Billionaires Blast off

[untermensche]

Bezos had fuck all to do with my cell phone, thank you very much.

It was more like Steve Jobs and he's dead.

At least keep your oligarchs straight.

And I lived quite nicely without a cell phone for almost all of my life. Pretty sure I could do it again.

We have cell phones because of government funded research and government launched satellites.

The only feature of cell phones that requires "government launched satellites" is GPS, and it's not essential.

Not essential but a standard feature.

Government funded research is the engine of the US economy.

Not a bunch of greedy capitalists.

 

[DBT]

The rich can do whatever they like, blast off into space, fly around the Moon, land on Mars.... they just should pay workers better, charge a little less for their goods and services and pay their fair share of taxes. Which means that everyone does well.

Isn't that the point of forming a community, so that all its members benefit?

 

[bilby]

I see it as talking around the fact that the American standard of living is becoming more in line with the rest of the world, by decreasing the SoL for most people and concentrating wealth among a very few.

But the US standard of living for most people is increasing*. "More in line with the rest of the world" means poorer countries are rising faster and catching up. They're converging on us; we're not converging on them.

(* On a scale of decades. Probably not in 2020 for obvious reasons.)

Perhaps true for the "average" American. But a nation shouldn't be judged on how it treats the wealthy, nor the average, citizen. It should be judged (particularly if it's a very wealthy nation overall) on how it's poorest citizens fare.

 

[laughing dog]

Nonsense - many innovators are not motivated by wealth. I believe when Orville Wright died, he was worth about 10 million in today's dollars, hardly a lot for the inventor of manned flight.

You mean heavier-than-air flight?
Anyway, that does not prove anything about motivation. This article suggests that they "blew it" business-wise.
How The Wright Brothers Blew It
Given all this, 10 million ain't bad.

And even if they didn't screw up, patents last only 25 years and so any patents on their early tech would have expired by the end of the 1920s/early 1930s. Note that passenger air travel did not really take off until after WWII and especially with jet aircraft and planes for military use came into their own only in WWII.

Your jabber proves you missed the point - many innovators are not motivated by wealth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You may have missed the point. In fact you have.

No, you have missed the implications of your position. You take away the wealth, you take away what that wealth produces.

Please consider what is actually being said.

You pretend you can take it without taking it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You may have missed the point. In fact you have.

No, you have missed the implications of your position. You take away the wealth, you take away what that wealth produces.

Nonsense - many innovators are not motivated by wealth. I believe when Orville Wright died, he was worth about 10 million in today's dollars, hardly a lot for the inventor of manned flight.

Backwards, you have it.

The great innovations generally come from people who have substantial wealth. I'm not talking about how much they made for the innovations they are known for.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I see it as talking around the fact that the American standard of living is becoming more in line with the rest of the world, by decreasing the SoL for most people and concentrating wealth among a very few.

But the US standard of living for most people is increasing*. "More in line with the rest of the world" means poorer countries are rising faster and catching up. They're converging on us; we're not converging on them.

(* On a scale of decades. Probably not in 2020 for obvious reasons.)

Perhaps true for the "average" American. But a nation shouldn't be judged on how it treats the wealthy, nor the average, citizen. It should be judged (particularly if it's a very wealthy nation overall) on how it's poorest citizens fare.

View attachment 34639

How many of those are bad diet vs a lack of food?

I also wonder how many of them are people who spend their money on drugs rather than food.

 

[Elixir]

How many of those are bad diet vs a lack of food?

Yeah that air diet is notoriously bad.

I also wonder how many of them are people who spend their money on drugs rather than food.

Meh. Food is for people who can't afford drugs. It's the 'Murkin way.

 

[Toni]

Nonsense - many innovators are not motivated by wealth. I believe when Orville Wright died, he was worth about 10 million in today's dollars, hardly a lot for the inventor of manned flight.

Backwards, you have it.

The great innovations generally come from people who have substantial wealth. I'm not talking about how much they made for the innovations they are known for.

Really. It would be most helpful if you would provide some examples.

 

[Toni]

Perhaps true for the "average" American. But a nation shouldn't be judged on how it treats the wealthy, nor the average, citizen. It should be judged (particularly if it's a very wealthy nation overall) on how it's poorest citizens fare.

View attachment 34639

How many of those are bad diet vs a lack of food?

I also wonder how many of them are people who spend their money on drugs rather than food.

Loren, you've obviously never been poor, not really poor and certainly not for very long.

Protein sources cost more money in the US than do junk food items loaded with fat, salt, sugar, calories with little actual nutrition to offset those negatives. Even if you are including inexpensive plant based diets --those generally require access to a decent kitchen with pots and pans. Sure, you can live on canned beans (full of sodium) but you need a way to cook rice to complement the amino acids in the beans and to provide all amino acids/full proteins required for human beings to function well. These are things that you and I take for granted but a lot of people really don't have a working stove or pots and pans.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are also really hard to come by if you are poor, compounded by the fact that at least in inner cities, it's harder to find a good source for fresh fruits and vegetables in a market you can get to by foot or public transport.

 

[Derec]

Your jabber proves you missed the point - many innovators are not motivated by wealth.

It's not jabber - it's showing that your claim does not fit the example you provided.
Just because Orville Wright died with a net worth of "only" 10 million (in today's dollars) does in no way show he was not motivated by wealth. Because
a) 10 million net worth is still pretty wealthy
b) the brothers made some business blunders that limited their wealth creation no matter their motivation
c) the big commercial success of aviation came many decades after their first flight

 

[DBT]

Please consider what is actually being said.

You pretend you can take it without taking it.

Fair pay for productive work is not taking from the employer. Taking advantage of an imbalance of power by paying the workers as little as possible, it's the employer who takes potential earnings from employees.

Which means that you have it backwards.

 

[Derec]

Protein sources cost more money in the US than do junk food items loaded with fat, salt, sugar, calories with little actual nutrition to offset those negatives. Even if you are including inexpensive plant based diets --those generally require access to a decent kitchen with pots and pans. Sure, you can live on canned beans (full of sodium) but you need a way to cook rice to complement the amino acids in the beans and to provide all amino acids/full proteins required for human beings to function well.

Cheese doesn't have to be cooked. Cheddar is something like 23% protein by mass (6.5g per ounce).
And in the US poor (and lower middle class with a couple of children) are eligible for food stamps. Really, in the US nobody has to starve because they are too poor, and if they do (I am skeptical of that graph though) it is for some other reason.

These are things that you and I take for granted but a lot of people really don't have a working stove or pots and pans.

Define "many people" that do not have access to anything kitchen-like, i.e. not even a hot plate? And if you don't have access to a rudimentary kitchen, there are inexpensive burrito stands and the like. Even something like a McD cheeseburger (for variety) which is only a couple of bucks gives you 14g of protein. Grocery store rotisserie chickens are affordable sources of fully cooked animal protein. The Publix rotisserie chicken is $7.34 and has 154 g of protein. More than enough for two average-sized people's daily protein requirements and enough to provide a protein-rich meal for the whole family if they get some protein with other meals (peanut butter sandwiches, or cheese and ham or something for lunch)

Fresh fruits and vegetables are also really hard to come by if you are poor,

Are they really? And the claim of the graph was that these deaths were due to protein starvation, so fresh fruits and veggies are not directly related.

compounded by the fact that at least in inner cities, it's harder to find a good source for fresh fruits and vegetables in a market you can get to by foot or public transport.

And whose fault is that? Grocery stores selling fresh fruit and veggies would be happy to make money in the inner cities if they could operate at a profit there. Note also that in Portland, a proposed grocery store was prevented from opening because of the outcry by the "community". They said it would lead to ...

 

[untermensche]

Your jabber proves you missed the point - many innovators are not motivated by wealth.

It's not jabber - it's showing that your claim does not fit the example you provided.
Just because Orville Wright died with a net worth of "only" 10 million (in today's dollars) does in no way show he was not motivated by wealth. Because
a) 10 million net worth is still pretty wealthy
b) the brothers made some business blunders that limited their wealth creation no matter their motivation
c) the big commercial success of aviation came many decades after their first flight

Innovation today comes from some corporate owned scientist.

They don't own what they invent and don't decide what problems they will try to solve.

If they were told to do away with management with a more efficient AI system they easily could.

And relieve workers of tons of dead weight riding on their backs.

 

[Jayjay]

The only feature of cell phones that requires "government launched satellites" is GPS, and it's not essential.

Not essential but a standard feature.

Government funded research is the engine of the US economy.

Not a bunch of greedy capitalists.

There were cell phones in the 90s, before GPS became a "standard feature". And that's pretty much the only part of the phone that requires infrastructure that I can't see existing without government doing the legwork. Specifically, the military. anyone can invent satellite navigation, but it takes a lot of resources to actually build the satellites, launche them to orbit, and keep maintaining the constellation. And it's something that's hard to start in small scale because you can't do triangulation with just one or two satellites.

the argument that we wouldn't have cell phones / microwave ovens / cars / whatever without governments is true only in the broadest sense that without governments we'd still all be hunter gatherers with nothing more advanced than fire or bows and arrows. But just because the government spent a few bucks on some basic research fifty years ago doesn't mean we owe our eternal gratitude to the military-industrial complex for inventing this gadget or that.

 

[Toni]

Cheese doesn't have to be cooked. Cheddar is something like 23% protein by mass (6.5g per ounce).
And in the US poor (and lower middle class with a couple of children) are eligible for food stamps. Really, in the US nobody has to starve because they are too poor, and if they do (I am skeptical of that graph though) it is for some other reason.

Real cheese--not the horrid processed stuff--is more expensive than beans and rice. Plus, cheese is full of fat and a not inconsiderable amount of sodium. I write this as a cheese lover. When I was really poor, cheese was a real luxury for me. Food stamps are great but if you've never tried to feed your family on them, you really don't know what you're talking about.

Define "many people" that do not have access to anything kitchen-like, i.e. not even a hot plate? And if you don't have access to a rudimentary kitchen, there are inexpensive burrito stands and the like. Even something like a McD cheeseburger (for variety) which is only a couple of bucks gives you 14g of protein. Grocery store rotisserie chickens are affordable sources of fully cooked animal protein. The Publix rotisserie chicken is $7.34 and has 154 g of protein. More than enough for two average-sized people's daily protein requirements and enough to provide a protein-rich meal for the whole family if they get some protein with other meals (peanut butter sandwiches, or cheese and ham or something for lunch)

Do you not realize that all of those convenience foods are loaded with fat and sodium? Have you looked at the sodium content for ham?????

All of what you mentioned is exactly what a lot of people without much money do to feed themselves. There are too many people who cannot afford to do that, or only can do it rarely. Food stamps don't work at burrito stands, none of which are in my town, despite there being a couple of Mexican restaurants.

The diet you are suggesting is full of fat and sodium which both contribute to poor health and is simply out of reach of a lot of people. And not necessarily available everywhere or for purchase with food stamps.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are also really hard to come by if you are poor,

Are they really? And the claim of the graph was that these deaths were due to protein starvation, so fresh fruits and veggies are not directly related.

Yeah, they are. I know what I spend each week on fresh fruits and vegetables and it's not something I could do if I were poor. When I was poor, a bag of carrots and a bag of apples needed to last for at least a couple of weeks. At least. Oranges were a rare treat.

compounded by the fact that at least in inner cities, it's harder to find a good source for fresh fruits and vegetables in a market you can get to by foot or public transport.

And whose fault is that? Grocery stores selling fresh fruit and veggies would be happy to make money in the inner cities if they could operate at a profit there. Note also that in Portland, a proposed grocery store was prevented from opening because of the outcry by the "community". They said it would lead to ...
View attachment 34643

Grocery stores and restaurants operate on very slim profit margins. Fresh fruits and vegetables have shorter shelf lives compared with canned. They cost more for stores to carry and are riskier. You need to be sure of your profit.

 

[Elixir]

U.S. Navy controls inventions that claim to change "fabric of reality"

Inventions with revolutionary potential made by a mysterious aerospace engineer for the U.S. Navy come to light.

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/us-navy-inventions-change-reality

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK?

The U.S. Navy controls patents for some futuristic and outlandish technologies, some of which, dubbed "the UFO patents," came to light recently. Of particular note are inventions by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, whose tech claims to be able to "engineer reality." His slate of highly-ambitious, borderline sci-fi designs meant for use by the U.S. government range from gravitational wave generators and compact fusion reactors to next-gen hybrid aerospace-underwater crafts with revolutionary propulsion systems, and beyond.

Of course, the existence of patents does not mean these technologies have actually been created, but there is evidence that some demonstrations of operability have been successfully carried out. As investigated and reported by The War Zone, a possible reason why some of the patents may have been taken on by the Navy is that the Chinese military may also be developing similar advanced gadgets.

Among Dr. Pais's patents are designs, approved in 2018, for an aerospace-underwater craft of incredible speed and maneuverability. This cone-shaped vehicle can potentially fly just as well anywhere it may be, whether air, water or space, without leaving any heat signatures. It can achieve this by creating a quantum vacuum around itself with a very dense polarized energy field. This vacuum would allow it to repel any molecule the craft comes in contact with, no matter the medium. Manipulating "quantum field fluctuations in the local vacuum energy state," would help reduce the craft's inertia. The polarized vacuum would dramatically decrease any elemental resistance and lead to "extreme speeds," claims the paper.

I don't know much (anything) about creating quantum vacuums, but it doesn't sound like stuff that someone could undertake in their garage. Nor does this sound like something for which an enterprising individual might succeed via a go-fund-me campaign, or even by recruiting venture capitalists to invest in. Yet the return might (or might not) dwarf the accomplishment of creating a reusable rocket booster - the only truly novel part of Musk and Bezos' celebrated endeavor (Binnie flew higher in SpaceShipOne - twice - some seventeen years ago).

I'm not trying to say that anything truly new always requires government investment, but some things require risks that the private sector simply will not shoulder.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Please consider what is actually being said.

You pretend you can take it without taking it.

Fair pay for productive work is not taking from the employer. Taking advantage of an imbalance of power by paying the workers as little as possible, it's the employer who takes potential earnings from employees.

Which means that you have it backwards.

Reality doesn't have the concept "fair". It's purely a way of pretending workers should be paid more than market rates.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Define "many people" that do not have access to anything kitchen-like, i.e. not even a hot plate? And if you don't have access to a rudimentary kitchen, there are inexpensive burrito stands and the like. Even something like a McD cheeseburger (for variety) which is only a couple of bucks gives you 14g of protein. Grocery store rotisserie chickens are affordable sources of fully cooked animal protein. The Publix rotisserie chicken is $7.34 and has 154 g of protein. More than enough for two average-sized people's daily protein requirements and enough to provide a protein-rich meal for the whole family if they get some protein with other meals (peanut butter sandwiches, or cheese and ham or something for lunch)

Even cheaper: Beans and rice in a crock pot. Non-perishable until cooked, also.

 

[Jarhyn]

Fair pay for productive work is not taking from the employer. Taking advantage of an imbalance of power by paying the workers as little as possible, it's the employer who takes potential earnings from employees.

Which means that you have it backwards.

Reality doesn't have the concept "fair". It's purely a way of pretending workers should be paid more than market rates.

That isn't actually true. The concept of "fair" is what happens when probabilistically positive and negative behavior is rewarded based on an artificial allotment based on the probability rather than the probabilistic outcome, so as to allot rewards based on values and behaviors rather than randomizations.

Some things must not be perfectly fair. Too much fairness robs a system of it's dynamism. But fairness certainly allows for more useful outcomes at selection; Too much individual variation against a core attribute makes it impossible to reliably prevent false negatives/positives on the axis of discrimination.

It's really a matter of tuning the balance between fairness and probabilistics so as to encourage enough bad selection to guarantee the presence of abnormal or borderline capabilities (dynamism) but ensure that the majority of success happens because of work.

Reality comes into it that this is going to create better outcomes for agents that adopt the strategy. We have adopted it, and the conclusion is "the system as it stands does not include enough fairness for optimal function".