World Affairs

[LexusInfernus 908]

Well, look at Turkey. They required several military interventions to restore democracy to a path as envisioned by the founder of the modern secular Turkish state. It worked quite well in Turkey, perhaps this is where Egypt is going as well. 

[Cpt Johnny 57]

.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Things are warming up.  Is anyone surprised?

 

The kid in the lower right of the photo should be in school not part of a screaming mob.  Wonder which agitator got this going?

[Bdub01 201]

Morsi is gone and he ain't coming back. This isn't like the coup in the Soviet Union back in the 90's when Gorbachev was put back in power only a few days later.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Mind you I guess those Egyptians have quite the history of unrest... Remember that King who united the two kingdoms of Lower and Upper Egypt? 

 

Still it would be nice to think that one of the most important/well known archeological areas in the world was under a stable government...

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Possible beginnings of a civil war?

 

Akenaton didn't do very well during the great kingdom.  The hierarchy weren't ready for a unitary god, and the factions in Egypt now seem to have a problem with a god who has several names.

 

My unnamed source (a real Egyptian immigrant to Canada) says things should be better without the Muslim Brotherhood in government.  He says they are really Islamic fundamentalists at the root, and the society wants a secular state.  Under Mubarak and the Generals that's essentially what they had with restrictions, but now the  people are after self-determination, and the question really is: Are they ready?

 

Freedom is not free, and many there seem to be willing to pay the price.  After they've shaken off the remaining controls, will they be able to set up a government of their people?  Seems the last one was hi-jacked by the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

There are lots of good modern constitutions to use a models.  They could take our Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a starting point.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Morsi is gone and he ain't coming back. This isn't like the coup in the Soviet Union back in the 90's when Gorbachev was put back in power only a few days later.

Ehh, what coup are you referring to? Pretty sure that the coup ended with Jeltsin taking over, declaring the USSR dead and the birth of the Russian Federation.

[airman15 4,111]

Along with 15 other ex-soviet republics..

[Stevphfeniey 35]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/costa-rica-accidentally-legalises-gay-marriage-8691185.html

 

Thought this was pretty relevant to world affairs

[Cpt Johnny 57]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/costa-rica-accidentally-legalises-gay-marriage-8691185.html

 

Thought this was pretty relevant to world affairs

costa-rica-accidentally-legalises-gay-marriage

 

[AkemiAzula 280]

I'd rather a military government than a religious one, because religions believe in heavens, and when you believe there is life after death you are more risk-taking during life and consider our world to be of less importance. The belief in Heaven is far more dangerous than that in Hell. 

 

At least with the military there is discipline and common sense, as well as the usual political infighting that any government suffers from in this pre-singularity human age.

[Cpt Johnny 57]

I'd rather not have a government, but a place where nobody can disturb my peace or ask me to pay any taxes or service in the form of conscription.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Without taxes you wouldn't have any services and we'd live in an anarchy of primitive technology and constant battle just to get by. You could kiss goodbye to all the comforts of modern life. Unfortunately government is here to stay.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Egypt carries on.

 

{Note: the Costa Rica story probably should be in the Closet thread.}

 

I fail to see any parallel with the collapse of the USSR.  This is just another military takeover in Egypt.  It should settle down in a few weeks, and be back to the status quo of about two years ago soon.  If anyone thinks the military were not running the show, take another look.

 

The Turkish Model.

 

If this is what is happening, the Muslim Brotherhood had better watch out.  The military wants a secular state because religious control means they would be truly out of power.

[LexusInfernus 908]

More because surprise surprise, not all Muslims are religious extremists and most of them are not to happy when someone comes around and starts telling them what they can and can't do because religion. 

[AkemiAzula 280]

I'd rather religion was kept under the control of the military. It seems logical. Religions can become dangerous, whereas an army will always do what is logical, even if it may be controversial. No army wants to commit suicide, but to win.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

More because surprise surprise, not all Muslims are religious extremists and most of them are not to happy when someone comes around and starts telling them what they can and can't do because religion. 

True.  Most Muslims, and I know quite a few, are completely peaceful, law-abiding people.  The militant crowd remind me very much of the fundamentalist Christians who ramp about in America, but who are mostly ignored.  The difference is the Islamic extremists tend to go around trying to kill people.

 

I'd rather religion was kept under the control of the military. It seems logical. Religions can become dangerous, whereas an army will always do what is logical, even if it may be controversial. No army wants to commit suicide, but to win.

I don't understand this at all.  Most members of the Egyptian army are probably devout Muslims.  However, one hasn't much to do with the other.  The one thing the military doesn't want is to have the Shari'a imposed on them, and that basically means a secular state.

 

The Koran strictly forbids suicide, and promises a forever visit with Iblis if anyone kills themselves no matter what some mad Imam may promise.  No gardens of milk and honey, and certainly no self-renewing virgins.  Sex with virgins is overrated anyway.  Usually a brutal affair.

[LexusInfernus 908]

I'd rather religion was kept under the control of the military. It seems logical. Religions can become dangerous, whereas an army will always do what is logical, even if it may be controversial. No army wants to commit suicide, but to win.

I think you are dead wrong there. The military is first of all extremely conservative in its thinking. They will flat out ignore that what they are doing is ineffective or even counter productive if it means they have to admit that their favorite doctrines and such aren't working. The American military for example has exclusively relied on increasing its raw fire power to win any kind of war for the past 70 years, even though they have been proven wrong in pretty much every conflict after Korea. But even today, 60 years after Korea, after they have lost the majority of conflicts they got involved in, they still believe that the army of the future should have bigger and more precise guns. Nothing else. 

 

Another fine example of how illogical the army operates in a specific conflict is WW1. It was abundantly clear that throwing more man at the opposite sides trenches was anything but effective. But did they change tactics? Nope, they just kept telling themselves that during the next great offensive they would break through and a movement war would begin once more.

 

Or during the second world war, where the German army persisted in wasting huge amounts of resources on going after Jews in occupied territories. Obviously they had to because Hitler ordered it. Which brings me to my next point. Armies do not operate independently. They are owned by the state, and as such are tools of the people who run the state. Politicians decide what the army does, not the army. A far more obvious example was during the Vietnam war with operation Rolling Thunder (Air strikes in North Vietnam). While the Joint Chiefs had made a nice list of targets they wished to bomb, Johnson had to take into account that North Vietnam borders China, and that China had nuclear weapons and was more than willing to support North Vietnam just like it had supported North Korea a few years earlier. As such, Johnson realized that if he had done what the army wanted, the conflict would have likely escalated into a possible nuclear war. So he told his generals to sod off and took direct control over the target list. Operation Rolling Thunder targets were completely decided by Johnson and McNamara, even to the point of the kind of bombs they used. Needless to say, the military was unhappy, the operation was a failure, but had the military got their way, things could have been way worse. In any case, the army clearly operates as a tool of the state and as such is bound to the logic of the politicians, not its own logic. 

 

 

As for the danger of religious parties, do you honestly believe that state's run by a junta are any less dangerous? So far history shows them as corrupt and incompetent or as war mongering aggressors. Sometimes even both. 

[AkemiAzula 280]

Well I suppose I am thinking of daleks, not humans. Humans of any kind tend to be stupid and weak.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Exterminate!

[AkemiAzula 280]

That is my feeling most of the time, Sir. But alas I have not the authority to carry out a cleansing process.

 

A great deal of humans should be weeded, though. There is a dire problem of overpopulation and overutilisation of resources.

 

One only hopes that after singularity robots will take control and enforce common sense.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sorry you have such an attitude.  I recommend a thorough reading of R.U.R. by Carel Capek.  This has all been discussed before, and I think you will find the conclusions fascinating.

 

Meanwhile, the world is unfolding as it will, not as it should.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I know we can't do as I speak. That's why I'm hoping the robots will finally remove human error so we don't have to fight to achieve progress.

 

As for science... One day we'll conquer her. By hook or by crook. 

 

If we can build computers that operate logically, why can't schoolchildren be forced onto the left hand side of the footpath whe it is a shared cycleway? Is it that much to ask shops to open on Sundays at the same hours as weekdays? Must another world war arise just because they won't sell me beer before 10 am? 

 

I reckon this world is doomed. Too illogical innit.

 

Then again I don't care. I haven't cared since they took Megan to Perth in 99 and I aint likely to start caring about this universe in the future. Unless I build a TARDIS. lol.

[airman15 4,111]

Sorry, but I don't like the idea of being replaced by an Artificial Intelligence. I think the Terminator trilogy explains why its bad and IIRC some songs that say the same thing (see Judas Priest- Metal Gods)

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Without taxes you wouldn't have any services and we'd live in an anarchy of primitive technology and constant battle just to get by. You could kiss goodbye to all the comforts of modern life. Unfortunately government is here to stay.

 

People seem to forget that once upon a time the government used to control the money supply. Now central banks, in league with major banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan (and all those gangsters), issue all the new money. Only a tiny fraction of the money in existence is in circulation and the rest is debt.

 

You think the money a bank loans actually comes from money already in existence? It's conjured out of thin air and the bank just adds a liability on its balance sheet to balance things out. So when you make those monthly payments you are draining money out of the system since that money goes to reducing the liability. When the liability is zero then all that money created in the loan has vanished.

 

Of course the real sin is charging interest on loans, since the majority of money in existence is debt then there is not enough money to cover both the value of the debts AND the interest.

 

Throw in devaluing currencies and GDP growth and you realise we have all been conned. We may nominally be seven times wealthier (concerning wages) than say 40 years ago, but if a countries GDP has expanded by the same amount and nearly all of it was created by expanding the money supply then each unit of your currency buys almost one seventh less then the same amount 40 years ago.

 

Once the government, and thus the people, truly controls the money supply then the government becomes like that of a central bank. A central bank cannot go bankrupt. Thus taxes (if they were needed at all) will be a means of controlling inflation; higher taxes to reduce inflation and lower taxes to reduce deflation. In that way an economy could grow at low levels or not at all with causing a recession or downturn. Unlike today's madhouse system where even a reduction in the increase of credit means a recession or a banking crisis.

 

When you really think about a government issuing debt to pay for its own services is the most retarded concept in the history of mankind.

[LexusInfernus 908]

People seem to forget that once upon a time the government used to control the money supply. Now central banks, in league with major banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan (and all those gangsters), issue all the new money. Only a tiny fraction of the money in existence is in circulation and the rest is debt.

 

You think the money a bank loans actually comes from money already in existence? It's conjured out of thin air and the bank just adds a liability on its balance sheet to balance things out. So when you make those monthly payments you are draining money out of the system since that money goes to reducing the liability. When the liability is zero then all that money created in the loan has vanished.

 

Of course the real sin is charging interest on loans, since the majority of money in existence is debt then there is not enough money to cover both the value of the debts AND the interest.

 

Throw in devaluing currencies and GDP growth and you realise we have all been conned. We may nominally be seven times wealthier (concerning wages) than say 40 years ago, but if a countries GDP has expanded by the same amount and nearly all of it was created by expanding the money supply then each unit of your currency buys almost one seventh less then the same amount 40 years ago.

 

Once the government, and thus the people, truly controls the money supply then the government becomes like that of a central bank. A central bank cannot go bankrupt. Thus taxes (if they were needed at all) will be a means of controlling inflation; higher taxes to reduce inflation and lower taxes to reduce deflation. In that way an economy could grow at low levels or not at all with causing a recession or downturn. Unlike today's madhouse system where even a reduction in the increase of credit means a recession or a banking crisis.

 

When you really think about a government issuing debt to pay for its own services is the most retarded concept in the history of mankind.

No, banks do not 'issue' new money, that power is reserved for the Federal bank. New money is created by the system itself though. If I put my savings with bank A, bank A actually invests that money by giving out a loan. That loan goes to the account of whomever loaned the moeny and as long as it stays on the guys account it can be invested again by the bank by giving out another loan. This can be done to the point where the bank only needs to have a fraction of real cash in its vaults for all the money it loaned out. Its called fractional reserve banking.

 

And indeed, there are some issues with this system. The biggest (and only real issue) is that if you abuse it by giving out loans to just about every body (like they did pre 2008) you have a serious problem when people begin defaulting on their loans. The bank needs that money to potentially pay back the people whose money it invested. However, this problem is easily avoided if you do not loan out to people who clearly can't pay for those loans. If that doesn't happen, banks are relatively stable, and this system actually is very very useful as it allows banks to invest a lot of money into the economy, from which everyone benefits. Look, if banks couldn't do something like this, they would only be able to invest money which the banks itself directly own, which is not that much money. In essence, it would slow down the economy to a crawl, when no one can go to the bank to get a mortage or get a loan for their business. Would that make the system more stable? Only slightly, and again, economic growth would be minimal.

 

And this is what really went wrong. We allowed the system to become so corrupted with greed that they introduced products that made it profitable for banks to actually begin betting against the economy. There were strong incentives for banks to really screw the system over. But if you take those incentives out, well, everything will go back to normal again. 

 

As for having politicians having direct access to the money press (and thus money supply). Well, that has been tried a few times through out history, and surprise surprise, it turns out that you can't trust politicians with money presses at all. They tend to turn them on for every little problem and before you know it they wreck the economy with hyper inflation. But hey, at least the government has no more debts. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

People don't seem to understand that money is fiction.  Money has no value unless it is backed by specie, and there isn't enough specie in the world to cover all the currency notes issued by governments.  Money is a lie that we've all agreed to accept.

 

Value is generated only by production of goods.  These goods are generally immediately traded for money.  This is the basis of our banking system.

 

Governments are totally unproductive.  They produce nothing of value, but consume money at a great rate.  Don't depend on the governments as a source of money, the money comes from taxes and taxes only in one form or another.  These taxes come from the general populace as a levy on what they possess.

 

Money has become the vehicle of trade both between individuals and nations.  There was a time when specie was used for international payments, and it has been done in my lifetime.  I've actually been present when an international payment was made by moving a skip of gold bars from one vault to another in the safety deposit system of a major bank.  Front-end loaders were used.  I think this has now been more or less discontinued.  Gold at that time came in 400 fine ounce bars and the price of gold was U.S.$35 per fine ounce.

 

Well, nations went off the gold standard and gold is now trading as a commodity at over $1,000 per fine ounce.  This is inflation.  You may well wonder why prices of goods and services keep going up.  The reason is that the speculation in gold on the commodities exchanges are driving the value of money down.  Currently, this is the driver of our economy and why everyone wants more and more.  This is a positive feedback loop, and any engineer who paid attention in his classes will tell you that this will eventually shake the machine to pieces when the feedback reaches the point where the strength of the materials in the machine fails. 

 

Hang on, it is going to be a bumpy ride.

 

If you think all this is too abstract and it doesn't affect you, shake your head.  The next market crash might well take everything you think you own away from you.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I have always been a believer in honesty, so the concept of a loan or debt seems strange to me. If you can't afford something, you can't afford something. I think naturally it should be illegal to deal in debt.

 

But austerity is never popular, and there are good reasons for that. 

 

In Simcity economies are simpler. Unless you take out a loan (which I have pretty much never done unless working on a mega-development) it is a basic profit/loss economy with simple integral transactions. Elementary school maths. 

 

Tax... is a complex issue. I would like to think it could be simplified somehow. Then again I'd like to think cycle infrastructure could be improved somehow. Both are nightmares for the planning team.

 

I once had a vague concept of a moral monetary supply, a 'social worth' whereby one's actions and honesty would give one points. Sort of like the rep points you have here, or a 'like' system at Facebook. Kickstarter is a good example of this idea in practice, whereby consumers begin the process of production themselves, rather than become the end part of the process. The pure worth here is very nice and wholesome. True value. Only those who wish to invest invest. The product is the result of interest in the product.

 

I'd like to think that a reputation based economy could exist. It could put the brakes on speculative investment and the stock market layabouts who contribute nothing. If you work hard and have done so for some time, you have a certain rep level. This allows you a certain spectrum of goods/services. But it's a vague idea, and probably a stupid one I came up with because I spent the entire day watering plant beds.

[LexusInfernus 908]

People don't seem to understand that money is fiction.  Money has no value unless it is backed by specie, and there isn't enough specie in the world to cover all the currency notes issued by governments.  Money is a lie that we've all agreed to accept.

 

 

The value of gold is just as much a lie we have all agreed to accept. It looks pretty and its a relatively rare metal, but so are other metals and products and those are not used as a measure to determine the worth of money. Money has value because we agree it has value, the end. 

Value is generated only by production of goods.  These goods are generally immediately traded for money.  This is the basis of our banking system.

 

 

Eh, no. Value is generated through a number of means. The rarity or supply of the product helps determine value. Gold is generally more valuable than iron because gold is rarer than iron. Demand also determines value. If there is no demand for something it means that something has little value. Finally value can be added to a certain product by doing something with it. Wood is cheap, but a wooden chair is not. Thats because labor went into it and did something with the wood. Labor added value in such a case. 

 

That aside, the value of products stands completely separate from the banking system. Banks trade in money, not in products. They hold money, the generate money and they aim to make a profit themselves by investing in things from which they expect a greater return in the future. They do not care what they invest in. 

Governments are totally unproductive.  They produce nothing of value, but consume money at a great rate.  Don't depend on the governments as a source of money, the money comes from taxes and taxes only in one form or another.  These taxes come from the general populace as a levy on what they possess.

 

 

Government are not companies, their aim is not to produce or make profits, their aim is to provide certain services and goods at the lowest price possible so that every citizen of that country can make use of them. These services or goods are common services or goods and aim to protect or to help citizens as well as help businesses. As such, no economic model states that governments are a source of money. 

 

That said, if the government has control over the money press, it can actually generate money on its own. But it does so by increasing the money supply, not because it actually earns money the way companies or individuals do. That said, only a few countries have a model where the government actually controls the printing presses and can turn them on at will. Most countries have independent central banks run by banking experts who decide to increase the money supply by printing money. 

 

Well, nations went off the gold standard and gold is now trading as a commodity at over $1,000 per fine ounce.  This is inflation.  You may well wonder why prices of goods and services keep going up.  The reason is that the speculation in gold on the commodities exchanges are driving the value of money down.  Currently, this is the driver of our economy and why everyone wants more and more.  This is a positive feedback loop, and any engineer who paid attention in his classes will tell you that this will eventually shake the machine to pieces when the feedback reaches the point where the strength of the materials in the machine fails. 

 

 

Again, gold and the value of money are completely unrelated, especially since we stopped with the gold standard. The value of money does not go down because people are all speculating on gold. 

 

I once had a vague concept of a moral monetary supply, a 'social worth' whereby one's actions and honesty would give one points. Sort of like the rep points you have here, or a 'like' system at Facebook. Kickstarter is a good example of this idea in practice, whereby consumers begin the process of production themselves, rather than become the end part of the process. The pure worth here is very nice and wholesome. True value. Only those who wish to invest invest. The product is the result of interest in the product.

 

I'd like to think that a reputation based economy could exist. It could put the brakes on speculative investment and the stock market layabouts who contribute nothing. If you work hard and have done so for some time, you have a certain rep level. This allows you a certain spectrum of goods/services. But it's a vague idea, and probably a stupid one I came up with because I spent the entire day watering plant beds.

Thats already there. The reputation countries have determines the interest rates on their loans. The reputation a consumer has (credit rating) determines whether you can get a loan or not. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Things are heating up in the valley of the Nile.

 

Note that the only violence here stems from the Muslim Brotherhood.  Violent Islamics?  Current wisdom says they must be associated with fundamentalists.

 

Their Pharaoh has been deposed, and that is nothing new in the land of Osiris.  Mut take them all.

 

---

 

This post is a little on the sarcastic side, and I certainly hope people will see it as such.