Looking at the escrow, it seems Kevin dumped the money before MtGox even reopened. Can't tell if he took it out for himself, or sent it to the BTC Faucet...

I get paid on Wednesdays, every two weeks. Paycheck came in today, so not surprised it started going up again. Since it tends to go down a bit on weekends, I expect my Dwolla transfer won't complete until Monday. Last paycheck was during the MtGox crash. I didn't get to buy until Mtgox reopened and the price went up from $13.50 to $16.50. Before that my money got stuck in Dwolla during their issues, so I couldn't buy during the $30 to $10 crash, either, only being able to buy when it went back up to $18. It's been pretty consistent.

Either that, or it's because I have a sh*t-ton more money than you and that amount isn't something I'll cry over if I lose.
As for why I'll keep buying more? It's my long-term savings. I won't need this money until a year from now.

I bought in almost $10k at that amount thinking it was the low figure. I may be an exception, but I still plan to continue buying in every two weeks, regardless of the price.

Two words: misaligned incentives.

Although I'm a fan of objectivism and free markets, my main concern about public vs private education is the fact that children are not financially free, nor are they capable of making financial decisions. If public education was given to adults, who know what they wished to learn, and have the money to pay for their education, I would be totally against it being "public." But kids are at the mercy of whatever their parents make them do, and they don't make enough money to pay for their own education. Thus, without public education, a child living in a poor, ignorant family will end up being poor and ignorant through no fault of choice of their own.
Granted I'm somewhat biased, too, since I came from USSR and studied a bit in Italy, both places where the public education system ABSOLUTELY DOMINATES the one in USA (think cellular biology and polynomial algebra in 3rd and 4th grade)

Also, please please please PLEASE don't push for home-schooling with parents providing the education. It takes quite a lot of education just to learn how to be an educator. Making kids reads books without the parents themselves understanding anything beyond maybe a 5th grade education themselves (even those who went to college forget things) is just asking for trouble. Likewise, most parents don't have time to work AND learn how to educate AND learn and understand the material AND teach their kids. It's a full-time job by itself.

I don't know at what price, but my next paycheck comes in tomorrow, so it should start rebounding fast just before my next Dwolla transfer clears... like it has done for the last 5 times in a row

Still waiting for an improved copy of the e-mail idea...

Of course it's weighted. We also have plenty of positives on the other side as well. Regardless, though, if you pick ANY side and stick to it, you'll still have a 50% chance of being right, or a 50% chance of not returning to this post.

Considering there are only two options, up or down, you obviously always have a 50% chance of being right.

Trust me, I've had A LOT of interest in electric cars since the 90's. The technology is there, but a lot of practical stuff (like these batteries or ultracapacitors) are so new ans so expensive that it'll be a few years before they can be afforded by mass consumers.


Profit is the act of selling to people what they want, so all the useless crap and stuff that doesn't last is either actually useful to someone, or is made cheaply enough that people are willing to save money and buy it again later if they need it. The idea that "companies only sell just enough to keep us buying more" is at most a conspiracy theory, because any new company that comes in and sells more durable stuff for the same amount will wipe out all other competitors instantly.
Arguing about "how long stuff lasts" is very subjective. I could just as easily say that an RBE city is something that can last, but doesn't, because they didn't build it out of gold and diamonds, and so it'll decompose and break down within 100 years.



What was the logical and human-nature based reason to deny women to think and make their own choices? There wasn't any. That's why they got their rights. Companies wishing to put women to work and thus improve their profit was another reason.


Aside from your apparent claim that over 99% of the world's work is nothing but bureaucratic paper pushing...
My grandfather is an engineer, from a rather well known line of engineers starting with Tsiolkovsky. It took just him alone to think up of a radical new idea for a levitation system that could revolutionize our transportation. The results of that 1% of the population work is a few pieces of paper and some patents. It will take a CONSIDERABLY larger % of the population to actually make it happen, and so far we haven't found ANYONE willing to do the millions worth of needed infrastructure for free.
As for the "no problem whatsoever," what do you think will happen to Saudi Arabia when their oil runs out? What do you think will happen to an RBE city when the machines break down, or something breaks in the software, or when those machines run out of resources needed to work, and everyone got too comfortable sitting at home painting or philosophizing instead of studying the difficult math and sciences needed to keep things running? Likewise, human capital is a resource as well. What will happen when the resource of people who know how to run things drops below the amount NEEDED to run things? Your only defense has been "it takes a low number, eg 1%."


You mean like this? http://www.thevenusproject.com/a-new-social-design/resource-based-economy
Where it says that "scarce resources" can be overcome by technology? Do we have the technology to create petroleum (plastics), steel, rare-earth minerals, or fertilizers out of nothing? At most, better technology will make those resources cheaper to obtain, which is what we're already trying to do in a free market economy. Now sure why RBE would be better. Yes, I have read those.

By the way, I love their example:
Would an anti-RBE equivalent be something like this?
consider this: if a group of people with tablet computers, solar panels, and wind generators were stranded on an island that had no resources such as food, clean air and water, their sustainable technology would be irrelevant to their survival.

The real answer to this example should really be HOW those people got the stuff they are holding:
If the people with money got all that money from running businesses that specialized in food production, water purification, and farming equipment, chances are they'll have the knowledge to apply the skills they sold back home to this island ans still survive.
If the RBE people got their computers, solar panels, and wind generators because they were given to them, and their actual home professions were things like professional TV watchers, philosophers, or random garage-engineer tinkerers, they'll be entertained by their computers, but will otherwise likely die.

I'm totally serious. Why won't the vast majority of people in RBE NOT just go into mostly much easier to do things, like studying religion, arts, or philosophy?

Wasting resources costs money. Profit = revenue - cost. Those who can cut costs the most will have the biggest profit.
If the company produces and sells a resource, and all of it's profits come from mining that resource, it'll either have to find more efficient methods for mining, or go out of business once the resource becomes too expensive to mine. Unlike RBE's claims, resources are not unlimited (we have finite supply of certain minerals). However, resources have substitutes. Steel can be replaced by cheaper plastics for example. The company that produces the cheapest, least resource-intensive product will kill the old resource-wasting companies, and take their profit.

If people have free access to tools and are able to earn a living my using their minds on a free unregulated market, then the only ones who starve will be the ones not willing to do the bare minimum needed to earn a living. With the advent of the internet, anyone living anywhere can sell their services to anyone else in the world.

On that note...

Question for RBE:
1. Since resources like arable land, fertilizers, and metals/plastics/minerals used in farming machinery and power generating equipment are very much limited, how does the RBE idea ensure that population doesn't go over the sustainable limit (above the amount of planet-wide food production possible), and people don't starve unnecessarily?

The only example on that list that existed for years is the Solectria. I'd like to know how much it cost (my guess is A LOT), how long it took to recharge (my guess is at least overnight/8hours), and how durable was it (considering the batteries it used, I'm guessing it lasted maybe a year before you needed to replace the batteries). My point is that, in the market, "durable" is a sales word. VAST majority of our stuff becoming obsolete is not because it's not durable, but because new technology makes old things obsolete (my SEGA Genesis and my IBM 5Mhz PC still work just fine). This, by the way, will be exactly the same in an RBE, with mountains of crap being thrown away because new technology will constantly outdo the old.



So your answer is to change the culture of the ENTIRE world, otherwise this idea won't work? And this isn't a utopian impossible dream why?

Oh, just remembered another obvious example regarding profit and conservation. Hotels now ask that if you stay with them for a few days that you conserve and reuse your towels, and don't ask your sheets to be changed every day. Their reason is that they wish to conserve clean water. In fact, many factories use techniques to conserve clean water. The reason? It's not them suddenly thinking green and wishing to conserve a precious resource. The reason is that clean water costs money, and saving water increases profits.
Examples like these are prevalent all over...

there's also an excelent example of consequences of a resource based economy in existence today: Saudi Arabia. That country is so oil rich that everyone is paid by the government, and doesn't really need to work to subsist. People aren't worried about food or loss of jobs, or healthcare issues, or insurance, since the country's riches sustain them. You would THINK that that country would be the most intelligent and technologically advanced country in the world, with people focusing on their interests and having lots of time to innovate. Instead, vast majority of people/youth are going into theology schools, learning about religion, and wasting their lives. That's pretty much exactly what can rationally be expected of an RBE society: as soon as the sustaining resource stops or breaks, the entire place will suddenly find itself full of useless lazy fools.

Regarding your programmed obsolescence, two examples against that come to mind. First is Japanese cars in the 70's vs US cars and Japanese cars in the 90's vs US cars. In the 70's, US cars dominated, because Japanese ones were unreliable clunkers. Japan fixed that, and is now dominating the market with cars that are more durable than US ones. Just 30 years ago, cars were expected to last maybe 50k miles, and were expected to die after 100k. My Civic today has 210k miles on it, and still runs perfectly. Reason for this drastic improvement in durability and efficiency? Japanese companies wanted to be more profitable than US companies (part of the result was US car companies almost going out of business)
Example 2 are power tools. Sure, we have a lot of crappy quality Made-in-China stuff going around, but which companies make the most profit on power tools? The ones promising that their tools are tough, dependable, and won't accidentally kill you on the job.

Finally, if what you propose is free, sustainable, can have people simply volunteering their time, and is a better alternative than what we have, then why doesn't it exist yet? What are the barriers to getting it done? (I'm guessing it needs LOTS of money, or LOTS of people willing to abandon their paying gigs and start doing stuff with no money/food/resource rewards)

It sounds like RBE = trying to convince people not to seek profit. That sounds like trying to convince people not to eat fatty foods, not to smoke, or even not to breathe, since seeking to enrich ourselves is pretty much our natural biological function. You're also proposing trying to change the culture... Makes me feel the RBE thing is more of a utopian idea than just trying to maintain us within a profit-seeking market.

Actually, the reason for THAT is because a lot of local governments have either unions or contracts with monopolies that prevent those governments from doing business with anyone else. Thanks to that, these companies can do whatever they want, including building crappy infrastructure that costs too much and needs to be replaced often. You're essentially describing an unnatural monopoly that has nothing to do with a "free market," and would likely be a problem in RBS as well. Places without those problems work like the rest of the free market: those trying to sell the cheapest crappiest stuff to make the most profit end up losing out to those who can sell better stuff at the same price. In a free market perfect competition environment, profit is usually close to 0, with the most efficient producer who can make the best product winning the race. So, in places like closed or private communities wo hire their own companies, or toll roads not subject to using government contracted workers (i.e. those working with a free market) usally have much better quality roads ad sidewalks for not much more money.

Woah woah woah! This here is a BIG heaping serving of fail. Sidewalks are nowhere NEAR free. Sidewalks, roads, and transportation in general is usually the biggest part of a state budget, is in many states (in mine, too) is most of where your tax dollars go to. If you think automated hydroponics can be supported the same free way that sidewalks are supported, do I have a HUGE tax burden surprise for you...
Which, of course, leads to the question, do you work, pay huge taxes to build and maintain these hydroponics, and help support everyone, or do you not work, relax at home, and have others work and make money to pay taxes to support your food production? Or, I guess since there's no money or profit, do you just have faith that there will actually be people who will be boring enough to be excited by hydroponics and will work to build and maintain those machines and maintain that knowledge for nothing?

I have read it. I believe you claim these things happen because people would do stuff for free, anyway, open-source style. Problem with that idea is that all these things required an enormous amount of money to build and support an infrastructure to make it happen. Where's our free open-source internet, CPUs, or hard drives?