulated wealth by the richest among us. If capitalism is so good for the majority, why has this situation occurred? Even Warren Buffet has said "there is class warfare going on, and my class is winning", what do you suppose he meant by that? Expecting the political system, as is, to fix the problem is a little like giving hundreds of billions of dollars to a group of people who lost many times that amount and expecting them to now invest it wisely and pay it back. While it is possible for corporate bad actors to be convicted of crimes, it seems to be an extremely rare occurance and happens only in the most egregious of cases. ps I appreciate the constructive tone of this thread thus far as many of the topics being discussed are among the most controversial in economics.