Arius

Amoebas flee from light. They can only do this because they detect the light. If Amoebas could not detect the light, they would die of dehydration. Amoebas are incapable of choice, but use sensory organs to detect light and dark. Senses are useful for reasons other than decision-making.

"For it has been already shown that nothing the sovereign representative can do to a subject, on what pretence soever, can properly be called injustice or injury; because every subject is author of every act the sovereign doth, so that he never wanteth right to any thing, otherwise than as he himself is the subject of God, and bound thereby to observe the laws of nature." -Leviathan

What you have here is an authoritarian individual with zero commitment to the NAP. "Corporal Punishment leads to abuse" That's the strangest phrase I've yet encountered. It's like saying "Involuntary sex leads to rape". All the counterarguments are consequentialist, doublespeak nonsense. Look at this: "Research into possible links between corporal punishment and abuse has proved inconclusive so far"...WTF? Sorry TeaBagger, these are some really bad arguments.

Amen. The best approach yet tried is to minimize legal limitations to economic activity...that "free market" thing.

I'm probably gonna get shooed off the anarchy forum but... That's not entirely true. There are three reasons government jobs are worse than private jobs. First, government organizations are not subject to normal market pressures (all of 'em, funded by theft). Second, government jobs increase the reach of the state. Third, government jobs crowd-out actual solutions to economic problems. Now, suppose the city reduces the police workforce by 10% but makes no additional change. The demand for cops didn't drop, taxes don't change, and the monopoly on traffic regulation isn't broken. I would imagine the police force will allocate its labor force to politically popular activities (drug enforcement and tickets). The result will be fewer available individuals to respond to assaults and 'real' problems. Basically, if the state doesn't give-up the monopoly on a service, when it downsizes the workforce providing that service, some demand will go unfulfilled. Just reducing the number of government employees accomplishes very little. I'm not saying the state shouldn't give-up the monopoly. I'm saying that if the state retains the monopoly, downsizing the workforce will work against the economy (assuming the state's service has any value at all). Alternatively, if the state's monopoly is broken, the state downsizes the workforce, and the level of taxation changes to reflect the new cost to the state, the long-run economic outcome should be good.

I was in a Jack-in-the-Box about 6 months ago (I don't eat out much) and the store had one of those automated check-out do-dads. Those have been a mainstay in Japan for several decades. I'm glad the US is finally catching-up. Which is actually my point. If you look at the difference between what is possible and what businesses actually do, you'll see that large corporations are incredibly reluctant to adopt new technologies. Most of the innovation and adaptation comes from start-ups. Blockbuster never migrated to kiosks, but the trip was easy for Redbox. For Redbox, every kiosk was a new section of the market. Blockbuster would have cannibalized its own sales with kiosks. McDonald's is way behind the "what's possible" curve. The reasons are entirely financial. The newer a technology is, the more it costs. I have no doubt that, if you really wanted to, it would be possible to build a completely automated McDonald's. But, how much would such a thing cost? Has anyone invented a device which ferries cooked food around a kitchen between stations? Is there a means for determining if the customer has changed their mind and left the store? What is the automated solution to "I want to see the manager"? Inventing and building solutions to these problems represents an investment in the technology. An investment which McDonald's would rather not pay. That's why American restaurants are only now adopting a technology which reached maturity in Asia several decades ago.

I guess we're using "automate" in a different way. There are two elements which I would consider automation. First, any piece of capital which performs a task previously performed by a person. Second, any process which reduces the total required number of people. Both have the same effect of reducing labor costs and are largely identical from a financial perspective. Mickey D's just introduced the double-queue drive-through. It allows two cars to order simultaneously, without adding any delay to the food processing time. McDonald's now has the lowest per-vehicle queue time of any drive-thru restaurant. As a result, the productivity of each employe is dramatically increased, yet labor costs remain unchanged. Now, if you mean McDonald's hasn't installed burger-flipping machines, I don't think the long-term costs are quite as low as you suggest. I know the franchise owners have no interest in a huge capital investment like that. The cost savings of implementing a mechanical burger-flipper would need to be dramatic when compared with the compensation of a minimum-wage employee. Remember, automating a process is only cost-efficient if there is an economy of scale in mechanical maintenance. For example, Honda has significant degrees of automation in their factories. All their machinery uses similar operating systems, software, and interchangeable parts. As a result, Honda doesn't need but a few technicians to keep the whole factory running. A single burger-flipping machine, in a kitchen of people, will require a maintenance technician with higher compensation costs than a human burger-flipper. Now, if you can automate the entire kitchen, maybe there's some cost savings to be made. Though, if you look at some of the modern examples of total automation, they look nothing like their human counterparts. As an example, Redbox (completely automated) looks nothing like Blockbuster Video (human operated). A fully-automated McDonald's will more likely just be a kiosk or a vending machine. It's strange you offer that argument. All the Blockbuster Videos are closed down. The brand was sold, but there are no remaining long-term employees of the company. In fact, my wife worked at a Blockbuster in her youth. Redbox and Netflix have completely replaced Blockbuster, through the use of technology and automation. Yet, most of those Blockbuster employees found gainful employment elsewhere. Redbox has a larger market than Blockbuster did. It's very rare that eliminating employees reduces the total size of a market. Equally, automation isn't a guaranteed ticket to high profits. Look at Bitcoin manufacturing. The entire industry is 100% automated. The margins are so tight that a one cent increase per kilowatt hour can put a producer out of business. In fact, most Bitcoin producers do so at a financial loss. I'm afraid the balance between labor and capital is not so one-sided as you imagine.

Women Don't Ask

Merry Christmas! I'm definitely pro-logical determinism and con-predeterminism.

Non-deterministically, there are multiple states of reality which do not violate the laws of physics. Deterministically, there is exactly one state of reality which does not violate the laws of physics. Constructing a conceptual model which does not represent an existent object or the behavior of existent objects will not mitigate this problem. Let me offer it to you this way: That I can know anything at all is a byproduct of the particular structure of reality at this moment. The arrangement of a collection of some real objects somehow constitutes the entirety of my knowledge. If there are no possible alternative states of reality, my knowledge cannot be any different from how it is now. I could not answer questions or provide arguments which differ from those I am presenting. I am, in a universe without alternate possibilities, just a very loud rock... Neither right nor wrong.

That is only true if there was more than one possible guess for me to make. If there are no alternate possible future states, there was not more than one possible guess. This coin argument assumes multiple possible future states.

"Correctness" is dependent on possible alternate states of an argument which vary in degree of similarity to reality. If there are no other possible states, there is no such thing as "correct" or "incorrect". The only position which is compatible with argumentation is: there is more than one possible future state of reality.

Enlighten me.

Do you know how crazy that sounds?

I think I understand the business model. Stef has explained it dozens of times. Go out into the street, practice philosophy, get free meals. I just don't see it working in the long-run. If revenues are gonna go up, there needs to be a product. Enjoying good conversations on a forum is neat, but not a product... or at least, not sold as one. If not advertising, why isn't there an extensive collection of merchandise? T-shirts, bumper stickers, books, mp3s, mugs, DVDs, anything. There's a large audience of interested people who would buy stuff if it were set in front of them. Socrates didn't have any access to mass media or eCommerce. I can't imagine that the philosopher wouldn't have sold a DVD collection of his greatest hits or manuals on philosophizing.

Automation displaces labor, that will always be true. I can tell you, there are cute little financial analysis techniques for determining if a position should be automated. The primary deciding factors are the cost of capital (availability and cost of credit), the marginal productivity of labor (the value generated by each additional unit of labor added), the cost per unit of labor (usually measured in total compensation), and the revenue generated by machinery. If, for example, money can be borrowed at nearly nothing, replacing workers with automation becomes very attractive (as the cost of, and interest on, the debt-financed machinery is tax deductible). Alternatively, if the cost of labor is artificially increased (say by increasing the cost of living in an area through manipulation of the housing market), then retaining workers over the long-term becomes less attractive. If the quality of workers is gradually declining (as No Child Left Behind's first generation of graduates begin to saturate the job market) then each of those workers is less attractive. In fact, if labor is made-up of a bunch of dummies, automation is significantly more attractive. On a high note, the productive value of machinery increases exponentially over time. Today's computers are significantly more productive than any of their predecessors. Put it all together and you get a situation where machinery is cheap and powerful while labor is expensive and unproductive. If the cost of capital were an accurate reflection of saving and consuming habits of people, then the cost of machinery would be an accurate reflection of the current employment level. That is, the interest rate on debt financing does not accurately reflect the real scarcity of wages (which it would if left to float). Basically, as more people become unemployed, the interest rate should begin to rise as these people stop saving. The increase in the interest rate should then make capital purchases less attractive than hiring workers (as long-term debt financing costs exceeded the cost of labor). The result would be a continuous balance between the cost of capital and the cost of labor, resulting in automation only replacing truly inefficient occupations. As it is now, the fixed interest rate keeps the cost of capital from reflecting the actual impact of joblessness. The end effect is falling demand for labor, reduced costs of capital, and overproduction (which is evidenced through over-automation).

It's doubtful that Stef lies to attract larger donations (he seems like an honest guy). He does make periodic requests for more money, occasionally resulting in things like this $2 thread. Personally, I find Stef much more conservative in his desire for money than I am. Me? There would be ads all over this forum. You know this web property is worth just under $70k (by traffic)? Building an advertising base for this forum would be so simple and lucrative. If the forum were split with a blog, both on the same domain, the advertising possibilities are staggering. I can't understand why there's a push for other people to do more to support FDR when the owner doesn't. It just confuses me. Stef can't exert social pressure on me or most of the people here, we've never met. The bartender has significantly more control over tip size than Stef does over donation amounts. Really, what can Stef even do that would exert social pressure? I'm pretty sure anyone who thinks Stef can manipulate the audience is projecting.

Informational completeness and accuracy depend on possible alternate states of the amount and quality of information possessed. You cannot make claims, which fall in the realm of possibility, about alternate states if no alternate states are possible.

Are you claiming Stef doesn't want more money from his audience?

Future events only depend on the quality (validity) of arguments if there are different possible arguments and more than one possible future. Humans can only have "normal" operations by comparing alternate possible states of existence. Don't worry though, determinism is unprovable. The past doesn't exist. The future doesn't exist. The is only the right now. Since claims about determinism require close examination of both past and future, I think we'll be ok.

Social pressure.

Additional, yet previously unnoticed, physical laws do not make building bridges impossible. A lack of possible alternate states of existence invalidates the validity of argumentation. No one who claims to be a determinist acts in a manner consistent with their arguments. Instead, they argue.

There's a big difference between "the universe is more subtle than first imagined" and "there are no possible alternate states of existence".

If a business is failing (or not succeeding to expectaion), don't blame the customers. It's not their fault.

Importance is subjective.