Voar Tok

Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus So, you are saying in essence that in the normal functioning of capitalism (i.e. recessions), capitalism has to be abandoned? That makes no sense.quote> Did I say to abandon them? No. They are a part of the functioning of an economy, but the same way that illness is to the human body. An economy will eventually rebound and come back better and stronger as will a person rebound and their immune system comes back better and stronger. But no one thinks that either one of them are something you should just let happen. You take steps to avoid them happening - not try and encourage them. BTW, to keep the overall length of this post down, I'm removing my comments and only keeping your responses. Precisely. But the failure has to happen before the turnaround happens. If not, there is nothing to turn around from.quote> Fewer people get rich off the turn around than off of economic prosperity. This is a self-illustrated point. Just look at the opinion of the big businessmen about the state of the economy. How many of them went jumping up and down for joy? None. Why? Because they know what everyone else knows - the economy is crap, you're going to be hurting. And cinching win the belt is never fun. It hurts more people than it helps. Are there people who made money on the upswings in business? Yes, but the world has a lot more cases of people like Jesse Livermore - made a fortune, lost it all when the economy crapped out, and never made it back. In people, the vast majority of those who have the flu get over it on their own, with minimal or no outside aid. In the same way, most economies and businesses get through a recession.quote> As has been previously pointed out, this recession is more like pneumonia than the flu. With pneumonia, the vast majority of people who get it have to be hospitalized and will likely die if not given proper medical treatment. The point being is that this is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression - even beating out Black Monday in 1987. The main cause of the run on the banks during the Depression was the fear of failure. Back then, if a bank failed, you lost everything. Now the FDIC insures your account up to 100000 USD (temporarily 250000), so the fear of failure is not as great, as your money is safe up to that amount. Also, people do not run on the banks when they are doing fine -- they run on the banks when failure is imminent. So, that line of reasoning is flawed.quote> First off, I believe that second thing there falls in the "duh" category. Secondly, that line of reasoning is not flawed. It doesn't matter whether the banks are insured or not. The important thing is what things look like are happening. This harps back to one of the golden rules of life "Perception is more important than reality" which is true in everything that isn't backed by hard math and science. (Perception is not more important than reality when it comes to something like bridge building). But when it comes to opinion based decisions, which much of life really is, perception is the key. If it looks like the banks are weak and failure is imminent, people will act like it is, even if their money is insured by the government. Besides, companies need money to operate too, and well in excess of $250,000. If the banks start closing, who cashes our paychecks? Where do we go if we need money? When credit is treated with a leery eye and personal checks already aren't accepted in a growing number of places, the one thing that always will be accepted is cold, hard cash. So, again to summarize, when it looks like failure is imminent, it might as well be because people will act like it is. I guarantee you that the first thing that crossed the minds of people who banked with Washington Mutual wasn't "Oh, my money is insured. No sweat." No one feels like going through a depression. But do you not agree that going through a 5 year depression is better than going through a 15 year recession? That is what the bailouts will do -- stunt economic growth in the future because inefficient and failing companies are preserved by government life support.quote> I hate to be blunt, but lets get the terms right. If you want to argue a point, having the terms right makes your argument seem more credible. A recession is a normal economic downturn characterized by negative economic growth for at least two quarters, but doesn't lead to costly economic failures. There is no set definition for a depression, but common characteristics include (currently applicable traits are bolded): abnormal increases in unemployment restriction of credit shrinking output and investment numerous bankruptcies reduced amounts of trade and commerce highly volatile relative currency fluctuations Notice that the only one we're really missing is the last one. Five out of six kind of paints a different picture of where we stand. Unemployment is up and still expected to go higher - a friend of mine who lives in California says that unemployment is currently looking at 8% or higher. Credit is obviously restricted. Try getting a sub-prime loan right now. Shrinking output and investment - the Dow has it's worst year since the Great Depression. Numerous bankruptcies - just look at the banking industry. Reduced amounts of trade and commerce is definitely the case. I don't know how many people have heard about the KDow deal, but the basic gist of it was that Kuwait didn't feel it could justify the deal given the current state of the world economy. On top of that, the bailouts are not going to stunt economic growth by keeping inefficient countries on life support. Right now, we need all the companies running that we can keep running. A part of the capitalistic system or not, you can't afford to have all the inefficient companies dying off at once. That just hurts too much. If you keep them floating long enough to get out of the economic funk, they can die off slowly, the way that economies prefer that companies leave. It's exponential decay - the faster they start to leave, the more it hurts. And in direct answer to your question - no, I do not agree because the scenario is not realistic. And on top of that, even if it was realistic, I still wouldn't agree because for the overall good of the economy, depressions should be avoided almost any legal cost. The vast majority of the people in subprime mortgages knew what they were getting into. They read the contracts, and they consented to sign them. Now, because their loan terms they agreed to are preventing them from paying their mortgage, they are asking the government to bail them out of their consented mess. Subprime mortgages carry risk -- they knew that. Now, for those who did not read the contracts, or the mortgage company lied to them, they should not have their home repossessed because (to the best of my knowledge) that is not legal.quote> If they didn't read the contract, then whose fault is it? It's their's, and they technically deserve to lose it just as much as the next guy who did read the contract. Your signature is legally binding and it doesn't matter if you read the thing or not. Well, guess what -- if you cannot pay your debts as they come due, you'd better declare bankruptcy. That is a part of capitalism as well.quote> The point though is that if we let pure capitalism settle this, the only people going to be left standing are people without debt at the end who have enough money to ride this thing out for a few years and the number of jobs that will be in existence are going to be few and far between. Honestly, a part of me really would like to see that happen. The market really, truly needs to finally settle all the outstanding credit accounts and reset the books. The problem is that you can't do that. You'll have so many people economically destroyed by it that riots will start everywhere. Yes, it would help the economy if inefficiency were removed. Then when the recovery comes those people will find jobs with more security and with a better company. Also, if you want jobs in a recession/depression, why not have the government build infrastructure projects and put people to work? It worked in the Great Depression.quote> It'd help in the very distant future, but that's far too painful of a move to make and while we don't want to screw ourselves in the end, we can't sit around and shoot ourselves to death in the present. The bailout is a band-aid. Something to get companies and people along until confidence is restored and the economy can afford to start trimming away the inefficient companies again. We don't need to be having economic trials by fire right now. First of all, it is unlikely that all three of them will sink. Most likely two will sink. However, your predictions for the short term are correct. Jobs would be lost, and Detroit would sink into a hole.quote> If two of them go down, they'll all go down. As pingangster pointed out, if two of them go down, the suppliers will be hurt, and that'll take whoever is left standing with the first two. But, people in America will still want to buy cars. Entrepreneurs in America will want to build cars to sell those people, because Toyota and Honda cannot satisfy every need of the Americans.quote> First off, American's aren't particularly feeling like buying cars right now. Second off, entrepreneurs will not be wanting to build cars to sell people. Sure, there will be a few people try it, but the rest of the venture capitalists in the world will take a look at people like Hyundai and Subaru and steer completely clear of the industry. As hym pointed out, it costs too much money to join the industry. Economists have known this for years. Third off, Toyota and Honda may not be able to satisfy the demands of the whole nation, but they'll do a really good job of snagging most of the market. Let me share with you a little story about the difference between the Japanese automobile industry and the American automobile industry. Car companies produce too many car variants to have a even single assembly line devoted to every model. This means that they have to change the assembly lines around to produce different cars - a process called retooling. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, this used to be a big event. It would take almost an entire shift to retool an assembly line. GM was faced with the dilemma of figuring out how many cars they needed to produce to keep their dealers happy while they lost valuable work time retooling the assembly lines. They attempted to fix the problem by maintaining an inventory - a valid, but extremely costly solution. So, to break this down, here's what they did - they attempted to solve a costly problem with an unrelated, costly solution. Now, guess what - Toyota had the exact same problem that GM (and everyone else) did. How did Toyota look at it? They tried to find a way to get the time to retool an assembly line down to smallest amount of time possible. The final product was that GM was spending 7-8 hours doing what Toyota got down to as little as two minutes. Toyota solved a costly problem with an immediate, direct, cost-effective solution. They were saving money hand over fist while GM was bleeding even more money. Toyota and Honda have been doing this to the Big Three ever since they entered the American car market. It would be naive to think that they couldn't snatch up the vast majority of the available market of the Big Three went down. When those new companies congeal and grow, the first place they will be looking for growth is Detroit. Why? A vast pool of potential new jobs, of people who want to work. They will set up their plants there, and Detroit will recover within 25 years.quote> Those entrepreneurs you were talking about earlier - if they knew what was good for them, they'd avoid Detroit like the plague. You'd get a better return on investment on a second NFL team in Detroit than a car company. On top of that, you can't just go screw Detroit over like that. Detroit wouldn't recover in 25 years, and even if they did, that's who knows how many years that they're living in abject poverty while the rest of the nation is humming right along. Well, no one wants the economy to go down, but it happens. If a company cannot stay afloat, it has to go bankrupt. Most often the companies who cannot stay afloat are inefficient producers that are not making what the consumer wants. The consumers go to other companies, and their income dries up. For once, think about the long-term vitality of the economy, instead of worrying about short-term effects, because the long-term effects are the ones you will feel most.quote> I honestly don't like the bailout. But just like it's a known fact of life that if spend too much time worrying about the short-term effects will screw you over in the long-run, spending too much time thinking about the long-term effects will screw you over in the short-term. An analogy - if you're driving down the road towards your destination a few hours away, it's fine to thinking about getting there and what you're going to do when you get there, but if you spend all your time thinking about what you're going to do when you get there, you're going to miss the exit to your destination. Or, to use a Star Wars analogy: Obi-Wan: But Master, Yoda always told me to be mindful of the future! Qui Gon: Yes, young Padawan, but not at the expense of the present. Think about this -- they will recover when they get new jobs, and obtain a new source of income.quote> Which will take a really freaking long time because if all the companies that are being bailed out were allowed to close, the unemployment rate would go up several percentage points, and everyone will be hanging on to their money rather than spending it, making a very unattractive market for all these efficient companies you say are going to magically appear out of thin air. A necessary functioning of the stock market during a recession or depression. Keep in mind that there was a rally beforehand caused by the prospect of a bailout. When the bailout was not passed, the traders did what they would have done the week before, only at a much faster rate.quote> Sell-offs are a necessary part of the stock market. Panic is not. Corrections are necessary. Crashes are not. Yes, the economy capitulated, and started to turn around. That is not a bad thing.quote> After years of waiting. It is now largely believed that if the Federal Reserve had not cut the banks off, providing them with the money that they needed to withstand the initial bank rush, they would have stayed open and the Great Depression wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad is it was. Yes, that is true. The economy would not have come back as fast as it did without WWII. Without WWII, the economy would have still recovered, it just would have taken longer.quote> Ten years was plenty long enough. I only know one person who lived through that and didn't think that it was that bad. That particular person lived in a family that always managed to put food on the table and make ends meet. Everyone else I know who lived through the Great Depression thought it sucked and wouldn't wish it on their enemies. duack: I could be wrong about this, but I believe you are under the impression that the US government has a habit of bailing out failing companies. This is not true. In the US, up to this point, if you ever started a business, if it didn't make it, you were out of luck. No one even dreamed of crawling to the government and asking for money. This is an extraordinary case though, which is why it is the first time it's ever been proposed - at least to my knowledge. Secondly, change does not equal economic prosperity. Change equals doing something differently. The banks responded to the change in economic trends and started offering sub-prime mortgages. I think we all know where that got them. Finally, about not worrying if Detroit dies off, let me ask you something. Do you live in Adelaide? Do you know anyone that lives in Adelaide? How do you think the people in Adelaide feel about having to start over in their lives? I think it's a safe bet that they aren't thrilled about it. How would you feel if you were told that you had to move to another state and state/province and start your life all over again. (Because let's face it folks - 5 million live in the Detroit area and if that's the largest city in Michigan and they can't cut it there, they're going to have to move out of state to find work). Now, another thing I should point out. I have a friend who lives in Michigan. Last time I talked with him, which was before the economy was going to hell in a handbasket, he said that Michigan is slowly drying up. Personally, I've never been there, but I've heard other people say the same. People are slowly leaving and looking for work elsewhere - predominately in the south. The thing I think should be pointed out is that no one is trying to stop them. Why? Because you can't stop the inevitable. If a part of the country is losing appeal, you can't stop them. The same is working here. The bailout isn't an effort to keep inefficient companies around forever. It's just to keep them around long enough for the economy to get back on its feet and let the natural market forces do their thing. It's the same as if you badly cut your arm - you put bandages on it to staunch the bleeding until you can get to the hospital and get put back together. None of the people supporting the bailout think it's a long-term solution. We all recognize it for what it is - a short-term solution to help keep things from spiraling out of control while the market gets back on its feet. When it does, it'll do what it does best and start weeding out companies that can't cut it.

Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus Inefficient producers should not be saved - in a normally working economy. Consumers should determine which businesses survive and which ones don't - in a normally working economy. When the economy is in a funk like this one, you don't want businesses closing down.quote> How do you determine if an economy is working normally or not? How do you determine what is normal and what is not?quote> Anything other than negative economic growth is a pretty good start. There really isn't a good way to define normal, but anything other than the economy going in reverse is generally believed to be tolerable. Businesses shouldn't close down? That is rediculous. In a functioning economy, businesses that cannot make it have to close down so that the economy does not become a collection of bloated, oversized corporations on life support from the government, and the inefficient producers will be perpetuated.quote> In a normally working economy, they should close down. This isn't normal. Yes, it's a normal part of an economy, but in the same manner that disease is a normal part of human existence. The analogy works out like this. Recession is to an economy what the flu is to humanity. When you get the flu, you take steps to get better. You don't work as hard during it's duration and if things are bad enough, you look for outside help in the form of doctors and medicine. Is it a normal part of life - yes it is. However, you don't just sit around and act like it's not happening and go on with your life like normal. The same concept applies to the economy when it's in a recession. Now if it's not bad, then you don't worry about it. This was a significant case though because banks were failing. When the banks start failing, you have to look at what is going wrong and see if you need to intervene. The bailout was a response to a lesson learned from the Great Depression. If you have a bad recession and you do nothing to help stave it off, when people start making a run on the banks, you're screwed. The banks have to stay open and functional. If they don't, then you're really headed for a fun ride. That fits in with my earlier comment on destroying capitalism to preserve it. Destroying it does not preserve the capitalist system. It puts in a hybrid fascist-socialist system. Do you want that?quote> It's a very fine line to walk, but unless we feel like going through a semi-Great Depression again, it's going to be necessary. To give an example of what I mean, after Galveston, TX was wiped out in the Hurricane of 1900, the authority of rebuilding the city was handed over to five men. These men were virtual dictators - basically able to do what they wanted, when they wanted, how they wanted. Nowadays, people would complete flip out - "they're trampling democracy!" - but looking back on it, historians all pretty much agreed that the city needed it and was better off with a small dictatorship after the hurricane. Besides, as things begin to take back off, the capitalistic system will once again resume normal functioning. Right now, you don't want businesses closing down, because even legitimate businesses are not doing so well. Are you sure that you're prepared to let pure capitalism solve this problem, because if we want to go down that road, the worst is just getting started. Capitalism - even through the current laws allowed, would dictate that everyone who has a sub-prime mortgage on their house would have their mortgage called back in. The repo man would be so busy he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Millions of Americans would lose their homes in the blink of an eye. What about the people who don't owe money on the house but have credit card debt? Guess what - if you can't pay when MasterCard comes knocking, you can kiss your car goodbye because in some states (don't know how many) they can legally take any asset you own until your debt is paid off. The public is not going to put up with that, but if we really want to just let capitalism solve it, I guess we can. On top of that, wealthy business owners are actually a good thing. Everyone hates them, but stop and think for a moment. These people that everyone hates so much make it possible for you to afford to eat. The following is a pretty well known fact among the business world. When the poor suffer, the poor suffer. When the middle class suffer, the poor suffer and so does the economy. When the rich suffer, everyone suffers. These people make our jobs. Kill their ability to provide for themselves and their business, and I guarantee everyone reading this that it'll hurt you worse than it'll hurt them. quote> Alright, so you are saying that because the corporations provide compensation to people for services, then the government using those people's money has to perpetuate it if it is failing to compete?quote> Not when things are working normally - as in something other than negative economic growth. If I company can't cut it in a market when the market is doing well, let the thing wither on the vine and rot away. But the key to recovering from a recession is people with jobs feeling confident enought to buy luxury items. And if companies were just allowed to close by the masses now, we wouldn't be helping the economy by cutting away the inefficiency. We'd be killing it further by guaranteeing that the public had even less opportunities to have jobs. If General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were all allowed to just sink because they couldn't cut it right now, then guess what would happen. Unemployment would go up even more, increasing the competition for a job and the amount of money that would be going out to people on unemployment funding would skyrocket. The Detroit economy would go bust and wouldn't make a recovery anywhere in the forseeable future. And the economy would be even further down the crapper than it already is. So, same question back at you - do you want that? There are ways to afford to eat other than providing services to corporations.quote> That's not the point. Corporations provide jobs. Jobs provide forms of income. Income provides a means on which to live. Let the corporations die and the jobs will go away, the income will stop flowing to millions of Americans, and a good percentage of them will be pushed over the edge and unable to recover. A lot of those wealthy people you speak of filled the void of a bankrupt company, drove their competition into Chapter 11, or went bankrupt themselves, and learned from that failure. If all that opportunity is eliminated, there will be far less rich people in the future to "make it possible for you to afford to eat."quote> Well, let's see what those wealthy people who made it rich through bankruptcy had to say about the bailout plan. Congress: "We are not approving the so-called bailout plan!" Dow drops 700 points in less than 24 hours. Congress: "Oh crap! We screwed up!" Congress passes the bailout plan. Those rich business men of which you speak made their point clear with their money - they aren't looking forward to the concept of bankruptcy and the promise of lessons that it might provide. Very, very, very few people in the world have the means and the knowledge to take something like that and use it to catapult themselves back into their greatness. It's not even realistic to expect a disaster to improve your situation. Sure, it happens occassionally, but it's definitely not the norm. No one ever got rich off of economic failure. They only got rich when things started to turn around. And the number of people who will be able to do that is very slim. Perpetuating quasi-bankrupt corporations will only prolong the recession/depression and stunt future growth, it will not allieviate it.quote> That's what they thought about the banks back in the start of the Great Depression. We all know what happened there.

Originally posted by: duack I think it would be better that if instead of bailing out businessess, everyone should get like a thousand dollars. Thats what they did in Australia (a thousand dollars for me ) and I'll just give this short explanation as to why - In an economy, individuals all have a different marginal propensity to consume (big scary word). Basically it means, if you give someone a thousand dollars, how much of it would they spend. Low and middle income people will spend around 80 to 100% of it, becuase they are spenders. Lets say, the 700 billion was given to low and middle class americans and everyone got like 2000 dollars. About 80% of that would be spent really quickly. Now this is the amazing part - all those billions of dollars that has just been spent means profits for businessess. Sure some will go to China, but most of it will stay in Americans. This will mean increased incomes for most, and increased income means more spending, and more spending means higher incomes and very quickly, (like in a year) the effect of the 700 billion is HUGE, and would run into the trillions. This scenario would expand the economy, making it grow. Now lets look at what happens if the money is used to bailout businessess. 700 billion is given to businesses. This would mean that the huge, innefficient companies dont go bankrupt, so people don't lose there jobs. So basically, the economy doesn't get worse but doesn't get any better either, it just has very little growth or decline. Not only that, but if the money is given to the people, they will probably spend it on the cheapest products, seeing as how they just climbed out of a debt pool. And we all know that cheap things are made more efficiently, as that is why they are cheap, so the efficient businessess survive. Sorry for the essayquote> I hate to shoot your idea down, but this isn't even close to how it works. Increased economic spending will not mean increased incomes. Why? Because if you give everyone a thousand dollars, they won't be a large enough force alone to produce a large enough revenue base for companies to start feeling like they can afford to increase their worker's salaries. On top of that, the companies are the ones that are going to need to have the money. Well, they create the products and they are the ones that have to have money to hire you, so if they get 80% of that money through sales, the money they're receiving isn't worth the same amount to them. The short and simple of it is that a dollar given to them is worth more than a dollar from a product sold. On top of that, you also have to look at the side impact of things. What would be the financial loss to Detroit if Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors all went out of business? The damage would be huge to put it mildly. Giving the entire public a lump sum of money wouldn't account for situations like that where an entire city or region is going to live or die based on a few companies in the area. On top of that, the public would either hoard the money or spend it on smaller ticket items. We're talking stuff that's $500 or less. And to be honest, if the average consumer had any sense, they wouldn't be spending the money at all. Economies are never rebuilt on the backs of people without jobs, so it makes more sense to keep the jobs around rather than the make an incentive for people to spend more by giving them a little extra cash. Who's going to spend more - the person with a job or the person who doesn't have a job and isn't going to have for the forseeable future? So long as people have jobs, they will spend. So long as people spend, the economy will not go entirely in the toilet. When mass numbers of people lose their jobs, there goes the economy. And the other thing that's important - the economy won't truly start to recover until people start more luxury items. Sales of foodstuffs may go down, but the agricultural market is much safer from total disaster than the market for flat screen TVs. People sitting on a limited quantity of money and no job aren't going to be the ones buying the luxury items. Another thing that greatly needs to be stressed is the statement you made about people just climbing out of a debt pool. This is not an accurate reflection of the average American. Most Americans have not gone into massive debt because of this. They either had it already or they still have roughly where they were at. And on top of that, the idea that cheap products are made more efficiently isn't really relevant to this discussion. Cheap products don't mean that they're made more efficiently - it just means that they're cheap. Efficiently produced goods have a tendency to be cheaper than their counterparts, but for example - computer chips are produced incredibly efficiently. They're still going to be more expensive than rubber balls. Which one serves a greater good to the economy? Much in the same way, innefficient producers should not be saved. If the money was given to the consumers, then they would determine which businesses survive and which go bankrupt, which is usually better. Plus, you'll be helping the low and middle class instead of wealthy business owners.quote> Inefficient producers should not be saved - in a normally working economy. Consumers should determine which businesses survive and which ones don't - in a normally working economy. When the economy is in a funk like this one, you don't want businesses closing down. On top of that, wealthy business owners are actually a good thing. Everyone hates them, but stop and think for a moment. These people that everyone hates so much make it possible for you to afford to eat. The following is a pretty well known fact among the business world. When the poor suffer, the poor suffer. When the middle class suffer, the poor suffer and so does the economy. When the rich suffer, everyone suffers. These people make our jobs. Kill their ability to provide for themselves and their business, and I guarantee everyone reading this that it'll hurt you worse than it'll hurt them.

Originally posted by: hamsterTK Originally posted by: Voar Tok trying to tell another country how to run itself isn't likely to do anything other than annoy (thinking of a stronger word here that I won't use) the citizens of that country. quote> Hey I am not offended by such a innocuous little comment....I am only offended by the concept that this site keeps getting so unnecessarily strict...srs bsns indeedquote> As a side comment, no one said anything about getting banned, and pissed off was a mild version of what I was thinking. Does that explain why I worded that the way I did?

Originally posted by: hamsterTK Economies of scale. Once there is significant demand for this clean technology, it can be mass produced and it's design continuously improved until the price has dropped. I think you'll get to see this soon. Electric cars, and cars with self-driving technology in them, are really the future of transportation. quote> True, but that's not guaranteed. There's are newer, cleaner ways of producing energy that still aren't practical despite the laws of economies of scale. Wind and solar power come to mind. If the entire nation just up and changed to either of those, there's still no way that the stuff would be practical. The technology to make it practical just doesn't exist yet.

Originally posted by: abcvs Actually the set catagory trixies are pretty simple apparently... it works on simple numbers... the person with the most nominations for a certain catergory wins. So in other word every nomination counts. Literally.quote> No, not so. Winning a trixie comes with strings attached. First, you must be nominated. Second, that nomination must be credible. If 500 hundred of us get together and nominate Meg for the "Most Improved BATter" Trixie and Bixel were to get two votes for it, Bixel would still win the award. Why? Meg has never batted anything in her life, so how can she possibly win the award? In other words, prank Trixies that have no legitimacy will not be counted, so don't bother submitting them. You can't sway the decision with them. Now, another thing - it isn't enough to just say "I nominate so and so because....." and then have an answer like "just look at his work!" There needs to be substance behind what you say. If you are nominating someone, you have to have a reason why, so give us that reason. For example, if Member A is nominated for "Most Improved BATter" and Member B is also nominated for the award, and there's a tie between the two of them (which actually happens a lot), then the admins are going to start looking at the strength of the nominations. So if the people who nominated Member A gave really strong, specific reasons why they should win the award and the people who nominated Member B gave weak, inspecific reasons why Member B should win the award, then Member A is almost certainly going to win. The admins judge the tie-breakers, so use your nomination reasons as an opportunity to persuade them towards the side of your nominee.

Originally posted by: astronelson All laws for the USA: Make voting compulsory for everyone 18+, dump the electoral college, and start preferential voting. Note these are the laws that are in effect in Australia, and we don't seem to be doing too bad.quote> While I agree with what you are saying as to the methods of voting, let's not be doing things on the basis of "well, it works for us, so you should do it too" as trying to tell another country how to run itself isn't likely to do anything other than annoy (thinking of a stronger word here that I won't use) the citizens of that country. Now granted, that's a bit hypocritical since the US government likes to tell places like Afghanistan how to run the government, but this is a different situation since we're an online forum. It helps keep possibilities for flaming down. Set up a national health service. [Russian Accent] In socialized medicine, doctors treat you! [/Russian Accent] However, keep the HMOs. That way, if you can't afford HMOs, you can go to the public hospital. We may see an increase in health there. Also sort of Australian.quote> This is an example of why I say not to be creating laws for other countries - this is a topic that many Americans feel strongly about - either for or against. I, for one, am dead-set against version that is similar to this and commonly proposed - do away with private healthcare and set up government-run everything. A safety blanket is a good thing for people who can't afford medical care, but still, it's a very hot-button issue. Finally, make the US part of Australia.quote> In your dreams.

Originally posted by: manticorefan Originally posted by: Duke87 But see, the point is that by taxing the dirty energy you make the clean energy more economical. quote> I fail to see how artificially inflating the price of one makes the other any cheaper.quote> It doesn't. It works like this - say you have two forms of energy - one that costs $10 per unit and one that costs $30 per unit. If you tax the cheap but dirty stuff up to $27 per unit, suddenly the $30 per unit, clean energy looks a lot better. Granted, that's an extreme case, but it illustrates the point. In all reality, you don't make the clean energy any more economical. You make the dirty energy less economical, the overall cost of doing business goes up, and any supposed cost benefits to going with the cleaner energy are purely an illusion and the result of mind games.

Originally posted by: Patricius Maximus However, long term it will benefit the poor, and everyone by spurring the development of cheap clean energy.quote> It will be a long time before it benefits the poor because cheap, clean energy is still a scientific myth. They know how to make clean energy, but it's still not cost-effective to do so. The only possible exception to that currently in existence is nuclear power, but that's got so many social taboos that I'm not even going to try to explain all the problems it would run into, not including the mere fact that it takes forever to get the permits to build one. In an entirely different venue of looking at this, there is the issue of the economic standpoint of this and what taxes do to supply and demand. When you create a tax to deal with a negative externality, you mess with the natural process of supply and demand and the point of market equilibrium. In other words, trying to fix a social problem with a tax creates problems in and of itself. You mess with the consumer surplus and what you are left with is fewer people that can afford the good. When the price is determined by the market, you reach price equilibrium. At price equilibrium, the largest portion of the market can afford the product. If equilibrium drops, then more people can afford it and the market expands. If equilibrium goes up, then fewer can afford the product. When you impose a tax to fix a social problem, you create a natural inefficiency in things.And with that inefficiency, you only create more problems than you solve.

If you can't post without being snide, don't post at all.

This thread has been continued here. -Jasoncw I've been doing some searching in the back pages of this forum, and I've noticed that the two types of threads most likely to overrun the place are either BAT requests or people wanting to know where to find something. Also, some of those threads didn't have such a great response because the question had apparently already been asked a few times. So, in the spirit of keeping tidy, here's a general thread for all those "where is such and such a file" threads. That and any newbies don't have to worry about accidentally creating a thread that's been made a dozen times or more.

Originally posted by: TV-VCR More than likely they were on drugs. When you're suicidal, you're certainly not aggressive like that. But who knows?quote> Both from personal experience and the training I've had in suicide prevention, I can assure you that there is no such thing as something that a suicidal person certainly won't do. A lot of suicidal people, if they are close to attempting it like these two women were, will become quite aggressive with anyone who tries to stop them.

Originally posted by: Boggy1 I believe the reasoning was that these two guys were in a busy crowded street, with kids about, with lots and lots of people. If they decided to go shoot people; there would be a lot of deaths. If one or two officers - and remember our police are never armed with anything more than batons. If two police officers, unarmed, confronted the men, they could have been shot down in seconds.quote> Even still, over here in the US, the SWAT would only get called out when they are dealing with a hostage situation and the people are holed up in some building and heavily armed (as in their toting assault rifles or something). My grandparents used to live next door to the mayor of the township where they lived and because we knew them, we were over at there place talking a number of times. I remember standing around with a few police officers who were reporting to the mayor when a report came through of a car with three guys in it and enough guns for a small army. The grand total of additional officers that showed up for that was something in the neighborhood of five. This may sound cliche, but if you want to get an idea as to what the SWAT teams might get called out for, go watch the opening scene of the movie SWAT. It's the only movie I know of where they actually coordinated the shoot-out scenes with a real SWAT team to improve the realism.

Originally posted by: zelgadis I think I speak for everyone in the gaming world when I say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ISF quote> And a few "LMAO!" just for good measure!

Originally posted by: SkiGeek Originally posted by: Voar Tok Originally posted by: SkiGeek Originally posted by: Flyboy1212 na it was made in a factoryquote> and there are no crazy people in factories? Seriously, think about it. All it would take would be one nutjob throwing the wrong stuff into the mix.quote> Theoretically though, one would think that quality control would catch this. If it a factory job, there's really no one place where one person can mess the whole thing up and no one else would be there to catch it unless they do it right at the end. quote> Maybe. or maybe quality control procedures are not universal. quote> This is oversimplifying things, but in all reality, there's really only one quality control standard that matters, and that standard is universal across the globe. You either check the product before it ships out or you didn't. So, you either have a quality control program (however primitive) or you don't. If you don't check it for errors, and all of the errors it could have, before it is shipped out for use, you don't have a true quality control program. The difference in where quality control standards becomes an issue is the margin of room for error. Also, I know this is not particularly politically correct to say, but China's international standing in the world of quality control is about as low as an industrialized nation can get. To give an example, the place I work at refuses to buy supplies from China because a fabrication shop was caught intentionally building something other than what the customer ordered in an attempt to save money. Basically, here's what happened (and there's no way anyone could convince the customer that this happened by accident). The customer ordered a device made out of two inch thick Inconel metal. (Inconel metal is a special metal alloy that is freakin' expensive). The shop shipped this thing out with their blessing that they had testing everything and it was all good. One of the company's third party inspectors decided to test the material just to see if everything was good to the order's specifications. It turns out that the metal was clad in a quarter-inch of the Inconel metal and had a one-and-a-half in core of regular steel. This was not an accident. It was done by intent to save serious money. China's biggest problem is not that they don't have quality control standards, because their factories producing products sold in the US will be using the same standards that a US factory would have to use. The difference is that in China, no one cares if you follow them or not. Also, on top of that, there is basically a set of international quality control standards. It's known as the ISO system. While the ISO system doesn't guarantee that you can produce the product any better, what it does guarantee is that you can produce a mile-long stack of paperwork saying you built what they asked for. The problem here is that outside of the United States, Western Europe, South Korea, and Japan, ISO certified companies are kind of hard to find. Even in the aforementioned areas, ISO certified companies can still be hard to find. My workplace gets all sorts of work because they're ISO certified and no one else in the area is. The point of all this being, the problem developed because someone was circumventing common quality control and trying to do it for really cheap. It's a known fact among the manufacturing world that in China, quality control is second string to making it cheaply. The common operating rule is to apply enough quality control measures to avoid getting recalls to often.

Originally posted by: SkiGeek Originally posted by: Flyboy1212 na it was made in a factoryquote> and there are no crazy people in factories? Seriously, think about it. All it would take would be one nutjob throwing the wrong stuff into the mix.quote> Theoretically though, one would think that quality control would catch this. If it a factory job, there's really no one place where one person can mess the whole thing up and no one else would be there to catch it unless they do it right at the end. That's a hard time to go messing with the formula though.

Micah: Well, classes have resumed for me, but that has to do with the fact that I'm in college. We can't add days to the end of summer, and they don't like having to extend the semester anyway.

This is really kind of saddening. Makes me more appreciative of when I went to see Roger Waters in concert. The entire Dark Side of the Moon album is a classic.

Well, here in Houston, we currently don't have any of the rain bands yet, but the wind is strong enough that it has already started snapping old trees. I have stuff planned for this hurricane.

Is there a way? Yes. Is it practical? No. The best you can do is let a STEX mod know if you run into such a lot. There's no way to practically search the entire STEX for "dead lots" since there is no automated way to do it, and going through 11K files manually just isn't practical.

Originally posted by: SkiGeek However, the rest of the restrictions apply to everyone with a provisional, which would include drivers from another state who have been driving less than 18 months, regardless of age.quote> So, what about the people who are from states where there is no such thing as a provisional driver's license, and once you prove that you're capable of driving a car, you're given a full license. And the whole thing about the parent's being able to just suspend a driver's license seems like an incredibly dictatorial and heavy-handed move. It sounds like there's absolutely no safe-guard there to prevent the parent from being able to abuse this power, and that's just flat out wrong. Originally posted by: Duke87 As if you actually need to officially suspend the license. Whatever happened to simply taking away the keys to the car? quote> Because suspending the license takes away the teenager's ability to legally drive someone else's car.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080809/ap_on_en_mo/obit_bernie_mac The guy could have some raunchy humor, but overall, he was pretty good. This was a bit of a shock.

You don't have to be able to understand someone to pull them from a bus, but it's considerably more helpful for the EMS when treating you if they can understand what you are complaining about hurting. Broken bones don't usually show up just by looking at them.

Originally posted by: saltandsauce Originally posted by: saltandsauce of course what nobody realises is, that a crap job is better than no job. quote> err . . . that depends. My grandfather started working as a breaker boy in the coal mines when he was 11. Fortunately, that is illegal now. quote> umm i'm sure your grandad would prefer sweating in a coal mine over starving to death in the street, which was the other option thenquote> Which is partially dependent on your financial situation. Back when Ski's granddad would have been started working, it was customary to send the kids off to work even though the family may not need the money. Odds are also good that he probably would have continued to eat even if he didn't have a job.

This would immediately and severely backfire. Any company capable of outsourcing is capable of running itself internationally, and if the company is capable of running itself internationally, what's to stop them from pulling a Tyco, incorporating in the Bahamas, and completely avoiding that minimum wage law while getting a significantly more business-friendly set of tax laws? You can't really protect a country's economy. Once you join the global game, there's no turning back, no deciding you don't want to play anymore because you need to protect yourself, and no breaking the rules. The only real rules are the general market forces, they won't be broken (despite the idea that we're not bound to them, we'll follow them anyway), and when they dictate that the balance of power is shifting, it's very difficult to stop it.